El-P

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.

Wow. Recycling really old TNA gimmicks now ? This company is so fried.

It was the real name of the pin combination Orange used, but it was semi-botched by Jericho. Since it wasn't a pin you'd see everyday on AEW TV, it served as a cover indeed, yet the finish did look botched. That's pretty much it. Waiting for Cancel Culture dweebs to pass onto the next fake outrage I'm guessing.

And so I tried some personality profile episodes and I can in good faith recommend Iron Sheik, Hacksaw Duggan, Kevin Nash. And a mild recommandation for Val Venis from the perspective of a case study of everything that was wrong about the Attitude Era, because it hits you in the head how much this guy did *nothing* of note ever and that his most famous bits were awful angles (and also the fact that he's only remembered because he was there at the right time, because three years prior, the guy would end up being Salvatore Sincere, he also never got over on himself after that point and he was perceived as a complete hasbeen when he showed up in TNA in 2010). Tito Santana & Earthquake are OK. Stay away from Nailz at all cost.

Well, that was one thing that would have been interesting indeed so... no such luck apparently. Yeah, that really comes through on many occasions. I mean, when the subject of FMW comes up in some Bruce Prichard episode, Brucie is like "FMW was some garbage drizzling shit, a smaller crappier version of ECW" and Conrad doesn't say jackshit. And, really now ? Onita was drawing 50.000 people at the Kawasaki Stadium *without TV* when Brucie's band could not sell out a medium sized arena for Mania the same year. Conrad's ignorance of anything not-WWE (or basically mainstream US mid-90's) is really stricking, which is why he's doing 2010's WWE show with Arn instead of Crockett/early WCW stuff.

So, apparently the younger audience flew the fuck away from Raw after the huge bump of last week. So yeah, it was a one-week "let's watch that car-crash", followed by "won't watch that shit anymore".

I expected no less and had not much intention of listening to it. I mean, Crush ? Yeah, I guess one interesting point is how a guy with so little talent got hired and got chances again, again and again. I heard he was really funny before. But the Sable one ? Winner.

Terrific show again. Dark Order vs Young Bucks was just an awesome match. Evil Uno has so much cool little idiosyncrasies between the big spots, way underrated worker. Cody vs Scorpio Sky was terrific too and they really made it a big time feel match with the entourage of Cody. The Brodie Lee match should be epic. Good things in the future for Sky too. The MJF segment was perfectly done and really made me think of some of the peak Austin segment with Mox at the end. Tully is an asshole in 2020. You know, despite the IMPACT debacle and whatever person she is IRL, I'd still enjoy Tessa in AEW, not gonna lie (probably won't happen). I was waiting for someone pointing out how Ricky was working when he put over the Young Bucks. Omega & Page vs Jurassik Express was excellent, Luchasaurus has looked better in later weeks, maybe because he has faced such terrific workers too. Gotta love Omega & Page's answers to the "greatest tag-team ever" question. Yeah, that's how you put over the NOW. Shida is great and again, Heather Monroe is a good catch for AEW if they eventually do something with her (as opposed to, well you know). That submission was quite cool. BTW Vickie Guerrero in kayfabe is a shitty manager, Shida is right there and she does not even do a thing, while Nyla is basically a spectator at this point. They are clearly coasting with the women right now. I agree they should have kept on with the Penelope feud to build to a rematch at All-Out. Archer & Jake's segment was funny, again, gotta love Jake totally impervious to Archer murdering guys like a lunatic in the background. I agree the main event was not as good as their previous match, and I do think Jericho did not go along Orange's pin combination well, just like he bumped funny on the dragonscrew. Still quite a good match, but not great, and it's way too bad Orange's first huge win has to go down without a crowd, it loses so much that way. Also, is it me of the timing was a bit off, they went off the air so quickly after the win. Yeah, JR kinda sucks, honestly. I guess Excalibur is back for the 22, well hopefully because he's badly missed.

