Jmare007

I hate that narrative because the fact is KENTA was already a shell of his former self well before he even signed to WWE. What he did after his 2012 return (from another ACL surgery), was a clear and steady step down from what he was doing before. To be honest, his knee injury at the end of his amazing 09' was the end of his peak as a in ring performer. If the New Japan setting, this new (steroid?) "diet" to bulk up and maybe even a change in style gives him a resurgence it would fucking awesome. But we can't put any blame on his tenure in WWE, he was what he was there.

I'm way more excited about Shingo in the G-1 than KENTA tbh. But it will be interesting to see if the steroid diet is gonna make KENTA more durable considering how brutal the G-1 is to wrestler's bodies. I wasn't a fan of heavyweight KENTA in NOAH but we'll see if having a chip on his shoulder and a bunch of fresh matchups in New Japan crate some sort of spark in him, hopefully we get his best version possible. You add Moxley to the mix and it's the most exciting G-1 in years.

I mean, Taker landed on his knees first, which is the safe thing to do and what he has always done. I'm not sure if it was Goldberg who didn't tuck his head or Taker just couldn't handle him and let Goldberg slip and land on his head.

After reading Dave's live tweeting of the Saudi show I feel he has become the Bill Simmons of wrestling.

holy shit

Murda Meltz

Eh, I didn't think it lead to anything and Mox's work on it was good/strong enough to me for it to mean something. I didn't feel Juice lost much by getting his leg hunted. It's a nitpick by me for sure, it's not like the match relied heavily on it or not having a satisfying payoff ruined the match or anything. It's just that if it had, it would've probably felt like a legit MOTYC to me. To be honest I'm just tired of leg work in general because it seems that in today's wrestling is impossible for any good attack on it to either be sold in a manner that makes me suspend disbelief or to have a payoff that feels earned. I mean the last time I felt it was done well was in a Daichi Hashimoto or a Takuya Nomura match (can't remember) were even though dude ended up no selling a bit, he showed that using the leg hurt like a motherfucker, it was something at least lol.

Kinda hard to have a better debut than that one for Moxley. I also didn't think it was "MOTYC" level but it was more than worth a watch. The leg work was one of the things I didn't like tbh, Mox did good stuff with it but it was rendered meaningless. Him working the eye brow and trying to bust Juice open was awesome though. Robinson is such a good babyface too, only bump I didn't like was the cannonball on the table, the rest added a lot to the match imo. Also thought Tana vs White was better, best White match since the one had against Juice in the US last year.

Aw man this is horrible. RIP to Atsushi.

Well, Ric's been very clear he's never gonna change no matter what anybody tells him. He's been saying for years he doesn't care about being Richard Fliehr, he loves being the Nature Boy too much. Sacrificing longevity for happiness (the way he sees happiness) is a perfect way of putting it.

98k for a promotion based on youtube is impressive as hell. Being 5 months aways from the TNT debut meant that DoN could've been a disaster and still wouldn't have meant much in the gran scheme of things, at the end of the day no matter how bad it could've been the buzz leading up to their TV show was going to be a huge anyway. But DoN was home run in every way imaginable so the promotion and anticipation leading up to TNT in October is gonna be something else. This is great.

Of all the things people bitch about Dave, him talking about WWE's creative process being a clusterfuck that leaves talent with very little (or non) wiggle room to actually be creative wasn't one of them. Unless we are talking about weird people on Twitter that have strange fixation with anything Meltzer says or reports. I think Punk's podcast was the thing that made every rational fan realize that things were indeed as fucked up as perceived by most and reported by guys like Dave.

Moxley sounds like Punk's mindset right before MITB 2011. Completely burned out and tired of being trapped creatively and constantly having to fight for every single thing. Mox was able to leave just in time before his love for wrestling was gone though, which those 2 and a half extra years basically did for Punk. It will never not be interesting hearing this backstage stories that confirm every perception we have about Vince and WWE's "creative" process. HHH was very smart in using Regal as his J.R and poaching all this talent from indys and overseas. Timing was perfect as there was no other company that could stop them from taking these wrestlers from them, so he basically got anyone he wanted. But a lot of those deals will be coming to an end in the next 1-3 years so it will be VERY interesting to see how many they can actually keep before even having them on the main roster with a sustained run. They have so many people right now that it's impossible to have them all happy even they did everything perfectly - and we know that's not a realistic scenario anyway -, specially when there's an option like AEW that has good money and it's fanbase is made of the people that connected with those wrestlers the most.

100k would be massive, 200k is otherworldly to the point it doesn't seem realistic at all. That surprised me a lot because I remember Dave saying it did 20k on the internet and if TV buys did better than that he would know or be told about it. 55k sounds pretty damn good or a show like All In.

Yeah, if they are gonna make mistakes better make them now than during the TNT debut. Commentary needs more polishing. Marvez sounded like he was doing a podcast, but it was better than I expected. JR and Excalibur could be really fucking good once they figure out who should be leading the call in any given match.

I didn't see the whole show but after re-watching Dustin/Cody I gotta agree that JR was the best he's been in a LONG ASS time.

They are gonna fuck up the timing of the show again. Cody went long as hell - at least the match was fucking great this time though - and the Bucks are gonna have to cut their shit to 10 minutes

That was great. They better make Dustin the main agent of this fucking promotion. Him and Arn could do some really special stuff with this roster.

Dustin is fucking amazing.

Ah, good. So they didn't have a replacement to face Page or was that shown on the pre-show?

How many matches left? I hope they learned from All In and don't have issues with the timing of the show...

Man Allie was useless on commentary imo.

Nice swerve there with Kong.

Fun match. I need Stronghearts vs Strong BJ to happen at some point in the next 12 months. One match in and Excalibur already showing why he's the best in the biz.

SCU are babyfaces right?