Gordberg

With the latest Secret Santo coming to a close, I am going to take a couple of months off from posting on the DVDVR boards. I'll likely keep lurking, and I reserve the right to chime in if I feel like it, and I will most likely resume posting around my birthday in early October. Might make that my birthday present to myself. I'd planned to make it to 1000 posts before taking a break. Didn't quite get there. Thought about not making any kind of "see ya" post, because I don't want to make a deal out of it, but I know I sometimes wonder if a regular poster is OK if they don't post for a few days and I (perhaps naively) wouldn't want anyone to worry about me if I just disappeared. I'm more than fine. Getting my second vaccination tomorrow. My wife is very busy (she's a nurse, and often works at vaccination centres on her days off) as are my daughters (who are in prep for another ballet performance while taking care of their pets and working through their massive pile of summer break homework) but we are all happy and healthy and handling the summer heat and humidity just fine so far. I'm really looking forward to enjoying my local izakaya and hanging out with my excellent drinking buddies again. Anyway: It's a great time to be a fan of AEW right now, and it's pretty likely to become an *amazing* time while I'm on hiatus. If the current hot rumours turn out to be true then AEW are heading into crazy dream match territory. Even if Bryan doesn't show up, there's so much to look forward to with a new show and all of the recent additions. I'm so happy that there is a major pro wrestling company, with an international TV deal, owned and operated by people who love wrestling and respect their fans. It's an amazing thing. A dream come true. We are all so lucky to be able to enjoy this right now. It's been fun discussing AEW and other things here. Helped me, in a very real way, to get through some crazy times over the past year. Thanks for that. See ya!

@Spontaneous I hope the surgery went well and your wife recovers quickly. Good Lord the match that @Matt D gave me here is amazing. It's all built around Strong Man being hilariously muscular and Plata being genuinely Super-Duper Porky. Jon Andersen is a pretty impressive guy: Bodybuilder, strength athlete, wrestler, and legendary prog rock musician and singer... He is so muscular that it is just stupid. Like if you somehow combined Big Poppa Pump and Brian Cage's muscle and packed all of it onto a single 6-foot T-800 frame. Literally 300-plus pounds without a trace of visible body fat. Porky here looks like he's wearing the Fat Bastard prosthetics from the Austin Powers movies on top of his usual bulk. Almost impossibly large. It kind of imparts a sense of wonder about the range and diversity of pro wrestler body types to look at those two standing side by side and ponder them being part of the same tradition. (I also felt that way looking at Akebono and Yinling the Erotic Terrorist a couple of weeks back). The other men in the match are Héctor Garza (teaming with Strong Man and Brazo de Plata) , Atlantis, Negro Casas, and Último Guerrero. Which, wow. As Matt put it: Absolute masters. And they all do one or two neato little things, but they are really just high-quality filler around the spectacle of the ridiculously massive muscle beast and his friend the elephantine behemoth. When Atlantis, Casas, and Ultimo Guerrero came out, Guerrero hugged and posed for pictures with a cute little girl and I kinda got my hopes up that Los Guerreros de la Atlantida might be working face but of course they were the heels here. That was mildly disappointing because and only because I was kind of hoping to see Héctor Garza's heel act, which is wildly entertaining. Garza got almost as big a pop as Andersen when he ripped his shirt off, so he was still entertaining working as a technico. The rudos took the first fall when Guerrero and Casas pulled of the impressive feat of double-suplexing Plata, after which Porky was like a turtle stuck on his back, and after that Casas casually stepped on Porky's belly as he walked around celebrating the pinfall. That's what I mean when I say the match was built around the extreme physical dimensions of two of the participants, with the absolute masters doing cool little things in the margins. Another cool spot was when it took all three rudos to Irish whip Strong Man out of the corner, but he managed to get a reversal on all three of them. Andersen isn't a particularly good pro wrestler in the traditional sense. His selling and facial expressions are somehow both operatic and cartoonish, for example. But I very much enjoy him every time I see him in the ring. He both looks and works like an over the top parody of how a big man wrestler "should" look and work. And I mean that as a genuine compliment. In the end, good guy Garza managed to get all of the bad guys lined up side by side, supine, on the mat. He tried to pin them all, but wass easily tossed off. They repeated that gag. Then Strong Man kind of chucked Super Porky onto Los Guerreros de la Atlantida and there was no way out of that predicament for the bad guys. Simple, effective, and wildly entertaining. I'm sad that this is over already. It's been a blast. Thanks, Matt!

