gordi

I watch entire AEW shows (Dynamite, Rampage, PPVs) now, and as often as I can I watch them live while they are happening. This is a huge change from how I was "consuming" wrestling 5 years ago. I also watch "big" NJPW cards as they are happening as often as I can. I usually chat online with a small group of wrestling maniac friends during those shows. Before the pandemic I used to go to a lot of live shows. That's on hold for now. For smaller New Japan shows, AEW YouTube shows, other Japanese promotions and indies and so on I tend to cherry-pick recommended matches after the fact. For older stuff I'm almost always going back and watching individual matches that I love and have seen several times before, or watching something that, say Matt D wrote up or something posted on the "clubbering" thread on DVDVR or what have you. I'll sometime re-watch an "old" AEW show but otherwise it's been ages since I went back and watched an entire event.

1 Brian Pillman Jr. vs. MJF 2 Malakai Black vs. Cody Rhodes 3 Sting and Darby Allin vs. FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) (with Tully Blanchard) 4 Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. (c) (with Rebel) vs. Ruby Soho for the AEW Women's World Championship 5 Kenny Omega (with Don Callis) vs. Bryan Danielson Yeah, I've got that "little kid before Christmas" feeling where I just want it to be show time already.

https://www.njpw1972.com/104513 Terrible news. Naito is dropping out of the tournament with a knee injury. It must be really bad if he is withdrawing.

That is a(nother) great Kingston promo. From 1:00 to 1:03 in that video, they show a letter from Japan. I'm at least 85% sure that the "Thank you for comming to Japan. Please come back" was from when Kingston, Fire Ant, and Green Ant came to Osaka pro in September of 2011. The Kenji who signed it is presumably my very good friend the Osaka Pro super-fan, and Keigo is presumably Keigo Yoshino, Osaka Pro referee and announcer who was also in charge of brining in and taking care of foreign talent. If so, I believe I had a small hand in making that (I was sometimes asked to help with/proofread English language stuff. Me: You spelled "coming" wrong. Them: OK). Oh boy did we ever love Eddie Kingston. A whole bunch of Chikara guys came over in October 2010 and they were so obviously delighted to be there that heels often tossed us a nod and a wink when they were heeling it up. Not Eddie. He never cracked a smile. We booed him like crazy, relentlessly. He frequently teamed up with my good friend Kuuga, and Kenji and Kae and I would scream at them and they would yell at us and flip us off. "Please come back" was meant with 100% sincerity, if indeed that was my friend Kenji who signed it. It warms my heart to see that in the video and imagine it still has some meaning for Kingston. I can't find any pics from that tour at the moment, but I do have some from the 2010 Chikara tour, specifically the Haloween party/show. Kae (the goat), Dasher (who is working AEW this week!) and Kenji Stigma, me, and Vin (UnStable) EDIT: I just got confirmation (from Kae) that it was definitely us who wrote that letter. She remembers him being moved when they gave it to him. Also, that's my boy Mihara that Kingston is suplexing in the Japanese magazine at 1:00!

I agree. My expectations were probably too high there. Honestly, and weirdly, I think Ron Funches might have had the most entertaining match on the show!

Come on! Full muscle live! You gotta Max the Max!

Pretty good GCW card on right now. 2 Cold Scorpio v Effy at the moment. Dickinson vs Fatu and MiSu vs Gresham coming up. Pretty sweet bridge to carry us from Rampage to G1 Day 1

Good call!

I can barely believe that I'm excited for the Miro v Fuego re-match... But here we are.

If you are gonna do shooty promo stuff, THAT is how to do it.

I like the Bunny precisely because she's so unlikable. She's really good in the role of a midcard heel, for precisely that reason. Tay is GREAT, at least in part because she's so naturally likable.

Cool, innovative finish to the Tag Championship match!

*AEW World Tag Team Championship Match: Lucha Brothers (Rey Fenix & Penta El Zero Miedo) (c) w/ Alex Abrahantes vs. The Butcher & The Blade w/ The Bunny *Singles Match: Anna Jay vs. The Bunny *Title vs. Car Match for the AEW TNT Championship: Miro (c) vs. Fuego Del Sol (car) *We hear from AEW World Champion Kenny Omega and Bryan Danielson! *AEW World Women's Champion Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. and Ruby Soho come face to face!

