SovietShooter

Sammy just hit a brutal looking SSP that busted Hardy's nose. If the protocol is that "its OK to just go home", then I can see a situation where Turner communicated to Sammy that Hardy was hurt, so "take it home", and the dumbass picked him up and hit the G2S, instead of just covering him for the pinfall.

I'm a big believer that your top singles title and tag titles should both carry the same weight and gravitas, where both should regularly main event shows. So I would have no issue putting my tag champs over

I'm a big believer in the (Bill Watts?) philosophy that a regular tag team should always defeat two regular singles competitors thrown together in a one-off. Conversely, when a guy that regularly works tag matches works a singles match against a regular singles competitor, the tag guy should lose. Booking logic.

I love Lucha, but sometimes I have trouble watching it in a situation where I cannot ff thru all the replays and downtime between falls. Like, a lucha match can go 30mins and only have 10mins of actual action with everything between falls and working the crowd..

I enjoyed the book, but it was more of a straight Flair bio than I thought it would be. Based on the title, I kinda went in expecting it to be more about Flair being the last bonafide "travelling champion". For a bio I thought it was extremely well researched, but was missing an element of other points of view. It isn't a book full of stories and antecdotes.

"Timeless" Toni is a straight up heel gimmick, and Toni has been working it like a heel (mostly), but it is just over and getting cheered. Sure, she does some stuff to get a pop, but it is a heel gimmick. She has a manservant and a lackey she treats like crap.

That was all on Madison Rayne. Purrazzo was doing a basic leg sweep/flat liner, and Rayne took it like a DDT. Rayne looked awful the entire match before that too, honestly. Not sure how she is one of the coaches...

Here is the in-house footage of their 18 March 1989 house show match from Landover, MD.

Cube's son seems to be a big wrestling fan, but partial to WWE. I don't follow him on any socials, but I occasionally see his Xweets in my feed that someone else re-xweeted, and he generally seems to be a tribalistic WWE stan. With that said, the clip going around is him criticizing AEW for announcing matches between "unknowns" and not doing UFCesque video packages to let you know who the wrestlers are before the match. I don't really watch UFC anymore, but when I did, they typically only do those packages for their headliners, and not prelim fights. And, although AEW does do packages like that on occasion, they do announce matches sometimes, like say Danielson vs Akayama, without giving the viewer any reason to know what that is a big match, or who Akayama is. Which is a fair criticism, but without seeing the full interview, I'm assuming it is being made in bad faith.

Speaking of Southpaw Regional Wrestling... An idea that I had awhile back was to do a series that was a period piece based on "found footage" from an old territory. Like, have a bunch of modern unknown indy workers tape matches & such set in the 1970s. Hair, clothes and other styles from that period, and working the in-ring style from back then. Treat it like a Lucha Underground type thing where it is in its own self contained universe and continuity.

Not for nothing, but Rush posted on Twitter shortly after the CC ended that he had been working hurt, and would have to take time off. Now, he has announced on Twitter that he has healed.

He was in one of my all-time favorite SNL sketches... "World's Most Evil Invention"

I agree with this 100%. He has a good look for his gimmick. But of the three guys in HOB, he is the one that impresses me the least in the ring. And the HOB vignettes are kinda old hat to me at this point.

I honestly think one of those Benoit vs Sullivan brawls might've started in the back before it was scheduled, and maybe interrupted a Mike Enos vs Wayne Bloom match?

He very well may be, but I don't know if he ever got the infamous ”Is All Elite” graphic. However, he never was under contract to AAA Along those same lines... Black Taurus recently popped up for a couple matches in AEW. He had been regularly working for AAA and Impact, but was not under contract. Apparently he has either signed with or will be regularly appearing for AEW/ROH going forward and no longer taking AAA bookings, so AAA went after him for using the "Black Taurus" name. Some future AAA lineups are out advertising a "Black Taurus", so either he is being false advertised, or AAA is going to put someone else under the mask.

