John E. Dynamite

Those that popped, popped hard.

This is the loudest crowd I've ever been a part of by, like, double. More will be written about Danielson/Omega but I have to give them a lot of credit for not telegraphing the draw too much live. Cody's Totally Not a Heel Evil Knieval Bridal Train had the crowd stunned. Every act is over. This shit is crazy. Did Ruby gas really hard, or something? Whatever, shit's magical + only half done, God help us.

I-95 looks ready to have me, time to begin the trip to Queens. WMXXX + Omega/Okada IV was last night's required viewing. We'll have lunch today in South Philly to soak up the prowres energy. Something on a roll. If Cody wins we Soho.

Mark Henry is completely capable as a radio host. He's a smart enough guy and can string together a meaningful observation better than the average person. He just can't do it at the speed wrestlers wrestle.

One more painful reminder that Arn Anderson is not, at all, my dad.

I slayed MC's in EWR expansions My style broke New York's fuckin neck like Stan Hansen

Sign me up. I need wearable deepsmark legitimacy at the indie shows I attend and my Negro Navarro x Nation of Ulysses collar tee isn't cutting it anymore.

Young wrestling fans are finally digging through the shit we already knew about and I shudder to think where their minds are going to be after "Shawn Michaels was a serial rapist" becomes common knowledge.

In defense of Tommy... No, really! Hear me out! His stupid statements were always cut to right after after Heidi Doyle's heavier segments. It made it seem like Tommy was responding directly to everything Heidi was saying, as if he were in the same room or at least had been viewing her footage. This is a very old editing trick, and you will see it in almost any documentary you watch. You'll see it all the time when they're trying to edit a story into a reality or competition show. It was a touch manipulative, and made Dreamer's already repugnant statements seem that much repugnant-er. This does not excuse or condone a thing Tommy said. This does not make Heidi Doyle's story any less true or troubling. I just think the show's editing was very MTV's The Real World when it didn't need to be. Ignorant as Tommy was, I'm willing to believe he'd never heard Heidi Doyle tell her side of the story. If I were Tommy's PR, I would tell him to say something along the lines of "Prior to the airing of this episode, I was unaware and misinformed in regards to Heidi Doyle's recollection of that day's events" followed by a few hundred apologies and public contrition via another kendo stick shot to the nuts.

Fuego will pin Miro in three or four years and the pop will be insane. AEW is back to their old ways of running the same angle twice in the same show - Sammy + Ruby grabbing a heel's discarded title and posing with it. Knock it off. But Britt/Ruby felt like the most legit non-wrestling AEW women's segment I've seen in, like, ever. Good on Jericho putting over The Butcher as the man he actually is - a very talented guitarist in a legitimately successful metal band. BB&B aren't as over as they should be and there's no reason not to provide Butcher with that extra level of depth, the Jungle Jack Perry route instead of the "Rex Steiner" method of burying anything that might generate more buzz. However, if we're gonna use Andy Williams' shoot name he might as well come out to a Drop D tuning, double kick drum cover of "Moon River". I just plain ol' like Allie. I've always thought she has natural screen presence. Not a huge HFO guy but I think the ponytail shearing got the point across. Shades of X-Pac/Hayes.

am i doing this right

I always catch myself thinking about the "Lost Generation" of US pro-wrestlers who existed after the demise of WCW/ECW and before the NXT talent raids. Like, I don't think we realized what was happening during those 18 years of WWE dominance and TNA futility. I don't think we realized it was a period in wrestling history when things were not the way they were supposed to be. Even (especially?) die-hard fans were so pessimistic about the whole thing that we just assumed wrestling wasn't ever going to be cool again, the UFC took all the legitimacy away, Benoit took away all the joy, the demise of WCW took away all the creativity, and somehow our favorite thing deserved to be portrayed to the masses as a largely stupid and childish form of entertainment. That's why I think it's really important to remember and celebrate the generation of wrestlers who peaked in that era and never got to make the millions of dollars & fans that they would have in any other. Off the top of my head, Homicide, Nigel McGuinness, and Chris Hero are the big-name indy superstars that come to mind but after that first tier comes a bunch of bigger what-ifs. Alex Shelley, Super Dragon, Eddie Edwards, maybe not headcases like Low Ki and Davey Richards. Really entertaining guys who would have gotten over as midcard acts, like a hypothetical 2002 ECW run with the Spanish Announce Team, or 2009 WCW running an odd CHIKARA tag in the first hour of Nitro. Who's to say an edgy rival doesn't counter-program the Cena era and doesn't do a Gage-esque short run with a deathmatch guy? I think the rawest deals went to the "sports entertainment" type guys who worked a real solid style but weren't flashy enough to win over spotmark indy fans, i.e. BJ Whitmer, Adam Pearce, Xavier, etc. Or European guys like Jody Fleisch who would have, at the very least, been able to garner a decent following with just a little US TV exposure or bigger US indies that could afford to fly them in. Or, here's a shocker, every woman who was in that first wave of SHIMMER talent - it is bullshit that people like Lacey or LuFisto never even had a chance to be famous. A majority of the PWG founders + early regulars had to eventually say "fuck it" and fall back on their day jobs, and I'm pretty certain time has already dimmed the glory of their deeds. Not to mention global talent like the cursed 3rd Generation of the NJPW dojo, the heavyweights that failed to inherent the throne of NOAH, and the dozens of luchadores who would have done a better job with the Sin Cara gimmick than Mistico. I guess what I'm saying is, this board was built on the discussion of monopoly-era indies and international wrestling so talking about these guys is second nature to a lot of us. But the rest of the wrestling fandom is pretty darn clueless. Don't allow these past decades to become the Dark Ages. Tell the children all your tales of B-Boy, "The Turkish Delight" Murat Bosporus, and Osamu Nishimura, or we will live in a world that will forget them.

