El-P

That remains one of my all-time favourite Raven one-liner. I died back then watching that shit. So brillant.

I've been kinda following from afar as usual, and I came to the conclusion that I have no earthly idea how can anyone still follow much less defend this company without consuming an ungodly dose of heavy drugs (which seems confirmed by the fact some people around here are praising the signing of Eva Marie, that has coke + alcohol + MDMA written all over it).

That makes me a sad puppy. Gonna rewatch the last season (which at least could look like an ending of sorts).

Block A has been insane. Ishii is easily the MVP of the whole thing. He's insanely great. And then Ospreay, Suzuki, White, Takagi and Ibushi have been awesome as well. Okada's insistance on working that damn Money Clip has hurt the early matches to me. Maybe now the hold is gonna be over and the match with Takagi was awesome. Taichi has been soooo good this year, even better than last year. Cobb is hit and miss but he can be a great dance partner. Takahashi is a waste of time for everyone involved. Block B.... not so much. Naito has been the best surprise of the G1 as he simply has had the best match of everyone in his block. ZSJ has been terrific, Tana is still working his magic despite being shot. Goto has been mostly quite good, and SANADA, Goto and KENTA I've mostly enjoyed too. Yano is more annoying this year because of how ridiculous the whole tape thing is getting. I mean, the ref are all totally dumb (and I've never noticed how BAD Marty Asami actually is before, but he ruins *every* nearfall with his Hebner-like delayed count). And so there's EVIL. Who has legit turned into a turn-off to me. I barely pay attention to his matches because it's always the same bullshit with Togo, who's completely useless in this role (sorry for the old Tog fetishists out there). He drags this block down so much. And I fear he's gonna get to the finals too. Yikes.

Vince sure did not.

Well, I guess it's here ! Enough of the silly bullshit, time to get serious now !

Can't work a lick, as showed in the NWA. Which looks more and more like a non-existent entity as each day passes and its talent is being signed here and there.

Please no. No MMA match on pro-wrestling shows. As far as Tay Conti, she has terrific potential, and I like her game already with all the funky submissions, but at this time she's still green as fuck. Let's not act like she's Mariko Yoshida already. Which is why AEW should bring girls like Serena Deeb, Sarita or Cheerleader Melissa. Need some more veterans.

The good news is that the shows will only have one pre-G1 match and then the 5 G1 bouts. Much easier to digest. That being said, still a crazy time to not get behind, not get spoiled and not burn yourself out with pro-wrestling. Anyone got a cool grid like last year ?

I have seen the whole match (well, what was showed of it). Of course there was some awkwardness because Ivelisse absolutely did fuck with Rosa at times. And I don't make my opinion from a stupid gif posted on Twitter (especially from *that* Twitter account, thank you very much. ).

Yeah, "shooting"... Funny how there are people talking about how Ivelisse was so unprofessional and how she should be gone and making Gifs on Twitter because of my god this was sooo bad, but there are also a bunch of people who are like "Really good match there", basically, not making anything more out of it. Why I mentioned tight slapping, in a bit of a jest because I have talked about that before, is that watching the match, to me it just seemed rough around the edge and a wee bit heated, but that actually gave it an interesting edge and realism to it, which was *fun* to watch. People complain all the time that matches don't look like a struggle and too much like cooperation. Well, this looked more like a struggle. It had an old-school kinda japanese feel to it. So yeah, I think some people are way overreacting. Give me Ivelisse trying her opponent a little bit any day, it makes for fun stuff.

The overreacting is amazing. People act like Ivelisse injured someone or something. Yeah, match got stiff (and was no less fun because of it). Big fucking deal. It's not like she carelessly threw a chair into someone's head or something. Or threw a helpless opponent straight into metal steps...

So, Mike Benett totally looks like a younger, jacked-up Eric Young. Hey, he's actually quite a good worker too ! Total sprint. 10 minutes or so match with a ref bump ten seconds in. Kamille (who looks even more impressive than on Powerr) back at ringside to prevent Maria to protect her husband, I guess, although she did nothing when Maria gave Mike the belt (which he did not use in a very bad drama spot, as he would have been DQed if he did since the ref was right there). Awful announcing totally overselling the drama and emotion. Match itself was quite a good TV match, kinda like a Cody TNT title defense. Maria really good as a valet still. These two could be used pretty well somewhere. But, PPV ? Weekly PPVs ? Come on now.

