El-P

Yeah, honestly it's pretty disheartening. I've had a rough last couple of days, last week one of my favorite actors of all time (Jean-Pierre Bacri), someone who has made me laugh so much during my life, has died from cancer basically from nowhere, and this had hit me pretty hard (pretty much harder than any celebrity death in ten years). Now like I've said we're on the verge of the third lockdown, which seems unavoidable. More and more idiotic complotists and anti-vax rethoric everywhere (BTW, France is pretty much the most anti-vax country in the world, or at the very least of the Occident, yeahhhhhh ), the perspective of the election in 2022 is either more of the same stupid bullshit or Le Pen (aka fascism under a pseudo republicanism cosplay)... At this rate you'll see me reviewing some TNA again soon...

Fuuuuuck. I had not heard about this. Ok, so I did a search. She did not say anything "islamophobic" per se. However, she tweeted about hermetically closing borders after the terrorists attacks during last fall (including a school teacher that got beheaded, yes, it happened, in the streets of France, and it depressed the hell out of me, it was just before the previous lockdown). And she liked a Tweet by Marine Le Pen... Fuuuuuck. Saying stupid stuff about closing borders (which is pretty rich when you were born in Portugal BTW) is something, but retweeting Le Pen is a no-no. Then again. Pro-wrestlers. Why should I expect anything, in AEW or elsewhere. I still love Jericho the performer... Of course, it hits way closer to home when we're from the same country, as Jericho supporting Trump still is some other part of the world, while anyone supporting Le Pen I feel personally offended (and threatened, somewhat) by. Fuck Shanna, you're Portuguese ! Portugal is pretty much the last left-wing country in Europe and you're a product of immigration ! Be smarter than this ! Wow, thanks for nothing, I did not need to know that one (then again, probably better off knowing). 2021 has already sucked enough. Next lockdown in a few days too, and maybe harsher than the previous ones. Ok, so... I guess... Well I guess I should look forward to... something still ?

Shanna on TV !

Even better, spraying disinfectant *on the other guys*.

Havok is everything Jaxx is not : a good pro-wrestler. (amazing elevation on that legdrop too, wow, the athleticism, that girl sure has everything going for her... And by that I mean she's part of a famous family) EDIT : I had totally missed the clip of Charlotte dragging a KOed Shayna to the outside and letting her fall off the ring as a total dead body. What the hell ? This is concussion city.

Since they signed the deal with Fox and MLB, they were already idiot proof. This is just the next step.

Stop spreading fake news. Stephy said it, their first priority is the safety of their emplo... independent contractors (I know, but that joke is never ever gonna get old, sadly) Is it really a surprise, especially the very last point ? The people running the company are part of the Trump supporting machine, NXT is apparently a hive for Q-anon and conspiracists What else is new ? People signing with them in the last year of so, signing with the *one* company that fired people during the pandemic while making record profits, should know where the hell they get into. And that's without even considering their total creative bankruptcy.

I had to google the name. Actually would be a great fucking gimmick, but could never be done in WWE for obvious reasons (way too dumb and old for that). That Brazilian Girl doing the Influencer gimmick in NWA was actually quite good at it.

Make Pro-wrestling Great Again. Manly men booze themselves, do heavy drugs and fuck underage bitches. That is the way we rollin' rollin' rollin'...