I hope Pac won't be a "victim" of Covid too, that would suck. Maybe when (if ?) this stuff is over they can Bea & Saddie them "back" (under quotation because they really did not appear that much anyway yet, I believe Gibbs showed up once or twice at most). Yeah, Havoc was a goner, no surprise here.

I tried my hand at Sable, it's a pretty good listen all things considered. She's actually a pretty fascinating case-study of what "over" means, in relation to context/talent and her trajectory is quite amazing and unique, in two years she basically, without any former experience of anything, became the N°2 draw in the company (really, she was just behind Austin in 1998). Also, it's quite a story that the Playboy spread (the first one) would be her eventual downfall since she believed her own hype after that point. It strikes me that we really don't know anything about who Rena is/was, really, because she wasn't a talent before, had no history of working and after that second stint (which also speaks loudly of the way Vince likes to embarrass people who attacked him before) basically went back to being a mom and housewife. Probably a loner kind of character (her couple with Lesnar makes all the sense in the world from that perspective) who got pushed into the limelight and became a huge star doing basically nothing (now, let's be real), which really can fuck with your head, not to mention the jealousy in the locker room. Anyway, good listen.

He's the Lance Archer of Infamy...

Kenny Omega 2017 - 2018

Because no babyface ran in to save Dominik. And yeah, this stuff is so bad and has been done so much since the latter nWo days that it almost seems *normal*, but it is stupid to have a guy getting murdered forever without anyone running to make a save. He also put in the stupit Retribution shit happening without anyone, including from the crowd of pro-wrestlers. Pretty funny stuff indeed.

This time in TNA was quite amazing is that it had some of its best stuff with the Angle vs Jarrett feud and angles, the rise of Bully Ray (the AJ Styles injury angle, the D-Von feud) and also some of the worst, Russoesque pure crap. Including : _the Pope (poor guy, he looked like a surefire babyface star the previous year) torturing Okada, who's dressed like Robin and named Okato (in hindsight it's probably better he wasn't called Okada during that stuff), complete with a few racist overtones . _Mexican-America, which was an interesting faction of workers (hey, Zelina) BUT, the gist of it was cutting promos about Mexicans being the *superior race* (that was said in promos) and taking over the jobs, lands and women of America. Just WOW. This is easily one of the most blatant racist angle I've seen in a long time, and to think it happened in 2011 ! Well, Trump became POTA in 2016, so maybe it was not that surprising. Still, I'm amazed that this stuff actually happened. _and of course the whole Beautiful People & Winter stuff, which has been god-awful and was really the apex of the Knockouts being all about "bitch this", "skank that"....

So, Meltz may be partial on his reporting on Ospreay, who has not been accused of rape nor any sexual abuse BTW. Well ok. Maybe that's the case, maybe not (I'm not gonna pretend to *know* because I don't, just like I don't *know* if Ospreay did anything bad or not). But that has nothing to do with the fact he's gonna suffer repercussions from his employers or not (if he should). Meanwhile, Meltz reporting on Matt Riddle, who's been accused of rape, has been considered fine, while Riddle is on WWE TV and suffers no repercussion at all (which means WWE doesn't believe the case). It's not whataboutism, it's just a comparison of the two situations...

Alleged / Alleged. Also, Matt Riddle is on TV and apparently everyone is ok with it at this point, for whatever reason (wasn't the latest development not looking very good for the cred of his story ?) When you consider Ospreay hasn't been on any NJPW card lately anyway, really, not *that* much of a story there thus far.

So.... Nicole Savoy is Lil' Swole. Come on AEW, you're doing the female division no favors two weeks in a row, that sort of naming is straight out of WWE. Let Nicole be herself, Big Swole is only gonna drag her down. Match was terrible too, but Savoy works circles around Big Swole (sorry to pile on, but... she really isn't any good), hope she gets signed. Leva & Chanel were funny, at least. Hey, Dasha is working now ! Well, she's green as hell and does some funky athletic spots, but she mostly sold. Ivelisse is better than 95% of the female roster, glad she got the pin here, they really need to sign her. Ellering is interesting, they should get her too. Ok match. Let's be honest, this show is not exactly setting the world on fire...