El-P

In other news, WWE is going back to Saudi Arabia in June. BLOOD.MONEY. ERA ! I mean, Vince said it. "It's our home now".

They did not sacrificed Swerve's run at all. Danielson winning at Wembley was an all-time great moment. Swerve lost nothing in this deal. The issue with Swerve is that they did sacrifice part of his top guy aura by feeding him to 49 years old dumbass Lashley, with *zero* followup. The Hurt Syndicate brings nothing to the table that's worth Swerve or Mark Briscoe losing to them. And don't give me that "But they look like stars" shit. They have produced zero in term of interest, ratings or attendance. They are 50 years old ex WWE guys, one of them being a JTTS for life. Their booking is straight out of TNA circa 2011 thus far. And now they are gonna win the (ice cold, and that's the booking fault for not having built Private Party, despite the Young Bucks working their magic *twice* and making the crowd care about it on those days) tag titles ? Jeez. Right now, the top guys are Ospreay, Omega and Hangman. Hopefully Swerve vs Ricochet ends up another awesome personal Swerve blood feud which will elevate Ricochet and gives Swerve his wind back.

The angle, which started awesome, has totally petered out. I still like the Deathriders as a bad ass heel group of great workers, but the angle itself has turned into generic heel group feuding with whomever. The Orange stuff was very cool, because Orange and Darby were the two people in the shot alongside Danielson. But after that, the 4-way felt thrown together kinda randomly. Cope & FTR feels completely off-topic. And yeah, Darby is off doing his stupid rich-boy hobby (fuck rich people going to the Everest, it's awful). If he doesn't die (which could happen, people die all the time there, there are actual corpses on the way and the long line of rich idiots waiting to go to the top collapses regularly because of the weight), at this point it'll be too late anyway. Ospreay is the way to go. Or Omega. Either of those two. Or hell, Hangman. And it should not be at All In. It should be way before this. Also, Jericho needs to retire/go away. Even Dax Harwood could not get a really good match out of him. He has failed time after time the last 6 months, with Mistico, with Ishii, with Cardona. He's 54. Enough.

After trying my hands on that NXT show, I realize that I'm way too hard on AEW. And that despite lots of great and promising talent (and some... not so good), I really don't miss anything not watching any WWE when my wrestling brain is already saturated watching a bunch of other stuff. And damn, the announcing is *godawful*. I have no idea how people even handle this shit. (and that's after I was rather annoyed by Matt Menard screaming banalities for two hours on Dynamite)

Back to back 10 minutes non-wrestling segments, one involving Jarrett (and yeah, I like Jeff but come on now), the other involving Cope (and after a week, I can say I have really zero interest in this program, the Deathriders which really started really great as just petered out into "generic heel faction" stuff). After watching two other 50 years old ex-WWE guys get programmed against the tag champs, who are cold as ice anyway. This is not how you wanna start 2025, especially with WWE getting on fucking Netflix. Omega's return was what it was (great jumping on Callis ass, super promising face-off with Ospreay, in front of a disappointing crowd sadly), but it seems obvious why he preferred making his big return at the Tokyo Dome delivering a classic. So, Malakai Black seems to be gone, finally. interesting stint for sure. Protected as all hell but never really pushed either. House of Black did get Julia Hart and Brody King over. Buddy Matthews has resigned with AEW some time ago. At 39 with a really fucked up back, I don't see him ever getting too far when he goes back to WWE (after a gigantic initial pop, of course). Heyman would probably pushed the hell out of him if he had the time and maybe things would have been different. The Von Erich are All Elite. Major fucking *yawn*. They are 30 something Brian Pilman Jr. Tier talents and will get pushed above much better and more deserving people while trying to sell tickets for that Texas stadium show. Talk about more turn-off for me when I need none. It's gonna be a long two months before the next PPV I'm afraid.

He's the first noticeable jobber I remember from watching WWF in 1990. I think he may have been in the very first episode I ever taped. And he was noticeable because the announcer would put him over as a tough guy. Only seen some of his WCW and territorial stuff way later of course. Yeah. Black Bart indeed.

Nah, Triple H, the guy who doesn't want to be in the spotlight yet puts the spotlight on himself every time there's something to brag about, announced it was a new era. So it has to be a brand new era. They really should have made it a special episode though and call it, I dunno, Capitol Carnage or something.

