tbarrie

Does it mean "world", though? The title was created when the North American champion won a tournament in Buenos Aires. Jokes aside, I always thought that made it clear the intent of the name was that they were the champion of both North and South America. (Though I realize some would argue that that's an intracontinental title.)

Why would you expect somebody to be an American citizen in order to be a North American boxing champion? There are 22 countries in North America that aren't the US.

I've been meaning to say how much I like the change to the semifinals. Doing intraleague finals for each league after you've just done a round robin felt silly. The crossover semis make much more sense.

I heard "Quay" (pronounced like it's spelled) a couple of times, but I don't think I heard him say "Zen". I might have missed it.

Changing the subject - anybody know the status of the guy who plays Luchasaurus? I haven't heard anything in weeks.

I believe when Andre and Haku won the tag titles from Demolition, one of the Demos was unsuccessfully trying to pull Andre off the pin.

Honestly, MJF kicking Adam Cole in the balls then moving on to more important things was a perfectly fine way to wrap up the storyline. There was no reason to revisit it after Cole came back.

I agree with most of this, but I don't think it's accurate to say Hangman is obsessed with the title. For the past year or so now he's pretty much been obsessed with Swerve Strickland. The only interest he's shown in the world title during that time is making sure Swerve doesn't hold it. That being said, I don't recall Hangman ever being presented as a friend of Moxley or an enemy of Orange. So it's not like his coming out was completely bizarre. But it could use some explanation come Wednesday.

I sort of feel I should be annoyed that they made so little effort to explain who these people were and why I should care. But at least they were consistent with how they handle Japanese stars.

What, you're going to settle for wrestling shows that are only, like, PARTIAL Gear? Perish the thought!

He did try it once. In the very first 30-person Royal Rumble, they did an angle which clearly implied he had paid off Slick to swap one of his men's number with him, and wound up entering at 30. Of course the ring wasn't empty at that point, but he did try. (It's not like he could have predicted an empty ring.) He got crappy numbers the next few years, with the idea being that WWF authorities were watching him like a hawk after that incident.

I love the Silmarillion, but you have to approach it knowing it's not at all a novel like Lord of the Rings. Even in-universe, it's supposed to be a slapped-together compilation of various tales and legends about the Elder Days. Have you read Children of Hurin? The percentage of the text that's J.R.R.'s own words is allegedly pretty high, and it's much more of a cohesive narrative. Pretty bleak though.

...I'm not sure you should be taking romantic advice from Helen of Troy.

Since Anna started interacting with The Vendetta, I've been hoping it was building up to Tay returning to even the odds. So I'd be down with that.

Well, at least it has some build behind it. Not a lot, though.

I suppose it ties into the discussion going on somewhere else (I think the general November Wrestling thread?) about how people feel about comedy in wrestling. In my opinion, being able to do comedy that's actually funny and be good at serious action and be able to merge them into a single match and have it feel like a cohesive whole is an extremely valuable skill for a wrestler. Cassidy has it in spades. Castagnoli has never shown that skill that I'm aware of. Danielson was funny during the "Team Hell No" stuff, but I wouldn't rank him nearly as high as Cassidy in this area. Obviously, other people might not necessarily value comedy skills as much or at all, which would lead to their ranking performers quite differently.

If we're complaining about Survivor Series, can I mention how much I was annoyed during the year or two when after a match, the survivors were referred to as "sole survivors" no matter how many of them there were? I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was pretty stupid.

No. It's Orange Cassidy. Heck, it might have been Orange Cassidy even when Danielson was around.

Gasp! Cheeseburger!

I clicked "reveal" expecting the most important rivalry in AEW to be Julia Hart vs Julia Hart. Honestly, the hope of another Julia Hart vignette is the most exciting thing about this week's Dynamite. Those things have been great.

Well, I guess I really meant it wasn't a controversial opinion with me. (The only opinion that matters, after all.:)) Maybe the hoi polloi liked the second Triple H-Undertaker 'Mania match. I don't pay much attention to the general fandom. But I will say if you can't successfully follow a commentator vs commentator match, you're not doing well out there.

I don't think that's a controversial opinion. I mean, their second match was comically awful. Their third was fun and all but kind of an overblown "epic".

Paul Dobson was pretty great as the voice of Doom in Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. Did he voice Doom in any actual TV shows?

From a mechanical standpoint, Cole is definitely better than Road Dogg. I'd say the Dogg had more charisma. I don't recall either of them being particularly gifted in-ring storytellers, though. (But I did like Adam Cole's match against Buddy Matthews that everybody else seemed to hate.)

Yep. In many ways, he's Road Dogg 2024.