El-P

No offense, but that says everything about NXT2.0 to me. The guy was in IMPACT forever doing the exact same stuff and yeah, he used to get good reactions, but still, it's piss-poor Rock cosplay, and he's *okay* at best as an in-ring worker. If that's what gets over big in NXT 2.0, shhhhhh.....

They should have gone the whole way with the Günther thing, really.

SRS has always been dubious as a journalist anyway (he's not Ryan Satin level either though). Denise Salcedo is basically an influencer/interviewer (and she's been doing ring announcing too) more than anything else. What's the issue with her or any other kind of wrestling-related "celebrity" doing a spot on a goofy meta indie show anyway ? Alicia Atout is now a heel manager is MLW. Chill the fuck out people, really.

Interest, zero. Hopes, zero.

Bloodsport8 was the best top to bottom to me. Always cool to see Masha Slamovich in any context. Shafir vs Zhang was quite good and yeah, AEW should definitely push Shafir in a very MMA way and not make her just another girl. Fine stuff on the undercard, with the highlights being Tim Thatcher vs JR Kratos and Mike Bailey vs Yuya Uemura, in very different ways. John Hennigan being called Johnny Bloodsport got a laugh out of me, I mean, of course he would. Kinda cool to see him in this context too. Barnett vs Jonah was a different flavor for sure, and although there was a lot of headlock spots(that did look heavy though), it developed into quite a good match. Suzuki vs Dickinson was terrific, Suzuki touring the indies is always a blast. Mox vs Busick was *awesome*. talk about making it look like a fight, it sure was the best of what Bloodsport is supposed to be. Busick bled a bucket too. Very fun show top to bottom. And yeah, Busick & Thatcher really should be on TK's radar at the very least for ROH, but really they would be perfect fit for the Blackpool Combat Club. Dickinson too, but I guess he's signed with GCW.

Before jumping on CSRO, or whatever he's gonna be called, I would rather sign Tim Thatcher and Biff Busick after watching both of them in Bloodsport. Considering Cesaro did not want to leave and has trademarked CSRO, there's a "risk" that he's more interested in living off his WWE name rather than going back to his roots, and since he would not come cheap, I would prefer get some guys who may be hungrier and don't have the "in WWE for 15 years and never was more than a midcarder" stigma at this point. Let him show some stuff elsewhere beforehand. (of course, I say that but if he showed up on AEW TV I would obviously be pretty happy about it, especially if he kills it)

Toni Storm ! YES ! Now we're talking. Really good debut (Bunny <3). Also, throwing Marina Shafir in the mix is quite interesting. I've seen her Bloodsport stuff, it was pretty cool. She's unique and will bring another flavor to the division. Lethal vs Mox was excellent, but Yuta vs Danielson was awesome. And yeah, crazy how Yuta is getting over in the span of two matches. Andrade vs Darby was also an excellent main event, these two are made to work with each other, they compliment each others game really well. Young Bucks vs Top Flight.... holy shit. CM Punk vs Max Caster was pretty ok in a Ric Flair vs Hugh Morrus opening Nitro match. The Gunn Club are absolutely the American Males of 2022.

So many great stuff on paper during Mania week, including Atsushi Onita's team vs PCO's team at Wrestlecon in maybe the most WTF booking moment of 2022. That being said, I feel like I'm already going through a burn-out (only watched two NJPW Cup matches and one of the Stardom shows, and did not get into it like I would have otherwise), so I dunno what I'll end up watching.

Watched those two, and yeah, these were great matches. The Ospreay one in particular was amazing, and really it's legit N°3 MOTYC for Ospreay, in three totally different styles. He put on a selling clinic in this one too. And ZSJ absolutely rules and remains one of the most fun pro-wrestler to watch anywhere.

They look like two of Legolas' nephews getting ready to track down some orcs or something.

