Timbo Slice

That’s literally been the case since the Page article though, and has been my point with all this; to go with ANY article that has come out since then as gospel, which people are basically jumping to do so they can have first right of saying, “Told ya!” is bullshit high school-level discourse. Gossip mongering at its worst. Why this entire enterprise of reporting has been bullshit.

Just means one of Meltzer’s sources has a bone to pick more than likely and is feeding him negativity.

He’s also worn down already. At this point, he needs to go the Tanahashi route and have someone step up to meet him, which isn’t in the cards right now.

I think New Japan’s best shot at a native HW star is to overpay for Takeshita but who knows at this point.

The other answer to the questions that people keep asking regarding Punk is that this has always been his idea of pro wrestling, and just like other aspects of it, there’s a good way to do it and the bad. And right now, it’s leaning bad because Punk isn’t seen as an underdog, which was his whole thing for the entirety of his WWE run. Now he’s establishment, and he can’t paint himself as an underdog anymore. That’s what makes me think of this more as a work than anything; there’s too much of this at play to make me think anything else

I also think a lot of this shit is getting fed to the sheets for clicks more than anything. Page’s grievances notwithstanding, I think Tony bears the brunt of what happened with Page more than anyone. And Punk just happened to be the catalyst for the aftermath. It also hinges on two pre-disposed ideas about both guys, which is easy to extrapolate into things that draw clicks.

Yeah, it’s more the character and the direction that are the problems here. Page also hasn’t grown up in an environment where he’s had to really listen to his “elders” before: Omega is the closest and their views on pro wrestling are extremely similar. So my guess is more of him thinking of guys like Punk as a wrestling “boomer.”

I think there’s this weird tendency for guys in AEW to quasi-shoot because they like the idea of adding realism to promos, but then they actually don’t follow through on booking. Just having a bunch of zingers does not a program make.

COVID cases are at an all time high in Japan, hitting 300k currently active in the last few days. Have to imagine that, along with some of the changes that have happened, are affecting it.

Pretty standard stuff: set up Ospreay/Aussie Open for the semis to set up Ospreay/Omega for WK, then get the dream match finals against House of Black. Then you get UE after.

It’s Omega. It’s always been Omega. They had to throw Page in there to align a big name. Then you get UE to stand off at All Out to build to the next PPV.

Again, the price didn’t go up due to product changes. It went up because a sale is anticipated as Vince said he’d never sell.

Really hope we see some Notalgic acts tonight to bump a number.

He’s not, but he absolutely should be. There’s some pretty good stuff, have to imagine Punk comes back tonight.

Hope Danielson tortures a dude in true LeBell style tonight.

I’m not excusing the behavior. Just that the tweet above is absolutely correct.

If only pro wrestling wasn’t a morally reprehensible business in basically every way.

Could buy a lot of jackhammers.

Rhea choking out Rey’s son with her thighs: a truly Dom gimmick.

Who’s gonna do the bad Olivia Newton-John impression tonight? My money is on Rollins.

Yeah, forgot to put that part.

Inoki put Vader over by getting basically no offense in and letting him squash him in 4 minutes. This was a competitive match that went 22. It’s a good piece of booking for the tournament and will lead to a title shot or another big singles match but there hasn’t been a match like that in Japan in literally decades.

The sequencing in this match has been weird. A lot of slow-motion portions in lieu of communication, it seems.

JamIe Hayter. Cowboy Hat emoji.

Billy Gunn was fine.