Short version is, supposedly the deal between AEW and CMLL is that the CMLL talent can't be on the same show as AAA talent. Now, what starts to make the answer longer and rambling is who and what qualifies as AAA talent. AAA really only runs 25-30 shows a year, their TV tapings. So, they actually have very few wrestlers under contract. Of all the "AAA wrestlers" that appear on AEW, only Hijo del Vikingo is under contract to AAA. Pentagon, Fenix, and Bandido are all under AEW contract. Kommander is straight up freelance, as is pretty much any other lucahdor that had shown up to AEW previously. The talent AAA has under contract are mostly midcard and prelim guys that benefit from AAA booking them out to affiliated and independent shows. Most of their main event and headliners are freelance workers that they only bring in for big shows (LA Park, Wagner, Blue Demon Jr, Alberto, etc), because they can make more money handling their own schedule. Only a few top guys like Vikingo and Psycho Clown are under contract. Supposedly CMLL does put talent under contract, but with how easily talent has shown it is to walk out on CMLL in the past, I think they just have booking agreements. CMLL runs so many shows (and at their own venues) that they can fill up a wrestler's schedule. Between CMLL's own shows and outside shows they book their talent out to, that is a lot of work to lose out on by working a show with AAA talent - so the wrestlers just don't do it.

That's the impression that I get.

Yes, to the former Hijo del Pantera de Ring, the unofficial 2022 CMLL Rookie of the Year. They called him "Mascara Dorada 2.0" at first, but then dropped the "2.0" part after the original came back and worked the loop as Metalik and teamed with his successor.

Not for nothing, but the mask in the pic is Mascara Sagrada, not Mascara Dorada. The original Mascara Sagrada spawned a bunch of lawsuits when he originally left AAA, as Peña claimed he owned the gimmick. They put other folks under the mask thru the years after that. Mascarita Sagrada was the OG mini superstar, and had the same mask. When he left AAA he kept using the gimmick, but AAA put another guy under the mask who was damn good too. By the mid-00s CMLL was looking to reboot their Mini division, and the replacement mini jumped to CMLL and was re-cristened "Mascarita Dorada". He was hugely popular, and when a young prospect out of Guadalajara named Gran Metalik was getting the call up to Mexico City, they introduced him as the full sized counterpart, Mascara Dorada. Eventually the mini left to join WWE as Torito, and later the full sized version went to NJPW, and then WWE. The current Mascara Dorada started off as Hijo del Panterita Del Ring - his father is longtime CMLL mainstay Ephesto, who used the "Panterita Del Ring" name early in his career. When it was pretty obvious that Panterita was going to be a big star, CMLL brought Metalik back in for a short stint, and passed the Dorada gimmick over to him, as "Mascara Dorada 2.0". Almost immediately the "2.0" was dropped. The current Dorada mask is virtually the same, except 2.0 has eyeholes, while the original had a solid mesh face.

One of the things I always liked about WCW was how Mene Gene would do the interviews from the entranceway. It was a natural progression from the old Worldwide promos with David Crockett in front of the cardboard backdrop in front of the live crowd.

Matt's middle name is legitimately "Ronjohn", like the surf shop.

With the attention span folks have these days, I get why they do it, but it is a Kayfabe killer for sure.

I used to hate when DDP got a guy up for a piledriver, and then just fell forward, instead actually piledriving the guy. It looked wonky, and from a Kayfabe point of view, why wouldn't you drop the guy on his head instead of a belly flop?

IMHO, the laddermatch jumped the shark when it became a McGuffin for crazy dives and stunts, rather than two guys beating the shit out of each other with a ladder. I think cage matches have generally jumped the shark too. The purpose of a cage is to keep interference out, and keep the wrestlers in. Now, the sole purpose of the cage is for them to get out of it so there can be a brawl on the outside (or a crazy dive off the cage). I want cage matches where they beat each other bloody inside the cage. Sammartino-style escape-the-cage matches I don't like to begin with, as it makes no sense from a psychology standpoint; "I want to get this guy 1-on-1 in a cage, so I can then run away from him!!!"

I'm not sure offhand what Slam Fans is/was, but I suppose it could be me!