El-P

I have no idea how you get the sense it won't be a puff piece from that preview. It's all full of excuses already (the guys was so complex ya see, he had so many layers in him so there must be a good reason he was a hate mongering asshole for so long... this is so lame and pseudo-deep bullshit, yeah, he had layers, like every human beings) and playing the emotional chord with his daughters telling the audience he was tucking them so gently at night. You can be a good father and be a godawful human being to other people, that's absolutely not exclusive. Plenty of horrible people are good fathers to their kids. On this topic I've only watched the Savage one because I'm not into, well, puff pieces and revisionist shit and this one I knew was more straight forward than the Austin one (domestic violence = doesn't exist) or the Piper one. I have no idea why useless guys like Bubba the fucking Love Sponge was on this spewing usual stupid bullshit or why there was a random "WWE superfan" and random WWE guys who had nothing to say, but on the other hand, they did not sugarcoat how poorly Savage acted with Liz and even worse Gorgeous George. That part I had no idea about (and Meltz mentioned it's only part of the story), so yeah, Savage did not come off very good at all and really like a manipulative abuser. Lex, as usual, came off as honest as anyone can in his situation. He could probably be a story on Dark Side.

Meat still employed ?

Seven months away from it, actually.

So, he's *really* another version of Test then (although much worse in the ring, Test could be decent, W. Morrisey managed to have a boring match with Willie Mack so that tells me about as much as I need to know about his current level) Not clear, although I believe the booking was pretty much mostly D'Amore and Callis was more of an executive guy in term of talent relation and overall direction of the company, something like that, but I could be wrong. As long as D'Amore is doing the booking, they'll be fine to me. Callis can be put into the color guy position in AEW and would automatically be the best guy announcing there.

So, it seems like Don Callis is not an Anthem executive anymore, so he's only gonna be a performer for IMPACT from now on, before I guess moving on full-time for AEW. That's a loss for the company for sure as he and D'Amore together really have re-built the company in impressive ways (creatively I mean, while also building the relationship with AEW and NJPW). The last few weeks have been quite enjoying. I'm glad to see Taylor Wilde back, and she looks like she hasn't lost a step. Moose is the one who should get the belt off Omega (how, I have no idea), they have done a masterful job building him over this last year. Very cool to have El Phantasmo on the show too, and Omega of course brings another level of work whenever he's around. On the other hand, after just a few match, it's very obvious W. Morrisey (aka Cass) has nothing to bring apart from being tall and sticking syringes of steroids up his ass (Why do that to your body ? Yeah, he's cut bit his skin looks repulsive and it's gonna leave marks forever). It's not like Matt Cardona has showed anything apart from "I was a WWE guy for 15 years and I can't do anything different", but Morrissey just hasn't evolved one bit in term of in-ring work. Why bother.

I must admit, seeing Dario again was cool. I will check out where they go with this.

I get a kick out of them taking two weeks (it was two weeks ago that he debuted the theme, right ?) to figure out Onita did not actually come out to the Troggs but to the cover by X. Also, it confirms 1000% that it *is* an Onita tribute so yeah, I marked out again. That made the episode for me (I mean, I enjoyed most of it anyway, but it could have been the only thing on the show and everything was awesome already).

She certainly did not anticipate the social media digital revolution. Why couldn't she keep the Bloody Phoenix moniker instead ? Plus it sounds so fucking cool. Or Naomi Kato, which is a good sounding name anyway. I would always call her Miss Naomi Kato back then for some reason, probably because "The Bloody" did not feel right. Yabushita & Sakai the judo girls were cool as hell. And Yuko Kosugi as La Hija del Megumi Kudo was quite a promising worker too.

Cursed. Must be quite serious to be forced to vacate the title. What is Gedo gonna do now ? Back to Okada ?

Three of my cult favorites back then ! I loved these girls. Jd' was a different kind of promotion, for sure. Wait, Tamada ? Damn, from memory she wasn't very good at this point. Yagi was awesome. HamaKINO were great rookies (AKINO was insane) and the Apache sister went from sucking and being green as hell when the company started to pretty much ruling a few years later. Fabi Apache probably still rules to this day (she was great a few years back in AAA). Yumi Fukawa is the one you should watch, although she retired in 2001 because of a neck injury, but her stuff with Yoshida is just amazing. Okutsu made a great comeback in 98, but she did not sustain the same quality of work very long. She was probably too banged up (she came back from her retirement, which this this day is one of the most emotional event I've seen in pro-wrestling).

Damn Schneider. Congrats ! I hope you put a LCO match in there somewhere.

This. These people are opening Overton's window to more and more godawful and dangerous ideas that are polluting people's mind and making the world a worst place. I have zero sympathy for these kind of people. Migrants who are drawning in the Meditterranean sea need helps. Drake Wuertz can go fuck himself. But hey, Road Dog is still employed, so the spirit is alive and well.

