Embrodak

I’m honestly unsure at this point, the Usos are more connected to Sami than they are to Roman at this point. I can almost see an Usos face turn easier than I can see a Sami v Usos feud. Brock on SD tonight is the first time I’ve ever noticed him showing some age.

I think at this point, after all the packages, if Cody doesn’t win the Rumble, he’s kinda cooked. If you’re not gonna do Roman wresting both nights, I think you gotta do Sami screwing Roman out of one of the titles at Elimination Chamber so Cody still has a world title to chase.

Probably a no brainer business decision, but very very nice that WWE allowed Adam Pearce to be on the stage on Dynamite and record interviews for the RoH tribute video.

Moxley was clearly the most important wrestler to a promotion this year, but I just don’t think his wrestling is very good. In terms of who had the best matches, overall, I might have to say Dax Harwood. Dude had both the best tag matches of the last decade this year and a bevy of well-regarded singles matches. Gunther had a fantastic last half of the year, following his move to the main roster. He turned the IC title into a legit title for the first time in a while, and was big enough by the end of the year to be credible as an opponent for Brock, if rumors are to be believed.

Rock got injured the last time he wrestled, why the hell would he put his film career on hold, potentially for much longer than the time required for training for one match if history repeats itself, to go roll around with Cousin Joe? I’d say he’s cooked as a movie star at this point, the dude has *never* had his Rambo or Terminator role and is getting up there, but there’s always a lag between a new paradigm manifesting and on-the-ground reality comporting.

I think where they’ve kinda fucked themselves is Sami is now so closely identified with the Usos that them turning on him for a Sami/KO versus Usos match just doesn’t make sense. Jey fucking hated him and is now his biggest defender! Maybe they could do a thing where Roman defends each belt on each night? Defend against Sami the first night, have him win dirty but have the Usos finally break with Roman and save Sami from a post-match beatdown, then Cody comes in the next night and, Roman being Uso-less, finally loses one of his belts to Cody. Then you could have Sami win the other belt at the next PLE, cap that storyline without giving Sami the “beat the streak” rub, and finally give Roman a break to go away, do some movies or whatever, so he can come back and do something new for once.

A racist, a sexual assailant, and a rapist walk into a Raw taping….. Seriously! All things considered, I can aaaaaalmost grok inviting Lawler because the accusation against him is a lot murkier and less publicized, maybe it’s a flimsier charge than we on the internet know (has it been studied by an investigative journalist? Serious question), but Hulk Hogan is literally on tape, in a moment of post-nut clarity, saying the man his daughter is dating is an n-word and that her dating him is galling to him, and Ric Flair is just a total degenerate, in the non-reactionary sense of the word. We don’t need to see these tanner’s shop mummies putzing around and doing Vegas impersonator versions of the shit they did 40 years ago.

Looking back, I think “Fight on the Farm” has to be said to be the best “cinematic match”. Over the top, yes, but not goofy, no teleportation, no ice machines.

You know the main problem right now is they don’t really have a heel tag team with any juice that can get the titles off The Acclaimed. It’s not pressing, they can prob keep them on The Acclaimed until the summer and do these mini Jarrett/Lethal type feuds because they’re still way over, but Top Flight and Jungle Hook don’t necessarily have anywhere to go for now.

I think Jungle Hook is a great way to get Hook over and get him more experience in the ring without exposing his green-ness too much. Hookhausen was over, but let’s be real, Hook is not the kind of talent that you let pal around with the comedy goof on Rampage or Dark for a long time. He’s not experienced enough to be the “real worker” who leads the match and sets up the circumstances for the comedy guy to get his schtick in, and given he has genuine potential, it’s a lot more important to get him doing straightforward matches that will really build the muscle memory and intuition he needs to be a singles guy.

Yeah it was a touching tribute. Hearing how happy Jay and Mark were to get to work a match with their dad and how it was hot enough to break through the eye rolls of the smart NYC fans was nice. Got choked up a bit when Last pointed out that if the Briscoes hadn’t been kept off television, there’s no guarantee they would have even been in town at that time and place. Laughed at Corny telling the world to leak to him who the WBD executive who nixed Jay being on TV, even for a tribute, so he can use his platform to do targeted harassment, get sued, and tell them to their face that they can go fuck themselves.

Yeah but you hardly had to be understood as gay to be insulted and denigrated for perceived effeminacy in the South at that time, or almost anywhere in America outside certain neighborhoods in a few big cities.

Sure, but Shad can’t buy Tony a time machine. But maybe…. He can buy him a Big Red Machine.

Eh, Dynamite has been somewhat better recently, and maybe a heel Kingston can get some of his juice back.

