El-P

If I'm being serious for a minute (pun intended), of course the two right thing to do would be to step the hell away from social medias and stop doing big announcements every other weeks, and to get serious help as far as booking goes (it's only human, who doesn't get burned out after a few years, not even taking in accounts his other business). Maybe he's actually doing it already, since there have been some positive changes in the product in term of character developments lately, although I don't get why they can't be as good as IMPACT as far as backstage segments and vignette goes (don't get me started on those Toni Storm "movies", although I get these were only going to be played during picture-in-picture, but they could do some awesome things with her in term of cinematic stuff). I sure hope we never see the days of Evil Coach TK, the Evil Owner character. You know it could happen. It's pro-wrestling, it's like a bug.

Pro-wrestling is years behind the times when you compare it to other entertainment industry fields (script-writer strike anyone ?). When you have guys like Cody Rhodes stating that "unions would destroy pro-wrestling" or something a few years back, it's a long way from Jesse Ventura attempt which dates from 40 years ago now. Blame Hogan for being a rat (among other things). The new generation has been brainswashed with the whole "I'm my own brand" mentality, which erase all notion of working collectively for the better of everyone, I don't see anything happening anytime soon on that front. Oh yeah, Zelina Vega was absolutely supporting unionizing for a second (ya know, before she went back crawling working for Vince). But that's neither here nor there.

Blue Panther is supposed to be his own personal lucha dream match. Ultimo Guerrero would be ridiculous though. Meanwhile, QT Marshall, the undisputed Champion of Mexico, teased a match against Negro Casas. If both happens in the same company (Casas has been with AAA lately), that would be pretty incredible.

Too many "Tony Khan has a huge (ACTUALLY NOT) announcement next week". People made fun all All Friends Wrestling, but this is when AEW had that one particular spark that it has since kinda (totally ?) lost. In the end, a pro-wrestling promotion will be a pro-wrestling promotion. There's a lot to love still, but this was pretty inevitable. And if we gotta get some unhinged batshit crazy pro-wrestling promoteur, might as well go for broke and drag the spirit of the guy who started the Sleaze Thread on the forefront in term of bashing the opposition. Might not get "responsible" nor "presentable" nor "corporate", but at least it would be pretty fun. And so *pro-wrestling* at heart.

He's a gimmick poster. Don't bother with him. When the Vince sex scandal thingy happened, he wasn't going "Fuck the billionaires", oddly enough, he was going "oh, El-P is using "Stephy" instead of Stephanie McMahon and it's so sexist, it should be stopped right now, this is outrageous and shocking." to disrupt the discussion about Vince being a rapist and shit. He's a troll with an agenda. Put him on ignore like I do, he's a complete waste of time.

The funny thing is that they are doing quite a good job on ROH with the women division. Tons of good matches, time for promos and angles, good character developments. The Athena & Billie Starkz relationship is a treasure. Mercedez Martinez is showing character for the first time since I've saw her years ago (I always found her very good in-ring but kinda dull before). Leila Hirsch is doing a terrific job. The Renegade Twins and Lady Frost are fun to watch in their own respective ways. And you have Skye Blue and Willow being fixtures too (and it's obvious they are working toward a turn to the dark side, courtesy of Julia Hart's mist). Also on ROH, a rare appearance by Martin Casaus, in full batshit Marty the Moth mode. In the same show where Daga make his debut, in a really strong match against QT Marshall (who's also doing a great job as the Mexican Champion). The Lucha Underground fan in me was marking out.

Coach TK in full DVDVR shitposter mode is actually hilarious. I hope he gets so unhinged we get the coked up version of Bischoff giving results on Nitro soon. People are just so boring these days.

AEW. And that's enough. Since before it even began, I never saw SO MUCH irrational hatred of a pro-wrestling promotion. Ever. Maybe it's because of the times we live in, with social media making it way worse than before, but it's been ridiculous from day one. Yeah. Getting Lince Dorado, who worked the CMLL Anniversary show, was one thing, but actually getting Mistico is another level entirely. Rocky is one hell of a smooth operator (and such an underrated in-ring talent too). Fuck, he's now managed by Salina in MLW, can't he bring her to AEW too ? Apparently Danielson reacted to this by a "AWESOME ! You know what this means...". You know Danielson always wanted to do that Arena Mexico appearance. Damn, I sure hope this happens now.

There's much more money to be made with Mohammad ben Salman than there is with CM Punk. One may be a pretty good draw, but the other one actually makes a killing.

If only to spite the douchebag with the "Stop Using Canadian Destroyers" sign, he should have. Imagine paying good money to go to a pro-wrestling show and instead of enjoying some great matches that you actually PAID to watch, you take the time to make such a sign and spend time trying to get it on camera, with the idea that anyone will actually care about what your dumbfuck opinion is. Some pro-wrestling fans are the dumbest dork around.

