SturmCRF

It has to literally be old news if it pertains to AEW Dark (RIP). Not sure how anyone would distinguish Rush shooting on someone from any other given Rush match, but that Blake Christian is a crafty one, didn't he somehow have a thing with Cora Jade, despite looking like Blake Christian? He must be really funny.

Shit on why? That match sounds like great fun. If it's because The Learning Tree are exactly the kind of nonsense Moxley claims to be against, I agree, but maybe that will play out in the match?

They've had Claudio Castagnoli winning matches by cheating. It's total cowardice, either push them as a bunch of dangerous thugs who might just have a point when they claim the rest of AEW is soft, or don't bother. Not all heels need to cheat to win, MJF sure, Ren Narita yes, Pac and Claudio and Moxley?! It's lazy, it's the same logic that gives us first fall wins three and four way matches. Grow some balls and have guys lose, it makes the wins mean more. The promos are good though.

They should have debuted someone. I would have even been excited to see Hikuleo debut in the Roman vs Solo match. He's one of the least exciting wrestlers you'll ever see, but he'd be new in this context, and novelty is the lifeblood of pro wrestling. Debuts and returns are much easier to do than all time classic matches like Omega vs Kidd, and the company controls when they happen. Why didn't anyone from NXT get a callup for this show? Everything moves like treacle, I should feel like I'm missing out only watching the PPVs, and if anything it feels like I only need to bother with three of them a year.

I thought Punk vs Rollins was decent from what little I absorbed while baby wrangling but the show as a whole was as intensely dull as it has been for several years. Yeah, the presentation is better and they say 'wrestling', but they also have even less of it than ever and parcel it out in a sea of filler and dross like they're doing the viewer a favour. That's not to even get into the Hulk Hogan, Riyadh Season plumbing of the depths, which I guess I'm complicit in if I still watch sometimes, but Jesus fuck.

One of my few shining moments at university was drunkenly DDTing a pinâta at a house party and cleanly decapitating it. Considering that's the only time I've ever even seen a pinâta in this country, and that this was on a concrete patio and I managed not to injure myself, the whole thing seems like something out of a fever dream, but I have excellent drunk recall and it definitely happened.

I often just let the Rampage ad break theme play while I go and get a drink or check my phone, mainly so I can mutter along to the theme. It's definitely Balls Are Made Of Stone, I refuse to countenance it being bones.

Didn't it end with Samoa Joe beating MJF to become world champ? I liked that PPV!

Preston Vance can pretend to be English and have a mild speech impediment, right?

Speaking with all the authority of a soft southerner, I think the default stereotype of the Geordie is of an amiable but semi feral alcoholic who rarely wears a shirt even in freezing temperatures, so Pac sort of half fits. But usually when people picture a Geordie caricature it's 80% the tragic former footballer Paul Gascoigne bringing chicken and a fishing rod to an on-the-run murderer, with 15% Michael The Geordie from Alan Partridge throwing a monkey in the sea and 5% the cast of Geordie Shore talking about tashing on and going to get some scran. And throw in light entertainment double act Ant and Dec, who I can think of no US equivalent for. Maybe the Street Profits back when they acted as an irritating Greek chorus for Monday Night Raw, but if they were really short white guys being witty about disgraced politicians eating cockroaches in an Australian jungle. This tangent won't have explained Pac any better to most of you though, I'm sorry.

He isn't from Scotland. He's from Newcastle, one of the most northern parts of England where the accent and dialect can be even less intelligible than some parts of Scotland.

That's a tough one. The Better Lovers album disappointed me a bit, though I owe it some more listens, but I love the EP and live they were phenomenal. I think Greg's choruses at their best are genuinely as good as it gets, but his screamy vocals can't quite live up to the unmatched expressiveness of Keith Buckley. I have grown to love Calculating, but it will still only ever represent half of what makes Dillinger my all time favourite band, because once Greg joined they made five albums in a row of exactly what I want music to sound like. Melody and noise both up to 11 in a beautiful mad intertwining dance. I 100% respect the sentiment of your preferring Better Lovers though, I don't trust the impulse to rate stuff based on its influence and make every band's early material a sacred cow that can't be topped, even when they spend nearly two decades building and improving on it. I am really happy and relieved that they added Ricochet vs Takeshita to this PPV.

Yeah, they're doing a Dimitri era reunion tour. No suggestion of any new material, but I'm trying not to begrudge them the pay day, even if I will always be a Greg guy.

He really did. It was a relatively slow and arty track off the Arc EP I'm pretty sure, rather than one of their 5 second long seizures where they shriek about doing acid joining a cult, but still.

