SturmCRF

I'm not too fussed about the angle itself, but I like that they're willing to lean into this being a heel vs heel feud. In real sports, sometimes dickheads compete with each other over prestigious titles, look at Manchester United vs Chelsea, or about 65% of all UFC fights.

Bryan Danielson Bret Hart Mick Foley Tomohiro Ishii Will Ospreay Masato Tanaka CM Punk Shinsuke Nakamura Kota Ibushi Walter Yoshihiro Tajiri Kenny Omega Kurt Angle Claudio Castagnoli Shingo Takagi Missing WCW, All Japan and Joshi in particular, but I'm favouring wrestlers I've watched lots of in real time, rather than just a selection of the highlights years after the fact.

It's genuinely quite unsettling to see Jade standing next to people who she's smaller than.

Brock's face here, and in general really, fills me with a strong urge to quote the 'Imagine if this guy came up to you' line from I Think You Should Leave. He looks like Cena's just fished him out of the sea after angering an elder god.

I like Hangman a lot, both because he seems like a genuinely good dude and because he's an excellent wrestler, but I don't know if a win over Punk would make a huge difference to his overall starpower at this point. His defences over Danielson and Cole established him pretty firmly as a main eventer, but retaining next month just keeps him at that level. Becoming a true megastar is a bit too nebulous to just book someone towards by having them beat other stars. It either takes a lightning in a bottle Austin 3:16 or Pipebomb moment, or the WWE style, over the top Roman Reigns push where you sacrifice everyone else's credibility to one person and build every show around them over an extended period. Hangman is a very credible Champion now, but anything more than that will have to happen organically over time by keeping people invested in him, with or without the title. Which isn't to say they have to put the belt on Punk. That'd be my choice, but I love how hard it'll be to call.

I don't like all this Miro TNT Championship talk I keep seeing. When he comes back he should demolish everything in his path and become World Champion.

Fuck off Tyson Fury. If anything could keep me away from a Wembley Wrestlemania it'd be that anti semitic, homophobic shit titan having anything to do with it.

It occurred to me while watching Ospreay vs Moxley this morning that Ospreay vs Danielson would be solid fucking gold. Not expecting it here, but that needs to happen.

They've given Ishii an Owen Cup qualifier, maybe Forbidden Door could have a couple of G1 qualifiers?

Have they officially confirmed if these Owen Cup qualifiers are feeding into two sixteen wrestler brackets in the tournament proper, like in the graphics, or just eight each? I had assumed the former, but that means they'd be running out of time unless the plan is to have some people auto qualify through the ranking system. Any tournament is better than no tournament, but with that roster, and the Full Gear tourney only having eight entrants, something more epic would have been nice.

My guys: House Of Black, Thunder Rosa, CM Punk, Swerve Strickland, The Acclaimed Not my guys: Alan '5' Angels, Young Bucks, The Hardys, Jake Hager, Frankie Kazarian Apologies to Keith Lee, Jamie Hayter, The Wingmen, Marina Shafir, Team Tazz and Bryan Danielson, who are also very much my guys but just miss out. AEW just has so many awesome guys.

Sold. I barely know enough about mainstream Japanese wrestling, but this sounds fascinating and I love that books like this are being written.

Oh shit, forgot the ROH show. Usually I wouldn't bother, but the AEW link and especially the Briscoes vs FTR probably makes that a must. The New Japan show also should be great, but not paying for it on top of my NJPW World subscription, so that one can wait a week.

What shows are people planning on watching (or attending, even!) next weekend? My eyes always get a bit big for my wrestling stomach around this time of year, but going to aim to see Bloodsport, at least one of the Spring Breaks, and the Mark Hitchman WrestleCon show. May have time for one or two more, my girlfriend is keen on the GCW AAA show due to her inexplicable love of Psycho Clown (well, it is explicable, his music is incredible.)

Timothy Thatcher should be available in a couple of weeks, get him in the Regal crew.

I dunno, Dante is a bit too spectacular to be a heel, he doesn't have the flashy dickishness that makes Sammy work as one. Garcia with Jericho is perfect from a character motivation standpoint. He's vicious and willing to scratch and claw his way over anyone to get to the top, but he's just fought Danielson and been defeated by a legend at his peak. in Jericho he has a legend past his peak, who he can use to propel him up the card, then turn on at less personal risk than an American Dragon, but similar reputational benefit.

