funkdoc

Bobby Fish actually got signed huh? Really thought he'd be a one-off. Guess he'd be a good hand to teach the kids...in the ring, at least.

i'm going to the Oct 23 show with Suzuki vs. Gage - that also has Psycho Clown of all people on the card

See, this is the thing i was talking about over in one of the AEW threads: i'm not so sure it does anymore, which is part of my point here. If you look at the consensus top indie talents that AEW's signed recently, there's far more matwork & striking than flips in their DNA. Think Daniel Garcia, Wheeler Yuta, Lee Moriarty... i argued over there that KENTA was one of the most obvious influences on this, but Bret may well be up there too - at least by osmosis through the current veterans who studied him like Punk & Kingston.

Really enjoy these, Matt! Also shoutouts to Mysterious Movado being billed from “Parts Unknown, Detroit”

The kind of person who would have Nick Gage in their top 100 isn’t the kind of person who would be into this project, I feel What I’m getting at is, he’s a guy for people who watch wrestling for the vibe - not for the “matches” as we use that term

Didn’t KANA actually pull that off well at some point?

If anything it was more his mental state during that time that would’ve prevented another run in a major promotion, though if he could’ve found some semblance of peace i think he could’ve gotten something in the modern era

re: the conversation on Omega-Danielson being so strike-based…for those who haven’t kept up, that and matwork have been making a comeback in the indies as of late. GWE Discord had some talk about this, and i brought it up to another one of my friend groups that’s really plugged into that scene. They think a lot of the striking is from KENTA, as NOAH in general was the hot promotion among the hardcore audience when a lot of these kids would’ve started following wrestling. Plus Punk & Danielson always shouting him out and copying stuff from him, of course. Going back and discovering the old ROH classics is probably another factor. tl;dr “lol flips” is an outdated stereotype of the modern style - the likes of the Bucks are better viewed as representing the generation before this one

Yeah i just meant that other wrestling promotions didn’t embrace reality TV like that, when WCW very well could have in its decline phase for instance. Well, TNA but nobody cared about them anyway EDIT: i also feel like Youtube has become more prominent in the past couple years as some really big names actually stream on there instead of Twitch. Vtubers might have started the streaming trend there, and one of them was in a Super Bowl commercial this year!

My thing is that reality shows feel like aping WWE. Something like collabs with really huge Youtubers or such would seem more on-brand in my eyes. EDIT: Not the bro kind that everyone hates, that’s also WWE territory cf. Jake Logan or whatever his name is

Don’t forget trying to babyface himself against Shaq of all people! Also modern fans are extra leery of people in positions of power looking to push themselves - Cody was giving some folks that vibe as early as his open challenges with the TNT title. Compare to Omega & the Bucks, where Tony Khan has to turn down their requests to do jobs - that’s more how modern fans feel top guys SHOULD be. EDIT: Cody & Jericho are about the same to me in terms of doing important groundwork for AEW but now having go-away heat with me & a lot of my watch group.

TK on Busted Open is outright calling him "Hollywood Cody" now. yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh i'd say that heel turn's coming real soon EDIT: As if that wasn't obvious enough he also announced Cody/Lee Johnson vs. Dante Martin/Matt Sydal for next week

the Cody/Dustin tag run was easily the best in-ring run of his career, and i could see people preferring one of the matches there to Cody-Dustin (though not me)

Kanyon episode went...a lot easier on Taker than i expected. If anything Cena looked worse just straight up saying "he wasn't any good" on Howard Stern in response to the homophobia accusations. A bit disappointing tbh

re: Cody, one of my Discord buddies made an interesting point… Earlier in the pandemic it made more sense to run him as a babyface since they were stuck in Florida where his Captain America shit would play a lot better. His act is made for there and the South in general, but now that they’re traveling to the East Coast and the blue parts of the Midwest it doesn’t make much sense anymore. Feel like a turn is coming.

Marty used to post on the Wrestlingclassics forums and openly bragged about this, to the point that a board that knowingly kept KKK members around banned him

bruh. As i've already said, the point of the episode was that it wasn't "just flashing" - it was "he trapped me and wouldn't let me go". i know you like to whine about ~cancel culture~ but you ain't picking the best time here

The thing you have to remember is a LOT of fans quit watching wrestling altogether in that period right before the plane ride - either because of WCW/ECW dying, or Austin turning heel. That's a decent chunk of the audience AEW has picked up, in my experience, so this would be genuinely new to a portion of the audience there. This is still wild to see in real time, though - the closest to this level of outrage i remember coming from DSOTR before was the Nick Gage episode and that was a drop in the bucket.

PWInsider just reported Dreamer on indefinite suspension, too...

Dude, you might want to try watching the episode in this case. The point here is that it wasn't "flashing", it was "he trapped me & wouldn't let me go".

Reminder that Triplemania had everyone *happy* to see Flair since the likely alternative was Alberto. Quite the shift in such a short amount of time, huh? EDIT: And yes, to what joeg just posted, Scott Hall was also implicated in the same stuff as Flair. It's just the timing with Flair in particular being why he gets the heat, obviously, since Hall doesn't have any visible role in the business now.

Another good point a friend brought up: the flight attendant is British, so given how much more stringent their defamation laws are...not that i would've assumed she was bullshitting anyway, but that adds another layer to it.

so um...the latest episode of this has already set off the biggest shitstorm i've ever seen from this series Plane Ride From Hell, with actual new information since they got the flight attendant there to give more details on what happened. That's now started a movement among the AEW fanbase to pressure them not to bring in Flair, and i had figured this could happen ever since that was announced as an episode. Remember that AEW *right now* is running a high-profile storyline built on the assumption that their audience watches DSOTR, so they can't just ignore this. Also Tommy Dreamer was a total victim-blaming asshole and appears to be getting almost as much shit as Flair atm. The ep brought up Brock doing sex-pest things as well but we know their fans won't care a fraction as much. BTW, one interesting bit from the flight attendant: Dustin was the only one who tried to stop Flair...

i mean, running that prestigious of a venue on Vince's home turf pretty much forced them to put together a PPV-quality card, so i'm not surprised at what we're being offered next week. Just need the action to live up to the billing now!

Also Starks might still be occupied with Cage