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We need Danielson/Jarrett with JJ in full-on Memphis bullshit mode. Danielson as Lawler might be a Danielson we’ve never seen.

It's an absolute shame a tragedy like this had to happen for a Briscoe to be on TV. That exec, or whoever is behind them being blacklisted from AEW TV is an asshole, plain and simple.

Tomorrow night: Mark Briscoe vs Jay Lethal.

The people who don't like the MJF "Run the gauntlet" gimmick must just ignore the level of awesome we get with each one. It's the schtick that has given us weekly Danielson matches, Wardlow powerbombing "Big Bill" and got us Nick Gage on live TV with a pizza cutter. I hope he never steps using it.

Just wrestling media. CC'ing @Greggulator to scowl at people.

Mark is in. Wrestling Jay Lethal on Dynamite. I can't imagine there's a number too big for TK to procure the rights to "Gimme Back My Bullets..."

That just makes me wonder if someway, somehow, we get AEW bringing in ZSJ as the final opponent for Danielson. Or Danielson vs MiSu 2 where at the end MJF makes the grave error of getting in MiSu's face and we end Dynamite with MiSu slapping the shit out of MJF.

Matt Taven is awesome.

It sucks too not just only because Jay's now passed, but because (and obviously we've all covered it, and in all actuality, it's probably getting uncool to touch on any further at this point) the whole shift in belief with regard to the original thing - we're country boys who thought we were taking a stand for God, but we were wrong because God loves everyone, and now we do too- I mean, as far as apologies go (and I said this when he was alive too, so my opinion's not in any way changed or colored by his death) that's pretty fucking hard to trump in my book. I listen to this psychology podcast, and there was a recent episode about all the components an apology should have, and this one pretty much hit em all: explanation, remorse, promise to avoid, change in behavior. So that's kind of the shit of it in my book, is that rather than run from some dumb, imagined potential PR nightmare that probably would've never materialized, they should've looked at it like an opportunity to show what real, meaningful change could look like. I mean, fuck 'Be A Star,' imagine if they did one of those PSAs like Eddie Kingston and Hobbs did for mental health awareness, or some of the others they've done for Pride month and Black history month? Legit missed opportunity.

Good question. Have to think long and hard on that. Off the top of my head, Big Cass/Ass at WWE Great Balls of Fire 2017 and vs. Miro at AEW Full Gear 2021. That was so disappointing. I normally skip Jay Lethal but won't here. The Natural will be beefing in the early hours of Thursday morning. Amazing this is happening. Kudos to Tony Khan and particularly Mark Briscoe.

That was pretty much my same trajectory. Muta, then Liger, then thinking all Japanese wrestling rules.

