NikoBaltimore

Preach! I unashamedly lost my mind when the song played. And I'll gladly echo all that Greggulator said because holy fuck all the Sami related stuff ruled so hard.

What in the flying fuck?! I have to watch this. EDIT: Watching it again I absolutely need to and will see this match. I know Brian is hyping a match but what he said about technology is so very much me (though Transformers were cool!) But this match is gonna be so much fun.

Yeah, I'm focusing on the Collective stuff and will likely check a show or two from IWTV. Only one I saw from there for obvious reasons was the Dean show. But as long as work's not busy I'm hoping to be good by mid next week.

If there's no time travel then my wife will be devastated. Do I dare ask?

Yipes! My bad, had a mental lapse there as I was trying to quickly finish the post before clocking out. But hopefully I can meet you one day to thank you for putting up with my dumb ass over the years.

8 days removed and it feels surreal to me that all this happened. A show that was in some way run by and mainly for a bunch of folks on a message board and it just happened to have some really fucking incredible stuff going on. Like I've been trying to comment on this throughout the week and stopped because it was hard to wrap my head around it all. Yet when watching it back I realize two things. One, my fat ass was on the screen way more than I intended (I thought chilling in the corner would get me out of hard cam view) and two it did happen and it was fucking awesome. I can't say enough how great it was to finally meet @Rev Ray, @Pete, @Phil Schneiderand @Johnny Sorrowto thank them for all the years of awesomeness. And it was great to meet @S.K.o.S.and @Danwho was near me the whole time yet I didn't know until he mentioned in the Discord chat. I was a bit shy for a bit and wish I met more people but I felt a comfort in knowing whoever was there was taking in a wild show and it was for Dean. I also experienced a first in that for the first time ever a hardcore tag match got me oddly emotional. But when Tank and Manders are battling on chairs in front of Dean's chair and the crowd chanting his name how the hell can you not be? As for the show itself I have seen a couple folks when watching random indy stuff but the only one I saw before this was Slim J. So it made me compare this to a concert. There's many a concert where I would go to let's say Metallica and you know what you're getting. But then there's random concerts that sound neat that all goes well end up fucking incredible. This was an instance of the latter for me and I became a fan that night of folks like Krule and of all teams the Ugly Sucklings. I definitely need to keep an eye out for them. And I sure as hell didn't expect Violence if Forever to show up but holy bats there they were so that's cool to say I finally saw them live. If I thought about this more maybe I could have tried a road report like I've been reading all these years. But I wouldn't do it justice so hopefully the truncated version of everything works. Anyway it was a fucking great time and I'll be looking forward to the DVD.

Another year passes and here I still am trying to catch up on the Mania weekend shows. I hope there's others in the same boat but there's been a lot of good shit going on. Hell, I just now saw Ruckus in a tag match and Faye Jackson make her return on the For the Culture show so it's fun seeing these surprises since I didn't see the card beforehand. Also, honest question but has anybody here actually managed to catch all the WM weekend shows within a day or two after it happened? There's been so many that you would you have to be a zombie to have time to catch it all and not cheat by skipping through some matches.

The zoomed in smirk makes it much better. Well done.

They shouldn't have put it on YouTube but AEW put up what both teams said and cut out the backstage footage.

Yeah, I saw that post earlier and before and after the Bucks segment Tony looked completely miserable. I feel awful for him.

When AEW does something bad and it's misguided or an accident I can usually go "That really sucks but oh well" But much like Adam's rah-rah speech this was deliberate and it added absolutely nothing of value. I don't care who was right and this is a situation where AEW would have been the "bigger man" by not saying anything at all. But they did two weeks in a row and while it's hyperbole to say I felt betrayed I'm sure a lesser word could be used to describe how I'm feeling. BUT if this is the absolute last of it and it's never mentioned again then fine. AEW warts and all is still a wonderful company and there's a lot to love. But this has to be it not just from them but also from Punk. I hate even talking about this and just want to fucking move on. It feel like it's too much to ask from others to move on but it would be nice if people at least tried.

I don't know if the show itself will have late WCW vibes but all this talk about the video sure does. I really want to say I don't care but it's all bumming me out so I guess I do. I mean it's wrestling and all but it can still be possible for somebody to be professional and not pull shit like this, right?

That felt like a season finale with one helluva cliffhanger. But I can't imagine they would kill off Gambit like that and he'll likely be in critical condition or something. Then again I could be wrong which would suck since we always liked Gambit.

That is exactly the type of concert I expected from them actually. I'm curious to see if they'll be coming anywhere near me.

