John E. Dynamite

Evil Uno has been a dude who has made me go "y'know who's pretty good? Evil/Player Uno" for like, ten years at least. And he isn't even the A Side of his tag team. So let's be positive. AEW Worked Shoot Doo Dah is fine by me. I cut my teeth on Dark Age NJPW, so this one hit well above average. Good territorial booking, of course Hager's gonna win in the environment he trains in, while Wardlow got his end-of-the-round hope spot, made a Frankensteiner look legit-ish, and obviously didn't tap in a situation where they otherwise would have had a rope break. They'll run that spot back in the rubber match and that's the way rasslin should be. Young beefy's gotta work on his punches, though. Good news, he can ask Dustin. Yo. The Wing Men are the platonic ideal of a jobber stable. What does Ryan's resplendent bump-n-preen say about what Big Bro Dee Zee could, should be? It kinda boggles the mind. Avalon is built for making undercard feuds engaging and is really contending for Jobber of the Year. Drake is being elevated like he ought to be and that's fukken peachy. Bononi gets to look the perfect mix of beefy and dumb. Them plus a full force Best Friends is the good time sports entertainment viewing you deserve. Karl Anderson showed the hell up and was the unlikely MVP of the main event. Am I gonna have to watch the G1 Final against Okada again? Gallows actually tried too and damnit if those bland baldies haven't decided to try every time I think I'm done with them. Anything's better than Penta left to his own devices. If Kazarian is taking on the Angel's Wings then it should be his finish. Nobody ever stops the Young Bucks from breaking up pins. Fix it.

They're setting back wrestling twenty years! You can't just give HIAC away on free TV. They should use only two Cell walls. Perdition in a Partition.

I like to start a really gameplay-heavy game whenever I start getting into another game that's predominantly story-based. I know they just re-released Ninja Gaiden Sigma again, but I haven't caught up that far. I'm finally playing Ninja Gaiden Black on the OG Xbox. Hah. Oh man. I spent ample time with the NES originals back in the day and I'm very comfortable playing 3D action games with this kind of difficultly level but this one is the real deal. I knew what I was getting into. That doesn't mean I'm not getting fuckin' wrecked more often than not, but I'm getting through it. Black is supposed to be even harder than the standard Ninja Gaiden on Xbox, right? Cause I'm gonna beat this thing eventually, even if my means of victory are 10% finesse and 90% beer-fueled attrition. The really talky game is 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and if you read a lot of 2020 best-of lists you saw this one get mentioned. It's the culmination of 15 years of Vanillaware refining their multi-layered 2D watercolor anime aesthetic and every screen is absolutely fetching. None of the action of an Odin Sphere, Muramasa, etc., 70% of it is pure side-scrolling visual novel/adventure game, albeit with top-notch voice acting and very little menu or puzzle jank. The other 30% is a solid enough pauseable RTS that might have some real depth if I crank it to Hard Mode (remember that Vanillaware made GrimGrimoire so this isn't their first RTS). I can't tolerate pure "Press X to Read" visual novels but even the talky parts have enough player control to keep my attention. Part of it is the side-scrolling control style, part of it is being able to switch to the RTS whenever you feel like it, but mostly it's the seriously serious amount of branching-pathery they've got going on. The prologue plays linear and is told out of order (I think?), but after that the game opens up and gives you 13 selectable characters with God knows how many scenes and "end-points" that all occur in way-the-fuck media res. Character-specific story chunks are unlocked via game progress but you can chose the characters in any order, and each scene has a crazy twist, sci-fi plot device, or cliffhanger. There's really no spoiling when I say the game involves time travel, alternate realities, frequent amnesia, robots, multiple identities, and casual loops. Nor is it a spoiler to say the game cribs from Evangelion, Godzilla, WALL-E, Terminator, The Matrix, Groundhog Day, Fight Club, or dozens of anime I haven't watched. I'm about 2/3's done and the plot is coming together really well. This is a major work in the canon of video game narratives. No other medium could have supported this story, it provides commentary on the media we consume (film moreso than game) without being to meta about it, and it's a wildly ambitious and unique way to tell a story. Is this George Kamitani's masterwork? That depends on your opinion of Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir. From my perspective, he's got two already and Vanillaware hasn't put anything out in the States that isn't excellent. I didn't pick up Dragon's Crown when it came out, partly because I didn't know much about the company in 2013 and partly due to the controversy surrounding its release, and I'm probably gonna pick up the next copy I see in the wild. All that bad press and Twitter feuding is looking more and more unfortunate as time goes on - every game I've played of theirs has a well-written female main protagonist (or six) and really grown-up, literary storytelling. Well ahead of the industry standard with no sense of pandering or trying too hard. That's why it stinks that there's these initially shocking bits of fanservice that make you think the game is going to play out stupid and adolescent. All the teenage heroes are naked in their robots, for no reason. There is exactly one character who is ten tons of tits in a 12oz bottle. Nothing else comes close save for some volleyball shorts and the story is not driven by any creepy sexual energy. In fact, Kamitani explicitly stated that the characters were inspired by shojo manga (comics written for a teenage female audience, predominantly romance), as a way to keep things fresh for anyone expecting a standard mecha plot. It's worth keeping in mind if you're starting out.

