Firebreaker Chip

Archer got up like a champ for those Wardlow powerbombs, damn

I stand to be corrected but I think Ishii is pronounced "Ishi-e" but the ii is more like one elongated syllable, doesn't really make sense to segment it to the point of saying two separate sounds eesh-YEAHHH

God I'd forgotten about that already. There'll be a Dark Side of the Ring about Cody's last year in AEW one day. Ominous electronic music playing over a vignette of a bleached blonde guy gesturing towards his neck while a weeping tattoo artist pleads with him

Is it bad that he was allowed to say he built the forbidden door? (beyond the fact that it became very annoying as a thing to constantly reference very quickly) I'm not unsympathetic to the idea that Tony Khan needs to impose a bit more message discipline and consistency on his product, but is Rhodes referring to a nebulous concept that got invoked on TV nearly every week, in a rambling promo about nothing much where he came across as a bit of an idiot, that big a deal? If anything it seems that Cody being allowed to have his own little sandbox was just the cost of doing business to keep a guy who was to some degree a draw and liked by the network etc, but as we've seen that all became too much of a pain in the ass for everyone involved and it's been resolved in a way that's probably best for everyone. The alternative would have been either not working with Cody in the first place, or changing everyone's name, insisting on giving them music you own, and having bullshit 90 day no competes, which would just be pushing AEW into being a company nobody particularly wants them to be

That entire shoot is on youtube on the channel "best of the KC archive" or similar (it's their own channel not a reup), but as with a lot of of their stuff there is a ton of grim misogyny as well https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2022/03/news-on-scott-halls-health-before-his-passing-sean-waltman-on-hall-suffering-during-the-pandemic/ Unfortunately it sounds like Hall's final years were not good, Waltman seems to imply he basically fell off the wagon and became isolated because of the pandemic, and when he fell and broke his hip he was lying around for days before DDP checked in on him because nobody had heard from him, pretty miserable stuff

Jericho should rush out some Parker/Menard merch, then have them work occasional indie shows where they have to go back to being called Matt Lee and Jeff Parker 2.0 because Jericho owns their AEW gimmick

Is there still a way to do manual rope breaks? I have auto rope breaks turned off and saw a website guide that said manual rope breaks are now available to all wrestlers, but have never seen the prompt or had an opponent do one when right next to the ropes Also how do you do the takedown defensive ability? I know the flash pin is right stick and down on d pad but not sure how to do the one that just trips them up

People are posting some pretty cool reversal sequences leading to match finishes and stuff on the wwe games reddit, much like fire Pro I guess the closing stages of the matches are handled better then the early stages The PSN store says the Undertaker Immortal pack is included with the standard edition as of now (it was meant to be part of the pre-order bonus I think), but it isn't actually turning up for anyone from what I hear. Currently trying to get them to send it to me but suspect the answer is "looks like Sony fucked up, have a nice day" I wouldn't care but I'm currently unable to download a reasonably good Luchasaurus caw because it uses moves from it

By default, you press x rapidly to fill a circle. That's it. You can change it back to the stop-the-moving-bar-in-the-green-line version in the options but I won't be doing that. The submissions minigame requires tapping the correct button according to the prompt, but can be changed to just holding it instead. All of the semi-realistic chain grappling/working holds and reversal limits have been removed, so the matches are kind of annoyingly go-go-go from the start. There's no stamina bar but there are still slider settings related to stamina effects and recovery; haven't heard anybody saying they've seen any groggy finishers or crawling pins, which has to be one of the best features they ever put in and then immediately dumbly scaled back and removed for no reason. On the other hand, the controls are smoother and more responsive, and there seem to be a lot of contextual animations linking things together. The overall feel of playing a match is definitely improved on e.g 2k16-19 where it was possible to have frequent good matches but too dogged by this kind of jankiness to ever really say it was fun doing it I don't know what all the sliders do to tweak yet but it doesn't seem very good for simming so far, feels like one AI wrestler (Cody lol) tends to get the advantage and steam almost uninterrupted to a finish.

