Custos

I know where you’re coming from. My mother in law’s family all fell out over her sister making their parents sell their home, building an annex onto their house as a granny flat for a fraction of the sale funds, then holding onto the extra money. Thats a whole bunch of cousins and aunt/uncle that won’t be part of my kids’ lives. Elderly passive parents plus greedy offspring = family disaster.

Obviously happy to see ZSJ appear so many times on your list. I agree about the consistency of the match quality, which I think is down to the ‘quiet achievers’ like ZSJ, Archer, Juice, EVIL, Goto keeping the bar high even for the matches with less potential on paper. Also Yano’s trickster antics were creative and varied enough to serve their ‘pallet cleanser’ role effectively.

In defence of WWE (not that they necessarily deserve the benefit of the doubt) the cross design is consistent with the Imperial State Crown, part of the British Crown Jewels so they may have been going for authenticity. May have.

I’m starting to believe the Flairs ShadoW = FSW conspiracy theory

I’m pretty excited, it’s on Fathers Day here in Oz so my gift is to shirk my fatherly duties and veg on the sofa watching this for a few hours. All signs point to having their best announcing combo back together (JR/Excalibur/Goldenboy) which is one of the biggest positives for me. PAC / Omega better be a total showcase for Kenny, he feels a couple of notches below Mox and he should appear every bit on the same level for TV. Also, for casual fans it’s not a good look for your potential fresh top star to be losing to the King of 205 Live. 3 way Barrel match should be chaotic fun too. Like others, I’m interested in the lessons they learned and what different decisions they make for this show. Timing is one, also will they make the Battle Royale less of a disorganised cluster of bodies. Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus were talking about how the match was laid out vs how it actually went down and it sounded pretty bodged together.

Meant to say, between the 'I won and have the t-shirt' line in this promo and the 'damaged goods' line in the last one, Omega is so on his game with the promos leading up to All Out. They really are making the best of the situation as you can imagine Mox just wanting to eviscerate Kenny after that verbal beatdown.

Regarding the 'anaemic' ticket sales, surely it's calculated and built into their business plan that the buzz and (hopefully) solid quality of the first couple of shows on TNT will draw in the remainder of the crowd. With the anticipated TV viewership, by definition there has to be some viewing for the first time, a portion of those will live locally and enjoy enough to fork out a modest sum. Nobody could reasonably argue (yes, I know, internet) they should run 1500 seat venues in the first several weeks. Please keep Johnny Whatsisname away from AEW, he is the opposite of 'fresh' and would take a sizable paycheck that could be given to a game-changing WWE or NJPW renegade. Brandi's Road To promo was fantastic but also clashes with the persona she has presented so far. Like I said before with MJF, a heel character with certain absolute 'red lines' and fierce loyalty can bring three dimensions to the storytelling if done right, but the rest of Brandi as a character is quite flat and her wrestling is so uninspired I don't know if that's the place for her.

Well I think that was more the WWE’s literal interpretation of Suplex City to mean ‘ten German suplexes and an F5’. When Brock shouted out ‘Suplex City, bitch!’ it was a cool statement that summed up the inevitable arse kicking to come. So folks started chanted it. It would be akin to seeing ‘Austin 3:16’ catching on and then WWE making Austin stand in a pulpit every week giving a sermon.

Listening to Quackenbush talk about personas and how, starting out, you should have a very specific persona firstly as a developmental exercise (how would a wrestling accountant throw a punch?), secondly because if it’s too broad then there’s likely a better version of your persona out there right now. Which made me think, does NJPW have the highest proportion of the ‘best version’ of broad archetypes in current wrestling? Conniving Odious Heel - White Technical Wizard - ZSJ Athletic Marvel - Ibushi / Ospreay Scary but Agile Monster - Archer Cool Rebel - Naito Stoic Warrior - Ishii Never-give-up Face - YOSHI HASHI ? Impossibly Handsome Man - take your pick among Ibushi, SANADA, Tana and others Yes there’s bias from having just binged the G1 but it’s hard to think of more proficient, more over versions of these character types.

