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Alabama supreme court just ruled that all individual parts of any Frankenstein monster are each children with full constitutional rights. In a related story, they also ruled that already living immigrant children are not children but are, in fact, Frankenstein monsters and can be shot on sight.

AEW, please stop trying to make Sammy Guevara: Likable Babyface happen. Dude could save animals from a burning pet shelter while curing cancer and we’d still want to punch him in the face.

These are all questions to ask PCO should any of us ever meet him.

New wrestling crossword!

I hope everything is ok in Hangman's life and he has whatever support he needs, but from a storytelling perspective, Hangman Frank-Grimes-ing his way out of the title match is a pretty logical wrap-up. I can break into someone's house and everyone will still cheer me because I'm Swerve Strickland. If he was gonna do the fake leg injury, doing it by failing on a cinder block stomp would've been the way to go, though. It's time to strap up Swerve anyway, and going back to the Hangman well so soon has been a drag on his ascent. Joe talks the talk as a champion, but AEW needs 2005 Joe at the top, not 2024 Joe. The Sting spectacle gives the ppv enough juice that they don't need to push Joe into working a longer match. A good 10-minute sprint with Swerve working face and winning clean will be just fine. Speaking of Frank Grimes, though, Wardlow airing all of his very legitimate grievances with his booking only to have Excalibur announce that he will be in a match called "Meat Mayhem" right after was good stuff.

Fuck. Just realised I posted the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards in this thread. Thought I was in the February Omnibus Thread. Genuine mistake I apologise for.

It also comes down to competition. You can't just automatically say X won this many awards when some of those categories were probably thin as hell in terms of nominees. You're telling me every year that there has been an AL and NL Rookie of the Year or MVP of the Year, both sides were just equally divided with quality candidates? Fighter of the Year in boxing (and MMA, tbh) is basically "did you fight more than once a year and beat someone notable in multiple fights?". That's it. The criteria is minimum now. You put so little thought into it. It's still valuable don't get me wrong but the level of the prestige that distinction use to have is gone cause it's virtually automatically awarded every year to one or two people who barely qualify. When Nicki Minaj for a span of five or six years was winning Best Female Hip Hop Artist, my first question was, "Is she competing against kids...who the fuck else is in that category?". Missy Elliott ain't really putting out any new music. Lauryn Hill was still considered "crazy" and skipping out on her own concerts. Remy Ma was still in prison. Lil Kim was worried more about cosmetic surgery than releasing any music. Like one year you get like "Papers Planes" or Kreayshawn or somebody, but that's essentially filler. Now? There are more than a dozen or so really worthwhile female rappers including Nicki. So if she wins it today, that's more of a badge of honor than several years ago. You cannot blindly assume everything has equal weight.

The former is supposed to be for “the whole package” including working, drawing power, etc. The latter is supposed to be best in-ring worker.

if you think TOO much about it, Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster out of dead bodies is also potentially/kinda/sorta human trafficking. and once you've reanimated dead flesh, is it even necrophilia anymore? Can a formerly deceased human give consent? If the reanimated body is a combination of multiple cadavers, can the brain/mouth give consent if the "other" part isn't originally theirs? Our society does not have enough rights protections for the undead.

Thanks so much to everyone who has been assisting and sending. Appreciate you and we will be reaching out for thanks, and to see what you'd like plugged/adopted etc

Mariah May is head and shoulders above someone like Deonna and all the other new talent they got, besides Queen Aminata.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jun Akiyama on AEW Collison tonight. Well, tomorrow in the early hours of the morning UK time.

Oh man, putting the Bounty Hunter over Black would make me take back everything I’ve said about AEW’s 90% JTTS matches TV philosophy.

Look how the award evolved from doing a Frankenstein’s monster character to Fritz faking a heart attack in the early years.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch and “worst promotional tactic” should be different from something like this. Maybe two different awards moving forward; one for something like “worst angle or gimmick” and one for “black eye on wrestling/MMA.” I’d be all for naming that one in (dis)honor of Vince, too.

