Leaderboard

No, you didn't miss it. I took a break from them for the last little bit, but I'm actually planning to post a new one this week. It could be up by as early as tomorrow.

I've never understood the idea that I should look down on Dolph because he knows how to spell "Death" and some metal band doesn't. I mean, I do look down on Dolph. But that's not why.

Ethan Page is a really good heel promo and that is helping to define him right now, and bringing him a lot of notice. And making him worthy of being positioned with Darby. And I like where Scorpio is for the ride. Going back to your first post, I don't think they need to be the centerpiece of anything to be successful. If they become 'the heels who always lose the feud' they'll have an issue, and likely begin to flounder, but as is, I don't see an issue. They're punching above their weight, so to speak, right now. Darby is amongst the biggest stars in the company, and certainly Scorp dropping a fall to Sting didn't hurt them. Neither Scorpio nor Page should've or really could've been pushed any harder. They're guys who have to prove themselves still. I just think they're doing a great job of proving themselves.

Yet, Taker, and the rest would get on DDP’s case for that a few years later. Yoko was great at it though. I don’t think there was ever a wrestler as good him when it came to whipping there head back on a worked strike. All of the Yoko Vs. Taker matches are so fun to me because it’s Yokozuna doing it for 15+ minutes a match.

10 pages about Jim Ross. I need another vacation already.

What a glow up, from DVDVR board member to getting personal birthday shoutouts from Katie Nolan

I think you hit the nail on the head with what makes Battlarts so special, which is that when they're good they hit the exact right balance between the "shoot" and the "style." They give the suddenness and violence you want from your shooty stuff while still doing the kind of match-long storytelling you don't always get from your UWFs or your RINGS where the five minutes of trading kneebars never really leads to anything. So one of the reasons I chose this match is that Ishikawa and Otsuka use that time to set up a story: that Ishikawa can get the better of Otsuka on the mat but he uses ring positioning and athleticism to force breaks, while Otsuka tries to wear down the older Ishikawa so he can suplex him into oblivion. Ishikawa then spends the meat of the mat trying to get Otsuka tied up the middle of the ring, and we get a rule of threes with his submissions: an octopus stretch that he goes for too early and can't quite lock in, the kimura where he fights desperately to keep himself between Otsuka and the corner, and the straight armbar for the finish. It won't make you forget peak AJPW, but it works. I also enjoyed how Otsuka holds his own by using his flashy pro stuff to set up more brutal offense, like using the rana to drop punches from the mount and grab a triangle, or the kneedrop on a dazed Ishikawa after the giant swing. My big knock against him in this match is some inconsistent selling and not really holding his own in the strikes department outside of a pretty nasty dropkick.

Paging @S.K.o.S.

Also, SIGN KILYNN KING YOU COWARDS!

I really enjoyed this segment. I know there’s the talk of Kenny’s promos and I agreed when he was a face he could be very awkward. But I’m really liking Heel Omega and the new facial hair is a plus.

