All Activity

Thunder Interlude – show number forty-one – 19 November 1998 "The WCW Gang stumbles into the final WW3 PPV riding a bunch of shitty angles” Larry Z. has been corralled into Thunder commentary duty in place of Bobby Heenan…I think that’s a clear upgrade at this point…God help us all, Larry Z. is an upgrade on Bobby Heenan at the desk… The final World War 3 pay-per-view will happen after this show…Nitro has stabilized into mediocrity after an all-time awful run from about Road Wild '98 up through Halloween Havoc '98…Don’t get me wrong, stuff like Hogan “running” for POTUS and the lWo absolutely stinks…This ‘”Bret Hart takes people out” angle that we now review through the magic of video sucks, but maybe Bret/DDP will be good…Then again, Bret/Sting was ass cheeks at Havoc, so I can’t even be sure about getting a quality match from the Hitman at this point… Norman Smiley opens the night against Booker T….I kind of enjoy that Booker’s arc over the past year was that winning his first singles title gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride that caused hidden aspects of his character to come out…And rather than it being that he was a babyface who devolved in his outlook and behavior and became jealous and greedy of his gold as it often happens (*coughDDPcough*), it was that he was a heel who developed a sense of character as he found a new belief in himself as an individual and willingly took responsibility on himself to be an exemplary champion…That is such a natural way to turn someone face…We’ve probably all known someone who was out of control, but then had to suddenly become a parent or guardian or take care of something else important in their lives, and it was like they flipped a switch inside themselves and became responsible and thoughtful… Anyway, Smiley pretends to be a babyface with an opening handshake and then heels it up…Booker makes a comeback eventually…Book misses an elbow and Spinaroonies up while Smiley dances, thinking Book was still down…That was a spot tailor made for me…Book wins it with a 110th Street Slam… It's only now that the Thunder intro plays… I was remiss earlier…I should have mentioned the absolute hell of this Steiners/Bagwells feud…Except for Judy making me laugh a couple times, it’s been only slightly less bad than the rest of this decades-long feud…At least, it feels like it's been a decade…I will repeat, if even Judy cuts a heel turn on Rick Steiner at the PPV, that will bring this whole dumbass angle back around and make me enjoy it for once…I mean, drawing out the punchline of a joke in which Rick Steiner continually gets suckered in and then attacked by a false friend over almost a year isn’t worth all the bad angles and segments…But at least I’ll get a bit of joy out of it…If it just happens that Judy helps Rick and they somehow win at the PPV, what the hell was even the point?... Disco Inferno had a whole character arc in 1997 that was pretty incredible…In 1998, he’s just jobber fodder for nWo members…Scott Hall (w/B-Teamers) beats up Disco in yet another televised match between them…I do love that Hall messing up Disco’s hair is what causes Disco to get super-aggressive and start kicking Hall’s ass…Hall finally reverses an Irish whip, hits a corner clothesline, and coasts the rest of the way to an eventual Razor’s Edge for three… Chris Jericho hits the ramp for an interview with Tony S….Jericho’s got to defend his TV title against Bobby Duncum Jr. at WW3 in a couple days…I’m not sure why we’re doing this big Duncum push…Jericho doesn’t like cowboys because Stu Hart made him one on his indy debut, haha…Duncum comes out here and hogties Jericho to mostly silence…Jericho screams for Tony S. to help him out…Tony’s like Sorry son, I don’t really do knots or ropes, good luck on Sunday though…HAHAHAHA… Kaz Hayashi has been walking around all day in the back with a Japanese-to-English dictionary and trying to get a tag partner for a WW3 match against Ernest Miller and Sonny Onoo…Kaz tries to pitch Scott Hall, who only recognizes when Kaz enunciates the name “Miller” and responds that he’s trying to avoid drinking before the matches…This was the wrestling equivalent