Zoo Enthusiast

You’re definitely going to just bury everything this company does no matter what, so I don’t think you’re going to be the target audience here.

The punchline to one of the most successful independent companies in the US for practically its entire run.

He is soooo terrible on NJPW. Hope they hire someone different. Hoping for Excalibur. Probably will depend on how much content they are making.

Who is Killer Kross? I saw him on the PPV and can’t say I have ever seen him before.

Gargano definitely strikes me as a guy who will always be in NXT.

My favorite hire they have made.

The Braun heel turn played a huge part in my stopping watching. Just so terrible and stupid and random. And it came literally a week after an emotional ending to Raw with the Shield reunion that had me more excited than I had been in ages. Stupid me. I think it’s pretty easy to point to the Nicholas match at Mania being where it all started going downhill for him, and it really picked up speed from there. It went from some people saying “he is like Stone Cold” to “he’s like the Big Show” in no time. The wheels coming off for Braun coupled with Roman getting sick made Raw completely unwatchable.

The healthcare stuff is pretty dubious to me. They are “working on it” until it recedes from the discussion and ceases to earn them goodwill from people who are desperate to have something they can support that isn’t WWE. It’s a company run by a billionaire. I can’t help but have a healthy dose of skepticism regarding exactly what the benefits will be. Considering how long this has apparently been in the works, I would have thought they would have this ironed out if it was going to be used to lure talent. I’m also very interested in the freedom of movement for the workers (i.e. Janela continuing to work for GCW, the Bucks going back to PWG, other workers being able to take dates). If the dates dry up relatively quickly, it could really fuck over some workers in a huge way - similar to when ROH was signing guys to contracts (Steen as one example) five or six years ago and giving them two Saturdays a month and having them on their TV show that no one watches. Obviously the Bucks and Cody will always get paid well and push themselves to the top of the wage scale, but I am talking about the mid-card talents. Once you start fucking over the workers, you’re the same as any other large wrestling company.

Man, I liked this show a lot, other than Drake/Abyss (and that was really derailed by the zip tie spot for me), and then the finish of the main event really sucked. I am a massive Survivor fan and even I hated it

I’m hoping Omega goes to WWE. He can always go play with his friends later if AEW makes it. The possibility of walking into WWE as a top guy and getting all the matches he wants won’t be there every time his contract comes up.

Nah, they can shun him. They don’t owe him a platform to honor anyone. That’s what funerals are for.

If watching a promotion starts to feel like work, I stop watching it. I burned out quite badly this past fall because of all the awfulness surrounding the Saudi deal along with the TV shows being so bad. I noticed that my enjoyment of wrestling as a whole had gotten too tied up with WWE. Canceled all my streaming service subs and have only watched a few things here and there until recently. Prior to that, I was watching various stuff daily. It also coincided with football season started, where a lot of my time gets consumed by fantasy football and DFS prep/research and grinding. Now that fantasy football is over for me, I have been catching up on Beyond, PWG, and other indies that I missed lately. Watched WrestleKingdom. Starting to get warmed back up and will likely check out the Rumble to see if I want to bother getting back on board for Mania season. I usually get back in on NJPW every January and stay there til I get bored with it.

Good show. Would probably give MOTN to the main event, followed by ZSJ/Ishii. Also enjoyed Jericho/Naito. Was into Ospreay/Ibushi for a while but Ospreay just doesn’t do it for me 95% of the time, especially when he gets into his shrieking “selling.” Wish Kushida/Ishimori had gotten more time. On the down side, I thought all the tag matches were pretty weak. Jay White is what he is. I definitely don’t see what they see but good on them for putting him over every top guy in the company, I guess. Cody was fucking awful as usual. The highlight of that match being Brandi getting ejected to next to zero reaction along with Cody getting zero offense (hopefully) on the way out the door. I like Juice but there’s only so much that you can do in a Cody match. AEW will be great if they quarintine all the guys I don’t want to see. I could go without ever seeing another shitty Adam Page shooting star press to the outside ever again, along with Cody and Marty Scurll.

Finally finished these tonight. I apparently need to watch a lot more Dan Makabe.

The Twitter rumor is that Dave is a paid consultant. I would consider that to be ethically compromised if true but YMMV.

Doing some catching up. Just watched Janela vs Starr at Americanrana. Fucking amazing.

Are y’all aware that there is an After Show for this show? http://www.afterbuzztv.com/after-83-weeks-with-christy-olson/

Stone Cold’s black trunks/black boots. Boots with initials on them.

Excellent!

WWE is able to provide a million hours of content and likely a pretty steady audience for Fox and all of their secondary and tertiary networks. Companies like WWE and UFC are pretty much just content creators at this point.

Hyped that the FKAABT eps have dropped. A holiday tradition!

No gods, no masters.

Aww shit I’m gonna have to come back.

Yuck.

I really liked him back in the Shaun Ricker days in CWF Hollywood.