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Any time someone brings up a wrestler’s legitimate sports background: “Okay, Sooner.”

A cop in my town went viral in Tennessee because he posted a Facebook video detailing why he’s quitting the force at the end of the month. No, it’s not because Black Lives Matter or anything like that. It’s because he fears retaliation from people he has arrested, is tired of his brothers and sisters in the force being murdered “because of the uniform they’re wearing”, and because of the way cops are being treated right now. It’s a big ol’ sob story copaganda thing. The thing that stood out to me is the cognitive dissonance to state “It’s an eerie feeling that you go anywhere and you feel like there’s a person following you.” Then he talks about how being married to a cop is one of the hardest jobs in the world because they might not even come home. You mean, like what black people face every day? You wear a uniform you can take off - they can’t shed their skin. This dude can get fucked, for real.

God damn it. Put a Spoiler on all NSFW links people. Jesus. ?

Standing offer to anyone in Texas: y'all get arrested, you call me and I'll take care of it if you trade me wrestling tapes.

Here is their 'brutal' kick exchange at least

So would Wilde and Mendoza be known as Santos' Little Helpers?

Giving up is a good way of honoring that flag.

Vicious and Delicious were the shit.

I think a reasonable reform that can be done is to abolish asset forfeiture. It's legalized theft for the police, and that money that they steal is often used to buy ridiculous military equipment for police use. And to defend yourself against asset forfeiture is extraordinarily difficult and specialized. Oh, and there's no exclusionary rule in asset forfeiture, so the cops can literally do an illegal search that would get shut down and does get shut down in criminal court and still be justified in stealing the money. It's insanity. And I know defund the police is popular, but I think "Disarm the Police" actually makes more sense. No more tanks and machine guns for cops!

This is long but a must read.

I am an HU alumnus and I slept in a bathtub in a hotel room during the first night of the Greekfest riots of '88 where Va Beach cops decided that using tear gas on black kids would be preferable to just letting them party like white kids at Daytona Beach did, so I know they can't be trusted. And just when I believe I am satisfied with my stance, I think about my kid brother huddled under the desk in his office with his students while Seung Hui Cho was gunning people down in the hallway no more than 200 feet from where they were bunkered in and wondered if tactically armed police ready to respond to the shooter would've made a difference. One less dead person is better than one more grave to dig. It's a really hard call.

I know you weren’t trying to justify its general use, and I agree that any kind of police department is going to require some kind of tactical arsenal. The difference between that and a free-for-all arms race rationalized by real and imagined threats that only benefits BAE Systems and Raytheon executives is my concern. And since the reasoning behind it often ventures into specious dog whistle territory and not the pragmatic position you have on it, I have a hard time believing they can be trusted with the equipment.

Should have just had Ford run in and beat on them both while they were lying there waiting for Nyla to climb the ropes. That would have looked worlds better.

Enjoyed the Blood Orange segment. Quen selling while getting his shit in even to his own detriment was really good stuff. Best he's looked yet, even if it wasn't near in quality to the Bucks upset, it showed me more from him than that tag match did. He CAN work a wrestling match with a story and selling. That corkscrew DDT thing was dope. Cody resorting to working a body part, including a pre-existing injury, is a good way of putting over the kids by selling his desperation AND PLANTING THE FUCKING SEEDS for a Cody heel turn. Very much the "just a show" it seemed to be on paper but it did well to give some lower card guys time and personality. These are important but I do wish they threw us something a bit more. Ultimately though, I'd rather them be cautious than kill off important matches.

I don't know what the fuck you do but whatever that Stray world is I wanna be in it.

I agree to a certain extent, but that's not really what I am talking about. The proliferation of hardcore guns amongst private citizens in general has caused police forces to arm themselves in kind. No normal beat cop in Vegas would've had the firepower to deal with that bumper stock shooter a while ago and every second he's waiting for back-up, people on the street are getting massacred. He's got to go in with what he has so he doesn't look like that cowardly sheriff in Florida, even if what he packing cannot match up with what the shooter has. Incidents like this are rare but they are costly enough to cause police to think that prepping for the Gunfight at the OK Corral for every call for service is a necessity.

These aren’t the people they’re arming themselves to take on. The overlap in the Venn diagram between them and the racist loose cannon militia guys who are itching to murder someone makes an almost perfect circle. We'd need to dismantle the entire system and create actual public safety programs or else it’s always going to be packed with cruel reactionaries who think that they’re an occupying army.

