NintendoLogic

The Wild Samoans have one of my favorite origin stories. Afa and Sika were huge fans (in both senses of the word) who would go to shows at the Cow Palace and try to attack the heels, particularly opponents of Peter Maivia. Roy Shire decided to bring them into the business for the sake of the safety of his wrestlers.

In this instance, I believe he's referring to the Cena spot and the Eddie Guerrero tribute. I liked the first one because it played into Kingston accusing Punk of becoming what he had previously railed against during the build, but the second one fell flat for me as well. Anyway, here are a few more matches from this decade I think are worth checking out: Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage (Dynamite, January 2021) WALTER vs. Tommaso Ciampa (Stand and Deliver 2021) Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair (Wrestlemania 38) Kazuchika Okada vs. Kaito Kiyomiya (Mutoh retirement show) Owens/Zayn vs. Usos (Wrestlemania 39) Kazuchika Okada vs. Bryan Danielson (Wrestle Kingdom 18) Gunther vs. Sheamus (Raw, May 2024) The second Hangman/Danielson match is my current MOTD, but I don't recommend going in cold because you have to be familiar with Danielson's previous AEW work to fully appreciate it.

How about this: Hikuleo debuts and joins the Sikoa faction while Zayn and Owens align with Roman to make it 5-on-5. Speaking of Hikuleo, WWE filed a trademark application for the name Talla Tonga, which is actually pretty clever.

When you're talking about the worst number Dynamite has ever done in its normal time slot, excuses like lead-ins and competition go out the window. The bottom line is that they put on a show people didn't want to see. The historical pattern is for attendance declines to precede ratings declines, so it could simply be that AEW's ticket woes have finally caught up to them. Regardless, that number is such an outlier that we need to wait until next week to determine if it was a fluke or the start of a trend.

I suppose I'd be fine with this as a one-off just for the WTF factor, but I have zero interest in seeing him become an AEW regular. Remember when WWE fired him because he wanted to make the 2022 Rumble all about himself and threw a fit when his ideas kept getting shot down? You have to figure he'd be even more of a nightmare in a company not run by his father.

I will eat my words and concede that Bray Wyatt really was a genius if this gets Bo Dallas over as a main event heel and it doesn't die horribly once he starts actually wrestling. By the way, Uncle Howdy nearly tripped and fell right after his big reveal, so we came dangerously close to another Shockmaster moment. I will also concede that Bray was hamstrung somewhat by the constraints of the PG environment. He would have been much more effective if he had been able to bloody people up rather than terrorize them with puppets.

@Phil Lions posted an interesting factoid on Twitter yesterday (apologies if this has already been brought up, but I've only been somewhat keeping up with this thread). L'Ange Blanc's TV debut in 1959 aired live on Friday night at 10:05 PM. Andre's world title win in 1968 aired on tape delay on Saturday night at 11:30 PM. It could be a situation similar to what befell Japanese promotions where they simply didn't have the TV exposure to create new stars.

Word is WWE wants to establish relationships with promotions in Mexico and Puerto Rico similar to the ones they have with TNA, NOAH, and Marigold. CMLL and AAA are both working with AEW, so what does that leave as far as Mexican promotions? Is IWRG still a thing? Speaking of NOAH, AJ Styles will be facing Naomichi Marufuji at their Budokan event next month. That match obviously won't be nearly as bonkers as it would have been 20 years ago, but it should still be a fun one.

This week's offering from the WAR Random Match Generator: Between this and the Christian Father's Day special, Collision is looking like a must-see.

TNA did us all a favor and posted the full segment to YouTube. Sorry, I can't bring myself to watch 13 minutes of this. All I know is that Alisha Edwards gets beheaded by a guillotine at one point.

Looks like NXT Japan's back on the menu, boys.

Oh hell yeah.

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/40290412/wwe-nhl-stanley-cup-final-championship-belt-edmonton-oilers-florida-panthers They actually referenced The Goon in this article, which popped me.

As with Japan, it might be a currency issue. The Canadian dollar is weak against the US dollar, which makes booking American talent more expensive. That could be a dealbreaker for a company like Anthem that likes to pinch pennies.

With all the recent layoffs, TNA currently has no marketing or live events team. They also have no events scheduled after the first week of August. Between that and the recent work with NXT, there's been increasing speculation about the possibility of sale to WWE.

It's hard to dispute this when just about every metric related to fans spending money on the product is setting records. Cody also has the advantage of not being turned on by a significant percentage of the fanbase. It remains to be seen whether he has the longevity, but his success in the short term can't be denied.

It was pretty hilarious when he first appeared in AEW and the crowd went crazy and chanted "we the people" like it was a major star jumping over during the Attitude Era.

Jake Hager and AEW mutually agreed to part ways after his contract expired. We all know what that means...

This doesn't necessarily mean criminal charges are imminent, but it's obviously a huge development.

The Danielson retirement tour is pretty self-indulgent, but it can't really be described as selfish. The difference between the two is that the latter involves the pursuit of self-interest or personal gratification at the expense of the bigger picture. I don't think you can argue that AEW is being harmed by Danielson putting people over or his opponents are being harmed by beating him. It's also simply inaccurate to say he loses every time he steps in the ring. He's won 72 percent of his matches this year according to Cagematch and his only singles losses were to Okada, Sabre, Kingston, and Ospreay. He still keeps himself strong enough that beating him means something.

Dude just about took TJ McConnell's head off.

I think I found brother @KawadaSmile's Twitter account.

Der Ringkönig has a nice ring to it.

The only Duggan story I saw on the sleaze thread (or at least the compilation on Angelfire) is an incident with him and Balls Mahoney. They were working a match and there was supposed to be a spot where Mahoney blew fire and Duggan ducked it, but Duggan blew the spot by knocking the lighter out of Mahoney's hand. Mahoney was pissed and went to the back to retrieve a knife, but Duggan left before things got out of hand. Not really much of a story.

Meltzer confirmed the cut was from the chair shot. It looked to me like Jade got her right hand up a tad too late, which led to the chair coming down sideways and hitting her in the neck and side of the head. I still wouldn't trust Nia with any spots that involve swinging a chair at someone even though it wasn't really her fault in this particular instance. By the way, yelling "Your mom sucks" at Jade's daughter is by far the coolest thing Nia has never done.