El-P

I was that close to ask him if he liked Volk Han yesterday...

1 - I did not defend Kenny Omega for "employing pedos" (which is a really stupid thing to say; I already made the point about difference between pedophilia and sex with underage under constraint, but actual meaning of words aren't important when you just want to make an impression). I said it was a mistake and that he acted on it with several apologies and refund offers. Those are the facts. Which are not a big story compared to, for instance : 2 - Jerry Lawler, who is a very creepy guy whose chances of not having had sexual relationships with underage is pretty slim. He most probably got away with rape accusations because of who he was in Memphis. To me it is an interesting comparison in term of how he is viewed by the moral outrage crowd of pro-wrestling. 3 - Back when I was going through territories footage years ago, I mentioned time and time again that Memphis was the most fun to me (more than Mid South, more than AWA, more than Crockett). More because of Lance than Lawler, but whatever. This is neither here nor there though (and the fact one would think I'm mentioning Lawler in this case because I "resent Memphis wrestling" really should get the fuck out of the bubble and think twice before writing stupid stuff, honestly.). Lawler is a case of a guy who's infamous for liking young girls, and there's at least one occurence of him being accused of rape, with charged dropped in the most convenient way imaginable (the excellent work Bix did on this a few weeks ago only exposed more shady stuff about his story). I was making a broader comment about the whole thing.

Why ? They eat soy sauce ? I eat soy sauce when I go to a japanese restaurant.

As far as Lawler goes, yes, probably. As it is, without any conviction, the fact Lawler likes his girls really young is just a good joke to tell around and make puns of. That being said, Mike Tyson, 5 years after raping a 18 years old girl, was part of what was the turnaround angle in WWF history. Omega did a mistake. That's life. He apologized. Twice. Offered refunds (and like I said, it would be interesting to know how many refunds were asked because of this). He will probably be a lot more cautious next time around. The sleazebag in question will probably not get that much booking after that one. That's pretty much it.

The real question is : how many of the fans who attended the show actually asked for refunds, as Omega proposed refunds to anyone that felt offended by his mistake. And how much this will affect Omega's image in the US as a drawing card for ROH/NJPW. The rest is literature. (wait, I thought Omega was already working for a big corporation named NewJapan Pro-wrestling, which also are evil misogynist motherfuckers for not having a women's division ? How does that work with the "inclusive" tagline ? Shouldn't the modern, progressive, diverse, LGBT friendly, feminist pro-wrestling fans already hate Omega for this fact alone ? Hell, he's working in Japan, which is not exactly a progressive, diverse, LGBT friendly, feminist society to begin with. This stuff is legit funny as fuck to me at this point.)

I have a whole grand analogy with the Tour de France and its history (of doping in that case), but I'm too lazy right now. But I'll just say this : Chris Froome can participate in this year's Tour ! Yipee ! Nothing to see there. Charged dropped ! He's not at all a dubious character at best and we can celebrate him as a multi-time winner and cycling legend ! What a circus.

Actually the entire Destination X PPV was mostly bad to terrible, with only AJ vs Booker, the tag title match to an extent (3D vs Beer Money, marred by an idiotic finish) and the Ultimate X match especially were worth anything. Clear burn out on my part with TNA 2009 after mere two months and a half.

Well, yeah, it was pretty fucking bad. Sojo atrociously blew a spot early on and from there maybe she lost confidence of something, but it's the worst she looked. It was mercifully short though. Kong really had no real good challenger since the Taylor Wilde feud. I have no idea why they didn't turn Melissa against her, she's like the best worker who barely ever works.

Except no one is making that argument. You mean worse than Jerry Lawler being employed for 20 + years and praised as a living legend by the WWE ? Or Snuka being eulogized as a hero ? Oh, I forgot, they were never *convicted*. Well, sex offense and murder did (arguably) happen, but… I bet no one will give a shit in the grand scheme of things, really.

Maybe. But the entire history of pro-wrestling reeks of guys having sex with underage "rats". This is the hypocrisy of the whole thing. People claiming moral outrage because of this yet still talk about how great the WWE is (you know, that company who just got a fat check to run propaganda pieces for a criminal regime) should settle the fuck down. Was it a mistake to book a sleazebag like that ? You bet it was. (That being said, the fact you're registered as having sex once with a 15 years old girl shouldn't prevent you to work either once you've served your time. This isn't pedophilia either people BTW, it's sex with underage, which can qualify as rape if you consider that underage equals no consent, but absolutely not pedophilia, which is a different, much worse offense and issue. That's beside the point, but words have a meaning.) But let's also stop lusting about the good old days too then, because as Meltz very well put it on the latest WOR podcast "If there isn't a 14 years old girl giving blowjobs in the bathroom, this isn't the territory days." Or maybe it matters less because "things were different then" ? (which is a totally bullshit line) But hey, Jerry Lawler is a legend and throws a great punch. Let's do some reviews of good ol' Memphis. Yeah, the hypocrisy of the whole thing is what annoys me (or what I find humorous, depending on the moment). EDIT : funnier when I think about back when I got a tons of shit for making the "New favourite murderer worker" joke/comment when Invader 1 was the new hype (aka "discovery") around here. I was told back then I had a holier than thou attitude. Same thing when people were still pimping the Nightmares despite the fact Ken Waye had been exposed as the piece of shit he is. I guess I was a few years too early being outraged...

