El-P

That was one issue with the ARSION tapes, they were really clipped as all hell after the first year or so. Also, these are 20 years old memories, pretty much, I have no idea how I would look at it now (well, I can pretty much guarantee I would love Yoshida, Fukawa & Yagi just as much if not more today).

Kayfabe, man, kayfabe.

I know people have said before that this was pandemic time and it did not matter, but I still wonder how much the awful EVIL push to the top with these main events overloaded with run-ins like it's WWF in 1999, followed by the single push of a stupid gimmick on a crappy worker like Great O-Khan have hurt the perception of the product. Cards who used to be loaded with great matches are now one match shows with one usually great main event (if EVIL isn't involved) and a useless, boring mid and undercard. Stupid americanized gimmick matches and angles (the Bea Priestley stuff which, again, reeked of WWF 1999) probably haven't helped either. Gedo has had an awesome 10's, but he totally seems to have lost the plot since last year. Yeah, he can still book a mean Dome Show and G1 for sure, but if the booking sinks for the rest of the year (not to mention ill-advised decisions from the business side to book TWO Dome shows in a middle of a pandemic while running a cold product), it won't help.

Like I said, the spirit is alive and well.

*facepalm* pro-wrestlers Fuck this, give the title to Shingo already.

And the entirety of "Where is my mind ?". Hey, if I could do it 16 years ago, drunk in a karaoke bar in Shibuya, you can do it at Double or Nothing.

You realize everybody here wants to see you chant "Judas in my mind !" on cam, right ? You have no choice.

They really spent way too much time on the whole Scorpio vs Hawk stuff, like there wasn't anything more interesting to say about being in North Korea than a bunch of anecdotes that you'd hear on an RF Video Shoot interview from 2005. Like, it's where Sasaki & Hokuto met and got together ! That's more interesting folklore ! It really feels they were struggling to tell a focused story, going into Rikidozan for a while then going back and forth with the Scorp/Hawk stuff. Very cool that they got Inoki at least. Norton was interesting but the best one was Bischoff. As much as he came off like a good in the Pillman episode, I thought he was the star of this show. As a matter of fact, his Conrad podcast about that show is really awesome and I'd recommend it to everyone who wants to hear more about this surrealistic story. He told the "running in the streets" story there, and he manages to convey the eerie feeling it must have been. I love his conclusion too, about how he can say he was at a bigger wrestling show than Hogan ever was, too bad no one paid to be there ! Overall an ok episode but a bit disappointing honestly. The Gage episode was a waste of time. The guy comes off like a mark for himself and fancies himself as some kind of tough dude because he cuts forehead of guys with a pizza cutter *without their consent* in the middle of a pro-wrestling match ? Ok. Whatever. Mox was really funny, but I couldn't care less about that Gage dude (whom, from the few times I've watched him, always displayed exactly zero in term of compelling working ability). The Pillman episodes were awesome. Right there with Benoit and Owen as the best of the series. Pillman Jr. stories about his childhood after his dad passed were heart-wrenching. That Kim guy was maybe the best interview of the entire series thus far (and he was incredible on Meltz's show too). The next three episodes should be really, really interesting, but I dread the Grizzly Smith one.

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.