Cobra Commander

listening to the Tony Khan episode of Phil's book podcast, and yeah, the AEW title is very obviously modeled on the Mid-South North American Title (Tony mentions liking that North American title belt) the concept of a major wrestling promotion ran by a dude that's 3 years older than me who was tapetrading in the 90s is kinda wild to think about, to be honest

Just remembered the surprise from some people in one of my High School classes when they heard that Elton John was gay. This was in 2003/04ish, about a decade after he came out.

A Village People vs Oddities feud would be plausible in the 1998 WWF

Steve Irwin as Lord Humongous is an idea

i'm gonna suggest the idea of a Steve Irwin look/accent for someone doing a Rick Rude gimmick. Just look like the Croc Hunter while doing micwork about how you're irresistible to women. CUT MY BLOODY MUSIC, MATE

you can decide for yourself if Kung Fu Billy Graham should have hired "plumbers" to break into Bob Backlund's hotel room to steal the WWF title belt. Would Ernie Roth be the E. Howard Hunt or the Richard Nixon here? (if you consider what Nixon said on the tapes, that comparison would be a bit hilarious) Anyways.. the Superstar is in the hospital. But considering he has made it 10 years after being years from death due to liver problems, if anything gets him, it's gonna involve getting caught in an Arizona Haboob or being attacked by a snake or tarantula, daddy.

speaking of a place name in the general area of Wales... The Isle of Man seems like it could have been a solid worked wrestler residence. But then again, I would push for the concept of a wrestler billed out of Bermuda who would use the Bermuda Triangle as a finish.

pre-9/11 airplane/airport security being what it was.. I can believe that. If the Sheik was flying cross-country for a match, one would wonder if he would fly as Edward Farhat from Michigan and how much he would fly as "A. Sheik" who openly carries sharp objects onto a plane because it was allowed in 1970. Cornette mentioned quite a bit about the flight etiquette of wrestlers and I suspect some of his aversion to flying involves the fact that a lot of his flights have involved the suspicion that if he falls asleep, some wrestler is gonna pull some prank on him. (Of course the standard of conduct was a little different between commercial flights and the Crockett Jet.. and he actually mentions liking being able to see the pilot from his seat)

Some people are not very self-aware, so it's possible someone else could have a Tommy Dreamer performance on DSOTR in the future. Not sure which episode of this half-season is gonna be the 'lightest' between FMW or Johnny K-9/Bruiser Bedlam. Somehow the episodes that'll involve a lot of organized crime are gonna be more light-hearted compared to issues of sex perverts, mental health, and every other awful thing that could come up in the next few weeks. Two Flair things 1) he probably has his share of issues, which was sorta apparent in his 30 for 30. 2) didn't Flair book or have more creative power than his norm for part of 1994 in the leadup to Hogan coming in?

The two Mitchell (who I kinda instinctively refer to as Vandenberg) quotes that were really interesting were the one at the end that people noticed (asking people to help friends who might be going through this sort of thing) and another one about the concept of Kanyon possibly being a "unreliable self-narrator" due to everything going on that were obviously causing a lot of turbulence in his life. The documentary didn't have any family (which really isn't a huge shock and not a failing by the producers) and I don't think it had any non-wrestling industry friends, which either gives you a narrow view of things, or tells you that his interests were so locked in on wrestling after a certain point. With all of that, I suspect some people might have been close to him whose approach to being around Kanyon during his bad times was to just try and find ways to not be around Kanyon. Which is something that I can understand if they don't want to admit to that on TV, and also something that tells you the people who didn't run in the other direction were true friends in the scheme of things.

a timeline with dates October 28th, 2001: Kanyon works a house show in Evansville, IN. His last match on Cagematch for 7 months. Wikipedia has Kanyon tearing his ACL against Randy Orton on 10/29/2001. May 22nd, 2002: Kanyon works against Prototype (John Cena) in OVW. May and July, 2002: Kanyon works matches in OVW and HWA, he injures his shoulder. Then he has even more health problems at the end of July October 30th, 2002: after a 3 months out, Kanyon starts working OVW again. February 13th, 2003: Kanyon/Undertaker angle on Smackdown Kanyon's last WWE match in Cagematch was December 2003. There were a handful of Mortis WWE matches from August to October 2003.

