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Straight up he'll climb?

This must be just like living in Paradise... and I don't wanna go home! (Joke's on you Van Halen! No one actually lives in Paradise, Nevada! But some Pay Per Views do!) Welcome to the 6th Double or Nothing! THE CARD~! FOR THE AEW CHAMPIONSHIP - Swerve Strickland (c) vs. TBA* FOR THE TBS CHAMPIONSHP - Willow Nightengale (c) vs. Mercedes Mone** FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP - Roderick Strong (c) vs. Will Osperay*** --- * - Opponent will be announced at 5/1 Dynamite ** - Mone's AEW debut match *** - Natural will give this match *****. Dave will go... higher.

@The Natural I couldn't have ordered this ROH Daneilson figure fast enough. https://shop.jazwares.com/products/ring-of-honor-bryan-danielson?variant=41127142785097 Also, the Claudio one recently came to the house and it's incredible. I don't intend on getting every ROH figure they do (no, thanks on the Bucks and Kenny) But Danielson, Claudio and eventually The Briscoes sounds oh-so-right so I'll need to find a special spot for them.

The Beach Boys

Hollywood Con Queen If you want to know more about the background https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/25/24140331/hollywood-con-queen-documentary-apple-tv

I like Chop, but lord almighty the Fins better draft every offensive lineman over 6'6" and 300# that's left on the board in their next picks.

Not only still alive but acting up a storm Just last year she was in Fast X, 80 for Brady, Family Switch and some TV shows And she was in the fairly recent remake of West Side Story

I thought HD-DVD was going to take off because it had Xbox support and Blu-ray players were prohibitively expensive (until PS3 came out) - we've all been there

Oh great muscular maple syrup Ronin Gordi! Protector of lands stretching from Kamloops, British Columbia to Nara, Nara. Selfie flexing, macha beer drinking, lover of the great Sport of Kings. YOU HAVE BEEN INVOKED. Is there a new modern wrestling company that has fulfilled your needs of professional wrestling? Any fun AEW matches recently stand out? Any fun non-AEW matches recently stand out? With this invocation, do I get three wishes?

The best thing about the Falcons taking Penix is the GM being all "It he sits for 4 or 5 years then that means we got great QB play and that is a good problem!" Umm....

I know you're NOT talking about me but you are absolutly describing me.

