Migs

Cardona's performance in the whole angle has been fantastic. Just pushing all the right buttons linguistically and presentationally, building the heat to a fever pitch for the match. An amazing piece of work from both guys, with Cardona taking it pretty far, coming off with just the right balance between tough and chickenshit. Very excited to see where they go with this.

The Dome show was good, all the way through, but the complaints remain the same - almost everything would have benefitted from being 5-10 minutes shorter (except maybe Okada-Cobb) and holy fuck, EVIL is not the answer to anything.

Agreed that I'm glad they just went with putting over the guy they wanted to put over, triumphing over the flunkies of the guy he's set up to face. Sometimes it doesn't need to be too complicated, especially since Hammerstone was the obvious winner. I haven't seen the TV version yet, and MLW obviously sweetens, but Hammerstone was definitely over as the winner. I'm curious to see how some of this stuff plays on TV - Battle Riot was the main event of the show, so maybe the set ups will improve the undercard in retrospect.

Ibushi is officially out for the Dome show, Tana is replacing him. That's certainly a reasonable substitute, but it feels like New Japan is just cursed this year.

A friend of mine just bought a ticket to Dynamite and is driving 7 hours to get to see Gage-Jericho. Honestly, all the open door stuff is so smart... it creates an environment where anything can happen, and a guy showing up doesn't mean he needs to be there for 5 years. Cobb, Warhorse, KENTA... they came in, did a match, added something to the show, and didn't need to stick around. I am very curious to see how far Gage gets to go / Jericho wants to go / TNT will allow. I think the idea of Gage as a sort of wild man who shows up occasionally (like a Brody, of sorts) has some legs, but only if they can find the right balance in his working style.

I only mean unseat in terms of winning the title - unless he's going to hold the title for 3 years, he needs to drop it at some point, and even if he gets it back quickly, the loss would be a big deal. If the plan is actually for him to go 3 years with the title... honestly, that's so extreme that I'd be interested in seeing them try it, at least it would be better than guys holding the title for a year + 1 day.

I was thinking the other day about who the right person to unseat Roman would be. They've built this up for a year now, and presumably you'd want the person to do it to be a newer, hot act with a future. Also, I'd assume it's someone already on the main roster (and frankly, I don't see anyone in NXT who Vince would get behind). Here is the complete list of candidates I came up with: Matt Riddle Keith Lee Everyone else is either going nowhere and clearly is out of the top guy running, has had runs as a top guy where they either don't need it or would be bad choices (Fiend, Rollins, Orton), or has been on the roster so long as a midcarder that they aren't credible top guys (are they really going to pull a trigger on Big E after a decade?). Maybe I'm missing one or two people, but the point remains - their biggest pile of ammo has always been the stars, and the lack of depth to replace the current ones is really dwindling. And now, for the first time in 20 years, he has competition for the best up and coming talent and for the already established guys, and it feels like a big ask for them to pivot from burying everyone for the sake of the brand.

It looks like they sold through the 16,500 setup and are trying for 19,000. The tickets that got added and still remain are all limited view, some of them literally behind the stage.

They are already down to the last few rows in the upper level, it looks like. They are going to sell this thing out, at least the initial setup (Meltz said 16,500, but that they could open up sections to get to 19,000).

There are A LOT of people in the queue for the Ashe show... if they sell this out today when WWE is struggling to sell tickets in the Garden, I would pay pretty much anything for video of the reaction when people tell Vince.

Some of this predates that, though. In 2019, they put in a lot of work in building up Taylor, really committed to Gresham even before the pandemic (and then went harder during, for sure). Even Brody King had been given a pretty big push and now seems to comfortably be one of their lead guys (and props to Lethal for putting him over strong). At points in 2019, it seemed like this was just circling the drain stuff, pushing the last guys left because they had no other options. But credit where it's due that this seems to have been productive based on the responses these guys were getting on the show.

No spoilers, but I found the show in Philly kind of underwhelming. It might cut up okay into TV episodes, but the Battle Riot was a real mess with not a lot of flow, and a lot of the undercard was good but lacked a bit in heat. Part of this is that there was stuff that will clearly be there in pre-tapes on TV that we weren't privy to - for example, Holliday was selling an injury that will almost certainly be explained in a segment. Show ran pretty long, too, ending up close to 5 hours from bell time to finish. In part I was there to go to the ECW Arena for the first time, and I have to say, they have done such an amazing job of renovating that place, which is good and bad - good because it's a really nice place to see a show, bad because it's a little hard to connect it in your mind to the place it was when ECW was running it.

Yeah, I thought the show was good on the whole. Not a huge crowd, but loud enough to make a difference and add energy, and there's no way I can go back to watching their empty arena stuff now. I like the call to go to Bandido - don't think Rush was moving the needle and it shows they're serious about pushing Bandido. He and Flip should have a good match in Philly, too. I think the TV title thing worked out - Lee makes sense as the champ but they got some rub on Williams and Deppen with the switches. Excited to see what Homicide and Dickinson do as tag champs too. One thing I noticed on the show - ROH has done a nice job of putting time in on guys and pushing them far enough to establish characters. Gresham and Taylor were nowhere two years ago but were strong, defined characters on the show last night.

Haha. I actually think the TV shows aren't terrible - I feel like we've been calling the years "seasons" for a while. It's more disorienting that the show "Money in the Bank" has 7 seasons, each one show. Literally no one has ever called them that.

I dove into Peacock a little bit because I was reading the Gary Hart book and wanted to watch some World Class, and boy is that navigation not at all made for someone with a wrestling or archivist brain.

Andrew Yang never actually became US attorney general, so he's got literally no power to do anything.

In reading the story, had no idea he got found not guilty on the prior DUI charge, despite what seemed like pretty damning video evidence. Would love to hear the story on that one.

I think it also becomes much harder to properly count shows in the late 90s - it probably doesn't make up the whole difference, but I bet a bunch of shows that would be promoted by territories got replaced with indie shows that are lost to time.

Not the same, I know, but ROH did still run there before the pandemic started (I think the last show was summer 2019). I think they drew pretty decently during the Elite era, but the 2019 show drew embarrassingly badly, so not sure if they'll be back.

I've watched a little here and there, and it's mostly been solid. I could imagine watching it as a weekly show if there's fans and a better energy to the proceedings.

They are really cleaning out the bottom of the roster. https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe-releases-14-wrestlers-fandango-tyler-breeze-tony-nese-345176 As always - never want to see anyone lose their job, and god knows WWE has enough money, but I do think it's good for wrestling for WWE not to hoard talented people who can make other shows better.

That's a great reason not to sign with them, but frankly, also a reason to say no and decide not to pursue wrestling.

Looking forward to them getting out of Friday night purgatory next week, feels like they've been in a holding pattern even when the eps have been decent.

Absolutely agree. Nothing's been blow away, but it's really nice to see some of the top guys working singles as opposed to half-assing tag matches, especially when the roster is so thin that they really have been running the same match on repeat for weeks at times.

Arthur Ashe is by far the biggest tennis stadium in the US, although there are some decent sized ones in California, Florida, and Cincinnati (of all places!). Now that I think of it, the Cincinnati one would be an awesome Moxley hometown show next summer, they should totally make this a thing they do.