Dav'oh

Have to respectfully disagree on the Kingston-Misawa tribute. You've got this psychotic arse-kicker from da streetz, yo, and he puts on his shiniest board-shorts and kickpads? (And he ended up throwing zero kicks unless I missed something). Matching, colour-co-ordinated freshly-laundered singlet, for a weapons and blood brawl? Nice paunch, Eddie. Add in that I don't think Kingston, whilst a good talker and serviceable wrestler, isn't fit to wipe Misawa's butt-cleavage, and that Misawa didn't work this "style" of "wrestling", and it's just jarring. Almost like he was taking the piss... With that out of the way, good PPV. I thought the Hardy/Sammy hour was self-indulgent tosh that seemed to go forever but apart from that a good showing from all involved. Darby in particular will benefit if/when live crowds return, they'll go nuts for him.

Watching a 41/1 outsider called Eaton leave some good horses in his wake reminded me of the value of "omen bets". I was on a good thing with a greyhound called Roman Reigns a couple of years back, Yes Yes Yes was a champion colt before its premature retirement, won a couple of bucks on Iron Sheik and even Rowdy Roddy saluted a few weeks back. On the other hand, Luchador is giving me no love. Anyone else won a dollar or two on wrestling-themed gee gee's or dishlickers? (Had the usual amount on Eaton - one whole dollar. I never bet to win, only for fun.)

So Vince dropped the Antonio from Cesaro's name because he didn't want people calling him Tony, and I'm 10,379 miles from Vince and I know that, yet the people working for Vince still give Vink the name Tony? Also, (the real) Tony Modra was, literally, a spectacular high-flyer, which I don't believe Vink is.

Walter vs Ilja from this week's NXT UK was not for me. All I saw was 30 minutes of guys slapping each other in the ears, back of the neck and chest, with an outcome that was never remotely in doubt. My mind started to wander after ten minutes or so, which was a good effort (lasting that long) given they were just rinsing and repeating. Brutal? Yeah, sort of - if you equate slapping with brutality. More like violence-porn than pro-wrestling, imho.

That's my main problem with WWE. I was being asked to give a shit about these two ten years ago. If I didn't then, why would I now? They're exactly the same people. Looking at some old results (2012-ish), we were being asked to give a shit about Dolph Ziggler back then. About Seamus. We were being asked to not give a shit about 3MB Drew, nor Daniel Bryan. We've been asked to give a fig about Rey Misterio and Jeff Hardy forever (except when Jeff was in TNA and we were told to not give a stuff about him, nor AJ, nor Joe, nor Roode). We were asked to give a tinker's cuss about John Morrison a decade ago. We were told not to care about Husky Bray a decade ago. What year was Lashley quasi-main-eventing Mania? 2007? We were asked to care about MVP back when Benoit was still around - Shelton, too. We were being asked to love Edge in the 1990s. I'm sure I'm missing plenty. Fucking Afa and Sika! It was mentioned that WWE are in a holding-pattern due to Corona. We are being asked to be patient with them during these times, until live crowds are back and business gets back to normal. But I'm all out of patience, because I've been exercising it for years before Covid. It's the same old faces for a decade, with often completely mixed signals about how I'm supposed to feel about them. It's a good thing I'm blindly, stupidly, loyal in general. It's the only reason I'm a WWE...not "fan" anymore ..."follower". I still "follow" WWE, with no hope of a better tomorrow, because they were good to me from about 1984 to 1992 or so.

Harrison Ford's first on-screen role was as a bellboy. The story goes that after doing his scene, Ford said to the director, "How did I do? Did I look like a good actor?" The director replied, "Yes, you did. The problem is, you were meant to look like a bellboy". I post this because I've seen others saying Roman looked like a good actor tonight.

Even the comments sections at 411's Wednesday reviews is weighted 3:1 in favour of AEW, and the "watch-along" comments are even worse for NXT. Last time I checked (a few weeks ago) the NXT live chat was a ghost-town of three or four die-hards, compared to over 1000 Dynamite comments. I just find there's a sterility to NXT and a vibrancy to AEW. Who cares if the inmates are running the asylum if their fun is infectious? The warders are there to tranquilise them if they go too far.

Jay White Zack Sabre Jr should enter it, just to be a dick. FTFM

Jay White should enter it, just to be a dick. He's listed as 220lbs (although I think that's stretching it a bit) so it's doable and I imagine it would inspire much loathing.

Excellent, excellent piece. No doubt you were speaking a lot of other people's truth, too. Were you being a bit harsh on the lone headbanger? I haven't seem the film but it sounds like he was the one having the most fun

It's a huge leap from my, "Sami reminds me, facially, of grown-up Screech", to your comment... Sami, Rogan and Diamond do look alike to me, in terms of being red-headed middle-aged white dudes, with beards, and moustaches. That's what I take alike to mean - "similar". Are you really seeing no points of similarity between Sami and Dustin? That they truly look "nothing alike"?

'twas I, and I stand by it. Definitely more "something like him" than "nothing like him".

