Leaderboard

If there's one finish you change through the entire run of Manias, this is number one with a GD bullet. Like nothing else is even remotely close.

Shit I really think Orange should have gone over tonight, it seemed like the right thing.

Wrestlers should periodically trip over their own tongue in promos for the same reason they should struggle to put on a hold in the ring. It feels more organic, more realistic. In the latter case, it masks the cooperation and contrivance of a spot under "competitive" struggle that gets exposed when everyone does every thing clean the first time [and worse yet exposes botches more badly because those are the only time anyone "misses" something.] Similarly, when they recite their written material clean and perfectly reproduce what's on the page, it just makes it more obvious everyone's performing scripted material with the same vocabulary and even taking dramatic pause breaks at the same intervals. Little verbal hiccups make it sound like a real person being emotional -- ESPECIALLY when the emotion is supposed to be some variant of indignance or anger. Doubly true in Bayley's case, because she's A] a heel, and B] scrambling to feed the reporter a Bullshit Excuse along the lines of "Well I Meant To Do That, Actually" so as not to admit weakness/defeat.

I wish there'd been some sort of follow up to the 94 Rumble, with 14 odd guys trying to look each other in the eye and carry on with their lives, knowing they willingly murdered a guy and buried him on live TV. None of this Leslie Nielsen stuff. Focus on the drama between Kwang and Headshrinker Samu, who has remorse, who doesn't. Then maybe segue into an I Know What You Did Last Summer sort of thing, despite it not being made for another 2 years, with Taker coming back, and then murdering them all, and clearing out the awful midcard at that point.

Mid 90’s WWE felt incredibly like a big budget Memphis with the wacky gimmicks and characters, King coming in, Cornette being all over TV, the NWA being featured. It was a weird time.

I'm skipping over the catfight, because, no. Growing up as a gay man and a wrestling fan, I've tended to develop a thick skin about some things. (Others, nope!) There's a disquieting level of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia, (among many other things... WEAR A MASK) that you sort of learn to tune out if you want any enjoyment of the product. So, Booker T being told "world champions don't look like you" raises a few red flags. HHH was in his "I'm like Harley Race" phase of his career, and WWE was still in the dying throes of the Attitude Era. So the dog whistles of the build up of this feud would blow out your dog's eardrums. They're basically replaying the Simmons/Vader feud from 1991 (WHICH WAS PROBLEMATIC THEN!), but at least Simmons won the match. Sigh. Alright, let's get through this. (The story I'd heard was that Booker was cool with all of this because he was supposed to win, but Vince changed his mind at the last second.) Booker T has been fighting as an upper-mid carder since his arrival as part of the WCW InVasion. And though he was WCW Champion, he was widely treated as a paper champion and then later as a dumb joke. So, when he won the chance to fight HHH for the title, people were, well, trepidacious. Nothing in the WWE's history indicated they were going to be able to go through this program with anything but the bull in a china shop style of storytelling they were so famous for. But, Booker agreed to this, so... hey, lets see how they do it. I don't know why, but I always had the idea that this video package was done to Puddle of Mudd's "Blurry". Since it's not, I must have been thinking of another match.... maybe HBK's comeback? Oh well. Time to play the game, means time to sprint. I keep up a good pace of about 19-20 mph (well good for me) for the whole 90 seconds or so it takes him to get to the ring. I reward myself by taking a swig of water as Hunter spits out his. Now, Book comes out to a good pop, but this is firmly in "HHH wins lol" time, so you can even sense the hesitance of the crowd here. Jerry Lawler is already playing a symphony concerto on a dog whistle, because he's talking about Booker being a thug, an orphan, etc. And here's where my focus fell. The match itself is fine. Booker works a knee and HHH is trying to make Booker submit(!). But Lawler's commentary is SO over the top in being a HAIR short of 'FUCKING RACIST', that JR seems to break character a couple of times. And not in a good way. Lawler's making jokes you would not make in any kind of mixed company, and JR about 15 minutes in starts screaming at him. Knowing what I know about the way announcing works, I'd imagine Vince was feeding Lawler one liners, but fuck, Lawler is just relishing every second he can wallow in the muck. I actually thought to myself, "he's going to say it... he's going to say that word." Thankfully he didn't. End came as Booker made a comeback, busted out the EXTREMELY rare Harlem Hangover (flipping top rope leg drop), Flair saved HHH by putting his leg on the ropes to break the count. Book collapses from exhaustion, eats a pedigree... We wait.... We wait.... Both guys are down. We wait... I look down at my watch... 13, 14, 15... 20 seconds later, HHH dragged himself over to retain the World Championship. There are few times I'm ashamed to be a wrestling fan. This was one of them. End of Day 56.

