El-P

Jack Swagger would be quite a HUGE letdown. He sucked the life out of the last season of Lucha Underground, he brought zilch to whenever he appeared in MLW during the first Fusion shows. If that's the case, then he'll be the Elgin of AEW, except Elgin actually has some terrific matches with the right opponents. Please, don't. He's a vacuum of charisma and a "decent" at best worker.

I would LOVE to see Salina end up in AEW. Hell, I'd love her to end up in IMPACT. From the Lucha Underground people, I agree Drago would be really cool in AEW. So would be Marty the fucking Moth. Where has he been anyway ? Of course, if you can't get Salina, you could get Catrina, in a totally different role and character. AEW should definitely tap into that latino audience that WWE has always been clueless about. Well, I guess I won't be able to watch Dynamite until tomorrow night. Hopefully this topic and the rest of the board has not melted until then. Not gonna lie, pretty damn excited.

Three strikes and you're out. The Dallas tapings really were no good. Mance Warner vs Jimmy Havoc was a really lame comedy garbage brawl, typical Havoc stuff, with mostly a poor use of the Bunkhouse Brawl aspect of the gimmick (they got back to using chairs, ring bell and those damn wood board in no time). I will give Havoc credit for stuffing his own head into a pumpkin, which aws funny, but apart from that, I was not into it at all. And I'm not hard to entertain as far as garbage matches goes. At this point Warner has dropped even lower though. Gimmicky from A to Z, he hasn't delivered jackshit unless paired against excellent workers, annoying promo to boot. At least Havoc looked decent in a straight wrestling match in AEW and was quite ok in the insane three-way brawl. The post-match going full gore was kinda odd after a match involving hays and pumpkins. I noticed Salina wasn't at those tapings. Her presence being reduced to nothing surely did not help that series of show. The neverending matches between #Injustice, whose gimmick is beyond stupid (they basically feud against the *referee* over being checked) and awful zero-personnality indie spot monkeys like Gringo Loco & Air Wolf are just fast forward material. I enjoy Tim Thatcher, but I would love to see him in IMPACT or AEW instead. With Dynamite beginning this week, I'm afraid I'm gonna throw MLW to the woodpile, this show has not delivered anything worthwhile to me in eons.

Come on, everyone knew LAX were gonna be Jericho's partners. Enzo & Cass would have got a huge collective groan from AEW's fanbase, for sure. I have no idea why these two guys names pop up regularly here when talks of some surprise comes up. If they made a misstep somewhere, it's the way they introduced LAX after the ladder match. It was not needed then and the "two masked guys attack the top teams" had been done before by the very not exciting Dark Order already, so it seemed like rehash. LAX showing up with Jericho would have had a much cooler effect to me.

NXT has been a magic trick. It's relatively easy to play "great booker" when all you have to do is play around with indy guys with reps and put together a bunch of dream matches and program who don't have to draw anyway and when you have access to deep pockets which you don't have to answer for. Basically, Trip has been playing with a toy-WCW for years now. Meanwhile, NXT hasn't really developed much during that time. Corny & Davis running OVW in the early 00's was a successful developmental territory. NXT has been a playground for rich kid. TNA, ROH and in a wider sense the indies have been developing talent for the current WWE in the last 10-15 years. So yeah, it will be really interesting to see if NXT doesn't work quite as well what it means for Triple H in the long run. Can you picture Paul Heyman taking over WWE in five years ! (EDIT : considering what I saw of yesterday's show while browsing through it today, probably not. That Rusev/Lana/Lashley angle was hot garbage straight out of Russo 1998 aka Val/Terri/Dustin)

Cuck angles = #creativegenius

Hey, RAW is "almost live" here too (and in English to boot), so here am I checking out the Fuck-AEW Era (for a few minutes, it's LATE already people). That brand new giant screen turning into a ramp is pretty cool looking. Those pyros got some Saudi money. The announcing is better than NXT's thus far, because no one is screaming dumb shit in my ears. Rey looks like he's five years older than his son. Brock looks gigantic. Wellness policy anyone ?

Don't be shy, say what you really mean !

Let's put it like this. CM Punk coming back to WWE : whatever. They all come back eventually. If Jeff Jarrett came back, anyone can. CM Punk doing a Saudi show, yeah, now that would be a bit depressing for those who thought the guy had any principles at all (well, of course, technically, WWE can afford anyone including Punk because of the Saudi money, mostly, so...)

They'll pop a huge rating. And make sure their current crop will look like complete non-stars and have no chance in hell to sustain it the following week. All of this because there is some actual other pro-wrestling on TV.

She was wearing at least one in TNA as late as 2009, yes.

FWIW, I watched Victoria in TNA when I was doing my whole TNA watch project stuff and she did not look very good at all. Sloppy, limited, you name it. She was badly exposed next to the TNA girls of the time. So the idea that she came off as a real talent in WWE then tells you all you need to know about their women division.

