El-P

ZSJ has been a heavyweight in NJPW for ever. There was no weight distinction in shoot-style. And Yoshida was not competing in "junior" divisions either, whatever they were in women's wrestling at the time. And really I don't see how the weight class is a factor at all. The thing is, "technical wrestler" has often been a gimmick in itself. And don't get me wrong, I thought Regal was terrific at it. The best, nope, but obviously excellent. But some people that were called "technical wrestlers" in US wrestling were basically guys working limbs and shit.

ZSJ is not just "flashy" (plus his "flashiness" is part of his character of being a douchebag to his opponents) . He's absolutely a master of transitions too. He can also be comedic, dramatic, epic, whatever you want, he's done it, his body of work is just incredible. People just take him for granted at this point. And I'm willing to bet that the first guy who would tell you that ZSJ is a much better technical pro-wrestler and a better worker is Regal himself. Fun fact, Will Ospreay is actually terrific at the style too. His match with ZSJ this year was a clinic.

ZSJ has no challengers. Not even close. Him, Tamura and Mariko Yoshida are (were) poetry in motion.

The Saraya interview struck me most in term of how she basically ain't wrestling for an entire month now. Not sure about that one. Her tag partner, well, maybe Kris Statlander ? She was on such a roll when she got injured again.

The Dutch Mantell episode is worth it for the dutchisms only. Conrad had one of the worst take possible at the end of the episode though, when talking about the differences of mindset between Mantell and D'Amore, mentioning how D'Amore enjoyed more steak and less sizzle (while Mantell did not mind Memphis like bullshit) and giving the exemple of not doing stuff like Mickie James being murdered by being thrown under a train. Which happened when Mantell wasn't there anyway. And when it wasn't actually a murder. And while Eric Young just was murdered *last week* on IMPACT, as booked by D'Amore. Also, at one point, while defending Mantell as not being any kind of yes-man, there's a funny moment where Jarrett launched himself into the argument of Prichard not being a yes-man and after two or three sentences you can almost HEAR the lightbulb in his brain as his basically switching off the topic, as he just realized what he was saying wasn't making sense AT ALL. It all was invalidated anyway later when there was this quote from Jerry Jarrett to Dutch, as he told him pretty early in his stint that he could either "be right, or keep your job". The TNA stuff is still endlessly fascinating to me.

Because he does take in account some personal situations like Regal's, that doesn't mean he just gonna release everybody because they want to work for the opposition if a family member works there. I mean, come on now, let's be serious.

Awesome show, period. Ricky Starks hanging on with MFJ (the best promo in the business in at least the last 20 years) on the mic. Joe vs Darby, holy hell. Yuta & Garcia foreshadowing possibly a terrific match. Red Velvet coming back and looking like she has not missed a beat. That mofo of a main event. CLEAN too. Gotta give it up to Caster, who has step up big time in the last 6 months. And Cash Wheeler was in "ok, everybody is talking about Dax all the time, enough now" mood. The post-match promo by the Ass Boys was AEW at its best fake-teasing something to deliver something better. The Briscoes case is really unique... That match is the unexpected gift of the end of the year. As far as the Acclaimed go, I guess they wipe Lethal/Jarrett on TV and move on to the next challengers. Ride the wave of the scissors. Kudos for trying to correct the trajectory of the Regal angle, I thought they did a decent job trying to tie the loose ends here, all things considered. Gotta give it to TK for that one and actually being a class act to Regal too. Also, the fact he did acknowledge there will be less ROH presence on AEW after this week means that either ROH gets some TV deal, either he just listens. Hopefully both. Mox talking about how the BCC are gonna be done with the JAS also strikes me as a sign of listening. I must say I have no idea why anyone would think Mercedes Varnado would end up in AEW at this point, I fully except her showing up back at the Rumble. That would be a coup for TK for sure though, but then again, we've been there before, and it did not turn out that well. So, either way I'm fine with it.

This is probably why Joey Janela is better off on the indies. To be able to do stuff like this. (or maybe I wanted AEW to be more of this and less of "Wardlow's World" and Bow Wow angles...)

Yeah, the Dynasty stuff was one reason I enjoyed MLW back then. I actually thought he would be a guy AEW would try to get as soon as possible. Very sad news, it really sucks, so young too. Hopefully he will get better. Joe Doering too (battling brain cancer for the second time).