of a dad joke, requisite with me rolling my eyes and chuckling with embarrassment at the punchline… Video of Bobby Duncum Jr. getting a totally unwarranted push upon his debut… Rey Misterio looks bummed about repping the lWo…Understandably, because this further dilution of the nWo branding and overall shitty angle absolutely sucks…Misterio’s going to try and coax something good out of Billy Kidman…Kidman is very over, and I’m still baffled about how that happened…Kidman gets a mic and, oh no, they let him talk…Kidman lectures Misterio on joining an organization that Rey doesn’t even want to be in…Eddy grabs the mic before Rey can respond and does his whole heel deal…Then Rey talks…Rey’s not in WWE yet, so he stinks at it…There’s a whole thing where Rey apparently isn’t getting a shot for the Cruiserweight title at Juvi unless he beats Kidman, Eddy steals Rey’s spot in the match, and the rest of the lWo bullies Rey out of the ring…This was bad television… There’s a commercial break, and after it, Eddy’s going to try and coax something good out of Billy Kidman…Mike T. and Larry Z. are both confused about why Eddy chose to substitute for Rey…You dopes…Tony S. figures out why (Eddy wants a Cruiserweight Championship shot for himself), but doesn’t point out that Rey won a number one contendership match over the current champion last Thunder, so the crackheads on the WCW Championship Committee should just give Rey the title shot as a matter of course…I mean, obviously Tony S. doesn’t say this, he’s trying to sell an angle and doesn’t want to expose how stupid it is…These are the little cracks in logic that I think bookers and executive producers think only the superfans care about, but they undermine the story of an angle for the regular viewers, too… Anyway, this is a short, back-and-forth match…Kidman ranas out of a pop-up powerbomb for a little wrinkle to the "can't be powerbombed" routine…Kidman scores two on a superplex shortly after…Then, Eddy tries a regular powerbomb just a bit later and Kidman hits a facebuster out of it…Stop trying to powerbomb Kidman, geez…Kidman goes up for an SSP, but sees Rey and Spyder at ringside arguing for some reason and dives onto them instead…Ah, that’s good dumb babyfacin’ from Kidman, who is even dumber when he goes over to confront Spyder on the apron…Rey tries to pull Spyder down, but Eddy runs Kidman into Spyder from behind and rolls Kidman up with his feet on the ropes for three, and presumably, a shot at Juvi Guerrera’s Cruiserweight title…It was mostly an angle with a couple of hot near-falls… We get a recap of the end of the Juvi/Kidman match from Nitro…Then, what the fuck, Tony S. says that Kidman gets a rematch against Juvi at WW3…So what the fuck was the point of Eddy subbing for Rey then?...I’m pretty sure that Rey was talking about getting a shot at WW3 before Eddy replaced him…You know what, I’m not going to think about this too deeply because neither Bisch nor Sully did… More video recapping…The Hall/Nash feud sucked, and we unfortunately must now relive it…Oh great, there’ll be a rematch at WW3… Scott Putski looks like a complete jackass, per usual…IWGP Champion Scott Norton (w/B-Teamers again) comes down for a quick serving of squash…Wait, I guess Vincent is his opponent?...No, Vincent and Putski just have a tiny match before Norton attacks Putski from behind and then the bell rings…Should this not be a DQ or no contest?...No, nevermind, I’m not going to think about this too deeply yada yada…Norton lands a powerbomb after about a minute for the win… Video recap of Hogan being so personally hurt about Jesse Ventura winning political office that he wastes time doing a stupid skit with a crappy Monica Lewinsky impersonator…Oh, also Hall and Bischoff are mad at each other for some random reason…The nWo is still around almost a year after it should have died, but there was a way to keep it around and have Goldberg + the Wolfpac finish it off that would have made keeping it around worthwhile…What they’re doing here with random nWo breakup teases (yet again!) was not the wave, though… Kaz tries to communicate with the WCW locker room some more…Disco hears the word "partner" and