kafkonia

If this was an emotional kneejerk reaction to losing Cody Rhodes, wouldn't it have happened sooner? Cody's Wrestlemania match was on Saturday. His disembodied-head-hovering-over-a-box tv return was on Monday. This is days later, and in the world of Twitter and especially the world of Tony Khan tweeting without thinking, that's an eternity. I know you're a big Cody stan, but if Tony put even half the stock in him that you think he does, he would have given him what he wanted to get him to stay. He obviously didn't think Cody was worth his asking price. Whether he was right or not, none of us can say -- so far, he's appeared at WrestleMania (which was going to do great numbers with or without him) and on the Raw after WrestleMania, which always has a ratings bump. If business picks up for WWE or dips for AEW, then we'll know he was wrong to let him go.

Wasn't the whole roster released from their contracts earlier this year anyway?

Abaddon has an 80s joshi monster heel one.

Has being in an angle with Lambert helped anyone? Other than the people he brought with him, I guess.

He was already Big Money Matt (though perhaps not in name.) It was his weaselly way of getting other people's money that got him into that mess with Page. And he only lost three months' salary, which is nothing to sneeze at but not exactly Big-Show-investing-in-a-strip-mall.

The idea that Cody is the best wrestler in the world is pretty laughable when he's not even the best wrestler in his family. Very glad for KO. You have to wonder if this was one of the carrots they dangled before him during negotiations.

But that guy wasn't his opponent.

Wrestling is littered with guys who though they were better than they were. Hunter is possibly the best of that bunch, and one of the few who got to try to pull it off. He was a good character worker, but not the kind you build a promotion around. They tried it anyway. He had charisma, but not the kind to break out into mainstream crossover success. They tried it anyway. He was a good wrestler, but not a superworker whose strengths lent themselves to epic in-ring classics. They tried it anyway. He had a good physique. So they booked him in a posedown with Scott Steiner. He had a couple of storylines where he was devious and manipulative. So they dubbed him the Cerebral Assassin and had him... hit people with sledgehammers and play-act necrophilia. He was ultimately, ironically, a solid B+.

I was thinking about this earlier, and I feel like if they can continue to juggle the roster effectively, the cycling of wrestlers in and out - combined with the company's willingness to let talent work elsewhere - can serve as a sort of ersatz territorial system, where talent runs less of a risk of getting overexposed by being on tv every week for eight years. Of course, there's no guarantee it works. They'll have to keep a lot of plates spinning, and there's always the chance of alienating people who feel like they should be getting tv time when they aren't. But it will be interesting to see how it pans out as the years go by.

The thing about Sammy is he's the sort of smiley obnoxious prick that folks like these days. Like a YouTuber or streamer.

Did they get the ladder?

Brain Guy.

Actually counting syllables says it's 6. You even wrote it out that way. Unless you pronounce Rosa as one syllable.

And so is AEW! We all win.

I mean, you have to ignore an awful lot of the roster to say Starks/Hobbes/Lee is "all the black guys" when it wasn't even half the guys on this week's episode.

Maybe you saw him wrestle Punk in October? Might have noticed 2.0 wrestling Sting and Darby in Sting's first match on TNT since WCW closed?

Look at those eyes, man. I don't think his soul's anywhere nearby.

The problem is when it comes across less like a gimmick and more like the wrestling equivalent of a bunch of tech bros Disrupting the Paradigm. Less Fight Club and more WeWork.

Conversely, if you're already paying to go see Mania, with travel, accommodations, and tickets for the show itself, what's another $50? One less shirt at the merch stand and one less beer during Happy Corbin's match?

I mean, it's not really a championship. It's basically just the Million Dollar Belt, or Flair's "real world championship" when he was in the WWF. It's a prop, and it's fine that way.

I could have sworn I'd seen Too Cool's theme crop up in some party scene somewhere, but it appears to have been a Jim Johnston joint.

This was only my second time seeing Session Moth Martina (I think the other was against Su Yung?), but I really feel like she's better suited to a match structure where she can do broader character work. She was just sort of there in this one, outside of a couple of grinding-on-Ruby moments. Ruby does some good selling. I echo the above, she should have played off of SMM more. Just when I was rounding the corner on Archer, they pick probably the least interesting move to base a one-move match around. I get what they were going for, though. Sky/Dean, Emi/Stat, and Garcia/Jaz were pretty good. The idea of a "main event" on a show like this might be a bit of a stretch, but I feel like the women's match would have worked better than the Yuta/Solow match. Did like the QT/Yuta fake interference bit, and I understand why that would go on last.

Oh good. So my ignorance was not ignorance after all!

Well, the name comes from Japan, so the patronymic would have come first. And given that he was "the man they call Vader" and not "the man they call Van Vader", we can deduce that his name when westernized should have been Vader Big Van. Or, if you prefer, Google Translate says that "big van vader" is Dutch for "piglet from father."

Time to betray decades of ignorance... What's the difference?