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I only interacted with John a few times, mainly when I'd randomly mention I was reading a book recommended to me by an author I never heard of that he'd reveal was actually a genre titan (after one of these he posted in one of the "what are you reading threads" asking how people who weren't already into books, or at least genre fiction, were managing to find out what's worth looking into). Anyways I think the last time this happened was when I wrote I was reading and enjoying "A Voyage to Arcturus", he praised the hell out of the writer and recommended picking up a copy of "Devil's Tor" which he felt was the writer's masterpiece. I thanked him for the rec but said something along the lines of at the rate I read stuff I probably wouldn't get to it for several years. I started reading it today as it felt like the right time. RIP John.

If I recall correctly I believe the story was that New Japan lost interest in Riddle once they learned of his fairly open marijuana use, so I think even if WWE had zero interest in him that door was likely closed to him.

It very much looked like he hurt his shoulder, but it is hard to tell if he just grinded his way through an injury or decided to play it up since he visibly jammed it hard and reacted on that powerslam spot.

Yeah I think the argument that Joe was mailing it in at any point in his WWE/NXT run kinda nuts. I saw people feel that a number of his matches in his last year or two as an active competitor underwhelmed compared to expectations, but I think that was more a result of being a larger wrestler who wrestled a physical style most of his career being 40 years old and no longer having much of his previously impressive speed rather than him not caring.

I mean if we are really honest with ourselves no one watching Dynamite will buy that as a significant win, I'm not sure most of their tv audience has seen Jack win a match. AEW is really bad about things like, that where Red Velvet was at one point the #2 ranked woman in the company while having lost every single televised match she ever had (I think that is still true FWIW). Even when the audience was less "smart"/plugged in that wouldn't really work, nowadays even less so. Using the hours to try and scam a streaming service exec is the best argument for it I've ever heard BTW.

I think it is fair for people to hold the seemingly incompatible thoughts that "people losing their jobs is bad and I feel bad for them" and "a certain degree of roster turnover is needed every so often for the benefit of both the company and its fans". Unless someone appears to be a legit scumbag or a truly dreadful worker I generally feel sad for them when they lose what was likely their dream job in WWE or whatever other wrestling promotion, but there has been several times over the years I've watched shows and went "they desperately need fresh faces" which eventually either requires people to go away or for the show to be longer and longer. I guess they could just leave people in catering but people seem to dislike that as well. Of course if I ran AEW I wouldn't be running 30 Dark matches a week and hence would likely end up costing dozens of people work, so there is a non-zero chance I am just a monster...

I watched that Tenryu/Hansen vs Baba/Rusher match because of this thread and damn was that snazzy.

What I take from this is I wonder exactly how bad Joe's concussion issues were and if WWE simply were just never gonna clear him. While it always felt like they could do more with him when he was available he was generally always used, it's not like he was stuck in the spot Ricochet, Black or Andrade found themselves in. Hoping for him to have a bunch of dream matches now is one thing, but I hope he's actually healthy enough to do so and not ignoring any medical advice. I feel bad about Mojo as he always showed flashes of something and just never seemed to be given enough work to try and hammer it into something more fully rounded. With a bunch of the other releases I can see them getting work somewhere else, with him I don't know if anyone who'd give him enough matches to have a chance at that development will want him. Billie Kay seemed hurt most by WWE not being very big on non-wrestler roles like manager as... well she's just been pretty poor in-ring this whole time and one would have hoped that she'd have shown some signs of improvement by now.

I disagree strongly. I want them in the suits with the masks.

It is very much not the easiest read in the world, for the first bit of it I actually had a notepad next to me to jot down names and brief descriptions of who they were which is probably the first time outside of school I had to resort to that. I think probably a good half of the people who give it a shot will likely bounce off of it for those reasons, but if you can get past that it really does a remarkable job laying out what all the major players were facing at home and abroad and hence why they made the disastrous series of choices they made.

