El-P

Yeah, to me he's clearly The Man right now as far as aura and audience reaction goes. It's quite amazing to witness how his career evolved from being "a dull guy" in WWE, to "he won't fit in ROH and will fail in the indy circuit" to a "fun act in NJPW thanks to his pairing with Brandi" to "legit superstar of AEW".

I would agree too. Still, it's not like he's been made the focus of the promotion yet, thus far the booking is having him lose all of his big matches. I guess (hope ?) there's a long term reason for that, as he seems to go back to his Cleaner character a bit. Thus far, Cody definitely looks like the hottest guy in the company (I wonder how much of the "anti-HHH" part of that plays a role).

Agreed. You only need two. It worked well in WCW during the Nitro eras because you had super strong characters with heavily defined roles : Tony the announcer, Heenan & Larry the color guys and Tenay throwing knowledge to help get the luchadors and cruiserweights over. AEW going for a three men booth is a mistake, it's not needed. IMPACT is perfectly fine with Callis carrying Matthews. LU was quite fun with Striker & Vampiro having their own fucked up chemistry.

Well Kenny Omega did sell out the Tokyo Dome working against Okada. Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano aren't exactly on the same level as far as resume goes. Will that translate to the US in the long run, no idea, but he's not factually wrong, him, the Bucks, Jericho, Mox are much bigger stars than anyone on NXT. I wonder what KUSHIDA thinks of this though.

I did not realize it was the first "fuck AEW" NXT already. I would watch it out of curiosity, then you all talk about Mauro and I go "eww, no"... That's how much of a turn-off this guy is to me because whereas I can shut off most bad announcing (I did not even notice Bloodsport's for instance), Mauro you just can't ignore, which makes it even worse.

Well, this ended up a super fun card and honestly one of my favourite show of the year. They may not have packed MSG, but in the end I thought this was a complete success. The Hulu theatre is a really cool looking setting, the place looked full and the atmosphere was certainly great, as it was a total mexican/lucha crowd (I guess the "build that wall" crowd would not approve of the Mexican anthem being played in MSG, ah ah ah) LAX vs Lucha Brothers was excellent/great as expected, Taya vs Tessa worked in complete AAA dynamic (reversed from their IMPACT role) was also very good, the Cain Velasquez six men match was basically the same stuff as Triplemania, Blue Demon vs Dr Wagner was as good of a straight match you could get from them (this is where the crowd being a true lucha crowd helped as this match would have died in front of a random US audience). The undercard was good match after good match, Chris Dickinson teaming with Mascara Dorado in the opener was quite fun, the IMPACT six men tag was very good and shockingly Elgin showcased actual personality (him "catching" the puto chant and throwing it back to the audience was a great spot, why can't he be like that all the time ???) and Fabi Apache really shined a whole lot there, the four way ended up really hot and King Puma was sporting a wonderful classic Tiger Mask outfit. Yeah, that show was certainly not promoted well, but it came off excellent. Oh, did I mention Melissa Santos was ring announcing, and she's still the best at it ?

I don't watch any WWE anymore, I'm barely reading the threads here for amusing facts. The Lucha Brothers stuff in IMPACT was indeed quite stylish. As far as subtitles go, Lucha Underground was doing it in 2015. Still, I'm glad we get japanese talent allowed to speak japanese.

Hasn't there been subtitles promos already on AEW stuff ? I mean, Lucha Brothers used to cut subtitles promos on IMPACT the whole time they were there, so it's not exactly new either way. So no, WWE did not beat anyone to the punch anyway about that deal.

How cool is that that they let Riho cut her promo in Japanese with subtitles instead of having her use broken English ? That's what I want to see, just like LU had promos in Spanish. MJF on TV is gonna become a big star in no time. The guy in red whom he spit at is Garrett Sakahara, a guy from the DDPY Center, that was pretty cool to see him pop up here. Hey ! Brackets for a tag team tournament ! That's very un-WCW.

