John E. Dynamite

They're UK Indie -> NXT guys. They're good enough. You won't like them.

Real talk? I will love Excalibur forever. I saw the dude at least three times live in Philly, I dig early PWG, I probably unknowling interacted with him multiple times on Fire Pro message boards, he is an important figure in pro wrestling history and should be remembered as such. But he cannot keep up with the duties of being the lead play-by-play guy in an organization this big. He can't read the copy, he can't organize his thoughts fast enough, he isn't a teacher. His tone isn't authoritative enough, and that is huge. Kills me to type this, but he should have been reassigned as the Tenay years ago.

Do we respond to things like the final segment of Dynamite based on our immediate interpretation and enjoyment of the events on-screen? Or do those feelings instantly get filtered through our doubts/hopes about how the larger pro wrestling fanbase will react to it? I've been slowly conditioned to think that things I find mildly cringe will be interpreted as harbingers of the end times, that good-not-great overwrought workrate epics will be called MotY and transcendent bloody brawls will be called "pretty good", and that once a month a "neat little match" I feel like chatting about is regarded as a travesty because somebody realistically covered for a botch. (Seriously, I saw a kid arguing that Dustin Rhodes vs. Butcher was a candidate for Worst Match of the Year and people were agreeing with him. You feel like you're eating three square meals of crazy pills every day.) The anti-AEW troll contingent was frothing at the mouth over the All In footage because it seemed like the kind of thing they could shitpost about for ages. A bullet in the chamber for the neverending propaganda war that they find far more interesting and engaging than any actual television show. The beleaguered AEW diehards were cringing at the thought because it seemed like not just some desperate worked-shoot trainwreck, but something that was going to be discussed online ad nauseam and create the same doomclick feedback loop that's been dragging everything down for however long. But we're a few weeks removed from it and thus far they've actually managed to thread the needle. They figured if things were still getting clicks then people must care, so they assumed people cared about Jack Perry and they were right. You have to wonder if they were going to air the footage regardless of the Punk interview because they were timing it around Mania hype. Regardless, here we are, Jack Perry is over. So I watch the final segment of Dynamite and I'm thinking "hey this is pretty good soap opera stuff" until about ten seconds later, when the bad feeling in my guts says "you are going to go on the internet and all people are going to talk about is how much they hate this". Which in the moment muted my enjoyment, embarrassing as it is to admit it. But then the next morning I see that a healthy majority of people really liked the angle, and that it's getting a ton of engagement and people are already theorizing how it might bleed into the NFL Draft and a Kenny return and all that stuff. So I feel silly, but better. But then again this board hates it so IDK anymore. I guess I'm arguing that some of you reacted negatively because you feared the fans would reject it. I want the text to be the text but that's impossible in all artforms as long as they're being created and experienced by human minds. I'm glad I'm watching the NBA Playoffs live and putting Dynamite on later because engaging in the moment is so dreadful now. Obviously this and that are driven by a broader "Negativity Gets Clicks" culture that is literally making the entire world depressed but I don't have the words for that right now.

I could see Trev salvaging the Matt Hardy signing if they book it right.

Quite possible the first time I ever spent money on non-WCW or WWE wrestling was giving one of my parents a five dollar bill so I could buy an Comcast OnDemand PPV with a bunch of joshi matches. LCO was included and the Death Lake Driver left a proper mark on me. Speaking of proper marks, between the Reddit Cares Safety Squad going all-out on that first post & the thousands of takes getting mad at Bryan Danielson for selling too good... can every human being go away? I feel like I am trapped in a madhouse. The pro-wrestling fanbase simultaneously complains about no-selling and gets mad when you pretend a move hurts. This wasn't even exploiting Danielson's concussion history. He sold like his neck got compressed. Like he was in a ton of pain and had his nerves jammed. I've had that happen to me. I've felt the painful results of it every day for over a decade. It was a proper, realistic sell and I thought that was the point. God damnit, we can't have any fun. No nice things.

It wasn't a seizure sell. It was a neck sell.

