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Dandara is free on PC next week as the Epic Games Store free game of the week, so kinda rough timing for Games With Gold on that one.

My picks were Suzuki and Ishii as well, so I think that is a consensus. Someone please inform everyone else to knock it off...

We should all agree on a few people who are allowed to still do standing forearm/elbow exchanges and make everyone else stop forever.

I read this and was so confused for a second there.

Worth noting re: Thatcher is that when he first showed up in NXT and had to talk he was among the least comfortable talkers I had seen in a WWE ring, it was something it was rather obvious he hadn't put a ton of effort into before getting there. Since then they put him in situations where he'd be more comfortable and he's actually improved a great deal in that time. His promo this week was a step back but in general his promos are something he and WWE have clearly spent time working on with noticeable improvement so I say let him keep working on it until said improvement stops occurring and he plateaus.

Last night I was curious about this and saw that Lita's twitch stream from that day was archived so I tried to find the bit of her talking about this and... I couldn't. The thing was 3 and a half hours long and I mostly kept skipping ahead 30 or so seconds at a time, and a few parts had the audio removed (I read the archived chat for these parts) so I can't say with 100% certainty it isn't in there but if it is it's gotta be mentioned for only 30 or so seconds without the chat reacting at all. IMO either the guy got the day wrong or this was a made up story. If there is anything to take from this it is that don't watch Lita's twitch stream it is mostly her rambling for hours on end and the only real wrestling tidbit I heard was that she doesn't like Bob Holly which I assume is true for most people.

I gotta be honest, I enjoyed Raw a bunch tonight because it was just plain odd in the kind of ways I appreciate (and at least one I didn't really but hey). -Multiple people got hardway blood -There was a fireball and for whatever reason a flaming hammer -The renamed T-Bar's finish to "Eyes Wide Shut" which puts this whole group of masked weirdos into an amazing new context. Bizarre sex cult > antifa. -HHH going with "burning someone to death is fine, I'd have done it myself, but being mean to old people is a bridge too far" is incredible in likely unintended ways. -Riddle/Lashley had about as fun a two minute sprint as you are likely to get. -Lee and Sheamus actually made a pretty fun tag team and it might be worth revisiting down the road. -Ric turning on his own daughter to bang one of her coworkers is not my bag. Also the way Shayna and Nia were acting immediately after their match was over made it seem like either Mandy or Dana got hurt, it was very odd.

Not to kick a hornet's nest but I was very bothered by this for a day because of that summary and then I found out it is a bit misleading. Linda's PAC gave money to the group that ended up putting that event together... one time back in 2019. Now you can feel however you want about her PAC and the people it generally gives money to (I would likely agree strongly with those feelings), but unless something else comes out saying her group contributed to putting that wretched "event" together is at best a stretch and at worst not particularly truthful. There are tons of reasons to dislike any of these folks, we don't need to make up more.

Daniel Bryan is on the SD booking team now and he doesn't seem like the type to book himself for the top title match at Mania, so I wouldn't get one's hopes up.

Big E is not that tall at all.

I'm now sad we'll never get to see Bryan is FREEDOMS just to see him try and fit in.

Oh hey the year is basically done. I guess I will go with... Clipping - Visions of Bodies Being Burned

The ratings pattern for the show was simply awful this week FWIW. Stolen from somewhere, NXT included as some might be curious: P2+ / P18-49 AEW Q1: 1.010 / 512k (Hangman/Dark Order vs Hardy Party) Q2: 826k / 410k (IC interview, Cody/Brandi announcement, very start of Cody/Angelico) Q3: 843k / 405k (Cody/Angelico, post match w/Sting, Eddie/PAC/Archer brawl) Q4: 835k / 413k (Dustin promo and 6 v 6) Q5: 726k / 400k (back end of 6 v 6 and Rosa/Britt segment) Q6: 746k / 399k (SCU vs Acclaimed and Top Flight interview) Q7: 741k / 406k (Ivelisse/Diamante vs Swole/Deeb) Q8: 718k / 419k (Omega vs Janela) NXT Q1: 743k / 230k (The Way vs KUSHIDA/Ruff) Q2: 734k / 247k (Legado promo, Shotzi promo, start of Rust/Ciampa) Q3: 695k / 223k (rest of Rust/Ciampa and GYV promo piece) Q4: 742k / 246k (start of Dunne/O'Reilly) Q5: 843k / 293k (second half of Dunne/O'Reilly) Q6: 801k / 271k (Rhea interview, Xia Li vid, Shotzi/Hartwell) Q7: 764k / 251k (Kross vs Troy, Isaiah Scott interview, Ever Rise interview) Q8: 772k / 241k (Ripley vs Storm) That's approaching a 30% audience drop from start to finish with your champ who is theoretically in the hottest angle in the company in the main. That's also the same main doing the worst quarter for the entire show. I think the solution is quite obvious: fire Joey Janela into the sun.