Super stoked to see two talented "what happened to that guy?" indy dudes getting a shot on Dark: Elevation. Santana & Ortiz are up against former Chris Hero protege & elbow lunatic JT DUNN and a man currently going by the name of Avery Good, which is a great stealth pun on his former name of A Very Good Professional Wrestler. You might remember him as CHIKARA standout, the Old-Timey King of Swing DASHER HATFIELD. I hope they get a decent amount of time.

Fucking hell Tommy Dreamer why don't you try to be the Innovator of Silence from now on.

Is the demo still up? I think it has a pretty lengthy one.

I think the bigger tell is Tony Khan not featuring Ric on TV at all, even after the Andrade angle in Mexico. There was an interview with the DSotR creators or producers or whoever from months and months ago - the link is probably somewhere in this thread - and they're talking about how the Plane Ride episode was by far the "worst" thing they've ever had to put together, and how it made the whole team a bunch of anxious wrecks. Now obviously somebody isn't going to do an interview where they call that incident worse than Benoit or Grizzly Smith or whatever, and I don't think that's what they're saying, but the tone was definitely one of grief. I think they think this one is the "worst" episode because there is no way to tell this story without bringing significant attention to the fact that Ric Flair sexually assaulted multiple flight attendants, and that the people who put together DSotR are actually bothered by the fact that this is going to maim the legacy of and bring significant controversy to their still-living, still culturally relevant pro wrestling hero. I think WWE realized this was going to be the case at least as soon as that interview aired, or possibly since the episode itself was announced. I think AEW realized this was going to be the case. Everything that has or hasn't happened with Ric since follows that scenario.

BRAZO DE ORO/BRAZO DE PLATA/EL BRAZO vs. EL DANDY/POPITEKUS/SUPER ASTRO 5/3/91 What a pure, good, happy match. I was far too busy to do enough grief-watching of Super Porky and this one really hits the spot. Super duper good-natured technico vs. technico stuff, particularly the Porky vs. Popi exchanges. You can hear the children smiling. 1991 El Dandy is the best babyface in the cosmos, Super Astro does some nutty dives and the other Brazos keep the momentum going. Is there a better "I completely forgot I love this guy" technico than Popitekus?

This x A Big Number. Being a talented base in any women's division is a huge skill to have. Hayter jumped into Riho's plancha like she was fuckin' Averno or somebody - related question - who are the best emergent lucha bases? I remember thinking Hechicero was a dude of some talent in that regard but CMLL is a dumpster fire and I've lost focus on the matter. Turns out you can run PAC vs. Andrade whenever you need to absolutely tear a house down. It didn't even seem like they were going full steam. Jesus, imagine if this match were slotted in to All Out where it was supposed to be, you would have taken the hottest US PPV of the last ten years and bumped it up to even another level. Pair these guys up. I think they have a stupendous 30 minute draw in them and a MOTYC blowoff after that.

