WrestlingPower

Wonder if that Norfolk match is from the George Pantas collection that they bought. This was stuff originally used as bonus footage on one of the Mid-Atlantic documentaries.

Who is the announcer on the 1981 World Class stuff? He's much better than Mercer & Lowrance ended up being. Sorry if this has already been covered here.

It can take a while, years even, to adjust your expectations of what reality looks like, what you honestly have time for and interest in. Eventually you become so disconnected from stuff you don't have time for that it's easy to not even have that stuff on your radar screen to make you lose that feeling of obligation. Then you can truly watch stuff for fun when you have the time. I've long since given up on following anything current as far as watching stuff and I'm usually disinterested in following much current news outside daily Observer recaps. I've long since given up on following results & show reviews. Really the main thing I take time for is podcasts. I'm lucky that I can listen at work and my podcast backlog is really the only thing that I semi-stress over trying to catch up on. It took a while but really the first step on this journey for me was realizing I had enough backlogged, unwatched footage in my collection already that it was really kind of silly to continue to "pile on" with adding more to the hoard so I kind of drew a line in the sand and accepted that I had to put a stop to adding to the backlog. Sorry if this is a downer, all that to say, just be realistic in setting your priorities & what you reasonably have time for.

Just now seeing this and my first thoughts are: It's been a while since there's been a new promotion with serious aspirations so it's about time and I guess we were due. As mentioned above with all the TV money being thrown about. Second, I'm wondering just how much of the "in thing" the Bullet Club guys will be a year from now. Every time we've thought that movement peaked, it didn't, but I think it has this time. I can't see any of those guys being any more popular or more over a year from now. If anything them stagnating working in NJ & ROH just waiting for this to launch could cause them to feel stale a bit by then. This group, if it happens, better hope there's some new, hot act in the mix or separate from this mix by that time as I'm not sure you want to launch with "the cool kids from 2 years ago". Also curious how ROH will react to this as it's really more direct competition to them. I can't see them standing idly by & keeping the BC guys booked strong only for them to bail & start their own deal. Them leaving ROH though could lead to them being more out of sight/out of mind in that time. More power to them though, I hope this happens.

I still enjoy listening to all the Cornette shows but to me it seems Brian's Vanguard network of shows has started to stagnate. The Cornette shows seem to be more reliant on the plugs of the lawyer and whatever the deal is with that Wondery site that they must be getting $ from to record bonus episodes just to plug their shows. And the 605 and associated shows are starting to seem like Brian needs to expand his circle of friends a bit. It seems like there's a family of 6-8 people in his "bubble" that get recycled across shows.

CIMA really should get in on work alone. And even though supposedly someone can get in on work alone, that doesn't seem to be the case in practice. It seems there's an unstated criteria that your great work had to be done in meaningful, top level promotions. This is getting a bit into the "historiography" as mentioned. It seems like CIMA, Chris Hero, Chris Daniels, great workers who have had long careers are penalized for not making it in the big leagues. It seems like Dragon Gate has always been kind of snubbed by more "mainstream" Observer reader types as something that's mainly spot monkeys doing spot matches. It's weird though that whenever Dave has covered Dragon Gate and its excursions to the US lots of stars were thrown around but the promotion itself never was seen as important enough in the grand scheme of the landscape for Dave to cover it regularly. If Dave had been doing monthly reviews of the TV in the Observer, no doubt CIMA would have gone in right away. I'd be curious to read some more stats & analysis behind the claim that DG has been Japan's #2 promotion for that length of time. Seems like in Observer world, regardless of who is #2, it's largely been irrelevant since Japanese coverage has been NJ and not much else for years now.

Yeah that show has hit its stride again with those "deep dives". Brian Last is really good at asking follow up questions and getting down into the detail on stuff that most other hosts wouldn't have the interest to mine.

I'm not sure how spread out the events are in NOLA but a word of warning from someone who went to multiple events last year in Orlando. Some shows either start late or run long which cause later shows in the same building to be pushed back. So if you have to travel from one event to another, take that into account. Dylan can probably speak to this more first hand from his experiences last year but that was the biggest criticism I heard, just timing wise & factoring in travel to & from the various shows.