Technico Support

Adam Cole is actually a massive lardass, as Excalibur has told me on numerous occasions. It's not fair for Buddy to wrestle so far above his weight class.

Last night, I was trying to think of who are the top baby faces who could align against the BCC, so it’s not just the job squad standing in the parking lot with their dicks in their hands, and I legitimately could not think of anyone. I know Darby and OC are on tap, but that’s it. Fantasy booking, I want to see Hangman find his way and just go whoop some ass.

I'll just say that my opinion is if Linda wants to paint herself as a former small business owner who built an empire, which is the gimmick she ran on twice and also used as her qualification for her cabinet position, then she's fair game in lawsuits. As @odessasteps mentioned, she took an active part in diffusing the ring boy scandal. She also had the political connections to get the iggy on the Zahorian thing and warn Vince. She's absolutely complicit.

Man oh man, this show was not great, from a lot of perspectives. Please indulge my bullet point notes. BCC vignette at the start of the show had horrible sound quality WTF was the Hangman/Bang Bros angle? Hangman comes out to promo, gets backjumped by a babyface, beats that babyface up in a fair fight, then babyface's friends run in to outnumber the heel and run him off. wuuuut OH MAN THIS FUCKING MVP PROMO. Motherfucker quotes Heath Ledger's Joker like a fucking edgelord, never mind that movie is old enough to have a driver's license. Way to stay young and relevant, AEW. Then he says "our agenda? We're taking over." And I resist the urge to shoot the TV like Elvis. Fuuuuuuuuck heel stables saying they're taking over, and double fuck two promos from two different heel stables talking about taking over 20 minutes apart. Tony is on crack. Shelton calls back to Shawn's anti-air superkick and I need to remind you that happened 19 years ago. Fucking Sammy was in grade school. Look. If you have one or two old guys on the roster, congrats, you have some legends. If you have 10 old guys on your roster, you just have an old roster full of cynical old carnies bilking a perceived money mark and waiting for the Fed to call them back to New York. Meltzer compared putting Shelton over Sammy to Bischoff putting Val Venis over Christopher Daniels in TNA. This isn't that. But it's close. This old guy shit is not what I wanted AEW to be. If I come off as a mark for that, so be it. In a shoutout to all the dumb fucks who only see race as a gimmick, MVP recruits Ricochet. Because all the black dudes need to be in the same stable. Fuck all this. Fletcher sporting the Shawn Michaels initial heel turn white denim jacket. Shit's gonna go down. OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER as Fletcher shaves his head. 10 years of yee yee ass haircuts, as helpfully evidenced by that montage before the promo, all gone. Thank god. My guy was physically incapable of getting a good haircut, might as well own it. GOOD: actually promoting upcoming shows and matches! Holy shit! BAD: Promoting Stat/Camille before Camille/Aminata, flushing all doubt as to the finish of that one GOOD: Showing Maple Leaf Pro footage! I can't stop imagining that masseuse just CONSTANTLY accidentally popping MJF's bacne and just rubbing it in like Aspercreme. LOL @ Cage & Archer vs Great Value Viking Radiers. Dudes looked like barbarian archetypes from Mat Mania or some other 80s unlicensed wrestling game. Hell yeah Chuckie T is on my TV Regular ring aprons and barricades look so much better than that LED monstrosity. Where do wrestling companies get ladders with climbing rungs on both sides? Do they buy two ladders and make them themselves? Speaking of ladders, Aubrey was talking to Jericho while Briscoe was climbing to the tippy top of that high-ass ladder and I was screaming AUBREY GO GET A FUCKING HAND ON THAT LADDER! Jesus Christ. Ishii out for the save got crickets, because Ishii was a jobber last time we saw him. Moving from Jericho beating the way over Mark Briscoe to set up a match with the nobody gives a shit Ishii is very dumb. One of wrestling's 10 commandments is that the surprise guy making the save has to be at least as over, if not more so, than the person he's saving. LOL @ Daddy Magic openly laughing at HoB's jobbers. Buddy Matthews: designated HoB singles match jobber challenges Cole out of nowhere because they need someone to do the job. Last week, Private Party intimated they'd break up if they lost another title match. Now the match is set for next week. Really speedrunning this angle, huh? LOL @ apparently no women care about the BCC takeover. As mentioned, BCC is feuding with the dumbest babyfaces alive, and apparently just came in through a different door, real Bugs Bunny shit. Next week, they will argue with the babyface brigade whether it's duck season or rabbit season. I want to give this BCC angle room to breathe and I understand they need to feud with the cannon fodder for a little while, but I don't know, man. If they're an existential threat to the company, vague as that threat is, then why aren't more people, and higher up people, also wanting to stop them? They really can't go too long with all this shit existing in separate bubbles.