Thoughts on the first half of the show (trying to watch the rest later!) Really good tag match between FTR and B&B. Best I've seen B&B look so far. While I liked Jericho on commentary with Tony a few weeks back, I don't think he worked that well in a four-man booth. Just too much of him stepping on everyone else to get his shit in, and just YELLING to damn much. I enjoyed the women's match except for the legdrop spot, which took too long to set up and made the babyfaces look like morons who couldn't figure out how to get off the ropes. Funny how a beltshot finish can look so great when you rarely do it. I really did not want to harp on Ross this week but god damn. Someone quite obviously told JR to stop noting women's size and instead to use the word "strong" instead of "big" or "built like a linebacker." There was a point where Statlander did a bodypress and Ross noted how she was a "BIG WOWMAN" and then quickly corrected it to "STRONG WOWMAN." Later, she did a moonsault and you could hear the gears turning as he did his internal find and replace, noting how that was an impressive move for such a STRONG WOWMAN, which makes zero sense. "Big" makes sense in that case but he's clearly been told to substitute it. He's working on it but couldn't help noting that Statlander is "pushing a buck seventy five." God damn JR. And that's not even factual, as it's obvious she's losing weight. I liked the six man for what it was, clearly just a quick match to set up an angle. Nice, brutal beating by The Inner Circle.

I beat the story mode of SoR4 yesterday, and am pretty pleased with myself.

A very solid show. FTR vs. Butcher / Blade was weird as both teams were teetering between tweener and heel. It was cool to see them finish off B&B with the Brainbuster's spike piledriver while the Brainbusters were out in the audience. Ladies tag was perfectly fine and it was obviously there to give Penelope Ford some ring time since she is as green as grass. Nyla Rose is fucking awesome. What is the best way to get me to love workers I absolutely hate? Give Kip Sabian and Jimmy Havoc a Chikara sounding tag-team name like the SUPERBAD DEATH SQUAD~! Orange Cassidy bled buckets, so I am good with the finish of the six man tag. I have been hit in the back with a bag of Clementines before and that shit hurt. I am not sure if I'd have signed up to get brained with a gigantic sack of oranges. You may as well have hit Cassidy with a pillow case stuffed with doorknobs. Not safe. Poor Sammy. Even a high profile win over Colt Cabana is just a means to tease Colt joining Dark Order. And after that, the man can't even celebrate without Matt fucking Hardy getting in his business. I am good with Moxley and Cage paying tribute to the parking lot brawl between Jerry Lawler and Eddie Gilbert. I hate the look of the TNT belt, but as long as Cody is going to use it to get guys like Jungle Boy and Marq Quen over with the audience, I can accept it. And yeah. Cody = Ring Psychology. Oh, so you think you have a speed advantage, Marq Quen? If so, then I'll just do my best to re-injure the ankle you kayfabe injured last week! One day, someone might remember that Cody was only barred from challenging for the AEW title as long as Jericho was holding the title... which he isn't anymore.

So IWTV is worth checking out tonight. The mixtape for BLM is a good mix of black wrestlers with most I never saw before. And they're trying to get more eyes on the live stream as that somehow helps with the donations they're doing.

maybe that also explains why the Thunder set looked like complete ass.

All I know if you play as a kitty with a cyberpunk backpack and that is all I need to know.

It seems like there’s a biannual discourse about asset forfeiture that goes nowhere politically. It probably has more bipartisan traction than most police reforms, so I’m still hopeful.

There was a weird irony yesterday amidst this because it was Hattie McDaniel's birthday, so you had people saying banning GWTW means diminishing her Oscar win.

As far as Gone With The Wind goes, it really needs a disclaimer about how historically inaccurate it was, because there are, to this day, millions of people who think that's what race relations were "really like" back then.

With more and more players calling owners on their bullshit about how NO ONE MAKES MONEY IN BASEBALL~! There is no way there isn't a work stoppage in the next couple of years

Given he died 6 years ago - probably not

I don't think Ted Turner personally paid for the production, most likely the cost of Nitro's production was covered by Turner Broadcasting's budget while Thunder and the other shows were covered by WCW's budget. Even though everything is "owned" by the same company they're set-up in ultra convoluted ways for ultra convoluted reasons.

