John E. Dynamite

I made a big spread sheet of every loose DS game that costs less than half of it's market value @ Gamestop and now I have hundreds of free gamer bux because of Wario Ware DIY and Spectrobes and some Avatar game and Tamagochi (among dozens of others). Every other store has a giant stash behind the counter and they're usually happy to print you a list and dig for the good ones. I sort of can't believe this worked, but now I have a $150 copy of God Hand for PS2 that I really only spent $50 bucks on - and this was just from trading things in at a place that would give me 50% of a game's Pricecharting value. I'm stashing all my Atlus-published games and RPGs. This is a fun thing to do and you should try it

Thread necromancy - June Carter & Johnny Cash have the best banter ever, June plays San Antonio Rose on an autoharp that cannot begin to be described as in-tune while wearing a diamond ring that possibly weighs more than she does.

I like how no member of the Pinnacle or the Inner Circle is even considering going for a title until the other faction is eradicated. Completely logical motivation for all characters involved & it frees up spots for other potential challengers. It's an old trick, but giving people non-championship objectives is crucial to to the artform.

WWE Dynamite never felt so real.

I'm a Punk and Prazak guy m'self. But they have enough talent already in-house.

Pet theory - we know what a huge Mid South mark Tony K is. It's probably the first thing he wants to talk to JR about most days. Name dropping Butch Reed (another guy JR called a zillion matches of) is his way of keeping the boss happy.

I want to be understood - The pervy uncle comments have absolutely no place on TV. The discussion around "articulate" = "can talk like a white person" has been going on for decades and every sports announcer in the world should have ten copies of that memo. JR's palpable misery regarding certain elements of the show buries AEW more than his legacy elevates it. I just don't believe anyone needs to actively misunderstand JR's retro remarks in order to criticize him.

There's such a fine line when it comes to these comparisons and unfortunately it takes a lot of knowledge and context to understand what JR tries to get at. This is why I discuss wrestling on DVDVR and not Twitter and Reddit. Gino Hernandez and Sammy Guevara - Two preening prettyboy heat magnets from Texas, Gino from the Dallas area, Sammy from in Houston. Both are half-Latino. I don't think I've ever heard either speak Spanish. Both started wrestling around 17 or 18 and were understood to be prodigious. The only footage of Gino Hernandez is where he is 28 years or younger. Sammy turns 28 this month. It is a completely fair comparison. I would make it in a heartbeat if I were in JR's position, especially since enough of the AEW audience has watched Dark Side of the Ring. I wouldn't list off all those points, but I'd expect somebody to get what I mean. On the matter of JR's other comparisons, do people ever take into consideration where JR used to work? He can't really compare people to WWE talent, so he goes back to his Crockett and Mid South days. On "The Brainbuster Scandal"; JR called/reffed/watched way more Dick Murdoch matches than Koko B. Ware - yes, Koko had a run with Watts in '86 but outside of that was entirely with Memphis or WWF. Murdoch was a Tri-State and MSW fixture. Also, Killer Karl Kox "invented" the brainbuster and taught it to Murdoch. I get that JR dropping the wrong names lacked some tact, but Jesus, some of these so-called flubs make complete sense.

You've missed out on a lot of the internet.

Ever since I saw my first Griff Garrison match I've had this weird feeling like he has a hugely high ceiling and that he might be a really good fit for the WWE system. I could never figure out exactly why... yeah, he's a big tall blonde babyface type who wrestles a sensible style, but for the longest time I thought "this must be the same vibe Vince got from Tom Magee". Today I think I figured it out. I think Griff Garrison reminds me of a young Hunter Hearst Helmsley with all the heel instincts flipped face.

Asanoyama has been officially sent to the Shadow Zone. Ikioi retired, I should be sad, but real fans know what the deal is. This man can finally focus on his singing career! I can picture it now - I'm at the infinitely more shoppable Tower Records in Shinjuku and the first thing I buy is something like this on a Maxi Single... Voice of an angel!

Especially with Jericho talking up the J-Cup previously. Never mind that one participant, that finish is sacred.

If you think that's bad, you should try breaking up the pinfall afterwards. Seriously, I feel awful for Reba but she really had no place being in any matches and it's a damn shame it had to end this way. Kind of crazy that Britt seemingly stiffed Vicki right afterwards but I get that she was upset. Vickie shoulda sold. EDIT: Completely feasible that Vickie forgot to sell because she was worried about Reba. Cooler heads will probably prevail on this one. Another week of vastly superior backstage pre-tapes. I'll say it again. Another week of vastly superior backstage pre-tapes. Except the Darby thing, which we know is being produced by somebody else. Nick Mondo? Anyway. Hager is this week's example of sounding way better on this stick than usual (he's been on an upswing). Alex Reynolds even got a little shine. There's a new creative element at work backstage and I can't figure out who's producing or directing these things. Is this what Mark Henry was brought in for? Christian? Did Sonjay Dutt do uncredited work last week? I'm legit curious.

I had a lot to say about this episode but it looks like all the discussion across the entire internet has been reduced to people making upvote-baiting comments about JR's botch (that I completely missed). Have at it, I guess.

