Zakk_Sabbath

I'm not certain on this, but I believe he was actually resigned by AEW (ostensibly for the ROHboot, but who knows)

For anyone with terrible short term memory like myself: Bryan Danielson & Daniel Garcia vs. Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara TNT title: Wardlow vs. Brian Cage MJF vs. Wheeler Yuta Hangman Page vs. Rush Toni Storm, Athena & Willow Nightingale vs. Jamie Hayter, Serena Deeb & Penelope Ford Darby Allin vs. Jay Lethal Luchasaurus in action National Scissoring Day” with The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn

My better half is a newer fan within the last six-ish years (I waited til things got a little more serious, but eventually date night conflicted with an NXT Takeover, so I had to come clean) and the first time I showed her Taz in ECW, she couldn't believe it. "You're sure this is the same guy from Dark?" I don't remember whether it was the Barely Legal bout or not, but it was whichever one where Taz grabs Sabu by the taped up, broken jaw, drags him over to the camera and says "See him?! Fuck him!!" and tags him good with a forearm. Certainly a far cry from 'Yambag Jones' and Baltimora karaoke!

Comedy Saturn was great, that Moppy thing was like Chavo/Pepe turned up to 11 (though that was the WWF, so not sure if you're counting it or not). This pick might be cheating since he didn't do much comedy as an active full-time wrestler, but Taz has been consistently hilarious on commentary for decades now, from Smackdown to WWECW to TNA to now AEW. Side note: It's kind of wild to think that in my time as a fan, I really only saw about 5 years of Taz as a wrestler, but 20-21 years of him on commentary.

Kurt's aged a little since we last saw him on TV to the point where I now believe he should be cast as the next live-action Lex Luthor (if WBD ever gets their sh... you know what, we're not doing this again).

You know that new thing people do on Twitter where they're like "(booking they really want to happen) is my new agenda?" My agenda for literally 15 years now has been a serious Truth run. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought a more serious version of his character could have been a great foil for John Cena, especially in that peak PG, LOLCENAWINS era.

Just watched tonight, fantastic hour of wrestling and next Dynamite looks great with the stuff announced tonight. Willow/Hayter kicked ass, and Hayter is getting so organically over they cheered for her over the consummate babyface in Willow (granted it's Philly, but still impressive). Both of those women are pillars in the way Hook and Darby and Ricky are for the men - awesome match. I'm beginning to think it might not be entirely out of the realm of possibility that Willow should be in the conversation to end Jade's streak. She's got a great look (settle down me-netico notwithstanding) and just a naturally bubbly presence on TV (in that Bayley sort of way, I'm struggling to think of a better comparison; someone here said she has kids TV host energy, and I thought that was pretty apt) - I think the idea of her as the likable underdog toppling the giant Jade might have some significant viability. Hate to clog up pages with fantasy BS, but i'd do a trilogy: * Match 1: Willow gets overzealous and tries a running start, slips on a banana peel, Jade pins her in ~60-90 seconds * Match 2: Another hot start except this time, Willow surprises her with a schoolgirl roll-up for a two - Jade rolls out and is visibly shook at how close it was. Willow comes close, but is thwarted by baddie skulduggery * Match 3: Willow fights from underneath most of the time, finally overcomes Jade in a Daniel Bryan-at-WM-XXX-type underdog fashion, ends the streak, wins the TBS title, queue confetti

I can get behind that, that pairing had some real "Survivor Series is the only time all year Raw and Smackdown go head to head!" energy - which sucks because I've found Penelope/Kip's new direction to be pretty cool so far, she deserved more in that segment than to be basically playing the role of "Heel #4." Essentially the same thing I said yesterday about Toni looking crappy for coming out with everyone else, just marginally less bad because Penelope isn't yet the frickin' World's Champion.

FWIW, he's definitely put himself on a bit of a diet with them on the new Ozzy and the last couple BLS records (Full disclosure, I haven't really thought much of Zakk's output since Order of the Black is all that great/memorable). Editing to say, while we're still on it, there's a song called "Mr. Darkness" on the new Ozzy where Zakk just kills it. Really strong track with big "Diary" vibes, the lyrics seem to be sort of a metal version of Eminem's "Stan."

It truly is, but I'll be the contrarian and give the Philly crowd a compliment here, because they totally saved it with the "Shit! Shit! Shit!" chants

There was some awkwardness in the segment for sure, but to me, the most egregious thing was Storm just kind of walking out with the other ladies. To me, the only way that would've worked is if she had laid Saraya out and said "I'm the World Champion, and I don't care where you came from or who your mommy is, you do not call the shots in my division." My gripe with the segment as it was is that it was a bit of an unintentional, subliminal burial in a roundabout way, because visually, you're presenting her as being at the same level as Skye and Willow (who I both think are awesome, but aren't presented at Toni's level yet, nor should they be before they're ready). If you'd never seen AEW before and you caught that segment, you'd think the women's division was like 2000s Divas level bad with the way Saraya was talking, with Toni leading the charge.