Every now and then, when we're watching Dynamite, Rampage or Collision, my dad will hit me with some sort of comment that I'm not expecting and make me bust out laughing. Last night on Rampage during Roddy vs. Hager, this was what he came out with. "A few more of these throws and Roddy is going to need that neckbrace again."

TBF with athletes, at least in team sports there are dozens of teams/managers/owners you could in theory play for and most will end up on several teams over the course of their career so it is very different than wrestling for much of its recent history where WWE was really the only major league there was. This means the athletes get wined and dined more early on and likely continue on at the highest level of the sport after being dropped (unless they are out period) which I think lends them to better feelings towards themselves and feeling less indebted to one super figure.

Since YouTube keeps giving me tv theme songs …. one day at a time: Who remembers richard Masur in the early years and Howard Hessemam at the end? Tom boy Valerie Bertenelli in the early years? Nanette Fabray?

Pretty sure Steelrising is like Lies of P, where it’s basically a clone of Elden Ring/Bloodborne/Dark Souls.

I saw a few people saying this re: Danielson/Akiyama and like... did everyone forget that Jun is 54? He's held up very well given the age and how physical a style he worked for the first half of his career but he is only gonna be able to give you so much anymore. I thought the match was fine given that.

AEW's booking has been rough for a while now and took a notable downswing they are just starting to recover from when they added Collision, so they won a lot of the awards that are in-ring focused but lost the others. Or to put it another way, they made us sit through that Devil shit so if they only lose a few awards over it they got off light ;P

Am I the only one that thinks the casting for the movie seems.... off? They made very little effort to make them look like the characters from the games. I don't think it has to be exactly right, and if its well acted that is what matters, but it threw me off just from the jump.

I blame Clark Gable. Damn, Eve so far gone she can't even get a mention out here, though, to be fair, this is the first time I've thought of Eve in like fifteen years, so I guess that proves the point, lol.

and UCLA's new associate head coach/offensive coordinator is Eric Bieniemy

Speaking of timing, I will say the the choice to have Christian do the “dead father” shtick on the same episode where Sting discussed his actual father who just died recently was a little questionable.

I always look forward to doing these, theyre so much fun.

Pentiment rules. Obsidian games are at their best when they are very talky. This game is very, very talky. It's also gorgeous. 10/10.

7:59. Might have done better but a cat walked across me. Thanks for doing these!

Excaliber could easily explain the booking instead of a Sydal promo. I kinda want Keith to win? Even a visual pin. I don't know why. It just feels to me that he needs one under his belt.

Sorry to quote you twice, but apparently there was a wreddit thread this week about how Malakai never wrestles singles matches. I’d like to think TK is above spite booking, but it’s certainly a thing…

"Well, anything I do here won't make your chances any worse than you've already made them yourself."

Meltzer: The New Japan show features the final match of Kazuchika Okada and Tama Tonga with the promotion. Okada's run in NJPW as a star since 2012 has been one of the great runs of championships and great matches in history. Meltzer's right.

I remember I think in Beyond the Mat someone mentioned that Vince’s greatest advice to him Was “never let the workers know how much they are worth.” kind of a moral imperative at the boss level now.

haven't read past this show yet. this is a reminder to myself to come back and get caught up. i went ahead and read all of the next reviews. Much like when i rewatched a couple years ago, i'm not going to remember any of that. in my backyard wrestling days, i took an overhead sign shot to the top of the head. it fucking hurt, man. looked like shit on camera, but easily the hardest hit i took in the year+ that we did that. definitely caused me to give respect to anybody that takes one of those. also, don't steal road signs, kids. maybe this is the Warrior promo i remember? was he just soliloquizing? i just remember a meandering promo that went on FOREVER. also, i like that the catchphrase he was trying to get over was stolen from a '60s tv show. very timely, as seems to be the MO for WCW babyfaces. new thoughts: i remember being excited to see Jannetty on TV throughout '98, but he never really did anything special to impress, and he never was factored into a feud. i really thought Bisch would have tried to play off some sort of "we've got one Rocker, will the other one show up...." angle. i forgot how much Brian Adams shows up on these shows. just the drizzling shits, both for promos and in-ring. the KroniK team really worked wonders. I was always higher (no pun intended) on Wrath/Adam Bomb than most, but being largely directionless is his entire career until then too. couldn't agree more re: Norman Smiley. dude knows how to work and get over. i'm glad he got his run eventually, but it also kinda sucks that it takes until the "big wiggle" to make that happen. the WCW tag titles were a mess for this entire year. it's not about to get any better. you mentioned that you didn't think Evan Karagias (or however he's spelling it this week) had even gotten a win on Nitro or Thunder yet. I'll do you one better: he hadn't gotten a win on WCW TV AT ALL yet. (cagematch lists one dark match win about 6 months prior). but good news! he gets his first TV win on the 9/19 Saturday Night (against Nick Dinsmore!)

He's not a company man. He values his own brand more than anything else. And his brand is never be confrontational, never be controversial, never say anything that might get people pissed at you.

You forgot "and literally no one will care". Unless it's Chris Evans, and then people will only care because they will be disappointed he attached himself to this burning sewage barge.

I had work drinks last night, quite a few, and although there was no headache, I really didn't feel like training today. So I actually used the opportunity to do a heavy squat single - so I decided to squat to a 30cm (so a shade under 12 inches) hip thrust bench pad, and went to 121 kg with the SSB - which is 267lbs. Now I said I could squat 300 the other day no problem, but this is a tougher variation on a bad day, and it wasn't a true max, so it was validating enough. Echoing what I said earlier about going back to a hip-dominant squat, this was my first time doing a fat powerlifter squat in a while - I can definitely feel it in my hips. I also tried landmine goblet squats and they are surprisingly challenging - again this is a more hip-dominant variation. I will have doms tomorrow I can tell, despite it being a rough workout.

Pirates? Damn you Paul Burchill!

I don't do them enough, and I'm not sure that's 100% because I hate them, or if it's just as much because I haven't prioritized them and get to the end of leg days without enough energy to throw *that* bit of misery on top. The balance issue for me is pretty serious. I'm a little klutzy to begin with, but one of the real weak spots in Fitness Youtube is doing *anything* at all to address balance problems. I do all the little tricks to position myself right (lower the bar on the device, do the 'sit on it and plant your heel' trick, etc.) and they still suck so damn much for me. The problem is me, and I don't know what I can do to actually improve my balance. I'm not remotely interested in all that Bosu ball garbage, and I would really, really hope there is something out there that's helpful beyond, "Stand on one leg more often." I don't know if it's my legs generally (my parents took me to a specialist when I was little because I walked funny), my hips, my ankles and my ridiculously high insertion points for my calves (I do not have aesthetically pleasing lower legs and never will, no matter how jacked I ever get) or if it's just everything all together. But DAMN it would be great if there were a reliable, useful resource for this one topic, because the Bromleys and Dr. Mikes of the world have nothing to say about it.

I Want De Belt (makes belt motion)

The wrestlers formerly known as Bear Country.

the world is full of terrible people. i hate that so many successful artists/creators are so awful. i can usually try to separate the art from the artist, but man, i wish that wasn't something that we all have to do.

Normally, a respectable tattoo artist won't go above the neck or maybe below the wrists so as not to hurt anyone's future employment prospects, social standing, etc. Darby walks in and the tattoo guy is like, "yeah, no problem."

Clearly, in his years of wrestling abroad, Danielson mastered the language of "American speaking to non-American," i.e. just speak slower and louder.

You know what, well played AEW for putting all the wrestlers I wanted in the final pack and suckering another $16.99 out of me. I hate it, but I respect the hustle.