NintendoLogic

Who would be considered the biggest Japanese star who wrestled primarily under their real name? Rikidozan, Inoki, Baba, Choshu, Tsuruta, and Tenryu are all out. I believe Fujinami is as well because his ring name is written with different kanji than his real name although the pronunciation is the same. Who does that leave? Akira Maeda? Chigusa Nagayo?

So, wrestling... Several years ago, JBL on commentary called Heyman the greatest manager of all time. Ever since then, I've periodically wondered who really deserves that title (in kayfabe). Heyman is an obvious candidate, as is Bobby Heenan. Lou Albano topped Bruno when he was seemingly invincible and managed a boatload of tag team champions. The Grand Wizard deserves consideration for what he did with Stan Stasiak and Superstar Graham in the WWWF and Sheik in Detroit before that. Who else?

I recommend revisiting the 2/3 falls match against Sheamus. Off the top of my head, I'd say he looked about as dangerous there as he does in AEW.

I liked Punk/Garcia the most out of all the matches either man has had so far. Punk coming back as a Bret Hart tribute act has been the most pleasing wrestling development of 2021 for me. I especially appreciate the fact that he maintains a degree of subtlety about it and doesn't quite beat you over the head with it the way, say, Eddie Kingston does with his All Japan tribute stuff.

I thought WALTER was adamant that he had no desire to relocate to the US full-time. Then again, the wrestling scene in Europe seems to be in pretty rough shape now, so maybe that changed his perspective.

You mean the same Austin whose heel turn virtually single-handedly killed the last wrestling boom in America? Yeah, great example.

Someone posted this on the F4W board in reference to the Rampage ratings and it's too hilarious to not share.

Yikes.

Looks like CM Punk is the true head of the table. Acknowledge him.

Steve Austin is your best friend?

Was she sipping on a little bit of the bubbly?

It feels like the TNT title was created mainly to give Cody something to do after he could no longer challenge for the world title. But he seemed to lose interest in it after dropping it to Darby, so now it occupies a kind of weird upper-midcard limbo while Cody has become preoccupied with the Codyverse.

Also, look how well Korean cultural products are doing internationally (different country obviously, but still within the East Asian cultural sphere). BTS is the biggest boy band in the world, Squid Game is the most watched show in Netflix history, and Parasite became the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. It should be noted that New Japan has a long history of failing to capitalize on overseas popularity. They were once so big in Italy that Tatsumi Fujinami came in third in a newspaper poll for most popular athlete in the country. But they were doing such strong business in Japan that they never considered expanding. However, an indie promoter ran a show in Italy with Inoki as the main draw and drew 15000.

The Andrade/PAC match that was taped for next week's Rampage has been getting rave reviews with people calling it the greatest or second-greatest match in Rampage history. It'll obviously be a great thing for both Andrade and AEW if he can get his mojo back. It'll also hopefully put an end to the baseless slanders PAC has been subjected to on this board. By the way, the "travel issue" that kept PAC off All Out was apparently a concussion.

I'm sure a big part of it is wanting to avoid the optics of Punk showing up and cutting to the front of the line ahead of the guys who've been there the whole time when that was one of his main complaints about WWE in the Colt podcast.

It's worth remembering that Roman is currently feuding with Brock Lesnar, who no one in their right mind thinks he could take in a real fight.

Here's what Dave once said: My two favorite Kevin Nash stories were the time on live TV that he was doing a promo with Terry Funk, where he was the heel and Funk was the face. They had worked the promo out, then Nash totally went against the script, double-crossed Funk, Funk looked bad and then went to the back bragging about how he upstaged and left Terry Funk in the dust. The second was for years he would brag in the WCW locker room about how given a chance, he'd do the same to The Rock. He said it so often, Rock knew the story. Then they actually did the promo, and Rock veered from the script and totally buried him.

Birds of a feather...

Are you telling me that Randy Hogan is #AllElite?

I thought it was more Punk needing to use the anaconda vice because he couldn't properly execute the GTS due to the damage to his leg, but that interpretation works too.

Wrestlers taking turns inviting their opponent to hit them will never appeal to me on any level. It has nothing to do with wrestling or even brawling. It's a form of bizarre sadomasochistic performance art. In fairness, things improved immensely once they got that nonsense out of the way and decided to have an actual wrestling match.

Well, this match sure got stupid in a hurry.

Obviously this is mainly just him being a company man, but he seems to really have it out for Punk. It's like the comments on Colt's podcast about wanting Chris Hero in the Shield and "make Roman look strong" left him eternally gotten to.

Knowing what he became, it's pretty staggering how bad Hogan was at promos before going to the AWA. There's a reason why in his first WWF run, he did little more than stand there and flex while Freddie Blassie did all the talking. Even in the AWA, the difference between a 1982 Hogan promo and a 1983 one is like night and day.

That tweet confuses me. Aren't Vans and Asics sneakers? Also: