SturmCRF

I enjoy him as a heel, but I never got what people were on about when they talked about him as a great pure babyface. He always came across as a sleazy hippy who needed a punch and had an annoying voice, which is at least perfect for mid level Bullet Club goon.

I just sounded that out loud to myself, and holy shit, now I sound like Jesse Ventura too.

Acclaimed have to win, but I'd like to see both Swerve and Lee pushed up into the main event scene as a consolation soon afterwards, maybe even without feuding or splitting. It needs some freshening up, and they both have untapped, exciting first time matches with almost all the usual suspects.

I really like Athena. Her gimmick isn't that complicated, she's a nerd who likes cosplaying whatever her character is in this year's mega D&D campaign, and has a disgustingly cool finisher, what's not to love?

Fat Spanish Waiter.

Got me and my girlfriend tickets for night one yesterday, they'd sold all the (relatively) cheap ones and it's in the arse end of London, so both nights would be pushing it. Logic says to go for the show that has FTR vs Aussie Open, and doesn't involve a three hour trek back on a Sunday. Very disappointed to see no Yano though. What's all this Hikuleo, Good Brothers and Gedo shit?! Leave them where you found them and send the true king of New Japan, you cowards. 2/3 falls dog cage match with Lord Gideon Gray, or I will personally riot. Genuinely, the only two things that might tempt me to night two are an IWGP title match, or Yano.

I kept confusing Rick Grimes and Frank Grimes when people made this comparison, and have been picturing CM Punk running around chewing on electrical cables and antagonising Miro because Tony Khan lets the Young Bucks do it.

Yuta is totally taking Garcia's place in the JAS.

It looked to me like Tony was part trapped by the situation, where he couldn't put his foot down and tell Punk to stop in front of everyone without escalating things and becoming the story, and part enraptured like most wrestling nerds would have been by seeing an insane, juicy, bridge burning, historical meltdown happen right in front of him.

Absolutely with you on the Wild Card match, such a great concept. They've flirted with something similar with other Survivor Series matches when the brand warfare thing is happening, but never done it as well.

That is Larry the dog, and I'm on his side (and I guess Punk's) in all this. If I had such a magnificent beast and anyone upset him in any way I would absolutely punch their face, moreso if they were any sort of Young Buck.

Bobby Fish immediately going to 'God-fearing' when listing the Bucks' good qualities gives me the heebie jeebies and brings to mind Drake Younger's leering, bigoted orange face. No ever really refuted the rumours that Fish was also a QAnon C.H.U.D, did they?

Really great show overall, but soiled by Tyson Fury showing up at the end. He is to me like Hulk Hogan is to The Natural, except he hates an even wider range of minorities, and has contributed precisely nothing to pro wrestling. Still, loved seeing Imperium reunited, and lots of high quality matches in front of a huge, red hot crowd, I'll take it.

I dunno, in sheer star rating terms, sure, but I'd rather see something fresh like Lee and Swerve vs The Acclaimed for the tag titles than have Young Bucks always in the title picture. All three of the matches you've mentioned should be good fun at worst, and we'll get FTR vs Bucks 3 eventually. The more titles they put on FTR the more of a political minefield it'll be to eventually have them lose any of them, so I see why they're not in a rush to give them the AEW belts.

I had a dream that I somehow bumped into Brock Lesnar in the supermarket, and it turned out he had absolutely no understanding of maths, so I felt obliged to try and explain it to him. It was a bit of a minefield, because what I didn't want to do was make him feel like an idiot and get F5'd through the organic foods cabinet. There was a lot of trying to explain things in terms of how many hours a day he spends watching American Football.

Jobbing out House Of Black to Dark Order, via Miro turning up and just battering 2/3 of them, while his music played, without a DQ, is maybe the worst thing AEW have ever done? Not that the rest of the show was much to write home about, but that WWE level bullshit took me right out of it.

I thought she'd had a couple of fights, but you're right, it's just one. Obviously she's no Valentina Shevchenko, but if she was confident enough in her skills to have a cage fight with someone (and she did at least make it to a decision), she'd probably believe she could do some damage to someone who spends most of her days rennovating teeth. I give CM Punk some credit for his MMA skills, just not a fraction of the credit I'd give someone who'd ever actually won an MMA fight. I do respect him for giving it a go and presumably training hard for it, even if he did get his face pushed in, twice.

Maybe it's one of those ones where because she's a trained MMA fighter, she wants to avoid confrontation with someone she can't stand, but could easily tear limb from limb if she lost her self control? Seems like it'd be easier to just apologise for the nose breakage, but now we're just speculating about speculation.

People keep saying this, but why wouldn't they? They do other singles matches and tag matches when those divisions have tournaments going on, or titles being decided elsewhere on a show. In fact, I'd say that having another trios match on the PPV is a good thing, as it demonstrates that there is a trios division, and that it is hotly contested. Plus they can main event the following week's Dynamite with House Of Black defending their newly won titles against FTR-dlow.

I don't like Moxley in the ladder match, because he's obviously not losing it there, killing any suspense in the ladder match. Having the winner face him in the main event would work, but I'd have thought they want a known main event to promote. Then again, we're ten days out and they don't have one yet...

Totally missed that we were getting Billy vs Colten too. Definite 5AM alarm tomorrow.

This one might call for a 5AM start tomorrow so I can watch before work. Not often there's a big title match where I genuinely have no idea what might happen. MJF return? Hangman Page run in? Mox or Punk win clean? Hook sends himself to challenge the winner for All Out?

Not to sugarcoat NXT getting battered by AEW, or go too hard on defending Gargano, but I still think the problem with NXT during that run wasn't the wrestlers, it was the stagnation. For years pre AEW, there were two main hooks - who will win a title, and who will transcend winning a title to get called up to the main roster? At a certain point they drastically reduced the number of call ups and the pushes of those called up, a lot of the main names had already won and lost the title, and on a meta level it started being a story about former indie stars fighting forever in purgatory. Titles in NXT used to be like a Money In The Bank briefcase where you had to lose them to someone else to cash in the prize of getting called up and getting a substantial push. As soon as they started presenting them as an end in themselves, and having wrestlers express their wish to win them multiple times, the whole machine was fucked up. Wanting your favourites to lose so they could get ascended to the big leagues wasn't ideal, but at least it was compelling, and leant itself to constant regeneration and novelty. AEW would have beaten NXT anyway, but to make it closer WWE either needed to double down on making it a third brand, with bigger stars and no developmental aspect, or turn the intrigue of who would get promoted to the big shows into its main hook.

This just reminded me how much PPVs miss theme music, and nu-metal specifically. It even lends gravitas to Eric Bischoff and Bill Kidman. Doesn't matter how stupid it is, wrestling is usually stupid. As most of us will agree, even Limp Bizkit can sound profound if you play it over footage of Stone Cold and The Rock giving each other a punch. No PPV music, like no PPV specific sets, makes everything seem very budget and low rent, when the sense of spectacle is one of the main things WWE should have going for it. This seems like an easy win for HHH, just chuck Code Orange and Poppy in a studio together for a few weeks and you'll have people feeling hyped up and emotional for that Karrion Kross vs Madcap Moss iron man main event in no time.

I didn't mind some of the video game signs, at least at first when there was a bit of wit (or at least displays of actual good taste in videogames) to some of them. All of the Youtuber or podcast in joke signs should be burnt, however, and those responsible executed by the state, or at least firmly told to stop it. 'Simon give me an up'? How about you and Simon both fuck off into a large bin and stop trying to publicise obnoxious influencer nonsense on my TV?