El-P

That would be hilarious.

I too have decided to get into lucha seriously just these days (I have watched a bunch before, and the anniversary shows of these mast few years, but never really followed it). My method ? I go the the CMLL youtube channel and I watch the shows beginning with this year. Not all shows, just the Arena Mexico stuff (I have no interest in watching isolated matches anymore). Works wonders for me thus far. I've enjoyed Fantastica Mania a whole lot more than usual because of this too. PS : and really, lucha is not hard to get. Like someone wise once said "They don't do anything that the 80 years old grandmother at ringside can't understand". The whole "lucha is so sophisticated" is bullshit from the lucha snobs. The whole "lucha is too hard to get" is a cop out from the lucha haters.

First night of Fantastica Mania at Korakuen was just a smooth two hours of fun pro-wrestling capped off by two terrific matches, Cavernario vs Soberano Jr. and the Family Tag Team Tournament Final (cool idea), Mistico & Dragon Lee vs La Sangre Dinamita (Sanson & Cuatrero). Gotta love the horns at the Korakuen Hall too. (on a side note, damn, Mima Shimoda on my screen in 2019. She's 48 and looks awesome btw. Is she still living and working in Mexico ?)

I finally listened to it, and yes, it was quite enjoyable. The story of Bischoff in a van with the interview set-up driving down to Memphis with his family was pretty cool.

That lucha talk didn't exactly catch up... I was about to watch NJPW's Fantastica Mania cards from Korakuen, then realized I didn't know jackshit about the CMLL guys. And since CMLL shows are on Youtube now, wy the hell not watch them to get a bit more familiar. From the 01/07 show, I enjoyed Fenix & Penta & Dragon Lee vs Templario & Cuatrero & Forastero quite a bit. Fun to see the Lucha Bros in a straight lucha libre format (you know the drill, that odd pacing, three falls worked in formulaic ways... damn, it's like I'm trolling the trve lvcha fans out there). Templario impressed me. Cuatrero, not as much. I'd call this very good, and the post-match angle was promising. I'm all for a Penta vs Dragon Lee match. The main event was odd, to me. Great looking work between Caristico (the guy WWE never managed to get over because he had a "big head" and "didn't know how to work" and "didn't speak English"...) and Ultimo Guerrero, but after a quick first fall, it ended up from nowhere with a foul. What ? Ten minutes or less of superb looking work, but as a main event, it was kinda puzzling... Then again, I'm not familiar with the lucha ways...

Do they even make (or need to) any money from the Network at this point ?

What strikes me about him his the way he carries himself during the match. I've seen exactly two or three matches with him, and he comes off like a star and someone I should care about. FWIW, Meltz mentioned on WOR that ROH was probably not the best choice for him to showcase his ability because he wasn't about the big moves and crazy action, he was more about character. Yeah, Callihan vs Park could be really good if they go into crazy brawl mode and if Park shows up to work as opposed to cruise forever and do a thousand obscene gestures...

Not really. Some of the early ones are really good. Some of the 90's are really good. Some of the 00's are simply god-awful. Like everything, overscripted Rumble delivered some good stuff but also a bunch of terrible ones. Two years ago I re-wachted every one of them and wanted to do "analytic" reviews, but I was too lazy. Still, You can see the way the Rumble got totally overscripted at one point. Some year it worked (last year's women's Rumble was the case). Most year it sucked. Lot of the 00's are much more of a black hole than the 90's in term of star power too, which is pretty stricking. At least in the 90's you had the odd participations, like Dory Funk or Carlos Colon showing up for no reasons. Damn, I should have taken some notes two years ago… One thing that became prevalent is that no one knows how to work the ropes, so no one does and people just mostly stand there and do regular spots and kick/punch instead of the tricky rope work guys like Martel, DiBiase, Terry Funk, Hennig, Owen did. The old-school guys knew how to do rope work. By the early 00's, pretty much no one did anymore.

The Rush vs Strickland was clearly the highlight of this week's episode (well, Rush is already gone, sadly), which was pretty non-descript apart from this. The February 2 card looks interesting though. MLW will really have to secure some key guys, because stuff like El Gringo Loco vs Ricky Martinez ain't gonna do the trick...

So I watched a bit of ROH TV from the beginning of this year. How is it possible that after all this time, ROH's TV doesn't look as good as iMPACT or MLW ? That and the way the product is presented, I dunno, there's nothing to grab my interest, despite the fact some workers I enjoy work there. The fact they signed Rush and Bandido for one year isn't enough for me to watch their weekly stuff at this point...

He's really spending his money for nothin'!

Vince never did pro-wrestling. He invented sports-entertainment. He's not a rassslin' promoter. The denial runs strong in his family.