Shootstyle reminds me of being a kid and watching wrestling in my first year of following it and knowing it was fake but just wondering how they could memorize entire matches and different ones every week. As Jimmy Garvin put it: "We just talked to each other in there and no one knew!" I get that the secret to shootstyle is that they feed limbs to their opponents but it is fun to watch, both to look for the strings and to be impressed when you can't find them. One thing I've learned about wrestling over the last ten years is that if you watch enough of any one style, you do start to see the patterns, the structural ebb and flow repeated again and again. For me, that's been true with lucha, with 50-60s French wrestling, with 1989 AJPW heavyweight tags. I'm pretty sure it'd be true with almost anything, even things that don't make a lot of logical sense as an output because the wrestlers still would have patterns in their input. I don't have that sort of mastery with shootstyle in general and definitely not with Battlarts in specific, where I feel like maybe you get just a bit more pro wrestling in with your shootitness. Here, Otsuka married the two fairly perfectly, between the somersault into the ring at the start and the flashy pink ring-gear with holes, and what he actually did in there: a running 'rana, the suplexes, the headbutts, the dropkicks, the bonkers shoot giant swing that somehow worked. The physics are a little different. Ishikawa eats the dropkicks, pained, more than bumping for them. The 'rana is to set up a choke and not a pin, and so on. I've seen my share of Ishikawa but usually older. I'm not actually sure I have the toolkit to talk about some of the more intricate elements of his work. "He moved in and out of holds well" isn't particularly useful really. Not when that's so much of the style in the first place. It's like watching a Lawler match and noting "Boy he had really good punches." Here though, I'm not really experienced enough to tell who was leading who, but I did like the small things, a little punch to help switch from one hold to another, or Ishikawa going for an ear for leverage out of a hold since Otsuka had no hair to pull. I'm not saying that the first half is meaningless in any way. There's the sense that these matches can end at any point, which helps. I thought there might have been some limit on rope breaks, which makes every little win of an exchange matter and every frustrated and desperate reach for a rope matter, but I didn't actually get the sense of that as the match went on. Rules matter but only insomuch as they inform the narrative; that's one of the big stumbling blocks people have with lucha, but knowing the rules would have helped here probably. Really, everything builds to Ishikawa's assault on the arm in the last third and then it becomes a cascading exercise in each wrestler hanging on or, alternatively, each wrestler not being able to put away the other. Ishikawa can't quite put away Otsuka with the arm submissions, which lets Otsuka start firing away with the suplexes. Otsuka can't finish Ishikawa with the first few suplexes, which gives Ishikawa another shot at the arm, etc. It's a style that eschews dramatic bumping for layered, realistic selling, which is more down my alley anyway. I can't tell you how this compares to other Otsuka or Battlarts but I liked the chemistry of what they were going for relative to either more conservative UWF or more elaborate modern indy grapplefuck.

Great score by Natalie Holt.

Some Rene (Jack De) Lasartesse being awesome against James Brown. First up a single arm, inner hook suplex. Then a waistlock into a slam. Considering he was huge, just a lanky bastard with big reach and able to get huge heat with his attitude alone, that was also doing bombs away kneedrops in the 60s....

This was in my Facebook Memories today, from a Monday Night Raw after party in 2007. The album was posted on July 4th, 2007 but this is after the Raw in Toronto in May. Goodtimes ?

Bucks vs Eddie & Penta this Wednesday night is now a street fight for the tag titles.

HOLY SHIT. I swear I've never seen Taue vs. Kawada and that match is an absolute revelation. It is everything I like about professional wrestling. What catharsis to witness that. I'm gonna watch it again right now.

Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth after being kicked out of Metallica, and chose the name purposefully because he wanted to make sure that whenever anyone was flipping through the albums at the record shop, they'd ALWAYS see the Megadeth record before they saw the Metallica one. He spelt it with only one A because the 80s was one of those eras where people spelt things wrong to make them look cool (like the 2000s were*). Or possibly because the first time he drew the logo, he ran out of room on the page, and then thought it looked cooler spelt wrong. * To be fair, Death Leopard and Limp Biscuit are both rubbish looking names if you spell them right. Lincoln Park just seems like the name of a park, innit?

All three guys did some great business here.

I watched the Wakusaver video and thats some spot on Sentai right there. The off-brand Sentai stuff has always interested me because it seems like such a labor of love. I think that's why Akibaranger was so cool, because to me it felt like Toei was acknowledging them and parodying them at the same time.

Goddamit, Moose!

You raise a valid point, but on the other hand Fujiwara has a top tier villainous face and they shouldn't waste that by casting him as the good guy unless absolutely necessary.

