S.K.o.S.

I didn't watch (not even clips) so I don't know exactly how he came across when he said it, but consider that "I'm here to make money" could mean "I'm here to cash a paycheck" or it could mean "I'm here to put on some good matches and cut some good promos". As many times as I've thought "SURELY they must know that this segment was bad" and been completely wrong, I do still give them enough credit to believe that everyone in the room, most of all Punk, knows that promo was completely disingenuous and that it's leading to something. Not planning on watching either way, though.

Fully agree with all this. Saw a take (I think it was on Twitter, hopefully it wasn't on here) that you couldn't do an upset tonight, because Mox and White needed wins to rebound from their ppv losses, and you couldn't have Swerve lose because he's hot right now and you don't want to cool him off. But the guy who said that didn't understand... at least in the G1... a round robin tournament is sort of self-contained, and losses in that tournament obviously count in terms of missing out on points in the tournament but kind of don't count in the bigger picture. It's a little tough to put into words, but I'm hoping some of you know what I'm talking about. Like a few years back, Chase Owens beat Tanahashi in the G1, and a bunch of people who probably don't watch New Japan got upset about it. I was like, it's fine! It's the G1! The G1 has upsets!

Also want to say that a round robin tournament like this is pretty much the only way we would ever get Jay White vs. Swerve in their current personas. A heel vs. heel match is rare, a matchup of arguably the two top heels in the company is extremely rare.

There's really nothing at all to complain about with that lineup. Like, on paper, there are no bad matchups. All we need is a couple of tournament-long narratives and a willingness to throw in a few upsets, and this will be an all-timer.

Buddy Matthews is sort of the perfect guy to put in this. Are they doing anything with him right now? Not really. Can he go 2-3 without being damaged too much? I think so. Do I want to see him in a bunch of singles matches? Absolutely.

There are 2 groups of 6 wrestlers. Call them Group A and Group B. Everyone will wrestle a singles match against everybody else in their group, so everyone will have 5 matches. At World's End, which will be after everyone has wrestled their 5 matches, the person with the best record in Group A wrestles the person with the best record in Group B. The winner of that match is the winner of the tournament. To answer your earlier question about whether this is the same as the G1 in terms of length and matches - the G1 has changed over the years, but in general this AEW tournament is shorter and easier. This tournament has fewer people in it which means fewer matches, and people will have more days off in between matches.

The lineup could be underwhelming for sure, but people also need to be realistic about it. I'm seeing people fantasy book it with the absolute top 12 guys in the company, which, there's no way. Somebody has to end up at the bottom of the pack going 0-5 or 1-4. Those people are probably going to be lower-tier wrestlers. I do think someone like an Action Andretti is much more likely to be in it than a Jeff Hardy. Someone who's not too broken down to wrestle 5 weeks of singles matches.

The best individual matches I ever saw live were Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka at November to Remember '99, and El Generico vs. Kota Ibushi at ROH in 2008. Both of these were helped by me not having high expectations - for whatever reason, I thought Awesome was nothing special going into that ECW show (?!?) and the Ibushi match was during his first ROH run and was my very first time ever seeing him. The best show as a whole that I saw live was day 3 of Chikara's King of Trios in 2012. Close runner-up was night 2 of the 2015 BOLA.

New wrestling crossword! https://twitter.com/avalanchestyle/status/1723362949115621516 Thumbs down to the tweet not embedding, because I photoshopped a crossword onto Muta's face and I think I did a pretty good job of it. Anyway, people seem to be enjoying this particular crossword, so take a look!

I heard there's an LFI vs. Workhorsemen match. Is the LFI team Rush and Dralistico?

I liked the show quite a bit. Good Dynamites are more "there were some good angles and segments" than "we got three MOTYCs" now, which is not what I'd prefer, but still.

It stands for Deadlock! The podcast guys got enough Patreon money to start their own indie fed.

New wrestling crossword!

Yes, Dynamite is on Tuesday next week

The "Early life" section of Edge's Wikipedia article says: "He has said to have never met his father, or even seen a picture of him". If you never knew your father, you'll never know whether he's dead.

I think he said a few days ago that he's not going to watch it - which would be too bad, because even if someone thought it was terrible they would still have to admit it was a very interesting match. My take on it is that, as much as people are saying they did, they didn't actually flip the face-heel alignment in any meaningful way. Hangman acknowledged that he was getting booed, and Swerve might have started using some flashier offense than he normally would have, but they had the same match they were going to have regardless of what the crowd did. I really liked the match, and I really liked that Swerve won, but I thought it suffered for them not being able to change things up on the fly.