I kinda agree with both dynamics, although getting the belts was needed for the Acclaimed to put them to the next level. Do FTR need the belts more than the Acclaimed ? Yes. They are like Bret Hart. Their gimmick is that they are the best pro-wrestling tag-team at pro-wrestling. They aren't like the Bucks who can make any match must-see because they can go in a thousand different directions, from straight comedy to highspots orgy to classic southern tags, whether heel, babyface or just plain meta-stuff. To me their regular TV matches with some underneath tag-teams have been kinda lacking tbh (Gates of Agony, Butcher & Blade). They are awesome big tag-team titles match workers (their first Briscoe match is probably my MOTY from the top of my head), but when they are not working in a championship setting, they aren't coming off exactly the same. The issue now is that yes, FTR would be better off with all the belts, but you don't want the Acclaimed to lose the belts already. That's too soon. The Acclaimed can be a NAO deal of lasting for only a little while, but who knows, they could end up being like the New Day also. I guess losing to FTR is not that big of a deal, but you don't want to cut their momentum off for no good reasons. Plus, there's what Dax said in interview. If he really thinks about leaving in April, why push the hell out of FTR now, with the risk of losing them anyway in 6 months ? That's tricky, especially in the current context of having put Regal in the middle of the biggest angle in the company only to have him leave in a matter of weeks.

Well, Kingdom actually would be a good choice and they would have a terrific match to boot probably. I want Kingdom on my weekly TV. I was thinking Ass Boys actually, and really this is a not ROH PPV match at all. Kingdom are identified as ROH talents at least. Worst case scenario.... gasp.... Gates of Agony. Which probably won't happen as FTR already defeated these dull ass clowns on the C-show.

Yeah, that's a puzzling piece of booking for sure. AAA probably don't give a flying fuck though. And really now, who are FTR facing at the ROH PPV for the ROH titles. Don't tell me "No one", ok ? FTR kinda got screwed by the Acclaimed getting over huge at the same time they collected belts. If the Acclaimed doesn't catch up like they did, they sure win the titles from Swerve/Lee (or the Hardies if Jeff doesn't fall off the wagon).

It happened. The day Matt probably enjoys AEW as a whole more than I do ! Never say never people ! I was thinking about this lately, that if I watched current AEW like I did my TNA watch (I've reached 2016, almost done), with the benefit of hindsight and detached from the notion of "hope" (which can be detrimental, actually), I would most probably enjoy it a lot more, because the good to great stuff wouldn't be hurt by the bad and frustrating stuff, which would be irrelevant by now. I would already know what I can ff without any second thought, I wouldn't have any "business" thought in the back of my mind either that would make me second guess some of the stuff I enjoy for what it is, but may not be productive in the long run.

Yep. No skateboard though. Can still do a decent belly-to-belly. Ricky Morton was there also, but he's been pretty active anyway. And Babydoll. Rare occurence of Gia Miller working too, she's doing the backstage announcing on the regular shows. Very fun show, as always. It's also interesting how most of the current guys *could* work exactly like it's 1985 if they wanted to. Mike Bailey was pretty awesome at doing early 80's mid-level "flying" spots and moving/bumping like a guy from this era. Trey Miguel (who was working the infamous Bill Ding the Evil Architect gimmick) was excellent at it too.

So, Rampage hit rock bottom ratings. Not surprising. At times it comes off less than a B-show and almost Dark Rampage. I have no idea what was the thought, or lack of thought behind this. At this point, I'm only watching it out of habit and really could drop it from my viewing habits without regretting much. Since it doesn't draw well at all, maybe making this the ROH based show would not be the worst idea, since TK seems hellbent on making that stuff a thing. 2023 is gonna be tough for AEW, and that's the year they will negociate for a new deal. Rampage is hurting their overall rating presentation. At the very least for the entire Mania season starting with the Rumble, WWE is gonna roll over them in term of hype, with rumors of The Rock, Austin, Cena at Mania, not to mention Sasha Banks if Trip plays his cards right. By default, this is already the biggest Rumble ever and the biggest Mania ever. AEW needs to find its own way, and they can't count on being "the alternative for disgruntled WWE viewers", because this is not that dynamic anymore. Maybe it's time to try something different, catching up back with some of the spirit of what made AEW to begin with. Something even more different.

The fun fact here is that the quote is about his work in NXT.

From what I've heard, you're on average a whole lot better imitating the French from France way of speaking than we are imitating the Quebec accent (I know, there are a bunch of different ones, like in France).