I second all of this. If I have to credit Conrad Thompson for one thing (I did really enjoy his podcasts too for a long while, let's be honest), that's bringing back Tony Schiavone the the fold. He sounds like he's having the time of his life and is actually loving the new shit. That was actually the one thing MLW had, Schiavone calling matches for the first time in 17 years and legit marking out at indy guys doing crazy indy shit. The first watch-along stuff with ECW was kinda revelatory as far as Tony's enthousiasm for stuff he is not familiar with. Such an open mind from an old-school guy is so refreshing.

You know, I kinda really like that Ogogo fella.

I don't think Cody in the title picture would change anything. It's a matter of visions of what pro-wrestling is and what AEW should be. Cody apparently believes you can cut a "rah rah America Great" promo in 2021 like it's 1985. And to a part of the audience, sure you can (it's still pro-wrestling, ya know), but probably not the younger part whose vision of the world is not rooted in the same cultural and political bath which 80's pro-wrestling was (Reagan, Rambo, Wall Street...).

By the way, I have defended her and gave her the benefit of the doubt many, many times, mostly because I really enjoyed her as a pro-wrestling valet/promo. But this is appaling : Ok. A piece of history ladies a gentleman. A rich white man going "60 years ago it was segregation but now I'm on the way to have a great princess (BTW, I *hate* how people refer to their girl child as "princesses") who'll be both black & white, so USA GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD ! Live the dream evil foreigner from the UK or leave the country !" is a piece of history. Not to mention he's saying that shit to a european *black man* (whose mother is white too I believe ?). Newsflash, for all the godawful thing Europe has done in term of racist politics toward black people (colonization says hello), actual segregation in the motherlands was never one of them (of course there was social segregation, but actual separation of black and white people in the physical landscape, nope). The "USA greatest country evah, American Dream real" shit is stupid and embarrassing on its own especially for the non-US audience, but when you add the racial stuff it's downright appalling. Upper-middle-class buffoons, both of you (princess is right, that's what she'll be). AEW is usually very self-aware, self aware of its shortcomings (the evolution of the Dark Order, lately the change of character of Miro) and most of all self-aware of pro-wrestling history and ridiculousness/camp (I for one LOOOOOOOOVED Matt Jackson dropping a totally sarcastic and cringy "I love you" spot at the end of the SCU match), but this kind of stuff displays a total lack of self-awareness (like, say, when they teased Christian, and they absolutely have backtracked on this one too, to the point Matt Sydal was making fun of the "HOF worthy" quote last week) and yes, it's like Cody is not on the same line with what I called earlier on the "aesthetic" line of the Elite, who have always rocked that self-aware, straight meta at times, approach, which is the one I enjoy and want to see more of. This promo was garbage, face-palm inducing and this tweet by Brandi, sadly, very sadly, makes her sound like.... can't believe I of all people will admit to it... Stephy. Yikes. And BTW : This. So this.

Oh yeah I saw that, it's so awful and depressing. So sorry. I've reached the point where I'm torn between following the news because I'm interested and trying to just go into escapism because it just puts me in too bad of a state. I mean, the perspective for France next year is very gloomy, and I won't say much more because PWO, but yeah, the country is leaning more and more toward really bad stuff... Yeah, I meant it as far as the philosophy and aesthetics goes, not literally. And honestly these guys have more to do with some of the old-school stuff that's happening in the promotion (they are such pro-wrestling geeks) than Cody Rhodes, who's a product of 00's WWE more than anything else (unlike his brother). Of course, totally agree, and I mean these guys have a lot of milleage on their bodies already. Nick Jackson is still young though and could be a breakout single star, but Omega & Matt are past 35 already and have worked a very taxing style for years. Darby is so awesome and clearly one of my favorites pro-wrestler in the world today. I understand how some refer to Jeff Hardy but to me apart from the fact he's young and "reckless" (but not really) and he's got the facepaint and all, there's not much comparable since Hardy's stuff always looked like shit and he was all about doing a big bump for the sake of it. He actually reminds me a lot more of Raven, as no one could take a beating like he did in his prime and he has that singular kind way of moving (both very different, but both singular). And Foley, but a lot less suicidal. And Rey Mysterio. I loved the hell out of that Miro match.