says he’ll only be a dancing partner with a buxom lass…Saturn walks in and corrects Disco about what Kaz needs a partner for because apparently he’s actually paying attention to what’s going on in this dumbshit company…Saturn considers being Kaz’s partner… Ernest Miller (w/Sonny Onoo) grabs a mic and does some mediocre heeling in the ring…Sonny Onoo takes the mic and also does some mediocre heeling…Onoo says that he had to scrounge up a tomato can from Japan to face Miller in a warm-up match for the Sunday bout…The desk is like This guy is white, he can’t be a karate champ in Japan…I mean, he’s obviously not a karate champ from Japan, but the word gaijin exists for a reason, fellas…Kaz runs out and gets beaten up again until Saturn makes the save…Saturn’s ceiling is as a babyface who wins against everyone at his level and below and gatekeeps the heels who will ascend to the main event…Neither getting involved in this feud nor the weird Konnan stuff really serves cementing him in that role… Chavo Guerrero Jr. (w/Pepe) faces Alex Wright…Wright insults the crowd on the mic before the match…He threatens to leave if the rubes in this Indiana crowd don’t give him respect…They don’t give him respect, but he sticks around…It's easy to forget how big Alex Wright, but then you see him collar-and-elbowed with Chavo and remember it again…The size difference is striking…Wright’s a lanky guy (well, at least at this point), so it’s easy to underestimate his size from a visual standpoint…The match is a solid affair with Wright utilizing his size advantage and Chavo using speed, agility, and flash pins to counter…Chavo Jr. makes a final comeback after blocking Wright’s reverse neckbreaker, but Wright blocks a vertical suplex attempt and flips Chavo over into a bridged pin for three…Wright drills Chavo with a clothesline post-match and attacks Pepe as the cherry on top…That was pretty good stuff… Kanyon tries to engender the support of the crowd…He fails…Hahaha, after the crowd responds to Kanyon’s usual question with EVERYBODY, he freaks out and yells NO, NO, YOUR MAMA…There wasn’t even a Your Mama joke in there, he just yelled YOUR MAMA…That was genuinely funny…Prince Iaukea comes out, Kanyon attacks him in the aisle, and they end up back in the ring and (unsurprisingly) have a fun TV match…Kanyon hits a Northern Lights facebuster, I guess is what you’d call it?...That should be a finishing move, not a random move that gets a two count…Kanyon hits a lot of unique-looking facebusters in general, and he hits a couple of them here as well…Iaukea comes back, but Kanyon pulls an Alex Wright from a few minutes ago, blocks a vertical suplex attempt, and drops down into a Flatliner for three…A few dopes in the crowd were chanting BORING…No the fuck that wasn’t, it was a perfectly pleasant competitive TV match… Saturn is out immediately after that match to face Wrath…I assume Saturn loses this one through interference…This is a decent competitive TV match…Wrath really pushes his size advantage…He lands a backbreaker and pummels Saturn in the corner…The pummeling just wakes Saturn up, so Wrath has to go back to power moves with a back suplex…Wrath gets 2.9 off a diving clothesline…Wrath misses a corner splash and gets overhead suplexed for two…Here come Onoo and Miller to spoil a solid TV bout…Saturn gets two off a top-rope splash…Onoo distracts the ref so that the Cat can land a superkick…Wrath follows with a Meltdown for three… We review Bam Bam Bigelow’s arrival to WCW… Konnan faces Bret Hart in Thunder’s main event…Konnan hits his pre-match big move, the Catchphrase Roulette…This is a five-minute number that starts with Konnan jumping on the Hitman and bashing him around ringside…It ends with Stevie Ray hitting Konnan with a slapjack behind the ref’s back and the Hitman winning with a Sharpshooter, followed by the Hitman attempting to Pillmanize Konnan after the match, but DDP making the save before that could happen…*yawn*… This Thunder had some solid matches, but it also reminded me that every ongoing angle in this company stinks…It’s close, but ultimately, I came away from this show feeling more negative than positive about it…OWW…