We've got to keep level heads and look at all sides here. Who's to say this isn't a huge misunderstanding, and that the Oklahoma republicans weren't simply opressing Nyla for being Native American?

Boy, y'know who can't gameplan against Olypmic-medal level judo? Holly... ...Holm???

Compare Moicano's promo to the crickets Bobby Green got. You're going to get more of this feeling tonight, I gurantee it. The UFC, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, is an actively facist entity. Joe Rogan is a huge component.

Takes! I think Ospreay is the biggest HHH-wishlist guy that he's ever failed to get. I think he's going to try the global expansion/territorial NXT thing again. Not saying that Will wouldn't be a main roster guy but I think he factored into their broader European plans. Japan and Mexico have more talent to poach. I also think either A) they didn't know Will was this good of a promo and they're pissed about it, or, B) they knew Will was this good of a promo and they're pissed about it. I am the furthest thing from an Ospreay guy but his mic work is leaps and bounds better than I assumed it would be and it makes Will way more valuable than Okada and Mercedes right off the bat. Last take - Ospreay vs. Seth on Twitter was 90% a work, and WWE guys are gonna continue to start fake Twitter beef with potential future signees so they can score an early feud.

When I saw some early, middling reviews for the show I checked out cagematch and saw the matchtime for SHO vs. YOH and I literally thought they were running the same angle they did when KUSHIDA got squashed by Hiromu and then went on to win BOSJ -> the title. I don't know why I made that weird assumption. Fuck.

It's bad enough to have to tolerate iffy TV, but having to navigate a sea of scorching hot weirdo takes that insist on elevating "that sucked" to "(whatever the fuck this is)" makes everything so, so much worse.

I can barely have a civil, sensible conversation about AEW anywhere on the internet right now. Please God no more. Now we know what happened. Every child that already decided they were gonna scream WCW at this (despite not knowing what the fuck they were talking about) is going to for months and everyone that supports this company is going to have their joy eroded if they even bother to peek into the larger wrestling discourse. No mas. Please focus your energy on booking bigger matches when you have a presumed ratings bump. Please focus on giving Mariah May a microphone so she can explain to a live crowd who debuting wrestlers are. Please sequence matches and segments anything but randomly.

It's Marvel Movie Pro Wrestling. It's the most profitable way to do it right now and it certainly has longer legs than Jerry Springer Pro Wrestling.

Raphael Saadiq is in a constant state of doing it, I assume in every sense of the phrase.

No, Tony runs everything. Every single decision AEW has ever made was a unilateral decision by Tony, or at least the ones I don't like. Tony. TONY.

I was too busy noticing the ref's mismatched socks. To think he was hiding such a faux pas behind his oh-so-shined shoes.

That show couldn't have gone any better. DEAN RULES THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD!

Blessed to have a good view of the plunder hiding under the ring. I'm gonna get blood on me.

Good lord if I can find anybody to go with me on a Thursday. This'll be a new experience.

Given the face/heel splits, I think Takeshita being the one to dethrone Copeland makes the most sense. Cope vs. Callis Family seems so easy and obvious, and they've got some other Canadian shows theyre running in May and I think the timing for it would be perfect. And since Callis Family in-fighting is an established scenario following Ospreay's matches, there's no reason you can't run a Hobbes-Wants-His-Belt-Back match as a Collision main or something.

Weirdly enough the Young Bucks have an uncanny ability to make Private Party seem important. I struggle to say this without grinding my teeth, but any haters and habitual fast-forwarders should keep an eye on what they're doing under their new gimmick.

Ospreay/Shibata awakened some classic DVDVR haterade within me. Nothing mattered and nobody cared who won. It made me want to shout at some kid on reddit about how Taue's better than Kobashi.

What's been lost in the AEW free agent talk is that they were bidding against a company owned by the most anti-worker entity in American pro sports. I think the number has been about 15% of the UFC's revenue goes to the fighters. Thr big four sports leagues are a hair under 50/50.

Oh yeah, nah, it's a battle for second. Nagata vs. Sasaki is gross.