SturmCRF

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.

I'm going to this, and it's a good card, but a shit Forbidden Door card so far. I know the G1 gives them no time to build, but I want my weirdo crossover matches. Hobbs vs Oiwa, Tsuji vs Shane Taylor, Darby vs Narita, Starlight Kid vs Queen Aminata... Fuck storylines, I want unique, mad bullshit that WWE can't do.

My main take on this is The Natural's long running catchphrase. But in the interests of balance - for my eighth birthday party, my parents took me and about 20 of my friends to see Mr. Nanny, and straight after that to a local McDonalds. We destroyed that place. Absolutely hyped up out of our minds after seeing the film, we started a full on food fight within minutes. Cushions torn out of the seats, ketchup and nuggets flying, it was mad. My Uncle never offered to help out with one of my parties again. So, thanks for that memory at least Hulk, you big horrible racist.

I miss those innocent days when we could safely assume this was just a metaphor.

As long as Oiwa beats Fale to qualify, I'm still provisionally quite excited for G1 season. Other qualifiers are Ishii vs Moloney, Taichi vs Newman, Chase vs Yoshi Hashi. Chase winning would also be bad, but not quite as tear up your NJPW t shirt maddening as a 400 immobile fraudster beating the potential future of the company. I always want to see lots of fun outsiders, but not so keen on having people in the tournament who definitely won't win because they're not New Japan guys. Claudio would be great, but you know he'd go 5-4 and be as protected but unpushed as he is in AEW.

Mariah Martinelli. God, a Mikel Arteta gimmick could be insufferable if done accurately, though it'd kind of just be a better version of Learning Tree Jericho.

I don't know, but then I manage to suspend my disbelief enough to almost never spot wrestlers slapping their legs on superkicks. All of my contempt for silly and illogical wrestling moves goes to the Panama Sunrise and that alone.

I find almost everything associated with WWE intolerable in a world where AEW exists, but let's not go saying things we can't take back about Sol Ruca and her spectacular finisher.

Anyone else reckon maybe they have Briscoe beat Ricochet to heat him up for a Moxley filler feud before All In? It'll be impossible to sell people on Moxley possibly dropping the title in June, may be a good way to kill time with a nice mini blood feud for a few weeks.

https://youtu.be/Ip5gWThSTHQ?si=AGh4451taIXiPpoQ Awesome, current best active band in the world The Armed did a concert film thing there a couple of years ago, looks like a great venue.

I'd love to see more stuff happen on a typical Dynamite, and more women's matches, and more of the roster featured. But the thought of that eight minute Eddie vs Finlay match enrages me. Who doesn't want to see those two have a match twice that long? AEW is about as good as American TV wrestling has ever been at maximizing actual wrestling and minimizing bullshit finishes and in ring talking segments, and it still has too many of those things. I'm not sure what the answer is, but more multi person matches are a great start. Make in ring talky segments, contract signings and such a very scarce occurence, what sport just allocates precious sport time to competitors talking at each other? Do a New Japan, emphasise short post match interviews, don't just tell your paying customers they have to spend 20 minutes watching MJF try to bribe people with sex workers when they could be watching a trios spotfest. Be wrestling for the sickos where only the best wrestle, leave the other guys to waste time and a month of Walter's career on jingoistic podcast bro fuckheads.

Hobbs was TNT Champion! Don't blame you for forgetting as QT Marshall ruined it by attaching himself to him to make sure he didn't get over.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm loving current New Japan. It's like a cup competition where all the favourites go out early and everything's there for the taking. The overall match quality is taking a hit without Okada, Ospreay and Naito when he could still go, but the intrigue is high. Callum Newman is about to challenge for the IWGP Title. Could he win it? Of course not, that would be fucking insane, but I kind of love that it's even a possibility. Gabe Kidd vs Yota Tsuji was one of the best matches I've seen in a long time, and it can't have hurt that they knew there are several gaping voids at the top of the card.

As a fellow Gunther enjoyer, I'm fine with him losing the fake World title and moving on to better things.

I did wonder about that, and I'm an English man who got into American football for a few years about 15 years ago to justify my Sky Sports subscription, but soon stopped following it because it didn't have promotion and relegation.

Thing about Malakai as a character is it does sort of massively undermine him to lose very often, certainly against anyone below the absolute top tier. But of course, he's the guy who came up with the character of 'tatted up, non-theistic diabolical mastermind who anticipates your every move and is an expert kickboxer.' Which is mainly based on who he actually is, to be fair, but still reads a bit too much like a 15 year old's efed creation.

I loved that Steiners theme, I think because it reminds me of sneaking downstairs as a kid to watch Royal Rumble 93, which started with their match vs The Beverly Brothers and was the first time I saw them. I was blown away by the Frankensteiner, and went to school humming their entrance music. It doesn't quite hold up, but I've never forgotten it in over 30 years.