Thanks! I had a blister on my foot and it got infected and my body WENT HARD! I went to a podiatrist yesterday and she was like, "Well, the infection didn't get to the bone so we won't need to saw off your legs." They gave me Doxocyclin to fight the infection and it was ROUGH. I got the worst chills of my life, which I guess was a residual of my body dealing with the infection and maybe the drug heightened it. IT WAS FUN! So now I'm a load for a little while! OLD! HEY, LET'S WATCH LAST NIGHT'S PRO WRESTLING! The Usos- Jimmy,Jey, take on Judgement Day- Damien Priest, Dominick Mysterio. First thing one notices is that that is a LOT of black leather pants. How cows gave up their hides for these dudes to look cool? Jimmy is our Ricky Morton in this and Damien Priest is our one man Midnight Express. That change in dynamic is fun. Damien Priest looks better than he has ever looked in this. He is fucking on fire in this. Dominick is an in-ring afterthought in this because Priest is so all over this match. Jimmy hurts his knee! Sami Zayn takes his place! Zani goes full El Generico mode and Dominick becomes more of the forefront of the match, as we get some GREAT nearfalls, as Sami appears that he going to lose the titles. Then Jey gets in a great nearfall but Sami makes the save. Sami and Jey hit the Dudley Deathdrop on Dominick and THAT was a GREAT Freebirds rules match. So Damian Priest is now completely awesome. They OPT to have angle en lieu of a two minute cage match between DMG CNTRL and Big Time Becks! To mirror the sentiment of wrestling twitter last night, Jesus Christ, you got THREE fucking hours. It's the Street Profits- Angelo Dawkins, Montez Ford, tagging with Seth Rollins. It's Imperium- Ludwig Kaiser, Giovanni Vinci and MOTHERFUCKING GUNTHER! They work towards Seth Rollins and GUNTHER facing off and they do and it's good! Rollins avoids GUNTHER for a minute and then he doesn't and he is a babyface imperiled by the ass stomping of Imperium. Montez Ford is great making the hot tag. Dueling Ankle Locks to the delight of special referee Kurt Angle. Angle and GUNTHER get up each other's stuff! Street Profits get all spectacular to allow Seth Rollins and GUNTHER to preview a singles match down the line. Kaiser gets Doomsday Deviced but borrowing from Top Flight. GUNTHER gets Pedigreed and Vinci gets stomped on the head by Rollins who then pins him! That was fun. Rollins vs GUNTHER will be good. Bianca Belair takes on Sonya Deville! Sonya takes another ass beating. Sonya Deville is the Jay Lethal of the WWE women's division. Austin Theory and Bobby Lashley battle for the US title! Man, Theory bumps like Darby Allin bumping for Samoa Joe. This match is a LOT like Samoa Joe vs Darby Allin! So this is great! This is Joe/Darby with a reversed heel/babyface thingy. So Darby getting beaten to death is horrifying, this same ass beating is celebrated by us! WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? Austin gets in a higher grade of offense than Allin but he goes back to bumping gigantic as Lashley makes a comeback. Austin goes through a table! Brock Lesnar shows up. He F-5s Lashley and then F-5's Theory onto him for the win! That was a no DQ match so I got no beef with it. That was a good batch of wrestling between oodles of shit to fast forward though!

Something I didn't know until just now... Both the Undertaker and LA Knight had the same manager

Marina Shafir is such an… odd case. I watched Wrestling Revolver’s Season Finale 2022 this weekend and she had a pretty great match with Billie Starkz. Her stuff with Bloodsport was good too. But you put Shafir on live TV and it’s just terrible. Indies and pretaped YouTube shows? Perfectly acceptable, it seems. Maybe live TV makes her nervous or something, I don’t know. Doesn’t help that her big breakout title matches have been against someone green (Jade) and someone with a mixed bag of a reputation in-ring depending on who you ask (Rosa).

I actually tried to tune in for the cage match. I really want to catch up with what Bailey's doing. I take no joy in having being an anti-New York hipster smark for most of my life but man, they always find a way to give me the old Manhattan Drop when I turn my head their way. Final two in the Rumble, Cody vs. Sami. Sami wins. Fuck it. Just do it. Just pull the trigger and tell the story.

IT'S PRO WRESTLING! LET'S WATCH! BILLIE STARKZ! BRITT BAKER! Awesome! Britt tells a little story. REBA CHEATS! Nice German Suplex by Space Jesus! REBA gets crushed by Billie in an inexplicable moment. TOMBSTONE PILEDRIVER by Billie Starkz! I can't believe how much Baker is giving Starkz. DMDDestroyer! They need to sign Billie Starkz already. Britt Baker is awesome. It's the Dark Order! It's Ballyan Akki! Markus Cross is not sporting Victory Hair. Dark Order does a giant wad of triple team stuff and it is enjoyable! SERP vs Tony Deppen! SAP CHEATS! So much fuckery! Deppen looked good! Cezar Bononi doesn't pit up much of a fight but Ryan Nemeth is GREAT, CRUSHING Matt Sydell, postmatch. Harley Cameron is a HEAT MACHINE! Brittany Jade is a fun babyface! FULL WORLDWIDE POINT! Madison Rayne has an inexplicable match against Kacie Lennox. Wait a minute. Action Andretti IS the new Will Ospreay! This match is really good. Bear Bronson and Andretti has CHEMISTRY! The best part of the match was the psychotic TOPES by both dudes! Mascara Dorada and Anthony Henry was really good. Dorada saved his flashiness for the finish. Three really good matches! STARKZ! BAKER! BRONSON! ANDRETTI! HENRY! DORADA! Daddy goes night ngiht!