Nyla Rose: https://twitter.com/NylaRoseBeast/status/1780728251201245605 Fuck Oklahoma.

Thank you for this. I still need to see Bryan Danielson vs. Blue Panther also.

I'm all for the riot when the Commanders draft J.J. McCarthy instead

My mind immediately went here:

Again, *HIRE* *GAY* *PEOPLE* *FOR* *YOUR* *DESIGN TEAM*. These look like someone said, How can we make our jerseys look like early 1990's black musicians would want to wear them in their "music videos". They also already look like the knockoff version of themselves, and I don't know how that's even possible. I'm confident I'll see a billion of these stupid things by June.

Speaking of uniform disasters...* *not really, just wanted to make the joke

Ah jeez, I feel like a huge jerk now, thank you for the link - I live in the northeast, and forget that despite dealing with a lot of the same idiots spouting the same crap, we really do have it pretty (socially) decent in a lot of ways compared to other regions of the country. I might have kinda "blue state bubbled" myself a bit on that one

This isn't strictly joshi, but I thought I'd mention it since it features a prominent joshi wrestler: Chihiro Hashimoto put on an absolute technical clinic with Shinya Aoki on the 4/7 DDT show. Highly recommend checking it out.

I still need to watch Danielson/Blue Panther and a few others, but here's what I have so far: Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada (NJPW, 1/4) Sareee & Mio Momono vs. Chihiro Hashimoto & Mika Iwata (Sendai Girls, 1/7 Sareee vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (Sareee Produce, 1/16) Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero (AEW, 2/3) Yukio Sakaguchi vs. HARASHIMA (DDT, 2/7) Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson (AEW, 3/3) Darby Allin & Sting vs. The Young Bucks (AEW, 3/3) The Blackpool Combat Club & Matt Sydal vs. Blue Panther, Mistico, Ultimo Guerrero & Volador Jr. (CMLL, 3/29) Mad Dog Connelly vs. Demus (ACTION Wrestling, 4/4) Timothy Thatcher vs. Daniel Makabe (ACTION Wrestling, 4/4) GUNTHER vs. Sami Zayn (WWE, 4/6) Shinya Aoki vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (DDT, 4/7)

Sorry, I need something to be happy about. Tsukasa Fujimoto is back tomorrow. WE ARE SO BACK EVERYONE

Guess where it's still legal to fire someone based on their gender identity. Go ahead. Guess. Ding ding ding Oklahoma doesn't protect you unless you're a direct employee of the government. So in that exact scenario, they can do EXACTLY what you're describing and it's legal. I know, I know, Wikipedia, but if you wanna be depressed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_employment_discrimination_in_the_United_States

Who in the hell is Jacoby Watts? I don't recognize him anyway. Although to be fair I barely recognize Nick Comoroto either with this new look of his

I like the red shoes but am a lower voter than most. That said, I plan to revisit it soon. I’ve seen a few latter Godard and did not find much enjoyment. I don’t think it’s so sad tho, he did what he wanted to do free of constraints. I find it interesting, speaking more of his prime era, how I’ll watch a film and like it then watch it a second time and kinda hate it and then a third time and love it, or any mix of those three. Truly unique and wholly original presenting countless inspirational ideas. Of the new wave I much prefer Rohmer and Truffaut, but I’ll never stop indulging the Jean-Luc catalog. Maybe more for unique creative stimulation than entertainment.

I'm glad you touched on this - not to sound like one of those nutcases with the fake license plates, but taking the prejudice out of the equation for a moment, it just seems like massive government overreach to tell ANYONE when and where they can work if it's against the employer's wishes. (Or I guess "Contractor" in this case, since it's wrestling). Like, I don't think it would be right for the state to tell someone "Hey, you can't pump gas at the Tiger Mart in Tulsa" either. It's not like she's a felon or has some kind of 'crime of dishonesty' that precludes her from having the privilege to earn a living publicly - it's the state doing this shit, not the business itself (like, AEW isn't sitting there going "We refuse to bake a cake for two women" you know what I mean? She's a former world champion FFS). Imagine hiring her to paint your house, and some dudes with badges show up and pull her off the ladder - people would lose their fucking minds.