If everyone who used the DDT paid royalties to Jake The Snake, he'd have weed money for the rest of his life. Just be like KENTA. If someone nicks your finsher, make up another one that looks even more lethal than the last one. I actually hate the GTS and would rather see KENTA kill people with the Busiaku Knee Kick. As much as I like Will's answer the simpler answer is that Xia works in the WWE and Penelope works in AEW, so I don't see the issue. Your badass move is still unique enough for most of your hardened viewers. Now if I were Xia and all of a sudden Aliyah started using the Wing Breaker or her Brookside Bomb, she and I would have a long talk in the parking lot... I'd probably have a tire iron in my hands.

They're really starting to get on a roll. Solid and entertaining show. Lionheart Chris Jericho on commentary makes everything that much better. FTR-B&B made for a nice debut for Harwood/Wheeler. Nice touch with the legends taking notes. So much better than regular crowd shots. La la loved the Power and Glory Powerplex - tho the splash looked a bit awkward and painful. Shatter Machine didn't quite hit the mark either, but they finished strong with the stuff piledriver. As much as I dig them (moreso Butcher), I have no issue with where the Butcher/Blade are at. They have good presence, but they still have some kinks to work out. At some point they'll get themselves a manager who'll guide them, if not to the top, onto a winning streak. Post match was alright, but r the Bucks going heel? I'm pretty new to FTR other than a trio of their classic NXT bouts. I might be jumping the shark a little, but I feel like these guys could not only have some great matches but also be legitimate big draws. Statlander/Shida-Nyla/Ford was fine. That double knee was an impressive clip, but the set-up of this move of having somebody stay draped in position makes no sense. Quick fix here, have Ford hold them there. But that's not happening from the inexperienced Penelope. I like Ford, but she's nowhere near ready to be pushed. Nyla on the otherhand is improving all the time, and I think it's a bit overlooked. I was preparing to FFWD some of this, but Jericho on commentary kept me locked. The Darby-Hawk piece was fine, but could have used a tighter edit. Baker video was a bit redundant. Besties-IC was also good. I dug it, but would have prefered the OC bit where he looks to match power with the bigger man (see his indie tag bout against Scott Steiner) rather than the simple hands up to the pockets bit. That's not so much a complaint as OC is money and continues to shine. The post match was good too, but like a lot of things on the show (OC in general) reminds me of the obvious - how much better wrestling is with a hot crowd. They really need to teach Schiavone how much more effective the visuals are without his overselling. 'Blood Oranges' did you get that? OC-Jericho has the makings of something special. Sammy-Colt had nice flow and action. The overbooked post match worked just fine. Loved seeing Uno and Grayson back! I hope this indicates a loosening of travel restrictions that brings us the Death Triangle back to Dynamite soon. Janela segment... I agree. I'm also really badly wanting to see Janela play his natural role as a heel. And in a Freebird situation as a manager/wrestler. Cage/Taz-Mox segment was solid. Quen-Cody was fun. Told a good story. Quen got reeled in a little and looked tighter than the often sloppy PP tag matches. Cody's starting this silver belt run beautifully. I don't see a Cody heel turn so imminently. He's working the tweener (as far as in ring) very well. I think ppl sometimes forget what an incredible babyface promo he is. Yeah, eventually he's gonna be a heel, but a turn now would be completely unnecessary. This is the most I've looked forward to a Hager match. To be honest, he's been slowly winning me over. Ha, I think it was the poem at the pep rally that really elevated him. This show over the past couple weeks, even without a substantial crowd, is starting to feel like what they so nicely had going pre-pandemic. Lots of reason to care about things. It's really a simple thing, but I just like that they're building to and announcing the matches for the next week and the weeks to come. It makes the show feel like there's some forward motion and reason.

She could've at least gotten a couple shots in and held them in position while Nyla got ready to jump.

My guess is he was planning to retire anyway, but now this lets him shift the narrative from "so-so race car driver retires" to "TRUE PATRIOT CHOOSES VALUES OVER CAREER~!" Maybe soak the rubes for some cash on the way out too.