Nice! I have never seen that Danielson vs Collyer match. Hopefully I will get the chance some day. Strongman and Super Porky on the same team sounds amazing! Like something I'd book in Fire Pro to amuse myself. I am a huge fan of both of those men. I love the challenge of trying to pick something interesting for you. I think I gave you Fujiwara in Osaka Pro last time. Here's a nasty little gem: Fujiwara in Kana Pro. Teaming with Syuri. Against Kana and MiSu. A word of warning: Nobody holds back on hitting anyone here. I'm not kidding about this being nasty.

I think I am going to start doing lunges. I think that would be a big step forward for me.

Is it next Wednesday yet? I kind of want it to be next Wednesday already. Why not "Fyte for the Fallen?" Anyway, it looks like the card is already pretty much set and I have got some time to kill... Tony Khan announces a new live event I wonder if it will be a New Year's Day event? There are more than a few interesting rumour-based things I'm wondering about and I wonder if Tony Khan will get into any of them. The Elite vs. Hangman Page and Dark Order ten-man tag with World title and Tag Team title shots at stake I'm really hoping for that classic Survivor Series type of feel here, and as @The Natural has said, I hope they don't rush this match. IWGP U.S. Champion Lance Archer vs. Hikuleo Coming off an excellent main event, I'm interested to see what Archer and Haku's nephew/adopted son can do in the ring. Christian Cage, Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus vs. Angelico & Private Party With that look that Jungle Boy gave when Luchasaurus hoisted Christian onto his shoulders, I'm wondering if they are going to do some sort of slow-burn build to a match between JB and Cage. I'm curious who the bad guy will be in that scenario. Obviously, the eventual match has the potential to be excellent. This match should be fun. Santana & Ortiz vs. FTR Sometimes it's better not to get your hopes up to high, so you don't end up disappointed. My hopes are sky high here, though, and I'm not too worried about it. Five Labours of Jericho, pt. 2: Chris Jericho vs. Nick Gage in a no rules DQ match I'm actually a little nervous about this one. I guess that kind of unpredictability is something that Gage brings to the table.

I think this counts as an actual hawt tayk on these boards: Kenny and the Bucks acting like clueless insufferable dorks who think they are cool is the second-most-entertaining act in pro wrestling today (after Lulu Pencil). The "Belt-Co-Lec-Tor!" chant, the porn staches, the hideous outfits, the shoes, the headbands, the corny insults... they have an endless number of variations on that theme. Respect to them for going all in on the gimmick, all the time. Whether you like it, or you don't like it... Learn to love it! It's the second-best thing going today!

Bryan should definitely try to get the "I ! DON'T ! KNOW !" chant over if and when he shows up in AEW. That would be the realest, most widely applicable chant to come out of pro wrestling ever, even more than "Yes!" "What?" and "Wooooo!" EDIT: I really really hope that these Bryan to AEW rumours turn out to be true. Adding Bryan to the current AEW roster means that we are just MiSu, Ishii, Cesaro, el Generico, and a bunch of ex-Osaka Pro guys away from my literal dream roster, from the actual roster that I used to book in Fire Pro's GM mode. It feels almost too good to be true. I am almost afraid to get my hopes up because I want this to happen so much. And I feel like he'd be such a great addition in the locker room and just raise the level of... damn near everything in AEW. I could not possibly be more excited for a pro-wrestling related rumour.