I was thinking the same thing. The 1-2 punch of kicking Jericho straight in the face and the grin followed by the punch on MJF was both terrific as spots and great babyface work. I can totally see him and Sammy as a babyface tag-team now. I was quite afraid for Jericho on that Lionsault. Damn Chris, more Tenryuesque heavy chops and less flying around, don't Hayabusa yourself at 50 ! BTW, how do you like the Inter Circle, JR ? Callis is just the best. I just waited 23 years to see him finally be the great one he was always supposed to be. Omega looks like the biggest douchebag star in these outfits, I'm glad the Cleaner came back. So, no one is talking about how good Nick Comoroto looked against Mox ? This guy has tons of potential and a total throwback look, I thought here would be the place where people would go gaga on him. Speaking about potential, Leila Hirsch is just that. She is also *just* that for now, like many other women in AEW, but it's a build to the futur. Pretty intrigued about this world tournament too and I hope we get nice surprise entrants in this. Ok, Private Party turning heel thanks to Matt Hardy (who walks like the Iron Sheik now, which is both sad and oddly appealing for an old fan) is just what they needed because they'll learn so much and this is gonna do them a whole lot of good. Plus they really were gonna get outshadowed by those pesky Top Flight brothers as babyfaces anyway, so all of this is all good ! Hangman Page is the most fascinating character as a tragic and sad figure and he's such a great worker, only getting better. Great opening segment from A to Z. The Brodie kids sure will have some nice memories of this tragic period in the futur. Taz is cutting his weekly great promo, Sting is collecting easy paychecks (I mean, his first appearance was totally awesome, but it's clearly been a case of diminishing returns with each passing week as he's been doing the same almost nothing.... him being a weekly character doesn't really work thus far and it's not like he can work anymore and he's 60 so why would anyone want to watch him work now ?). Yeah, Cody & Shak is the mainstream feud I couldn't care less about. At least they had Cargill do what she does best this week, stand there, look awesome and don't say nothing. The Miro/Taylor bit was quite underwhelming too honestly, but the wedding should be fun, because nothing is more fun than a ruined wedding ceremony. IMPACT has done a masterful job with weddings in the last two years, but in the serious (Cage/Santos/Callihan) and absurd (Bravo/Rosemary) vein, so lets see how AEW does it.

I would pop so hard if Taya Valkyrie (who's a free agent and done with IMPACT) showed up to challenge Shida. She teased it on her social media, but you know how those things work...

Isn't it sad that in the end, I'd rather watch an I.R.S. match ?

What ? You don't like "The Midweek Wars" ? Well, that's for sure, I have loved the announcing of IMPACT since it became a weekly watch for me two years and a half ago, first with Callis/Matthews then Rayne/Matthews, and although Matthews wasn't that good on his own, he formed a great and *fun* duo with both if them. And that intricate part of the product is no more. Striker... damn, as a LU fan I should enjoy him more than I do, but the LU stuff was kinda unique and it was also my comeback to actually caring about current pro-wrestling, so maybe I got him a pass too easily... I'll say this, to me at worst Striker is a much much less annoying Mauro Ranallo (and that includes the fact I can easily ignore him). At best he could be pretty good (as he was in LU at times, I believe). I'm sure he's not gonna say something really stupid about the talents like Ross does on AEW at least. And maybe, just maybe, him and D-Lo will end up having some sort of chemistry eventually.... but I don't count on it tbh. Striker is too much of a guy who gets the attention on himself, like you know who (Vamp has such a big personality that it balanced this, not sure D-Lo will be able to do it). So yeah, that part of IMPACT that I loved, a really FUN announcing team, is pretty much gone, sadly. Which is too bad because the company really is in a good spot now to do some super fresh stuff as this week showed. Better make peace with that fact right away... And since we're at it as far as sad stuff goes, Taya has had a terrific stint in IMPACT, I will sure miss her (Dreamer's promo was quite funny though). Rumors of "Taya as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble" in 5... 4... 3...

And this week's show went full fledge interpromotional with Private Party & Matt Hardy showing up, Jerry Lynn & Tony Khan at ringside and whatnot. They're absolutely going all the way with it and it's the WWF vs ECW stuff we never got back in 97. Loving it. Also, Black Taurus in IMPACT ? Nice catch, he was one of the best AAA guys the last few years.

