John E. Dynamite

WWE will fire somebody worthy of the role in the next two years. If I were NJPW I'd bank on that or poach the first under-utilized ROH guy that'll jump. I'm gonna say... Dalton Castle after a heel turn and an ROH title run, then they forget how to book him like they do most of their champs. The current forecast is Kenny leaves in Jan 2019, right? And isn't it great that NJPW contracts expire right before the Rumble? La Sombra's gonna get fired, right? Ex IC champ. Not a bad looking dude. Just throwing it out there.

REALLY liked Okada/Kojima. Awesome heel work from the champ. The Cozy Crash Dynamite tease brought be back to all the way back to Kojima's 2005 Triple Crown reign, which I was really into at the time. I still don't get why a dude as big and burly as Mike needs to throw a bajillion fancy moves out when he looking scary performing a basic suplex. It's like he short changes his entire moveset by having way too many late-match moves which look like finishers but conceivably can't be on account of when he uses them. With that said, Mike/Kenny did a good job with the "he's already dead" formula with Kenny being completely out of the match after the sitout crucifix powerbomb and being too dumb to give up.

Those Kawada kicks were completely unacceptable. I've never had that much of a problem with the guy but as of this week he's pulling Yujiro duty as the guy I cheer against in every match.

SANADA's on weed and Dianabol?

Don't want to be mean but I dunno if YOSHI-HASHI's cut out for this main event thing. Seeing him in there next to Naito highlighted some deficiencies.

Moreso than anything else they have going for them, New Japan has stayed alive and prospered due to their dojo. The pound-for-pound greatest list of grads from any establishment that ever existed, AND the Young Lion -> Excursion -> Comeback Push model *actually* works. Trust the process.

Some people out there hating on Omega/Suzuki for whatever reason. Boo hoo. I liked seeing him play super babyface, never thought Fale was ever gonna provide a great ""to-the-rescue" spot but hey I'll take it.

Better yet; I hope he found someone who appriciated his work on the World Cup Soccer pinball table. Y'know, the one with the cartoon dog.

Now that the UFC have announced a Shogun/OSP rematch for the main event of the upcoming Japan card, it made me think about how former champion Shogun's current 3-fight win streak is the longest he's ever had with the company. So I looked up how many other former champs have an equal or lesser "longest UFC win streak". Turns out that number isn't weird at all. 1 Win - Carlos Newton, Carla Esparza (active, previous high of 4 with TUF) 2 Wins - Bas Rutten , Maurice Smith (completely forgot he went into the Coleman fight at 5-7), Murilo Bustamante, David Menne, Matt Serra (4 with TUF) 3 Wins - Vitor Belfort, Rampage Jackson, Forrest Griffin (5 with TUF), BJ Penn (!), Tyron Woodley, Sean Sherk, Eddie Alvarez, Holly Holm, Germaine de Randamie (active)

No mention on commentary, Goldie was too busy reminding us how 90 proof Edgy-to-the-Core MSG and Bellator are.

Heather Hardy clearly wore eyeliner to the fight. New York commission keeps it professional, y'all. Looking forward to Chael fighting in Billy Graham sunglasses, Wanderlei with an actual axe

It looks like Hague was KO'ed three times in 2016 and three times in 2015, only fighting in Russia and Edmonton. It's not on the level of Gary Goodridge's 23 career KO/TKOs but it's completely insane that any commission or camp could have let it reach that point. I've seen people bring up fighters who suffered more career knockouts, and y'know what? Mark Hunt's brain is jelly. So is Overeem's. They're punchy, they slur, their later years will not be kind to them. It's friggin' sad but knockout is just a catchy word for concussion.

It reminded me of the old Kawada spot where he'd collapse after being Irish Whipped. Cool when done sparingly but if you see it enough you start to ask "why doesn't everybody just collapse on purpose?". Ball's in your court, indy dweebs.

The renaissance of the submission finish was something to behold. Much preferred this Naito/Tanahashi to the one at the Dome, particularly their attempts to outheel each other. What a great, confusing crowd. Two GREAT nearfalls tonight, the first being the One Winged Angel rope break heard round the world. So much of the build-up centered around the "if he can just hit his move" narrative, PLUS Kenny worked in a wrist clutch prior to hitting it which plays off some established Rainmaker psychology. Having Okada escape defeat by that narrow of a margin had me biting hard. You could even hear portions of the crowd booing, thinking their was some botched kickout or other shenanigan. Then the replay had 'em ooh-ing and aah-ing. The OTHER great nearfall, which nobody else probably liked as much as me, was the Taichi ref pull. It felt like a worthy payoff to all of his mediocre stooging throughout the year.