I was more alluding to the lack of talk on this board, really. I like the concept a lot, but the execution isn't always the most exciting. I mean, why even book Nick Gage for instance ? I know he's the GCW champ (god, that tells me all I need to know), but in this setting he's just useless (well, he's been useless every damn time I ever saw him, but that's another matter). I dunno, maybe I was tired, as honestly I did enjoy watching Wentz do shoot-style as well as the Kratos match. Tom Lawlor vs DBS Jr. was quite ok not nearly as good as the Kross match from the Mania week-end though, so there you go, I just don't think Lawlor is that good overall (showed way more charisma here than on MLW though). Come on. If you're following pro-wrestling even a little bit more than WWE, you know who Killer Kross (great name too) is. If anything, he's been a regular gringo in AAA lately and was part of the first match of Cain Velasquez (and should have been in NYC if IMPACT was not fucking with him, which is ridiculous). Kross is one guy I really hope gets grabbed by AEW when his contract runs up, alongside Scarlett Bordeaux (they are a couple). Two big loss for IMPACT.

I see there's no hype for Bloodsport 2, and honestly I get it. As a novelty, it can work if you have some compelling matches, but this had pretty much none as far as I'm concerned. Barnett vs Dickinson was largely on the boring side of the fence to me, as an old shoot-style fan. Some cool flashes and the finish was really good, but really, this kind of post-MMA (with total pro-style spots worked in) shoot-style match really isn't that interesting to watch, it's not exactly Tamura vs Khousaka. The rest of the card was mostly meh stuff to me. As always Nick Gage was a complete and utter waste of time. Killer Kross challenged Batista, yeah, that's gonna happen... If I'm honest, the two most fun moments were two former WWE comedy guys doing shoot-style (for the sheer WTF aspect of it) and Sumie Sakai still kicking ass at 47. I would not mind more of that style instilled in regular cards in IMPACT or AEW, but for a complete show, you really need more compelling stuff than what was presented here.

What crossover ? Angle's career happened during a time pro-wrestling became less and less popular. Hell, his better years happened in TNA, where he was barely even watched. I don't see how there was a crossover of any sorts with Angle. Old-timers marked out for him because of his gold medal, but apart from that… I guess you could argue Lesnar getting in pro-wresting came from his success... Meanwhile, Jericho was part of the hottest era of pro-wrestling of the last 30 years, him jumping to WWF in 99 was a big deal and probably propelled the jumps that followed (Benoit & Eddie being important in the early 00's), he's still relevant after 25 years, he made his name in New Japan in a hot period too. He was probably a key part in AEW getting a TV deal as he's the big "mainstream" name of the bunch. It's not even close to me.

Don Johnson could play Bret Hart, it's almost scary :

So, Rusev is the father of Maria's baby ? Conspiracy theory : this is yet another attempt to fuck up Rusev's couple IRL !

So, War Chambers wasn't very good. Yes, there were a bunch a decent moments like Jacob Fatu doing his usual big spots at several points, Low Ki looking good whenever he was featured and Ross Von Erich entrance kinda got some fire, but seriously, they did not tell any story after the final guy entered and it was pretty much an aimless brawl inside a cage that went on *forever*. I find WWE stuff to be way overproduced, but man, putting some kind of thoughts into a gimmick match like this seems necessary. Most of the action was just stuff happening without any dynamic. Kevin von Erich got to do the claw on some masked goon. Samael bled, because that's all he can do well I guess. The ending was pretty good, but it should have happened two minutes after Ross got in, not twelve. Salina calling the audience putos was the highlight of the show (I wonder if they even know what it means). That and Teddy Hart taking about "beating on a pussy". I guess they don't have to apologize like Cody did. Still, I'm definitely gonna cherry pick from now on.

Blame the Libarians. Yeah, what Ricky said. All Out has less buys than All In. Still way impressive overall for a product with no TV in an era where pro-wrestling is cold. But you can't sustain the hype forever, at some point, reality kicks in. People are waiting for the TV now. And really, they don't need to sell out every show to do good. The insane results they got with the first few shows had to end at some point.

