SturmCRF

If they met in 2004 she'd have been about 10, so it probably meant 2024. If they have children who end up in the business, they're going to be so very good at wrestling.

I don't like MJF winning the title and I'd be lying if I said I did, but my main objection was them making it so obvious he was going to do so by setting up his first challenger in advance. He can win it, that's fine, but I can really do without another year plus reign of terror, and they need to start laying more groundwork for some first time champions. People winning their first world title is almost always more compelling than the established main eventers trading it. Ospreay, Fletcher, Takeshita and Okada (get him out of his Codyverse, please) are already at a point where people would accept them, but I also want to see Bandido, Brody, Garcia, Knight, Bailey, O'Reilly in the mix. Even guys like Hobbs and Hook, who might never be ready to be at that level, but should be booked like they could be.

How has nobody mentioned how insultingly fucking stupid it was to telegraph MJF winning the title by having Bandido win his Dynamite Diamond Ring gimmick with a right to challenge the world champion, three days before the Pay Per View? Did anyone think he was going to walk in with the special MJF signature ring and challenge Joe or Hangman or Swerve on the 14th? Bafflingly dumb. Apart from that everything was great. Loved Mox vs Fletcher. Love that Mox can be convincingly tapped out by Kyle O Reilly but then win a gruelling tournament, because he's Jon Moxley. That's what happens in sports. If Manchester City get knocked out of the cup by Sunderland, there's still every chance they'll win the league. That's the AEW I love. Fuck that MJF win though, spoiling your own main event, total morons.

Okada vs Takeshita being in different semi finals would really spoil those semi finals, so I prefer this way.

I went to the WWF restaurant in 2000 during some free time on a school art trip to New York. Didn't have the time or probably money to eat there, but had a look at the gift shop. Loooot of XFL merchandise in the clearance bins.

Great PPV, I didn't exactly call Joe winning, but I told my girlfriend I wasn't ruling it out, so I'll take some credit for semi predicting it. I enjoy Hangman and he seems like a lovely guy, but he's like Naito at this point, it's never enough that he just win the title, he has to win it and have a long reign, or win it and do the LIJ roll call in the Tokyo Dome, his fans are never fully satisfied. I'm pleased he had a short reign, AEW has too many overly telegraphed long runs with the men's World belt. Die hard sickos like me will keep buying the shows each month anyway (especially with the sweet two for £25 deals on Triller), but they need to have more genuinely hard to call main events. Anyway, Joe should have a moderate length run and then drop it to Kyle O'Reilly (sorry Drew). He doesn't radiate star quality, but I'm not Tony Khan's accountant, I'm a fan who wants to see a rare underdog sports story done properly in pro wrestling. The blandness and goofiness is part of the point, as long as he conveys that that's a genuine part of who he is, which he does. Combine those qualities with being a high level ROH-ey Good Wrestler, and he's a perfect guy to do a Leicester City and shockingly win the big one. And they may actually be considering it, cos Moxley did a hell of an unselfish job putting him over, and it'd be a shame if all that effort ended up being a glorified Jericho vs Action Andretti.

Putting aside how much of a dick he might or might not be to work with, I don't see how it hurts to have Andrade back on the roster. Sure, he's a notch below their top, top workers, but he's a pretty damned good pro wrestler and I can immediately think of nearly as many matchups I want to see him in as there are guys for him to have matches with.

I was in The Entertainer with my family earlier today, and had a quick peek at the wrestling figures. (I don't collect them but we have two, an AEW Dustin I bought for the girlfriend, and a Hasbro Undertaker, which miraculously survived a pre-University toy clearout 20 odd years ago, but I still kind of want to throw in the bin, because, and I cannot emphasise this strongly enough, fuck The Undertaker). Among all the usual suspects, they had a Doink The Clown facepainted Bushwhacker Butch, which also appeared to come with a set of arms and hands with which to assemble your own Frankensteined Adam Pearce, presumably with parts from other figures. What the shit?! When they pick through the ruins of our civilization in six years time or whatever, the people of the future are going to be so entirely baffled that someone bothered to make that.

I think it was just there in the Triller app. It'll be a sad day if and when Triller collapses because it's hard to run a viable business selling people GCW and Portugese football.

I somehow got this and Wrestle Dream as a two pack for £25 on Triller. That's barely more than a pound a match!

Mick Foley, Bret Hart, Bryan Danielson, Tomohiro Ishii, Mercedes Mone, Will Ospreay. Favourites, not best, I recognise Terry Funk is better than all of them except maybe Danielson, I just spend too much time keeping up with current wrestling to have watched enough Terry Funk.

I've been thinking for years that I'd really, really like Don Callis to write a book, and turns out that he's writing two! Except one is 'the business secrets of Don Callis' and one is an 'intellectual' book about his philosophy of pro wrestling, which could be more what I'd hoped for. He's had such an insane career covering so much of the wrestling history of my era, and I'm fascinated to hear his take on it. If he's even half as much of a total prick as he so effortlessly portrays I sort of want to read him justifying himself, and if he's actually just a nice Canadian dude who's great at playing a character, it'd be interesting to see behind the curtain.

Not going to go into too much depth here, as it sounds like 'who was the most over?' and 'which matches were good?' was pretty evident to people watching on TV. We left halfway through the main, as my parents were babysitting and I didn't want to subject them to staying up til 2AM if we got caught in an endless queue for the train. Really hard to pick a favourite match, they were all good, but none of them were great. Not a star rater generally, but felt like nearly everything was a solid 3 and 3/4. Would have loved the tag match if not for the double ridiculousness of Hurt Syndicate being brawl-down-the-aisled out of what was an elimination deal until seemingly the last minute, and the botched pinfall, but very happy with the result. Athena vs Toni was disappointing, I felt beforehand that Athena had a real chance, but they never conveyed that within the match itself, and the finish was flat. They've both had better matches with Mercedes, but I guess you could say that for a lot of people. Fletcher vs Hiromu did a great job shrugging off foregone conclusionitis and still being a quality match. Cope and Cage vs Matriarchy maybe exceeded my expectations the most, was really impressed how they got a compelling match out of it without pushing the bounds of credibility as far as Kip being on their level, he hung in there through cunning and retained enough of his punchable jobberliness without it seeming absurd that they didn't just blitz him. Sorry to the several thousand people I queue jumped in front of to get in for the pre show, my girlfriend just really, really wanted to see Despy. As did I.

I really like what I've seen from Bozilla, she had a great match with AZM, which isn't such a rare achievement, but also a really enjoyable hoss fight with Megan Bayne at Mania weekend. Good get, even if I'll be disappointed every time a Forbidden Door passes without Natsupoi or Starlight Kid showing up.

We're not too bad thanks! Can't promise anything too elaborate, but will try and cobble some thoughts together.