You can't hit a person over the head with an abstract idea or something that is represented by something else, nor can it be worn around one's waist or on the shoulder. The physical object represents the position and accomplishment of champion. I don't mind a wrestler saying, "my goal is to win the championship." But hearing someone say, "he took the championship and hit his opponent with it" drives me all the way up the fucking wall.

Aw man, I didn't even consider this. So we'll get MJF saying something uncreative and gross, then mugging to the camera like Urkel. Generational talent my ass. AEW's gambing iconography gives me real Texas Hold Em Bro vibes and is aging poorly, as that fad died years ago. Maybe get rid of all of it except All In and the Casino Gauntlet. Edge's cash in was awesome because it was the first time it had been done, so nobody really considered a prick heel cashing in on a beaten champion to steal the belt. Also, he had the briefcase so long he only had like two months left to cash in and it was sort of forgotten about. Now it's just a cliche. A year-round gimmick wherein someone can steal a championship is lame.

Behold, Wesley's CG eyes because he was pissy at the director and refused to open his eyes for the shot He also: Referred to himself in third person on-set ("go get Blade some coffee," etc) Spent whole days smoking up in his trailer instead of shooting Shot a lot of his stuff alone (two characters are conversing with him, then cut to Blade for his lines, which was shot at a different time) Threatened other actors Eventually, they just shot the movie around him. Complete shitshow.

I hope Wesley has changed since then but, if the stories surrounding Blade 3 are any indication, a short role like we got is the best we can expect.

At the same time, they definitely didn't shy away from milking the subtext. And that didn't stop Pillman from yelling into the camera, on the way to the ring for a match with Badd, "JOHHNY DON'T B BADD, JOHNNY B GAY!" Yes, that was a babyface promo at the time.

Gotta rush in a chest, shoulders, tris workout (and hopefully the fastest shower known to man) at the office between meetings, hoping the pre-workout meeting runs short. EDIT: aaaaaaand the pre-workout meeting just got moved. Sweet.

Good back, biceps, and core workout at the office gym yesterday. 5 mile run (I said I'd only do 4 but the weather was nice) today. Halfway through my Sunday - Friday workout week.

I wish Danhausen had gotten the opportunity to try to grow like Orange Cassidy did. OC should be commended for how he grew his character and changed his style while maintaining his gimmick. I was about to write off Danhausen as a meme wrestler, a "and then the bell rung" guy, but that's not fair, considering how little ring time he got in AEW.

I think there's a lot of good wrestling that lives in the middle, between the two extremes of "old vets laying on each other for a half hour and having a night off but being so good they had the marks eating out of their hands anyway" and "meaningless and dangerous spotfest." I feel like your tastes are more toward the former and that's, of course, okay. I once expressed, in the AEW navel gazing thread, how I feel like the former is cynical and anti-fan and was roundly ridiculed by you and Curt, so I won't be doing that again. But I feel like there's plenty of variety out there for everybody. I'm not even sure why I'm replying specifically to you; I guess your point just reminded me of all this. But nobody should argue with anyone about their personal tastes and I'd love to read something where you qualify the argument that we need more Johnny Valentine and less Kenny Omega. Do you love actual pro wrestling matches, or just the idea of pro wrestling and the con? There's an undeniable art to doing as little as possible and making the people think they saw something amazing when they didn't. But that's not something I, myself, want to watch.