Tiger Mask II and Toshiaki Kawada vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu and Hiromichi Fuyuki I typically do not get AJPW, especially the '80s/early '90s tags, which almost always feel like they have no flow. I'm interested to see how this ends up working (or not working) for me. Fuyuki and Kawada start out and have a nice reversal chain into a Fuyuki Side Russian Leg Sweep. I have hope for the pace of this match - I love, love, love fast-paced tag matches. Yatsu tags in and the pace slows a bit. Kawada tackles into...a tag to Tiger Mask. This is what I'm saying about my experience watching AJPW tags. That was a weird tag. We started out hot, but with no real transition, we got slow. There's another tag from Yatsu to Fuyuki that feels kind of random? I genuinely wish I understood the flow of these tags. That's not to say the match is bad. I am really into Fuyuki. He throws nice elbowdrops and in general I enjoy watching his offense. Tiger Mask and Kawada have a nice double-dropkick. Hell, Yatsu hits a sweet side slam. This is all in the first few minutes. The work is really crisp. That's not a problem at all. The disconnect is that in the middle of the work, tags continue to be weird. Like, Fuyuki works Kawada nearly into a pinning position, but instead of rolling him over on the crucifix, he, uh, tags out for some reason instead of going for a pinfall. This is a match of moments for those first minutes. Kawada stiffly kicking the fuck out of Fuyuki's hamstrings = cool. Fuyuki firing back with a hard clothesline = cool. Yatsu repeatedly headbutting Tiger Mask like a crazed man = cool. I like all these guys, I think! I mean, I've seen Tiger Mask and Kawada multiple times before, so I already knew that I'd enjoy them, but yeah. So the match gets better with the long heel control segment as Yatsu and Fuyuki just headbutt the shit out of Tiger Mask and toss him around and stiffly kick him and look like kings, generally. These guys are whipping his ass so much that he definitely feels like he's in danger. I mean, they are fucking this dude uppppppp. So, Kawada's had enough and he comes in to confront Yatsu. Tiger Mask takes the chance to kick Yatsu in the back of the head. He's still kicking Yatsu as Kawada helps him take off the mask that Yatsu and Kawada have been ripping at. Tiger Mask rips that shit off and everything goes haywire. He beats some ass outside of the ring. Then he comes in the ring and tags Kawada in (nice top-rope dropkick on Kawada's part here). Tiger Mask is back in and he's completely lost it, throwing back kicks and choking dudes while Kawada tosses kicks from outside. Kawada dumps Yatsu on his neck with a nasty powerbomb, and then Fuyuki's back in after a tag, but now he's getting his ass beat and, oh now he's in a stiff slapfest with Kawada. OK, Fuyuki is the shit. I like this dude. He's on his own for now because his partner is rolling around outside, still hurt. Back in the ring, Kawada gets a tag and Tiger Mask hits a top-rope dropkick. The thing is, the work is definitely still fun, but the pace is so slow. Tiger Mask goes nuts and rips his mask off, but the action doesn't really pick up after that. After a couple of minutes, they're back to working a tag match that feels really disjointed, like a series of enjoyable spots with no flow. Maybe I'm just too culturally endeared to the typical early face control -> heels cheat to get control -> multiple cutoffs of FIP by heels -> hot tag -> into whatever finish is going to happen structure of tag match. Eventually, Tiger Mask gets the win with a German Suplex and a bridge on Fuyuki. I didn't dislike this despite my negative criticism. I ultimately enjoyed the match. It was a fun exhibition of moves and Fuyuki is pretty great. I just do not understand AJPW tag match structure. I don't think that I'll ever get it, really. If I come into these matches in the future, I'll probably come in for the MOVEZ~ rather than for whatever narrative the match is telling. This did lead me down the path of watching a shitload of Tiger Mask II, though, so for that and for convincing me to watch more Fuyuki this summer, I'm super-glad that I watched this!

Great segment. Can't wait till Kenny Omega vs. Adam Hangman Page.

ICW NHB 14 on IWTV today was pretty good. Insane Lane vs Neil Diamond Cutter was brutal. Akira had a good match. Then John Wayne Murdoch defended his title against Dan Maff,short match but good. After that Eric Ryan came out and challenged JWM and we got a bloody match.

Fancy Dustin to TKO Conor again. First time Conor was ever stopped by strikes in their second fight at the start of the year.

I mean, if her next destination is AEW and keeping her husband happy is something they place a premium on then I say go for it.

My birthday is next week and one of my buddies was in town for the 4th and got me my first Funko - the classic outfit version of Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel. He knows I'm a huge Ms. Marvel fan, so that was really nice of him. These things are small and lightweight too, not what I expected from years of seeing pictures.