They could have run that Bloodline segment for the entire 3 hours and I would not mind. The whole thing was absolutely magnificent and one of the most enjoyable segments and matches and set-ups in memory. The whole “Tribal Court” itself was so fun. It is just great wrestling camp stupidity. Roman taking the whole thing with the utmost seriousness in his mob boss character made the whole thing work. It does not work as a goof. It works as a goofy thing taken seriously. Then it got even better with the whole Law and Order type of stuff with Heyman - the ultimate sleaze - going over his conspiracy theory with Sami, who is of course the conspiracy theorist. And as I was watching, I was completely convinced they put in all of these red herrings throughout. And I thought for sure it was going to be execution time for Sami after he provided no defense and Solo was about to spike him. They got me! I literally gasped when Jey made the save. Jey has been great for years but he has really become an all-timer since The Bloodline arc began. It takes someone really good to do the initial stuff with Roman and get beaten into submission but still be able to have credibility. He went from being incredibly sympathetic to becoming a great henchman. He and Jimmy just have bangers with absolutely everyone (I really think the New Day’s Last Stand match was one of the best matches of the century when you consider the rivalry and organic stakes). And Jey really hit an iconic level with the Doubting Thomas story with Sami where we saw his motivation - part legitimate skepticism, bigger parts jealousy - without having it told to us. Wrestling is not a “Show But Tell” type of narrative but Jey nailed it that entire time and I am not sure anyone else could do it. I popped so hard when he made the save for Sami with his own footage. It left us with an awesome cliffhanger. But then it got even better with that fantastic tag match. I thought Judgment Day would have petered out months ago. Instead, they have been maybe the second best part of the show for months. What a fun stable. They do a great job of being a collective of awful people but they come off like they actually like each other and are friends. And while they definitely roll their eyes at Dom, it seems like they actually like him as well and enjoy him as a little brother who they can pick on but nobody else can. So many awesome things can be said about Dom. One of the things I really love about Ruby Riott and Britt Baker is that they have limitations athletically but lean into the character aspects fantastically well to make them upper tier wrestlers. Dom was set up to fail as a green chubby kid without a lot of athleticism against his dad, one of the most athletic wrestlers ever and arguably the greatest babyface in history. Dom has really arrived by doing the same things as Ruby and Britt — making his limitations his strength, playing off of the relationships of his alliance, and leaning into the material he is given and “making it work” as Regal said all the time on his podcast. Damian Priest is also fantastic. He has been such a great glue guy for Judgment Day — really good muscle who juxtaposes well with Finn’s flashy leadership and a good promo. Unsung worker of the year. As soon as Jimmy went down, and it was clear Sami was going to replace him, my investment in what was already a very good match just went up. I really had no idea what they were going to do — is Sami was going to cost them the match accidentally or intentionally with Dom getting the win. I know what the end game is going to be but they made me think otherwise. That was an absolutely spectacular block of professional wrestling: Sublime, ridiculous, emotional that incorporated one hell of a match and still gives us the cliffhanger for Saturday. A+.

I think a rematch happening just because Hogan lost the title would have sufficed. The Sting/NWO feud had more than enough momentum for multiple ppv matches. In a perfect world, you have a Sting semi-squash at Starrcade, then Hogan comes back much more prepared and they have a longer, more competitive match at Superbrawl. They could even get away with a screwy finish in the rematch to transition to the NWO breakup angle while Sting moved on to other feuds. I know, good luck getting Hogan to job in 2 straight matches at that time, but one of the biggest problems the Starrcade match exemplified was Hogan's outsized influence in creative when he should've been made to pass the torch. On the second point, there has to be some nuance when using the phrase "killed the company." Sting/Hogan was the first obvious crack in the dam, not the final break that sent WCW on its death spiral (that would probably be the finger poke if I had to pick one thing). WCW still had inertia to be viable despite one bad show, and along with the general growth in the wrestling market at the time, it's no surprise they hung on a bit longer. Worth noting, however, they never had a ppv that approached the Starrcade 97 buyrate again, which supports the idea that a good chunk of the fanbase did feel burned by the show itself. Wrestlemania 14 and 15 (both of which delivered supreme triumph for the top face if nothing else) surpassed the Starrcade 97 buys for comparison. Also with the benefit of full historical hindsight, we can safely say that WCW did in fact fold just over 3 years after Starrcade 97. Obviously the same did not happen after Flair left.