The Kenny/Fenix is not close to "fucking amazing" . The write-up is worse. Maybe everything is bad? I know that I have encountered good things in my life before, but I cannot remember them. Thank you.

I'm kinda glad the Limited Run Games announcements won't totally blow out my wallet. Ghoul Patrol on SNES sounds legit. I've been putting off SUPERHOT so that's a contender. One Step From Eden is a card-based thing and I can always use more of those, Going Under looks like it has personality, DUSK fits in my household since I live with a DOOM 2 fangirl, and believe it or not I never played Axiom Verge so I don't want to speak on the sequel yet. I just don't know how much energy I have for re-imaginings of forgotten 8-bit and 16-bit classics. They always tend to be pretty good, but there's been so many put out since Kickstarter became a thing and I can't keep up. I'm loving the new Blaster Masters but I've got stuff in my collection like Super Hydorah and Blossom Tales that feel redundant. Everything gets good enough reviews and I can't tell the Shovel Knights from the Owlboys.

Advance Wars remake is no joke. SMT V would be the biggest JRPG release around the holidays unless Tales of Arise overachieves, so it's good to see that it's looking like it ought to (unlike Disgaea 6, woof). But yeah, Metroid. This was a pretty good Direct.

To pile onto the Braun problems, every other ex-WWE guy who is a current big player in AEW has a good body of work outside of the WWE system. Any East Coast indie dude knew the Jon Moxley gimmick was money, Jericho speaks for himself, La Sombra was a main-eventer, Cody took his years in the wilderness very seriously, Christian and Hardy had their TNA runs, PAC always had Dragon Gate. The exception is Miro (and FTR if I'm being fair), and I have no reason whatsoever to believe Braun can take advantage of the AEW system as well as Miro currently is. Let him try to figure out how to be a non-WWE wrestler on his own. See if he has the capacity to give a shit about the business in any other way. If he can do a solid year in Japan or Mexico, great, consider him. I don't love his odds.

Leon's brain gets shut off and he instinctively starts moving laterally away from the power hand. Nate's lead leg just wasn't there to chase him after the calf kicks. That's crazy.

If this is the end of top-ranked Demian Maia, it was a great run. Eight of his UFC losses were to UFC, Bellator, or Strikeforce champions and two of the other losses were to a UFC Interim champ + a contender. His win list is fuckin' sick. UFC contenders and outside champs like Shields, Condit, Masvidal, Fitch, Askren, Sonnen, Santiago, Good, Quarry. Non-contenders with legit records like Magny, Matt Brown, Dong Hyun Kim, Rick Story, Ed Herman, Kendall Grove. A consummate upper-midcard motherfucker and best no-bullshit BJJ guy in MMA history.

That was one of the gnarliest and most unique expressions of human violence you're ever gonna get. Barf. That was awesome. I'd watch a replay but they should just have Paul Craig do the same thing to the ref.

Wait until Dana gets cheap and we get Ngannou/Błachowicz.

Rarely have I seen/heard a crowd that deserves this many decisions. Shame that this fight is so good.

Thank God the Buffer market's been diluted since then.

Knox lets the Bucks get their shit in. Remember in PWG when Knox *hit a tope con hilo* against the Bucks in a match he was reffing? They're boys. So Knox refs all the Bucks matches, it looks stupid, but only a certain subset of smark is complaining so everybody just deals with it. I don't like it either.

Andrade debuted on what will end up being a low-rated Dynamite, with no music, his name got no pop because of Vicki's bad diction and timing, he interrupted an already janky Mark Henry segment, he doesn't speak great English and had a weird line about being "the face of the Latinos". SMG can be a negative lump & this debut can be bad at the same time. I like Dustin Rhodes. I really like the old diving bulldog being the finish.

El Hijo del Brazo de Yeso, I'm thinkin'.

I love that this post implies Orton changes his last name to "Ortin" to better court the Hispanic market

Chairshots, monkey flips, dropkicks, table spots, a better bump through glass than Kurt/Shane, in what universe is this not a MOTYC?