I don't remember what year that was when they debuted, I know I wasn't watching the product back then and only following from afar, but there was so much hype about the vignettes and the debut of Bray Wyatt that I had to watch what that was, and yeah, the intro, the music, the fireflies, it was indeed super engaging. The issue very quickly is that there was nothing behind it and that Bray's promos were basically gibberish for the sake of it. He was basically the worst Raven ever, because Raven always had a point behind everything he said and did, his character had depth and was also stepped into the slacker pop-culture of the 90's, his Nest/Flock always was a whole bigger than the sum of its parts. Bray Wyatt was talking about Sister Abigail and acted spooky and.... that's about it. There was never any point to any of his feuds apart from speaking gibberish and acting spooky. The character was all presentation and no depth whatsoever, it's not a wonder all of his feuds ended up huge letdowns if not complete disasters. Not to mention his big matches always under-delivered. Evil Doink was actually more spooky because although he did much less, the mere character work of Matt Borne made it more creepy while having really not much to work with (I mean, he did the Crush angle and the SummerSlam match with Bret and that's about it). Ditto Waylon Mercy, which was basically the Cape Fear version of Razor Ramon, but the fact Dan Spivey was creepy as fuck as himself (really, that face) and the simple character work he did (the shaking of the hand, the demented face when he was beating on someone) was enough. Windham Rotundo looks like a lovable big bear of a guy and despite the awesome production values, just speaking about Sister Abigail and never having *any point* whatsoever just runs short very quickly. The fact he turned into a fourth rate horror movie character and that it's considered "super creative" in the realm of WWE really underlined the vacuity of the whole thing.

Nice outside shot of the Performance Center.

Anyone has any idea who first did the "gets thrown off the tope rope" spot that Flair did all the time ? Was it a Ray Stevens thing ?

I do not romanticize anything. I loved her character work and I enjoyed the matches, which were nothing special but quite good enough for me to enjoy.

Well, thanks to Youtube I have actually watched that segment, I mean, you people made it sound like it was so wacky I could actually enjoy it. Holy fuck. This is wretched. Everything about it. I loved Alexa Bliss years ago when she was rolling over everyone. What have they turned her into ? Seriously, Bray Wyatt's ideas are like the worst shit ever. He's Russo with ambition in term of having "ideas". EDIT : and I had not seen the match where Alexa is basically inhabited by Wyatt ! This is all-time WCW level "This is not hot" garbage.

No wonder he looks as good as he does in the ring.

At first I remember it was a good two months behind. It might have gotten a bit better after a while. Usually the Royal Rumble was around the Winter vacations (which was great) which basically happen the soonest in mid-February. In the mid 90's maybe it was only a month or so behind, Mania was usually in early May or something.

Canal + was not a free channel though, so although we did not have to pay for the PPV's itself it was still not free of charge either. We did not get the IYH PPV's either, and I think when they switched to WCW they only showed 5 or 6 a year too (might be wrong on that). We did get some Saturday Night's Main Event I remember. Also, I started to watch around the fall of 1990 and the first PPV that was showed was Survivor Series 91 (which I missed because we were on the road to my grandparents place and I only saw the last match !). Maybe some had been showed before, not sure about that. First PPV I saw was Royal Rumble 92 (lucky me !).

Hum... now that you mention it, maybe I'm just mixing things up as I do remember watching some WCW in German on DSF indeed, including I do believe some German house show (I think ? Or was it a WWF show ?). I remember watching ECW on an English speaking channel called Bravo. Not sure if I ever did in German now that I think of it. I think I watched WCW Souled Out 97 in German !

Even back in the DX days, HHH always struck me as the kind of guy who thinks he's funnier than he actually is. Which is always the worst kind and often gets cringe because of it. (there's something pretty similar to be said about his actual wrestling and promo abilities too of course, it's one and the same in term of overrating yourself)

The reptilians ? Fuck, they should do a Reptilians tag team in NXT. As far as running a Stadium show in the spring of this year... yeah, seems like a stretch. WrestleKingdom had about 13.000 people I believe, but it's Tokyo (just before the situation worsened). This sounds like ClusterMania to me...