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"No honey. I don't care if he's Sting. We're not buying a house from a guy that looks like Fred Durst."

Kushida: #1 Babyface in the whole world

Really awesome shot from the Slam Wrestling Tom Farhat obit of a Detroit battle royal with a young Randy Poffo in the jean shorts.

The Japanese gov't seems pretty confident that they are going to get everyone inoculated early next year. My wife is a Hospital nurse so as a family member of "essential personnel" I might even be in the first few waves of people being vaccinated. I'm hoping that optimism turns out to be justified. I'm looking forward to not worrying about it any more. To regular dinners out with my wife and daughters. To going drinking with my friends. To going to live wrestling shows, and yelling and screaming until my throat is raw. To walking around in Osaka or Kyoto or Nara before or after work, and seeing what I can find. Going to movies. Buffets and beer gardens. Trying out a new izakaya or restaurant or taking a look inside a shop I haven't been in before. To working out without a damned mask on. To not getting mad because someone else in the gym isn't wearing a mask, or isn't wearing it over their mouth and nose. To going anywhere that isn't work, the gym, the supermarket, or the convenience store. To going to work, the gym, the supermarket, and the convenience store without any anxiety. I hope I'll really appreciate all of those things for a good long time, that I won't just take them for granted after a few weeks.

Wow. Well, now there's no excuse. BOB took over playcalling duties and ... the playcalling still sucked. Time to fire the Offensive Coordinator, the Head Coach and the GM. Oh wait, it's all the same motherfucker. Fire Bill O'Brien. Fire him into the sun.

I'm pretty sure this is what is written on the back of his football cards.

Sting looks like a retired motocross rider now.

It's so dumb. There is no one to cheer for in this mess. FTR doesn't give a shit about Tony or they'd do something about it rather than standing there. They aren't the babyfaces. Imagine someone attacking Gordon Sollie during an interview and Dusty just standing there. It wouldn't happen. The Bucks (or the one that was there) don't give a fuck about FTR because they'd attack them rather than the random announcers for no purpose. If they actually wanted the belts they'd go after FTR. If they were actually upset they'd go after Page since he was the one who cost them a match that spurred this turn. Instead they are going after employees of the company they help run and probably helped hire for ... reasons. Page has been hurt immensly by this angle by turning from a badass drunk to a sad drunk who turned on his friends (The Young Bucks who he didn't like anyway), got turned on by the people he was trying to be friends with (FTR) and is still being a sad drunk now. Omega is turning heel for I don't know why and did it over commentary instead of having any sort of actual heel moment in the ring accept being aggressive against people no one cares about like the lower members of the Dark Order or Marko Stunt. Don't get me wrong, they've successfully made the classic heel team with the classic heel manager who just cheated to win the most likeable people in the story. It's just amazing.

I believe that is the same SNME where Piper had the Halloween sketch with the kids. Boy he had all the Colombian marching powder he could handle before he shot that.

All that's missing is COCAINE! across the screen as if it were POW or WHAM.

Put it on your kitchen table as a nice Thanksgiving centrepiece.

I didn't think it was possible to make the Giants more boring but here we are

Mostly moral reasons, yes. But right when the shutdown happened, the job I was working at the time enforced a pretty steep pay cut. I trimmed the fat on a lot of what we were spending money on and that was on the list. I actually somehow landed a new job during all of this mess and realize that I am a very lucky person.

SMU had the right idea. Throw them all out.

Sigh...

My first born is due on January 11th and to say I am fucking pumped about the little guy arriving is an understatement. (I'm also equally shitting it at the same time).

the plan ought to be "Sasha is moved to RAW and will thus never* get a title bout with Bayley (cue top-notch gloating from Dos Straps over having successfully ducked Banks) unless Sasha wins the Royal Rumble, which she of course does" since they're more than worthy of a Wrestlemania conclusion after all this time. but that kind of narrative patience seems in short supply these days

AND I dig promo photos wherein the wrestler has his/her eyes rolled back into their skullbone. The usual rogue's gallery delight me with this: Sullivan, Brody, Abdullah, Lewin, Sheik - Undertaker is the modern example but he did it in the ring more than in pictures. - "it's thee manifestation of their Evil!", RAF

I <heart> <heart> <heart> Satanic Kevin Sullivan. I really do. - RAF

Andrew Yang just tweeted that Yokozuna is joining the Hart Foundation next week

Now they just do it whenever someone kicks out of their 3rd tier signature move 5 minutes into a RAW match. "How did he kick out of my belly to back suplex?!"