Great show, loved the Jericho angle, will be a bit disappointed with every episode until Claudio appears though, preferably with Chris Hero (while we're willing things into existence and acting under the assumption that Coach Tony somehow has time to read the board still). Haven't seen anyone else mention the possibility of Pac as the next challenger to Hangman, which seems to me like the easiest explanation for his random match with Yuta out of nowhere. Bolster his record for a few weeks while they finish the Cole angle, have him challenge Hangman to reestablish him as someone who's competitive at a main event level, then some House Of Black involvement to set up a blowoff match with Malakai. (Then Malakai beats him, challenges Hangman, wins the title at the next PPV, but that's the biased take of someone who wants a guy who once came out to an Agoraphobic Nosebleed song to reign over everybody.)

They definitely have been in the past as I remember watching some of the 2019 shows, I was just concerned as the GCW stuff is already available to order, and theirs isn't. If Timothy Thatcher and Ishii cave each others' ribs in and only Texans get to see it, did it truly even happen? A day's delay I can deal with, it'll be a perfect palate cleanser after enduring Wrestlemania itself, as long as it doesn't fall outside that weekend.

Just saw this, and Busick vs Suzuki, while desperately trying to find any information on whether the Wrestlecon shows will be streamable. They're not up on Fite yet, and the official website is full of minutiae about different tiers of photo opportunity, but nothing I can find about watching shows from my couch on the four day Mania weekend I've booked off work. They'll be on Fite, right?

Another Jewpinion chipping in here. MJF's character as a whole has always made me a biiiit uncomfortable, what with leaning into his background as part of his character, while that character is also a rich, conniving manipulator. I wouldn't want him not to be a heel when he's so natural at it, or be open about his heritage when he's proud of it. But also, I've known real life MJF's who had overly lavish Bar Mitzvahs, were brash and obnoxious and were massive bullies, so him doing such a good job of embodying an unpleasant anti semitic stereotype I have actually encountered, isn't exactly fun wrestling escapism a lot of the time. And again, to clarify, I'm Jewish, so hopefully that gives me some leeway to have resented fellow Jews who made my life miserable growing up, and whose worst qualities MJF has turned into a compelling heel persona. A bit of a different perspective from those of you who experienced direct anti semitism from non Jews, which I never have, outside of my actual friends parroting Cartman lines at me and such, and possible unspoken motivations lurking in the subconscious of non-friends who were picking on me anyway because I had red hair and liked Warhammer. All that being said, the main thing that bothered me about Wednesday's promo was the crowd reaction. 'Do we have any Jews in the house?' definitely seemed to get some boos, and I hope it's just a wrestling crowd conditioned to boo because a heel says a thing, I may even have heard what I feared hearing rather than the actual noise those people made, but these days it's tough not to expect the worst. Again, it's hard to put too much blame on MJF. I didn't like it, but nobody, whatever character they play on TV, should feel like they shouldn't be vocal about who they are because it might get the bigots riled up, so I suppose on reflection I'm not against any of MJF's choices.

I think that's about the size of it. People get excited for debuts and surprises, moreso than matches. I know I do. I can't imagine not bothering with a show because of a lack of those things, but if forced to choose, it's the show with a new guy turning up every time.

Yes fucking please.

Wait, we could all be missing the big story here. Didn't Cody have a hand in training Hook? If Hook leaves AEW that could be curtains for them.

On the one hand, it appears Cody has used AEW to boost his profile and wrangle a bigger money, presumably main event gig from WWE. On the other hand, 'use' in this case covers helping create a viable, billionaire funded, wrestling fan friendly dream promotion that has saved the wrestling industry, brought back CM Punk, given Eddie Kingston a shot at stardom and gifted us hour long Bryan Danielson TV matches. I'm even a bit excited to see what he'll do in WWE, although his promos will miss a lot of the morbid curiosity factor once he's back on a script.

Was it just the camera angle, or did Tay Conti come very close to decapitating herself on the ring apron during that moonsault? Total lunatic.