For Great Justice

The double LP nature of All In and All Out was good, poetic stuff. All In being held in daylight, bright colors, big stadium, babyfaces mostly win, fun cameos, joy. All Out: dimly lit arena, heels reign supreme, ultra violence, blood, hate. It definitely felt intentional. Cool stuff.

I think my expectations for the main event were not the correct ones, but let me try to explain why I thought this was a miss. With the escalations, I expected the match to be “I hate you! I want to kill you!” in a rawer sense, narratively. What I felt like we got instead was “I hate you so much…I’m going to have an EVEN MORE extreme BJW death match with you!” That, to me, is context breaking and honestly silly. Again maybe bad on me for misreading the room, but wasn’t this the time and place for cage, fists and blood until someone drops, and not just a continued escalation of a gimmicky pro wrestling death match? Like if you have beef with a dude at work, you don’t settle it within the context of work. You meet up behind Waffle House and beat that dude’s ass. By doing a death match, this felt like we never left “work”. I dunno. I didn’t like it at all. Was just disappointed by the whole thing.

Icarus flew too close to the sun in the main event tonight

Was thinking about this more and you know when the “wrestler whose gimmick is that he is a great wrestler” deal actually worked for me? Dean Malenko in 97-98. You watch those old Nitros and Dean was over fucking HUGE. Like he’s legit the 4th or 5th biggest pops of the night routinely. I think people forget just how popular he was. 40+ year old me says that I should kind of hate the whole good matches Iceman thing, but Dean ruled. Maybe his babyfave rogues gallery of colorful lucha opponents and the contrast is a big part of that? Anyway, yeah. Dean Malenko, badass.

I was just watching Sasaki/Nagata that was linked in the blood thread back in July, and to me that’s the answer: two dudes that hate each other just teeing off on each other. if they pull out the razor wire and glass gimmicks I’ll be pretty disappointed

I don’t care for either one because contrived Chekhov’s Glass spots feel so inorganic and like we are grabbing shit from under the ring in WCW Revenge

The most important part of that post: What! Where is the Colosseum Video exclusive? You can’t deprive us!

What I hope we get is lots of hate, lots of blood, lots of cage, but keep the Texas Death Match nails/glass/tacks gimmicks at home. This doesn’t call for that. This calls for fists.

That ending. This is pro wrestling, motherfucker!

See I like post-comeback Shawn in the sense that wrestling is a 3 ring circus and overly emotive, playing for the back row, dramatic stadium show style has its place. Dug the comeback Triple H match, first Taker match, Flair match, etc. I also dig the Cena Raw match which is definitely this style, because it played to a crowd that elevated it. I think it’s when he continuously tried to shoehorn that stuff into matches that definitely were not the right place and time that it went bad. Three stages of Hell being the most egregious example. Flair had his pattern but every once in a while you got him having these brutal wars with Valentine or Garvin or something. Post-comeback Shawn didn’t have that versatility in his bag.

Oh my god prime Rock promos are theeeeeeee drizzling shits. I can’t watch it without cringing and turning it off. But I guess context is warranted? The late 90’s “extreme” era of pop culture has not aged particularly well, to put it kindly. Howard Stern at the time or Season 1 South Park - same cringe reaction as the Rock stuff.

My entire “I don’t get ‘em” wing is simply enough littered with workrate guys who are wrestling for the sake of being workrate guys. That whole thing absolutely sucks. I was going to mention this in the RIP thread but I’m pretty sure the whole reason younger me found DVDVR in the first place 25 years ago is because I was in a virtual shouting match with those claiming that Lance Storm was a better pro wrestler than Sid. Which is just blasphemy, and I felt like I was shouting into the internet void until I found this place. Thankfully this archetype has, mostly, gone away - even the Ospreay types bring a lot more to the table than the Storms. But there are still a few: Gresham is terrible, for instance. FTR has a pretty big whiff of this which is why I think they rub some (including me) the wrong way.

Have we talked about how Hologram is the new Blitzkreig? Like, it’s uncanny. Dude shows up almost out of nowhere, does crazy shit and hangs with some of the best wrestlers in the world. Pay this man so he doesn’t go back to selling insurance, Coach! Its been said but Rampage is booked specifically for DVDVR and it’s awesome.

I am intrigued by Mox’s rendition of Scott Hall’s speech after interrupting Nitro and I’m curious where that goes

This is so good, and nails it. Sid Eudy was completely, 100%, unabashedly Sid. All the time. No winks, no meta, absolutely nothing to suggest that he didn’t legitimately show up to the arena that night to dust fools with powerbombs and dab up fans. That’s as pro wrestling as it gets.

In honor of the master and ruler of the world, and after much deliberation, I present wrestling’s Mount Rushmore of physical charisma Sid Vader Bull Nakano The Great Muta Some were close (Ahmed Johnson, La Parka, Yokozuna), but this is the list. I don’t make the rules.

This right here. This is where the veil of people trying to sound cool on the early 00’s internet because they thought a given opinion was required to be cool, was lifted. RSPW smart marks losing their goddamn mind for Sid. Because Sid was fucking awesome.

Aww man. Y’all know how much I’m on record on here over the part 20 years loving and defending Sid, even when internet wrestling discourse was at its lowest, Scott Keith-ian point. Sid, Fucking, Rules. Maybe the most physically charismatic wrestler of all time. Heaven needed fist bumps. RIP to the master and ruler of the world.

So Ospreay is going to “I’m sorry; I love you” Danielson with the TD91 in a year or two when BD really does call it quits, isn’t he. Big foreshadowing of that in the lead up stuff.

This was so good I’m so excited for the future. One could argue that the lineage of the AEW title has followed a logical story progression from Jericho all the way to Swerve. Now, for the first time, it truly feels like anyone could be up next. Just like Danielson likes it.

I see that. A little Single White Female, too (complete with cosplay)

I’m not going to hate on the main because wrestling is a three ring circus and I get that Star Wars Movie Lightsaber Dual Stunt Coordinators is a style. It ain’t for me though

Really impressive how they’ve laid it out. Pretty clear this leads to Wargames, but on the way we’ll get the duality of Jimmy, Sami and ultimately Jey rejoining Roman one by one, just like they did in leaving him one by one. Really well done stuff.

Kudos to WWE for getting Halliburton and Brunson. Two very legit megastars, especially in that arena.

I think in-ring-wise you can hide everyone reasonably well enough in a big plunder 8 man blowoff that it would be ok. But storyline-wise I don’t see how you get there? Normally, “wrecking havoc on the promotion” is a heel angle that calls for the top babyfaces to band together to ward off the threat in Wargames or something. But there’s no way that works here, right? “Sorry your brother died, dude, and I get the promotion overlooked you for a decade, but you gotta stop murdering people” — who cheers that babyface? But at the same time, how do you book a group banded together to save a promotion, as heels? Curious to see where it goes but not sure how you get it the payoff, or what the payoff even is.