I appreciate you reading. I appreciate the question. I have a lot of plates in the air this morning but let me run through some of this stuff quickly to the best of my ability. On a second read, I realize that this has as much to do with them as it does with me. I really wasn't familiar with them so I wasn't sure what we'd be getting here but this does spell it out pretty well. The way I initially read the question (and there's still some of it in there) was a bit of bothsidesism. Let me try to cover some of this ground though. It should probably be more of a gazing thing but I'm not cross-linking right now. Me: If you asked me ten years ago what was most important, I'd say narrative/storytelling and I'd lean hard on selling and things having meaning through the match. Excitement/execution were secondary to this. Second-level even. You couldn't even consider them if the first level wasn't met. I think I have developed in that time to have a bit more of a balance but that balance leans hard towards.. Commitment/immersion: this is what I balance the coherency/consistency of the narrative with primarily. How deeply is a wrestler submerging themselves into what they're doing. How well can they use that to pull the fans in. It means that I give more credit to someone like Sabu that I might have previously because they're so thoroughly and consistently in the moment. A lot of times this is where I struggle with Omega because he feels like a director carefully staging every shot wanting perfection as opposed to an actor in the moment who has given in to the moment. I struggle a little with Dax now too primarily because I listened to too much of his podcast and get more how his mind works and how he puts together matches. It means that I can appreciate it on a different level but it's not exactly the level I enjoy wrestling on normally and it chafes. This does make me kind of want to revisit TNA Angle at some point, after he'd completely gone off the rails and see if there's something Sabu-ish to like there. But not enough to actually do it. Implicit storytelling: Through watching all of that Hansen and AJPW, I am higher than I used to be on people who are so thoroughly their character and that eat up so much air in the room that they sort of force a logical, path of least resistance sort of storytelling onto a match. I do see huge differences between Tenryu and Hansen when it comes to the former finding ways to outwardly highlight the strengths of his opponent (even without it seeming like he's doing so) vs the latter who forces his opponents to find ways to be strong on their own in order to stay with him. When the second happens, you get amazing matches, maybe even more so than what Tenryu was generally doing, but Tenryu's method and skill and consideration creates a far stronger baseline. Individual attributes for wrestlers I may not overall rank: This is something we're bad at as a community. We don't give credit for small things because we're always focused on the big picture. I give the example of John Studd. Terrible offense. Miserable control. Often just lays in holds. But he was a wonderful early match stooge who used his size as a point of dissonance by stalling and complaining and refusing to engage. I really enjoy those 2-3 minutes of his matches. Recently, I think Kyle Fletcher has some great instincts when it comes to working with the crowd and doing some of the in between stuff, especially during AEW mandated commercial break heeling pauses. If you just have him react and be a jerk, he's going to do ok with it. It doesn't mean I even liked his ospreay match and i was just ok with the Lee Johnson one but he seems like a guy who would pop a beach ball very well and he should watch old Gino Hernandez matches if he's going to stay a heel. Likewise, I do respect Omega's ability to devise complex stories in his matches. I just can't help but see the strings, which ironically at this point of my watching life, more or less invalidates the positives in the same way immersion without story might have ten years ago for me. I absolutely respect his ambition. I just find myself not enjoying the actual results. Tag wrestling: This is pertinent. The thing I dislike the most about modern tag wrestling is that the matches break down too soon. They jettison so many of the narrative opportunities to get heat and build anticipation for a hot tag and a comeback that makes tag team wrestling so special in order to get to the complex spots and quick in and out action too soon. They miss the forest for the trees and boy do they ever love trees. The one team, strangely enough, that somehow figures out a way to structure it to make it work for me is Silver/Reynolds. They're like idiot savants in structuring "everything breaking down too early" in a compelling way that still feels like it has meaningful momentum shifts and build and payoff. Overall: I do still lean towards minimalism. I love the manipulation/working aspect of pro wrestling, the idea that by putting the smallest finger on the pulse, you can completely move a crowd this way or that. I do feel like people do more and more with less and less result, or that it's become much more of an explicit collaboration with the crowd now where there's mutual feeding and pandering and basically surrendering to the will of the crowd instead of the sort of one-directional manipulation and the a skilled response to the crowd's reaction to that manipulation. I heard Mansury on the AEW podcast gloat about how yes they do rehearse everything, and that's well and good, but it's much more compelling when there's a bit of flex in the moment. I thought the Bunkhouse match was pretty fun along those lines, especially Claudio.

Schiavone said at the end that the correct answer is 21 (Casino Gauntlet).

Props to Tony, that was a slick trade back in the first round and still getting his guy. His best booking of the week, obviously distracting him from Dynamite. The Bucks needed to pile drive some sense into him.

Movies seen yesterday.... Undercurrent (Criterion, leaving next week) Superbad (Peacock, leaving next week) Challengers (saw at the theater)

https://cdn4.whatculture.com/images//2024/04/e54ea7b3d656cc582866f536fac664db.png Another picture of Tony Khan with a neck brace.

For some reason this reminded me of one of my best friends, back when we were kids in the 1980s. His parents got excited about modern living and went out and bought a Betamax VCR and a Commodore VIC-20. I think he still harbours some sort of psychological grievance to this day.

I guess this and the Cosby reversal show the difficulty in prosecuting some of these decades old crimes

Seems there's a lot of horror movies being released in The spring this year, LNWTD, The First Omen, Immaculate, Abigail.

"I have more Cocaine than Jackie Crockett and damn I'm gonna use it" papa Shad should bring in Jinder to go after The Dastardly Elite! I'd also like for Jericho to rename the FTW title then "Stu Hart International Title"

I'm reminded of something Jani Lane I think said on Celebrity fit club "some people just don't have the motherhood gene"

I remember thinking when all his shit came out and he quite that maybe Ole Lars wasn't mentally cut out for the pressure cooker world of Pro wrestling and that maybe he would be better served somewhere else but he seems to be an un repentant asshole

The Sherri episode might have been even more depressing than I expected.

You've the reverse Midas touch ;).

That's a smart play on Bucks' part. Hook Cole up with a sweet podcast gig, so he will be preoccupied for the time being, while The Elite take the spot recently deceased Tony K was probably saving for Undisputed Kingdom in hopes that they would actually get over as heels for what they did to MJF. Storyline-wise, Cole and The Elite should at least acknowlegde the situation and promise to stay out of each others' business, for now, until the AEW World Title comes into play in one way or another.