You know Cham Pain was a fucking pro because he dives head first onto concrete and still remembers to sell the knee.

Lance Archer fucking rules. Janela still struggles to not look silly doing anything athletic but Archer coming out with Sonny and using him as a weapon as part of his entrance is great. He's such a mean bastard. Jake looking pretty rough again. Moving very gingerly and sweating through his shirt. Brother needs that DDP Yoga back in his life. Tag title match was one of the better Private Party outings and significantly better than last week. Champs leaned into their strikes, really pouring it on against PP. Smart bit of psychology for them to use their size and striking prowess against the all flash Private Party. It worked too. Really liked that closing sequence too with the gin and juice reversal into the avalanche powerbomb and last call. But, yes, it's time to move on from this team. Have FTR beat them either in August or, likelier, the PPV. Do whatever turn you want, but they've pretty much beaten everybody now and both guys need a new goal. I really do want to see the Bucks & Omega vs. FTR & Page before whatever split happens. Could Page be the 4th guy for the Cody deal? I hope not, but they should try to win him over before he rejects them. 8 man was an awesome train wreck with some storytelling leading up to the likely six man tag and eventual tag between FTR & the Bucks. That fake superkick into the Arn DDT was gorgeous. Some sloppiness early on with the heel team, which seems to be the case in just about every Lucha Bros tag in AEW so far. Fenix got to do his crazy shit (holy shit, was it crazy), Penta got to be the most charismatic guy in the match. FTR vs. Lucha Bros should be fantastic. Nutty stuff. FTW Title is back, bb! Kip Sabian living it up in a beach chair yelling at Penelope that she also has a manager, yessss. Kip the douchebag kept man has a tonne of potential, as does Penelope. I can't see anybody other than Vickie managing Nyla after Guerrero just said she parted ways with WWE a few weeks back and she's been hanging out at AEW shows. Dark Order: part cult, part mob protection racket. Thumbs up. SCU are dorks. I just can't get into them. Scorpio had that glimpse of something during the Jericho mini-feud but that's it. Good to hear we'll get more solo Sky and the older guys can be gatekeeper tag dudes. I enjoy Kazarian on BTE way more than I do in the ring but he and CD should be more than fine in that role. This Dark Order stuff has settled in nicely I feel. Brodie can elevate midcard guys and still be a threat himself when needed and it's fun watching him bully the dorks around. Main event was great. Jericho just about hung in there with OC for all of the latter's quick-strike offense and flash pinfall attempts. Told a solid story, executed very well, gets OC a huge shine to look that good and come that close to beating a legend, and Jericho needed help to win. Overall, everything accomplished what they wanted it to, everything made sense and was leading to something or concluding something. Maybe not the most spectacular two week mini-special but everything was good-to-great I thought and most everybody is better off after than before. Spoilered for size and hilarity: We may not have big crowds for another year, y'all. Especially with how well the States have handled this situation. I know I've talked about them needing to move on to the next phase of their plans because the product is stagnating... At the same time, I'd rather them go too slow than too fast and burn through a lot of huge matches in front of staff and family/friends. Repeating myself, but a lot of people wanted a NJPW presentation and were disappointed with what they got. Instead, it's their booking philosophy that is way more Japanese than American imo. They are not going to give away a lot of big upsets when people can get over through losses and getting close to the big boys. I love it. When Cody loses the title to a younger guy (I think Darby was the obvious choice prior to the allegations, now I'm leaning OC even though he's a few months older than Cody), it'll be huge. When Jericho puts over somebody like Page, it'll be huge. Those kind of big wins should matter. This isn't WWE burying the push of the month. This is long-term booking trying to maximize value without either turning into a 50/50 promotion or devaluing big matches and wins. If Orange is worth a damn, which I think he obviously is, he will be fine slowly moving up the card rather than being pushed too hard, too soon. How many guys get elevated and then fans kinda become indifferent once they got what they wanted? In Japan, you book key upsets when you desperately need a star. Tenryu bails, Misawa gets the big win. NJPW needed more star power besides Tanahashi and Nakamura, so they quickly elevated Okada, knowing they had a generational talent on their hands. Omega leaves, Jay White super push. AEW has people closer to stardom than OC, so it's not his time to be that guy for now. Omega and Page need big single wins more than Cassidy does. OC winning the TNT title makes a lot of sense and would be a great character for Cody to go full heel on because there are few wrestlers more loved by hardcores than Orange Cassidy. They put Private Party over the Bucks in their first month or so of TV. Bucks lost to Santana & Ortiz. Cody put over MJF in one of their biggest feuds to date. People were talking about there being too many upsets, especially with the EVPs early on. Meltzer would say almost every week that they're doing the wrong thing with Omega and the Bucks losing so much in the early days of the promotion. They've since course corrected and I think it's for the best.