Fascinated by how bad this sounds, though I guess this sort of jank was what GM mode was always like and everyone asking for it back is a total monkey's paw situation anyway

still can't get over that three count that's the length of a nine count

I guess it crossed everyone's mind as a possibility at the time, but that was the moment where it became a cast-iron certainty in my head

I think people are mainly intending these points about the men's division because that's where the issue is, and there was an understanding that the women's division was more of a work in progress and they didn't have access to as many polished women wrestlers to start it out or grow it during the pandemic. Jade however is kind of a special-case nailed-on phenomenon that reminds me of the Ta-Nehisi Coates line on Obama becoming president where it just sort of raises the question "so it took someone that perfect for there to even be a chance, huh?" It's true that the off-the-peg-over main event male talent they were able to sign was mostly white, but if you don't have access to sign a ready-made main event black male talent maybe you should be making more effort to grow one? Like is there a reason Hobbs can't be on main TV a few times a month just to squash a guy, let him get some reps and see if he connects with the crowd? Also not really directly related to any of this but the second I saw that Khan tweet insulting Swole I thought "oh shit yeah he definitely signed off on the offensive Caster rap then threw him under the bus when it backfired didn't he"

Saw this come up on Eurogamer and thought some gameplay details might have leaked but no, imaginary digital pre-order tat for suckers "When It's Your Yard It Hits Different" is some absolute brain worms shit

I definitely believe that they Fedexed Jericho a box containing nothing though

Yeah totally, have long felt like the kind of "three star ten minute match that does the exact job it was meant to on the card" is way more of a lost art than the actual five star epic. I'd rather watch a relatively average-for-them Austin vs Steamboat match from a minor show in 1992 than one of those very good but forgettable 20 minute six man matches they were having every week on Raw a few years ago that got 4+ stars from Meltz. Peak NXT was good for this too on the undercard matches, I remember liking Dijak and Lee wrestling each other to a double countout that showed they could be spectacular together in future without giving too much away on the day

Oh yeah my kitten's already on the bandwagon but tbh a lot of the time it's like "settle down Richienetico"

In terms of mainstream crossover potential this might mean something and it might not, but we got a puppy at the start of the week and after an evening of bombing around the living room and fidgeting wildly in my wife's lap, he momentarily stopped and paid rapt attention to the entirety of Wardlow's powerbomb symphony

I feel like the logical next step for Cody is to solemnly announce he feels he has to renege on his promise and challenge for the world title as a result of overwhelming fan demand Agonising over the decision for a 20 minute Dynamite segment every week as he provides updates on this unprecedented groundswell of grassroots support; his voice cracking as he reads out a (very real) letter from little terminally ill Timmy in Boise begging the Codester for just one favour: to win the big one, for him, before the lights go out on his tragically short life Not a dry eye in the house I'd bet

I think I've actually lost count of how many good Sting matches there have been in 2021 What a weird timeline we ended up on

Haha Punk's stinger woo on the ramp ended up closer to a Wilhelm scream!

That title match was fantastic. I could feel my heart in my chest in the last couple of minutes, there were so many ways they could have gone with it. Mad how after years of spammed superkicks and overwrought community theatre drama it took a guy nominally trained by Shawn Michaels to come in and restore Bretism to its rightful, permanent place at the top of the wrestling industry (I'm being flippant; Serena of course deserves her proper respect for this too) I love how half of Dante's spectacular shit is just clever acrobatic dodges that aren't even going to kill him young. When he eventually debuts that second facial expression it's going to be like the second coming of Hook Although none of them are individually 10/10 megastars all round, all of the former Undisputed Era guys have something to recommend them (godspeed Roddy) - KO'R was always my favourite of the group and I'd like to see him show up. He integrates his MMA stuff in a way that doesn't make him seem tediously ashamed of pro-wrestling, stooges like a champ and has a well calibrated sense of humour Good show!

AEW needs some message discipline about everyone saying "shit" with slightly too much gusto every five minutes. Either that or lean into it, throw caution to the wind and give me Orange Cassidy dropping relentless c-bombs throughout every single promo

Yeah I was counting the Dax one as probably being improvised due to the injury I think PAC's Avalanche brainbuster, if he ever does it again, should be not so much a finish as a "you aren't seeing this guy on TV for a while" move Generico's is different and if they were saving it as a finish then other people shouldn't be getting two counts off it every week!! it looks awesome though so I'll still watch that shit In non-brainbuster news, the constantly-interrupted interviews feel like one of this company's few concessions to WWE-style hating your audience

They seemingly have like a dozen people on the roster who can hit picture-perfect brainbusters on the regular, can at least one of them just use it as a dang finish already