Despite my inactivity on the board I'm still following pro-wrestling (although watching much less than I used to because of a global mental burn out, and yeah, I'm aware of that GWE thingy but it's in 5 years so, a marathon not a sprint ) and enjoying a lot of what AEW does (and other thing not so much like the last part of the Wargames match, less so the padded fall but rather the fact they felt compelled to do that spot, which did look stupid and reeked of WWE among other issues), like this week the amazing SCU vs Young Buck and Miro vs Darby Allin matches (and Mox coming out to Wild Thing as a tribute to Onita and having Nagata showing up), but I do have to say, when Cody cut that promo, it was the very first time I legit CRINGED watching AEW in a "I don't want to watch that shit" way. Of coure there have been bad matches and bad angles before, but this was different. Talking about "taking pro-wrestling 30 years backward", here we are. Of course who am I kidding, this is still pro-wrestling we're talking about, so I should not be surprised. Still, I was feeling embarrassed to watch shit like this when I was 14 years old (Hacksaw Duggan promos during the Slaughter Iraki sympathiser angle, first time I questioned if I should keep on watching that dumb shit), I really have no sympathy for this at all 30 years later. And the one thing that popped in my mind, oddly enough, was that I would not be surprised to see Cody back in WWE eventually. Let's not get confused. AEW has been built on the Elite. But the Elite was always Kenny Omega & the Young Bucks. That's the core. The match that made it possible was Jericho vs Omega in NJPW. The three people Khan wanted to anchor his promotion were Jericho, Omega & Punk. Of course Cody did get over during his run with the Bullet Club and was a draw against Aldis for the NWA title at All In. And of course he looked like a bigger star *as long as Omega & the Bucks kept themselves in the background* for the first year or so. But once Cody was done with the first main event feuds and got the TV title over, he seemed like he was lost in his own shuffle of wanting to attract the "mainstream viewer", whatever that means. Hey, I though the Shaq match was tons of fun. The build was terrible, but the match was fun. Then again, it really did not mean anything long term. Then, he's doing a baby gender reveal on TV. Ok. Good for you. Watch me not give a fuck. Then, they announce a real TV show, which reeks of WWE. Then, he has this odd feud with QT Marshall that looks totally separated from whatever the Elite are doing on top, leading to a promo flaunting embarrassing jingoism, the worst of it was talking about how 60 years ago there was still segregation in the South but look now he's having a baby with a black woman.... Well, the fact there was still racial segregation 60 years ago is actually super embarrassing, and it's not like the social climate for black folks has got a whole lot better either especially after 4 years of Donald Trump (get some lectures by the NXT crew for your education, people). And the whole "American Dream" thingy, in 2021 ? Really ? What's next, he's gonna cut a promo about how trickling down economy works and how union would kill pro-wrestling (speaking of which, Zelina sure worked us fools for believing she had any actual serious though process. See also, Bryan, Daniel, if he resigns with the E after all this talk about his love of pro-wrestling and his social values and whatnot) ? Yeah, I just want Agogo to punch the fucker in the gut repeatedly after THAT promo, which I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking it was tone deaf as fuck. So, rumors of a split between EVPs, whatever truth there is to it, would not exactly shock me. And Cody & Brandi back in WWE eventually or going for "other business ventures", as they say, would not surprise me either. The promotion has been built on the Elite views of pro-wrestling (and it never ceases to puzzle me how people seemingly never seem to get bored of complaining about Omega & the Bucks every damn week, I mean, it really is *their* promotion when it comes down to it so...) while Cody seems to chase the ghost of his father (the fact he wasn't in the first Blood & Guts after all may have been an issue too, who knows ?). I'd love to see heel Cody & Brandy Rhodes again working like they did in ROH & NJ a few years ago instead (let's face it, although I gave her the benefit of the doubt so many times during my "honeymoon" period, Brandi's stint in AEW has been a complete mess). Hey, AEW is just what it is after all : another pro-wrestling company. It's not reinventing the wheel. I'm not exactly worried about them at all, they've been nothing but a great success all things considered (despite the ridiculous "moving the goal post" talk that has been going on since the beginning). The worst thing that could happen to them from my perspective is becoming another WWE. So, yeah, Cody cutting THAT promo was really the first time I went like "well, pro-rasslin'" and sighed. I guess the biggest red flag was there for a while : the neck tattoo.

Well, enjoy the rest of the show... I'm out. Terrible first hour just put me in a bad place and it's 3 in the morning already. Enough !

Two quebecers feuding and they are talking to each others in English. The audacity. No pride ! Well the rest of the show looks quite good on paper at least.

Because it did not rain. That's it. The crowd isn't *that* hot. But hey, if you pay that much to go at Mania and don't get your ass soaked, might as well pop for *something* considering the shit that was happening before.

The tribute to Snuka is cringe as fuck.

You mean all those maskless idiots ? Yeah, they love Tamina apparently.

All those maskless douchebags wearing Hogan shirts no less. ClusterMania running wild.

Judging by the noise, no. So they are trying to have a worst match than yesterday. Cool.