watching the Superstar Graham documentary on the WWE Network, and I decided that Kung Fu Billy Graham was basically Superstar Graham deciding to look like G. Gordon Liddy for a few years

Speaking of Raven, he seems like someone who could have maybe offered something for a few DSOTR episodes. For example he was of one unsuccessful lawsuit against the WWE with Kanyon, while also working with Kanyon during his emergence. Idk if he just wouldn’t offer anything or if DSOTR couldn’t track him down or make it work. Anyways, Page or DSOTR told the story like Mortis was a thing when Hogan turned heel. It was more of the WCW midcard grind that impacted Kanyon for 97/98.

This being Hollywood, Greek Brit Marina Sirtis as a New York Hispanic (Puerto Rican?) was totally plausible. The movie was filmed in London and set in NYC. Also... That sounds like a tag team name that would have ended with AmEx's lawyers sending a letter to the promotion.

HHH's promo on Benson leading to him going over Benson anyways was some bad booking

kinda excited for the version of SOAP where Triple H kills all the snakes by spitting water on them and hitting them with a sledgehammer

Cena worked against Kanyon in Kanyon's first matches post-injury in 2002 OVW. Which isn't to justify Cena's POV in any way, but just context that could explain some of how Cena felt about Kanyon along with the usual company-speak. But considering the OVW run.. prepare yourself for some Cornette clips, which probably isn't gonna involve a public self-immolation but it'd be surprising if the Cena clip didn''t come up on the first JC podcast after this episode. Mental illness is a hell of a thing, and the stories had a lot of blaring red flags of various things that were 'off' about how he was acting. Like some of his behavior sounded like people who were on something, but at the same time, he's bipolar, so. Parts of the timeline were jumbled (looking at you, DDP, thinking that Mortis was quashed by the NWO). But it is what it is. Next week is people unaware of the Dark Side of the FMW... and they'll be surprised by the Yakuza and a huge star getting paralyzed in the ring.

if Anna Kendrick shows up on an AEW show to receive a painting, it will be the greatest in-joke in the history of our sport

Also good work by Cleveland weather to get a baseball game banged due to rain so that I could watch the entire show entire of maybe the last hour or half hour after the baseball game ended or became uncompetitive. I also thought of the Toronto/Tampa Bay "scouting note card" beef when Arn showed Cody a 'scouting report' (that looked a lot like a Waffle House menu). Sometimes real life books better absurd angles than pro wrestling. Make sure to tune into the Cornette podcast to hear once again about how he has always hated that kind of elevated ramp. It was a very early 90s WCW sort of ramp and I don't wanna speculate about the realities of bumping on that thing tonight.

Assorted comments: Danielson taking a dragon suplex on that ramp was batshit crazy Pillman Jr almost looked like he was moving in slow motion for parts of his match with MJF. Maybe it was optical considering it was the first match after the great Danielson/Omega match. But stuff like starting the match with a takedown/pound just didn't seem like it worked and his punches kinda sucked there. The cheerleader dropping her pom poms in disapproval was great too. Boy do they like having faces tap to submission holds. FTR was probably living the dream working with Sting like that. Good work by Darby Allin and his dad. Jake Hager looks like he's a prospect for a motorcycle club wearing a vest and t-shirt like that So the fans don't like Cody Knievel as much as Malakai Black?

Category: Bron Brekker/Bronson Rechsteiner ring names Guessing that Bron Scott didn’t make it very far. Although it can simultaneously reference Scott Steiner and Bon Scott.

I could see Missy Hyatt saying something very similar to that, and she's someone who has went to court over sexual harassment and whom one has to ask "which sexual harassment event" in regards to how WCW execs treated her

Once Upon A Time was pretty good, of course it being the Mets, they thought Kevin Mitchell was the bad influence on Darryl and Dwight Also, present day Kevin Mitchell looks like he's a mainstay of Quiet Storm R&B radio.

I think this came up back in July but...

Chioda wasn't on the Wikipedia entry list of referees at Insurextion, but obviously he could have been around doing something (I had to go to TheHistoryOfWWE since someone like Dreamer was only on that PPV to run in on the Hardcore title match)