tbarrie

Wait, what? I tried googling this but found nothing relevant.

So does it, like, hold the beverage without spilling even when you're walking with the crutch? That would require some clever engineering, I would think.

Have Top Flight actually beaten the Bucks? If so, the circumstances must not have been as memorable as Private Party taking them out of the original title tournament. This is similar to my initial reaction to Cole saying Wardlow would hand him the title. I didn't groan because they were duplicating what Christian and Luchasaurus were doing, I groaned because it seemed like they were planning to redo the MJF-Wardlow story with Cole in MJF's place. And granted, Wardlow's peak overness was when he finally destroyed Max, but I'm not convinced running the same story again will produce the same results. Meant to mention this earlier, but it was gratifying to hear a crowd chant "Luchasaurus" at him. I'm genuinely surprised crowds haven't been doing that since Christian mandated the name change.

I agree with Curt. I'm not sure what the expression on Wardlow's face after Cole said that was precisely, but it didn't look to me like "I'm fine with that.".

Takeshita's a lot taller than Darby. So close enough.

<shrug> It's entirely possible I've scrolled past his name any number of times, but it didn't register. Sorry, but the reference means nothing to me. I've never watched or listened to a scrum. I'm honestly not 100% convinced that "scrum" is even a word.

Okay. I hadn't heard of him before this thread. If your prior knowledge of him leads you to conclude that it's unlikely this was simple stupidity on his part, I'll accept that.

I think we're generally in agreement, but I'm less than certain on that point. It seems plausible to me that he could have just picked a stupid example and not thought about the implications. Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity and all that. Again, I don't think it matters in terms of his being liable for the damage done to Jericho's reputation. I suppose if Jericho wanted to go for punitive damages he'd want to establish that it was done out of malice. (And this Hausman guy apparently going on a podcast a couple of days later and essentially saying he was trying to damage Jericho's reputation, just not that much, would probably Jericho. It also in my opinion supports the "He's an idiot" theory.) I think everyone's in agreement that AEW would prefer there be no lawsuit. But AEW's interests and Jericho's interests are not necessarily aligned here.

The thing of it is, he didn't even bring it up, assuming the quote somebody posted earlier in the thread is accurate. He merely said Jericho had done bad things, then used Harvey Weinstein as an example of what happens when your bad deeds come to light. He neither said nor logically implied that Jericho's specific misdeeds were in any way similar to Weinstein's. Legally, of course, I don't think that matters much if at all. To reinforce what you said earlier, to the best of my knowledge under civil law words are no different from other actions, and you can in fact be liable for any consequences of your words that a reasonable person could have predicted. I think a reasonable person could conclude that accusing Jericho of wrongdoing than immediately mentioning Weinstein could lead an incautious listener to think he had said Jericho was guilty of the same things Weinstein was, and that this would spark a shitstorm that would be damaging to Jericho's reputation.

They explicitly won the title shot that the Young Bucks earned on 1 Oct 2023. Since Starks and Bill weren't champions until 8 Oct, it would be odd if the shot had that caveat attached.

According to Steam: 73% of my playtime was spent on Old World. That's higher than I would have guessed, but not a lot higher. Old World is a Civ-like that combines 4X mechanics with a Crusaders King-style system of characters and random events. Turns out the combination works really well. There's another expansion coming out this month, so I expect it'll rack up decent numbers in 2024 as well. 9% was spent playing Tropico 6. I forgot about this when I was speculating what games would top my list, mainly because I played it almost entirely back in February. Decent enough diversion, but the default sandbox mode is really easy, and I couldn't be bothered to go over all the options to figure how to make it a challenge. 8% each was spent on Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, which are from the same developer and similar enough that I'll discuss them together. But I can't really discuss the mechanics without giving spoilers, because the games deliberately have no tutorials; the developer wants you to experience a "What the heck am I doing here?" feeling when you start, and honestly that's when they're at their best. Hours is by far the more forgiving of the two; you can expect to die early your first few attempts at Cultist, whereas I don't think you can die in Hours. To my knowledge the worst thing a mistake in Hours can do is cause you to have wasted the time performing multiple previous actions (which is arguably more annoying than dying). 1% was spent on Return to Monkey Island, which I really should finish. I remember thinking as I went through Chapter 3 that things were rushing to a conclusion more quickly than I'd like. Then I got to chapter 4, which as I recall was titled "Things get complicated", and I was felt it may have gone too far the other way. I've already gotten enough fun out of this to justify its low price, but I still want to finish it. Some day. I should see if I can tease a similar list out of my Xbox account.