This is probably the most "known" recent one but I thought "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" by Christopher Clark was a good dive into the conditions that lead to the start of World War 1. This might be too specific of an ask on the history front, but I had a soft spot for the few counterfactual books I read as I found looking at how history could have went a different way put the actual events into greater context so if @Kuetsar knows any good one of those I'd be interested to hear them.

Pfft, if you paid attention you'd have known that his punch is actually fine, it's his chop that was usually awful...

Stylistically AEW is about as homogeneous as WWE is. Under the WWE umbrella you have a more grappling-centric wrestler like Thatcher or the rare times they care to let Gulak do stuff, or a true bruiser like WALTER who will just beat you to death with strikes. New Japan also has people to fit those molds (ZSJ and Ishii for example) but AEW mostly does not. The closest to the latter is probably Kingston, although he's more focused on his own selling than either of those other two are. AEW mainly has people going for your big modern indie 2.9 style approach complete with big kickouts and acting shocked that a move that never gets a pin didn't get a pin, even their big guys tend to work that style more than "just" being big guys. TBF you do have stuff like Cody running his own take on a throwback NWA-style matches, but I have the same feeling when watching both promotions that they'd both benefit from more variety.

I feel like I took a completely different thing from that Andrade interview than everyone else. The whole "she was temporarily suspended via suspected pregnancy due to elevated HcG levels" thing could just be an unfortunately timed false positive... but HcG beyond the whole pregnancy thing is also used in doping and I half wondered while reading it if he accidentally tattled on Charlotte, especially since he followed it up with "and that same doctor said I used a banned substance which I totally didn't". Note: to clarify I am NOT saying that Charlotte is doping. There is no where near enough even circumstantial evidence to support that. It's just going "she tested high for levels of a substance that is elevated when pregnant, doping, or some other cases, and she's not pregnant" is one of those things he probably should have thought about a bit more before saying aloud.

I love LA Park; on MLW at least ever since they came back he's looked shot to hell. I don't know if he's just mailing it in as there's no crowd or if age has caught up to him but he seems to be barely mobile and it makes me sad as before the stoppage he was the highlight of the show.

I don't mind the loss of the IC title, but the IWGP belt was IMO the best looking one in the biz and I'm really sad to see it go away.

I don't think Montez Ford had any training before either.

I believe I saw Meltz say they sold out most of the tickets during the presale and that it seemed like sure sellout.

Yeah, Eddie/Rey was pretty great.

Screw you all and any tiny amount of common sense, I'm from New Jersey and I am here for the -5 star horror of The Fiend as The Toxic Avenger.

I actually read The Fifth Season a few months ago and while my recommendation would carry much less weight, I do second it. Very good book with some very clever bits of craftsmanship that still feels fairly complete while leaving a clear sequel hook or two out there.

I watch Raw every week and I honestly have no idea if Braun is supposed to be a face or a heel. He's the face in this program with Shane but Lashley was positioned as the face when dealing with Miz, that didn't make him an actual face. The booking around him has been a mess for months. Re: this actual Shane/Braun angle, I am convinced it has to be a rib on someone but I have no idea who. Probably the audience by this point...

I've seen people slimed on Nickelodeon shows for decades now and they never took it as this horrible affront worthy of homicidal rage. ...Now that I think about it that would've made their shows much more interesting so perhaps WWE has it right on this one. BTW Asuka comes back and the first blow Shayna lands on her is a knee that appears to catch her directly on the jaw.

I feel like I've said this before but the Andrade situation has always seemed like an obvious case of "being in the dog house" and yet no one else anywhere ever thinks so so I wonder if I'm just nuts? Guy was used fairly well and had the US title, but during said run he pissed hot in between injuries. When they had the chance they put together a program to get the US title onto Crews and Andrade got moved into a tag team where if they lost he ate the pin and if they won his partner got the pin. I get the Vince & co. will randomly seem to give up on people but this always seemed much more like punishment than that as opposed to Black who I think they legit just have no interest in.

Silver lining is Gable is a lot better than Tucker?