Yeah, she will always and forever remain a highlight of the show that brought me back into current pro-wrestling. She did not have it easy at all. Damn, and now I realize I do miss Dario Cueto sitting in his office, planning some evil stuff... As much as I really enjoy AEW a lot, LU was the future.

People complain about too much tigh slapping and whatnot, then this happens and they complain again. I guess that was the AEW drama spot of the week. Gotta have one. Twitter People are bored. And boring, mostly.

He's not doing that right now. Nothing clearly indicates he's gonna do it again in a near future either (the weekly PPV are not his deal apparently and definitely aren't done under the NWA umbrella). Hey, I'm an Ivy fan, I don't care. I'm also a Thunder Rosa fan. So, if I get Rosa on my AEW TV every week anyway, I'm fine with it. I'd rather have both, of course.

The whole "UWF-I" approach kinda makes me want to give it a try, but I wonder if it isn't gonna get dry after a few weeks. Also, I think this stuff can work only with a certain kind of quality workers.

So the current promotion is coming back in November. If they go back on Youtube, I will probably give them another try, I was totally down on them during the last few months of activity, but maybe they can come up with something fresh again.

That's kinda the beauty of it, actually. (for personal reasons, I will always kinda have a soft spot for anyone not giving a flying fuck) Although, burning bridges with the NWA is basically burning a bridge to nowhere (hey, I enjoyed the second season of Powerr, but let's be realistic for a second, those weekly "PPV" aren't even really NWA stuff).

In the 90's, that would make for good little pro-wrestling folklore. In 2020, people make whining tweets and call for people to lose their jobs and win Internet points. Whatever happens with Ivelisse it's too bad, because she's better than 90% of the AEW roster (Diamanté is not even close to Ivy in term of in-ring talent, let's not be silly here). She may be difficult to deal with, but her stuff is not difficult to watch like, say, Swole. Oh anyway, it was fun while it lasted. IMPACT, wanna grab one more to piss off the usual Twitter crowd ? How long is Thunder Rosa gonna stay within the NWA btw ? I mean, really, she's the best catch AEW can do right now (straight at the very top of their female roster in term of both in-ring talent and charisma) and it seems she's becoming more and more of a regular... Yeah, really good stuff this week, nothing much to add to what's been said already. Main event was ridiculous

I'd go for Ibushi too. My one issue with these blocks is that Block A final really looks like the final. There's absolutely no one this year on Block B that should win this (Sabre would be cool, be he ain't winning). Hopefully Gedo works his magic and we don't get too much Bullet Club Bullshit matches...

And so Avalon vs Cutler ends up as a double count out. Of course it does. I hope they work the 20 minute draw eventually. Poor Leva, she looked in such a need of a hug at the end.

Very cool interview with Debbie Malenko. At 47 she now wants to get back into wrestling now that her children got older, that would be a terrific story. People talk about how women wrestling is kinda rated on a curve, sometime with good reason, but in Debbie's case, she was right in the middle of the most insane roster ever near its peak basically, and she was not just hanging on with them, she was actively on the level of the Hasegawa's and Yoshida's in 1992 (not quite elite level, but top-tier midcard level, which by this time's standard is awfully good already). Transfer 1992 Debbie Malenko in today's wrestling realm, she's right at the very top. Some really cool stories told, the old Mariko Yoshida fan in me loved how she credits her for helping her out a lot. Would absolutely love to see her make a comeback. AEW, IMPACT, make it happen (yeah, WWE is out of question when they make Mickie James out to be "old", which is such a disgrace) !

One of the funniest thing in the last two seasons is how the whole universe just shrunk. Either that or a raven basically invented teleportation !

Bro, they would never expect it bro. At least John Snow did not say to Danae "Come on Emilia, you don't follow the script ! What am I supposed to do now, improvise ?"