NintendoLogic

Rumors are swirling that the Ospreay situation is a lost his smile/took his ball and went home scenario. Dave seemingly lent credence to the rumors on WOR when he said that Ospreay dropping the title due to a neck injury isn't the whole story and there are a lot of issues behind the scenes. He even likened it to 90s HBK. I seem to recall that Harold Meij got the ax largely because the foreign wrestlers hated him. Well, relations now seem more strained than ever. New Japan post-Meij is starting to remind me of CMLL post-Paco Alonso.

He's training at the PC, so that's a pretty big if.

Ol' Davey was quite the whipping boy on PWO and DVDVR back in the day. Say what you want about the guy, but he should have become a much bigger star. Early 2010s Davey would be a main eventer in any promotion in the world today. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you. And as far as I know, he's not a sex pest or a COVID denier, which practically qualifies him for sainthood by pro wrestling standards. What better place for him to make his return than the island of misfit toys?

Very cool. I'll have to pick this up. You might have some trouble reaching the beach reading crowd with that cover, though.

Okada's back is still shot, so I doubt it. If there ever was a time to give Suzuki a cup of coffee with the belt as a lifetime achievement award, it's now. Let him join Mutoh and Akiyama in the grandpa champions club.

When it rains, it pours. As for Umino, Rev Pro put out a hype video for him, so it looks like he'll be getting a pretty big push there when they start back up.

I suppose you can say that. Pro wrestling is back on the muthaship, daddy. They'll also have quarterly specials on TNT. This is a great move for AEW since TBS is in more homes and they'll no longer have to worry about being preempted by NBA games. Also, having TNT specials to build toward in between the PPVs will hopefully lead to more focused booking.

The kick from Kofi looked really bad, but he didn't get concussed. In fact, he wrestled twice the next day (the Main Event taping and the Smackdown taping). He did suffer a concussion during the main event of WM27. I bet it sucks for him to not be able to remember the biggest moment of his career.

So Miz tore his ACL during the zombie lumberjack match. It has yet to be determined whether it's a full or partial tear. Either way, that's the first major injury of his career, right? Off the top of my head, I can't remember him ever taking time off for anything other than to film a movie.

He was 71. He was probably best known for the Final Conflict cage match with Sgt. Slaughter against Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood, which led to the creation of Starrcade. He had been suffering from a number of health issues in recent years, but the F4W site is reporting that his death was self-inflicted.

Holy shit.

So he says that Cesaro isn't on his level and then goes out and proves it by beating him clean. That's some big HUNTOR energy right there. The main difference is that Roman isn't killing off any babyfaces because all the babyfaces in WWE are already dead.

The root of the problem is the "Cody can never challenge for the AEW championship" stip, a legacy of the period in late 2019 when the EVPs were running wild with terrible ideas before Tony put his foot down. Being a featured star on a wrestling program when you're completely out of the title picture by necessity doesn't seem sustainable. They were able to sidestep that for a while with the TNT title, but now he just comes and goes as he pleases and exists in his own bubble separate from the rest of the show. He has to create his own issues, which leads to garbage like that promo.

Not quite nobody. Joseph Currier knew and tried to prevent it from being put up. Dave's silence in this situation is deafening. It's not a case of him being offline because he's been opining about the vital issue of the length of MMA fighter contracts on Twitter today. After the Peyton Royce kerfuffle, he said he was advised by people who advise celebrities that apologizing is the worst thing you can do in a situation like this because it only makes the story not go away but he didn't care because it was the right thing to do. Not commenting for this long suggests that either he now thinks those people were right about never apologizing or he believes he's done nothing wrong. Neither is a good look.

Then there's this embarrassing attempt at whataboutism from Garrett. Whatever you may think of Gage, he paid his debt to society and has expressed genuine remorse for what he did. Mitchell doubled and tripled down and still tries to justify his actions to this very day. Also of note, Bryan Alvarez didn't know about the show until it went up. I'm sure he's thrilled to see mass cancellations (or at least threats thereof) over something he had nothing to do with and likely would have shut down if he had known about it.

Hey, at least the UK has actually been at war with the US in the past. Unlike, say, New Zealand (Sheepherders) and Finland (Ludvig Borga).

I've said this already, but it bears repeating: this dude is genuinely unhinged. If the FBI isn't keeping tabs on him, they should be.

A winner leaves town match? That's an...interesting stip.

Having a guy with spinal stenosis take a sunset bomb off the apron in the first place is lunacy. Whoever agented that match should have been fired on the spot.

https://www.njpw1972.com/96799 Seven (!) more positive COVID tests. Ruh roh.

It could also be the case that the NXT crew are even worse actors than Shawn and the failure of NXT melodrama is a reflection of the limitations of the performers rather than the unsustainability of Shawn's ideas. Gargano in particular seems ill-suited for that sort of thing since he's basically an expressionless robot outside of the obligatory shocked face after a near fall. And NXT has been largely built around him for the past three-plus years, so naturally there's going to be a ceiling. Of course, it seems likely that the degree of difficulty in both athleticism and acting chops means that Shawn's ideas will never be realized to their full potential.

As someone on the F4W boards put it, Shawn's legacy is the thigh slap and "I'm sorry, I love you" and we're paying the price now that the kids who were hitting puberty then are entering the business.

All Japan actually ran the first wrestling event held at the new Ryogoku Kokugikan (on 3/9/85). They also held their October anniversary shows in 1985 and 1986 at the venue. Wajima had been expelled from sumo for using his Sumo Association elder stock as collateral for loans to pay off his debts, so they were banned from the building starting in November of 1986.

Brother Matt's comment got me thinking about possible parallels between the workrate revolution in wrestling and the sabermetric revolution in baseball. The use of analytics in baseball has led to increased emphasis on the three true outcomes (walk, strikeout, home run) and less emphasis on putting the ball in play. As a result, home runs are up, but strikeouts are way up. It's also resulted in games being longer than ever. Those two developments have caused the game to become largely boring to a lot of longtime fans. By the same token, the increased emphasis on big moves and near falls in important matches has led to the death of "small ball" as far as MOTYCs go. A WON MOTY winner only going 20:12, which happened as recently as 2015, would be completely unthinkable today. There's even a parallel between the physical toll of the modern in-ring style and the damage the current emphasis on velocity does to the arms of pitchers.