The question remains. If Mania was the beginning of the new era, as showed by appearances of Stephanie McMahon, MAGATaker and the Rock, does that mean that this new era is actually over already, as WWE has now entered into yet another new era, as showed by appearances of the Rock, MAGATaker and Hulk Hogan ? Lots of new eras in a very short span...

He literally made a video alongside Glen "I'm a piece of human trash" Jacobs and Donald Trump replying to Dave Bautista. Also, him coming out to Kid Rock was the perfect MAGAmatch, if you will. But yeah, the only thing missing on this outfit was a Blue Lives Matter cap. Also, Dana White is now part of Meta. These fucks are everywhere now.

Hogan getting booed still is hilarious. Taker not getting booed is also hilarious. The amount of cognitive dissonance is amazing. No Penta debut ? Really ? Consensus seems to be quite underwhelming. Business as usual with a heavy dose of corporate masturbation. All of this on a ring splattered with adds for the Saudis. Yeah. Netflix era indeed.

Imagine having to pay for ad-free tier when subscribing on Netflix. What a scam this shit has become over the years. Long gone are the days of "Love is sharing a password" too. And yeah, the jokes are writing themselves at this point : 😂

In other news, it seems Rush and Dralistico are kinda iced because of an incident where, I know it's shocking, they got unprofesionnal by beating up a worker who was legit checked by the doctor. Ya know, at this point, I don't even see why Coach TK should bother. Rush is terrific, but he's ungovernable (see what I did ?). You can't rely on him nor his brother to behave. Let someone else have headaches with these two. And release Fénix and Miro while he's at it. Just save the money. Way too many talent on the roster already. Cut back and focus.

The real question is how CM Punk gonna manage to never bump on the Riyadh Season adds on the mat. Also, Bruce Prichard is back and apparently heavily involved with the Netflix show. Total change of an era. I sure hope Taker shows up alongside Hogan. The MAGAPowers explode.

Well, so apparently NJPW office feels Charlton going off script talking shit about AEW and calling TK a "money mark" was akin to make them lose face in front of their business partner. Which is a huge no-no.

I mean, they also chanted "Thank you Vince" not that long ago (this is still undersold how this was incredibly awful and slimy)... The audience is younger now and may be closer minded to the UFC crowd. The reaction he gets will say a lot about where they stand for sure. Honestly I'm very surprised they haven't brought Flair back already. The Whatever Energy sponsorship with AEW thankfully petered out quickly and hopefully he never shows up there again, but why in the hell WWE would not bring him back now or in the near future, no idea. Hell, I would not even be shocked to see Lesnar show up at the Rumble, at this rate.

Hilarious. In an ideal world, this turns into a big ass interpromotional war angle and NJPW brings Kevin Kelly back and Forbidden Door is NJPW vs UWF-I redux (and yeah, there's a joke in that reference too).

TKO is a full on Trump supporting act. So is WWE. They just are more hypocritical about it than UFC is. WWE has hired a "problematic" head of production *after* the Vince lawsuit was out. WWE is still dealing with Logan Paul, who is a legit crypto-scammer. WWE is partnering with Hulk "everybody is a bit racist/watcha gonna do when Trumpmania runs wild on you" Hogan and is bringing him to to Netflix debut. After years of "non-canon" bloodmoney shows that have been completely internalized as "normal business" by its fanbase, they now bring one of the big 4 (and really, one of the big 2) as a whitewashing act for MBS (ya know, the guy who ordered a journalist to be murdered then dismembered with a saw, hell, there's a Netflix documentary about it). So no, nothing has changed. Oh yeah, booking is better, let Papa Trip cook or something. Tune in for John "even Randy freaking Orton was not as offensive when talking about Vince" Cena's road to WrestleMania.

That was pretty damn cool, especially since he was part of the very first 01/04 Dome show, tagging with Dusty. Sammy seems to live his best life away from the pressure of the "AEW" shows. Also, Tay Melo going back to the ring in Stardom after 22 months had her in tears. It was so sweet. This was quite a moment for all involved. Maybe did not mean much (if anything) to these shows in the grand scheme of things, but it sure meant the world for them.