I agree it is shocking to watch a wrestling show where the women actually get something meaty to do after catching Dynamite >_>

Drew not coming out to stop AJ from trying to cripple his best friend of over a decade, then not mentioning it or even being mad at AJ when they met in the main event face-off shows that he is an awful friends and deserves it when Sheamus turns on him. Also I laughed when Lashley accidentally ruined his own suit.

So I watched that Keith Lee/Angel Garza Main Event match that was being discussed (and put it in the 2020 matches thread so others can as well) and the guy who tweeted that it was wrestled like neither man had any idea how to work a big man/little man match... I have no idea what he was talking about as that didn't appear to be the case at all. The match is just sorta there and if one wanted to go "the WWE match formula has issues and I'll use this match to show why" that'd be fair but they generally worked the big/little formula well enough and the layout doesn't show any sign of the agents letting them down. Angel does have an awful chinlock but using it once you finally knock a big man down to keep him from getting back up is actually the right time to go to it, Lee perhaps registered Angel's strikes a tad bit much, but those aren't massive "these guys have no clue how to work this kind of match" issues. Lee didn't do any big athletic moves which is a larger main roster issue for him but I don't know that I'd want him to bust that out for Main Event. Watching it with a critical eye what really sticks out is that on this stage Lee just lacks presence due to not really emoting much or being all that expressive either facially or with his body language. He does the big guy powering out of stuff WWE likes and at the right times but he doesn't really sell it all that well, perhaps if he was in front of a live audience that is marking out for it it'd work better but in this environment it looks... well it basically looks like a guy who needs a bit more training in that area. It is generally the one area WWE generally focuses on, often to excess (cries hysterically after someone kicks out of a move that has never won a match), so I am pretty sure it isn't something they'd ask him to do and something that would bother them in particular.

Since people were talking about that Keith Lee/Angel Garza match:

I mean, I both appreciate this sentiment but think it is probably the wrong game to make that argument about given the very buggy state it is in on the base models. That's a case where it is actually much better to listen to the reviews than spend $80 to find out for yourself that it seems to just run awful for many people.

I watch Raw pretty much every week and I've said since his first match on the show that Lee seems uncomfortable. I don't know if it is his confidence getting shot or just something with how they run a main roster show but if I hadn't seen his prior work I'd have been confused as to the hype around him. His booking hasn't done him favors but I see a lot of that on Raw and this is something more than just that (Ricochet is booked awful and I'd never say this about him in ring). Oddly I thought the triple threat match with Riddle and AJ was the best he's looked since being called to the main roster and that may have been his last match before this came up but I'd say something has definitely not been clicking beyond "the show is poorly written and people suffer due to it".

Worth remembering is that Punk is a bit of a raconteur and while he doesn't generally lie outright he seems comfortable fudging with the details of a story a bit to make it funnier/more memorable/etc. I think most wrestlers are. Anyways, while I'm sure there is a specific true story about someone in WWE having a role of some sort that the company deep-sixed them on I would not necessarily expect all of the given details to be 100% accurate. Workers gonna work after all.

My favorite wrestling show I attended was the Ring of Homicide show for ROH with the Homicide vs Necro Butcher main event as I got to toss a chair into the ring.

An experienced reviewer at a site that gets pre-release games frequently should have a feel for which type of bugs and glitches are likely to see a day one fix and which kind are likely the kind that'll be around for months. The fact that the reviews for this game from said reviewers/sites seem to harp on the bugs makes me fear that it is likely they are of the latter variety.

Yeah the site has been almost unusably slow for the past few days.

Ishii has some swell matches but I don't think there is any argument for him being a hall of famer barring some surprising late career twists and turns. Unless the argument is that "this era of NJPW is so tremendous we are gonna just put everyone in" his accomplishments don't really exist and I don't know that there is any evidence of him being a draw in the least. Like... Samoa Joe isn't in and has little support. Taue isn't either and was a higher ranked member of a different golden age and was in quite possibly the match of the decade in the 90s. Those two are widely considered to be below the hall of fame cut-off (Taue gets a bum rap IMO) and both have much stronger arguments in their favor than Ishii. I still think all three of them own, but I don't think that's really enough to be a hall of famer.

Lashley nearly killed himself right before the commercial break where he lost his balance fireman carrying keith towards the post outside the ring and banged his head off said post with all of Lee's weight on his shoulders. He was lucky it was a glancing blow but it looked like it scraped and bloodied him up a bit.