This is an example of a pro wrestling company that I love leaning all the way into something I genuinely dislike... ...and, I kind of love it. If I owned and operated AEW, I don't think that I would bring in Nick Gage. I don't have any desire to see light tubes used in an AEW ring. In fact, I desire not to see anyone in AEW take a light tube shot, ever. BUT Obviously, I do not own and operate AEW. I'm just an internet nerd who likes their TV and web shows, one of literally thousands. But (and I hope this makes sense) If I were in Tony Khan's shoes, I'd like to think that I'd run the promotion exactly how I'd want to run it. I mean, I hope I'd actually bring in all my friends who used to work at Osaka Pro, run lots of comedy matches, strap a rocket to JD Drake, set up Tucky and Bear Country to dominate the extremely active six-man-tag division, book Daniel Makabe in regular 20-minute matches, be deep in negations with Jaguar Yokota and Takumi Iroha, and have Calvin Tankman teaming with Powerhouse Will Hobbs and Orange Cassidy teaming with Juice Robinson but call their teams "Tankhouse" and "Cassidy and Robinson" and so on... So (this is making sense so far, right?) I can find delight in Tony Khan booking AEW the way he wants to book it, even if that isn't necessarily what I most want to see. We all (here at the Death Valley Driver boards) know that he's a death match guy. So, let him book death matches! There's enough stuff I like at the buffet table. If I personally don't want the light tubes, dudes falling from unnecessarily high places, and callbacks to Attitude Era comedy... well, I can still (thoroughly) enjoy Sting messing around with Orange Cassidy, Kenny and the Bucks rocking ridiculous clothes and facial hair, Taz and The Big Paul cracking each other up, Luther throwing Serpentico at people, Miro's new character, the rise of Darby, Jungle Boy, Tay Conti, Hangman Page, John Silver, Abadon, Hobbs, Ricky Starks... And if you don't enjoy some of the things that I get a kick out of, which is fair enough, there's probably something you can get into. Maybe you very much prefer light tubes to goofy porn staches. Cool. Let's both enjoy the buffet. You know what I mean? Anyway, I'm not about to make up my mind about Nick Gage before I've seen how AEW is gonna use him. I have been positively surprised often enough that I'm not finding it hard to keep an open mind.

I think i have said this before, but: Right now is a very good time to be a wrestling fan and it is about to get even better.

Nyla vs DMD was not good, and I don't feel like that was Baker's fault. There were more than a few little flubs on commentary. BUT Pro Wrestling is just so great with a hot crowd! And, now we've all seen a really good Texas Death Match. I also got a pretty big kick (no pun intended) out of Cassidy vs Sting. And both big surprises really landed well tonight (plus also: Hikuleo) It's a good time to be a wrestling fan.

Open the forbidden door! (Maybe bring in someone with a past relationship to Ibushi? An ex tag partner or someting?)

I think it's just clown makeup.

Last week's show set a really high bar. I'm excited for this week's show and really hoping the Garland crowd can be close to as heated and responsive as the Cedar Park crowd were. Orange Cassidy (w/Kris Statlander) vs. The Blade (w/The Bunny) The Blade is really good, and should be able to bring out the serious side of Orangey Boy. It will be interesting to see how the seconds get involved an whether (and how) the brass nux come into play again. Frankie Kazarian vs. Doc Gallows Karl Anderson looked as good as he ever has in AEW, last week. Let's see if Gallows can match that performance here. This should be hard-hitting, at least, and the angry regular-sized human being vs nasty giant story writes itself. The 5 Labors of Jericho: Chapter 1: Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Spears – “Spears Can Use A Chair, Jericho Can’t” As I said last week, it would be a funny twist if Jericho were just to lose the first trial. That being said, it should be entertaining to watch the veteran work his way through The Pinochle. Presumably they have four or five more interesting stipulations in mind. The story of this one also pretty much writes itself, and I trust Jericho to come up with an interesting twist in the telling of it. IWGP United States Title Match – Texas Death Match: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Lance Archer (w/Jake “The Snake” Roberts) I've been a big Lance Archer fan since his match with Ospreay in the 2019 New Japan Cup. I was there live in person and that match stole the show. You know what was another pretty damned good Archer match? The match he had on night one of Wrestle Kingdom 14. Which was a Texas Death Match. Against John Moxley. For the IWGP United States Title. A Texas Death match in Texas arguably makes more sense than a Texas Death Match in Tokyo. I'm hoping Archer does a call-back to the spot where he choke-slammed another wrestler onto Mox. AEW Women’s World Championship Match: Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. (c) (w/Rebel) vs. Nyla Rose (w/Vickie Guerrero) I wonder if this match will get the main event slot. Rose beat DMD back in February to eliminate Baker from the AEW women’s world title eliminator tournament. A win here will show that Baker has grown as a wrestler since then. That's some nice longer-term story telling!

