The Man Known as Dan

Planning to post a longer write up later, but I flew up from St. Louis for this show and it was worth every single penny I paid for the flight and ticket. I’m attending Dynasty in a couple weeks and I find it very very unlikely it will be a better show. The first half of the show was great, but that 2nd half man. It’s a damn small list of shows who can have 3 matches like Priest-Slim J, Mad Dog-Demus, and Daniel-Thatcher on one card.

Traffic around the area today is really damned rough, and made it that are missing the meet and greet. But hopefully should be on time for the show

Getting ready to board my flight in St. Louis to Philly and someone just sat down wearing a Big Japan Pro Wrestling shirt. I’d put it at 40% you are a poster here going to DEANbecause the odds of someone wearing a shirt for one of Deans favorite companies is so minor. If so, hi, the guy in the CITY jersey will see you at the show

Technically speaking not even the same country, as Sinner & Saint are from Vancouver. I've seen a lot of Austin Luke, and he is really good. Like, should be one of the breakout stars of the Northeast good. Mathers is also really solid. I've only seen one match from Williams, but it was against Makabe and it was really damned good and I came away very impressed with him. Basically, this is just a cool ass match.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssss!

I ran into my first "Eddie Kingston isn't fast so therefor he sucks and is being carried" fans today in some discussions. It's amazing how poisoned some fans minds are by the "If the match isn't going 100 miles per hour it sucks" mindset. Really enjoyed the opener and Murphy/Garcia. Murphy has been arguably the most under appreciated great wrestler of the last decade for me.

That is one fuck of a start. Damn.

Let this show be a reminder that any time a company positioned Joe in the mid card in the last 20 years they were absolute fools. Half of why his RoH world title run was so legendary was how he carried himself as champ. No man in the US has been a better true ace of a company then Samoa Joe this century.

Hits keep on coming. Priest is damned good, and super excited he’s on the card. I’ve had similar thoughts as well. I am at the moment figuring out the means to fly out from the Midwest to see this live and would love a hang out before hand. Also, wanted to thank you in person Johnny for introducing a poor lost teenager posting on Prowrestling.net that wanted more intelligent conversation that this was the place for me some twenty years ago.

Actions regular announcer in Georgia is actually fellow DVDVR Alum Dylan Hales. Will be interesting if he makes the trip up to Jersey for this.

So, weird confession time. I think I like Adam Copeland in AEW. Like, I like his as a wrestler. And it feels weird to me. I thought his little match with Griff was pretty fun, and it felt like he did a good job giving Griff something when he had nothing coming in. It was a fun little showcase for him, and it felt like our first real time seeing Edge work a random guy in a promotion that isn't so.... plastic. And I think I like him in this setting. Makes me wonder if he always had an extra gear in him but he did what he thought he needed too in that setting instead.

I'm shocked there are people who thought the reveal today should have been literally anybody but Cole. There was nobody else that could possibly actually pay this off in any way that made any god damned sense. The problem with this "Mastermind Reveal" angles that makes them so impossible to use in general is because you can't really use them to elevate someone. If it's just some random midcarder, who cares? It just comes across as a giant letdown and doesn't get over. The payoff could only be 2 things: A legitimately big name that has never worked with the company before (And unless you wanted this to be Dolph Ziggler or Mustafa Ali, that wasn't going to happen) or someone that is already involved in the storyline that would draw heat for the heel turn. It was always going to be Adam Cole, it was always the obvious decision. The bright side is the payoff went down better then the Black Scorpion or Higher Power. My big problem remains with this angle still is the massive problem that I don't fucking understand why I'm supposed to be rooting for MJF. The dude has been booked as a straight up menace to the company since word go. His actions never really changed, he still tries to cheat incredibly frequently, and not even really in the fun Eddie Guerrero way to cheat. But he's a face now just because he became friends with another guy whose been a prick of a heel almost his entire tenure with the company? I never gave a fuck about their friendship that spawned in like 3 weeks. Guess I'm just hte old cranky man on this one. Really didn't help that this Devil nonsense basically buried one of my favorite wrestlers title attempt.

Just wanted to note, as a fan of both Willow and Stat, I think this is a crazy opinion. They botched like half the match. I can't remember a AEW match that went as poorly as that one did.

Opening 8 man was good but not quite as good as I wanted. Christian/Copeland was an amazing reminder that Christian is the god damned best, and maybe Copeland can be a damn fun brawler when he isn't just stuck into WWE style of shitty brawling. Full credit to him, he was fucking game today. Kingston/Mox was great, and I love seeing Kingston win. Nothing else on the show, including the pre-show, was for me at all. The Jericho 8 man should have been changed, because there was no way it wasn't going to go that way. AEW managed to ruin Ricky Starks momentum twice in one year, which is very impressive. I don't even watch WWE and I'm rooting for him to go there, because god damn, you can only fuck it up so many times before I don't blame the guy for fucking off. Super happy to see Joe win the belt, even if it was completely secondary to whatever stupid Devil bullshit. Shame Roderick is stuck in that angle I don't care about now, But whatever, keep that shit on Dynamite so I don't have to pay anything approaching attention to.

A post of mine from 2 weeks ago [quote] Let me just lead with this was an amazing Collision, outstanding weekend of wrestling between ROH and Collision. So, we are deep enough in the game that I think I can tell the direction the booking is going to go last next week. My predictions for the last results on each side Mark defeats Jay to get on the board. Swerve defeats Rush. Feels like that was always the expectation, and draws him even with Mox. White beats Moxley, thus creating a 3 way tie on top of Gold league. This will lead to a triple threat as each of the 3 are 1-1 against each other. Blue league is more spicy. Danielson beats Claudio, eliminating Claudio from the competition and securing Danielson one of the 2 spots. Garcia gets his 1 win of the tournament, upsetting King. this eliminates King and Garcia can feel like he finds himself. Kingston defeats Andrade in the main event. This pulls him to a tie with Andrade, but since he just beat him head to head, Kingston wins the tiebreaker, thus giving him the second spot in the Blue league finals and a rematch against Danielson. Gold League can go a lot of ways. My gut says Moxley wins, pinning White, avenging his loss and keeping Swerve decently protected. The Blue league is Kingston securing the biggest win of his career beating Danielson and giving him his match with Moxley to keep his belts.[/quote] Ehhhhh I can call em. MJF getting beaten by one pipe shot and a Piledriver in 3 minutes after Jay White couldn't beat him in 30 minutes with the same injury and interference. Uh huh.