Coffey

I actually think AEW would be an easier, more fun watch if Cody & Chris Jericho weren't on the shows at all. To me, anyway. I also don't think they're getting anything out of Sting other than having to pay him to stand there. Cody & Jericho especially though are just fucking WWE through & through. Everything they say & do comes off as being a b-level attempt to parody WWE shit. Jericho has more than worn out his welcome to me. Even when shit is supposed to be taken seriously he's out there telling jokes & trying to come up with some stupid new one-liner to slap on a t-shirt. He was far & away the worst part about Wargames. If the commentary team was just Tony Schiavone with Paul Wight or Tony Schiavone with Taz, it would be much better off as well but that's a different rant for a different time. I'm never going to like Excalibur & I think Jim Ross would be better in a backstage role. Talent relations.

Of course he is. That's where all this shit starts.

At least the Varsity Blonds feel fresh. I say why not? They just strapped Miro with the TNT Title, so trying some new things now seems like it's not out of the question.

I feel like letting him sit out his contract but still being employed by the company is a recipe for disaster. He already did one of his loony rants while wearing an NXT shirt. Imagine if he was "off" so he had even more free time to kill, the crazy shit he would get up to while being employed by WWE. I think that's an even worse look than keeping him employed because of fear of backlash. They can just have Johnny Ace, Triple H & Stephanie McMahon make Twitter posts like they did with Mickie James, right?

The people in that video not wearing masks look exactly like what you think people not wearing masks would look like.

There's still a lot of outspoken fans that think Shawn Michaels is the greatest wrestler of all-time. I remember the Natalya talking point as well. Just different corners of the internet, I reckon.

My big issue with New Japan is the same now as it's been for the last 10+ years: in a 3-4 hour show, the only thing worth watching is usually the last two matches & maybe like a Junior title match. The undercard is miserable. Guys like EVIL, Sanada & Taichi are never going to improve. I mean, we don't have people like Takashi Iizuka shitting up the card anymore but there's still way too many guys that are mediocre at best or downright boring & bad at worst - like Tama Tonga, Chase Owens, Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi or Tenzan. If a match is happening featuring two of the following, I'll watch it. If it doesn't feature two of them, I won't: Okada, Tanahashi, Jay White, Jeff Cobb, Ibushi, Suzuki, Naito, Ospreay, Zack Sabre Jr., Ishii or Shingo. I don't mind Yano during a G1 but I don't go out of my way to watch him. Sometimes I'll give Goto a chance as well if he's working one of the names above but more often than not, he feels like he phones it in. I love the New Japan main event, big match style. It's just that everything else, especially the undercard & tag stuff, it almost always universally bad.

It's just not a good look when they just fired The IIconics, Chelsea Green & Mickie James - then shipped her shit to her in a trash bag - and then re-hire Eva Marie.

Honestly, at this point it's just exhausting to even continue to talk about the lunatic conspiracy theorists. These last four years in the United States of America have been so tiring, I feel like many of us are just at our wits' end. As if our country wasn't already ridiculously divided, due to the Trump Presidency, then the pandemic hit & became politicized. So suddenly even our health was now controversial or some conspiracy. So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that some how wearing a mask gets turned into another nut job rant about human trafficking & abortion, because of course it does. In the name of Jesus Christ too, of course, because if all else fails, play the religion card. We're dealing with politics, dealing with racism, dealing with authority abusing power, dealing with the pandemic & it is bleeding into every single faucet of life, including our hobbies that we used to be able to use to escape the daily burden of stress from life. When we're in quarantine, or trying to limit how often we go out into public - often times for me at least, because I'm worried about running into OTHER PEOPLE (people like dumb shit Drake Wuertz) - when even the shows you can watch in the privacy of your own home, like professional wrestling, feel like you can't escape anymore... it's just a lot. How often have we seen videos of people going nuts in public because someone else was wearing a mask, or because someone not wearing one was asked to put one on or leave a store? Every time I leave to go run some errand, which I don't even want to do in the first place nine times out of ten, I think is today the day I have to knock out some loon in public because he's on his bullshit? I don't even know what normal means anymore but I know that we're never getting back to how shit used to be. We're going to have a new normal & it's going to be very divided. People like Drake Wuertz or B.G. James aren't going to go away, if anything, I think we'll get more of them & they're going to get louder. We have people that think our election was rigged, that the media is full of people purposely lying to us, that the vaccine for the virus is somehow injecting us with tracking devices or whatever-in-the-fuck. We had people literal attack the Capitol. That was just a couple months ago & a lot of people have seemingly moved on or want to pretend like it was no big deal. So another Austin Aries or Sean Morley Twitter rant doesn't seem that bad when you consider everything else going on around all of us right now. We've always known that the majority of professional wrestlers are fucking idiots. After all, they literally sign-up to get hit in the head for a living. Now they just all have a platform, thanks to social media, to broadcast their idiocy. The fatigue is real.

