NintendoLogic

It's certainly for the best that AJ has a college-educated wife. Otherwise, he might be susceptible to crackpot ideas like the Earth being flat...oh, wait.

Nobody should sign with WWE unless they're a big enough star to bypass NXT. If you have any preexisting damage to your knees or shoulders, the PC will aggravate it exponentially. If you don't, the PC will inflict some.

Professional wrestling is the only industry where guys like Kane and Chris Jericho can be considered intelligent. However, I will say it's kind of cool that he used his Kane promo voice in that video calling public health officials sinister forces.

Four luchadores (Ultimo Guerrero, Bandido, Lluvia, and Princesa Sugehit) have tested positive for COVID and are off CMLL's anniversary show on Friday. Common sense would dictate that the show be postponed in the wake of a serious outbreak. But as thecubsfan has pointed out, doing so would require multiple powerful parties (CMLL and the authorities who gave them permission to start running again) to admit that they made a serious mistake in allowing shows to resume. So it's not going to happen.

It looks like this came out of nowhere since he was still taking bookings for appearances and was scheduled to be at Jerry Lawler's 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday. Sadly, 60 puts him at the high end of longevity for his peer group. Nikita Koloff, Barry Darsow, and John Nord are just about the only ones left from that crew of Minnesota wrestlers who broke into the business in the early 80s.

Credit where credit is due, I thought this was a borderline masterpiece. One of the things that set this apart from a typical strong style slugfest was the fact that they both seemed to have strategies beyond "take turns clobbering each other until one of them goes down." Goto won me over in the opening minutes when he responded to Tenzan's invitation to come off the ropes with a shoulder tackle by kicking him in the gut and following up with elbows. I also really liked the struggles to maintain control and the way both men had to gradually fight their way back in rather than transitioning with a single big move or counter (or worse, no-selling). There was a sequence near the end (Tenzan ducks a Goto lariat, Goto blocks a Tenzan kick, Tenzan blocks a Goto lariat and headbutts him in the gut, Goto catches Tenzan coming off the ropes with an ushigoroshi) that felt closer to high-end King's Road than modern strong style. Finally, it was compact enough to prevent them from going off the rails with overkill. With this style, less is almost always more.

Update: Hirooki Goto vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan (NJPW, 8/1/14) It's been a while since I felt compelled to add a singles match to my list, and I never in a million years figured it would be a match with these two. But credit where credit is due, I thought this was a borderline masterpiece. One of the things that set this apart from a typical strong style slugfest was the fact that they both seemed to have strategies beyond "take turns clobbering each other until one of them goes down." Goto won me over in the opening minutes when he responded to Tenzan's invitation to come off the ropes with a shoulder tackle by kicking him in the gut and following up with elbows. I also really liked the struggles to maintain control and the way both men had to gradually fight their way back in rather than transitioning with a single big move or counter (or worse, no-selling). There was a sequence near the end (Tenzan ducks a Goto lariat, Goto blocks a Tenzan kick, Tenzan blocks a Goto lariat and headbutts him in the gut, Goto catches Tenzan coming off the ropes with an ushigoroshi) that felt closer to high-end King's Road than modern strong style. Finally, it was compact enough to prevent them from going off the rails with overkill. With this style, less is almost always more. ****1/2 I need to redo my 101-150 rankings, so I'm not quite sure where this will end up. My guess would be somewhere in the 110s.

I saw clips of the Retribution crap and the Rollins/Mysterio crap. You know what, I'm tapping out. I've way past the point of being a serious WWE fan, but I don't even think I can follow casually anymore. There's no reason for you guys to subject yourselves to this week after week when there's literally decades worth of actual good wrestling to watch.

MLW only runs like 10 dates a year, so $3k plus trans with TV exposure actually sounds like a good deal for most of the undercard as long as they're allowed to work indies.

