NintendoLogic

https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/2019/11/13/separated-pit-bulls-hit-the-doggie-lottery-as-marvel-star-adopts-both/ More evidence of what a great guy Batista is.

So I checked out Cody/Jericho, and it mostly delivered. Off the top of my head, the closest comparison I can think of is Flair/Luger with the way it combined classic wrestling with bells and whistles. It was far from perfect, but it was a near 30-minute match that kept my attention the whole time and never made me roll my eyes, which is a near miracle in this day and age. Definitely the second-best match in AEW history. Cody is looking like the clear wrestler of the year, which would have been inconceivable to me at the beginning of the year.

Looks like somebody lent Brock their Arcade Fire albums.

CJ Perry is supposed to be a trained actress, right? If I were her, I'd ask for my money back. Has Rusev had the upper hand, even for a moment, at any point in this feud? As best I can tell, it's been a nonstop cavalcade of being humiliated and laid out week after week.

The thing is, wrestling is supposed to be entertainment. I have no idea how someone with a healthy moral compass can find guys trying to mutilate each other with barbed wire and broken glass entertaining. When I made that argument on the F4W board, someone said that I couldn't find it objectionable because there was violence in the Iliad. No wonder society as a whole holds wrestling and its fans in such low regard.

Holst's Mars doesn't really get going until about a minute in, so it's not really suited for pro wrestling entrances. Mozart's Dies Irae is much better in that regard. I mean, it worked for Wolfgang Krauser.

Has there been any kind of storyline explanation for why the Kabuki Warriors turned heel or are we just supposed to boo them because they speak a foreign language?

Plenty of people develop a different perspective as they get older. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's not unthinkable.

I wouldn't dismiss the notion of Orton wanting to leave out of hand. You have to think he's set for life, so it's possible he wants to cement his legacy by proving he can get over outside of WWE.

I can only imagine how he was taking the Shane McMahon push. Maybe that's what drove him over the edge.

I don't see the Moxley playbook working for anyone else after they gave him the classiest sendoff imaginable and he still thoroughly torched the company.

I haven't gotten much sleep the past few days, so I ended up crashing in the middle of the show. Cody/Jericho sounds well worth checking out, although I maintain that being the only one who didn't see MJF's betrayal coming makes Cody look like a bit of a goof. Extreme gullibility is not a desirable quality in a babyface. I absolutely will not be checking out Mox/Omega. Deathmatch torture porn is the only style of wrestling whose existence I actively oppose. The people who enjoy that sort of thing are not the kind of people that any respectable company should want to cater to.

The Horsemen aren't eligible to be on the ballot because Ric Flair is already in as a singles wrestler. It's a silly rule that I've been arguing against for years.

A wrestler who uses medical terminology to describe what they're going to do to their opponents is a pretty great character. It's a shame that Dr. Britt Baker, DMD (who is a dentist) is nowhere near ready in the ring.

Being a talented actor doesn't make you a scholar of history or literature. When someone with no scholarly standing dismisses the overwhelming academic consensus on tendentious grounds, the only appropriate response is mockery.

I dislike long heel title reigns as a general rule, but there seems to be a dearth of strong heel challengers if Cody wins the belt. I think the solution might be to make Tully Blanchard Cody's primary antagonist and have him manage a revolving door of challengers. A Horseman trying to take out a Rhodes? The storyline practically writes itself.

There's a major disconnect between Page's persona and his wrestling style. He's basically Seth Rollins in chaps. Dude needs to study tapes of LA Park or even the Briscoes to learn how to be violent and dangerous while flying all over the place.

Vince has a history of showing far more respect to those with the guts to stand up to him than those who try to blow sunshine up his ass. But even setting that aside, what are they afraid he'll do to them? Firing them is obviously out of the question, and burying them through booking isn't much of a threat since most of them could hardly be booked worse. Seriously, what more could they possibly do to Rusev? If Vince's reality distortion field has prevented them from seeing what's plain as day to anyone with an Observer subscription, then their plight isn't worth caring about. There's far too much genuine suffering in the world to shed tears for those who bend over backwards to allow a psychopathic billionaire to humiliate them.

My issue with Aldis isn't his lack of workrate. It's the fact that he's the world champion when he's clearly nowhere near the best wrestler in the world even in kayfabe. Like I said earlier, the cocky heel champion who keeps retaining his championship by the skin of his teeth is as much of an anachronism as the heel authority figure. It's an archetype that doesn't make much sense outside of a handful of contexts that are pretty far removed from modern wrestling.

From the latest Observer: Absolutely pathetic. None of these losers deserve to be treated with a shred of dignity. At this point, I'm actively rooting for Vince to shovel shit down all their throats for the duration of their contracts. And even then, they'd probably re-up and come back for more.

It would have made no difference in the long run. The structural rot in this company extends far beyond whoever is being pushed as the top guy. Cena was able to disguise the rot for a while, but he also helped to accelerate it.

I'm pretty sure most fans consider the move preceding the pin rather than the pin itself to be what puts someone down. Given that, it might be a better idea to give the wrestler being pinned credit for having the strength to kick out rather than criticizing the one doing the pinning unless it's an egregiously nonchalant cover. That, or make a concerted effort to educate the fans (and the wrestlers, for that matter) on what a proper pin entails. That's actually something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently. If pro wrestling were a shoot, how would you keep someone's shoulders pinned to the mat for three seconds with a lateral press? It seems to me that hooking someone's legs would make it easier for them to lift their shoulder up. By contrast, here's a lateral press from Johnny Saint that looks like it could believably keep someone down for a three-count. Then again, when Sting shoot pinned Jeff Hardy at Victory Road, he did it by hooking both of Jeff's legs, so who knows.

Sounds like Brock pulled a Hogan and got WWE to bring in Cain so he could get his win back.

On the negative side, JR and Schiavone have been driving me nuts the past couple of weeks with their constant harping on wrestlers not hooking the leg or applying enough pressure to the shoulders. What makes it worse is that Excalibur, who as a former wrestler should be able to provide some insight on how to properly execute a pin, always sits there silently whenever they do it. This must be how Meltzer felt listening to Gorilla Monsoon in the 80s.

There was an episode of Impact in 2011 where Bully Ray cut an promo on AJ Styles calling him a boy who would rather play video games in his hotel room than drink whiskey and get lap dances at a strip club like a man. That sentiment sounded believable coming from Bully Ray. From Finn Balor, not so much.