PeteF3

This is not to be read as a defense at all of segregation, but no, it's absolutely not ridiculous--there's past precedent for such an occurrence (scroll down to/search for "Economic Costs of Desegregation on Negro League Baseball"). If NJPW thought that incorporating women would help them, they would do it in a way that helped New Japan as a business and only New Japan as a business, not in a way that helped women's wrestling.

Dave's response about how NJPW adding women would be better for women's wrestling--this makes way more sense than his stupid NBA analogy: "It would be far worse for women's wrestling. Either you'd have the elite women go there, taking them away from the headline positions in promotions and those companies would lose popularity, or you'd have non-elite women there, meaning it would not get over,and be a failure. This is Americans who don't know the industry there trying to make a business decision while not even knowing the first thing about the business or the culture. UFC is completely different, they had the ability to hire hundreds of women and Strikeforce and Elite XC in their culture already proved the audience was there on a men's show. New Japan doesn't have the roster space to do that nor is there any evidence that the New Japan fan base wants it on their shows. This is a company that already books six, eight and ten man tags because they have so many men under contract, as keeps the matches short unless you are a top star because they don't want long shows unless it's the major events. There's no spot available unless they run multiple shows per night and you're happy with them killing off the places that develop the new talent." Me again: Joshi went through a severe talent shortage in the late '90s because they killed off the women and girls' audience, and thus their dojo tryouts went from thousands of women a year to maybe a hundred. I'm not sure how easy it is for Stardom, Ice Ribbon, et al to replenish their roster as it is drawing around 700 people per show if that, much less if two major promotions start raiding their talent instead of just the WWE.

I like wrestling--period. Even though joshi definitely had its own style at least in the '80s and '90s, I'm not sure about championing a match or a style simply because it happens to contain women. (Yes, I sort of followed along with all the Twitter drama on this subject--my view is, while there may not be any reason for NJPW *not* to have a women's division, I also don't see any really compelling argument why they *must* have one, either. I'm also not sure if 6-8 women getting a big pay and exposure increase if they were under NJPW contract would do much for women's wrestling as a whole considering that would probably cripple the women's federations, who probably need all the help they can get at the moment.)

Ole got booted out of the Horsemen, leaving Arn partner-less.

Sure seems like they're going to go with multiple uploads on holiday weeks, then. This series started on Memorial Day, now it's a

"Jim Cornette had a banana emergency and couldn't be there" is a line I remember from a Scott Keith review, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't being literal, just referencing an urban myth about Cornette (one that even DX referenced on Raw once).

It's okay for there not to be any babyfaces in this little pissing contest. Looks like a heel vs. heel program to me. If Corey does want to call out Punk for whatever reason that's his business, but I have no idea what taking a shot at "oversensitive" fans who might have committed the horrible crime of liking Kenny Omega was supposed to accomplish.

Bump? Second verse, same as the first, really. Punk wasn't an embarrassment in the 1st round and conceivably could even have won it, but after that he was gassed and helpless and would have been annihilated had his opponent not been a tomato can whom Rogan was actively saying seemed to be carrying the fight to make sure it went a full 3 rounds. One of the unofficial online scorers had the second round as 10-*7*, which I've never even heard of in an MMA fight.

I'm older now than they were then, never seen Frozen, but I still know "Let It Go." A Whole New World was at or past that level of ubiquity in the mid-'90s.

Remember, though, Benoit had brought up the "family emergency" before going home, and just when specifically have there been instances of someone finding their family dead (from CO poisoning, a home invasion, or whatever) and immediately killing themselves? It's my experience that suicide simply isn't that spontaneous. That said, I'm in the position of someone who was at work until 11pm that night with no Internet or phone access, so by the time I heard about anything happening I was getting the full story at once. I still already knew that Benoit was consciously missing the PPV, though. WWE had options for Monday night. Even running a generic best-of show would have been a better option than what ended up happening.

CLIMB THE LADDER, KID. MAKE YOURSELF FAMOUS! Glad to see this concept resurrected.

I don't know why, but Kieran's suggestion of Nash's suggestion regarding long-term planning--"Let's do long-term planning, but quicker"--gave me the biggest laugh listening to a podcast in a long time.

I have no dog in this fight but that seems like a *greater* indication that they were trying to latch onto Cornette, not less.

Lawler was going off the rails in that promo to start with--he re-uses the "they'll all have tears coming down their faces" line twice, then names Dakota, then rhetorically asks Goldust what his daughter's name was after that. Whatever he was going for, I'm pretty sure it wasn't what came out.

The ALL-NEW ecwwrestling.com. The big selling point is the photos of Francine, Tammy, et al. Pushing 1wrestling.com as an "outlaw" website is LOL-worthy.

Raven's still pouting. Sabu and RVD are teasing dissension TWO AND A HALF YEARS after that started up. Good Lord, Paul E., there's slow burn and then there's just leaving something on the kitchen counter to thaw.

The closing action is okay and so is the whole beatdown, even if Cornette inserts himself rather unnecessarily. At least the only guy to sell for him is Bolin. This is apparently building up to a coward-waves-the-flag match and the ostensible intrigue is if Cornette will be able to be in the corner of whoever--Conway, I guess.

Even though we saw a lot of these people earlier in the set I have no idea who was originally on whose side here, and it doesn't seem like the crowd does either.

This was pretty good but I definitely didn't like it as much as anyone else, though there were some truly spectacular moments like Shimoda's sadistic smile, the wiping of the blood on Aja's shirt, and some of the counterwrestling done by the babyfaces. That said, I grew numb to LCO's garbage brawls where they cut off their opponents at every opportunity and never seem to take what they dish out--like, we all know the deal with chairshots to the head so I'm not advocating for people to give themselves concussions, but please don't indiscriminately brain people with chairs and then cover up like you're trying not to break a nail when Hamada and AKINO are giving them back to you. And the big triumphant comeback and victory didn't really feel earned the way it was in Aja's match earlier on the set--this was closer to one of those patented Scott Hall slip-on-a-banana-peel finishes where the babyface comes off as lucky and fluky rather than smart and resourceful. This sounds really bitchy but I did enjoy the match overall, I just don't see it as MOTY level even for this year. The in-ring stuff, blood aside, was way better than the out-of-the-ring stuff and weapons involvement.

Raven refused to help Tommy Dreamer from a beating because it would mean helping Sandman as well. Dreamer says if "Scotty" does anything like that again he'll give him the beating he wishes he gave his father. Oh well, Raven's past has never been hidden by ECW, so shoot namez are acceptable here. That said, yes, it's time to shit or get off the pot with this angle.

One or both of the Revival have done the slingshot suplex several times.