Migs

Yeah, he seems kind of like a more enjoyable version of Fale.

Yeah, it seems like there's a weird performative aspect to being a "top guy." Like, why do I want to see Mance talk to some random guy or gal's partner? (Oh, who am I kidding, this is going to be the wives of dudes who are insufferable.) The only logic is that it's fun that your wife is the one people have to see talk to Mance. Don't get it. To be clear, would never begrudge Conrad or the hosts for making a buck. If they're making people happy enough to drop $100 a month, more power to them.

I like Mance, and the idea of him talking about bad wrestling has the potential to be funny. But the rest of that is so weird and creepy and why I feel turned off by the whole community around Conrad's shows sometimes.

I'm not sure I'd go as far... really good but ended up feeling a little long for the story they were telling. I did really like the parallel story they were telling with Yoshi-Hashi and Douki. Looks like the payoff is Yoshi-Hashi and Goto getting a tag title shot next week, which should be fun.

Yeah, I saw that - clearly it's not a dead deal (and it seems it sort of worked out, since Dice's NWA contract had expired but they could get him on this show to drop the belt). I don't think crowning a champion for this show is a terrible idea, but it just seemed a but conspicuous that this was a "world title" tournament when they supposed recognize the NWA World Title. But maybe that's just me paying more attention to detail than they are.

Yeah, I appreciated the effort and the idea, even if it didn't totally land for me. I like a wrestling show that has the range to potentially be anything that fits the needs of the story.

A quick scroll down his mentions shows it's basically a conspiratorial way of saying the "it's just like the flu" talking point. Which is, of course, insane - the flu doesn't kill this many people, nor can it be spread so easily by people who are pre-symptomatic. Whatever, I'm sure he and Flip Gordon had fun conversations in the ROH bubble.

Is the NWA no longer involved with this? I thought the whole point was that they recognized the NWA title as the world title.

They'll presumably only do 6 matches a night, so there's not a lot of gaps to fill there that aren't taken care of with the other title matches. The big name open on that list is SANADA, which makes the IC Title match vs Naito seem likely. Feels like they could do that as a main event for one night if they supported it with a couple of other bigger matches.

Vegetables have nutrition. Naito-EVIL is like being forced to eat a pack of plain rice cakes.

Very worried that they may be setting up another Naito-EVIL match, although I think it may be a three-way with Kenta to further the Bullet Club in disarray thing. That would at least be different, I guess.

The Ospreay turn was interesting. New Japan badly needed a fresh faction, so him leading a small group could work. Felt a bit like Naito slowly creating LIJ. Really loved the finishing stretch of the main event, with it feeling so obvious that Jay was going to be the winner and then Tomo pulling through (and then casually walking to the back like a badass). Still think Jay might win the briefcase from Ibushi at Power Struggle or something.

It's not helping that EVIL is basically working the same as before with more cheating. What's really taken White up a notch is he's leaned into how he can work *well* while generating heat, generally via a slower pacing and using heeling in the spaces. It's like EVIL watched some White matches and only picked up on the working slow part.

I think this is a good idea. Conrad has sort of become a better version of RF, so him doing his version of a shoot interview is potentially interesting to me depending on the topic. Solves the problem of the shows getting stale, too. I'd be up for signing up once in a while to catch up if these are good.

I think he's been the biggest victim of some match construction choices that seem to be all over the shows so far. They have really, really been pulling back on the length of the finishing sequences, and since that's something Okada is a master of, I think his matches are suffering. I'm not sure why so many of the big matches feel like they've had truncated finishing stretches. A few theories (and it may be a combination): 1) They're trying to keep the shows shorter and trimming the matches 2) They don't want to burn a lot of kick outs for crowds that can't fully react to them 3) They feel like the style has pushed the finisher kick outs too far and they're trying to dial it back

Yeah, they're doing two joint shows at the beginning and end of the tournament, and otherwise alternating. Guessing that means, like the G-1, there will be 5 tournament matches in each of the separate shows, with an opener and maybe a tag match with the WK main eventers as a closer. Makes sense for both tournaments, as I can't imagine they want to import guys for these, and both tournaments usually rely on a number of foreign talents to build out the roster. I was trying to figure out how they'd get to a decent number of teams for World Tag League without using the stars that normally get that tour off, and this solves it. (Although man, that tournament could be a real dog this year.)

There's only 9 shows for each of the tournaments, so they don't need to be particularly deep. Maybe they need 10 guys for BOSJ? Hiromu / Bushi / Desperado / Kanemuaru / Douki / Ishimori / SHO / Wato / Taguchi / Togo

"How can we possibly do a show about wrestling during a pandemic? Everyone would have to get so close!" A good hint as to why Vince doesn't want wrestlers in SAG, he'd need to treat them like humans.

The Elite sold out All In and MSG basically on their strength and launched an entire promotion. The Bucks/Kenny/Cody will all have at least something of a draw argument.

You don't think 240K a year sounds reasonable for a top independent draw?

It's also VERY curious that there are like 15 accusations and 3 lawsuits. It says he's trying to target those with the weakest corroboration to, as rovert said, try and say he's "innocent."

DBS Jr. definitely seems to be on the way out. Mancer is an interesting one to me - he's got a very specific act that I wonder which larger companies would go for.

The episode of Underground TV they posted this week is a good one, with Jerry Lynn getting a surprising amount of heel heat and an interesting angle/match involving the World title that was apparently the result of Japanese promotion politics being transferred to a second rate Florida indy. Worth checking out.

He had also been doing some work in wrestling while not with WWE (I know he was doing at least some production stuff with MLW in 2018).

The White thing wasn't zero-to-100, though. You can really see him get better in stages over 2018-2019, as he goes from being actively terrible to sort of figuring out the character (starting to have heat instead of go away heat) to really finding his groove as a heel worker in the G1 last year. I'm not quite as high as some here, but he's now firmly in a camp where I still enjoy cheering against him but am engaged with his matches in a positive way.