Id def recommend Colonel Blimp as another top level Archers film, which also has a Criterion edition. I’m also a big fan of 49th parallel.

Yeah, I'll probably try to watch everything from Powell/Pressburger. Let's not forget The Red Shoes (which I see at Barnes & Noble and it calls to me but I never answer the call). They are seriously a film school by themselves. It's almost like all our favorite directors (Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Nolan, etc) watched their films religiously for the right way to do it. I'm finding I like Gene Tierney as well now. She has intelligence and personality in her roles - if she were alive today, she would be there with Meryl Streep and Glenn Close. It's sad that Jean Luc Godard had some disappointing movies that are leaving Mubi. His earlier work aged better than his later work - the two movies I saw yesterday from the '80s and '90s had everyone in a perpetual state of being mad at each other.

Yeah, Script of the Bridge is excellent. It's been on rotation since around the time of this post. This album is like if the Killers had a truly great album before going overly commercial. I've read their celebrity vocalist is a fan amongst many, many others. The underrated call on this album and this band's catalog seems to have much to do with their presentation. They seem like a key study in great bands without strong aesthetic choices - they're sorta forgettable looking (that's okay) and have consistently rotten album covers (Script included). Apparently this presentation was a point of pride. One of the band members was responsible for the atrocious sleeve design. Kinda wonder what signing to Factory, with in house Peter Saville cover art, would've done for this group? They also were noted as being signed to a major label which lost them the Indie press they so needed in the UK. I always forget how much I know and dig Speaking in Tongues. It was one of the first vinyl LPs I purchased. A real old beater copy that I've long since replaced. Great album. I feel like I indulge a lot of these songs outside the massive single via (arguably the greatest concert film ever made) Stop Making Sense.

I just recently watched A Matter of Life and Death, and loved it thoroughly. I wanna see everything by Powell-Pressburger. Black Narcissus is calling to me. I've been eyeing The Ghost and Mrs Muir for a long while. Thanks for the 'leaving' reminder and terrific review. Big Gene Tierney 'mark' here.

Per the New York Times and Bloomberg - Sony is considering making an offer to buy Paramount Skydance Media already has an offer out to buy Paramount but apparently that was met with a "lukewarm" reception

Trust me, I've been dealing with this sort of stuff for a long time. I know what I'm working with here. They're doing two things. 1) Rallying up support to stop trans people from competing in legitimate sports, because frankly there isn't enough of us who actually compete in legitimate sports to beat the drum with nearly as much intensity as they do. (See my earlier post about how the state of Ohio only having one trans athlete in all of high school sports as they attempted to stop the supposed swarm of trans athletes). 2) Getting people to delegitimize the complaint, because when people go "it's just pro wrestling, it's all fake", they can respond "well, you don't care about real women, that's why you don't think this is a big deal! We're trying to protect real women! Blah blah bloo!" like we'll get our trans cooties on them or turn them into newts or whatever. It's not that they're too stupid to get that there was no legitimate competition in play. It's that they're trying to delegitimize the argument entirely. The argument people should be having isn't "it's a fake sport, so what", it's "trans people are actual human beings who should be able to participate in sports anyway if they want to, and most of them don't unless it's to hang out with their friends, leave these people alone you utter creeps".

Chris Jericho vs. Rob Van Dam, King of the Ring 2002. Still remember that outburst.

I'm glad that they put RVD in a spotty 4-way elimination match instead of tying him to the HOOK stuff by "giving" us Jericho vs RVD in 2024 as a rematch from their match that Jericho got pissy about on the internet all those years ago for people not liking it as much as he thought they should. Also, Emi vs Yuka on Rampage should be delightful.