Rah

Found the fuss through Twitter. His profile is edgy sex-pest level tweets, badly written freestyles (when were freestyles ever written? that's clown shit) and terrible jokes some of which around mental health. Then there're these doozies: Yeah, fuck off.

I feel quite comfortable in saying this is the best match out of Japan for the 2010s. When I mentioned that I'd never seen Hojo wrestle before (and embarrassingly got her confused with Io Shirai), Grimmas recommended this to me. Boy, I'm glad he did. This was an absolutely masterclass performance from Meiko Satomura in terms of character work. I loved how as the match wore on she went from quietly confident in herself to this hubris-level asskicker toying with Hojo only to get her (eventual) knock back to earth when the reality of the situation finally hit. There was no way Hojo was going to topple Meiko, she looked like a Chihuahua biting off more than it could chew against the pitbull Meiko, but Satomura slowly started to see there would be no way to beat Hojo, either. There's this unfortunate consequence of comebacks where the face shrugs off their damage to hit their spots. Honestly, beyond every intricate minutiae to her picture-perfect selling, how Hojo handled this seems like it should be something handed out as required viewing for anyone training to be a wrestler. When it came time to hit her comeback I'll be honest, I winced. I was fully expecting her to shrug off the damage Meiko had done to her so she could fire the crowd up with a move off the top rope. Yet, that never happened. As soon as she started to run for the turnbuckle her body came crashing down in a heap between the ropes. It couldn't support her weight but her adrenaline helped her hold on and climb to the top. What a fucking beautiful touch.

Complete smorgasbord of MMA, kickboxing, shoot-style, Japanese handhelds and lucha. The aim is to chronicle the history of "MMA". https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRTeS8GejKeOc68cbJU1wcA/videos

Flair is most likely heading with Andrade. When does Charlotte get her release? Other contracts recently ended/soon to end this year: Ronda Rousey April 2021 Gran Metalik (?) Sami Zayn So, he was going to be but he fucked it with Black and Cole's contract.

There's also this tag match: Here's hoping the channel uploads some more. They've already got some interesting stuff.

I wonder if half of these releases are just 'we want you but you'll need a pay dip' and hoping they re-sign after the cut. Bray Wyatt and Daniel Bryan are not on the current WWE superstars page. Brock is, interestingly.

Is "heel grossly over-valuing their skills" really that bad a gimmick? If they can back it up in the ring and that cockiness seeps into other aspects, I'm not sure that makes them geeks.

A tale of two halves. Every moment with Rocky Star was fan-frigging-tastic and the clear star of the show, he took an absolute rollicking to kick things off before leading the charge back against Los Brazos. Everyone else was just a bit player to the Brazo/Star feud and normally that'd be fine but the work, otherwise, was middling. I love Eddie, I really, really love Eddie but every time I try get into his Mexican work I just come away with his GWE case damaged. This was the usual young Eddie moveset: armdrag, armdrag, armdrag, "oh shit, what do I do now? Oh, yeah..." armdrag. He also seemed to have Los Brazos more interested in wrestling comedically which broke the narrative of them as maulers here to wreck shit. Hey, it did lead to some cool Plata moments, I guess. Descansa en paz, Porky. Stay for the after match promo where El Brazo channels some Mick Foley screeching anger. Where's the apuesta at?

Wonder where he's going?

What's the deal here? Anybody going to bat for him? Is there anything even online? I'm checking out names I'm not familiar with and keep coming back to this thread. I went on a Youtube deep dive and found a total of two(!) matches. They're far too short to judge on but Bracero looked way out of his element in the Jeff Sword match as Sword had no idea how to work against Bracero's maestro-esque matwork. Zero points for versality, I guess. If this was El Toreo I could see an argument that he might be an interesting mat worker from the little glimpses he gave us. What's out there? What should I hunt down?

There's also his worked MMA hair match against Rey Escorpion in late 2013 which is basically Pride meets Lucha. The stylistic clash doesn't quite work but Porky looked much more than competent in his role. A very unique match that I think should be experimented with more (provided we don't get more of the Solar/Minoru Suzuki low-blow extravaganza stuff). I dropped my thoughts in the GWE discord that he's probably not a 100er but, the more I consider his body of work and versatility, I wouldn't be against anyone being really high on him. I actually think I should give him a deeper dive because I am starting to think I can't name anywhere close to 100 guys better than him. He's the best super heavyweight in Mexico by quite a margin, regardless.

What would be the must-see matches before 2017? 9 years is a long time to get going.