It’s 12:48am and I’m laying in bed, awake thinking about ice cream. I know my wife has a tub of vanilla in the freezer and we have Oreos on top of the cupboard. I could smash those up in a bowl with ice cream. But I know I won’t sleep again tonight. I think about food too much. Pre-married pre-COVID world me would have probably an hour ago went out for wings and beer. Buffalo wings and a big cold mug of Summit EPA. I do have beer in the fridge. A few wrongly poured growlers I got from my brother for free. Also some Rolling Rocks. I might even have a Hopslam left. Next to the ham. Which if I don’t want the ice cream I could make myself a sandwich. Not as bad as ice cream. It’s a 1am compromise I could make. I’m tired though. I’ve gained weight and I’m not active. If I do the ham I might put some hot sauce on there because I’m thinking of wings. Maybe I’m just afraid of sleep. I create these nighttime situations because I don’t want to shut my brain off. But I guess that doesn’t explain why I still think about food during the day. Maybe not as much though. Now I want ramen noodles and whiskey. I get winded going up the stairs. I should start jogging again. I just need to wear sunscreen when I do. My pale Nordic skin gets wrecked in this weather. Hot weather like this goes well with ice cream. I do have Oreos. I’m so tired and regularly ashamed of myself. I’ll make a sandwich.

Austin will forever be linked with Jerry Springer, crash TV, South Park, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill, etc, despite having very little in common bar sharing a complaint letter from Phil Muschnik.

Speaking of LGBTQ+ allies, Nick Gage is on Kameo now. And the first one he did, he said trans rights are human rights and he'll fight anyone who disagrees. Then tweeted that even though he was paid to say that on cameo, he would have said it for free because it's what he legit believes.

Meaning what? That young folks are becoming more aware of the world's injustices and are doing their part to not contribute to them? Goddamn, I hope so. I struggle everyday with how to be to a more positive force in life in order to set the example for my boys for those kinds of things. I don't want my generation's missteps to continue to fuck things up for everyone.

Nick Gage is so awesome at everything about wrestling except the wrestling part.

My friend and I were talking about Raven earlier, and about how perfect his look and character were for the mid-90's. That got me thinking, what are some of the most zeitgeist-defining looks or gimmicks in wrestling history. I suppose you'd have to mention Hogan in the 80's. When two of the biggest stars in Hollywood were Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the WWF had their very own version with Hulk. Nowadays, even though the gimmick is at least 6 years old at this point, I don't think anyone has a more contemporary look than Sasha Banks.

Self quoting, in case anyone didn't see it: MDK.

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by how good Archer/Janela was, considering I don’t like Janela at all. But he did a good job of throwing himself at Archer, and Archer is just so tuned into his character, it’s scary. He always knows where to find the camera, and the camera loves him. I also really liked that the big table spot on the outside was the finish. I feel like you don’t see that a lot.

Thought the tag title match was pretty great, but it's starting to feel like diminishing returns on Hangman and Omega. If I were an actual, legitimate wrestler, I'd have to be talked into selling for Joey Janela even a little bit. This should've been a glorified squash. I have no idea why guys like Moxley and Archer give him so much. Loved the 8 man. All four of those teams would be the best team on any WWE brand, and one actually was. The AEW tag division is truly an embarrassment of riches. Nyla was fine-ish. I get the feeling something didn't go through that was supposed to. A debut or something. 6 man was good, but not as good as the 8 man earlier. Big Swole made me laugh every time she was on my screen. Some of these women are really turning into performers, which is good, because they are sorely needed. Main event was fantastic. Cassidy is super talented, and Jericho did exactly what he needed to. I get the feeling the feud isn't over.

Dang tootin'

Bask in his FUCKING glory

Billy Robinson was a badass.

Yes. Also, the newer generations not only have access to learning via the Internet that we didn't have but are using it positively... unlike their predecessors. Dumping children into a no-hope warzone is gonna make them smarter and warier in all fashions, anyway. You gotta grow up fast.

It was all about the house shows back then. That's what's so maddening about listening to Alvarez review SNME episodes. They talk about them in modern terms and can't understand the booking, not realizing that, most of the time, matches were booked for SNME only after they'd exhausted their ability to draw on house shows.