Brawling outside the ring during the ring entrance for Choshu, I love it already. This might be a hot take, but Fujiwara looks and and strikes more like a murder grandpa than Minoru Suzuki does. Goddamn, Choshu is already busted open, presumably from these repeated headbutts than Fujiwara is laying in. That's one thing I'm not a huge fan of in pro wrestling. Immediately after I type that, though, Fujiwara does one of my actual favorite things: a piledriver. And breaks the pinfall on his own. I take it he's the heel in this match, then. (Haha) Fujiwara just choking the life out of Choshu, and then goes for an armbar, and stomps the FUCK outta Choshu's head. Jesus christ. The crowd is fucking HOT for Choshu just kicking him in the stomach and punching him in the corner. Random observation but the referee for this match is more buff than Fujiwara or Choshu. I love a good backdrop driver! Fujiwara gets to the ropes during a Sharpshooter attempt, and Choshu just lays the stomps on heavy. Brainbuster from Choshu reversed into an armbar, I liked that a lot. Fujiwara pushes him into the corner and works over the arm - something I don't think I've seen before, a headbutt to the arm! Granted I haven't seen a ton of puroresu in my fandom, but I also don't think I've ever seen the removal of the turnbuckle pad thing here (and using the turnbuckle pad as a weapon???). NASTY lariat, and Choshu goes for another one but it's reversed into yet another armbar. Gee, it's almost like this guy is famous for armbars or something. Whoa, Fujiwara is busted open pretty bad. Nothing immediate stood out as to what caused it, guess it was something on the outside they did that the cameras didn't pick up since they don't follow them outside the ring like. God, he's bleeding buckets, and Choshu kicks him right in the fucking face and then gives him two more nasty lariats. Match ends by referee stoppage, and... I don't know, that ending feels a little anticlimatic but this was just a straight up fight. Barely any "pro wrestling" moves, besides that one backdrop suplex. I would love to know the context behind this match and why it felt like this was a fight instead of a match. The crowd was super hot for it too, even the finish. This was a fun little match - if you can even call it a match, geez! It's a full on fight from the moment Choshu makes his entrance up to the very end of the match. Shit, Choshu even gets in one last kick to the head after the referee calls for the stoppage. Whatever the context for the match was, it was obviously over as fuck since the fans didn't even mind that it wasn't a pinfall - from my limited puroresu knowledge and viewing, they hardly ever even do DQ/count outs, so I would assume this is also a rare occasion where a match doesn't end in submission or pinfall. I think I'm left wanting to see more Riki Choshu matches. Dude is on the shorter-ish side, stocky, and is obviously pretty hard hitting. Fujiwara is alright, and gives me skinny Suzuki vibes, but I definitely want more Choshu.

Just so you know Smelly, I too have been watching Nitro as well. I’m up to the first ever Hog Wild. Positives & Negatives… + Ric Flair is on another level here. He takes the cartoon version of himself that he would play opposite Hogan, and steals the show from everyone. By mid-96 he’s so over, he gets huge face pops from places other than the Mid-Atlantic region. + The Steiner’s return transforms the tag division completely into something extremely healthy. And it’s not like they brought other people with them, it’s just that the Steiner Brothers wake everybody up as soon as they show up. The team that gets the biggest help is Harlem Heat. Sure Stevie doesn’t improve, but this is where Booker starts looking like a potential star on the rise. + Benoit, Dean, and Eddie… ‘Nough said. But, I will say this, Rey Mysterio showing up changed things for the better, and may have made Malenko into a better heel worker(For the short period he works in that role). + Sting is mostly lost not being the top guy, but he really shows up Hogan by being well… Sting, one of the all time best baby faces. - Yeah yeah… I have strong opinions about former WWF/WCW/WWE Champion Terry Bollea which you should PM me about. But I wanted to express them here too because I can't help myself. But it’s never appropriate than here. The best example of bad Hogan compared to everything, and everybody is The Giant program. He brings in Paul Wight to give himself a new Andre to feud with, so he basically takes the wheel, and proceeds to crash it into a wall. For such an experienced veteran, he can’t get anything out of Giant, and makes the young monster look like a fucking idiot. But once they get the kid away from Hogan, you start to see the potential with him when he’s in the ring with Sting, Macho, Flair, and yes even Lex works a really great program with him. I think this might be my only real negative of the first year of Nitro. There are other small things, but this is the only thing that completely kills these re-watches.