Poor Taya took a bump on the ladder and of course it wasn't showed, because AAA. That said, Taya vs Ayako in a ladder match, I'm so there. Cool to see Ayako make a comeback. Thanks for clarifying that up, because the whole thing is confusing as all hell. I kinda got that Mystiziz Jr. was doing the Mistico gimmick in AAA but I wasn't sure who copied who and who was the first one to do it... It's confusing enough that the current Mistico in CMLL is actually the former Dragon Lee (am I right ?) and the old Mistico is Caristico... The new theme is brutal where the old was merely annoying, which suited Psycho Clown...

Yeah, WTF is with Swinger being really funny all of a sudden ? One final babyface match for LAX is indeed really cool. Yeah ! A wedding party in two weeks ! You KNOW what is gonna happen there. I wonder where they are going with Tessa for Bound for Glory though. The card is shaping up to be quite cool, as usual, with the special attraction of Shamrock coming in (match is gonna suck probably, but hey), Marufuji vs Elgin (which should be excellent despite Elgin having less personality than a dead oyster), Wagner jr. & luchadors vs Rascalz, probably Ace Austin vs Eddie Edward in a blowoff match with Alesha being involved, either Dashwood or Rosemary vs Taya. Maybe Cage is not gonna be cleared after all and they are gonna switch to Tessa vs Callihan after the wedding destruction angle... In a less positive spin, IMPACT punishing Kross by preventing him from working the AAA show at MSG is not good business. The guy is a goner anyway at this point.

Well, so yeah, it wasn't a friendly split at all. I don't think it was ever near the vicinity of any window to begin with.

Not sure, but Richards was a trainer at the DDPY Center for a while, then he pretty much vanished and launched his own training program, while not being mentionned ever again by DDP or Christina… All his workouts are still on the App though, since they are the properties of DDPY. As I said, the Cass video being removed is the only one I can think about.

The article mentions that Cass went to DDP for help and there's something that may be anecdotal yet still struck me as odd. A months ago, Cass did appear in one of the Motivational Mondays videos on the DDPY app, which is exactly what you think it is (positive thinking stuff, which I'm not a fan of but still watch from time to time when someone intriguing like Awesome Kong pops up). Anyway, so Cass did that thing, talking about battling depression (and how God had a plan for him and shit...). Only the video was removed a few weeks later and doesn't appear in the archive of M.M anymore. It's the *only* video that has been removed since I have the app. All the Stevie Richards stuff are still there, despite I believe a less than amicable departure. So, no idea what happened here, but it struck me as bizarre. So, I dunno if the guy is battling depression, but the fact he's acting like a complete asshole at this point should be obvious by now. He certainly should seek help though.

At least we can see he's be banned from Twitter ! Too "disruptive" I guess. Well, we got Parv to promote his alt-right Youtube channel on the board at least. Now he can go back to do only that and let emotional and unsane people babble about pro-wrestling without being polluted with dumb shit straight out FOX or BFM TV.

If you read my post from last week or something before I saw the vignette, I was like yawning so badly. But the vignette actually had me chuckle with the total meta 80's cheesiness. I have never ever cared about Swinger one way or another and it's probably the very first time I actually got a positive reaction from anything Swinger, which is shocking in itself. Hell, I already care more about him now than I do about Elgin (that IS a backhanded compliment).

I agree LAX went on kind of a wimper, with a crowd being not that hot in the post-match. Maybe they should not have done this one in Mexico. But it was already a done deal anyway, so... I will miss the LAX theme though, too bad they won't use that and their team name in AEW. The North vs pretty much anyone is fun, so that's the good part. I did not expect Cage to ask Melissa to marry him, so that was fun since you know Callihan is gonna ruin this, and nothing is more fun than a wedding ceremony being ruined. Cage is a happy man btw, Melissa's reaction was so genuine too, again she showcased the natural personality she had in LU. I hope good stuff is coming for this angle. And damn, can't they actually *sign* Marty anyway ? From all the really good LU guys, he's the one who really hasn't showed up anywhere. I'm still enjoying the Austin & Eddie angle, because it's so cheesy. Speaking of cheesy, the Swinger vignette actually gave me hope this could be fun. Now I just hope he'll work like Brutus Beefcake in 86.