Are menthols illegal in Canada? Wait, are YOU Canadian?! I'm learning some shit in this thread

This probably isn't the right thread for this, but I have listened to this 15x and cannot stop laughing: https://twitter.com/VRTLPROS/status/1575470430751784960?t=PajuaZUHkgiJQ1_oTtH2tQ&s=19

Love the promo praise, but bad take by Jericho on Eddie's look, though in his defense, it's for sure something I've seen others say. I'm beginning to think that one's opinion on Kingston might be rooted in a combination of life experience, geographic location, and socioeconomic status - I grew up with a ton of guys who look, talk, and act like Eddie and I never thought he was anything other than hard as fuck. Wild guess, but there may not be a ton of dudes wearing Timbs and smoking Newports in Winnipeg.

I just saw on Twitter someone posted that one year ago today was Arn's "Glock" promo with Cody - that flew by! Gave it a rewatch and have to admit I got a couple of goosebumps when he says "I am Arn Anderson, and all that implies." That's an all-time badass line by anyone, anywhere.

I must have missed that Raw as a kid, because I saw that promo for the first time on a rewatch when the Network first came out, and I thought it was awesome. It wasn't as edgy as Nash would later be in the NWO, but in a pre-Stone Cold world I thought it worked really, really well as an early draft.

Great point. I was mentioning that yesterday too more in relation to Malekai's back injury, but I kind of forgot about the Visa aspect of it.

Great call. This is why it pissed me off Death Triangle won the trios title after the All Out hubbub, between that match you said and the AWESOME PnP street fight, Best Friends were definitely among the unsung heroes of the pandemic era - they deserve at least a short courtesy run with the tags or trios for that alone IMO. I get the idea of you know, eternal underdogs, heart and soul, Mikey Whipwreck, etc. but I don't think DT needed the belts, especially with Pac being AA champion and the Luchas doing straight tag matches anyway

Nothing personal against any of the ex-WWE guys looking to leave AEW, but if I woke up tomorrow in HHH's office and he said to me "Who do we poach from the competition?" I'd be looking at the Dante Martins and Jungle Boys of the world instead of dudes we already had and did nothing with, and now its 5 years later so they're all pushing 40.

I enjoyed it, but not as much as Dystopia. That one was a REAL pleasant surprise - this one didn't knock my socks off in the same way. I'll put it in the class of "pretty solid" with United Abominations and 13. If it has, I haven't seen it. As you might guess, I have some big feelings about this one. On the one hand, if you're gonna do it, these are 100% the guys to do it - the pedigree is there, and given the relationship both guys had with the brothers, it's about as close to "in-house" as you can get. They even brought Dime's guitar tech back to work with Zakk on dialing in the tone just right (I'm not 100% sure, but I'm assuming he'll be playing on some of Dime's stuff at least part of the show - every time I've seen BLS he uses a Razorback for at least a handful of songs). On the other, it's a little gross. I don't care how many times they trot Rita out to say the brothers would have blessed it, if Vinnie wanted it, he would've done it while he was here. Period. Then you have Rex, who wrote a lot of nasty things in his book about Phil, out here emphatically going "If we ever toured, it wouldn't be with Zakk Wylde, I can tell you that." Go$h, I wonder what'$ changed hi$ mind? I say all this with the full acknowledgement that I *will* be going to this when it comes to my town. I really can't sit there and justify shitting on it and 'voting with my wallet' when I've seen Down, BLS, and Anthrax countless times since Dime was killed. Like you, however, I'm really not digging the whole "no modifiers" thing - this really ought to have been called like, "Reinventing the Steel" or something. I thought the Clapton one kinda sucked, but agree on the Tony tracks big time. His and Zakk's are the only ones I keep revisiting (though the title track is a bit of an earworm). It's pretty interesting to me to hear Ozzy singing about mortality and things like that on this one and the last one, when so much of his usual lyrical output is the total opposite - think "I'm Not Going Away," "I Don't Wanna Stop," "You Can't Kill Rock N Roll," "Hellraiser" etc. Now it's like, some of this stuff is almost a thought experiment on "What if Johnny Cash's version of Hurt was heavier?" Overall, it's a pretty solid effort, and while I probably won't ever revisit it cover to cover, I think it's probably his strongest record since Down to Earth, possibly Ozzmosis in some places.

Now hang on a minute, playa

Slightly off topic, but the other day on Twitter, I had what I thought to be a pretty good idea for a show, and I got seven replies telling me it was too much of a Vince idea. I understand that in 2022 it was supposed to be an insult, but I felt like you could probably do a lot worse than the guy who has literally made the most money ever in wrestling. All this to say: don't feel too badly; a broken clock is right twice a day.

Maybe I overrate Black because it's a dope gimmick (I'm pretty simple to please, rip off as much Kevin Sullivan, 'Taker, Raven, and '97 Sting as you can, and I'm a happy camper; see also Wyatt, Bray) but I personally am of the opinion that if his back were healthy and he was mentally healthy and willing to work, he could have been slotted into a world title feud tomorrow and it would have worked fine.

I took Claudio/Jericho (and though I can't cast one for her, my lady took Fenix/Jungle Boy FWIW). I was actually really, really, near-coin-flip close to going SIOG/Acclaimed, I'm pretty shocked it's not gotten one vote - maybe it was just the insanity of being there and getting sucked into every near fall and popping huge for the Lee rana and the Billy Gunn stuff. Still, I stand by my vote - 49.9999999999 to 50.0000000001

"Dude. Dude. Dude? Yeah, you've got a point." has lived rent free in my head for 25 years, and I think I've only ever seen it in full twice