Dustin Diamond looked good in the ladder match, but they were asking me to care about a Jeff Hardy swanton in 2020, which I don't know how to do. Maybe the handful of young people watching WWE had never seen it before. Drew getting by with more than a little help from his friends makes him look weak, to mine eyes. Why would the putative babyface champ need or welcome help in a mano y mano situation? They weren't there to "even the odds" like traditional babyface interference. Too much "acting" in the main for my taste. And yes, you need a strong storyline, but you also need a strong contender for a world championship match and main event. Put this match on earlier in the show and I would've been somewhat happier, but don't ask me to take Jey freaking Uso seriously as a headliner. If I can think of any positives outside of Sami's performance, I'll come back and edit this for balance.

Joined Night Three in progress. Quick thoughts: Is MiSu going full panto-villain as he gets older? There's been aspects of it present these last few years I've been watching him, but his facials and selling seem to be getting..."bigger"? That mugging he did for the cameras off of Taichi's choke seemed so un-Misu. Ospreay and Ishii made me jump off the couch, twice, which is exceedingly rare. First was Ishii's leaping headbutt as Will was sat up top, the second was whatever the "Murder Ishii Out of a Stormbreaker set-up" is called. White vs Ibushi is on now. I'd put money on White if my online bookie took G1 bets.

"WWE legend Triple H has urged Declan Rice to stay at West Ham amid interest from Chelsea." It seems Trips really is devoted to developmental groups (sorry, Hammers fans).

I assume that at the very least it's based on fact; there was enough information in the larger article to suggest so. "Titans" seems to have some fans around here so when I read the article I thought I'd put it up here, and if it reeked of horse-cack then someone would be able to refute it. Glad you enjoyed it.

From Cracked dot com: "Soon, all of Argentina was abuzz with the news that the Fab Four would play a series of concerts in the country. It even became a point of national pride. Sure, Brazil kept winning World Cups, but the Beatles were coming to Argentina. Naturally, the country's leading TV stations competed to book the band for a live appearance. Channel 9 ultimately secured a signed contract, but their rivals at Channel 13 were undeterred and simply scheduled the band for the same night. You may sense trouble brewing. When the band landed, Channel 13 challenged Channel 9's contract and used their government connections to have a judge award the Beatles concert to them instead. That's when Channel 9's CEO deployed his secret weapon: a squadron of muscle-bound wrestlers from the hit show "Titans in the Ring." The wrestlers charged into the airport and physically abducted the band, racing out pursued by the judge, cops and Channel 13 executives. Channel 13 briefly re-kidnapped the drummer, but later released him, presumably after executives realized that Ringo was not going to strap on a one-man-band outfit and carry the evening. * It wasn't the Beatles. It was actually a group of unconvincing American lookalikes called the Beetles. They had been performing as a Beatles cover band in the US when a shady Argentinean promoter spotted them and booked them for a lucrative South American tour -- without telling anybody they weren't the real deal."

Love the guy on the Thesz Board who ingenuously asked Lou what was the difference between a wrist-watch and a wrist-lock. Lou played it with a straight bat.(For context, he was an Israeli fella whose English was otherwise fairly strong).

I was reading recently that wrestlers signed to the Gold Dust Trio would spend their time at Sandow's private ring, practicing routines. It's always been the backbone of the sport, it seems.

I think people missed the mark outing Joey Ryan and David Starr. They should've been outing Joseph Meeham and Max Barsky, because it's Meeham and Barsky and Macahren et al. that the wider community needs to be informed about and protected from. It's like outing Cliff Huxtable instead of Bill Cosby

Who is Low-Ki screaming at, exactly? It reads uncannily like one of my teenage angst-and-anger poems, where I'd scream at the world and think the world gave a shit. *memo Mr. Low-Ki: your life-long anger is worse for your immune system than covid-19 would be. All your cardio and nutrition won't counter-balance the years that negativity and rage take off your life. 40 years old and no smile-lines....

I saw, over many stays over many years, lots of people in rehab who were there for the wrong reasons. People "sending" other people to rehab is an exercise in time-wasting, whether it's mum and dad, your missus or your employer (all of whom are flattering/deluding themselves if they think they can do or say anything to get someone clean.) Havoc also reminds me of another group of "wrong reasons" people - those that were only in rehab so they could tell the magistrate they'd been to rehab, hoping for a reduced sentence. (One rehab I went to was like the remand yard.) And finally, maybe, maybe, 1% of people who go to rehab for substance abuse are "one-and-dones", for want of a better term, which I don't think AEW understands. You don't just sit around for 28 days and then walk out cured; it's generally a very long process which, for some people, continues for their whole lives. Detox and rehab aren't cures. (And now I'm thinking "in vino veritas" so Havoc probably needs to work on bigger behavioural issues than just substance abuse...)

I agree 100%. I think there's a lot of "hating on women is bad, unless I choose the woman" seeping through.

He's also relevant to this thread and thus to everyone who has posted. He's clearly relevant to his hate-listeners, he's relevant to the news sites, he's relevant to advertisers. He's relevant to impartial listeners who want to hear old-school stories. I'm sure there's others.

I kept getting distracted by the audience doubling as catalogue models for WWE Shop dot com. Every one of them in a brand-spanking (pun unintended) new t-shirt of another wrestler.