Really liked that "Last Supper" pinfall from Darby. I had no seen that before.

This has been a great show.

Santana just out promo'd Jericho.

That match owned. Great finish.

No idea why Trent is trying to even do an apron Piledriver. Course, I have no idea why he's employed, so whatever. That promo segment with The Pinnacle was great. Fucking great. Wardlow super impressed me but MJF is on another level from everyone.

My dad used to watch wrestling in the sixties & seventies & would often reference a lot of things that aren't easy to find. Growing up & living in Indiana, I reckon his exposure to live wrestling was the old Dick the Bruiser WWA loop from Terre Haute up to Fort Wayne by way of Indianapolis but whatever he got on television, which I imagine was based out of Indy or Chicago, I don't know. I don't think anything from Detroit would have played locally. Obviously I am familiar with the likes of a Dick the Bruiser, Moose Cholak or Bobo Brazil but my dad often references the "Algerian Hangman" which is apparently a move? I have no idea what that move is or who used it. Anyone familiar?

I keep waiting for Starks/Page to hit that next level & I don't think it's coming. And it's over. I thought that match would be... more than that. Still, Jungle Boy Vs. Darby and Shida Vs. Tay should be fun.

I don't know, that's why I asked. I don't know if this is like a documentary, a Dark Side of the Ring kind of thing or what the show even is. I just heard A&E was doing wrestling shows.

I never once saw Low Ki and thought he could legit kick anyone's ass. My legit first thought when I saw Low Ki back in the early 2000s was that he wouldn't have been able to make a high school football team. That being said, as I don't think real life toughness ultimately matters in pro wrestling, especially nowadays, he had some pretty good matches that I was a fan of. Similar to Austin Aries. I thought they were both pretty good workers & was a fan of them both in Ring of Honor. They also share some similarities for me there as well, as post Ring of Honor, I wasn't a big fan of either. I think the common denominator here is that early Ring of Honor, outside of like Xavier, was really good.

I just finished the Bret Hart book a couple of days ago & it was pretty good but I felt like I had already heard all of the stories that were in the book. From Bret doing shoot interviews & his Hall of Fame speech & what not. A lot of the drama with his family, especially after Owen died, reminded me a lot of how selfish my own family has been in similar situations. Sucks that some people are like that, so I felt for him there. Now I'm currently struggling to get through the second Jim Ross book. It feels like a total cash-grab rush job & it's reads like a high school worksheet. That being said, it's super short at least so I could finish it quickly in one sitting if I could find the motivation to do so. The "chapters" are all like a page or two each & read like "remember this. this happened. this sucked. this was cool."

Did they mention any of the Austin issues behind the scenes, like his domestic abuse, or was it all a total fluff piece?

Every time I hear some crusty old dude in WWE, be it Vince, Hayes, Dunn, etc., say they don't "get" some woman, her gimmick, her work, whatever, I assume it means they tried to make a sexual pass at them & got rejected. I'm not giving any of the people in charge in WWE benefit of the doubt on anything.

Nak is another dude that if WWE released I wouldn't bat an eye. Surprised they've kept him this long to be honest. Then again they just used Nattie, Tamina & Nia in a tag team title match at Wrestlemania, so what do I know.

Now can they put the axe to some people in NXT? Like Drake Wuertz & Velveteen Dream should have been gone yesterday.

It's weird how wrestlers getting released is like the modern version of Lex Luger showing up on Nitro. Due to the no compete clauses, we don't really get jumping ship surprises anymore, so now all the speculation is where someone might wind-up after they leave one company.

I wouldn't be shocked to see Mickie James in NWA. I think Chelsea probably goes back to iMPACT! & it seems like a no brainer for Peyton Royce to wind-up in AEW with Shawn Spears. Which probably means Billie Kay goes with her. Maybe Kalisto winds up in ROH. Wonder if any of them will show up in MLW. I imagine they all have 90-day no complete clauses. It'll be interesting to see what happens with Samoa Joe. If nothing else, I hope we get another shoot interview or podcast from him. Always loved his story-telling.