El-P

That would be Chien. And it does sound like an insult in French. "Quel gros chien ce Roman !" (What a bastard that Roman is!)

The setting, big baseball stadium with tons of empty seats, the sunset, the city buildings in the back, warmed my little heart of 90's japanese indy sleaze fan. Quite a fine show with two excellent/great matches in Shingo vs Suzuki beating each other to the sounds of cicadas and Hiromu vs Ishimori killing it (and themselves), while the tag match was also very good (although ZSJ in this setting really doesn't get to shine as much as in singles matches) and the opener was solid and fun (Kanemaru is so underrated, a low-key excellent worker for more than 20 years). Yano pinning Okada was fun and honestly, him getting stupid stip matches for his little title works for me. The main event however, was only slightly better than the Dominion match and this whole Bullet Club thousand run-ins and idiotic ref bumps is basically Double J Special level of annoying and stupid (that final ref "bump" was embarrassing, still he sells it for ever while four guys are jumping in the ring, the only thing missing is a guitar shot with tons of debris in the ring) . So sick of this shit in NJPW main events matches (I'm dreading all Bullet Club guys matches in the G1). EVIL was never a very compelling worker (he really shined last year in G1 I thought, but that was the only time), but in this version he's just plain boring as fuck, especially in overlong main events, where he absolutely doesn't belong. Dick Togo is useless, hell, you even had Gedo run in at the end so why is he even there ? Get Miho Abe back on the shows instead ! Anyway, the EVIL push to the top has been a complete failure to me and a legit turn-off. Naito is totally damaged goods at this point too, he looked like the greatest wrestler in the world three years ago but seems like in another life almost. Have Ibushi win the G1 and put the belt on his ass already.

So, Satin still kissing WWE's ass *after* being fired ? Wow, that guy doesn't have an ounce of dignity (left ? Nah...).

"Firm plan" in WWE in 2020. Until Vince decides he's not worth it anymore. Like, after 3 weeks.

Fun stuff. "Styliste" is interesting because you can basically translate it into "technico". "Styliste" infers they are technical wrestlers who do cool looking stuff. Gotta love the fact the guy outside the ring during a tag team match is supposed to stand still and not move at all.

Is babyface Fiend gonna get a straight happy clown circus music like Doink did when he turned babyface and basically became useless ?

Well, honestly and without any malice, being pushed as the Ace in WWE in 2020 is like being pushed as the Ace in the AWA in 1989...

Well, two matches clearly stole the show at Slammiversary, making it the best show of the year by a wide, wide margin thus far. AJ Styles vs Bully Ray was a legit great match with a crazy-ass performance by Styles and Ray stepping up big time, proving he was worthy of a single push right at the top of the card. And the final match between Jarrett & Angle, capping off the feud of the year (and really, along with the Bully Ray angles, carried the entire promotion on its back for the first six months) by an excellent match, which I would guess would be Jarrett's swan song before he went to AAA. It's sad the Impact Zone by that point had turned into a really dead venue and they really did not get the heat they deserved. Rest of the card had some good stuff like the British Invasion (yeah, again, the creative was dead for these guys) vs James Storm & Alex Shelley (subbing for injured Roode), the really stupidly booked X-division three-way between champ Abyss (yeah, total Russo-ism gimmick of "rebuilding" the division by making Abyss the champ and beating the actual X-div guys), Kazarian & Kendrick which was still good thanks to the two X-div guys and Abyss being okay in his role. But also some really dull stuff Matt Morgan vs Scott Steiner (ok thanks to Steiner, honestly) which reeks of 2009, Crimson vs Joe which was okay but Crimson is such a nothing happening worker/character and a wannabe Goldy streak gimmick (for ONE MORE YEAR ! To accomplish NOTHING !)... Mickie James vs Angelina wasn't very good at all, James has not been able to get some quality matches out of the rather depleted women's roster (Madison Rayne was totally carrying the division as a character, but the booking never allowed her to have actual strong solid matches either). Winter is coming, so it won't get any better on that front. And yet another flat Sting title match, he sure had the star power but he really couldn't go very hard anymore. Bullshit finish too. Mr. Anderson has not quite worked either as a main event guy, despite working his ass off every time. And he's back at being a heel too despite being one of their hottest babyface just a few months prior.... The booking is all over the place... At this point with the conclusion of Jarrett vs Angle, the entire promotion fells rather flat and without any momentum, despite the change of look and rebranding. After one year and a half, the whole Hogan era has produced exactly jackshit in term of actual results, and the product is still continuously ruined by terrible booking ideas, to the point I'd argue from 2008 on, each passing year (apart from the last few months of 2009) has been worse in some ways than the preceding one (2010 was probably "better" or "less boring" than 2009, but it had hurt the company). More later... when I'm motivated enough to dive into this AGAIN... (why , WHY ?)