Canyon Ceman, Senior Vice President Of Talent Development, Released By WWE. https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/canyon-ceman-released-wwe You'd think with a surname like that, he'd be Vince lifer.

Lucha referees summed up in three sentences.

It's probably nothing but

You can sweeten audio you don't like but there's not much else you can do visually when your audience just packs up and goes. I understand it must be soul-destroying for the wrestler, but this is an entertainment-forward product and you should be putting out a product that your fans want to see and not placing these guys in positions where they'll fail. -------------------------- Aside, isn't this Sunday's main event the first WWE title match with two black wrestlers? It feels like this should be a bigger thing than it's been alluded to. I get the sentiment that WWE would handle it terribly but this seems like a kinda big deal.

Have you seen their rumble in the cage?

MCMG vs Generation Me (Empty Arena) - it's probably not the best match but it's the most memorable of what I've seen from TNA. I'm guessing something before 2008 might be better but I wouldn't doubt the MCMG vs Beer Money feud holds up really, really well with a highlight being the 2/3 falls.

He uploaded a video a week back telling Cody, Ogogo and team to apologise or else. He seems certifiably insane - like murder-spree insane.

Rey Mysterio vs Mark Henry (WWE Smackdown 20/01/2006) - I've not seen anyone talk this up except myself and Jimmy Redman. Be number 3! Rhodes Bros vs Real Americans (WWE Main Event 18/03/2014) - shaping from Goldust/Cesaro to a Cody FIP, to a Rhodes Bros hope spot and down to an elongated Goldust FIP in a mere ten minutes is as crazy as it sounds. The final five is even nuttier. Stupendously good match. Rush/Rey Escorpion/Maximo vs Negro Casas/Terrible/Shocker (CMLL 28/06/2014) - the second greatest 6-man of the last decade (behind only Wyatts/Shield).

So, Tommy End seems to be a very lucky guy. According to PWInsider, WWE forgot to modify his contract when they bumped him up so he was still on a 30 day no-compete clause. SRS posted a picture, as well, seemingly alluding to 4 wrestlers moving from WWE to AEW. We have Andrade and now End. Who's next? Breeze?

What's frustrating about the Jimmy case is that he knows how to play the system at this point. He never refused to take a field sobriety test back in 2019 but said he would only comply if his lawyer was present (there is a part in the video where he goes in circles each time the officer tries to conduct it). There's not much else the officer could have done, it seems, and they had to wait for his lawyer to arrive from out of state which gives Jimmy enough time to bring down any readings. I imagine it then going something like: Defense: did you take a test? Officer: No, bu... Defense: do you have proof he was over the limit Officer: No, bu... Defense: I rest my case.

I don't want to sound antagonistic, but I'd love to see a case being made for Bret being better.

This is an interesting comparison and one I'd like to elaborate further when I get the chance. From 2004 to 2010 I think there was a considerable difference in their input. Claudio was quite clearly the weaker of the workers but was definitely helped in tag matches where his cool stuff could shine and he didn't need to be reliant on his own structure or controls. Sure, he had some good "output" in his indie singles career but that was more against super workers than anything else. I don't think Claudio did anything as good as Hero in that Necro match from the watch party (and that wasn't elite or anything, either). Towards the end of their run Claudio was pulling ahead and by 2012 he was quite clearly the better of the two. In the previous decade, Cesaro is ahead of Hero in terms of consistency and range as well as having much higher lows (I'd take his stuff vs RVD in 2014/2015 over Hero's 50/50 no-selling against smaller guys like Fenix). Notably, they both made a lot of their case working vastly inferior workers but I'd put Cesaro down at getting the most out of his opponents (that Main Event match against Kofi is surreal). They're also workers that have a lot of hidden gems tucked away on C-shows (Main Event for Cesaro and NXT UK for Hero) and live events so I think their consistency case might be lost on most, which is a shame. That said, I do think Cesaro is the most consistent TV worker since Rey's mid 2000s Smackdown run and I think that is a big factor in why I'm so high on him. Many people are going to point out "what are his all-time level matches?" and I agree that he doesn't have a litany of slamdunk MotD's to his credit but he's never been in that position until recently (if that) and he does still have a laundry list of truly great matches (his 2013 is insane). He's not an output candidate at all but, as an input consideration, he's almost impossible to deny as one of the best in the world for the past decade, in my eyes.

I guess one way to get people to pipe down about the unionization nonsense is to stir up drama about something else. I'm all for more eYada memories - this stuff sounds terrific!