25 years. Yumi Fukawa is 47. Way to make me feel old. I was such an ARSION mark back in those days (with some pretty awful bad faith defense of terrible booking too). It was much more fun and interesting than GAEA, which always was the ICW darling back then thanks to heavy pimping by the DVDVR. Of course they did not maintain they own style for more than one year and a half, and even then by the end only Yoshida and Fukawa (and Yagi when she showed up) were doing it. Lioness Asuka coming in really was the nail in the coffin of that fine little promotion which saw the debut of two super rookies at the same time, leading to LCO vs AKINO & Ayako Hamada, which may have been the peak of LCO's style too, amazing bloodletting match. In retrospect, interesting to see that even though ARSION did not work, Rossy Ogawa ended up succeeding anyway with STARDOM years later. Well, if anything, that's pretty cool that they are celebrating the little promotion that could have been.

Come on Punk. Do it. BfG is in Chicago. Just help pro-wrestling as a whole and make IMPACT the n°2 company in the US. I dare you ! Now that's a true challenge.

In other news, the other half of TKO is having its first show in Saudi Arabia. Congrats to more bloodmoney for this wonderful, wholesome company run by Dana White and Vince McMahon. Also, apparently WWE said no to Punk. I kinda hope he does show up at Bound for Glory now...

That escalated quickly. I knew as soon as I saw the angle in question that there were gonna be some really, really dumb takes, but I did not expect them on PWO. Or maybe I did, at this point. Whatever one may think about this idea for an angle (bad idea no matter what if you ask me), this was just the worst timing EVER. I kinda feel bad for Juice, who's probably just doing what he's told and probably will get tons of unwarranted shit for it. Danielson vs Swerve and Hangman vs White were terrific. Shida winning back the title was pretty cool. Copeland main-eventing against Luchasaurus was asking for a ratings beating (which was predictable and meant nothing anyway, WWE is hot, AEW is cold, Dynamite was not on its regular night and WWE was petty enough to drag MAGATaker's corpse because they don't even have faith in their own current talent, despite the product being way over with its fanbase) and did not feel like AEW at all, totally got me an old TNA feeling where AJ Styles and Samoa Joe were killing it on the undercard while Booker T was main eventing with Tomko... Just felt off.

PCO is done with IMPACT after this month. If anything, they should get him for the Montreal date (I mean, PCO vs Darby or Mox) and have him promote the hell out of it locally.

I mean... Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Then know as Triple H aka "the Game"... As far as nepokids go, Dominik Misterio is one hell of a dumb name. People realize that Rey Misterio means "King Mystery" right ? Misterio IS NOT A LAST NAME !

I'm old, but not THAT old. I think that came from years of doing integral watches of WCW, ECW, SMW and then TNA in the 2010's.

French TV was super uptight in the 70's. But nothing like the US or the UK I'm guessing.

No offense. The language teacher in me can't help it, and I just love this meme. They chant "Aux chiottes l'arbitre !" which is basically "The referee to the shitter !". It probably does come from football chants, which are always so very smart and clever. It doesn't originally come from the sentence you found on JVC (which is basically "What a shitty referee", and although it refers to referee and shit, doesn't mean the same thing and is not a chant either) I guess by googling what you thought you heard before (and bad luck, you stumbled onto a badly written sentence with a bad orthographic mistake that confirmed your own mistake by making you think it existed). They chant "Arbitre ! Salaud ! Le peuple aura ta peau !". Which is indeed not very nice. Because they basically call the ref an asshole and that "the people will get your skin", literally translated. Less a sport-chant than a demonstration chant. You can hear the exact same chant right there at 0:30 on the second video about president Macron.

In a way, it's just way too hard to be named after your father when he was as great as Pillman. Especially when you're... not that good... But yeah, in term of pure marketing, this definitely looks like he's gonna be a case of Curtis Axel.

This is all so infantile. All I care about is that I'm gonna get probably a great episode out of this. Plus, Kingston vs Suzuki !

I don't know how giving a title to someone will play a part if he wants to leave. Jade Cargill was a rookie that was given literally everything, they basically made a belt just for her, was fed 90% of the roster and only had to do one legit job, and she still left for greener pasture. What I need is Young Bucks vs Aussie Open, as soon as Davies is healed.

Oh well...

They aren't AAA guys, most of them. Komander has been signed. Lince Dorado just worked the CMLL Anniversary show (which was awesome). Metalik is a free-agent I believe. Apart from Hijo del Vikingo, I don't think there are many legit AAA guys being used. And really, CMLL would be a much better working arrangement anyway. Danielson could do that Arena Mexico show he always wanted to do. They could get Stephanie Vaquer, Titan, the new Mascara Dorada, do their own Fantastica Mania shows in Texas or Arizona. Apart from getting Vikingo from time to time, the AAA business deal doesn't bring much of anything to AEW. Plus they bring Alberto to big shows, and although that gets under the radar, it is still a pretty shitty stain to have your guys working with him, like Penta or QT have this year.

One thing I thought about during that Toni Storm vs Kiera Hogan match, is Juice & Diamanté watching it together backstage and being kinda grumpy about it. Juice : "Damn, Keira is slapping that ass." Diamanté : "She sure is..." Angelico on TV makes me happy.