You know damn well that Gene would be like, "What WORLD LEADER has recently fallen ill? Find out tonight on the hotline after Nitro!" and then it would end up being that the mayor of Paducah has a regular ass cold.

not here anyway call my hotline at 1-900-909-9900 to get all the inside information

Baker came back from a layoff and had the best match I've seen her in not involving Shida or Riho, and all JR could talk about was how big her shoulders are. That's not a problem? What if Patrick Mahomes came back from injury, threw six touchdowns, and all Joe Buck could talk about was how big his guns looked? As far as racism in commentary goes, I literally said in my post that there have been studies and I specifically mentioned the one about portrayal of black QBs and white QBs. It's something you can go look up. To sum up, white athletes are typically described as owing their success to their intelligence and drive, while black athletes are described as owning their successes solely to their physical attributes. So yes, saying nothing about a black wrestler except "she's athletic" has roots in systemic racism. But why read up on something when it's easier to just say something's not true? It's 2020, that's how we do it now I guess.

Rejoice as we're in the last quarter of this terrible year. Stay safe DVDVR Family. This month sees the NJPW G1 Climax 30 carry on and the annual WWE Hell in a Cell event.

Nick Mullens is not good.

The suplex is great and the twitching sell is a damn masterpiece

If you can watch Kingdom of Silence and still give money to WWE, I don't know how you can sleep at night.

2015 would like its far-too-rosy assessment of the world back. In other news, I went back and restarted Super Metroid because of course I did. Did my first mockball and quick-killed Kraid (well OK it took 1 extra missile after he rose up)! I suck slightly less!

I think a lot of that aggression was because Aldana was just following her around. That's like part of the Holly Holm path to victory flow chart. Is she just walking towards you? No -> Keeping circling Yes -> Counter counter then circle. I wonder if Aldana's team ever watched footage of Holly Holm because outside of Nunes (part of that is Nunes' strategy to always meet you head on unless it's GdR after rounds 1 and 2 of their second fight), Holm doesn't let people just get inside on her. If they do, she's just gonna clinch and probably try to take you down. Moreover, Aldana is coming into a fight for the first time where she isn't the better boxer. She could cook everyone else on the feet minus GdR, Holly Holm, and probably Nunes as well. Unfortunately, that's the elite of the division. We saw what Aldana's ceiling is tonight.

I love the UFC finally listing the cornermen. I missed that from the days of HBO boxing and Showtime Championship boxing.

Colour me shocked that someone I consider as pro WWE as anyone on this board canceled the Network. They are positioning next week's show as an "important" show, with it being a draft show so them doing Bayley/Sasha makes sense. Have Bayley weasel her way out cheaply with a dq or count out, have Sasha drafted to Raw, and do the Rumble/Mania build that was mentioned before. Easy peasy.

As a fellow old ass, Discord is just a faster, more instant of a message board. it's what all the cool kids use now.

4/4/89 Tenryu/Hansen vs Jumbo/Yatsu (c): I have no idea if there's any history of Hansen and Tenryu teaming but this felt like a weird pairing since I just saw them wrestle. I'm really seeing Tenryu as if for the first time as part of this project. His use of learned psychology is a few years before his time at least. I love how he dodged the first double knee only to get nailed on the second here, or how he ducked behind on a Yatsu German attempt, and then went off the ropes only to get nailed by Jumbo so that he fell into it to get hit. Or how he countered the second bulldog, letting Hansen charge Yatsu into the corner. He's really good at that sort of structuring of complex spots that show familiarity but seem completely natural. Hansen was a looming beast on the outside, which made for a much different dynamic than the Tenryu/Kawada tags, obviously. He was a force, who'd often come in, even after a kick out just to get a few more shots in. I think from a kayfabe perspective, he and Tenryu weren't always on the same page. There was one point where Tenryu lost an advantage on Yatsu because Hansen had to come in and do some extra damage. The finish was a completely ill-advised Hansen whip of Tenryu(the legal man) into Yatsu in the corner. It was so dynamic that Tenryu went flying out which let a recovering Jumbo come at him from nowhere and ultimately led to the count-out. If Hansen had been the one to get whipped into the corner instead, with Jumbo incapacitated on the outside, they would have won the match.

WWE doing everything they can to fuck over talent, change/eliminate stuff people like, and double down on "brand over everything else" at a time both when fans are growing restless with their stale output AND a rising, legitimate competitor is gaining traction? Is there anything MORE simultaneously predictable and surprising?

In all seriousness regarding the Bay Area Death Fest 2, I may have to seek out Party Cannon and hear what they are about, because that seems awesome!

I actually like NXT UK. I'm just far behind. I at least want to catch Walter/Mastiff & Toni/KLR from before COVID before I start the recent episodes. Dar has been great on NXT UK. He has improved so damn much all around since the CWC. Wolfe also shows a lot more more than he did in NXT.

I wouldn't go around assuming everyone in WWE has an agent.

Hopefully the David Ruprecht version and not this Leslie Jones garbage.

Holy shit