Migs

Should have been clearer - *I'm* not interested in listening to Paul Heyman on a weekly basis. I'm sure many would be!

Will give it a try. I'm curious about the new ROH episodes - an hour without fans feels doable, the tournament provides a nice focus, and I'm intrigued by how they play out the Pure Rules thing (I quite liked the Gresham-Young Pure Rules match they had last year).

There's only a few guys who were far enough on the inside of ECW that a podcast like Conrad does would be worth it. Heyman obviously, but Paul's not exactly known for being truthful. Taz or Bubba seem like the other two reasonable options besides Dreamer - part of the inner circle, good talkers and weren't totally out of their minds on drugs during the period. But honestly, I feel like my problem with Conrad's shows at this point is Conrad. He's just not a guy I want to listen to for two hours at a stretch. I'm burnt out on him. I'd give an honest try to an ECW show but I just can't see myself sticking with it. (And of course, that's just a personal taste thing. I've been listening to the Art of Wrestling for almost 10 years and I'm always up for a new episode, because I'm down for spending an hour with Colt.)

To be fair, I feel like some of that comes in response to people who are like "[insert promotion here] ratingz are better that means its better" that's also dumb. As an AEW fan, ratings matter to the extent they need a certain number to keep TNT happy, because I'd like AEW to continue to exist. Beyond that, I try not to worry too much about them. (And to be fair, on this board, I think that's the opinion of most. We're a bit more nuanced than Twitter.)

This is probably a key. Way easier for him to come in one of the many entrances and head straight to a private dressing room to protect himself. At that point, he ends up being exposed to a pretty minimal number of people.

I don't think that's AEW's fault, though - they were working that way for years before, really since they started tagging regularly in the US. Their work in MLW and Impact as a tag team is the same. They could probably get more out of them as singles. The Bucks feud was really good and had enough juice for two PPV matches (that they had to build without TV). But they've been directionless for so long that it's almost hard to remember that Penta vs Omega was a dream match at All In.

I think even Bill Watts would have understood that its ok to hangout in each other's private homes and that you can't plan for a home invasion and attempted abduction becoming news.

She can also probably afford to sit out for six months and wait out offers. A lot of the people who've departed WWE over the last 10 years have talked about needing time off just to come down from being in the weird WWE bubble anyway.

He's about to win that giant tournament being run over on Facebook, too. I think a lot of it comes down to the discussion in the main forum recently - he's clearly, undeniably, the best guy of the last 20 years. He's going to end up defining this generation from a work perspective in a way that few others can claim for their generations. It gives him an edge over a lot of the other contenders.

He has to challenge for it, he's the King! But yeah, that's exactly the kind of good weirdness the belt should be used for.

See, I kinda think it's the other way - they went to add cinnamon and added so small a hint as to not be able to taste it. The stips are mostly dull, they've picked such a random group of guys that I can't imagine the four-way will be better than okay, and in a tournament with fresh matchups they've landed on Okada vs Yujiro again. This feels like the tournament they'd have for some weird mix of the European and Hardcore titles on Raw in '98. That said, if this helps them generate some interesting Okada matches in the fall, I guess it might end up working out. Really, the only thing for the stadium show that's had a compelling build is the tag title match, where they've really made the most of the million matches they've had over the last couple of months to tell a story about the Ibushi-Tanahashi relationship that's really interesting. Loner weirdo Ibushi getting to team with one of his idols, only to find out the idol is too broken down to carry his end, and then watching Ibushi grapple with that emotionally has been excellent, and I'm legit excited to see where they're going with this. (To be fair, I'm also looking forward to Shingo-Suzuki and Hiromu-Ishimori, which have had straightforward builds but haven't needed much more).

They like belts and several of them are on the shelf right now? (IC is merged, US is with Mox, Jr Tags are on injured Yoh) They want to give Okada something to do without challenging for the title? They're trying to find a way to spice up these cards when they've been running with the same crew for 2 1/2 months now?

The stips are really, really lame, except that a lumberjack strap match sounds reasonably fun if they feel they have to do another round of Okada-Yujiro. The New Beginning shows were excellent. The summer shows... if you haven't been starved for New Japan, not sure there's a ton to strongly recommend. The stadium show seems like a reasonable place to hop in.

https://www.rohwrestling.com/news/roh-mourns-passing-former-world-champion-xavier So sad that he was going to get another shot in ROH at the Past vs Present show that was cancelled right as COVID hit. He'd been looking for that shot for a while - I'd actually met him at one of the Hammerstein shows a few years back in the crowd, as he was there trying to get back in. Glad I got to meet him and tell him how much his work had meant to me. I probably can't overstate what his ladder match with Low Ki in the Elks Lodge did for my fandom - it took me from someone who was there that night to see ECW guys to someone who was deeply into the independent scene for a number of years. There are those nights that change your trajectory as a fan and that was a big one for me.

It does feel like the four way for the title is going to be a really odd mix. I'll admit to being a little worried about the G1 given that they've announced dates that would indicate a 20 man tournament and they're apparently *still* not sure if they're bringing in the foreigners for the tournament. Does the world need 9 Yujiro Takahashi singles matches?

The pin is called the Mouse Trap (which I believe is what Taz correctly called it), and it was essentially his finisher outside of AEW. Haven't sat and compared a proper one and what happened Wednesday, but it definitely looked like Jericho fell wrong with it, and it sort of screwed up the flow of the move, which usually looks like a pretty elegant pin. Probably not a huge problem because it hasn't been used in AEW a lot, so it likely wasn't an obvious botch to most.

Yeah, that one really could have used Excalibur.

If they charged $10 a month for four of them, it still might be too rich for my blood.

Seems like he mostly just worked the Disney tapings. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=1107&page=4&year=1997&promotion=2

The Dalton Castle/Joe Hendry Youtube show was quite amusing. You can knock out all six episodes in about a half hour.

https://www.f4wonline.com/aew-news/aew-launches-female-focused-online-wrestling-community-316911 There's at least theoretically a $50 annual value there. (It's basically a networking group combined with a fan club, which is an interesting idea.)

I think they've basically all signed elsewhere. Although if they're short, one could be Drake Maverick.

That's it! The DDP involvement seals it. Thank you for the help, was driving me batty last night.

About 10 years ago, when Netflix was a DVD subscription service, I used to grab random wrestling DVDs they had. I have this vague recollection of watching a few DVDs from an early 00s promotion that used a lot of ECW guys. They were not prominent at all (definitely wasn't XPW or 3PW or CZW). Does anyone else recall this? Googling is getting me nothing.

English seems like a good utility guy to have around. The one tough thing for them, particularly with COVID now, is that I think they'd probably want guys to get indy runs to freshen up between them and WWE, but it's really not an option now. The reason people care about Cody is he evolved an incredible amount in his time outside WWE before he was on a large national stage again.