strobogo

I can't think of any year in the past 7-8 years where Ishii had the most boring match on any given G1 night unless it was in a filler tag. Everyone has some rest days and light matches during the G1, but even Ishii's breather matches tend to be pretty enjoyable even against dudes I don't particularly enjoy watching like a Yano or Tama Tonga. I understand your critique of Ishii here, but I think it's really as much of a NJ/Gedo's booking issue as it is with him specifically because everyone on the roster goes through that due to the amount of rematches Gedo runs. Especially in the last 2-3 years. I feel like White/Tana has had to have happened 8 times in the last 2 years. I think last year was the first time in probably 5-6 years where Ishii wasn't my G1 MVP (which went to Jay White, who I don't think was in the best matches but was the best performer through the duration. Anyway, Ishii is a delight and I can always rely on him to give me 5-10 hype as hell matches during the year.

Sure I could see little kids being into some of it I guess, but the audience is 50 year old dudes. It doesn't bother me if some people love it, I love a lot of objectively bad entertainment myself. I don't understand anyone enjoying this particular set of angles/promos/matches, which is not the same thing as being bothered or upset by it. In the same way I don't understand why my 4 year old nephew loves to watch toy unboxing videos more than playing with the toys himself, but it doesn't bother me.

Hurts tremendously as he spent the last few years of his career leaving the impression of a pathetic old sad man who doesn't know when to hang it up and being a risk to himself and co-workers. I think The Last Ride also hurts him as it revealed this guy WWE has been building as the greatest and most mythical guy since at least 1996/1997, the most respected guy in the locker room, etc as a wildly insecure sad old man who didn't know when to give it up/knew when to give it up and couldn't because he had nothing else outside of wrestling. He instead spent the last few years of his career being a fat hobbled mess of an old man embarrassing himself and the company as well as being a risk to himself and his co-workers. Not unlike god tier MMA fighters and boxers who spend the last 5-6 years of their career getting knocked out in the first round. That PPV tag match with Roman seemed positive in the sense that you didn't come away from it thinking man Taker looks like he might have a heart attack later tonight. In general I think his 90s output is often the worst stuff on a WWE card from 1991-1999, he was trash in 2000 and 2001 particularly when it came to being a complete shithead to all the Alliance guys and going out of his way to make all of them look bad even when others like Rock were selling like death for guys like Rhyno and Austin was putting over RVD. His best run by far is 2002-2003, and then to me the rest of his career is real hit and miss. The more it leaned into dead man gimmickry, the worse it was, but the more it leaned into more wrestling based stuff, the better. He's involved in some of the lowest lows of the past 30 years in WWE. I don't think his highs balance it out, and I do love the 2002-2003 run a lot. For every post 2004 feud with Angle or Batista or HBK, you get feuds with Khali/Kozlov/Mark Henry/possessing Josh Matthews to torment Orton/Mr. Anderson/JBL/Hassan/the Edge feud that seemed to go on 5 years/the second Kane feud/the HHH feud desperately trying to be on the same level as the HBK one, and so on.

I don't know how anyone could like that stuff. It's TL Hopper tier or the worst Russo stuff you could imagine someone walking in on you watching. It also simply can not be done in front of a live crowd so they're going to have to have an actual match unless they do another pre-taped cinematic match. I have watched and enjoyed a lot of completely dogshit horror movies in my life (also a lot of completely dogshit pro wrestling tbh), and nothing has been as bad and embarrassing as even the recaps of the Fiend/Orton/Bliss stuff.

I think the real issue with Brock isn't his skill or talent, which are of course very high, but the corner WWE has booked themselves into with him since 2014 where he's a special attraction with classic special attraction booking, but it also makes no sense for his character to be involved in anything except the title scene, and also he's nigh unbeatable. It'd be like booking Andre to be the champion for most of the 80s so not only is your champion rarely around so the title scene is held hostage, but also anyone who gets over enough to face him is going to get smashed and still have to be on TV every week while Andre doesn't come back for 3 months. Because of this, everything he's involved with is the same and his feuds have benefitted no one, not even Seth/Roman actually beating him (twice in the same year in Seth's case). In fact in almost all cases it has derailed his opponent's momentum (Reigns, Rollins, Strowman, Joe, Ambrose, Balor, Orton, Kofi, Rey, Ricochet (lol how did that even happen)) to the point it took them years to recover or not at all. It doesn't even seem like he's done anything for ratings or ticket sales, either.

I think the most interesting things to come out of this weekend is to see if the live crowd reacts to how the TV booking as been. Are they going to cheer Roman because he's a good heel now? Are they going to rage at Edge like Batista? Will Lashley get cheered over Drew because THB was cool and Drew is giving some serious 1996 corny HBK vibes anytime I've seen him in the past 6 months? I'm just imagining how live audiences would have reacted to the atrocious, unbelievably embarrassing Fiend/Orton/Bliss segments and I'm hoping they feel like they can do it with a live crowd and they completely shit on it. Should be a lot of energy from the crowd and talent, at least, which is a lot more exciting that what I've seen of read about the lead up to...well, everything. Real quick Takeover thoughts: Ciampa/Walter was great, for sure going to be the match of the week for WWE. Night 2 in general was real bleh, Karrion Kross needs to tighten up his game if they're going to play up his MMA and heavy strikes because they have no impact at all, Cole/KOR was not at all what it needed to be and was a huge disappointment. Somehow KOR vs Balor seemed like a more violent and hateful match than what is supposed to be this super intense bloodfeud match that featured just a ton of overwrought and overthought "epic" spots. If any match needed some blood.

Seriously like 70% of the roster is exclusive to the Youtube shows. And both versions of Dark get so few viewers, it seems like such wasted money and effort. It's good that a lot of these young talents are getting a place to work and get paid during all this, but also....why are you signing Big Show to do commentary for a show that gets maybe 30,000 viewers on Youtube? This is definitely a WCW style lol what did they spend money on type of decision. Big Show is probably getting paid more than the entire roster on the show any given week. Show's signing in general is weird to me. It's always helpful to have a vet and all, but I'm not sure what he has to offer to a roster where the biggest monster is about the size of Jake Roberts and they all do moonsaults and dives every week. Even among the people that are on TV regularly, most are either doing the same angle for 10 weeks or floundering around in mini angles that go no where and are dropped with no explanation or blow offs. AEW's booking is as dull, repetitive, and dumb as WWE's they just have talent that are happy to be there and haven't had the passion pounded out of them so it has an energy that still makes it mostly enjoyable if you just tune in every 3-4 weeks.