Too bad. He has actually been underused comparatively to what they could have done with him in term of cool multi-men matches. I mean, this week has Max Caster in a single match (waste of CM Punk's time) and the Gunn Club ? I'd rather watch Marko Stunt doing cool shit than anyone of these three, especially Caster. But hey, of course they won't re-up every contract at this point, and you can't always get what you want. Maybe Stunt can show on on IMPACT.

Tony Storm or Athena, please.

Doing the Shane troll job for the Cody debut would be soooo stupid on soooo many levels.

I need to catch up on some of the last few days to watch the best matches. I fully expected ZSJ to win, and I really hope they pull the trigger on him this time. He was so awesome last year during G1, and yeah Dangerous Tekkers especially since their "face turn" of sorts has been an awesome tag team. And then just have Zach vs Danielson for the IWGP title somewhere.

Or Veer. Cody getting the Mania pop is probably the best thing for him though, better than showing up on Raw a week before, as the Mania pop could already get diluted if the WWE audience doesn't get excited about him.

Oh, so this is what Seth Rollins is doing now. Wow. That's freakin terrible. Because he's actually a zombi.

Pro-wrestling fans looking at slo-mo videos with confirmation bias be like I mean, it's stupid. Yeah, people talk about them. One for making a stupid sexist joke, the other for acting like a goofy "white knight", which is just as sexist (yeah, his wife needed him to act like a "real man" aka display idiotic violent behavior on a worldwide watched stage, as if she wasn't able to defend herself if she wanted to). Would be a great marketing plan for... what ? Both look bad. And I won't mention people on Twitter going "people believing this is real are sheep", for obvious reasons (I mean, what does that kind of argument makes you think about ?). About Chris Rock's reply, what was he supposed to do ? He's trying to stay professional and not lose face more than he already did in the process. The fact he smiled and said what he said displays exactly zero evidence (or even hints) of this being a work. The rest of the exchange is pretty awkward too. If that was a pro-wrestling angle, it would have been a pretty poorly thought out one, with no benefit for anyone involved, no one getting over, and a sloppy execution.

There's a 37% chance that he's gonna make some Big Poppa Pump-like comments.

Pro-wrestling fans be like

Wait, what ? Did I miss an episode ? I kinda heard about some stupid anti-vax shit in the past, but is it to the point of being seen as a "liability" ? How so if she's still doing the Star Wars stuff (so she did not Gina Caranoed herself at least) ? And so she's doing some tag-team match at Mania ? Not exactly the biggest profile, indeed, compared to main-eventing.

Moose was arrested under battery charges. Not sure what has happened next. By all accounts he has not repeated any violent behavior either. That's pretty much the extent of what's known.

Well, that's quite a bunch of answers here ! So I'm not totally off-based, ok. Last year I only watched parts of Day 1 I think (or the whole show, I don't remember ?). Actually, I only remember two things about Mania last year : Alexa Bliss vomiting black goo and the terrific Sasha performance against Bianca. With my pro-wrestling mind pretty much saturated already with too much product, I must say my desire to even watch some bits of Mania this year is exactly zero. If I don't, it will be the first time in years I don't even watch like the main event or something (even in the lockdown year I watched Taker vs AJ Styles).

Well. I like Moose a lot as a performer but let's be real now, he doesn't strike me as the sharpest knife in the drawer.

See, this is also where the issue lies to me. Maybe the fact Moose had that incident makes it awkward to some people. Ok. But then again, the fact Austin did not do *fake prow-wrestling shit* with women anymore makes it ok to not remind the public he used to beat the shit out of Debra until she was fearing for her life ? Whereas the fact Moose does intergender angle makes it ok to remind the public of that one incident (again, I can only talk about what's known, and it's not up to me to basically imagine wether or not there's more) and call him "domestic abuser" and basically to reduce him to that sole moment of his life (if indeed that's the only occurence, which obviously I don't know) ? Again, to me the issue here is both the essentialization of people and the difference of treatment based not on reality of facts but perception of fictional work in a given context.

Not at all. It's an example of a difference of public treatment and perception.