Rest of the show was whatever though it was cool to see Suzuki again live. Enjoyed the joshi match and the guy next to me kindly gave me an education on the six involved which was great. But no matter what this was a one-match show for me. It was easy to see Mark was gonna win and thank fuck I was there live to see it. And sure as shit the tears immediately were flowing. I'm so fucking happy for the guy that it's almost hard to put into words.

On that note @Phil Schneideris there a chance of TK seeing the main? Makabe has more than earned the opportunity and I hope this helps with his decision.

I just got home and am having a Steel Reserve in Dean's honor. The show was a fucking success in every way and I can't say enough how happy and even proud I am to be part of this board. I love you all (except for the ones I ignore including one I met today) and hope we can do this again. If you saw it you know the show ruled but if not I really hope you check it out in some way. I'll have more say but I'll save that for the daytime when I'm more awake. But I will say one thing that's been said already: DEAN~! RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD~!

I found my Penta mask but my pesky glasses get in the way. Maybe I'll bring it at the risk of incurring the wrath of Natural. If not then I'll be the dude in the W*ING shirt and maybe a hat. I can't believe it's today already.

It didn't dawn on me until watching this week that Wren Sinclair is Madi Wrenkowski. I thought she showed a lot of promise when doing AEW Dark/Elevation and feel NXT is a damn fine place for her to be.

Yeah, dude. Once I made the switch it was a game changer. I still have use for YouTube TV for now but I at least don't have to deal with ads.

My initial reactions: The Boys-I know you can put anybody in the gimmick yet these were the two that actually made the concept work. So that sucks. But cutting them was likely planned out for at least a month since Dalton lost them to Johnny TV on a random ROH show. Dasha Kuret-This baffles me. She was a beloved announcer and unless there's somebody replacing her it seems odd that Roberts would do all the AEW shows. Yeah, there's Bobby Cruise but I can't see them using him for anything other than ROH. Jose The Assistant-Kind of makes me wonder what's going on with Rush and Dralistico at this point but to be fair Jose was fine but not that to whoever he was with. Jora Johl-Didn't know he was signed. Anthony Henry-Since the injury happened outside AEW I'd rather not speculate on anything. Was never gonna be a singles star but had a really fun team with Drake. It sucks but oh well. Gravity-His match with HoB sealed his fate and honestly he was only worth it for the Pac match as a joke. But that was about it. Stu Grayson-Was wondering about him recently but since he wasn't on TV since the Righteous stuff it was a matter of time before he either left or they cut him. Parker Boudreaux-Will not miss him at all. He had a presence about him at points but nothing else. Slim J-This sucks a lot. The guy is only 38 and maybe with a better gimmick might have had a better chance. I really hope he finds a way to recover because of the people cut he's the one I feel really bad about. I would hope that the reasons for the cuts are relatively benign but it's hard to put a positive spin on a business move like this. I'd much rather see a contract run out like apparently TK preferred but it's odd that they would change course like this.

If it was almost anybody else the Rocky 3 montage with Sami/Chad would have been at best really funny and at worst corny bullshit. But while funny it actually did a pretty good job building up to him beating Bronson and feeling ready for WM. But man if they shelled out the bucks to have "Eye of the tiger" it would have been incredible much like the link Phantom posted. I hope with Rock being around more some backstage have a chance to pick his brain. He hasn't been heel for a long-ass time and it's like riding a bike to him. And yet somehow last night was on another level. The part that got me the most was him talking to the kids and progressing from empathetic father to full-on shit-talking Rock. Man, he rules.

I wonder how the game would have turned out if Angel didn't hurt her ankle at halftime. She had a good first half and tried in the second but if fully healthy she might have drove LSU to a win. Whenever they have a rematch in the WNBA it's going to be incredible. Also, it's not lost on me that Caitlin Clark is fucking special. She has the skills and the charisma to boot which makes me hopeful for her WNBA career. I don't want to look too far into the future but with how she is now it's hard not to get excited about the impact she'll have on the WNBA.

Hi, folks. Some of you may know I setup a Discord a few years ago that's board adjacent in a sense. With the show coming up it only made sense to create a chat for the show which is located here. https://discord.gg/jYk9PRsS4v I asked @Jaceyfor permission to mention it here which he kindly gave. Basically it's a chat room and I'm sure a lot of you know what Discord's about (if not it's a fancy IRC) What I'm hoping to do is archive this for posterity so while those watching at home can certainly join if you're at the show it could be something worth posting to as well. I'm sure I'll be putting a few pics up myself. If interested in some way please check it out.

Agreed and honestly I forgot she mentioned that in the Raw confrontation until 10 minutes after I posted this. That's mainly because I didn't know what Rhea was or was not doing on TikTok and this aside still don't since i don't use it. But hey if they want to use real feelings and make it part of what is or is not discussed in the story then cool. But I still stand by the second paragraph.