NikoBaltimore

I forgot to mention that in the Discord but yeah Missy turned on Janela in the title match at Spring Break and sided with Blake. Also, I need to see more GCW but Blake is becoming much better as a shithead heel than he maybe ever was as a face. I'm sure he's playing both when doing the indies but I would love to see him back on ROH as a heel to see how he would fare.

It comes with two heads. @The NaturalYou can keep it in the packaging if you wish. If you take him out it should be relatively easy to put back in. I took out the Claudio one to get a better look and there were no issues putting him back in. And as much as I like the version with hair first thing I'm doing is swapping the head to bald/buzz one.

I wonder if anybody here would dare call the number for giggles. Yeah, that turned into one helluva music discussion that I was digging. But the Punk thing at the time did run out of steam so with the thread still open might as well talk about something awesome. With this one because it's a long-as-fuck legal process I'm exercising a bit of patience for once. I just hope it doesn't go to arbitration because that will be awful for Ms. Grant.

Just got paid and one of the first things I did was order it. Can't wait to get this and man that cover is incredible.

@The Natural I couldn't have ordered this ROH Daneilson figure fast enough. https://shop.jazwares.com/products/ring-of-honor-bryan-danielson?variant=41127142785097 Also, the Claudio one recently came to the house and it's incredible. I don't intend on getting every ROH figure they do (no, thanks on the Bucks and Kenny) But Danielson, Claudio and eventually The Briscoes sounds oh-so-right so I'll need to find a special spot for them.

Holy shit he did. https://twitter.com/tde_gif/status/1783691205399716178?t=YfhMGWpPn1DaoZtEXb37gw&s=19 Oh, right the draft itself. First third played out like many expected though it's to see some defensive picks recently.

At first glance it's fucking amazing but it lost the point of the article once they said it was an angle and he was protected. I mean yeah kayfabe's done for and all but they could have at least tried to go along with it since he'll likely be shown in a neckbrace for draft night. As for the show itself I liked it. The matches were fun and the gauntlet was a blast because once Ospreay came in I was like "I want these two to have a singles match!" "No, wait, I want THESE two to have a singles match!" and so on. No matter their placement in the company Will has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to opponents so I'm hoping if/when he wins the title we'll see defenses against some quality opponents. And the ending angle is fine and with Kenny back next week they have a plan that they're looking to quickly follow up on. I don't like evil authority angles either but willing to see how this plays out. Also, Adam Cole still has a long way to go in his recovery. He was carefully going down the steps on the ramp so while I like seeing him out there who knows when he's back wrestling.

Yeah, this was the first time I felt a need to watch something back on mute which is admittedly pretty odd. But yeah they were really great on commentary.

I wonder how much Graves and Barrett knew when they were commentating during Grimes's last SD match. They both agree he's really great but wasn't given any real opportunities once called up. Which unfortunately that's what it was for his main roster run. I would have thought HHH would have found something for him since he seemed to like him but I guess that didn't pan out. But Grimes will tear it up once back on the scene.

So I ended up watching this again. But in order to take out the crowd's part in the way Matt mentioned I decided to watch it on mute. It goes against what the point of wrestling is meant to do but I didn't want the crowd to influence my view of the match. On rewatch yeah it really fucking rules. The story beats worked with Danielson knowing early he was in for a rough ride so he had to dominate. Then when the top rope Tiger was done it almost snapped Will out of it and he rose to the occasion. From there it led to a wild third act and it came crashing down with the worked injury. It almost reminded me of The Beatles "I want you (she's so heavy)" in that it would build up and up and up then it suddenly got silent and it felt jarring. First time hearing that song I was not prepared but have grown to love it. The ending of this match was essentially it getting suddenly silent and I was in all kinds of "Wait, what?" mode. So yeah with Danielson's history of real and fake injuries no thank you. But watching the match back I realized I was so caught up in the moment that I didn't pay attention to 1. The Storm Driver being done as safe as possible and 2. The gravity of the situation in Will's reaction. He had that post-match as well as in the media scrum and with that context this is one time where the fake injury works. I just hope Danielson never goes fake injury route again. As for ranking the matches Natural mentioned I don't know. Daneielson/Omega was loved by me for emotional reasons and Danielson/Sabre was a technical dream match that I ate up with a giant spoon. This one was a mix of everything and it all just worked so beautifully. I think it's a bit soon for me to say where it compares to the other two. The shock of the end has worn off a good bit but I also want to see how this is followed up on Dynamite and a couple shows after. I feel if the fake injury was concerning for some it might be worth a rewatch.

I might end up re-watching this match sooner than anticipated. A lot's been said about the match but I never considered the crowd's part in this. I mean how can you not go batshit insane watching this? Yet your reasoning for the crowd missing out on something makes perfect sense. I know I was losing my mind at all that was going on and maybe missed out too. Maybe that's why the ending felt like a shock to me and snapped me out of the euphoria I was feeling. It's something to think about and thanks for that awesome write-up.

I think Liv will beat Becky either at Backlash or the Saudi show so I'm fine with her not getting it tonight.

