SturmCRF

I'll get the Xbox version so my girlfriend and I can play each other, as that happens to be the console I have two controllers for. If anyone else Xboxes and wants a game, I will mainly be playing Hook.

Oh yeah, fair. And the Cody match come to think of it, the ending was garbage but the preceding match was pretty special.

Yeah, good call. I tend to let my personal dislike of AJ Styles cloud my opinion of him, but his matches vs Brock and Roman were excellent.

Has to be the Mania match with Brock at, I think, Wrestlemania 31, that Seth interrupted. Best Roman singles ever, maybe the last great match either man had that wasn't against Bryan Danielson?

Parts of it were genuinely very sad, but there were also several points where I laughed as hard as I ever have in my life.

I mainly agree with this, but I'd argue it's more weak from the perspective that no one can imagine any way MJF doesn't retain. The mistake isn't doing this match, it's failing to build it so that any of the other three pillars can really win. They've badly telegraphed MJF having a long, 2002 HHH kind of a reign, and it's therefore very tough to create any interest in his defences only a couple of PPVs into it. Wardlow win some time in 2024 is probably predestined, which would be good long term storytelling but also very boring until then when you can see it coming. And I say this as a huge AEW fan, but one who thinks their world title scene has nearly always suffered from this to some extent. Give me chaos, I want Swerve as champion, or Malakai, or Fenix. I want them to put the belt on a Sanada, whose title reign will be interesting as long as it lasts because you always wonder if they'll cut bait and put it on the challenger.

I only found out about this just now, (while listening to the excellent Okada's Shorts podcast), and was just about to alert everyone else to it if nobody had yet. I was undecided on getting Rev Pro tickets in case AEW ended up doing a live Collision somewhere in London on the same night. I know they almost certainly won't, as part of the draw of All In is it being their UK debut and Rev Pro are fellow NJPW partners, but still wanted to be sure. Now? Signed straight up for the pre sale, because what the fuck could AEW even run on Collision that would make me regret seeing Ospreay vs Shingo live?

It wasn't top tier by any means, but I thought she came off quite well. The bits where she got angry looked to me like she was trying to be heelish, while sticking to the spirit of things. Ruby Soho's was one of the worst, because she was a face at the time, but seemed very touchy and genuinely put out by some of RJ's questions. And Andretti, because he just came across as a bit dim. Mark Briscoe, Hobbs/Starks and Danielson stick out to me as the Hey! EW pinnacle. Saraya's also stood out as doing more to make her likeable than anything she did on actual TV before she turned.

A friend of mine was recommending this show to me just a couple of weeks ago, but there were too many episodes and I didn't know where to start. Now I have my answer!

She wasn't there at the beginning, when it was daylight, was she? So maybe she drove from Baltimore to North Carolina while The Firm were trapped in the space/time continuum, and arrived at night when they all returned to this layer of temporal reality. Or, thanks to her Fallen Goddess powers, Athena contemptuously referring to the ROH interviewer as Lexy on that show on Thursday caused multiple other Lexy Nairs to spawn throughout the Eastern United States, and one of these newly corporealised Lexys Nair blindly followed her journalistic instincts to seek out the Hardy Compound, knowing that a great happening was about to occur. Ignore all that if she was already there at the start though, then there's no plausible explanation.

Also, in case anyone hasn't seen Dan Moloney since the WWE UK tournament, he's reeeeeally fucking great now. Hardly a junior, but then neither was Shingo when he was in BOSJ, and he ruled too.

My girlfriend and I will be at Forbidden Door from deepest north London, I'd be up for that. I regretted not really interacting with anyone when I went to Wrestle Kingdom five years ago, this sounds fun.

Rest In Peace Dean. I feel so sorry for your family, and everyone here who knew you personally. Absolute legend, you seemed like one of the best dudes ever and it seems pretty unanimous on here that that's because you absolutely were. From now on, whenever the thought even flashes across my mind that I'm watching too much wrestling, I promise to remind myself that DEAN would watch even more wrestling than that, and keep on going.

It's hard to separate DEAN from this magical place that's fed and nurtured my love of wrestling for literally half my life, but his ability to be endlessly positive about it while simultaneously having a sharp critical eye must have osmosed into my brain over the years, because I try to apply that to everything and it's immeasurably improved my life. I definitely used to be a much more miserable individual, and he's been one of the best examples I've ever come across of how to just really fucking enjoy the things you enjoy, and waste as little time as possible on all the rest. Not to make this about me, but so many people have already written most of the things I would have liked to say, so seconding all of that, too. Best wishes to him and his family, get well soon. Benj

I got basically the same tier of tickets, a couple of sections along. Should be close enough to see the wrestlers doing wrestling, but not so close that I'm paying £1000 per seat for a show that isn't even guaranteed to be main evented by Orange Cassidy vs Toru Yano.