Meltz mentioned that Kushida probably makes a lot less now than he would in NJPW if he had not left. So yeah, going to NXT to work in front of 400 people in Full Sail for average pay doesn't always seem like the greatest career move unless you're a desperate WWE fanboy or someone who is sure to get to the top once called on the main roster. With NXT becoming its on "opposite" brand, "being called up" may not be as garanteed as it was before. And then again, how many people got totally wasted once thrown into the main roster ? So yeah, Taven taking the fat ROH money probably is the best thing for him on all front. Big fish small pond big money less dates to work. What's not to love ?

Raise hands, guilty as charged. I really did love the hell out of it then though. No idea what I would think about it now though. But is it relevant ? I mean, maybe the fact I loved the match enough to think that way THEN it actually the only thing that matters. I'm not gonna get a cookie if I submit a balanced list of great matches or something. I know my approach has dramatically changed over the years, and although I'm annoyed like everyone with the recency bias or the fact anything merely quite good is called GREATEST THING EVAH especially on the WWE side of things, I dunno, I'm enjoying living in the moment and not caring about anything else.

The whole wedding is exactly why IMPACT is my favourite show right now, and has been for a year and a half. Dreamer cracked me up when he reacted to Swann saying that it was one woman for your whole life with "Wait, no, that's not how it works". Good balance between the comedic part of the first half and the serious angle at the end. The fan of LU in me really enjoyed to see these guys working a major angle in another context, and IMPACT has done a really good job making me care about Cage as a character (which really wasn't the case in LU). Again, Santos involvement truly helped. And Callihan is the best heel/heat feud worker of the last two years. He again proved it. Can't wait to see the whole story unfold culminating with Tessa finally winning the big one at the end. Oh, and Ken Shamrock looks ridiculous. Again, they did a really good job making me care about this one. Also, I did not realized the "new" IMPACT was beginning this week. What a week indeed. I wonder if IMPACT will remain my favourite once AEW Fusion kicks in. The one thing they miss as far as presentation goes to me is a guy like Don Callis.

Wow, that's sad. I remember him most for his Big Titan work in Japan, both in FMW in the early days and then NJPW. He even was part of the 1998 G1 Climax. Decent big man worker.

Yeah, I mean, the idea would be to have some actual fun with this. Like, the opposite of a GWE debate. You know. Just have FUN with this nonsense. Because... No shit !

Meanwhile, their Anniversary show looked like nothing special at all. Dynamitas vs Caristico/Mistico/Valiente was excellent as expected, but I would not subject myself to that long-ass cage match. Negro Casas lost his hair, which I guess makes it a big deal, but still...

Well, maybe. I was in a super optimistic mode maybe. It happens sometimes.

Post G1 fatigue is the right way to put it for me. But I was wrong, because as always NJPW big matches are pretty much the state of the art. So I watched the other big stuff from the Destruction shows. KENTA vs Ibushi was very good, but I also am tired of the Bullet Club run-ins. Never liked that aspect of Gedo's booking. I recognize it works and is well done, but to me it's tired and was too americanized. KENTA is perfect in this role, because he's clearly not his old self physically. Goto vs Takagi was a great match, as Takagi is pretty much the perfect opponent for Goto. Then again, he looks like the best opponent for everyone. Perfect way to build Goto for the IC title match. And well, Naito vs White was also just great. White is so awesome at everything at this point. It's crazy how far he has come. He's also atotal heat magnet. Naito looked way better than in the G1 too, super crisp and healthy. That tag match was still the best match of these three shows. Incredible stuff.

Mitsuharu Misawa Blessing: One of the greatest pro-wrestler ever, legit brillant, was responsible for the greatest pro-wrestling ever before the current NJPW era. Curse: Geeks who thought he was great because of lots of elbows and lots of headropping.

No it would not. But there you go. It's been a crazy ass week, really, with Punk maybe going back, Rush & Dragon Lee leaving CMLL, NXT ratings being not very good and all. But next week is gonna be ridiculous. Probably gonna watch NXT at least for the first opposite show, because come on, it's fun. Hell, we should do a weekly NXT vs AEW thread and have fun with what worked and what did not and which show "won" each week (I would guess NXT has the advantage here). As long as it's not stupid nitpicking and haterz/stanz business and is all in good spirits, it could be a fun thing to do for a while.

Next Crown Jewel in beautiful progressive and democratic Kiev, soon, on the WWE Network.

Wow. Would Rush go in WWE after his ROH contract is up, now that his pal Andrade is having a good time ? An actual Andrade/Rush/Charlotte faction doing some Ingobernables-like stuff would be quite cool (well, anywhere but in WWE because they book like shit, but you get the idea).

Well, thanks for hyping this to me, because I wasn't about to watch otherwise. Fucking incredible match, easy MOTYC to me (not that I'm keeping score or anything, but that just says how much I thought of this one). Ospreay vs Phantasmo is gonna kill everything at KOPW, most likely.