SturmCRF

I think AEW should 100% sign Buddy and Swerve, I love watching both of them and the potential matches make me drool. Never been convinced by Bandido as a top tier talent, but he's good and I wouldn't be unhappy to see him there. Gresham is excellent but incredibly short, I know his style makes up for that but I think it limits his main event potential in a company of AEW's size. Again though, would be happy to see him there. Having said Gresham is too short, I don't think any of these guys, or AEW's current roster, should be pigeonholed as cruiserweights. I don't even like the idea of a junior division in Japan, where they're treated with relative respect. Darby Allin shows how a small guy can be a believable main eventer if they work to their strengths, and in a company where an Alan Angels can get 10 minutes with the champion, someone with Ali's level of talent and presence can be presented as capable of beating the champion. As far as what Ali brings that separates him, apart from the superb wrestling and promo abilities, he's been hinting/outright saying for years now that he wants to present an heroic Muslim babyface character, which pro wrestling is definitely ready for and would firmly put a stamp on what separates AEW from WWE. But probably getting ahead of myself, as they could yet stick him in Pac exile for years for not being satisfied with being an ineffective Antifa ringleader or whatever the fuck he was meant to be until they settled on him as Mansoor's unsupportive friend.

I watched it on Wrestle Universe and was overjoyed to be able to do so through my Xbox browser rather than streaming NJPW World in terrible quality from my phone to my TV while using 2/3 of the battery. Yours and Stewart's commentary is excellent, and NOAH in general has won me over, happy to keep paying the subscription for now just to keep watching KENOH kick people.

He was a Jungle Boy, she said see you later boy, Luchasaurus has horns and an ancient history degree.

No, clearly not. I will give Will a pass, while feeling a bit uneasy about it, because the thing he was accused of, while bad, was significantly less bad than what Marty was accused of, and was at least partially debunked, as far as whether he actually caused Polyanna to be blackballed. It sounds like he's an idiot who acted shittily to misguidedly defend a close friend, which is less definitively unforgivable than being a sexual predator using wrestling to prey on young women. Separately from that, I enjoy Ospreay's wrestling a lot, he does graceful flippy stuff and he hits people hard. I think Scurrl was a good wrestler who polluted his matches with shitty finger spots and pandering to fans far too much to be an effective heel.

Think it's a bit unfair to compare Ospreay to Scurrl, both in terms of their alleged wrongdoings and as wrestlers. I never got the hype for Scurrl as a wrestler, whereas I love Ospreay the wrestler, and don't think he's irredeemable as a person just a bit of a dick who's very good at leaning into the dickishness as a heel.

Raquel breaking up a pin that would have guaranteed her a title match next week because Cora Jade was stealing 'her' win is one of the stupider things I've seen on a wrestling show in a while, though to be fair, I have stopped watching Raw and most Smackdowns.

I dunno, I wouldn't want every belt defended on a one hour show. They've just established that a match between two elite wrestlers can take a full hour, cramming four ten minute matches into one show would suck. A two hour show, sure.

Kind of disappointing card, but LIJ vs Kongoh is very exciting on paper. What this card really needs more than a particular match is some angles setting up future crossovers, they need something to freshen them up if Covid will be keeping their foreign talent inaccessible for the most part.

Of all the things I love about AEW, I might love Tazz the most. He's a joy to listen to, just an endlessly chuntering orange cube of grumpy good cheer, Dad jokes and spot on analysis.

Not sure who I want to win. I prefer Danielson, obviously, but he won't be hurt by a loss and Page might be. And normal AEW booking is to build a heel or quasi heel up to be unstoppable with an unbeaten streak when they come in, then have them lose definitively in the big title match to be reheated as needed. In BD's case, he can lose, switch back to unbeatable babyface with one handshake and busy himself with literally anyone on the roster for a few months until he's ready for a title run. He doesn't need the belt yet, but I kind of want him to win it to break the pattern of long reigns. I like them, but only doing extended title runs can hurt the drama with any defence prior to the obvious coronation. Kenny vs Christian and vs Pac/OC were very good, but hurt by being obvious filler on the road to Hangman. In this case at least they have people genuinely unsure of the result, so they've sort of solved that issue for now, whether you credit a strong challenger or a vulnerable champion. Not gonna stay up to watch live, but think I might have to set my alarm for 5 and watch it before work.

I agree with most of that clip, including the bit where they talk about how Dominik Mysterio would have been better served by going to AEW, but my mind is boggled by the idea that his character's failure when compared to Hook is just WWE's fault. Hook and Dominik could be used as the absolute textbook example of the difference between great wrestling screen presence and irredeemable anti charisma. Hook has managed to come across as a magnetic cult character by standing around looking mean for 95% of his screen time, to the point of becoming a meme. Dominik has always seemed like an awkward, gangly rich teen whose Dad has coaxed him away from Fortnite for the night to try and do something constructive with his life. He's AJ Soprano without the Slipknot t-shirts. If he'd gone to AEW they'd have given him a big debut tag match with Rey and then hustled him off to Dark with Brock Anderson for however many years it took him to sprout a personality, or at least come up with a cool mask. I don't listen to the Bryan and Vinny show, so I don't know if they're regularly that wrong about a thing, but even as someone who didn't start regularly skipping Raw until the last couple of years, I can't envisage a time where Dominik wouldn't be a one man fast forward prompt.