I honestly wouldn't mind a Taker feud just going all-out on the supernatural and dialing the histrionics up to 11. Literal smoke and mirrors, and an emphatic changing of the creepy guard like they should have done with the cult leader years ago. Yes the Firefly Fun House has been meticulously crafted with care, nuance and attention to detail. But it's WWE, it's never going to stay pristine and perfect in perpetuity, especially as Bray inevitably starts getting pushed out there to do random matches. Might as well do something big with arguably the greatest wrestling gimmick ever created while the Fiend is bringing the intrigue and the buzz.

When I saw Darlings I was thinking more twin brothers like this:

His focus seems to be on attacking legends so far. Is it a gradual build to an Undertaker feud on Fox and a decisive torch-passing of the spooky long-entrance phenom role? A last hurrah for BOOKAH? Or a means to get some more mileage out of Goldberg? It better not be the bloody Big Red Mayor.

Wouldn’t Atlanta be an obvious choice after a Carolina date on their way down to their Jacksonville base? Is Atlanta still a big wrestling city?

I'm not sure, I did some googling around but my Japanese is not so great. Although I can read enough to know that this impressive collection of humanity is ONLY THE A BLOCK. Imagine the talent in the other block. And below is last year's effort, which appears to include two 'once in a lifetime' aces:

Ospreay appears to be a corpse who has had his hair bleached.

Same as Lars Sullivan right?

Nearly perfect. You should just swap the Seth pic for the cross eyed goofy one and it would be *chef kiss*

In the past I always felt Mauro was a net positive because despite all the overreaching references and sometimes exhausting maniacal delivery there was an honest-to-goodness passion that he was genuinely feeling in the moment. It was an antidote to the too cool for school mst3k irrelevant bickering interspersed with corporate buzzwords in the main show. This is the first time it was so egregious that it detracted from the show overall. Or it may be that his less desirable tendencies were forgivable because the Takeover shows were just that damn good. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with the show we got at the weekend. Io was the bright point, and the tag and three-way were pretty fun too. Roddys running drop kick was beautifully violent, it reminded me of those shoot drop kicks that Joshi trainers would throw at their poor students. I also got a kick out of the corner to corner running forearms hitting Dunne and Dream and then back again. They used to walk the line of drama and group masturbation and now it’s just all masturbatory with everything drawn out a few minutes longer than it needs to be with the forced epics. That aspect reminded me of the last AEW show. Hopefully they find the balance again.

B Block possibilities courtesy of Wreddit (no idea if 100% accurate)

Dave definitely has a type, doesn't he. Still, can't fault him for loving some Shingo. Some of those lariats in the Ishii match, yikes. Jay seemed to really click for me around the time he got some facial hair. Not to say one is linked to the other. And Taichi's two battles of dastardly tactics against White and Yano is the most I've enjoyed him for ages. I feel like the second to last night of vacation when you know you're going back to normal boring life soon. Oh well, it's been great keeping up with the tournament in mostly real time.

It's hilarious how his version of 'brawling' is exactly the same human pretzel shit but just happens to be outside the ring, especially funny in contrast to Suzuki chucking barriers and chairs and punching out Young Lions.

It was more whether a lackey who was responsible for keeping tabs on AEW picked up (maybe subconsciously) on this turn of phrase that was then passed to VKM to summarise their promotion in a derogatory way. The Page promo was weeks before the investor call.

I watched the Road to All Out episode through again sequentially and had a couple of takeaways. I don’t think they could have framed Spears any better than they have done in these vignettes. He’s probably got the most ‘wwe cast off’ stench to him coming in, and he’s presented as such a big deal here, with the master stroke of Tully as manager (the company actually showing respect and reverence to a legend is quite the novelty) played with a subtle sense of menace but with some straight men in the room (Ops Manager and Lawyer) so they still seem larger than life in comparison. Secondly, Hangman in his stitches ripping promo, at that crescendo moment, uses verbatim ‘blood and guts’ as he thanks Jericho for bringing this out in him. Is that where the Vince comment originated or just a curious coincidence? Either way, AEW has been reclaiming the Blood and Guts of pro wrestling since before Cody’s rebuttal.

He’s probably the biggest barometer for nepotism in the company, along with Brandi Rhodes. How prominently they are featured and in what roles will show to what extent they’re genuinely making the best business decisions or if there are some blind spots due to familiarity or outright favouritism.