If it was anybody else I might have been initially more open to what was being done. But because it was Danielson with his injury history plus the fake injuries he's done to mixed results I just had a hard time opening my mind to what he was doing. I was also hung up on the staredown>Blade>pinfall being a much better result that would have ended things on a super high for everybody. That said Tim's and John's posts just now are helping a lot with what was being done and I can appreciate it. The intention was to make the Storm Driver more deadly and if it works in the long run then it's worth the awkward ending. Maybe a rewatch will help though that might not be anytime soon. I think it's also going to help for me to separate as much as possible what happened with Danielson before and focus on this in a vacuum. But awkward ending or not that feels like a maybe top 5 all time AEW match. Also, on a separate note the St. Louis crowd was really fucking awesome throughout the night. They were into the stuff you'd expect and also helped make me care about a Strong/O'Reilly match that I initially had no real investment in. So kudos to them and whoever from here went.

We saw that Saturday and it was only us and another couple. We love the show and especially loved the movie. And yeah what you said in spoilers had us howling with laughter. I'm glad it was an actual movie and not some BS like Demon Slayer did/does where it's only showing two older episodes and one new a week before it came to Crunchyroll. If I knew it'd be that I would have held off on going.

I don't care what anybody says, there was no Jericho/Hook match. No, I don't want evidence to the contrary thank you very much. But aside from...whatever the fuck that was the show was fucking great with two absolutely incredible matches. If Danielson had a fake injury it ruined the finish but if it's real then I hope he's okay. They could have ended it with Staredown>Hidden Blade>Pin and it would have been damn near perfect. But before they went one step beyond the match was fucking exquisite. And Pac/Okada not only delivered on all fronts but the pacing made every big moment matter. I really loved the shit out of that match and if not for Ospreay/Danielson it would have been an easy MOTN. The takeaway I have right now past all that is Swerve is the champ. He talked about this in the All Out media scrum about this happening and how much he's put into making this happen. The guy has earned every bit of this and I'm incredibly happy for him. Now for the love of everything please put him on every great media outlet you can. The guy is a star and needs to be seen by as many as possible.

Well Collision looks like a damn fine show and also a fine way to celebrate a holiday. So on that note:

This whole thing is incredibly awful and I feel horrible for Nyla. But despite that I'm glad to know she's feeling the love.

Preach! I unashamedly lost my mind when the song played. And I'll gladly echo all that Greggulator said because holy fuck all the Sami related stuff ruled so hard.

What in the flying fuck?! I have to watch this. EDIT: Watching it again I absolutely need to and will see this match. I know Brian is hyping a match but what he said about technology is so very much me (though Transformers were cool!) But this match is gonna be so much fun.

Yeah, I'm focusing on the Collective stuff and will likely check a show or two from IWTV. Only one I saw from there for obvious reasons was the Dean show. But as long as work's not busy I'm hoping to be good by mid next week.

If there's no time travel then my wife will be devastated. Do I dare ask?

Yipes! My bad, had a mental lapse there as I was trying to quickly finish the post before clocking out. But hopefully I can meet you one day to thank you for putting up with my dumb ass over the years.

8 days removed and it feels surreal to me that all this happened. A show that was in some way run by and mainly for a bunch of folks on a message board and it just happened to have some really fucking incredible stuff going on. Like I've been trying to comment on this throughout the week and stopped because it was hard to wrap my head around it all. Yet when watching it back I realize two things. One, my fat ass was on the screen way more than I intended (I thought chilling in the corner would get me out of hard cam view) and two it did happen and it was fucking awesome. I can't say enough how great it was to finally meet @Rev Ray, @Pete, @Phil Schneiderand @Johnny Sorrowto thank them for all the years of awesomeness. And it was great to meet @S.K.o.S.and @Danwho was near me the whole time yet I didn't know until he mentioned in the Discord chat. I was a bit shy for a bit and wish I met more people but I felt a comfort in knowing whoever was there was taking in a wild show and it was for Dean. I also experienced a first in that for the first time ever a hardcore tag match got me oddly emotional. But when Tank and Manders are battling on chairs in front of Dean's chair and the crowd chanting his name how the hell can you not be? As for the show itself I have seen a couple folks when watching random indy stuff but the only one I saw before this was Slim J. So it made me compare this to a concert. There's many a concert where I would go to let's say Metallica and you know what you're getting. But then there's random concerts that sound neat that all goes well end up fucking incredible. This was an instance of the latter for me and I became a fan that night of folks like Krule and of all teams the Ugly Sucklings. I definitely need to keep an eye out for them. And I sure as hell didn't expect Violence if Forever to show up but holy bats there they were so that's cool to say I finally saw them live. If I thought about this more maybe I could have tried a road report like I've been reading all these years. But I wouldn't do it justice so hopefully the truncated version of everything works. Anyway it was a fucking great time and I'll be looking forward to the DVD.

Another year passes and here I still am trying to catch up on the Mania weekend shows. I hope there's others in the same boat but there's been a lot of good shit going on. Hell, I just now saw Ruckus in a tag match and Faye Jackson make her return on the For the Culture show so it's fun seeing these surprises since I didn't see the card beforehand. Also, honest question but has anybody here actually managed to catch all the WM weekend shows within a day or two after it happened? There's been so many that you would you have to be a zombie to have time to catch it all and not cheat by skipping through some matches.

The zoomed in smirk makes it much better. Well done.