You know it’s interesting how you can watch something as old as this and see things that, if you were wrestling, you might try to bring back for at least some matches. Drama over keeping both shoulders from touching the mat would be nice to see sometimes, if only to break up the monotony of the 2.9 count. Plus you could get a lot of fuck finishes out of that.

Looking at the intersection where it supposedly happened, it looks pretty country. Wouldn’t surprise me if the combined speed was like 120 mph or more.

In “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, Shoshanna Zuboff says Google exploded the use of split voting power stock offerings, which were comparatively rare before the 2000s, when they did their IPO, as the original founders wanted to remain in control of realizing their “vision”.

Seat belts becoming a weird culture war thing is a huge human tragedy. Honestly, fuck WBD if they put a kibosh on a proper tribute show. The man is fucking dead, his daughters are in the hospital, I have to imagine it would have meant something for them and for all of his friends in the locker room to get to celebrate him on the national stage he never got to perform on in life. Especially considering what we now know in the wake of the Me Too movement, god only knows how many predatory reprobates appear on that channel on a regular basis. They make a shit ton of money airing Seinfeld reruns, when he was dating a fucking high school student during a large portion of the making of that show, ffs.

Well considering they’re maybe getting reamed for not disclosing those expenses because they provided a material benefit to the company, even if the money didn’t always come from the company coffers, I tend to think him being off the board doesn’t give him free license to make hush money payments, considering he was still the majority shareholder. Is it possible to characterize WWE as somewhat of a pump and dump scheme? Become a public company and get a bunch of outside investors bolstering the McMahon family’s personal fortunes on the basis of bloated media rights deals taking advantage of changes to the televisual marketplace in the wake of the rise of streaming and DVR, then sell it at a relative high point of its valuation just when it looks like the media rights fees are gonna take a big hit? That’s an extremely bloated sentence, but that story that Fox lost hundreds of millions of dollars broadcasting Smackdown was nuts to me.

There’s a lot to be said about patriarchal violence, but Benoit had as much brain degradation as an advanced Alzheimer’s patient when he died. I don’t think it’s weird or bad that people started to look at some of the stupid, unnecessary risks that were taken in the Attitude Era and post-WCW closure era and wonder whether all of that was really necessary when guys got over without that stuff for decades. I think we’re probably going to see someone like Darby or Sammy using a Walker at a young age in like 10-15 years and wonder something similar about the current working zeitgeist, tbh. Julia Hart almost got her neck broken doing an unnecessarily risky spot in a nothing angle, Big E got his neck actually broken (in a spot that could have left him a quadriplegic if it’d been worse) doing a Belly to Belly on the floor in a random TV match, Cody put himself through a burning table in a random, juiceless TV main event, it’s just so ridiculous.

If Danielson gets a good match out of Cage, he’s a true visionary. Cage isn’t Warrior bad, but he’s gotta be in the discussion for worst ratio of working ability to look.

First of all, that Garvin line is pretty fucking funny, in my opinion. Second of all, I didn’t say Corny never got cheap heat or said edgy shit, I said that it wasn’t some central facet of his performance style and probably wouldn’t be what he most encouraged in a performer like MJF if he were in regular contact with him, which again I am rather dubious of. (Unless we’re saying the whole premise of being a heel who goes out and does one-liners and roasts people is “cheap heel heat edginess”, which is not my understanding of what the general critique of MJF is.) Third, saying “flamboyant rich kid who is actually a coward and weakling” is a “thinly veiled gay stereotype” is a bit of a reductive characterization of his gimmick. Yeah, there’s stuff there that’s queer-coded, but basically none of it exclusively and unambiguously so.

Look I’m a Corny fan and mostly agree with him about the state of modern wrestling, but I think you’re deluding yourself if you think MJF is seeking advice from Corny. He apparently was pissed at FTR for going on Corny’s podcast when he’s been so critical of the company that is buttering all their bread, and he’s only used Corny references as a way to get heel heat thus far. Moreover, Corny has been critical of MJF’s lack of variation and vocabulary and overuse of repetitive affect, so I doubt this is true even on the terms you’re setting, as Corny was like the most verbally creative and least cheap heat-getter of the 80s.

Bryan is great, but the psychology of this is really weird. Going into the PPV as the face challenger to the dastardly heel by beating a series of babyfaces? Idk, something about it is off, even if it’s hard to complain about these excellent TV matches we’re getting. Top Flight versus Bucks was exactly what I expected it to be, but at the same time not to the umpteenth degree it could have been. Top Flight winning was nice, they’re both green but are really sympathetic babyfaces.

Always wear your seatbelt brothers. Anything that has ever peddled the notion of seatbelt use as unfreedom is death cult propaganda, do not listen to it.