Royal Rumble 99 was a very interesting topic to me, because as I've said about a million times before on this board, this is the show that marked the end of my WWF fandom. The Rumble always was my favourite event of the year, and this one just killed the WWF fan in me. I was glad to hear Bruce say that it sucked and wasn't good at all, for every reasons I thought it sucked back then. He also pretty much shared my feelings about the undercard (ok matches, with Gangrel vs Waltman being the best, despite the botched finish by the ref). The part about the Rumble itself was ok, I thought the most interesting part was about the shows leading to it, with them going into details in some of the worst Russoesque shit happening at the time. Again, I was glad to hear Bruce thought it was godawful, as the Taker cult bullshit and the Mark Henry awful sexual stuff really put me off back then. Crazy to think Vince still saw money in Mabel in 1999. The Attitude Era maybe was the hottest period ever, but damn 1999 was unwatchable at the time and it obviously has aged the worst way too. It's refreshing to hear Bruce shit on the product without looking for excuse or justifications. Even the "We had a story to tell" line couldn't counterweight the "but as a result the match sucked" this time around.

No capitalist mogul want competition. The entire "competition is good" shit is a myth, but it's useful to control people. Competition between the workers, yes, so they don't open their mouth and fight for their rights, of course. But every big company wants to be the only game in town and control the world. That's capitalism 101. The rest is bad literature. WWE wants to own pro-wrestling as a whole. They'd be happy destroying the entire landscape and open NXT promotion everywhere to be the only game on the planet. Imagine that. That's why I have no idea why people find exciting the whole NXT UK thingy. And yeah, the way they whined and cried when Turner was kicking their ass and showing them how to do it was fucking hilarious. They have rewrote the history since, but Vince doesn't want competition. The fact workers have more leverage now thanks to AEW rising up and ROH playing more competitive it seems (Rush, Bandido) is bad for them. They can thank the TV right fee bubble and their own total lack of ethics (the Saudi blood money deal), that's the only reason they are drowning in money right now, because their ratings are god awful and their live shows don't draw well.

Which may give some other workers on the market some thinking to do before getting locked up with WWE for years, now that several companies are gonna be willing to spend good money for talent.

Man, you don't say. The few I've seen from Swagger in WWE, he always looked quite good if not better. When he showed up in LU, he immediately became a sore spot to the point of hampering my enjoyment of the show. Same, or even worse, in MLW where his total lack of charisma was on full display. This guy so needs to wear a mask and just throw people around and never do the ankle lock, he'd be a decent JTTS a-la Black Blood or something (I'm so dating myself).

That's a good point. I don't care one way of another about Mike (I seem to remember him being the decent worker in tags with Bobby Fish or something, but I was too occupied to crack up at Liger being all over Maria's ass), and apparently no one does, really, but Maria like you said has a great personality and I've heard nothing but good things about her short TNA stint. So there, wouldn't mind to see her do something fun again somewhere.

Shockmaster. But yeah, they were doomed. At some point you wonder why they sign all those people they have clearly no idea what the fuck to do with. Well, these days you know why (aka prevent any other company from existing and killing the indie scene if possible), but really...

The only thing him and Ziggler have in common is curly hair. That being said, WWE is such a shitty overproduced environment that I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone leaving them to try to do something elsewhere. Yeah, even Shawn/BillyGunn cosplayer Ziggler. Hell, who would have bet a dollar on Cody Rhodes or Juice Robinson ? Look at them now, how far they have grown in every way. (it works both ways though, some guys/girls only look good thanks to the overproduced environment and will get badly exposed trying to work elsewhere while trying to do WWE style)

It was obvious from the very first day they weren't do jackshit with them anyway. So yeah, good for them if they can get out and sign with either ROH, iMPACT or AEW.

I thought the announcement of a big Rush match for April was ridiculous. And there you go, he get picked up by ROH. At this point, there's really no consistent story apart from Konnan vs SDR (generally speaking) and Lawlor vs Low-ki. The promotion looks like "Hey, we got that cool worker for these tapings, let's have him do some matches." I guess I'll have to watch ROH to watch some of the guys I enjoyed in MLW (PCO, Rush, Brody King).

I search MLW on Youtube and I immediately get the channel and all the episodes.

They could have made it Double A... Or ACA... I mean, the boss of the company made his career on a stupid-as-fuck contraction of a terrible name.

Understand all that. Still, it sucks for Ivelisse, who really deserves a break. Would love to see her and Melissa in AEW or iMPACT (well, back on iMPACT for Melissa, the only pro-wrestler ever playing a "babyface" in the US while wearing a hijab, when Amazing Kong turned for a while)

Ivelisse just posted about how she has wanted out for the last year and LU won't give her her release. How isn't she allowed to work elsewhere when Penta, Fenix & Mack do ? Anyway, the LU people seem to be locked, and although I have really loved the promotion, these practices kinda suck when they aren't even sure to film a S5.