SturmCRF

I did. What the fuck was that?! I never watch BTE because I imagine it will be badly mic'd high school banter and Jacksons talking about trainers - and it literally is! Fair play to Tony Khan for making it clear early on that nothing like this would ever make it to TV.

I'm not going to forget today in a hurry. I woke up at 3:30AM UK time, saw an email confirming I tested positive for Covid (I'm fine, I'm double vaxxed and already feeling better than a couple of days ago), so thought I might as well stick on Fite TV and see Rampage almost live. That whole thing was like an out of body experience, the crowd noise, the promo, CM Punk could actually start a cult and I wouldn't be surprised, I might even join. As comically shitty as the MITB 2011 followup was, with the Nash and the Del Rio and the HHH, nothing could actually have lived up to the pipe bomb promo short of giving CM Punk significant creative control over the company. He made such a convincing case that the whole enterprise was rotten, and the last ten years have mainly been a whole lot of proving him right. AEW, more than most of us could ever have dreamed, is the closest thing possible to a wrestling company run on the principles of that promo. Young talent gets built up, the wrestlers get to organically convey character through their words and actions rather than someone else's hack job sitcom script, titles are treated with importance, the fans aren't held in complete contempt. Whoever dropped the line about leaving out cookies and Pepsi on CM Punk Eve and wasn't sure who to credit it to, I'm going to do the same and recycle it here, because it makes me grin every time, and this whole morning, from the insanely early start to the wrestling, minus the Covid, has been like a surreal portal back to the sort of excitement I felt as a five year old at Christmas.

I dunno, the preachy, evangelical, hypocritical MMA fighters he's (hopefully) parodying are at least as offensive to me in the wild as edgelord comedians, it's just hard not to find it charming when Miro does it, because Miro rules.

This whole thing will be fine if he gets his comeuppance in the blowoff match via Julia Hart counteracting their boom box interference by chucking one of the Varsities a replica Eiffel Tower paperweight to brain him with.

There's not much I'd change about AEW's overall booking, but I'd love them to cut way back on the distractions/shitty reffing, and give us a time limit draw a few times a year.

Skipped this week's show because I watched last week's, but one thing that struck me is the sheer misery of them having two separate 'contender matches' where someone has to beat the Champions to earn a title shot. I might have had some passing interest in Sheamus vs Priest if they put any effort into building to it, but they think the way to build anticipation in an eventual title match is having multiple, unsatisfying versions of it first. It can't be that they have a small roster, because they have a huge roster, they just choose to rarely do NXT callups, and treat their Cedric Alexanderses as worthless job guys rather than potential contenders.

Are they maybe not using Scarlet because they think two hot blonde occultist gimmicks would be too many? Seems a shame if so, they could just have gone all in with Alexa ridiculousness and had her summon Kross and Scarlet from a haunted tea set or something. Personally, I've always quite liked Kross in NXT, at least he stands out there, and as big goofs go he's perfectly serviceable. With his whole act in tow he could have done well on the main roster, but this was just baffling. I watched Raw for the first time in months because it at least looked set to be eventful, and yeah, what a disgrace. It was an easy watch because it had returns, a debut and a title change, but they can't do that every week, and the basic booking logic and presentation is still rancid nonsense.

As I remember it, the main thing in Sekiro is to always be attacking whenever possible, every second that you're not dodging or parrying attacks. That doesn't remove the need to time your defensive maneouvres, but it means you don't need to land them as many times, as you'll overload the enemy endurance bar quicker. It's still the hardest From game I've played, but it's beatable, I managed it and I'm far from a games wizard.

I'm sure I'm not, but sometimes I feel like one of the only people who thinks Kenny Omega is fantastic, and one of the best wrestlers in the world despite his various much discussed irritating habits, while The Bucks are unbearable one trick ponies who look like they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. I know both those opinions separately are quite widely held, but it's mad how rarely they get expressed together, considering that they're objectively the correct ones.

Aren't Bear Country's masks a reference to the film Wrong Turn? I'm sure I heard them get announced as from Bear Mountain, which is where that film happens. Not that anyone gets their face caught in a bear trap in it, but there's general murder and mayhem at the hands of mutant Leatherface knockoffs.

That's kind of mind blowing, Brazil's quite a big place for one of its all time great sportspeople and Phillipe Coutinho to have gone to the same school. Also random tangent that arguably doesn't deserve its own post but belongs in the AEW thread, I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that Hollywood Hunk Ryan Nemeth drugged me and stole my PS5. Ever since then it's been clear to me that he's the biggest heel in the company, the thieving piece of shit.

British Bulldog, Crush and Max Moon were my absolute favourites early on. Plus a very brief Ultimate Warrior phase. The first wrestling show I ever saw though was Rumble 91, and the main reason I came back for more was that the Undertaker was so green and scary, and Earthquake and Tugboat were so fat.