Isn't that basically the same argument used against Akira Taue as as worker? That just about anybody could have had great main events working with Misawa and Kawada and Kobashi? Again, the closest historical parallel is Bob Backlund. The WWF title was strong enough, and the MSG cards were loaded enough, that they could've put the belt on any number of guys and drawn well. And he virtually fell off the face of the Earth while the WWF kept going strong after they let him go, which pretty well indicates that the brand was the main draw. But 41 MSG sellouts is 41 MSG sellouts. Maybe WWE's stadium business would be exactly the same with R-Truth in main events, but any guesses would be pure speculation. Wrestlers can only be evaluated on what they did, not what they hypothetically would have done on Earth-Prime.

Look at who liked that tweet.

According to Higuchi's Observer obit, he was universally regarded in Japan as the GOAT referee. He was especially great at things that a typical fan wouldn't notice like not obstructing ringside photographers (a huge deal given how important wrestling magazines were back then). But even given all that, having him on the ballot for the first time well after when he would have benefited from a death bump is rather bizarre.

I'm all for Minoru Suzuki winning the G1. Naito/Suzuki is the only matchup they have that feels big enough to headline Wrestle Kingdom while also being relatively fresh (their last singles match was in 2018). And if they want to give Suzuki a run as IWGP champion as a kind of lifetime achievement award, the COVID era would be the time to do it.

According to Fightful, Ivelisse decided to go into business for herself in the Thunder Rosa match by no-selling. I see no reason for AEW to keep her around when they have Diamante, who is basically the same wrestler but far less of a pain in the ass to deal with.

Taue and Akiyama both should have been in years ago. Looking at his drawing power at his peak, Caristico should be a no-brainer or close to it. But the WWE run killed him. Looks like we'll have to wait for that run to fade from voters' memories for him to be given a fair shake. I've been skeptical of Owen's candidacy, but if Crockett Sr. is in, he should be too. Roman Reigns is an interesting case. Unless WWE business collapses or he ends up in the doghouse (both very real possibilities), he'll likely end his career having headlined more events that drew in excess of 50,000 fans in history by a wide margin. You can say that he's a beneficiary of the WWE machine and plenty of guys could be plugged into his spot and do just as well, but the same could be said for Bob Backlund and his MSG sellouts as WWF champion. At the end of the day, they're the ones who did it and that can't be taken away from them.

This year's ballot got posted on the F4W board. New additions for 2020 are in bold.

Brock's only banger post-WM31 was the AJ match in 2017. The Rey match was so awful that I turned off Survivor Series in disgust immediately afterward. That was the point where I decided I had no desire to ever see Brock again because the Suplex City crap had damaged him beyond repair.

Gonna be honest, the idea of Meltzer as a puppet of WWE management strikes me as so preposterous on its face that I'd need to see it fleshed out in far greater detail before I could take it seriously.

When Stacy Keibler went on Dancing with the Stars, everyone she met was shocked by things like wrestlers driving themselves from town to town and having to pay for their own meals and hotels. After about six weeks of that, she decided she was done with WWE. Even D-list celebrities find the conditions there appalling.

If she doesn't already have one foot out the door, she will once she discovers how much better entertainers in non-carny industries are treated.

For what it's worth, it looks to me like Asuka usually hits her opponent in the neck rather than the face with her backfist.

Sabian getting beaten up by female wrestlers is the only intergender wrestling I would approve of. It'd be a modern version of Cornette getting knocked out by Baby Doll.

Looks like the Performance Center has worked its magic yet again. Dwayne should've sent his daughter to a wrestling school where they actually teach you how to wrestle and not do endless forward rolls.

Hey, the Funking Conservatory produced Kurt Angle. Actually, just about everybody who debuted in the WWF in the late 90s trained at his wrestling camp.

In other news, Mandy Rose has been traded to Raw for a jobber to be named later. Apparently, Miz leveraged his connections in the entertainment industry to orchestrate the trade. It's all part of his master plan to divest Otis of his Money in the Bank contract. I'm opposed to heels outsmarting babyfaces as a general rule, but someone with that kind of power in the industry should be able to get a step ahead of a guy who stores his contract in a lunchbox.