Takeshita was easily and by a wide margin the G1 Climax MVP too this year. Well, he's got a dual contract, whatever that means as far as how far NJPW can push him. Yeah, Charlton going way too hard into the "AEW has been stealing from NJPW", leaning into some of the fanboy talks online (just read NJPW reddit for a minute or two. Well, don't, because reddit is a cesspool of idiots apparently) to sell the Gabe Kidd angle, but he lacked... uh... any kind of subtlety. My take is that he's just not used to that kind of commentary work and he was just try-harding the whole thing. As much as I think he's great in a Mike Tenay role, I'm not a big fan of some of his ûber emphatic presentation at times, and this was a case of him trying way too fucking hard. He's getting some flack online now because people are shit and dumb and taking it at heart (yeah, he was just selling an angle guys and playing the NJPW good soldier). At the end of the show you could see they made it a reconciliation in a "in the heat of the moment you say stuff, but we do great together and are so happy" mode.

And when the dust settles, Kenny Omega is actually still the GOAT and the most unique pro-wrestler ever. Dynasty was better as far as in-ring than WK, but both show totally flew by, including the 43 minutes of ZSJ vs Umino, which I enjoyed a lot. NJPW is very clearly on a transitional period, and the Dynasty show was not very well thought-out (and really was NJPW & AEW with a little bit of CMLL and Stardom, not that massively fun inter-promotional show it was sold to be at first). Would be better off not doing the same mistake next year, two Dome shows in a row when you're not hot is not a great idea, but I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless for what it was. Takeshita getting a dual NJPW/AEW contract is an interesting news for sure. And yeah, AZM vs Mayu deserved WAY better than less than 10 minutes (they would probably have showed up everyone else too on that day of given 15 minutes). Then again, when Mercedes vs Mina (which was excellent, AGAIN) are early on the card the next day, that tells you everything you need to know about NJPW booking women matches on their shows in Japan. Of course, the irony is, Stardom did its biggest number in eons (ever ?) at Ryogoku last week, and it was also the best show of all the major shows I've watched during this period. After New Year Dash tomorrow where they launch the new programs of the new year, it's really the end of the most exciting period of the year wrestling wise for me.

And guess who's back for the first Netflix show ? Straight from cutting a wrestling promo at a Trump rally to the first ever "brand new era" show. The smell of the audience who would cheer for him after this shit. The sponsorships on the mat are a riot too, if the leak is real. Honestly at this point they just should straight out put Elon Musk's shit plastered all over the show too (imagine a WWE show in Germany with Musk's sponsorship after he directly supported the AFD, which are basically neo-nazis). Maybe they can run Cena's retirement in China. He can even cut a promo in the language... Man. 2025 is gonna be so cursed on every level.

Let's fucking gooooooo !!!! Here we are finally ! Maybe they should do it in some shitty NEOM site too. (the amount of delusion of WWE fans thinking they are not currently still living in Vince's dream... He made the Saudi deals, he made Saudi "their home", he recruited Cody personally and promised him the WWE title at Mania, the upswing of the company began while he was still at the helm. It's crazy that last year's Mania tried to whitewash the entire thing while having Nick Khan and Bruce Prichard show up in the ring at the end. They are running Cody vs Cena at Mania this year. This is STILL Vince's product and vision out there, 100%. Minor details in booking and in-ring style don't change the overall picture of what this company still is)

Reminds me : fuck Netflix forever for cancelling GLOW before I got a final season. Fuck Netflix in general, it's thrash, but for this, fuck them a whole lot.

I would not be surprised at all if Mayu lost the IWGP title at the Dome then moved on to Marigold once her contract is up, considering how close she was/is with Rossy. If that's the case, then the top of the card certainly looks different (plus Sareee is still a freelancer, so there is that). The fact that Yumi Fukawa's daughter and I think Michiko Ohmukai's daughter too are on the roster makes me feel old as hell, as I was a huge ARSION fan back in the days. It's kinda cool at the same time. (although nepotism is running rampant everywhere, it seems like it's been less of a case in japanese wrestling. Well, maybe not the best time to say that when Shota Umino is getting that Dome Show main event, but oh well)

No one will watch it. No one watched that stuff when it was on the WWE Network. You think anyone will watch that stuff on Netflix, which is overloaded with stuff nobody watches anymore and whose entire business model is about oversaturation of new content all the time ? WWE and Netflix really deserves each other though (take that as you will). Hey, now I can watch the Rumble or at least the first one, before I get really bored, without having to find some russian pirate feed on VK or something. Yeah, would have been fun a few years back to talk shit about it around here.