It used to be that the one big problem with NXT was that you'd end up cheering your favourites on to lose big matches, so they could get called up. Sure, main roster was bad then too, but I still wanted to see a Balor or a Nakamura in the big leagues where they belong, getting a shot, and hopefully freshening up one show while leaving a spot for someone to move up into in the other. Now, hardly anyone ever leaves, some are so traumatised by main roster shittery that they ask to come back, and the show is incredibly stale as a result. Still the best WWE show, but stale. I don't make a habit of talking to my TV, but I actually screamed at it when Io Shirai appeared the other night. Why is she still there?! Smackdown has about five women at the moment, Raw basically has three who are taken seriously, why do we need Io in midcard NXT purgatory when they could be using her to massively improve one of them? Don't get me started on Gargano, Ciampa and Cole. All excellent wrestlers (if they have an editor, but still, top level talents overall) and I'm sick of the sight of them in this context.

WWE should be calling up about ten men and ten women minimum, it would instantly freshen up all three of their main rosters. It wouldn't solve the general wretchedness of Raw in particular, but it'd make me and a lot of people at least tune in for a few weeks to see something new. AEW should absolutely sign Andrade, Joe, Murphy, Tommy End, Kalisto. Obviously Bryan too but I can't quite see it happening. The thing they're maybe best at is not running anything into the ground, creating genuine anticipation for matches between pushed acts, I don't see how they don't get huge benefits from bringing in a bunch of world class wrestlers, all of whom were misused and underutilised where they were. Roster size is less of an issue because you can trust AEW to rotate someone off TV for a few weeks without making everyone assume they've given up on or forgotten about them. A Samoa Joe can cut a killer promo one week, batter Trent or someone backstage the next, and build to a match that'll have people foaming at the mouth. In WWE they'd have him wrestling Jeff Hardy three weeks in a row and consider it storytelling to build from a DQ to a countout to a pinfall. As far as their women's division, yeah, give anyone they've released a shot. My opinion on Ruby Riott is currently clouded by that embarrassing wheelbarrow double team botch last week, but that might have been Liv's fault, and I hear she was great on the indies, so sure, put her in the mix. I don't really want anyone to go to New Japan at the moment, because they can barely run shows as it is. Sure, Murphy in the G1 sounds fantastic, but I didn't have that much patience for how slow they are to push newcomers even before the pandemic, let alone now they know they can't rely on their ability to get in and out of the country easily.

You'd hope so, surely going on his delusional rant while wearing his official company uniform would be enough. I'm sick of seeing his face, NXT is the only WWE show I can usually sit through in full but he puts a damper on the whole thing.

Towerhacker Bomb for me, great move but it's just so satisfying to say. Of all the puro moves I heard about through wrestling video games year before I saw one in the wild, it's the most evocative.

I could see them having Rhea win it and challenge Charlotte to a rematch. In fact now I've thought about it, it seems so obvious it's practically a spoiler. It'll suck for Asuka to lose the title and big Mania match as an afterthought again, but it'd be par for the course, and I guess at least should result in a good match. No idea for the men's match, Bryan maybe?

It struck me while half watching Roode and Ziggler vs Street Profits earlier that one of my number one most hated WWEisms is lazily starting a feud by having someone beat the champions in a non title match. Can there be any worse way to build excitement for an eventual title match than having a half formed, usually abridged version of that same match with nothing at stake? Particularly objectionable in the tag division, where their own stupid brand split contrivance means there are very few potential challengers and someone could just as feasibly be awarded a shot after reasonably pointing out that there are only two other tag teams, and the other just had a shot. Total garbage.

I think 15's about right for the average match, any less and I'll usually be disappointed, unless it's a squash match or anything else where the relative shortness of the match is the story being told. I don't really worry too much about star ratings, but I can't see anything below about 25 minutes as a worthy of a top grade, any less and I'm probably going to feel like something's been held back.

One thing people seem to keep missing when they want Butcher and Blade to get pushed is that Butcher is in Every Time I Die, one of if not the best band on the planet, and as soon as society starts opening up again they'll hopefully release the new album they've had on the backburner for a year and tour the shit out of it for the next two.

They still have a second Dome show to think about, surely they repeat last year and have Ibushi beat Evil to earn a title shot on the 5th? If he never wins the IWGP title I'll be very sad.

Unless I missed something while idly half watching Raw with my finger on fast forward, they only changed back to the right brands because the two sets of champs happened to agree to the idea. If they hadn't, I assume they would have remained on the wrong brand. As it is, there'd be nothing to stop that happening in a future draft. Or to stop one brand grabbing both sets of a particular title.

Really, now they've established that no title is tied to a brand, it's pretty stupid to call them the Raw and Smackdown titles. It's also a much worse idea than having one set of tag titles that can travel between brands to keep feuds fresh without needing regular drafts, but we can't expect too much. They obviously need two of every type of title or those lucrative house show dollars will dry right up.

Why is the triple threat match advertised as No Holds Barred, when triple threat matches in WWE are no DQ by their very nature, and therefore do not bar any holds?

I know the Sonya Deville stalker sounds particularly disturbed, but you only have to look at the replies to any of the WWE women's social media to realise how impossible it'd be to preemptively get psychiatric help for everyone displaying signs of obsessive and creepy behaviour. Honestly, I think the sort of fan culture that has sprung up in the last ten years or so alongside Twitter, especially, is fucking alarming. There's a whole world of lunatics out there who think they're entitled to famous people's attention if they try hard enough to 'earn' it, and even if 99% of them are harmless, that leaves a scary amount who might be far from it.