Hogan could've used a front facelock against Slaughter. It worked before, when he beat that big, stinky Richard Belzer. But really, he couldve gotten him with the camel clutch after knocking Sarge out cold, leaving the ref no choice but to call it after doing the three arm drops.

https://suplexapparel.com/collections/jpn4/products/suzuki-gun-鈴木軍-t-shirt

Worst X-Men team ever.

I would pay so much money for Dusty Rhodes to commentate the section with the kendo sticks, particularly when she beats the referee's ass with one. I was looking up when Grizzly retired ('93) because she's not really lumped in with a lot of the women from that golden generation and saw this on her pro wrestling wiki profile (VERY OFFICIAL): Yeah. I can see why. They really beat the shit out of each other, even for a joshi match, and brought extra emotion (mostly hatred and rage).

I watched this week first time since April. I liked the women’s tag match. I like Kylie and Susie as a team I like Susie as a character the stuff between Susie and Rosemary at the beginning was pretty fun. They may have teased a John E Bravo face turn with him checking on Rosemary leaving Taya open for the school girl from Kylie and getting pinned. Whatever they are setting up between Susie and Rosemary I feel bad for the inevitable beating Kylie is gonna take when Susie transforms back to Su Yung. The 4 way tag was cool. They have a very versatile tag division, versatile Knockouts Division too but back to that later. Each team is very different t and it was fun to watch them all hit movez on each other. Looks like the Deaners are picking up some steam. I really liked the brawl between Scum and TJP/Bah. TJP in the trash can with the chair with Bah pushing him around as he hits The Scum with the chair, that was a cool spot. I like the way backstage is shot with the handheld cam that’s a positive that the Eric Bischoff regime brought to the product. The Impact plus moment of the week was the entire Knockouts Tag Team Championship match from Lockdown 2010. It was only 5 minutes. It was good for what it was. I’ve never seen it before, this was a reminder that ten years ago Impact was an entirely different promotion. I’ve heard smatterings of The Knockouts Tag Titles coming back knit wonder if this was a subtle hint at that. Jordyne Grace vs Kimber Lee was cool. Grace was dominate but Kimber got some offense in. Purazzo cutting that promo has me pumped for their match at Slam. Purazzo cut a really good heel promo I know we just had a year long heel run in the Knockouts Division but what the he’ll why not. Unless they want Grace to go over in the first match then run this until BFG where Purazzo goes over idk. That was a really good video package for the Slammiversary Main Event. Like Dream Broken said really good at getting the talent involved over and also great use of so much footage Impact has, Anthem until Sinclair is not afraid to acknowledge the promotions history before they purchased it. Sting being teased as the mystery opponent made me chuckle. He’s the least likely to show up. The Johnny Swinger stuff was really good. He’s great at playing the dope. So I think Eric Young’s coming back they teased it with the Super Eric mask and cape. I personally would like to see Eric and ODB return as the Knockout Tag Champs as they never lost the belts 8 years ago. Swinger as Suicide was fun. Willie tricking him into a match led to some funny spots of Swinger falling on his ass trying high spots. The match was short and sweet. The only negative is Josh Matthews can be a poor mans Micheal Cole and he repeatedly reminded us that wasn’t the actual Suicide and called Swinger a dope every chance he could get. Let’s tone it down dude. Madison Reign interviewing herself was funny. Moving from seat to seat was a nice touch. There’s a lot of talent in the knockouts division right now and that was on full display during this segment. I loved the brawl at the end they are all gunning for the title and if your in the way then well you gotta get Moved out of the way. Tommy Dreamer in a suite reading an apology written by his lawyer Tricky Dick Heyman yeah sign me up. Moose as TNA Champion I haven’t seen any of it but with the exchange between Tommy and Moose I think I can get behind it. Calihan vs Alexander was good from what I saw. I DVRed this and Ringo Starrs GD birthday party ran 3 minutes over, it cut off right when Ken Shamrock ran out. I don’t know what I make of Shamrock and Calihan as partners last I watched Sami threw a fireball into Kens face but then one of Sami’s hacker micro chips or something landed in Kens eye and nod he can see into the future or something. I like The North as champions and I don’t know if I want to seen them lose the titles to Ken and Sami.

Oh hell yeah! Bull Nakano vs Monster Ripper!

Sasha in general for the times. Bayley right now with her I'd like to speak to the manager beats. Orange Cassidy and Adam Page are both kinda on point. The new day as a whole right now have been on point with pop culture. This one is gonna sound strange. John Cena was perfect for his big time up top. He represented a throw back attempt to get the kids. When he was on top the #1 video game system was the wii and all the "hardcore" gamers were pissed off. It didn't really work business wise but the idea was solid in my opinion.

