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I knew it was going to cause problems the moment I heard it. I mean I don't think Craig is a card-carrying KKK member of anything but it's not really okay to start talking about "Jungle Love" (even if it was in reference to the song) and repeatedly refer to women of color as "exotic". Honestly I could do without all the lecherous 40 year old dudes creeping on young women on that show in general.

Apparently KUSHIDA was knocked silly (maybe concussed) on that top rope armbreaker spot and had to be led through the entire match by O'Reilly, which explains all the awkward moments and blatant spot calling from then on.

He seems to me like an unnuanced worker in a style where nuance is key. I wonder if he might have had a better run in a promotion like All Japan whose style would have better played to his strengths, i.e. melodrama.

He's been saying this for a while now.

NJPW also has Ibushi coming into his own as a draw although he's a bit older but doesn't have the years of wear and tear that many guys his age do. Komatsu and Tanaka both seem a big push and a few months on the gas away from being viable main eventers too.

(***)

Main event is getting MOTY talk, which I think is inevitable for any long match where they do a lot of moves at this point. I thought it was very good, like **** level, but felt over-long, unfocused, and had some really embarrassingly sloppy moments. It seemed like KUSHIDA said to himself, "I like 90's juniors, King's Road and US indies so I'm going to have a match that's all of the above!" They peaked with the apron brainbuster but kept going for another 5+ minutes for some reason. That said, much like Owens/Cena, having the best possible match wasn't as important as getting KUSHIDA over as a star and I think they accomplished that in a way maybe a better match couldn't.

The piledriver has always seemed like such a inherently visually brutal move to me that it's weird to see matches where it's almost treated like just a step up from a body slam or something. Just another move to do as part of a sequence. Not to mention the very real dangerousness of the move, you'd think wrestlers would want to get the most out of it.

There's also the Gotch-style piledriver, where, in classic pro-wrestling fashion, holding the legs slightly differently makes it more powerful

That indie spotfest stuff probably hasn't aged well but it was exactly what they should have been presenting at the time. Nobody had ever seen anything like it on a national stage and it was awesome to experience.

Steve Austin's recent talking point re: the DDT has me thinking about how the piledriver has been sold differently according to time and place. It's a move that people are even more sensitive about than the DDT and many people have very prescriptive ideas about how it should be sold that seem to be mostly a result of growing up with wrestling where it was a big move. But there's plenty of examples of it not being that big a deal. Watching 80s New Japan stuff, one thing that struck me is how little piledrivers are sold, even spike piledrivers. In Mexico it's famously sold like death, though I have no idea if it's always been that way. It seems like most of the popular perception of how it they 'should' be sold comes from 80s and 90s WWF/JCP/WCW, where it was a big bomb, potentially a finisher, but not necessarily a debilitating move, unless spiked or done onto a chair or table. What other examples are there?

Ratings are in for their first night on Wednesday, as well as ROH's debut. PWInsider says 369k for Impact, 273k for ROH (includes replays). So TNA only managed to beat a non-first run showing of a practically unadvertised, worse-looking show by 90k. Not a good look.

What is it that I hear Japanese crowds in the 80s and 90s chanting when a guy is in a submission hold? Sounds something like "okoshi"?

There's a good chance I'm projecting my personal struggles with evaluating some of this stuff. I find it much easier to talk about why, say, a Triple Crown match built around duelling limb work worked than something like an MPro 6 man which is less about telling a concrete story and more about working to a rhythm, bringing the exictement up and down at the right times and hitting beats in a way that feels impactful. All of which would be factors in the former match too, but the fact that there's a more obvious narrative thread there makes it easier to talk about.

Re: storytelling. I think the reason it gets so much focus is because it's easy to put thoughts about logic and coherency into words. But wrestling is something that's often more felt with the heart than the head. A well-structured match can be as much or more about having a rhythm, peaks and valleys, a well-built to climax, etc. than about 'worker X sold the leg well and worked around it in a way that made sense'. Things that defy logic can work because they're making music in there, not writing a thesis. Problem is it's difficult to talk about those things beyond "well, it worked for me".

What's the name of the buff referee from 80s NJPW? edit: of course it's mentioned on commentary right after I ask. Mr. Takahashi.

Man, Boyd Rice would be a great pro wrestling manager.

On Cena/Owens: I didn't think the kickouts were the problem as much as the turn-taking. It's not like there were any more kickouts than a 90s AJPW main event. But those matches had long runs of control with one guy getting several near-falls over the other, then a big transition. This had a good 10-15 straight minutes of big spot -> kickout -> weak transition -> repeat. I still thought it was a good match, to be clear, and absolutely a star-making performance. Not a MOTYC though, even though as a moment it will probably end up being much more memorable than many MOTYCs.

I think there's a big difference between seeing wrestling as a rigged sport and seeing it as a work. From what I've seen most of those old articles about fake wrestling are treating it as the former. I wonder if we can pinpoint when that perception changed, or if it's just been a slow transition over time.

Talk about killing his aura as a badass

The Shield were very big with women, far more as a unit than they are as singles I think.

And putting it as the lead in to TNA is pretty smart by DA. They're already losing money on this investment so why not experiment with crossover viewers? At worst they still cancel TNA in September anyway. Great deal for DA. It's actually airing directly before and after Impact, which Meltzer interprets as being a strong indication that they're using Impact to establish a following for ROH before they cancel it.

Alvarez said only 3 people in ROH knew about it before today.

This is interesting because it casts the Impact cancellation in a new light. I thought DA just had unrealistic expectations about the kind of advertising revenue wrestling would be able to deliver, but I guess there's more to it than that?

I think he was just using it metaphorically to describe the explosion of new accessible wrestling we have now