Pretty much sums up what I think about it too. And ? The guy apparently is a sleaze and a piece of shit. Ok. That's pretty much a given. (How is Jerry Lawler doing, BTW ?) I mean, really, are people in the Tokyo office going crazy because some unknown indy sleazebag got sloppily booked to work as a ring crew and work a dark match on a joint promotion vanity show at a video game convention in the US ? Really ? That's gonna hurt their business ? Come on now.

I loved the second Jarrett vs Angle match. Maybe Jarrett's greatest match and performance ever. But to me it gets silly after that point where you've got Jarrett the "founder", Foley the "stock holder" and Corny the "GM". The women, well... The Beautiful People are fun characters but not so great in the ring (Velvet especially, Love is quite solid). Madison Rayne just joined them. Daphney is still doing the Governor but has already showed her true color. Taylor Wilde is kicking ass. Sojo Bolt just turned babyface. Not too sure about her, we'll see what she can do with Awesome Kong (basically if you can't have a very good match with Kong, you kinda suck). ODB is kinda going into comedy figure... Yeah, really the booking took a nosedive quite quickly... I'm probably not going through this as quickly as I went through 2008, which was easy as hell for the most part.

Fun fact : every time some guy does a frog splash to honor Eddie, he actually also honors Art Barr by proxy.

Thanks. Things needed to be said about TNA sucking...

The early months of 2009 have not been very good at all. It seems like Russo has gain power as he's got his fingerprint all over the show now. The Main Event Mafia angle could have been done right, but it was just a vehicule to make the product about the older WCW/WWF guys. AGAIN. AJ Styles and Samoa Joe are been pushed to the background. Fuck, Samoa Joe is getting back with the facepaint and attacking Scott Steiner with a knife. Yeah, that's when TNA fucked it all up with Joe. And Mick Foley has been there six months already and has been completely worthless. He sure talks about WWE a whole lot though, another Russo staple. And we've finally reached the point where Kurt Angle on top all the time is getting very close to overdose. Yep, not a good year at all thus far, seems like the first PPV with two really good matches was the last days of 2008. Since Dutch is getting fired soon, I can see why things are not going in the right direction...

There's no way to post in any Megathreads since the new board has been active. You can create one but you can't reply.

Well, it took three episodes to get back into the groove (although Matanza vs Pentagon was already really good), but damn, that Grave Consequences three-way was everything I love about LU. Can't wait to see what comes of that post-match... No idea what that talk was about them running on such a smaller budget it would not look like the previous seasons. The production is just as good as ever.

Well, the KOTR 98 episode was still really good for the Hell in the Cell match only and the fact the real important stuff actually happened backstage (sort of). Not spoiling it if you haven't listened to it or don't know what it is about (I never heard that story before). I also enjoy Bruce ripping Russo's bullshit to shreds (the Al Snow match).

Then again, tons more (most, actually) of this stupid kind of shit happened after Owen's death, so I'm not sure this argument holds any water.

Switch NXT with Lucha Underground, and that's me. I may go through S1 again before diving into S2 though ! So glad it's back !

Idiot ? Unprofessional ? Brock is the smartest and best worker in the business right now. "The money and the miles". Eat your heart out Kevin Nash.

G.L.O.W is baaaaaack !

The journey of Jarrett in WWF during the Attitude Era never ceases to amaze me. Aztec Jarrett does shooty shooty promo : doesn't work. Aztec Jarrett nWa champ : doesn't work. Ok, let's bring ack Double J with Col Parker : doesn't work Pissed off serious Jarrett with Godwinns in suits : doesn't work Jarret + Debra... hummm. Hey, Debbie, can you strip down to your bra & panties ? "Yes !" : hey, Jarrett IS getting a reaction now !!!

Yeah, it's pretty funny when that happens, because it kinda breaks the usual dynamic. It has to be noted Meltz actually put over Sable's first match (the intergender tag at Mania) pretty strong (considering what it was), which shocked the hell out of Bruce. The same way, when Meltz totally annihilates the Mania match against Tori, Bruce is laughing his ass off and actually concludes "It wasn't that good !" and buries the match even further. Which kinda gives away that the whole fuck-Meltz thing is a gimmick.

Totally the case to me. Much like guys like Kane are very much liked by the workers and a total drag to watch for me. Again, there's a hiatus between the production and the consumption, these are two totally different things.