New wrestling crossword! 2nd one this month, and the biggest one ever.

Oh, I should have mentioned I've got a bunch of invites as well.

This is a big part of what's keeping me on there (and thank you porksweats for doing the work to make sure people are aware of it)

So The Z, John from Cincinnati, and The Natural are the prize-winners. I'll be in your DMs at some point this weekend. Gotta look into getting region 2 DVDs for the Europeans...

UPDATE 20 OF 20 - through September 21 Standings 1 [- 1] The Z - 60 points (32/28, tiebreak 0.04) 2 [- 2] John from Cincinnati - 66 points (34/32, tiebreak 0.468) 3 [- 3] The Natural - 70 points (40/30, tiebreak 0.435) 4 [- 4] JRGoldman - 70 points (34/36, tiebreak 4.592) 5 [- 5] Rippa - 76 points (44/32, tiebreak 0.305) 6 [- 6] DreamBroken - 76 points (26/50, tiebreak 0.41) 7 [- 7] Kuetsar - 80 points (38/42, tiebreak 0.523) 8 [- 8] Phantom Lord - 86 points (42/44, tiebreak 0.631) 9 [- 9] S.K.o.S. - 90 points (40/50, tiebreak 0.272) 10 [- 10] Elsavajeloco - 90 points (36/54, tiebreak 0.646) 11 [- 11] Hail Sabin - 92 points (44/48, tiebreak 0.736) 12 [- 12] J.T. - 96 points (48/48, tiebreak 0.435) Box office 1 [- 1] Barbie - $545,782,865 (28 days) 2 [- 2] Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - $328,371,821 (28 days) 3 [- 3] Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - $312,511,454 (28 days) 4 [- 4] Oppenheimer - $274,631,735 (28 days) 5 [- 5] The Little Mermaid - $261,567,764 (28 days) 6 [- 6] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - $163,084,867 (28 days) 7 [- 7] Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 - $153,314,219 (28 days) 8 [- 8] Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - $141,723,312 (28 days) 9 [- 9] Fast X - $140,383,585 (28 days) 10 [- 10] Elemental - $116,589,287 (28 days) 11 [- 11] The Flash - $106,086,978 (28 days) 12 [- 12] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - $100,577,874 (28 days) 13 [- 13] Insidious: The Red Door - $79,530,087 (28 days) 14 [- 14] Meg 2: The Trench - $75,481,732 (28 days) 15 [- 15] Blue Beetle - $64,805,782 (28 days) 16 [- 16] Haunted Mansion - $60,156,861 (28 days) 17 [- 17] Gran Turismo - $40,258.539 (28 days) 18 [- 18] Asteroid City - $25,753,061 (28 days) 19 [- 19] Strays - $23,236,435 (28 days) 20 [- 20] Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken - $15,555,475 (28 days) Rotten Tomatoes 1 [- 1] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - 214/221 = 97% (28 days) 2 [- 2] Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 - 391/407 = 96% (28 days) 3 [- 3] Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - 327/341 = 96% (28 days) 4 [- 4] Oppenheimer - 420/450 = 93% (28 days) 5 [- 5] Barbie - 393/447 = 88% (28 days) 6 [- 6] Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - 297/363 = 82% (28 days) 7 [- 7] Blue Beetle - 199/255 = 78% (28 days) 8 [- 8] Elemental - 171/232 = 74% (28 days) 9 [- 9] Asteroid City - 214/291 = 74% (28 days) 10 [- 10] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - 271/391 = 69% (28 days) 11 [- 11] The Little Mermaid - 210/314 = 67% (28 days) 12 [- 12] Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken - 60/91 = 66% (28 days) 13 [↑ 14] Gran Turismo - 140/218 = 64% (28 days) 14 [↓ 13] The Flash - 226/352 = 64% (28 days) 15 [- 15] Fast X - 160/286 = 56% (28 days) 16 [- 16] Strays - 89/164 = 54% (28 days) 17 [- 17] Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - 112/210 = 53% (28 days) 18 [- 18] Insidious: The Red Door - 42/108 = 39% (28 days) 19 [- 19] Haunted Mansion - 90/236 = 38% (28 days) 20 [- 20] Meg 2: The Trench - 49/168 = 29% (28 days)