Excellent recommendations. @Shartnado, I'd also add vs Bear Bronson (Dark, May 29) and vs JD Drake (Dark Elevation, May 28) I skipped through Dark and Dark Elevation this week because I'm fairly busy, but it was great to hear even some of the under-carders and "enhancement talent" getting pops and reactions. I'm really hoping AEW gets at least a few months of Fort Worth style crowds who just seem to be into everything. I'm really looking forward to Dynamite tomorrow! As much for the crowd reactions as anything.

That's a great question! 1949 leaps to mind: Ric Flair, Jerry Lawler, Stan Hansen, and Yoshiaki Fujiwara at the top of that class make it pretty hard to beat. Then you've got Paul Orndorff, El Felino, Austin Idol, Iceman King Parsons, Don Muraco, Jerry Blackwell, Jim Brunzell, Chavo Guerrero, Sr. and quite a few others rounding out the list.

This was really good, and not at all what I expected. The Honma vs Yamakawa matches were important in my development as a pro wrestling fan. When I moved back to Canada (from the Czech Republic) in 2003, I got right into buying and trading tapes and DVDs in an effort to catch up on all the great stuff I'd missed while living in Europe. Those state-of-the-art death matches (and also Toryumon, and some other stuff) were things I got into that gave me a feeling like "not everyone has seen this" and they gave me footage to show and to trade with friends who had footage from the territory days and/or the Monday Night Wars and so on. The Honma vs Yamazaki series was sold to me as "these guys bring psychology into death match style" which from my current perspective seems totally insane given that Atsushi Onita is an absolute master of pro wrestling psychology. What it seems to me that Honma is doing is bringing state-of-the-late-90s-and-early-2000s speed and athleticism and perhaps also fancy-dan suplexes and top rope moves and so on into the death match style... which is significant. This specific match is cool in part because it's Honma who was (one of) the absolute top guy(s) in that style for a time and he's at his peak here and he's facing Jun Kasai who was (arguably?) next in line to be (one of) the absolute top guy(s) in that style, and who is a young lion on the rise here. It's a compact, niche take on a Hogan/Warrior, Bock/Hennig, Jumbo/Misawa kind of confrontation. The psychology therefore isn't so much good guy vs bad guy. It's top guy vs young buck (as it were), and they work that style really well and it pays off beautifully. Honma is mean and confident, Kasai shows a lot of fire. Exactly what you'd hope for. They work a large percentage of the match perfectly straight with lots of fast and tight chain wrestling and they are both really good at it. Here's something I'm thinking about now: If Honma and Kasai had just stuck to straight pro wrestling, would we be discussing their work now, in 2021, or would they be largely forgotten or overlooked these days? It also feels like - and I believe it was - one of those Japanese tournament matches where you know that anything can happen. It's interesting to see Kasai before he became a walking mass of scar tissue. It's interesting to see Honma young and spry (and very loud, and not overly tanned, and with black hair...) For fans of the old ultraviolence, there is a sickening chair shot in this one, a barbed-wire bat comes into play, and Kasia is wearing a very crimson mask indeed by the time this one gets going. Near the end, a splash of blood hits the camera lens. Through 2021 eyes, the violent spots feel more impactful because we aren't being overwhelmed by a never-ending onslaught of them. For fans of stiffness and bumping I recommend at least watching the finishing sequence of this one. In particular, there's a series of three moves that bring this match to a close that are not too far removed from peak All Japan in terms of intensity. As I said, those relatively well-known Honma vs Yamakawa death matches were important to me 15 or 16 years ago, but "2021 me" probably likes this match more. I appreciate how the blood and violence add to the story of the match rather than being the entire purpose of it.

