El-P

Well, not exactly. This is the WWE version of history. In 2007 Gail Kim vs Awesome Kong in TNA had legit great matches. I know that it's being ignored because it did not happen in WWE, but erasing them from history makes no sense. The advancement of women's wrestling in the US in a promotion that was actually on TV comes with them, seven years before the "Revolution"tm. After that point there's some going backward because of Russo's booking, of course, but still, saying there was no real serious women's wrestling before 2014 in the mainstream (as in, on national TV) US landscape is misleading. They should be acknowledged, despite the fact that of course, they could not have the same influence as people in WWE because the promotion was not competitive. The fact that to this day, IMPACT does much better with its women division than AEW is pretty telling on that matter too.

The fact Power & Glory gets referenced in NJPW in 2022 is kind of a thing of beauty, as Power & Glory was actually the very first team I saw getting together, and I was a big fan (ah, those formative years). I totally want Dax in the G1 in 2023.

Becky Lynch is one of the first three women to have main-evented Mania. But if Ronda Rousey is not in the picture, she doesn't main event Mania, no matter how big of a star she was at this time, that's a given. From that perspective, Rousey is much more significant than Becky, and her significance comes from her MMA success. Just throwing that out there. I don't see any shift in WWE booking that is due to Becky Lynch per say. If anything, one of the biggest shift in term of how women got booked in the company was Paige vs Emma. Sure, none got even close to the level of stardom Becky has attained, but arguably their stuff together was more influencial in actually changing the way women have been portrayed since the mid-10's than anything else.

That big dumb fuck is being owned not only by people outside of the company, but his co-workers too. He's such a complete douche. I have no idea why WWE brought him back, especially now that Triple H will be more open minded about the types of people he wants to push (Karrion Kross notwithstanding).

Absolutely.

What a complete douche. That reply though...

Of course. I'm sure there are people very ambivalent about it in the bunch (if only because of the precedent of basically being taken hostage on an airport tarmac). But it would be nice sometime to hear voices raising against it from within the company. And MVP.

I don't even remember the last full show I watched. Something in the Spring maybe. Probably gonna watch the Stardom joint show, with the last Mutoh match in NJPW. I really hope WK will indeed be full of fresh matches. FTR vs Aussie Open at the Dome would be really cool.

And really now, just a few months ago : "Thank you Vince" chants. Only in pro-wrestling.

Considering the amazing amount of stupid bullshit, propaganda gobling and total lack of empathy displayed over the last 24 hours, yeah, that seems like a reasonable take. Hell, football fans are displaying way more ethics questioning around the World Cup in Qatar. I take the 5th, or as Coach TK would say "I have no comment on that."

You're almost selling it to me. I do need to laugh at dumbshit wrestlers.

Getting mad is not always a choice. I feel like I'm getting madder by the day about what happens (again, all hail to Brazil for the little bit of positive news this week). Or more depressed. But if one is gonna kill me, then I'd rather live mad.

I mean, people on Twitter were all "lol" and "wtf" about the way Claudio pronounced Ian Riccaboni's name. That struck me as an amazing occurence of why the rest of the world think what they think of the USA. Claudio's an Italian-speaking Swiss, and so he actually pronounced Riccaboni the Italian way. I was just shaking my head at the amazing display of proud ignorance. Riccaboni even went on Twitter to explain it was actually the best way. There is actual actions taken against the Qatar World Cup, actual boycots from some supporters organisations. When football fans are better than pro-wrestling fans, well.

That's just plain relativism. Not everything is the same. Doing nothing about it, or even finding excuses, is a super comfortable stance. If even a third the WWE audience would protest against this and be vocal, at least there would be serious talk and awareness about it, of nothing else. I feel like despite the vomit inducing propaganda, the Overton's window has been wide open to the point of no one is caring anymore and the only thing we hear is about how great Logan Paul is. And when Pride Month is gonna be there, WWE is gonna be all rainbows and shit and people are gonna talk about how great and progressive all this is and how important this is and how homophobia is really bad you know. So no, it's not all the same. This is World Cup in Qatar level of gross. It's very hard for me to not feel completely ashamed of being a pro-wrestling fans right now, honestly. Because of its fans. Because of the workers who don't dare to say a fucking word (hey Roman, the guy with the weigh, don't you open your mouth, we could mix you up with someone with actual ethics). And I don't want to hear the embarrassing music about "Oh, but you would take the money". Nope, not everybody is like that, actually, as shocking as it is. And plus, these people don't *need* the money. Logan Paul ? Brock Lesnar ? Are we fucking kidding ? Even the undercarders don't need to because WWE as a company does not need to either. Anyway. I guess pro-wrestling deserves its audience. It's just not fun at all being part of it sometimes.

He just took a massive amount of money, that he doesn't even need to begin with, to do propaganda work for one of the worst regime on the planet. Legit piece of shit. He's not the only one of course. The less said the better I guess.

Logan Paul is a piece of shit. I hope he enjoys his blood stain money while LGBT influencers get thrown in prison. See ya all during Pride Month, WWE Universe. Fuck all of this.

I think this is a good sum-up of why AEW doesn't *feel* the same. When it started, there was an enthousiasm about an alternative, a different way to do things, to present pro-wrestling that wasn't the WWE way and an approach that was fan-friendly, honest and transparent toward its audience. This lasted for a good while. But now, in 2022 (and really the first occurence was the MJF stuff, which now seems ages ago), AEW is not that anymore. It's just another pro-wrestling company.

I was all about praising Saya Kamitani's work and say about how she had some Steamboat in her.... and then she botched her finish on poor MIna Shirakawa.... twice. The second one is one of the worst thing I've seen in a while. Poor Mina's mouth and jaw was shattered. Hopefully not broken, but it obviously was absolutely brutal. Poor girl. She was having probably her best single match ever too. Syuri vs MAIKA was a terrific main event. I very seldom watch entire Stardom shows, but they always are pretty satisfying in overall quality. Can't wait until the chanting comes back though (same for NJPW).

The "normalization" of these shows is a huge embarrassment and black mark for pro-wrestling fans.

The undying Tyson love is something that baffles me as much as whenever someone deemed "progressive" wears a 2-Pac shirt. Actually, Iron Mike was better than what I expected, which says a lot. JR did not seem to have a lot of fun this week. That being said, neither was I. But JR comes off more and more out of date with every month passing by. The "unlimited" potential of Wardlow (sure), him wanting more of Gates of Agony (holy fuck, that was the worst take of all, these guys have no business in AEW, they bring nothing to the table at any level), taking that alpha-male/alpha-female shit that should be reserved to incels discussions on Reddit. Shibata vs Orange was quite good, but I was not comfy watching it, I must say. The randomness of the whole thing really made it work. Rest of the show, complete and utter waste of time. It seems like Hayter has cooled off. Well done. The angle was her vs Britt, and they have done nothing to develop that story in weeks now, and they are getting some storyline for her vs Storm (which should be terrific and I look forward to it, don't get me wrong) out of a hat. Hopefully she can get back some momentum, but she was crazy over when people wanted her to turn on Britt. She surely was not here. Gates of Agony are fast-forward material. I have no idea why these guys are getting TV time. They won't get over, the matches are boring as hell, they have no personality at all. This is NWO-B Team on Thunder level. What a waste of Joe. They really deserve to be killed in ratings by putting on stuff like this, it's like TK forgot why there was an audience for AEW to begin with (Orange vs Shibata was AEW from 2019-2021).

Well, except the LGBT ones who are thrown in prison of course. The level of straight propaganda nukes the first show they did. "His excellency"... Introducing, straight pieces of shit, husband and wife. Nothing but contempt for these people.

In other news, this company is actually still fucking disgusting. MBS chants, people.

Please don't. Hell, I was actually thinking about that one today, how if Punk returns to WWE, would he take part in those Saudi shameless shows ? I would hope not, I would hope he would be the one to say "nope".

Matt. Matt. YOU'RE NOT FUCKING HELPING NOW (allow me to underline how fair play I am by posting this myself and making fun of it, not that it changes anything in the grand scheme of things) I wonder if this is the Montreal of the 20's and in 20 years people will still argue about it.

The one thing that has to be said, is that TK should have stopped Punk's rant. No idea how Punk would have reacted, but TK needed to stop him before he went too far and reframe the interview pretty quickly. If Punk left the room, then he would have left the room pissed, but this was a debacle of epic proportion. I hope it's a lesson learned.