I enjoy Malakai as a wrestler, but I really love that he has good, eclectic taste in music. That Amenra theme is maybe the best wrestling entrance of all time. And in Progress Wrestling he came out to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, so he's not just into big scary beard dude music, he's also into small scary craft beer guy music. He's like me if I was taller, more handsome, better at fighting people, and Dutch. His promos are a bit rambly and bollocks though.

Having Okada cheat to win when he doesn't have to, to emphasise what a heel he is, is fine in isolation. Doing it in a company where most of the heels cheat to win already, and more matches than not seem to end in interference, is a load of shite and bollocks. He's fucking Okada, just have him beat people clean, because he's fucking Okada, and then be a dickhead about it afterwards.

Young lion from the class between Tsuji/Ren/Yuya/Shota and the current crop whose names I have yet to internalise, currently excursioning in Noah. I haven't seen much of his Noah stuff, but from what I have seen of him there and in New Japan, he looks like a future star. Good charisma, hits hard, built like a tank, I get no credit for stating the obvious and predicting Tokyo Dome main events in his future.

Oh yeah, I really like Tsuji and he should definitely be a multiple time IWGP champ, his actual wrestling just doesn't excite me as much as the other four. He's pretty damned good though, and has loads of charisma. Umino also should have enough to be a top guy there, but he needs some sort of heel turn or general grittening up. Plus Gabe Kidd, heavyweight Dan Moloney and Clark Connors and Kevin Knight... The future of New Japan is bright, if AEW doesn't poach all their best dudes.

One of the mid card titles would be fine for now, but the long term plan for Takeshita should be a face turn and a World Title reign. If not, he might as well go to New Japan and trade the IWGP with Zack, Uemura and Oiwa in a glorious new golden age.

Scurll, always seemed like a midcarder posing as a main event guy to me. The aura of sleaziness was also offputting long before 2020. Shawn Michaels is largely responsible for the only time I've stopped watching wrestling since 1991, I just couldn't stomach him as a babyface main eventer, and when I was 11 I didn't really have the option of migrating to ECW or Japan. More controversially, I was never as big a fan of Eddie Guerrero as a lot of people. I was still delighted when he beat Brock, but I don't think I fully appreciated how great he was in real time, and even though he made the whole cheating routine as charming as it was possible to make it, I'd prefer it if most heels didn't cheat, let alone faces.

I used to try and watch every WWE PPV live for years, until I realised I didn't have to/moved out and could no longer rely on my parents waking me up for work the next day. Originally it was because I had frenemies at school who would eagerly spoil me on anything significant that happened if I hadn't already watched it the night before. During the Attitude era I didn't even bother to watch the matches a lot of the time, if I hadn't watched live and didn't have three hours spare I'd just zip to the end and see who'd turned on who. There were also several years where I'd watch RAW live, staying up til 4AM drinking Red Bull, eating cottage cheese and Sweet Chilli crisps like a gremlin, and then wasting several doctors' valuable time trying to get to the bottom of why I had really bad acid reflux.

Unless I hallucinated it, he turned up and wrestled Danielson a couple of years ago. Those two definitely have a better match in them, but I remember it being quite good.

The bit where Danielson hit the first running knee, and Swerve just leaned into it like an Ishii and did his sicko deathmatch grin was fucking perfection. Talk about a wrestler who knows his character, he played a relentless heel like he needed to without ever being inconsistent with his character up to that point. That's the whole Attitude Era-ey shades of grey thing done right, Swerve as this focused, ruthless, amoral bastard who will accept the cheers and the hatred as they come, so long as his current actions help him to win the match and be the best.

Vicarage Road. 20,000 capacity will be perfect, get Elton John in to do the Collision theme, and I can walk home afterwards. Maybe a special appearance from Tom Cleverley, managing Troy Deeney in his Wrestlemania 2 style boxing match against Anthony Ogogo.

I loved MITB for years because it was like a sneak preview of who the next first time world champion was going to be. The MITB winner almost always cashed in successfully, and at least half the time they were winning a major title for the first time. What ruined it for me was, when Big E won it and cashed in, finally having someone point out the pattern that it was their way of pushing someone without actually pushing them. 'Here's our guy, he can't beat Bobby Lashley fair and square and will be soundly dismissed by the first real main eventer who crosses his path, but we're throwing you a bone with something fresh until Wrestlemania season starts'. AEW are always happy to actually push their World Champions, so in that sense it shouldn't be as bad when they do it, but it's still an unnecessary WWE booking crutch and I wish they'd steer well clear of those. Let's keep the mix about 75% New Japan, 20% ECW and 5% WWE.