Same thing with me and my friends that watched wrestling. It was the face paint, the mist, the cool as shit moves he would do, and it was unlike anything any of us had ever seen. We're all kids at the time, so it just blew our minds. For as cool as Sting or Demolition or the Road Warriors or Vader was, Muta was on a whole other level. He may have been a heel, but it didn't matter to any of us. He was like the mirror universe Sting. And then shortly after we see Liger doing even more high flying stuff and looking like a superhero and that was basically that. WWF was always my first love in pro wrestling, but they didn't have anyone near as cool as those two guys. In the early 90s when they brought in Hakushi we were kind of like, oh shit, is this WWF's answer to Muta? And while he was cool and all, it just wasn't the same.

Muta was also a part of my foundation as a fan that of course went all the way back to childhood. It was just like the article also said. I just plain liked his moves. I didn’t care if he was “bad.” I rooted for him because of his cool moves.

Yeah, Lethal is absolutely the right person to put him with. That much I totally support.

I have zero doubt Mark wants to be there. I'm sure he's chomping at the bit to work out his emotions in the ring, and Lethal is the perfect dance partner... a long-time friend he can trust to deliver a hell of a match on demand.

My favorite hour of 1970s territory TV that I have watched in a very long time. 45 minutes from Montreal that flies by, with a promo production style that I would love to see someone tweak for a modern audience, and maybe the best segue by the commentary team from a hot angle into a plug for a local charity event ever.

There were certainly outlets urging people to voice their displeasure to WBD and/or TNT. They make have listened for whatever reason.

Dov Kleiman (i know, i know...) is reporting that Green Bay is looking to trade Aaron Rodgers. They want two 1's in return. The Jets, Titans, Raiders, and Dolts are the ones most interested. Boy, for as much as Rodgers and Favre hate each other, they both seem to have the exact same career.

This wouldn’t be happening if he didn’t want it to. Getting some Bret vs Benoit vibes, and I like it.

Growing up I had a passing interest in wrestling. Then when I saw Muta, followed by Liger, I became instantly hooked.

Good. I think Payton would give the Texans some legitimacy, but him quitting on NO kinda sucks, and having to give draft compensation for him sucks even more. He can head to the Denver traveshamockery if he wants. I bet he just wants the Cowboys job.

I think next week will be Chuck Taylor vs Danielson, with the announcement blowing away the Kentucky crowd.

Hot dang that was great. I liked 3 points that he made the most. Muta was “effortlessly cool.” His moves had an “athletic snap.” That describes Muta’s exclusive way he did moves in a nutshell. There was just something neat about it. And of course Gary Hart in general. He was a part of it that had to be there even if he was never the centerpiece. Without him it probably doesn’t work initially. What was the deal at Halloween Havoc 89 seriously? Was the fire at the beginning rigged? Dumb question perhaps but if it was rigged it was random and I’ve never heard anybody take credit for the idea. That’s 1 of those ideas that a million people would take credit for over the years it seems like, similar to The Gladiators. Of course if it wasn’t rigged it’s a miracle a bunch of other things didn’t happen.

If we're throwing ideas around, one way to keep things going into Spring/Summer and not completely toss Cody under the bus would be this: Cody wins the Rumble and later gets the Bloodline banned from Ringside (maybe beating Sami on Raw with a stip). Sami finds some insane way to get himself into the match and make it a triple threat, probably at Elimination Chamber (maybe beating Cody in front of the hometown crowd) so he can protect Roman. They could do the deal where both he and Cody go out at the same time at the Rumble too, but I like my idea better. Match is a triple threat at Mania sold on the intrigue of what will happen with Sami. They spend the whole match doubleteaming Cody (just a massive beating) but Cody's able to capitalize on some miscommunication, gets Roman down, and with the last of his strength, hits the Cross Rhodes onto Sami so that he lands on Roman, but can't immediately capitalize. All three guys are basically out but Sami's accidentally out on top of Roman and wins the belt. All the babyfaces come out and hoist a slowly recovering Sami on their shoulders as the fireworks wake him up and he freaks out and they fade to black. Cody's protected. Roman's somewhat protected. Sami has the belt. People want to know what happens next.