All fuckin day

Because WWE booking has been shit for a decade.

I think this pretty much is an indicator that television (both linear and OTT) is basically a content mill now (shit, look at the beating Quibi is taking right now). You would have a shorter amount of time naming who doesn't have a television show in some shape or form. As much as I'm not a fan of the "intersectional/being black is not a monolith" crowd, I can say confidently as an African-American that the black spectrum now on television is vast compared to the 90s when Living Single was a breakthough for black television. A show like Pose for example on FX wouldn't exist even twenty years or fifteen years ago let alone thirty years ago. No way in hell. It's not because being identifying as both black and LBGT is now super popular, but television is in a different space from the past. Representation is looked at differently. So I would not say wrestling even feels more popular as much as wrestling isn't as demonized as it was several years ago. The problem still though is if you have your finger on the pulse of now, there is no way in the hell you continue to do record low numbers. I think a big issue is the stigma developed within wrestling fans where if wrestling does try to be hip and cool, the fans (or more importantly, lapsed or potentially new fans) revolt against that because of past failures. You might love your parents to death, but if your dad got up at a family function and starting dabbing (five years after it was cool) out of fucking nowhere, your skin would crawl in embarrassment. I think wrestling being so popular at one point in time makes it feel like a relic of a bygone era especially if you keep trotting out old wrestlers from that specific era. As Bert Sugar would say, horse racing, baseball, and boxing were the biggest pastimes in America in the early 20th century. If Bert were still alive, he would see that they ain't now more than a century later. Yeah, you will get a couple boxing mega bouts that do 1 million or more annually. The Triple Crown does well for NBC every year. The World Series captures the intrigue of people for a couple weeks every year. It still ain't the same as it was back then. I think part of the reason why wrestling was so big at one point is that it didn't necessarily have to have it's finger on the pulse. It was not an either/or thing. You could do both. Seamlessly if need be. The Undertaker is perhaps one of the greatest gimmicks ever. Maybe you can tie it in with some of the dark, over the top rock music in the 80s, but there was nothing that made it extremely time sensitive. You can do that gimmick in ANY era of modern pro wrestling. They haven't produced anything since then even close to that, which is why this motherfucker is still around. Therefore, it comes off as wrestling still looking for that magical formula that worked when wrestling was cool. So no, I cannot imagine or fathom it feeling remotely close to the Attitude era. I think that's more anecdotal evidence.

This is the best work of Tony Schiavone's career. If you dislike this begone from my presence.

Nick Jackson has some pretty big balls to take a destroyer to the floor, given the AEW roster’s recent catch rate. Man, I loved seeing the FTW title. Taz is giving everything he’s got to get Cage over. It’s up to Cage to deliver next week.

I wholeheartedly agree with the entire rest of your post, but I want you to know I had to give you the sad face because I marked out hard for the FTW title.

My episode cut off too since the Ringo Star thing went late I guess so I didn't get to see the finish. Dug the Swinger stuff and Madison segment was great. Looking forward to Slamiversary.

The Flock (Reese, Lodi, & Sick Boy)

Holy Shit they're gonna use Stormfront! This is gonna be great.

Huge 1958 spot (they had both gone for a headscissors before this): It's becoming cliche, but this is one way to escape a hold/pin, yes: You give Ami Sola just a bit of distance and he's going to running 'rana your head off.

It's doubly crazy because Booker was just insanely over at the start of the Invasion. The Booker/Angle match from one of the early Invasion Raw's had an incredibly hot crowd and they just pissed it away because Vince is Vince (and also racism. Probably mostly the racism).

Wholesome Nick Gage:

After a few weeks I've come to the conclusion Cutler/Avalon & Bates are honestly one of my favourite acts in the company. The Butcher doing Pentagon's hand gesture thing was awesome. The Butcher rules. I think it was Craig H that said he was upset they have Britt Baker in a feud with Big Swole because Big Swole sucks. After seeing her wrestle tonight, well, he's not wrong.

Two hours since Dark ended and no one has mentioned Taz referencing Rochelle, Rochelle on Seinfeld? What happened to this board???

Foley, since he is a nice guy and would take it on you . Don't think I would necessarily say that about Severn, Terry or Bam Bam.

Quake catching Bossman off the top like it was nothing. This account has lots of good Tenta clips.

It's fucking bananas when you down the card. You see three title fights and it's like "this is too much." Then the next names you see are Adrade and Thug Rose. Saturday night is too far away for me right now.