Scarlett was an excellent character in Impact and shined in intergender matches there. Well, you learned something everyday (had to google the thing as I'm totally ignorant is those matters). Why am I not *that* surprised though ?

Yeah, this is exactly why that nickname always sounded stupid to me. Because it's completely idiotic when said in French. (in all fairness, that's not the only case, far from it) So, in other news, I guess Kross signed in the *right* company after all. Well, with his injury, maybe they'll do something with Scarlett, it seems like she's basically been reduced to play animatronic during an intro, what a waste...

Best authority figure ever in SMW, such a great promo and angle worker. Can't speak of his in-ring work, really, as I've only seen him way past his prime.

Yeah, honestly I agree it's kinda repetitive, but this is really a Youtube show in the times of COVID, so I can let it be. I do enjoy the relaxed feel of the announcing on this show and the fact some of the indy talent is actually quite cool to watch. Some guys also are better squash workers than others. Yeah, mixing in some vignettes and such would make it so much easier to watch, but then again, it's Youtube, you do whatever you want with it, it's not like it's promoted as anything special. It's kinda like a bonus show.

People on this forum have *begged* for years for the squash matches format because 80's is the LAW. AEW does a squash matches format show on YOUTUBE, giving visibility and opportunity for talented indy workers to work and improve. People bitch.

Avoid Bob Backlund at all cost. Like, it's really embarrassing.

He's already jumped the shark with his regulars, he's exposed himself as totally ignorant of anything that is not WWE/Nitro era WCW and later ECW, I don't feel there's anyone out there who could catch my interest at this point. Arn was the worse in term of going from surprisingly good to totally skippable in no-time. Brian Myers did one of the most infamously boring and tiedous History of WWE shoot interview with KC years ago.

The fact people thought to put up pictures of Chris Benoit, the KKK and a fucking execution instead of just plain porn, like any normal human being would, says a lot about the kind of sick fucks we're talking about.

This is almost too crazy to be true, which means it is. Insane.

Word. Madison Rayne is totally carrying that women division at this point, and there's a clear disdain of the booking for it. No good match, crap angles, Rosita & Sarita used as background dressing for the super racist Mexican-America angle... TakerAngelina is so bad it's almost good. Honestly, this period strikes me as another low point of the booking in the company. The involvement of Chyna was straight embarrassing (showed up to do three moves, two of them looking like complete shit). Jarrett is having the performances of his career (not as a worker honestly, but as a character) and Karen is just awesome but the angle has been ruined by two awful PPV matches in a row. Also : Tommy Dreamer, the heel turn. And of course; Mr. Anderson doing an impersonation of Surfer Sting. In 2020. And also, Crimson as Random Goldy Wannabee doing the undefeated streak gimmick. And Bischoff pinning Gen Me on TV. And so on I know Russo was gone by the fall, but at this point he's just running wild again it seems, to the point the first months of Hogan's stint in 2010 looked better because it had this Wrestlecrap appeal to it, while here we are just running potentially good stuff into the ground, so it's actually coming off worse. Blue Impact Wrestling is on and the TNA logo is gone, but by this point, it was too late. Still a good move though as at least it refreshed the visuals. Funny, I was thinking one good thing AEW did is that it did not use either red nor blue in the show's color scheme. Impact switching from red to blue was a nice little change, but it was still RAW > Smackdown, it did not look different from WWE's aesthetics. Which was a mistake. Gonna make my way through the build-up to Slammiversary, but thus far, 2011 has been a few great angles, mostly during the few first months and a whole lot of awful stuff. And very, very few really actual good in-ring stuff. This period actually reminds me a lot of WCW 2000 in some respect, in a much worse way than 2010 did.