" Let's go Brandon."

That's such a good finish tho, just not with Hogan. Reigns gives Sami the orders that if he wins The Rumble he is out of The Bloodline and his sworn enemy. Sami is number 30 and everyone is eliminated before he even enters. He comes out and is immediately declared the winner while begging the refs not to raise his hand and having a panic attack. He had no control over it. It's not his fault. Don't kick him out of his family. Instant sympathy.

Sometimes I think I would rather watch wrestlers doing silly shit like this than the actual wrestling. What a bunch of good people.

The Steiners have signed a legends deal according to a random sponsored FB that came across my shit. A quick Google showed a bunch of results, none of which I clicked but it must be true with so many. They’ve discontinued DVD sets right? A properly done Steiners set is 1 of my holy grails. Do they still do docs somehow? Somewhere? Just no more physical media?

Slamboree 1997 notes: Steven William Regal and Ultimo Dragon have an interesting match. It starts a bit slow and they don't gel well until they get to the point where Dragon starts pulling out offense that Regal's never seen; Regal and Dragon both sell Regal's confusion as a detriment to his ability to control the match. The idea, I think, is that this is a competition between Regal's British matwork-and-bar-fight style of controlling a match and Dragon's unorthodox cultural mash-up of styles. I love the idea in theory, but this match doesn't quite get it right. It's almost compelling, but it never makes that leap that you'd hope for with such a clear narrative thread running through it. Regal gets a chant going for him here in Charlotte, though, so that's something neat. I don't want to be too harsh because they do pick it up as they go into the climax of the match and have some nice sequences. Sonny Onoo and Dragon are basically sick of each other, though, so Onoo kicks Dragon in the back of the head on purpose, and it spells the end for Dragon's TV Title reign. It's worth watching just to see the psychology of the match, and I'd also suggest watching the previous Nitro's Regal promo on 5.12.97 if you do, since it actually sets up the story of the match. In what I would guess, without looking it up, is Luna Vachon's only WCW PPV in-ring appearance, Luna loses to Madusa in what is a perfectly cromulent match. Heck, Madusa gets legit busted open. I think some of those strikes hurt without looking particularly great. This is alright, though. Both women work as hard as they can and put together something decent. Randy Savage cuts an in-ring promo on PPV. Ew, no. You already sold me the PPV with your talking, theoretically. DDP enters the ring with a crutch, but rather than bludgeoning Savage, he talks to him. I am not a fan of this feud. Eventually, DDP bashes the fuck out of Savage, Bisch, and a couple B-teamers with the crutch before Norton jumps in and we get a *sigh* nWo beatdown. The Giant makes the save, though. I mean, the crowd loved this. I bet I did too back in 1997. Yuji Yasoruoka was in a random WAR match I watched a few weeks ago! He was also in this equally random Slamboree match against Rey Misterio Jr. It's okay, I suppose. Yasoruoka isn't particularly interesting in control. Rey does the plancha over the ref spot that rules, though. Rey is always good for at least one dope spot even in the dullest of TV matches or in nothing PPV matches. This isn't a bad match. It's acceptable. I don't know what it's doing on this show, though, or why Yasuruoka got so much offense. I enjoy having Kanyon on my TV screen doing overelaborate, but somehow appropriate offense in a goofy gimmick, so I was pleased to see a return match between Mortis and Glacier. Actually, most of Mortis's offense was stomping Glacier's Cryonic Kick leg, so we didn't get said offense, but this was less a match than a continuation of an angle. And actually, Mortis hit a leg lariat onto the stairs in the post-match beatdown, so we got at least one novel wrestling move. In the end, Glacier is saved by ERNEST "THE CAT" MILLER, whom I unabashedly love. Things are looking up for Glacier's short tenure in WCW! The Charlotte crowd thinks Jeff Jarrett sucks, but actually this first WCW run of his has been excellent. IDK what the fuck they're talking about here in Charlotte. This U.S. title against Dean Malenko match is not his best work, but it's still solid. Malenko's gameplan never quite comes together; Jarrett shrugs off his legwork for the most part and uses his veteran wiles (read: he cheats and clubbers) to control the match. One dude who looks like he's made of tobacco juice sitting in the third row is solely focused on flicking off Jarrett whenever Jarrett is turned his way. It's hilarious. Anyway, it had a nice, fairly intense finishing run, and Mongo coming out to interject didn't really harm the finish, at least from my view. While Mongo doesn't entirely fuck Jarrett's chances up, he tosses Jarrett back in the ring before Jarrett's really recovered and leaves him dead for Malenko and the Texas Cloverleaf. I expected Jarrett to win the gold here because I'm pretty sure this title goes Malenko -> Jarrett -> Mongo, but I might have misremembered. You may not be surprised at this, but Meng and Chris Benoit wrestled a pretty good deathmatch. They didn't just go to using chairs and tables and wandering around doing a bunch of bland brawling. They worked this logically; Meng was the stalking killer in a slasher film who Benoit needed to outfox. Eventually, though, it became less about outfoxing Meng and more about being able to take punishment and persevere for Ebnoit. The crowd was weird about when it chose to pop and sort of hurt the match, but not in any significant way. Also, the finish is sweet, with Meng locking the TDG onto a diving Benoit. That shit ruled, and nary a weapon was used. Well, now I think Meng can beat anyone this side of Sting for the next couple months, so I hope they end up using this effectively. The Steiners and Hugh Morrus/Konnan had an alright little match. Hey, Morrus getting tossed into the lights is never boring. Konnan was real quick to beat up Morrus for taking the pinfall. It's not like they've been on a losing streak or anything. Jimmy Hart yelling I THOUGHT YOU SAID BLOOD IN, BLOOD OUT cracked me up for whatever reason. Mongo McMichael and Reggie White wasn't good in a conventional sense, but it was a spectacle. Never discount the power of Two Meaty Men Slappin' Meat (tm Big E). I will say that my favorite thing about this was Mongo getting more and more rattled as the match went on, Gilbert Brown showed up to support Reggie, and Reggie wouldn't quit. Also, there was a power-out-of-a-hold spot centered around blaspheming, which somehow worked amazingly. Mongo was out here promising Reggie that he'll go to church if he just lets up off that nervehold, and I will say again that the wider wrestling world needs to reassess Mongo and give him his flowers. It was awful nice of Jarrett to help Mongo get the win with a Halliburton after how shamefully Mongo treated Jarrett earlier. The main event, which pits the WCW members of the Kliq against Flair/Piper/Kevin Greene, gets off to a great start with Buffer's over-the-top introductions of all the wrestlers. He had me cracking up. Tony S. also cracks me up by insinuating that when Flair beat Vader for the WCW title at Starrcade 1993, Vader left WCW in shame. So, we're getting a Syxx/Flair feud out of all this stuff, and I'm personally happy for Syxx to get that level of feud partner, but I don't want to watch Syxx carry past-his-prime Flair to something decent. Speaking of Syxx, this guy kills me. He's repping THUG across his tights like he's Tupac. Oh yeah, the match! It's quite fun! Flair and Syxx do have decent chemistry. And there's a series of tags that is well done. They escalate the tags! Syxx tags Hall; Flair tags Greene in response, so Hall tags Nash. No one touches another person, unless you count Hall spitting on Greene. The Nash/Greene segment is great, and Greene finding a way to eventually overpower Nash really does come off impressively. Greene is like if you took the Ultimate Warrior, but made him a standard 'roid-crazy jock instead of a mystical peyote (and 'roid) using goofball. Kevin Greene is better than Ultimate Warrior, I guess is what I'm saying. Obviously, Piper is the worst thing about this match, but he's not so bad that he makes the match appreciably worse, and actually he has a couple good spots in here. Hall slaps his injured hip, and he immediately slaps Hall in the face like it was a completely programmed response. That's good stuff. This is a textbook example of how to lay out a match where of the six workers involved, two are over the hill, one is limited, and one is a unspectacular-if-solid worker. This is not just Hall and Syxx carrying the show or anything. It's the typical shine-heat-comeback deal, but really well-laid-out. And the good guys win! Definitively! Well, look at that. What a concept, WCW. That was an uneven, but ultimately enjoyable PPV. No Luger, no match for the BGB, no Sting appearance, no problem!

