Timbo Slice

Seems a bit strange that Andrade didn’t go over, as you’d think with AEW hitting their stride that Kenny would be focused completely on being the champ there with the Bryan/Punk Possibilities and the Page match to come. But maybe they set up a rematch down the road?

Nak’s plan was always to end up in the US so I don’t think he really gives a fuck about hitting his ceiling. KUSHIDA is a timing thing more than anything else. Guys like him were all the rage before he came in, and then it was as if once he came in they had no idea what to do with him AND they kept folks in the mix for too long.

Have to think there’s a schmozz to set up a blowoff for Jericho/MJF, plus Bucks/Lucha Bros, Andrade/PAC, Mox/Tanahashi, Black needs a match, etc., and if they decide to do something with Punk off the bat. You also wonder if Dunne re-signs, because if not, he can show up. I think there’s a lot they’re holding steady on because they need to make sure certain things are in place.

My decision to stop following a bunch of wrestlers on IG and getting off Twitter entirely seems to be working well.

Just a true natural for the business. Everything he did looked great, and every move in his arsenal, from a simple punch to his stuff off the top, is in the running for the best version of the move ever done. He just absolutely got pro wrestling in a way few others did, and he was someone I grew to admire even more as I got older. The health issues he had recently were sad to hear, and now that he’s gone, it’s gonna linger for me a while. A true joy to watch, as he was such a fixture in my childhood when I got into wrestling. Gonna miss him terribly.

I just wish he wasn’t a piece of shit. That was a fun six-man. Highlighted everyone on the winning team well.

I feel Danielson beating Omega and then Hangman beating Danielson would be even better for Hangman. And Danielson unquestionably would be willing to do it.

My hope was actually Moxley/Gage in a Deathmatch to play off the Dark Side doc and the pizza cutter, which came into play tonight, but I don’t know how good a Moxley/Okada match would actually be. Okada is broken down something fierce, but I also wonder if maybe what’s been happening in New Japan over the last 18 months or so has sapped him of his interest a bit? Maybe this is to get him motivated?

I think a lot of the storytelling issues are BECAUSE they all of a sudden have a lot of hot talent at their disposal and they don’t really know what to do. I mean, Bryan/Omega is obviously the match, but they also have to pay off Hangman and now he’s getting pushed out of the picture. Things happened extremely quickly and I think they had their plans post-COVID blown up when both Bryan and Punk showed interest. Now Moxley is most likely facing Okada, which probably wasn’t in the cards until a few weeks ago either.

Ahem. NICK GAGE IS FOR THE CHILDREN.

Nick Gage worked a bloodless brawl at a high school gym and was so over with the kids there that they all came out and were high fiving him the next night. I think he’s gonna do just fine with Jericho.

His athletic prime is some of the most amazing work by a person of his size maybe ever. He ran the ropes like prime Rey. Never mind him being consistently the most entertaining part of CMLL shows well after that. An incredible loss.

With the report that Danielson will appear at the Arthur Ashe show and Punk rumors flying around, Cena coming back makes a lot more sense, but it really does seem more and more like desperation. Vince has run out of ammo in a lot of ways, and they have a sterile presentation they can’t change drastically due to who they’ve gotten in bed with to keep the money flowing. I’ve made the ESPN comparison many times, but ESPN has stuck around mainly because nobody has built a credible competitor to face it. There just seems like there’s no future with WWE, and that they’re treading water hoping they get lucky somehow. The women becoming more of a focal point helps, but what they have doesn’t seem sustainable, even if the way they run their business from a financial standpoint makes sense.

It’s not really a shock, but my question remains whether or not they’re gonna find the space for all these guys. Even with a second show.

There’s now a ton of evidence that points to NXT just not being what it should be and it mainly has to do with NXT burning out their goodwill due to who runs the brand. Say what you want about how NXT UK totally crushed the entire European landscape dry but at the very least they can build programs that have value to them.

Dude has the skin tone of a ghost and the vascular definition of a tomato. But his BP is probably obscenely low. It’s hilarious.

At his size, he’s basically a super heavyweight given what NXT has run out there on a weekly basis, and he’s someone moldable that is okay with smoke and mirrors hiding his weaknesses. Problem is guy should never be going longer than 15 in anything.

Paul has always been a front runner, and the best of NXT was because of who he had around him, so now that he’s been exposed, how can you be surprised?

Causation isn’t correlation and all that relative to stock prices, product be damned. The bigger issue is that there isn’t much of a plan forward from a talent perspective. The ESPN influence on the company for pushing brand over talent is a business direction not conducive to product, and they seem to be turning it more into an excuse to run legacy talent or expand programming options instead of making the current talent memorable. That’s not sustainable, especially since the legacy talent is what drives the ability to offer expanded programming. Can’t have one without the other.

You can make agreements with the network to go commercial free for the last part of a broadcast as long as you frontload it with commercials, and this would have been the time to play that card.

I’m big on aesthetics because I come from a TV production background so those things can really ruin the flow for me probably more than others. I also think this will be released in full somewhere, and once it is, it’ll probably change for me.

That’s on production more than anything else: Nobody knew how to shoot this match to avoid things like that.

The fact this wasn’t on PPV absolutely killed the momentum, and the crash pad was bush league…sigh. The first part of the match really had a good rhythm though. Just got killed dead.