Somehow I forgot to mention that Deus Ex: The Conspiracy on PS2 is the best game I'm currently working through. As a dyed-in-the-wool console gamer I've been learning to love (likely inferior) console ports of classic WRPGs. Apparently the PS2 version of Deus Ex is perfectly fine and you trade some loading screens on the bigger maps for an impressively streamlined UI. Runs like a charm on PS2, you'd think they developed the game for it. And I guess I can plug in a USB trackball mouse + keyb if I really want that legit trenchcoat Windowlicker feeling. It is a little weird to play through a conspiracy-heavy plot based on the availability of plague vaccines being controlled by a technocratic Illuminati, and I wonder just how much damage has been done to the collective consciousness by media like this. But nothing has been presented ignorantly so far, just heavy-handed and semi-knowingly ridiculous.

Is Ocean Riptide when Rhea Ripley crosses their arms first? Is there a Japanese Ocean Cyclone Riptide I gotta watch out for?

I thought my collector's phase had reached a terminal point, but I managed to find more shit to covet. The harsh, weird spike in classic game prices that happened in April took a lot of my higher-end games off the wishlist, so I've been picking up a lot of cheapies. Props to the wonderful Play Raven in Eldersburg, MD - I have no idea why anybody would ever be in that part of America, but if you ever are, go. They have not charged me for any games <$10 I have grabbed off the wall the last three times I was there - no, I don't think this is some sort of deal they're running and I wouldn't ever be so impolite as to ask them about it. They're just fuckin' hooking it up. This includes BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend for PS3 and Splashdown, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Blood Wake, Crimson Skies, and Kelly Slater: Pro Surfer for OG XBOX. Speaking of XBOX I'm chipping away at Magic The Gathering: Battlegrounds, which I picked up because it seemed like the perfect retro value find. Clearly underrated upon release because it wasn't the MtG-on-Xbox-Live game people wanted, still sold well enough to not be rare, hopelessly Western and therefore not being tracked down by weeby collectors, and on a console that would be the best value collection-wise if not for the existence of the 360. The gameplay is a weird but cohesive mixture of RTS, deckbuilding, and dodgeball. You're in an arena with a line down the middle. You cast creatures that auto-attack along with spells and enchantments, running around to collect mana and occasionally bonk a baddie yourself. I only played MtG for a couple of years when my old girlfriend forced me to (never lost to her, ever, maybe that's where we went wrong) and I think that's who this game was unfortunately tailored to - people who knew the rules but weren't diehards. Not sure how this game played on Live back in the day but the story mode is a fun collection of quasi-puzzles based on whatever new card you get. Very much worth the ten bucks I spent. Maybe you're into that Ghosts of Tsushima thang, and if you are, hey, Rocket: Robot on Wheels exists! It's the first game developed by Sucker Punch, and it doesn't even feel like a dry run for the Sly Cooper games that came after, it's very much its own thing. As far as straight-up gameplay is concerned this might be the second-best platformer on the system next to Mario 64. Really advanced physics on this one, a lot of gameplay variety without feeling too fetch-questy. Not as charming with the characters, levels, or music as something like Banjo-Kazooie, but the meat & potatoes are hearty. I got drunk and bought a Wii U because my good dudes at Re:Gen moved their store from White Marsh Mall over to the Towson Town Center and because I heard that Monolith Soft asked Nintendo if they could port Xenoblade Chronicles X to the Switch and got shut down on account of Xenoblade 3 & BotW 2 being the priority. So before that price gets absolutely ignorant, I picked it up and played the first two hours. It's obvious that they tried to cater to a more western audience with this one and eeeehhh, it's gonna take some work for me to give a shit about saving Space Los Angeles. But everybody that's played X seems to love it so I'll let it sink its teeth in when I have the time. Also grabbed the Wind Waker remake (they fixed the Triforce quest bullshit?!), Wonderful 101 (way better than the Switch version?), the absolute development tragedy/legend-killing Rodea: The Sky Soldier (with the good Wii version included). I've got my eye out for games that happen to have their best versions on Wii U like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, maybe Batman: Arkham City but all I've been playing on the damn thing is Kuru Kuru Kururin. A fuckin' GBA launch title that Europe got instead of us, but we have it on the Wii U eShop - you're a slowly-turning set of helicopter blades and you can't bump into the sides of the stage. You just gotta wiggle-wiggle you way to the goal. It's perfect, absolutely brilliant, astoundingly fair and frustrating. I love it. I hate it. Look it up

If I were Tony ugh. sorry. Pitch a shitfit backstage. Let Kaze Ni Nare play out. Finally run a TV Time Remaining! Finish. Run it back in two weeks.

They cut off Kaze Ni Nare. I'm only watching FMW comp tapes + old AXS TV kickboxing on youtube from here on out.

I can't imagine how rough it would be if JR hadn't called years and years of big NJPW matches. But I don't have to imagine, because thank goodness he did.