Seeing as how nobody is named Aleister Black anymore, I'm gonna call Tommy End by the name he's calling himself. And I wouldn't do that if there wasn't hours upon hours of footage of a dude named Tommy End calling himself Tommy End and kicking a lot of ass while doing so.

I would strongly argue that Ruby/Heidi is the lowest-risk potential AEW signee released this year and I'm saying this as somebody who would hotshot the championship to Tommy End if given the book. I would pay her before I payed anybody else.

I'm feeling some surly and belligerent feelings regarding these Bad Opinions on the Value of Good Jobbers. Any company in the world should be humbled by the presence of a Peter Avalon losing a dualing losing-streak angle so valiantly. Leading his cadre of cads into bad results against bad mamma jammas. Michael Nakazawa should not be on Dynamite, but he played American football because his dad played American football and thus speaks good enough English to translate Kenny's Japanese into perfect Japanese. Marko Stunt exists as a hype man and human projectile. If you're bitching as a fan wants to see a roster of nothing but potential champions, that's Your Prerogative. You don't need my permission to make your own decisions. If you're telling me why your ideas are good and why AEW's are bad? Stop Humpin' Around.

It's the kind of cover that tries to match everything exactly. Same BPM, same kinds of instruments being mixed in a similar way in every measure. It's actually hard to tell because the crowd pops so hard for Jungle Boy and sings the hook so loud, but that's a way different vocal take. The original lead vocal was sung by an Italian dude (the Irish-born singer in the video is lip-syncing) and he sung in a recognizably Italo-disco lilt. The cover vocals might be double-tracked and sound way more "rock" ("butt rock", really) not to mention like the singing of a native English speaker. This is the version I heard on the last Dark + Dark Elevation shows. The drums in the intro can be heard really clearly before the JB/Bear Bronson match. Totally different pads being played exactly the same. If there's a disco bassline (main line on the quarter notes, octave jump on the upbeat), it's buried way in the mix compared to the original and doesn't sound anything like Baltimora's synth/sequencer. That initial F power chord is held way longer than the original recording. It's even more noticeable on the A# power chord that starts the third bar of the hook. Oh my God you have no idea how many of my specific interests had to overlap to make this post.

The original version of Tarzan Boy opens with big, corny power chords. It was one of my backyard walkouts. Trust me, I know. He does have some weird cheapo cover on Youtube though. Dare I say it sounds so bad it's almost heterosexual.

In regards to the ripples of all this affecting AEW's roster situation 1) Are you cutting guys because you're worried about TV time available to active talent? Or are you cutting guys because you're worried about money? Because Serpentico doesn't cost AEW any fucking money. The company has a really organic and worthwhile undercard and I don't think they're overpaying every obvious fall guy you personally don't like. Guys like Brandon Cutler might be dweebs but they very obviously have enough backstage value. This isn't EWR (unless there's a mod where jobbers edit your main eventer's youtube videos + their wife is your seamstress). The bad-value contracts are more likely the WWE castoffs and veteran managers AEW brought in to legitimize the company during the early goings, and maybe some early signings that didn't break out. The Gunns, Vickie, Kip, Sydal, Hager, TH2, Swole, Arn, Janela, Brian Cage, etc., these are all possibilities. The point isn't to find the least valuable members of the roster but rather the least valuable contracts. For all we know Jack Evans works for cartons of Newports and gift certificates. And since AEW contracts aren't a matter of public knowledge, any opinion on who they should or shouldn't keep is based on heavy speculation. 2) I've been banging this drum for awhile but nobody ever wants to hear it - a majority of AEW contracts are up in 2024, including the EVPs. It is absurd to think that WWE, whether it's run by Vince, NBC, or Ian Fucking Rotten at that time, won't significantly attempt to poach the AEW roster. They are going to overpay for multiple stars. Stars that have proven themselves as TV draws, have relationships with people already in WWE, and who's signings would very much screw with AEW's long-term plans, locker room morale and perceived legitimacy. It's a no-brainer. It even makes you wonder if WWE are staggering these releases so that AEW snatched up the wrong guys before the really good ones got let go. This kind of cutthroat capitalism is WWE's bread and butter, the reason why we don't tune in to AWA Raw and WCCXT every week. I know Jericho and Jungle Boy are two notable guys who are on shorter contracts. Should AEW overstock their roster now in order to prepare themselves for maybe losing one of them and... let's say MJF, Cody, Wardlow, and Britt in two-to-three years? Shit, man, maybe.

Shawn Spears' "First, Easiest Boss in an Arcade Beat 'Em Up" energy is off the charts.