Seriously, this is something Vince Russo would have done. Of course I doubt the execution will be as stupid, but still.

Well, Lockdown 2011 was an amazing shit show. I honestly can't remember a TNA PPV in the last previous years that had been so bad, poorly booked and poorly produced from top to bottom. A bunch of totally pointless matches to begin, a long-ass Bischoff promo (on PPV...) that had nothing to say, Mickie James vs Madison Rayne with the big Mickie win after a whooping 36 seconds (was she injured for real ?), just plain bad matches like Hernandez vs Morgan or the three-way TNA title match between Sting, RVD and Anderson (Sting was a trooper, but he was long past the point of bringing anything to the table in what should be great main event matches), complete with missed big spots, the cage door hilariously opening up during matches, stupid run-ins all the time and some of the most un-cagey cage matches ever (compare that with former Lockdown PPV when they had managed to at least be a bit clever about having the cage in every match). By the time the main event came, which was an ok garbage brawl if you don't mind 60 year old + Ric Flair in street clothes bleeding like a pig, I was just begging for a mercy killshot. Daniels jumping off the cage to the outside (man was crazy but the catch was really good by Abyss & Matt Hardy) and AJ Styles making a comeback were really the only highlights. Oh, and the most LOLTNA moment of the card : they managed to ruin Jarrett vs Angle, by making it, from nowhere, a dumb as fuck 2/3 "falls" match, with the first one being submission only (won by BABYFACE Angle, of course, so the psychology would be all fucked up from the get go), then pinfall, then escape because it's such a great gimmick especially in a personal blood feud. And then also you send Karen backstage (and then don't get her reactions which would help the match get heat) because that way she can't interfere in a fucking CAGE MATCH ! What is the purpose of the cage then ? Well, not too sure since she'll come back anyway and interfere because the door is open anyway. And Kurt Angle almost kills himself twice. Just Russo at his shitty "best". Amazing. So yeah, just an awful show, worst TNA PPV in years really because even at the low points of 2009 and 2010 you always had a really good, even great, match here and there on PPV. Nope, not this time. The fact they managed to fuck up their best feud with this dumb-ass over-gimmicked match is both amazing and a testament of how awful Russo really was and he will always be the worst guy ever (although Senile Vince is getting close). Also, I have no idea what Bruce Prichard was actually doing at this point, but needless to say things haven't got better at all in term of production since he got hired. Hell, it's actually been worse in many ways (like the super obvious piped crowd noise on Impact, I won't even go into Jeff Hardy at Victory Road reaching the ring).

That Emergence thingy they are doing over the next two weeks looks quite decent in term of between-PPV special TV shows. Gotta love they actually booked a big match from Wrestle House too (Kylie vs Taya). So, Bryan Myers debuted this week and quite like Matt Cardona, he looks quite ok as a worker but also kinda nondescript and generic. To me it speaks volume that out of the released guys who have showed up elsewhere, Eric Young is the one who made the biggest impact, no pun intended, in term of suddenly looking important. Anderson & Gallows take second place. I must say Heath is doing a good job thus far though in term of displaying personality (he was the "sponsor" of this week's Madison Rayne segment) , but the fact the guys who spent basically their entire career in WWE come off generic should not be surprising.

Last basho had the best booking ever. That's how you book a comeback and babyface turn.

Without Pieter's intro, no. It's the highspot of his matches. When is the stadium show with Naito vs EVIL already ?

Too late. Comedy is timing. BTW, he had been there WAY before too.

Was he ever ? All jokes aside, as much as I've enjoyed some of his matches especially in the mid'00 with AJ, I'm currently in 2011 in my TNA watch (that I keep on from time to time), and it's been a long, long-ass time since I've seen anything worth a shit from this guy. In 2010 already he was slow and sloppy. It's amazing this guy got a job as an agent considering what a globally poor rin-ing-worker/promo/angle-worker he was.