Doesn't DC reboot their multiverse every year or two anyway nowadays?

How messed up are we talking? If she is the Devil, she's probably not the one wrestling the blow-off match with MJF anyway. So if she can walk and talk but not work a match, it could still be her.

Assuming Joe is only slated for a brief title run (which I think would be likely, as Joe is no spring chicken), then his being the third most important guy in the angle wouldn't be a disaster in my opinion.

Honestly, "You can do whatever you want yourself, but you can't bring a fucking army in to beat down your opponent" makes a lot more sense to me than the way No-DQ matches have traditionally been handled in wrestling. I mean, I'm no fan of three-way matches always being No DQ, but the idea that it makes no sense for the "no interference or else" clause to still be in effect seems like an odd take to me.

Honestly, "You can do whatever you want yourself, but you can't bring a fucking army in to beat down your opponent" makes a lot more sense to me than the way No-DQ matches have traditionally been handled in wrestling. I mean, I'm no fan of three-way matches always being No DQ, but the idea that it makes no sense for the "no interference or else" clause to be in effect just because it was seems like an odd take to me.

MJF. The ultimate explanation will likely involve time travel or the multiverse.

Can you elaborate on what assumptions you think I'm making? I'm unclear on what you're trying to say at this point.

Okay, but did they provide any sort of explanation as to why there weren't constant double teams in Three Way Dances? Or did they just figure no one would care? You can arguably get around the problem by only booking three-way matches when all three people hate each other enough that an alliance is unlikely, no matter how strategically advantageous it would be. But modern promoters use them for things like tournament tiebreakers where that wouldn't necessarily apply. And maybe I'm being unfair. I mean, thinking about it further I do allow genre conventions to override the "humans should act like humans" rule to some extent. I'm fine with superheroes having secret identities, for example, even if the reason why they keep them a secret is sometimes shaky. I suppose the difference is that secret identities have been part of the modern superhero genre since its beginning in Action Comics #1, while three-way matches have only been a part of wrestling for what, thirty years or so? Maybe they're too recent an addition for me to just accept that wrestlers mostly stick to the spirit of the match just because.

The show will be entirely Gunther matches.

I think it is, because there's more than one way a work can be unrealistic. I have no problem with wrestling physics. I mean, I watch all sorts of genres with fantastic elements. If I can deal with superpowers and dragons and God knows what, I can certainly accept that in wrestling running into ring ropes causes you to bounce back and continue running uncontrollably. Why not? But allegedly human characters who don't act like humans are a bigger problem for me. And in an elimination-style triple threat, two competitors working together until the third is eliminated is so obviously the best strategy that pretty much every match should play out that way, which would get repetitive. And yeah, ganging up on one competitor is a pretty good strategy in a single-pin triple threat too. But in that style of match, when the alliance breaks down the third person is still in the match, which opens a lot more possibilities.

The problem with elimination three-ways is that it could never possibly work in a real sport. Though how big a problem that is for pro wrestling is debatable, of course.

Also, it's not like he's Reed's son or half-brother. There are more than enough generations between him and Nathaniel that he could easily be a black dude. (Three or four would be plenty, I would think.)

I'm turning fifty in less than two months. I don't know where that puts me on the Rippa scale, but I would like to request both Andrew Poe and Chaos remove themselves from my lawn.

I don't know. I doubt they'd want to do a triple threat semi-final for the very first Continental Classic. They need to establish how it's supposed to work for a year or two before they start messing with it. It's like - it's questionable whether having Royal Rumble co-winners was ever a good idea, but it would have been a really bad idea to do that for the inaugural Royal Rumble. I agree with all this being the most likely scenario. My expectation going into the Swerve-Moxley match was that they'd wrestle again in the semis, with whoever lost in the round robin winning then. That hasn't changed. Eddie over Swerve in the grand finals is my pick.