Some online friends were going crazy over the big surprise at the end of the Impact PPV... and yeah, that's a pretty good surprise, and it portends interesting things moving forward... and there is a lot of that going on these days. A lot of nice surprises that make it seem like crazy things are going to be happening soon. Plus, that insanely great live crowd at the Texas Dynamite... hopefully that portends a lot of white hot sold out crowds in pro wrestling's near future. People who have been starved for live entertainment and are just wildly delighted to finally be getting their fill... It really feels like right now is a very good time to be a pro wrestling fan, and things are absolutely poised to get even better.

I think this match is a nice counterpart to the one you gave me. Almost minimalist compared to what you might expect from an Onita FMW match. Stiff as hell. I think it's less than 15 minutes bell to bell, as well. Atsushi Onita vs. Tarzan Goto No DQ Match FMW 2/26/91

No, sadly. I had a pretty good look around, too. You can buy Zima in drug stores, supermarkets, convenience stores... but none of those places, locally, had the high fly lemon. I even took a quick look in a couple of places in Osaka and Kyoto when I went there for work. Nothing. My buddy Rod, who lives in the Tokyo area, got some. I'm assuming it was only available in that region.

After finishing my second play-through of Three Houses I decided to lay it aside for a while. I wanted to have a look at No No Kuni, which is a game where staff from Studio Ghibli contributed to the art and music. I'm now about 50 hours into it. I just couldn't put it down. Totoro and Spirited Away were key movies for my wife and I when we were courting, and the Ghibli museum in Mitaka near Tokyo was one of the first places we went on out first visit to Japan. So, no surprise that the animation and music totally won me over. It's also a really nice game. A major part of it is healing the broken hearts of various NPCs you encounter. Also, a huge part of it is murdering cute totoro-like creatures by the dozens to grind out experience... it is a JRPG. But its heart is genuinely in the right place. I've never played a pokemon game but from what I understand this game is along those lines. You tame creatures and they fight for you. The reviews I read said that the AI is bad and the game can be tough or frustrating because of that... but there are a lot of guides out there recommending the best "familiars" to recruit, and I am a fiend for grinding, so it's actually been a little on the easier side so far. The "strategy" aspect seems to come into play more w/r//t figuring out how to set up your teams and which "familiars" to grind up, and so on, rather than in the battles themselves. The characters, the art, the music, and the general theme of helping people make it a very pleasant way to pass the time on my weekly commutes. I'd definitely recommend this one if you like Ghibli at all.

Happy birthday to Alexander Otsuka! One of the best to ever do it!

This is very much my take on the subject. I joke around a lot, but I am 100 percent serious when I say that my favourite recent wrestling stage set, by far, is NWA Powerrr: It's at least partly the nostalgia fator but in all honesty I think I'd be perfectly fine if all TV tapings took place on a standard studio set like this one, with the simple additions of a ramp/elevated entranceway and "bicycle rack" railings around the ring for big arena shows and PPVs. I can appreciate a good light/laser/smoke show and a great sound system when I'm at a live show but watching on TV I think I tend to ignore a lot of the design elements. I mean, I think I'd also be fine if everyone wore plain tights or trunks or singlets in basic colour combinations, as well. It's cool that other people are into those thing, though, and this thread is interesting for me just to see what everyone here likes.

I am sure we can all agree that The White Castle of Fear was the Greatest Video Package of All Time. Everything about this is perfect. Nothing about it has aged badly at all. It's just too bad the those ham and eggers, Sting and Vader, couldn't live up to this in the ring: