Migs

Janela-Cardona was great for what it was, but that segment was a full half hour. Wondering if that was mis-timed, because I don't see how they'd have gotten everything into a shorter slot but I also don't know if the intent was for that to be quite so long. Was at the show and really enjoyed it. Was great to be back at the Hammerstein for wrestling and the hard PPV time slot in some ways makes for an overall better show than when they can run as long as they want. Nothing felt too flabby. I doubt the main event was meant to be an epic - they already seem to be setting up a rematch, probably in NJ where they can do a deathmatch style.

Yeah, the sad thing was less the match losing some time and more that Emil Jay couldn't do the entire Gage intro. ("Representing the eastern bloc... representing the H8 Club...)

Amazing that you could sign a contract for 3 years and get to be in that place for 3 years! Janela seems like he's going to seamlessly transition back into being an indy guy. (They set up him and X-Pac vs. Cardona and Myers last night at GCW.) Cage didn't get signed until 2020, so if it was a 3 year deal, they've got a long way to go on that one. I also wonder about the contracts of some of the guys who were much hotter at the start of AEW than now. Like, is Kaz taking a pay cut? Was his salary not enough to be worth negotiating him down in the scheme of things?

I picked the up the previews at the All Out fan fest. I enjoyed them, but given the forma, doubt we'll learn anything we didn't know already.

I thought the episode was mostly transitional, but I liked a lot of the moves. I've been a fan of Archer's ever since he went on that hot streak in New Japan in 2019. I think he's a great guy to give Page a fun Dynamite title match before he moves on to whoever the opponent is at Revolution. I'm a huge Brodie King fan, and in particular, I've found he's an awesome tag team worker (his stuff with PCO was fabulous). Very in for him and Malakai as a team and into them vs basically any of the high end tag teams AEW has. I also like that they're not screwing around too much with the Elite angle - feels like we're going to get to Young Bucks-ReDragon real soon to kickstart things. Wild that almost five years later they're finally circling back to what was supposed to be the big Elite angle (Kenny vs. Cole), which got nixed when Cole went to NXT.

I think the Varsity Blondes stuff has all been to set up Black and King murdering them in their team debut.

Hopefully they're just putting the old ECW show on the network.

ROH actually announced a date and location for the April show and are putting tickets on sale. So I guess the reboot is happening in some form.

I have this hunch more was supposed to happen last night but stuff got screwed up because of where we're at with COVID. Like, Mox is going to come back in two weeks and Meltz is going to be like, "oh, yeah, he was gonna come back in Newark but got COVID."

I don't know if I'd draw any final conclusions on Ospreay's drawing power after this weird-ass year, with New Japan being in the weird-ass place it's in. But I certainly don't think he's proved much yet. When New Japan added him to the Strong shows in the US... they did the same terrible numbers they'd been doing. But also maybe no one was saving those shows (Jay White was on those shows too, and Suzuki). Same can probably be said of where the British indies are at right now.

Don't need someone to scout the indies anymore, just watch college basketball games.

I have Danielson-Hangman second all-time in terms of matches I was live at, ahead of Danielson-Omega. (#1 is Cody-Dustin.) Just a classic. Really paid off Danielson establishing so many finishers, gave the match real drama. Also, Danielson's blade job was perfect, working perfectly as an explanation of why he couldn't always capitalize in the final stretch, or was able to be knocked off by one strong shot. Just a master class.

Mox in the Terry Funk judge role would *chef's kiss.*

I thought this was a pretty meh show by WK standards. Okada-Shingo was great, and the Shibata match was cool. Everything else felt fine but really lacking in emotional investment. The Jr and Tag divisions have been so diluted that the matches felt like rehashes for the sake of them rather than anything anyone cared about. Tomorrow doesn't look much better from that perspective, although I'm sure the main event will be awesome.

Doesn't help that SHO has become Jr. Evil. Hopefully for him this is the underwhelming early heel push version of HBK, because otherwise this break up is gonna have two Marties.

Charlton is really best as the third guy in a three man booth, like early Mike Tenay. When there's only two he's very exposed. When the world opens up again, we really need Don Callis back in that chair (and him ripping on Charlton would probably be great).

But that wasn't a turn either. He got a huge babyface pop coming out for that match. He was a heel in the match because it looked like he might murder his brother. Then they got a massive response for getting back together. And that's the good version of the Cody character - a character that absolutely can swing between babyface and heel based on the situation, even within the same night. I think they're trying to get back there, and he'd be an incredibly valuable character if he can make it work again.

I watched a few more episodes... got through Thanksgiving. As usual, liked the build for War Games but the match was terrible. Jeff Cobb comes out as Matanza and then was just kinda Jeff Cobb. Match had no flow and no real sense of escalated violence. The Hammerstone/Holliday dynamic is fun, though. Are they setting up Reed and Tankman as a new Injustice team? If so, I think that works pretty well - Tankman is a fun but very indy worker, and him and Reed together might work better as a team. I feel like Court is just ruthlessly avoiding overhead in generating content. It'll always kinda keep the promotion at a certain level, but it also feels like they can withstand a lot and keep going. It feels like he's just waiting out someone giving him real money for the promotion, and if it never comes, he's set himself up to be ok. Meanwhile, ROH is basically now chasing the MLW model, and New Japan USA is kinda doing the same thing with a few NJ top guys thrown in.

I had dropped MLW from my rotation after the big title for title match, but MLW always plays better in a binge, so I've got it on while I'm working this week. Already like the way they are shooting the Duran segments, very LU. One other thing I'll note - he's not the best, but Rich Bocchini is very solid as an announcer, far stronger than Matt Striker (who is killing my ability to get into Impact at the moment).

I think it all works if the responses are intentional and they're not fighting the audience. That means he probably does need to work mostly against faces, unless they can find a way to keep him a face in certain scenarios. If you look at the Omega feud from 2017-2018, Cody was able to play hell against Omega but be a face if he has teaming with the Bucks (which also happened less when they were ramping up to the blowoff with Omega). Right now he's struggling so badly to get cheers even against heels that I'm not sure how effective he'd be, although I think they'll at least take a swing with a Scorpio Sky match.

I thought Cody was great here. First time in forever it felt like they've gotten good heat with him.

Eddie was ahead of his time in a lot of dimensions - as a worker, as someone combining his character and that level of workrate, as a Latino star in the US after that had faded away in the late 70s. As a result, he's one of the rare figures that's important to basically everyone, for one reason or more.

I hope so. Brodie and Malakai wrecking dudes would be wild. I'm in for them against every tag team on the roster.