NintendoLogic

Dynamite beat both NBA games, which is even more impressive than beating Raw. The top three segments were Moxley, the mixed tag, and Cody. So there you have it. The Codyverse is a draw.

A luchadb search also turns up a trios with Herodes and Enfermero Jr. vs. Solitario/Lizmark/V3 on September 25 and a super libre rematch of the 9/30 trios on October 7. I can't vouch for their quality because I haven't watched either of them, I'm just posting them for the sake of completeness.

https://uboat.net/boats/u740.htm The U-boat the other Stark commanded spent a total of 29 days at sea on patrol and didn't sink or damage any Allied ships. It was sunk by depth charges on its second patrol, killing everyone on board. So the other Stark was clearly far from a prominent figure in Nazi Germany. With that said, they've already had issues with fans giving Marcel Barthel Nazi salutes at NXT house shows, so best practice would be to steer clear of anything even slightly suggestive of Nazism.

Per Meltzer, Cody is going to be on Dynamite tomorrow and absolutely will not be in the Rumble. He'll probably do something like come out and sign his new contract in blood while making a reference to gory self-mutilation. In other news, Every Time I Die has broken up. I wonder if that means we'll start seeing the Butcher in AEW full-time.

The absolute state of the Smackdown women's division. They had to drag Lita out of mothballs to give Charlotte someone to feud with. Yes, I know that was last week. But no one wanted to talk about it then.

WWE going back to the early Monday Night Wars playbook. But they're clearly not worried about anything AEW is doing.

Great Kojika has been wrestling for nearly 60 years and has run BJPW for nearly 30. Does that make him HOF-worthy?

Yeah, simply remaining in business isn't that much of an accomplishment when you're a member of a cartel that insulates you from any real competition. I see Owen as the promoter equivalent of Randy Orton: decades of mid-level consistency but none of the highlights you expect from a true HOFer.

I disagree. I think he gets in easily every year from the point he first becomes eligible with the possible exception of the period he was self-destructing in TNA. No offense, but this board is really on an island when it comes to Angle. Just about any other place that discusses wrestling, he's held in near-universal reverence as one of the all-time greats. That doesn't mean they're right and we're wrong, mind you, but it's important to keep the broader consensus in mind when evaluating someone's candidacy.

Dave has repeatedly said that wrestlers need to be evaluated as close to their primes as possible because the further away from someone's peak you are, the more perceptions become clouded by nostalgia and reputation. He always points to Kiyoshi Tamura as the quintessential example of a guy who was screwed by the fact that the style he was arguably the best ever at died and the companies he worked for went out of business, which killed his legacy for newer voters. Raising the age floor is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. None of the wrestlers voted in before the age of 40 were anything less than very strong candidates, and the vast majority were absolute no-brainers. In other news, the Holy Demon Army goes on the ballot next year. That means Taue is being removed as a singles candidate, which is unfortunate, but anything that increases the likelihood of him taking his rightful place in the Hall is a plus in my book.

The issue's out. Okada, Los Brazos, Jim Crockett Jr., and Don Owen got in. Mistico, Sgt. Slaughter, and Mark Rocco were the biggest near-misses.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Punk reinventing himself as a Bret Hart tribute act has been the best recent development in wrestling.

Speaking of January 6th... I suppose he can always go back to Parler.

One of the foundational notions of AEW's booking is the idea of wins and losses mattering, which is why every wrestler's W-L record is displayed before each match. Having someone lose a bunch of high-profile matches prior to getting a title shot would make a mockery of that notion. Really though, how about we let the company's world champion and hottest act manage a few successful title defenses before we start fantasy booking ways to get the belt off him?

I never saw him wrestle in NXT. Was he any good?

Bryan and AJ are two of the greatest wrestlers who have ever lived. So yes, you can overcome height bias in WWE if you're a GOAT-level talent. It seems premature to presume this Hayes fella is on that level.

God damn, that was a killshot on par with the 1999 Rock/Billy Gunn promo. I don't know how Lashley recovers.

I think it's clearly the opposite. Going into Wednesday's match, Danielson had been positioned as an unbeatable wrestler with a million different ways to finish a match. Hangman kicked out of or escaped all of them before winning with a single buckshot lariat. You don't give someone that kind of Superman push unless you have him penciled in for a lengthy reign. At the very least, he's being positioned at least a level above the Pillars. If MJF does beat him for the title, I doubt it'll be more than a quickie transitional reign.

Is the opportunity to do forward rolls for Lord Tensai really that much more appealing for an NCAA athlete without any passion for the business? It seems to me that high-level athletes who are used to being coddled are a lot less likely to subject themselves to a bunch of Power Plant bullshit than experienced workers whose lifelong dream is to be a WWE Superstar. Who do they even have left to teach the actual basics of wrestling?

https://www.cagesideseats.com/aew/2022/1/5/22868556/cody-rhodes-regrets-anthony-ogogo-angle-race-relations-american-dream-promo Cody recently admitted that the Ogogo feud was a failure on just about every level. That would seem to poke a hole in arguments that he's supposed to be getting booed and the angles and promos that caused crowds to turn on him were galaxy brain 11th dimensional chess moves to make him a heel who thinks he's a babyface.

Made my first #1 pick for 2022, one that'll be hard to top.

OK, I watched Hangman/Danielson Part Deux. I don't want to jump the gun, and I need to watch it again to fully process it, but my initial reaction is to call it the greatest match in AEW history. It's as if Danielson was a PWO lurker and worked the match specifically for me after reading my comments about the first match. And yes, his jumping jacks continue to infuriate me.

Meltzer is reporting that Shibata legitimately went off-script when he changed the rules of his match and everyone backstage was freaking out when it happened. So there you go. I suppose it could be an elaborate WCW-esque attempt to work the boys, but I doubt it. By the way, for you all you GWE voters, Dick Togo being the driving force behind the House of Torture surely has to be a black mark on his candidacy if not an outright disqualifier.

It looks like the conversation was started by someone blaming Ospreay for the dropoff in attendance between nights 1 and 2, which is silly because that happens every year. I can't speak to his drawing power on the UK indies, but he appears to have been responsible for a significant increase in NJPW World subscriptions in the UK a few years ago. He does seem to have cooled off quite a bit since turning heel, though. Between that and Becky Lynch's current run, it's pretty clear that wrestlers doing bad Conor McGregor impressions is not what fans want to see.