I started watching this, but had to stop when the closed captions told me one of the commentators had just said 'syphilis soaks up your dog', because nothing is topping that.

Rosa is my favourite by far, but I don't want her to win this, I want her to beat Britt for the Women's title. I think Ruby beats Jade in the final, they clearly wanted to roll out the red carpet for her when she debuted, but couldn't have her go straight over the champ. If she wins this, it sends a strong message to any of WWE's female talent with a contract coming up, which presumably they want to do as it's the one area where the competition currently has one over them.

Average Death. The drum pattern alone is better than most songs. An Iteration is great too, but Big Shell and Real Folk Blues are my joint second favourites.

All my anticipated albums for the year are out, so ready to settle on a favourite. Every Time I Die ran it close, but my album of the year is Ultrapop by The Armed. Not often a new album comes out with one song I'd immediately put in an all time top ten and two that'd go in a top 100. Anyway, I'll leave the reviewing to you. This reminds me that The Apple Drop is very good and I need to listen to it again.

Gared O' Donnell, the singer from Planes Mistaken For Stars, died yesterday. Amazing band that I'm really grateful I finally got round to getting into five years ago, and saw live in London a couple of years back. All their stuff is good, but they really hit their stride on their last two albums, Mercy and Prey. I'm at a weird point in my life where almost nothing makes me cry these days, but I listened to 'Penitence' by them yesterday and was on the verge. Listening to a fifteen year old song where a man who's just died in real life imagines saying goodbye to his family and apologises for all his mistakes will do that, especially when the song's that incredible. One of the most genuinely difficult to describe bands I can think of, they sound totally singular and it was mainly down to his voice, which started gravelly and got gravellier from there. I guess they come under post hardcore, but that covers so much ground it's not much use. Just do yourself a favour and listen to Mercy.

Along similar lines, I guess, I was watching Dynamite with my girlfriend last night and during the Billy Gunn match, the subject of steroids came up while we were marvelling at a nearly 60 year old man being in such great shape. She's wholeheartedly got into wrestling since meeting me last year, mainly AEW with a bit of NJPW, and has read Jim Smallman's history book, but doesn't have the insane reserves of pointless nerd knowledge I've built up in 30 years of being a fan. So, I was explaining the Ass: Origins story as far as him being fired from his agent/trainer job in WWE for preparing too enthusiastically for a bodybuilding competition, and had to acknowledge that, as far as I knew, AEW didn't drug test (correct me if I'm wrong, but if they do it'd be the first I'd heard of it). Which is not ideal, and it'd be great if they did, but it got me thinking that what might be more beneficial than testing for steroids etc. is creating an environment where wrestlers aren't pressurised into doing them. They've demonstrated so far that, if you can project as a star, wrestle good matches and get over with the crowd, you can look like Darby Allin or a Young Buck (this is where someone who can spot these things tells me they're juiced to infinity) and still get a major push. And if you have to take time off, for whatever reason, you can rest assured you'll get a huge, featured comeback to a major pop, instead of going in the boss's black book of unreliable talent. That sort of culture seems like a better deal than rigorous wellness testing that still seems to mysteriously miss anyone above a certain level in the hierarchy, although some form of drug testing may obviously still be worthwhile, even at the cost of a slightly less vast Ass Gentleman.

Looking back, he was kind of a giant, Kenta Kobashi move stealing incel. In defence of the totally well adjusted teenager who was writing for him, the narrator usually kept at least a bit of ironic distance from his actions.

My favourite Wrestlemania 2000/No Mercy CAW was Carl Sturm, (concept - what if me, but Kevin Nash?) and he then graduated to being an e-fed character (what if ECW Rhino, but more misogynistic and with the vocabulary of an eighteen year old who writes a lot of English literature essays?) CRF is the initials of a line from the second Glassjaw album.

Can't believe this was posted an hour ago and still nobody has made enquiries into whether or not you will stop.

The Carmelo cash in was done well if you take it in isolation, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Why use it on the North American title? It's like someone using MITB to become Intercontinental Champion. I suppose you can handwave it and say that he's a heel now, so saw some easy prey and took his shot, and they did sew a bit of tension with Swerve, but it's still pretty stupid. Bron and Ciampa are having a gruelling title match soon, just show some patience and get the big belt. Also, while I'm complaining, Mandy Rose was disturbingly orange. Maybe the red lighting didn't help, but that woman looked irradiated.

Oh yeah, she spoke pure nonsense but she did it with seamless confidence, she's a pro wrestler through and through.

Rewound it twice to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, but Mandy Rose definitely said "Where were you guys when my face was batteredly and beatened?"

Delighted for Big E, and that I watched it unspoiled after getting wind that they may be desperate enough to do something interesting on Raw for once. Also very happy that he won the proper WWE title, not that artificial, almost historyless brand split prop that Roman's dragging around.

Bit of a copout there keeping it to the WWF title, the WWE title is the same lineage and then we'd get into some huge stars like Cena, Lesnar, Mahal.