He cornered a flight attendant and forced her, against her will, to touch his penis. That is flat out sexual assault. What is the proper response to that?

I'll most likely tune in for tonight's show. I am also looking forward to Shingo vs Ishii, and Naito vs ZSJ should be good as well. I am cautiously hopeful that the other matches won't all go 20+ minutes and at least one of them will be surprisingly good. How I.feel at the end of the show will go a fair way in determining whether I make more shows appointment viewing or just cherry-pick matches after the fact. I can certainly understand not being excited. I had planned to go to tonight's show live and in person (it's in Osaka) but I think I would hate sitting there quietly. Watching all those AEW shows recently with white hot screaming crowds really throws Covid-era Japanese crowds into very sharp contrast. I think Migs' idea of treating it like a content-delivery system is bang on for this year.

RTF? That's good ole RJ for ya.

For me personally, he hardest guys to predict (in terms of which matches to go out of my way to see) are the good tag workers like Taichi and Goto. With guys like Ishii, Cobb, Shingo... you know that if they have anything like a decent opponent it's gonna be really good. Taichi (e.g. last year's match vs Ibushi) and Goto (e.g. that WK 12 match vs Suzuki) are both capable of putting on something must-see, but it's not like you can count on them to put on a great singles match night after night... With Sanada and ZSJ in different blocks it's hard for me to count on anything from Sanada, but I'll be sure to check out his match vs Taichi this year. If anyone else has suggestions, I'm all ears. I'm cautiously hopeful that something like Shingo vs Loa or Cobb vs Tonga or, like, Tanahashi vs Chase Owens or something will surprise us all by tearing the house down. And ya never know when Yano's gonna come up with something really creative. I'm almost talking myself into it...

My theory is they are saving the second hour for Lulu Pencil to make her AEW in-ring debut. Your ideas make more sense, though. I imagine we'll get some build/hype for Archer & MiSu vs Mox & King, which should be really entertaining

I think there are only three announced matches for Dynamite so far: Adam Cole vs Frankie Kazarian Jade Cargill (w/ Smart Mark Sterling) vs Leyla Hirsch Darby Allin (w/ Sting) vs Shawn Spears (w/ Tully Blanchard) Am I missing anything?

Well... nine, really. But, yeah that is probably the best way to look at it. Ishii! Pretty much every ight has at least one match to hang your hat on (or at least pretty much every night of Block A): September 18: Osaka Night 1) Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Tetsuya Naito September 19: Osaka (Night 2) Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada September 23, Ota (3) Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Kota Ibushi vs. Tomohiro Ishii September 24, Ota (4) Yeesh. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Hirooki Goto, maybe? September 26, Kobe (5) Shingo Takagi vs. Tetsuya Naito Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Tomohiro Ishii vs. KENTA September 29, Korakuen Hall (6) Uhhhhh... Hirooki Goto vs. Jeff Cobb? September 30, Korakuen Hall (7) Shingo Takagi vs. KENTA October 1, Shizuoka (8) Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. SANADA? Kazuchika Okada vs. Hirooki Goto? Man... block B has a few rough nights in terms of potentially great matches. October 3, Nagoya (9) Kota Ibushi vs. Shingo Takagi Tomohiro Ishii vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Tetsuya Naito vs. Toru Yano October 4, Korakuen (10) Jeff Cobb vs. Taichi? October 7, Hiroshima (11) Tetsuya Naito vs. KENTA Tomohiro Ishii vs. The Great-O-Khan Toru Yano vs. Shingo Takagi October 8, Kochi (12) Kazuchika Okada vs. Taichi??? October 9, Osaka (13) Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tetsuya Naito October 12, Sendai (14) Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jeff Cobb October 13, Sendai (15) Kota Ibushi vs. Tetsuya Naito Toru Yano vs. Zack Sabre Jr., October 14, Yamagata (16) Yeeeesshhhh... this night looks pretty skippable on paper. October 18, Yokohama (17) Kota Ibushi vs. KENTA Tomohiro Ishii vs. Toru Yano Tetsuya Natio vs. Great-O-Khan October 20, Budokan Hall (18) Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Taichi Kazuchika Okada vs. Jeff Cobb (I suppose it would also be correct to say that every night has at least a couple of matches that look like they have zero chance of being really good). But there is quite a lot that should be well worth watching this year.

"I love pro wrestling."

And I got another really good laugh out of imagining that