You just saved me a lot of time and effort writing basically the same thing, thanks. I'm a huge AEW fan, but I agree with a lot of AK's criticisms, it's just that they're mostly very small fry for me compared to what I like. Jungle Boy and Sammy suck at promos, agreed, but I like watching a company that lets them try and fail. I don't like reading most of what AK says because it makes me feel worse about something I enjoy, but I'm capable of having my opinion challenged. Where it comes across as disingenuous is in how little criticism I see from him towards WWE, and how a lot of his praise of them, and forgive me if I'm conflating this with someone else's take, is that they're good because they're doing record business and are currently very popular with the mainstream wrestling fan. Which, for me, is a bit too close to the 'Ed Sheeran/Coldplay must be great artists because they sell out stadiums and do billions of Spotify listens' school of criticism. It's one thing to deconstruct the issues with AEW and make me question the fact that it's the best weekly TV wrestling show in history, but good luck making a convincing case for current WWE not being mainly a travesty still.

I have! Three times, I think. Excellent fun, not insanely loud, but I think the UK has some sort of upper noise limit these days. I saw SunnO))) in a theatre in Birmingham before that though, and that has to be the loudest, I was stuffing tissues in my ears so I didn't go deaf or shit myself.

Thanks a lot dude, much appreciated! It's on Sunday. I will be spending it in a sling as some idiot teenager dropped me on my shoulder on Tuesday, but on the plus side the arm is looking and feeling a lot better now than it did then. Going for a Chinese with some friends tomorrow and having sushi with the family on Sunday, so I will be very well fed. And it was very considerate of AEW to do a Saturday Rampage for me to watch the next day.

Chad Gable beats Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins.

You're right. I don't think I outright said it was on TV for any significant time before AEW, but I guess I implied it. I'd maintain it was a Being A Good Wrestling Show success though, and its decline largely coincided with having to compete for ratings with AEW. Less time for new acts to find their feet, while anyone who had a hint of potential star power got grounded there for an indefinite and storyline ruining duration.

Yeah, I'd love to see the cranky maniac back, but not at the cost of a brand split. I haven't officially retired from the joys of the pit, but in a post Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die world, it's rare I feel compelled. I do four gym sessions, two Judo lessons and a 10K run pretty much every week, so I guess I'll either maintain an excellent level of fitness for my age or evaporate into a fine mist by about 42. Only major injury so far is a torn meniscus last year, but I think that was 90% a 180lbs man falling on me and only 10% age or genetics.

Cheers mate! Yup, I remembered that we were basically the same age, the early 90's WWF UK media offensive took so many young minds.

Wait, is he? And don't we? I'm of Polish descent on both sides and 38 next week, I hope my bones don't start exploding whenever I leap triumphantly over a barricade into a melee of people.

I'm not an Adam Cole fan at all, and could probably list 50 guys I'd rather seen pushed at a main event level than him, but it's not really fair to blame him on AEW beating NXT. NXT is a developmental show/indy wrestler storage facility that was put up against AEW to disrespect the competition and set up HHH to fail at something. As soon as NXT went head to head with AEW it was doomed, because it trapped your Ciampas, Garganos and Coles in a stagnant treadmill of bullshit, forcing them to pretend they were part of a viable third brand. It gummed up the works, undermined the headliners' characters by making them look like losers with no ambition to go to WWE proper and fight for the big boy belts. Pre AEW, NXT always had some mix of novelty, with a regular churn of new wrestlers and gimmicks (which is the main thing keeping it watchable now, for all the bad acting and Shawn Michaels over emoting), and indy dream matches. Once AEW was on the scene, anyone with more of an interest in the wider world of wrestling could go elsewhere for their dose of work rate, and even the WWE die hards must have been confused by the sudden end to main roster ascension, and new wrestlers finding their feet no longer being trusted to draw a rating now there was a war on. The happiest I ever was to see Adam Cole was when he debuted, as part of a CM Punk and Bryan Danielson debut sandwich. He's perfect as a roster depth guy, who's good enough to meet the level of his opponent and over enough to be a credible sometime main eventer. He just shouldn't be allowed to turn every match into a neverending finisher and kickout exchange, and no wrestling show should be allowed to become the Adam Cole hour, solely focused on the travails and doings of Adam Cole.

I feel like I went to many a metal club night in Birmingham in the mid '00s featuring at least fifteen couples who looked approximately like Rhea Ripley with Pac.