This is one of those weird questions that won't be answered until most of today's active wrestlers are retired - has it been harder to aquire steroids during the pandemic? I don't know a tactful way to say this, but this roster does steroids. Just like every other pro wrestling roster in history. There's been enough chatter about guys looking schlubby in this thread and I kinda gotta wonder if it's a symptom of COVID's effect on what's essentially part of the drug trade. International restrictions and all that.

Andrade, Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, a name New Japan guy. They make about equal sense. Tommy End? JB's lost so many consecutive big matches that I really think he needs a different kind of program for awhile, but if he's refusing to promo I don't know where you put him. Maybe an excursion is due.

People bitched during those few months when everybody was bouncing between face and heel. Right around the Bucks' turn. The Dark Order and the Inner Circle turned face, the Elite turned heel, Kingston/Penta/Fenix/PAC have been in this weird tweenerverse forever, Scorpio Sky turned, Matt Hardy, Private Party, Lance Archer, QT, Hobbs, kinda sorta Brian Cage, Britt, Janela, all in the last year. I don't think AEW is doing that much resetting to the status quo. I think that COVID has had a much bigger effect on AEW's long-game booking than TK or anybody else's territorial or Japanese-infulenced booking philosophies. You have to assume AEW books like they book due to having had no immediate crowd responses to take the temperature of the angles they're running & saving certain big babyface moments for a chance to get an actual pop. And we don't even have to argue about it , we're on the cusp of finding out what they've been holding back on.

Jake Atlas?

Kenny Omega is exceptionally good at half of his job. I don't see how there's any controversy in that.

Whoever is directing these "look at the camera and say your shit" backstage vignettes has the right idea. They read a lot different then the one-take cutaways we've been getting over the last year. Even the Bucks shittin' on Brandon was focused and coherent. And when did Miro become the BEST PROMO IN THE WORLD? It's like if Nikita Koloff was an actual insane Lithuanian dude meets what children on Reddit (who have watched >10 Minoru Suzuki matches) think subtitled Minoru Suzuki promos sound like meets that one Key and Peele MMA sketch. If this version of Miro were the bad guy in any 80's action movie he would be more memorable than any protagonist. We need to name a constellation after him.

Not arguing any of this. I just think it's crazy given where they were situated pre-COVID, or at least pre-AEW. I'm not sure how RoH was the #2 company in the US in 2018. Since then they embarrassed themselves at the MSG show, willingly co-promoted All In which wound up being the catalyst for a huge roster exodus, lost their CMLL relationship, damaged their NJPW relationship (how long did Lifeblood last?) had next to no gameplan per how to deal with no-crowd wrestling, bet on the incredibly wrong horse in Scurll, bet on several other wrong horses in Flip Gordon, Bully Ray, Dalton Castle and Matt Taven, never put together a functional women's division, dealt with the Kelly Klein lawsuit and Joey Mercury whistleblowing... fuck, is there anything I'm forgetting? You'd think with this influx of free agents and ample time spent licking their wounds, Ring of Honor could feasibly rebound. But with Sinclair in charge of the purse strings I don't know if I can expect them to make up any lost ground to Impact, MLW, NWA... and with RoH's contracts being the way they are, GCW, PWG + others are probably going to outdraw them because they'll have AEW guys on the bill.

It is simply amazing how much Ring of Honor doesn't exist anymore.

My fave Italo Disco deep cut. Long intro but the astoundingly bad English at :50 and the hook at 1:16 provide momentum that the track never loses. Anyways, wrestling. I read a Jungle Boy interview where he said he's "not a promo guy" and that he runs away from the cameras when AEW asks him to cut one. Hypocritically, I think this should disqualify him from winning any title any time soon & I think Kenny Omega should consider also running away from the cameras.

Xavier Woods' contract allegedly runs until 2024. Not sure what the six months comment is supposed to be about. Lost in the (deserved) frothing hatred of corporate cost-cutting is the very real fact that all these releases have to do with an industry-wide talent surplus. This is the generation of talent that grew up watching the Attitude Era, 25-to-35 year olds who probably represent the biggest number of wrestlers than any generation is ever going to see. And yes, WWE panic-bought a lot of these guys and horded a lot of others when they thought they had a chance of keeping AEW off the ground. It does make plenty of sense. But every batch of these releases features somebody that I just can't wrap my head around. Ever-Rise doesn't add up. Tyler Breeze is not a good look for locker room morale & the amount of eyes that are on UUDD. We know the bigwigs are ignorant to this stuff, but jeeeeez. And you wonder why Tony Khan & AEW are investing so much of their profits into the gaming market...

Untitled Arts are doing really, really good work. But in my market their sours are pretty limited and you're only gonna find them at stores that are actively ordering them as soon as they hit the warehouse. Most of those sours are gonna be one-offs, so don't fall in love. UA's big move is probably their hard seltzers, believe it or not. They're far and away the best hard seltzers I've ever drank, not that I advocate spending 17.99 on a six pick of 5% abv bubbly water w/ fruit puree as a habit. But if anyone wants to treat themselves, if anyone wants to see the pinnacle of this strange new craze, it's out there to be found.