And today he’s a sacrosanct hard man patron saint of old school wrestling. In 40 years, we’ll be looking back wistfully on how the Young Bucks ruled the locker room.

Even with him leaving, why couldn't they transition the Funk/Hart/Muta feud heat to him, build him as a contender, and have him vs Flair as the Starrcade main? One last hurrah before returning to Japan in January? Muta was hot, as I recall. They did him dirty, as the young folks say.

Here's one of those matches. It's amazing, as this ominous siren goes off to signify the transition into overtime. They really missed an opportunity by not transitioning into Natural Born Killaz and playing it on loop for the whole period, though.

That was me, and I was about to mention Paradigm again! Here's a copy of their adaptation of UWFI rules and some matches as well. I used to watch them when they were on IWTV -- they are on Triller now. I can't remember if they ever did UWFI and regular rules on the same show. I know they'd hold the Heavy Hitters Tournament, which was all UWFI rules, and they'd also hold a tournament called Terminal Combat, which is where, as you mentioned, matches were held under UWFI rules at first but, if the match went to a draw, would restart in "overtime" with deathmatch rules. But yeah, it's easy to turn off your brain and enjoy the ridiculousness when it's a small indy and you're seeking it out/knowing what you're getting. Harder to do when it's a big promotion and you're telling a more mainstream audience that a dude can win via KO with a suplex when they just saw 12 suplexes a few matches ago.

I seem to recall that all her posts are in character, so she's probably setting up a heel run. Honestly, WWE stopping the current project (tag her with Bianca so she can learn) to turn around and book her just like she was booked in AEW would be counterproductive to her growth. That is, unless someone in WWE, after months of tagging, became convinced that "female Goldberg" is her ceiling and is just like, "fuck it, let's just do that." Also, related, Shaq never coming back for revenge is another miss. He mysteriously disappeared from the ambulance and was never heard from again.

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I like to sit on my hand until it gets numb...

Obviously Punk is the biggest miss. TK should have paid him half in cash, half in Zoloft. The guy was gifted the title, anointed the top guy in the company, and he couldn't let some dumb comment slide. It's fascinating. To quote Harvey Keitel's character in From Dusk Til Dawn, "Are you such a fucking loser, you can't tell when you've won?" I wish the Bucks could have cooled off instead of confronting him, and that Ace Steel was nowhere to be seen instead of being Punk's Brutus Beefcake. Overall, things would have been so much better if everyone had been a little more grown up about everything or, at least, TK could have figured out a way to bring all sides together instead of the ridiculous, passive solution he came up with. Sequestering Punk to Collision and booking PPVs where one of the warring groups would go on early, then go home before the other group arrived, was lame and unprofessional. Another related, weird miss is: what would have happened with Collision had the Punk stuff not happened? Collision was supposed to just be a one hour show, but then when it was decided to make it The CM Punk Show, it was expanded. What would have happened with a one hour Collision and how would that have affected the future of Rampage? One more: Jade Cargill. What if she lost the TBS title at some point and became more integrated into the women's division? Would she have become a better wrestler? Would we have gotten cooler stories? Instead, she existed on an island separate from the whole division, wherein a talented wrestler would get into Jade's orbit for a program, Jade would cut the same promos as always, she'd win, then rinse, repeat. That belt was just the Being Jade Cargill title until it was time for her to leave.

Thanks for posting that! The new Bucks are already outdated. Bleh. I might pick up a Kenny. Ringside Collectables has a new Orange Cassidy in black gear with the International belt and a backpack (!!!) that I might pick up. The next Unmatched line, out in January/February, looks really good, too, with a new Darby, old school Sting, Ospreay, and eyepatch Danielson. I'll have to pick that one up, definitely. My local Wal Mart has Business Casual Smilin' Bryan warming the pegs right now and there's no damn way I'd spend money on that abomination. His teeth look like Chicklets, like he got the same caps Cody did.