That reminded me of this. Thanks for the laugh.

I am not sure why the devs felt the need to fuck with the money since the economies of ME2 and ME2: LE are very different. All of the DLC items that the Illusive Man shipped to us for free now have to either be purchased or crafted in the lab and you really need to have a gear build in mind before you start buying shit or using resources. There are more money sinks in this game than there used to be. I don't think the devs took that under consideration when they clamped down on starting funds.

WWE Dynamite never felt so real.

I can't be the only one wondering how big that trunk had to be to pull that one off. Also, hanging out of an open car trunk pantomiming sex seems like a car accident waiting to happen. If nothing else, I'm assuming the open trunk lid was blocking the driver from seeing out the rear view mirror. I've probably been reading stories about this business for too long. I'm officially desensitized.

I just read this part of Bret Hart's book where he talks about them '"Jake [Roberts] finally decided to come back to work in May, on the Kiwis' last day. They rode in his car with him and when they passed us in the car us in the van both Crazy Nick and Sweet William had their butt cheeks pressed to the side windows: a full moon in broad daylight. Not to be outdone, we passed them a few minutes later with a wide assortment of big hairy asses stuck to the van windows. Several miles later, Jake overtook us again. This time the trunk popped open and there was Crazy Nick bent over on his knees, with Sweet William pretending to shag him from behind. The crazy Kiwis made wrestling fun, and I was sorry to see them go."

No offense to Slade/Cogar but IWTV does hardcore so much, I could care less anymore: turned it off because I'm just MEH on the whole concept of hardcore wrestling. Yuta/Nightengale was really, really good. Deppen/Holliday was also excellent. I like that Beyond tries to think outside the box, for such things as "hey, let's not play Yuta's new faction's music 50 times tonight," and had them out there for four straight matches, instead. It made it a little weird that the only guys making saves were the very next guy in the very next match, but hey...they tried something different, and now just need to work out the kinks. Kudos to them.

Ever since I saw my first Griff Garrison match I've had this weird feeling like he has a hugely high ceiling and that he might be a really good fit for the WWE system. I could never figure out exactly why... yeah, he's a big tall blonde babyface type who wrestles a sensible style, but for the longest time I thought "this must be the same vibe Vince got from Tom Magee". Today I think I figured it out. I think Griff Garrison reminds me of a young Hunter Hearst Helmsley with all the heel instincts flipped face.

Per Variety - and supposedly confirmed by Vin Diesel - the next spinoff movie will focus on Charlize Theron's Cipher character

TLC has finally gotten around to cancelling Counting On

Even more silly and ridiculous than some of the previous outings, but the people I was with enjoyed it. I only recently came around on the franchise and watched 4-8 (I really dislike 1-3). Don't really understand the appeal of the actors or the characters, so the only measuring stick I use is 'are the stunts fun?" I feel like, if you go to see this film for the family drama, you're doing it wrong. Didn't think Cena was good in this, though, to be fair, not sure anyone could have made the scenes between the brothers work. Wooden acting, clunky dialogue, and a fairly silly plotline don't mix. Cena didn't really fit the movie and I didn't believe he and Dom were related. It does say something that, given how absurd some of the plotting was, the most ridiculous F&F thing i saw yesterday was an article about Vin Diesel claiming his feud with the Rock was a misunderstanding arising out of him showing the Rock "tough love" to get a better performance out of him. Lol, I'm taking that to be a subtle dig at Rock (I was just doing my job and being professional and the other dude took it personally). I mean, I watch wrestling and run an entire department at work. I'm used to being fed a line of bs. Vin Diesel doesn't have the chops to sell me that story.

Unrelated but Mai Yamane rules and it's a shame the Kid Cudi/Pissy Pamper track had to be pulled due to copyright claims. They've basically nuked the internet of all the Bourne mixes of the above but here's an instrumental take to give you an idea: Yamane did some tracks for Yoko Kanno on the Cowboy Bebop OST that were super unsurprisingly.