To respond to anyone who didn't know the scene, "grunge" is as much of a musical genre as "alternative rock". It really isn't a particular sound, I would argue the big grunge bands didn't sound that much like each other at the end of the day. Nirvana proclaimed themselves a punk band. Alice in Chains was very much a metal band. Pearl Jam were the most broadly accessible band on account of their classic rock vibe. Soundgarden kinda did that too, but with more of a hard rock bent. I think they've always been compared to Sabbath or a more depressed Zep in terms of tone and composition, but with "like, a real good singer, man". Their legacy has been that of being the "talented" band, more technically proficient than their peers and ambitious enough to try (and generally succeed) with something as bombastic as Superunknown. But they couldn't quite drum up as dedicated fan base as the others - maybe on account of the fact that they weren't treading a lot of new ground thematically or musically, and the lyrics were always kinda dippy. Still. Riffs were crunchy and Cornell had one of those once-in-a-lifetime voices. The kind that can make a gold record singing the phone book.

I hesitate to give up on him (or anyone, anywhere, ever) because it's the year of Kenny Omega, Main Event Dynamo. ANYTHING can happen. Much like Kenny, Marty has "it". And "it" isn't some magical intangible pixie dust, it's an inate magnetism that makes a crowd feel a little extra sumpin' at you. And it seems to me that young indie guys who posses this "it" get caught up in their own shtick and hype is because they can get away with it in front of crowds who haven't seen it before.

I have tried so hard to become tolerant of this shtick-heavy UK indie wave. I haven't even hated Scurll the half-a-dozen times I've seen him do is stuff. But Scurll/Osprey was putrid. If the dudes he does his "finger break" spot to don't come out wearing a cast or binding on their finger in their next few matches, *he didn't really break their finger, did he?*

Wikipedia lists the move as, and I quote, "Triangle Choke / Cobra Clutch combination". He's been using it for nearly a decade. Huh.

Whoa, hold up. Non-American gaijin indie-darling shtick machines come to NJPW to get stiffed into compliance. At least for big singles matches.

Right as the timer ticks down to zero, he drops him. BOOM. Chaos. Then, the smoke clears. There's a pin. The end. BOOK IT.

Like this line? Not to dig up old dirt but all that stuff happened around two or three years ago. Before the Reebok deal but after Fox and after the Miguel Torres/Forrest Griffin rape-joke-a-palooza.

I can't help but fantasy book a years-long feuid in which Mike Perry usurups Donald Cerrone as King Stupid Hick of the UFC (fans notwithstanding).

Reptilicus didn't do it for me. Jonah, while I'm surprised how well his nice-guy character works during the skits, can fall into that aggravating modern-nerd mush mouth when he's trying to squeeze an overlong riff in before the next bit of dialogue kicks in. Doesn't this dude make his money on what's essentially the radio? As I am a TRAIN-ED ACTORRR, his poor diction bothers me a good bit. But that ties into the problem of "too many riffs", which I think every review has mentioned. Still. The very next episode, I finally had that moment where everything clicked and it felt just like watching the old stuff. Somewhere between stories of a young boy bonding with Bigfoot over Coca-Cola and rock 'n roll and the Samuel Taylor Coleridge albatross riff it all felt like home again. It's also been a good mix of genres. Weren't the Sci-Fi years kinda... sci-fi heavy? Avalanche felt like such a nice departure. I don't remember another movie that was quite that star-studded. Plus, y'know, there was that part with the avalanche.

Which is a hell-of-old European folk song, but Jimmy Page based their version on Fred Gerlach's version, which was based on the *amazing* Lead Belly version. I assumed for a long time Zep was doing it as a straight-up Lead Belly tribute but I guess Page only got into that stuff once he heard white English folkies perform it. I'm assuming most Zep heads have heard one of Lead Belly's recordings of it so here's Gerlach's! This version, while showcasing plenty of talent, is so derivative that he even keeps the spoken-word intro.

Part of it has to do with the fact that most blues structures don't put much emphasis on the chorus. When the Levee Breaks is probably their best known 12-bar blues track and that doesn't have one. Same goes for their covers/unfortunate rip-offs like Dazed and Confused. But they did cover *so* many Willie Dixon songs and he certainly liked to use refrains if not all-out choruses. There's also a lot of Zep songs that use instrumental riffs as functional choruses, like The Ocean and Black Dog.