John from Cincinnati

Don’t know anything about him aside from really enjoying his episode of Talk is Jericho. And another day one behind the scenes person that I’m sure everyone will be normal and chill about elsewhere:

Are they trying to kill Alek Manoah?

There was an obvious choice for the part…

Sting and Flair in a Yellowstone spinoff?

This is a thread for navel gazing, so please excuse me while I hit you with what’s likely to be some very rambly bullshit. I’m prone to being in a funk around the end of year holidays, sorry. Reread your@Gordi the former AEW fan post a couple times since last night thinking about how I wanted to engage with it. I enjoy engaging with your stuff even though I know I can be a contrarian little shit. Thought about quibbling about our definitions of “disingenuous.” Is Nigel disingenuous? We know it to be true he wants to be that guy again and fight Danielson. Is it disingenuous for OC to be a full on lazy, unthinking wrestler when we know that not to be true? None of this is really important, but it’s the kind of inane nonsense I find mentally stimulating. (confession: I also mostly don’t like heel commentators) Then I came to the bit about your being nostalgic for 2019 and how this has become more of a late capitalist venture. And as usual, I bristle against the concept that AEW was ever anything but. It was always the challenger brand looking for a big rights increase to reach profitability. And then Matt really crystallized something for me, which is that like him my experience of wrestling is more solitary than communal like yours. So why am I always bumping up against you and trying to clarify that I think you had blinders on this whole time? And it occurs to me that while I don’t think my perspective is wrong (who does?!), all I’m doing by engaging in a contradictory manner on this issue is trying to ask other people to start from a place of cynicism and close their heart off to things like I’m inclined to. And that’s a shitty thing to do, and I apologize for having engaged your posts in that way. And I think it fucking sucks that we’re here now having an existential dilemma about what it means that Ric Flair is on these shows in the year of our lord 2023. Now onto nostalgia: I think it’s a cheap trick to keep going to those wells, especially after they’ve long run dry. And it’s really troubling how dry some of the wells are. We did ECW nostalgia in mid-2000s WWE and then again in 2010s TNA. Were good! Hook doesn’t need the FTW belt as a crutch, and Impact certainly doesn’t need to be doing any Bully Ray vs Tommy Dreamer stuff! And with Sting and Flair, we already had our nostalgia time with them — in TNA a decade ago! We don’t need more! We’re good! And yet it’s undeniable how powerful some nostalgia is. The last concert I went to with multiple generations of my family involving multiple cars on the voyage was Elton John and he brought the fucking house down with a pretty diverse crowd. Nostalgia can bring people together. I heard so many versions of multiple generations of dudes going to see Top Gun: Maverick last year and how it brought people together in a way the movies hadn’t for them in ages (of all the movies that got bumped in 2020 because of the pandemic, nobody played their hand better than Cruise). I think the memberberries stuff does suck most of the time, but it can clearly be executed at a high level and brings great joy to many people. I don’t know if I want to take that joy away from people, but it’s also normally empty calories. I struggle with it. And there are some wells that haven’t run dry! You have no formative memories of Steve Austin, but they haven’t rung that bell too many times. I think that last Spiderman movie is cynical CGI sludge, but I know what age I was when I first saw Tobey McGuire as Spiderman and can resentfully admit that shit activated something in me (it also helps that Tobey kind of fucked off and disappeared from movies for a while). I understand why people respond to this. But I really don’t like seeing Ric Flair these days and I get that too. On the topic of pandering: I think my favourite anything of the 2010s was Twin Peaks: The Return. Among the “legacy sequel” nostalgia trend, it was the most prickly and interesting and least pandering of the bunch. A beautiful misshapen object that seemed like it was designed to actively make people annoyed. Great vibes. Nobody likes to hear about anyone else’s dreams, but that rule doesn’t apply to David Lynch. To bring this back to wrestling, I’m one of those silly people who think we’re kind of in a movie star crisis. All this nostalgia and IP floating around, and very few stars really breaking through the noise. Tom Cruise is still a number one and Will Smith is still doing Bad Boys movies. Black Adam flops and the Rock cynically runs back to the Fast movies. For some people, culture peaked when they were a certain age, and they refuse to throw their action figures away. And I’m probably as guilty of it as anyone because I like some of it while rolling my eyes at people who indulge in versions of it I don’t get (there’s no way that new Ghostbusters movie is good, and the cool thing is I’ll never know for sure). It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that this culture resulted in Sting and Flair together on TV in 2023. And we enjoyed some of those Sting matches, and him authoring a worthy final chapter, so we participated in bringing us to this place. There’s a reason Tony thinks we want this. And it sucks. I don’t know what the solution is. Tony’s as online as any of us. Maybe he’ll solve the problem, maybe he means it when he endlessly insists everything is fine. Maybe he can’t throw away his action figures. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and yours, Gordi. Thanks for letting us ramble at you. Hope you get more of what you want in the new year. I’m looking to hit play on as many matches in the Secret Santos thread as possible to wash the taste of Ric Flair on AEW TV out of my mouth.

The thing is that established stars with any degree of discernment can detect the smell of grizzly death coming off this shit and should be prohibitively expensive to lock into multi-picture deals. The budgets on these things need to get smaller, and unless the bag is ridiculous then the Adam Drivers and Margot Robbies of the world should be saying no.

You’re welcome.

The thread will make the new year. Niners will run out of steam.

CM Punk is Michael Jordan. Many people are saying it. So true. So true.

This. Beyond the Majors issues, the multiverse stuff blows and there have been obvious quality control problems for a while. No reasonable person would object to a pivot. They won’t pivot, because that would signal weakness, but they should. Joanna is wise

On top of all this, and I hate to relitigate this forever, I have questions about the report that came out after everything that went down stating the Bucks were willing to work with Punk if he could be cool for six months. Were the terms of his double-secret probation even laid out to him?

Pretty sure they’re talking about Pillman.

The multicolor ropes were good and Tony was a coward for backing down.

So true. In dunking on you for being tedious, I’m actually pretending they’ve got packed houses every week. You’re still so good at reading.

“People calling me on my bullshit means I’m over the target. My persecution proves my virtue!”

So true. This is the first we’re all hearing about any of AEW’s potential shortcomings. We never discuss this here. Thank you, brave truth-teller.

Is this thing being added to the archives immediately? Sounds like it’s more than worth the $10 or whatever and I can catch up on some stuff.

Get ready to groan when it’s Dolph.

Sony has informed Mayim Bialik that she will no longer be sharing hosting duties of the syndicated version of Jeopardy!

About that

There’s always rumors.

Per SRS, Kenny was diagnosed with diverticulitis. He was sick even before his match with Ethan Page.

Doesn’t even need to subscribe. There’s so much interesting stuff on their YouTube and podcast feed. Free of charge! Gratis!

Lethal vs Briscoe should be a draw. “Well at least one of them is going to get a win” Oh?