UPDATE 19 OF 20 - through September 14 Standings 1 [- 1] The Z - 60 points (32/28, tiebreak 0.04) 2 [- 2] John from Cincinnati - 66 points (34/32, tiebreak 0.468) 3 [- 3] The Natural - 70 points (40/30, tiebreak 0.435) 4 [- 4] JRGoldman - 70 points (34/36, tiebreak 4.592) 5 [- 5] Rippa - 76 points (44/32, tiebreak 0.305) 6 [- 6] DreamBroken - 76 points (26/50, tiebreak 0.41) 7 [- 7] Kuetsar - 80 points (38/42, tiebreak 0.523) 8 [- 8] Phantom Lord - 86 points (42/44, tiebreak 0.631) 9 [- 9] S.K.o.S. - 90 points (40/50, tiebreak 0.272) 10 [- 10] Elsavajeloco - 90 points (36/54, tiebreak 0.646) 11 [- 11] Hail Sabin - 92 points (44/48, tiebreak 0.736) 12 [- 12] J.T. - 96 points (48/48, tiebreak 0.435) Box office 1 [- 1] Barbie - $545,782,865 (28 days) 2 [- 2] Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - $328,371,821 (28 days) 3 [- 3] Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - $312,511,454 (28 days) 4 [- 4] Oppenheimer - $274,631,735 (28 days) 5 [- 5] The Little Mermaid - $261,567,764 (28 days) 6 [- 6] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - $163,084,867 (28 days) 7 [- 7] Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 - $153,314,219 (28 days) 8 [- 8] Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - $141,723,312 (28 days) 9 [- 9] Fast X - $140,383,585 (28 days) 10 [- 10] Elemental - $116,589,287 (28 days) 11 [- 11] The Flash - $106,086,978 (28 days) 12 [- 12] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - $100,577,874 (28 days) 13 [- 13] Insidious: The Red Door - $79,530,087 (28 days) 14 [- 14] Meg 2: The Trench - $75,481,732 (28 days) 15 [↑ 16] Blue Beetle - $64,805,782 (28 days) 16 [↓ 15] Haunted Mansion - $60,156,861 (28 days) 17 [- 17] Gran Turismo - $37,072,852 (21 days) 18 [- 18] Asteroid City - $25,753,061 (28 days) 19 [- 19] Strays - $23,236,435 (28 days) 20 [- 20] Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken - $15,555,475 (28 days) Rotten Tomatoes 1 [- 1] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - 214/221 = 97% (28 days) 2 [- 2] Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 - 391/407 = 96% (28 days) 3 [- 3] Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - 327/341 = 96% (28 days) 4 [- 4] Oppenheimer - 420/450 = 93% (28 days) 5 [- 5] Barbie - 393/447 = 88% (28 days) 6 [- 6] Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - 297/363 = 82% (28 days) 7 [- 7] Blue Beetle - 199/255 = 78% (28 days) 8 [- 8] Elemental - 171/232 = 74% (28 days) 9 [- 9] Asteroid City - 214/291 = 74% (28 days) 10 [- 10] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - 271/391 = 69% (28 days) 11 [- 11] The Little Mermaid - 210/314 = 67% (28 days) 12 [- 12] Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken - 60/91 = 66% (28 days) 13 [- 13] The Flash - 226/352 = 64% (28 days) 14 [- 14] Gran Turismo - 138/216 = 64% (21 days) 15 [- 15] Fast X - 160/286 = 56% (28 days) 16 [- 16] Strays - 89/164 = 54% (28 days) 17 [- 17] Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - 112/210 = 53% (28 days) 18 [- 18] Insidious: The Red Door - 42/108 = 39% (28 days) 19 [- 19] Haunted Mansion - 90/236 = 38% (28 days) 20 [- 20] Meg 2: The Trench - 49/168 = 29% (28 days)

Uh oh I forgot I need to update this. Will try to get it done today.

WrestleTix on Twitter has it as slightly over 2,500. They filled up the hard cam side, but there are pics of the full arena that look very bad. The only reason I can suggest is that so many big shows so fast is burning people out, and at the same time the shows that aren't big shows seem that much less important to attend.

Mailing out a money order and waiting a month and a half for tapes to get delivered, then watching them and being like "fuck, this match isn't THAT good"