NintendoLogic

Darby Allin is straight edge as well.

It's always great to see modern wrestlers take inspiration from the GOAT.

I question whether Bryan would be much of a draw to the tourist audience. I figure someone going to a CMLL show as a tourist attraction wants to see pure lucha libre. To a typical American, that means guys in masks doing flips and dives.

Nah, fam. Jungle Boy's like Ricky Steamboat and Rey Mysterio. He can't be anything but a babyface.

They just shut down WWE Japan, so Kairi Sane might be available.

The Pat McAfee feud made it clear that he has no idea how to play the political game. There's no way in hell Shawn or Hunter would have agreed to get knocked out by a punter and then have an authority figure issue a challenge on their behalf. Anyway, AEW knocked it out of the park last night. There was nothing I'd consider a MOTYC (then again, I wasn't really equipped to judge match quality since I watched while partaking of a couple too many IPAs), but nothing underdelivered either. As a total package of in-ring and booking, it was easily the show of the year. Cole showing up and joining the Elite only to be immediately upstaged by Danielson felt very Attitude Era in a good way. I really wish they could have gotten the rights to The Final Countdown, though. Ride of the Valkyries still has the stench of WWE to me.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger. This is the first PPV of any kind I've ordered since Double or Nothing 2020. The problem with Punk/Darby is that there is no optimal outcome. You either job out the biggest returning star in years in his hometown or you have your hottest homegrown act lose to a WWE guy who hasn't wrestled in seven years. Or you do a fuck finish that pisses everyone off.

On a certain level, WWE's hubris is understandable given how much success they've had in Mexico despite lucha libre being so deeply ingrained in the culture. The first-ever WWE event in Mexico in April of 2004 set a new live gate record for the country, and once they got on TV there, they instantly made CMLL and AAA look minor league. WWE/Stardom is a story in itself. Talks fell through because WWE couldn't answer basic questions about what kind of plans they had for the company after purchase. Instead, they tried to seal the deal by offering to induct Rossy Ogawa into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Gable Steveson has signed with WWE. He looks like a can't-miss prospect on paper, but you never know with this company. The fact that he's not exactly a dynamo of charisma doesn't help.

That looks like the set of a Nickelodeon game show. It'll be fitting if they bring back obstacle courses.

They announced during intermission at Wrestle Grand Slam that Wrestle Kingdom will be three nights in 2022. They'll run the Tokyo Dome on January 4 and 5 and Yokohama Arena on January 8. I'm not sure they could put on a compelling one-night WK with how depleted their roster is, let alone stretched over three. You just know EVIL's going to be in the main event of one of those shows.

I find it surprising that someone would argue Lawler had the more varied toolkit of the two. Hansen may not have been a man of a thousand holds, but I'd say he was clearly better at the traditional title match style. When Lawler worked with guys like Bockwinkel and Dory Junior, it was striking how much they had to dumb themselves down so he could keep up. Also, Hansen was a far superior tag wrestler.

Has Miz done anything in Hollywood outside of the WWE umbrella? It'd be pretty funny if he pulled a Stacy Keibler and quit the company once he realized how much the treatment of wrestlers pales in comparison to that of real celebrities.

The fact that they planned on running a show called NXT UK Takeover Dublin tells you how ill-conceived the whole project was.

It looks like he was too busy playing Risk when he should have been watching his back.

I don't think anyone seriously expects this to improve the product. NXT has sucked for years and will continue to suck with this new direction. It's more schadenfreude over Hunter's continued fall from grace. First he got his ass handed to him by a DVDVR poster, now he's been outmaneuvered politically by Brother Love.

Well, shit. On the plus side, maybe this means they'll move Big Show/QT to the buy in.

It's bizarre how many people subscribe to the idea of the money being in the chase in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not sure there's ever been a babyface who dethroned a long-term heel champion after multiple failed attempts and then went on to become a long-term successful champion in his own right. That's really what it comes down to, though. Far too many people think HEAT~! should be pro wrestling's default state and babyface triumphs should be rare and fleeting because their brains have been rotted by terminal levels of exposure to 80s JCP.

This right here is why having guys like Christian on the roster is so valuable.

Sure, but there's a big difference between sucker punching someone who's expecting a worked blow and landing a hit on someone who's actively defending herself. In other news, we have some clues as to Asuka's recent whereabouts. She had vehemently denied Meltzer's report that there's nothing wrong with her physically and creative simply had nothing for her. Normally when someone in WWE emphatically denies something Meltzer reports, it's almost certainly true. But her arm being in a sling suggests that she's been on the shelf due to injury. Or maybe it's something minor that she could work through but decided to take care of since she wasn't being used.

By all accounts, Charlotte had no interest in wrestling until Laurinaitis saw her one day and asked her why she wasn't in the business. And Ric wasn't exactly much of a shooter himself. In his early years as NWA champion, he brought along Harley Race as an insurance policy for his overseas defenses in case someone tried to shoot on him and steal the belt. Even so, Nia would gas out in about 30 seconds in a real fight. Giants can't fight, especially ones with bad knees.

Dave said on WOR that Nia/Charlotte was an attempt at a worked shoot, but that sounds like some bullshit his WWE sources fed him like when they told him that Kairi getting her head split open when Nia threw her into the stairs was Kairi's fault. Regardless, I hope they wrestle each other every week. Matches that completely fall apart as two sloppy reckless workers with entitlement issues get fed up with each other is the closest thing to an entertaining product this company can provide.

Red Velvet has had more TV time this year than Riho, Serena Deeb, and Leyla Hirsch combined. She and Jade Cargill are on TV every week (and before that, you had the inexplicable Big Swole push) while Hikaru Shida, who carried the division on her back for over a year, has been locked in the Dark/Elevation dungeon since losing the title.

Speaking of tired old acts, Gangrel said on his podcast that he was supposed to appear on Dynamite but that got nixed after the Broodbath on Smackdown. Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing as you. Gangrel has a podcast?