THIS RIGHT HERE. I got pulled over making a left on green a few months ago and the cop told me it was red. It's a turn I make every singe weekday so I knew it was green. Even though I argued with him (THAT is white privilege -- I didn't get shot or arrested for arguing), he didn't give me a ticket. Quite obviously, he was just on a fishing expedition. I can't even remember the last time I was pulled over for something even approaching justified. Twice I've been pulled over for speeding on 4-5 lane roads with nobody else on the road, once at 9-10 at night, once at 5 in the morning. Like who the fuck was I endangering? When I went to traffic court, I was really struck by the militarization of police. Every cop who came in was bald or sporting a high and tight, had a very obvious and blocky semiautomatic (Glock?), wore their black vest on the outside with more pouches than a Rob Liefeld comic, combat boots, the whole deal. How are you supposed to gain trust instead of fear when you look like an occupying force? When did every cop, even traffic cops, start dressing like the SWAT team? When I was a kid, the cops literally walked a beat in my neighborhood (East Baltimore). They wore regular pants, cop hat, white button up shirt with a discreet white vest under it, and a more low profile revolver. They talked to people in the neighborhood. You knew them and they knew you. Not anymore. The whole role has changed.

Space Mountain doesn't use anything other than futuristic stuff. It's SPLASH Mountain that uses Song of the South stuff (including being built around Brer Rabbit to begin with). I mean, if you're gonna go after stuff that has bad depictions, we're gonna be here awhile (pretty much EVERYTHING before oh, today).

Also Dynamite should have a weekly segment where Jeticho berates Excalibur. I really hope when he wraps up his in ring career Jericho moves to commentary.

That'd be putting David's sling to the test. But you're right in saying it won't be good for anyone.

While I enjoyed the segment overall, Tony's repeated insistence that they were blood oranges got me to chuckle a lot.

Agreed on Cage. He looked like a badass killer. Good for him. He nails down that intensity aspect and maybe works a bit smarter instead of harder and he could be a star. I dig Taz as a mouthpiece after being initially a little indifferent.

My oldest nephew is 19, 6'7", mixed race with a Jewish last name, adopted, aspergers, and I am praying he never has a bad day around the local yahoos because y'all will have to come bail me out.

This is the first time I've watched AEW, this shit is on TSN so why not. I made notes throughout the evening. Oh god it's 2020 and I'm watching wrestling again. Butcher/Blade vs FTR I didn't see a face team out here, which was weird. Other than that the match was fine. Everything was executed well. I don't really think it needed this many near falls but it's not like they did anything too crazy. Lots of good double team moves. Announcers killed the best false finish with the old chestnut "this could be it", thanks for that. Post match stuff just seemed like a bunch of heels all acting like assholes to each other to me. Again, I'm a little confused by that. I've never seen Butcher/Blade, they have a cool look. Overall this was a good segment. I kinda missed this interview segment with Dustin. Didn't catch enough of it to comment. Rose/Ford vs Statlander/Shida Penelope Ford and Kip Sabin look like inseufferable douchebags, I love this entrance. I love Penelope Ford's forearm smashes a lot less. I didn't like the timing of the commercial break in the middle of your monster heel actually doing moves and not just sitting in a rest hold. Ford takes a sweet bump off a missile dropkick. That Nyla Rose move with the kneedrop on the ropes is wild, I've never seen anyone do that before. The end stretch was weird. The faces do the old "grab the leg from out of the ring" trick, which is good because they are faces. Then the heels do the same thing which is bad because they are heels. Then your champ does a job. Okay. The work was mostly fine here for execution but I didn't like the way this match was laid out, at all. It looked more like a move showcase than a match with much story, and I'm iffy on the finish which was the only part of the match that really told any story. Britt Baker is Karen, The Wrestler right? Is everyone in this company a heel? This was a good short package at selling what her character is about. I have no clue who anyone is in this Inner Circle vs Orange Cassidy and Best Friends match. At least the guy that came out in the Canadian tuxedo is selling something when he gets beat up on the ramp. The match is just filler to get to the angle. This felt like every indie midcard "do stuff" match ever. I don't care about this. People learned how to sell in the post-match, which was better than the actual match, but didn't fit when you put the two together at all. They could have accomplished exactly the same outcome with a run in on a promo, the match added nothing to this. Anyone who shows fear of Billy Gunn is banished from wrestling. I don't make the rules, I merely enforce them. Sammy Guevara vs Colt Cabana I didn't take a lot of notes on this but thought it was fine. I was actually watching the match instead of typing and deleting shit about people doing bad indie wrestling like I did for the last match, so this was a definite improvement. I've never seen Guevara before but he seems eminently punchable, which is a good quality in a heel wrestler. Colt Cabana is, indeed, still Colt Cabana. After the match some white guys into Warhammer 40K came out and helped Colt Cabana. Matt Hardy is here to talk about RESPECT. I looked up Guevara and he's 26, but he looks younger. He plays young punk pretty well. Hardy warns him to get away from Jericho. Matt Hardy is changing gimmicks mid-segment? This is very fucking weird without context. I didn't hate this. Overall the match and promo together were a good segment. I want to see where this goes. This Joey Janella segment committed one of my big peeves. The whole show is shot like "a wrestling show" but then this is shot like "a movie" for no obvious reason. Lucha Underground made this work by sticking to a consistent tone where every out of ring segment is a movie, you can't just do this shit because it looks cool. A lot of my problems with this show so far are production/agent stuff and not wrestler stuff. Jon Moxley is speaking. Taz is speaking. Brian Cage is clubbering. A red car does more selling than any of the guys in that six-man. This was a good old fashioned wrestling show segment. Marq Queen vs Cody for A Presigious Wrestling Championship The TNT belt looks like shit. I liked most of the actual match telling a story of the wild high flyer taking batshit crazy risks to try and wear out a bigger, more techincal guy. Honestly this kind of felt structured like what you'd want out of an earlier career Sabu match if Sabu wasn't the sloppiest fuck of all-time. Cody doesn't really control much of the match, instead picking shots here and there, letting Marq Queen highlight all the crazy shit he does. It worked pretty well. There was never any doubt Cody was going over but Marq got to showcase himself. The post-match brawl actually looked chaotic enough to be a proper one. There wasn't a lot of clean, obvious setups once The Shit starts going down, which is what you want. A bunch of referees broke this up but were nowhere to be seen when Jericho needed to get his shit in earlier. This is me yelling about production/agent shit and consistency again. Overall nothing on the show blew me away but I had a good time. It was 2 hours of pro wrestling I don't regret. For a show that was clearly "TV setting up a bigger, more important show later" I think it was alright.

Jericho used a weapon I've never seen used before in wrestling tonight.

Oh you know us black dudes. We can't behave and we have super strength and high pain thresholds so only tasers set on maximum charge or bullets will work on us. On the real though, I don't know a black father who hasn't had "the talk" with his kids and that includes me. The Talk for us isn't about sex, though. It's about how to not get yourself killed by the fucking cops while you are out and about. It was heartbreaking to tell my near valedictorian daughter that she needs to watch herself around police for just being black. The Talk has had to change over the years, though. Philado Castille changed The Talk because it proved that you can be 100% compliant and respectful and still not make it home alive. Breonna Taylor changed The Talk because it proved that bad shit can even happen to our women and young girls. Freddie Gray changed The Talk because it proved that white cops aren't the only ones that will put you in a body bag. I don't think that all white cops are racists, but I do believe that cops in general tend to think that they are immune from the consequences of bad deeds and that's why things like what happened to George Floyd happen with brazen impunity and why other policemen fail to intervene when they see shit going down. I am a Dostoevsky man, so I believe that a society is judged by how we treat the worst of us and the least of us and right now, we're reaching brand new lows. We won't even begin to talk about dirty cops. That is a whole different rant.

In my area, a 60 year old white guy attacked some teenagers who were posting flyers. I'm glad they got him. Old white guys are going nuts right now (full disclosure, I'm a middle aged white guy). I saw a story on the news last night praising a black cop in DC for conducting a class on how young black men should act when stopped by police. Rule 1 was "do not escalate." I understand the practicality of it but this just makes me sick. It's like holding a class for women in bad relationships to teach them how not to get hit. "Rule 1: make sure dinner is on the table and don't talk back." How about teaching the cops how not to be lunatics instead? Philando Castile didn't escalate. He literally told the cop "I have a licensed firearm in the car" and Barney Fife over there fucking executed him on the spot. Breonna Taylor didn't escalate. She was SLEEPING. Is this cop a racist who thinks African Americans by nature just don't know how to act right? Or does he understand that the cops are racist who see every black person as a threat but he's thrown up his hands, given up, and decided it's easier to teach blacks to lie down and take it instead of trying to change the culture? It's one or the other and it just fucking sucks that this cop has to teach people how to try to stay alive in a horrendously flawed system instead of working to change it.