Sure. Back in the days the young workers used to sit under the learning tree and listened to every word of wisdom geniuses like Ole Anderson would tell them, like how Ric Flair's work was the shits and how he wasn't a draw. Wait, no, they did not care either, I remember a Rick Martel interview where he expressed how frustrated he was in the 70's because the old guys would refuse to work the "flying spots" he wanted do to. And instead of playing video games on their phones, they sure shot roids, did drugs and banged "rats". Oh and they played cribbage with Andre too, which I guess is akin to whatever video game you can play today while bored in the locker room. Same old same old.

Mike Bailey is just awesome. If you go stereotypical, go for broke. Gotta love the nice effort hiding his Quebec accent too when he spoke French. And unlike pretty much every American trying to do the French speaking English with a terrible accent and failing (see : Inspecteur Clouseau), he showed exactly how it's done. And yes, he cheated his way to the win using a baguette shot. The entire show was a hoot. We even got the Dynamic Dude Shane Douglas making a babyface run-in.

Bolded : that's the ultimate boomer line, really. People on their phone at any time in 2022, how shocking. Sounds like "damn those millennials playing video games" stuff we heard since the 00's. Because we like Regal as a performer doesn't mean we should ignore when he's saying stupid shit. And yeah, there has something to be said when we talk about management issues. Sure, there are management issues in AEW. Meltzer mentionned that the office staff of WWE totally dwarfs AEW's, and the reason is twofold : WWE is a huge machine that has been there as the dominant juggernaught for more than 35 years now, and the other is that TK invested mostly in talent and not so much on the office. The other thing is that, we can bash AEW's "immaturity" all we want, but it's also a company built by people learning on the job (speaking of the EVP's). They probably need to work on the office staff for sure. And also, if the model of "good management" is WWE in the last 20 years, holy shit, now this is really a fucked up way of looking at things. Sure, we hear that "the culture is changing", but last I checked, a holocaust denier was given a job opportunity last week, and I've watched Paul & Stephy give "his excellency" LGBT killer a honorary belt. Like @Coffey said, I'll gladly take some immaturity and EVP's acting like shitposters over any of this. The tweet by Pillman also makes you think there is an overstatement from the older guys side on the fact "no one would listen to them", which is not surprising either.

These two should be like the Rougeaus in Montreal right now. Biggest Quebec stars in the history of WWE for sure. Hey, speaking of people who used to be smart but are now completely irrelevant old fucks, here's Dutch Mantell saying Kevin Owens looks like car driver and doesn't have the body fitting the promotion, and that he blows up and is not in good in-ring shape. The same Mantell who jumped on AEW during the fake Athena drama where he called her untrained and such. Damn, I used to think so highly of this guy's mind. "La vieillesse est un naufrage" (aging is a sinking ship), as De Gaulle would say.

Gotta love how it's formulated like Regal left WWE to go to AEW. He got paid a probably nice amount of money to work with Brian Danielson again, I'm sure he "immediately regretted it" while not having a job with WWE anymore (and considering where Triple H was in the totem pole then, he wasn't gonna come back anytime soon).

That's the main point. There are a bunch of people who ended up in AEW but who really only wanted to be in WWE, but they took the job because they got fired by Vince and he would not sign them back in a hurry. Vince being out and Trip being back in power totally changed the deal for all those people. Regal included. Regal probably more than anyone else.

Damn, he's controlling Regal's narrative now. That's from an interview ECIII did with Vince Russo. Talk about great source. But hey, I'm sure when you compare WWE and AEW, not the same kind of machinery, for sure. The later is obviously lacking in management. The former.... well, considering the last 20 years, probably better say nothing about it. It's a company that sent Mickie James her stuff in a plastic bag and fired a lot of people during the pandemic. But they sure are a lot more professionals in term of running things in a professional way. Especially now that Vince has gently retired after a fruitful career.

Not even sure what you are asking there. TV role and actual backstage mentors is two different things. And there's only one I can judge, as a spectator. As TV characters, I never cared for the babyface coach role. Arn was efficient at times with Cody, yes, and it was cool to have him trade spots with Tully too. Dustin I don't remember really what he did as a coach. I remember that awkward angle with Thunder Rosa. More than anything Dustin was cool to have as a worker, because I've been a fan forever. Regal in AEW had some great spots. But I agree with the sentiment that overall, past the pleasure of seeing him again, he did not came off super important to me. It was just cool to have him around. It honestly won't change the product much to me in term of what's actually on the screen. Backstage, what do I know ? Old guys complaining about young guys not listening is just how it is.