Continuing my 1989 and onward WCW rewatch, I started Starrcade 1989: Future Shock. Three matches in... So weird making your promotion's premier event of the calendar year a gimmick show. I'd love to hear some background here and why they blew off the Flair/Funk program the month before on free TV instead of doing it on PPV. Maybe Halloween Havoc didn't draw? Let me get my biggest nitpick out of the way: the time calls and time limits and how they should have, but so far didn't, translate to the wrestling style. All matches have 15 minute time limits. So in kayfabe, you'd think these guy come out full bore, guns a-blazin', trying to get a quick win to beat the time limit and to save their energy for the next matches. But three matches in, they really didn't. I'll elaborate more below. The time calls stressed me out because of this. These guys open the matches working like they're going 30 minutes, and Capetta is announcing the 5 minute call before damn near anything has happened. It was agitating. Also, logistically (in kayfabe), shouldn't tags get a longer time limit since there are, you know, more guys in the match? Lots of empty seats facing hard cam on the lower concourse. JR assures us that fans are still filing in. We'll see. I hope it wasn't another Bunkhouse Stampede showtime debacle. Terry Funk as the nice, jovial veteran on commentary is weird considering he tried to murder Ric Flair twice earlier in the year. Opener is the Steiners vs Doom. A fun meat men match, but meandering and aimless. They're kind of just wasting time to get to the finish. The Steiners are barely doing anything when the 2 or 3 minutes remaining call is made. With, I think, less than a minute to go, there's an outside the ring schmozz, and Rick gets back in for the countout win. What the fuck was this? Bonus 2024 relevancy: Deadpool & Wolverine star Tyler Mane is at ringside as part of his cup of coffee as Woman's bodyguard, Nitron. Cornette is on color for tags, Funk for singles, which is fun and makes sense. Luger and Sting are out for the first singles match of the night. Again, no sense of urgency. Both guys, after the bell has rung to start the match, play to the crowd and taunt. I'm pulling what's left of my hair out. Again, fun match, but the time constraints and these guys wrestling like they're going 30 just agitated the fuck out of me. Another out of nowhere finish, and it's also really clumsy. Both are fighting on the apron. Luger tries to, I guess, clothesline Sting back into the ring. He can't do it and time stands still as both guys kind of lay on the top rope until the ref helps them fall back in. Luger lands on Sting, fights mightily to get the ropes for leverage, and gets the pin. Woooof. LOD/Doom is next. Ross tells us the match order was determined by coin toss (wouldn't random draw make more sense? Was it a six-sided coin?) and Doom got fucked. AGAIN, barely anything has happened by the five minute call. Animal grabs a fucking chinlock and we're 33.33333 repeating percent into the scant 15 minutes they have to win. Later, they make the 5 minutes remaining call and Reed is laying on Hawk in a rest hold. Sweet merciful Christ. Wikipedia claims the match was 8:31 but they definitely made the 10 minute call. I guess they were cooking the times a little. LOD wins because Doom has a gimmick change coming up and is, spoiler, going to lose all night. Apparently, they speed the matches up as (spoliers) Flair beats Muta in under two minutes. I'll watch that soon. For the math heads here, the calculation for number of matches in a one-match-per-participant round robin is (number of participants) X (number of participants minus one), divided by 2. Please excuse my dear aunt Sally. Clearly you can tell, when I played TNM a lot, that I liked to do round robins. Thanks for reading!

Down about another pound and a half this week. Had a great chest, shoulders, and tris workout today.

That pic of the McMahons and Trump in the Oval Office, smiling like a bunch of rubes who’d finally made it to The Big City (not far from the truth, really), killed my WWE fandom and I’d been watching since 85.

My dad was a huge bigot but loved Motown and Sanford and Son. Not really mutually exclusive