Dav'oh

An even bigger WTF was that Tyler Breeze got the gig. Did I read somewhere that Liger asked for him?

My bad...it stems from my belief that the fighting arts aren't "sports", because you don't "play" "brain damage".

Cole called him a "Karate player".

Does Vince dare job Mansoor in his hometown?

One door joyfully opens, another slams shut....

HOLY FUCK!

Couldn't find a bookie taking bets on Ibushi. I can get $1.06 for the Liberal Democratic Party to form Japan's next government, though.

Watching AEW makes me feel like I'm a part of something. I'm pretty sure that's Tony's intention. Watching WWE makes me feel like a dickhead a lot of the time. I'm pretty sure that's Vince's intention. So it's a dead cert that I'd rather watch Bunny.

I beat the fuck out of Jeff Jarrett in a dream recently, which was odd because a) I'm non-violent and b) I don't mind Jeff Jarrett.

Seth Rollins absolutely has all the tools needed to be an all-timer, except between the ears. He's been the most disappointing. Moxley has found himself and whilst the worst worker of the three, as the most charismatic he will probably be remembered most fondly. Roman's the hardest to finger (ahem). He's at his most memorable with others around him (Shield, Bloodline/Heyman) but he's got the matches the other two don't. I'm curious as to how often they switch him between face and heel over the coming years. I'm going Mox, for getting as far as he has without the natural abilities Seth and Roman were born with. He's made more out of less.

Bryan/Mi-Su was a gift horse. It doesn't occur to me to check its teeth.

I nearly disowned myself after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC0TBtkccCU. It's a magician/wrestler called The Shocker on the latest Penn & Teller and forget dying a little inside, my heart poured kerosene on itself and lit a match. I think what hurts the most is that it's pro-wrestling on an international stage and it only strengthens preconceived disdain and mockery towards our sport. This is not what I want non-fans to see. It's worse than the theme song of Heels (ymmv).

Agree fully with your reasoning, but it should hold that Okada is stepping up too, and if Okada - a real-life and kayfabe GOAT contender - was stepping up, we'd be writing, "Chase Owens was 31 and is survived by his wife and kids". I don't think anything is lost in making it a 12/14/16 man tourney, but it's a moot point.

You'd think a Chase Owens or a YOSHI-HASHI or a Tanga Loa only exists in the G1 to give the other guys an easy night, but nah. It reminds me of Flair being criticised for needing 10-20 minutes to beat a Gilbert or an Eaton or a South. Owens should never be anything other than a squashed fool in a squashing fools equation. And fuck capitalising YOSHI-HASHI; it should be minimalised, as in yoshi-hashi.

I don't think Kota Ibushi is demonstrably the lesser of his contemporaries D-Bry and Kenny, and may even have a deeper toolkit. Not that anyone is expressing that sentiment, but he's absent from the conversation, it seems. I enjoyed tonight's show, first I've caught in a while. Nothing you'd sell your firstborn to see, but nothing you'd take a corkscrew to your eyeballs over, either. Young Lions looked good, I swear they'll still be doing Boston Crabs in little black boots in the year 2121. Tanga Loa shouldn't be going more than eight minutes versus Shingo but I get it and he didn't offend. I picked the winner of the perfectly fine KENTA/ZSJ match (DM me if you want to send me a trophy). No predictions for the final, but Sabre versus Cobb would be an interesting match-up. Of all of New Japan's problems, perceived or otherwise, does the lack of an "ace" hurt them? I may be wrong but they feel "aceless" with Tana winding down, Okada just....floating around, Naito never made it, nor has Kota, EVIL was insipid rather than evil, and Shingo's the Champ/Man.... Am I reading it wrong? Is it Takagi? Still Okada? Or is the brand more important now than any of the independent contractors wink emoji?

That might not have been the case, though. From Observer Radio via 411, " (Meltzer's) comments paint a bit of a different picture regarding AEW’s creative situation. According to Meltzer, the current status of Tony Khan taking the reins of the creative booking has been the case in AEW since December 2019 ...Meltzer added that none of the EVPs have lost any power “of late.” He continued, “Nobody has lost any power of late. It’s the same thing that it’s been....The EVPs, they are all in the discussions on this stuff, but Tony makes the final call. They all have input.”

I'll see you that, and raise you, "I'd rather die from Belushi-ing myself than have my wife wipe my arse/empty my colostomy bag for decades 'cos I Hayabusa'd myself". Anyway, I said they were smarter workers, not smarter drug-abusers...

1980s for me. The "Territory System" produced better workers than the "Death of the Territories System" (go figure...). Guys who were so well-versed in the basics, they could put on great matches using only the basics. I'd go as far as to say the 1980s had "smarter" workers, too - e.g it was the 90s when you could start to fill a bingo card with the names of wrestlers "who will be in a wheelchair by the time they're 40" (although people were probably saying that about Funk or Race in the 70s, I don't know, but I don't think it became prevalent until later).

Didn't take long...(available at BoxofGimmicks.com)

"Esports" biggest audience ever came this year, with 5 million dorks watching some other dorks play "Garena Free Fire" out of Singapore. The "League of Legends" dorks drew 3.99 million viewing dorks in 2019. The first eight rounds of Anand v Carlson ChessSlam! drew over 100 million every day on television. It's hip to be square, or something....

Bit late to the party, but I wanted to bring up the "Omega is a dork", "Cole is a dork", "XYZ is a dork". There weren't 20,177 reincarnations of James Dean at Arthur Ashe the other night. It wasn't an audience full of young Marlon Brandos. It wasn't even a house full of Arthur Fonzarellis. The Elite and friends were playing to twenty thousand Potsie Webbers. They know and reflect their core audience, whether in-ring e.g dropping the southern tag formula as mentioned in another post, or by being, y'know...uncool. It's not like the beautiful people have even glanced sideways at pro-wrestling since 1984-5 (the 1950s, even?) We're a pretty dorky fandom. Always have been (except PWO posters, who are all Fonzies ). I guess Orange Cassidy is a Fonzie, too...

No, not at all - it's preferred. It takes too many syllables to say "Australian" Here, a string is a g-string, although g-banger seems popular, as well as the timeless anal floss.

Bogans are a special breed, whose heyday was in the 1970s and 80s. Originally characterised by an ACDC t-shirt with a pack of ciggies in the sleeve, tight Faberge jeans, international-calibre mullets and always with beer in hand, your bogan was most comfortable with moccassins on his feet, or thongs (translation: flip-flops) if he was taking the missus out for dinner. The female of the species is known as a "Shazza", and drops more c-bombs than any other group of people on the planet.

AslongasThornespeaksinonelongsentencelikearealAustralianhe'llbealright. Andifhethrowsrisinginflections?intothemiddle?andespeciallytheend?ofsentenceshe'llbeevenbetter? It's my pet gripe about Australian wrestlers, as I'm sure I've mentioned here - too much bloody elocution!

It'll be fun watching Bryan trying to restrain himself as an entire stadium does the "Yes!" chant. He won't be joining in because "I'm not doing it myself because I respect WWE's intellectual property. I don't think anything legally, they haven't threatened anything legally. So I had a great conversation with Kevin Dunn with WWE before I debuted with AEW. I was very upfront with WWE about, 'Okay, I want to let you guys know I'm leaving. This is my debut date’ and all that kind of stuff. They asked me, politely, to respect their intellectual property, even some of the things that couldn't be legally enforced. I'm trying my best to do that.” I hope the crowd just (good-naturedly) bait him and bait him and bait him, getting louder and louder and louder, trying to get him to join them.