I got nothing against Rolen or him getting in, really. But if part of the point of the hall of fame is to tell the story of baseball, having Scott Rolen in and A-Rod and Manny not get close is sure telling a distorted version.

Muta and Liger compelled me to get the WCW/NJPW SuperShow PPV which got me into New Japan.

Missed out on Muta until much later, but Jushin Liger and Ultimo Dragon both blew my mind when i found them in WCW, and the J-Crown '96 tape was the first Japanese tape i bought off the internet.

I have no interest in defending WBD or anyone there whatsoever. It just seems the "WBD WON'T LET THEM HAVE A TRIBUTE!" thing has grown to be accepted as fact here, and I'm just not sure that it is.

You can count me amongst those whose pro-wrestling fandom trajectory was greatly altered by Muta. I was too young for his NWA run - missed it by a couple of years. There were probably other Japanese wresters I saw first. Kaientai in WWF, likely Liger in WCW and definitely Ultimo Dragon, maybe even Tajiri and Ikuto Hidaka in ECW. All of those wrestlers combined led me to want to research puroresu. So on to the internet I went. But...I saw images of Muta and some of his elaborate NJPW entrance attires along with maybe some short video clips, and that sealed it for me. Muta was the wrestler that flipped the switch between "I think Japanese pro-wrestling might be of interest" to "I NEED to see this in motion and find out what it's all about." I'm pretty sure the first puroresu VHS order I ever put in was for two Great Muta comps, a "Best of Ultimo Dragon in Mexico/Japan" comp, and a Misawa/Kawada rivalry history tape. I've been hooked ever since.

Count me as someone who's interest in Japanese wrestling can be directly attributed to Muta's run in the late 80s and Liger's run in the early 90s. It was probably 5-7 years between setting them in WCW and me getting the internet, but Japanese wrestling was one of the first things I tried to find once I had access to the internet. They influenced my fandom as much as any American wrestlers. You have to understand that I grew up in a small town in Ohio with no access to cable for the majority of my childhood. I'd spend spring and summer break in Virginia, and that's pretty much all the WCW I ever watched. So my wrestling fandom was almost all WWF for 45 or so weeks or of the year... and Muta and Liger were still asking the most important wrestlers of my childhood. That's how to make an impression with limited opportunities.

I'd bet you could trace a TON of North American wrestling fans' interest in Japanese wrestling directly back to seeing Muta for the first time. Edit: And after making it to the end of Schneider's article, I see he already made that observation.

We've only got three more Dynamite Danielson matches, this week vs. Brian Cage and the next two.

I stupidly went back for episode 2 like a moth to a flame and I was treated to what was one of the most disgusting things I've seen in TV or a movie. The only way that would have weirded me out more was if the mushrooms came out of the zombies eyes and went into Tess' eyes, complete with closeups. And now that I've introduced this idea into the world, it's probably going to happen to someone. Good episode otherwise. Part of me started to wonder if the show would stray from the game and keep Tess alive until a dramatic finale death. Looking forward to an episode where 30 minutes of it is Joel and Ellie move big wooden planks around to try to cross terrain.

The Bloodline court segment was good, but ate up way the fuck too much time. That should have been at least 10 minutes shorter. The following Usos vs. Judgement Day match was good with the injury angle to get Sami in working well too. Bayley/Becky ending up as a segment sucks, but it was a decent beatdown. That said while the match interested me I'm kind of ok with it not happening tonight because the crowd gave absolutely no fuck about it. The sad truth is the audience has been pretty apathetic to most of the Raw women for a while and its starting to affect even the bigger names like Becky. Street Profits/Rollins vs. Imperium was good fun. Dug the little tributes to Angle and how Angle reacted to them. Bianca/Sonya was solid though felt unnecessary. Theory/Lashley was fun though i would have preferred no Lesnar.

After doing the stinkers that were Wonder Woman 84 and Don't Worry Darling, I don't know if Chris Pine can be too picky about the roles he chooses.

of all the times to bring back the wrestling manager who reads the Wall Street Journal daily

This! I mean, we got a Juvi match last year or the year before, FFS. It's such a great device to 'bring in X outside talent', as is/was the TNT title open with Cody and now Darby.