Matt D

Not French but I'm putting it here. @Phil Lions You found some Spanish footage it seems? Any chance that we have anything even close to the French collection hiding in a RTVE archive somewhere?

Counterpoint: they just added Tom Lawlor vs Wheeler Yuta to Final Battle.

Edit: nasty injury. Hope she recovers well.

Genetics. Oh wait, that’s no-showing.

Given the drop in cable subscribers over the last four years they’re basically getting the same % of possible eyes over the last few weeks as they were when they were consistently getting more, no? 850k in late 2023 is how comparable to 1 million in 2019 or 2021? So either fans haven’t stopped watching or they picked up new fans as the promotion broadened out to make up for the drift of the BTE fans.

It’s been a solid, well-built feud with good matches week to week and a feel good Serpentico win. Woods’ development getting sidetracked for it was a shame and there needs a better payoff gimmick than that but the show has been stronger for it. Billie vs Athena is three months too soon and without Athena really snapping and doing something vile but better too soon than too late, I guess.

I’ve really enjoyed the last week and a half of tournament-heavy eliteless Danielson-driven AEW, let me tell you.

Every Khan ROH PPV has been like this and every one has been great. The less the build the more random ZSJ or Jeff Cobb appearances we get.

He was probably the perfect Kowalski opponent.

It’d be fun to go back to Day 1 AEW and tell people Joe and Christian would be the top heels.

The most powerful force in AEW is friendship. There isn’t a championship committee. There isn’t a league. There’s an owner. From a kayfabe perspective, if it’s “good for business” and it’s good for the fans, he can be swayed. It’s honestly not a big leap.

I wrote way too much about Athena/Billie the other day since it’s one of my favorite things going now too: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/11/aew-five-fingers-of-death-1030-115-bonus.html?m=1 I do hope this is a stop on the road and not the destination but it should be a fun and unexpected stop.

You have access to the master list, right? I had some project drift at the end so I have to double back and put in those last matches and yeah, I never redid it fully chronologically like I said I could, but it could be useful to you if you don't have it. https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html And I don't want to downplay your interest. I spent three years with this stuff, right during the worst of the pandemic. It was a big part of my life and I was working with meager language skills and youtube's translate function and not a lot of documentation out there that I can access. A lot of my conclusions (Ben Chemoul/Cesca > Ben Chemoul/Bordes > Bordes/Gordon.. or how Carpentier carried himself more like a star than anyone else.. or comparing/contrasting Mercier with LeDuc, or rating/ranking the Spaniards/Mexicans/Peruvians, etc.) are purely textual. Obviously "The Death Of" is interesting to people. Look at the success of the Alvarez book relative to overall WCW discussion. A lot more people are going to talk about the Fingerpoke of Doom and Russo booking than Regal's 94 TV title run or the weekly Dangerous Alliance matches from 91-92 or whatever. And yes, we want to apply things to our own lives when possible. I'm an American who got into wrestling when he was 9-10 in 1990-91 and I had zero points of personal connection with the footage, save for maybe my journey in figuring out how lucha functioned. But if you're going to delve into anything, figuring out who the heck Quasimodo was and if he actually had a tour of Amarillo or digging into Spartacus being a contract killer or figuring out if there's a case for Saulnier in the WON HOF as a worker/trainer/featured referee who was treated as a centerpiece in so many matches all seem like more bountiful uses of one's time.

This feels like talking about the entire history of the NWA in 2060 and primarily focusing on Tyrus’ cultural influence since he was on Fox News.

There's probably a fascinating book to be written but the answers aren't on the tapes. We're the blind men touching the elephant. I've seen every bit of the archive footage there. There's no fingerpoke of doom, and even if there was, we're in a world where people spend hours upon hours saying it was all about the merger instead anyway. Watts pointing to the oil crash has always been compelling because it's not like UWF is all that bad, even if he was overstretching himself. We have every indication that all of those things you mentioned were symptoms and not the disease.

I've written thousands upon thousands of words about this stuff, but I kept it almost completely textual for any number of reasons. Here's what I'll say from a purely textual perspective of Hervé/Gordon in the late, late 70s into the 80s: He was presented as the heir to the Ben Chemoul > Bordes line. More showy, less gritty, crowd pleasing, heel embarrassing, crowd singing. And in that role, he was believable enough. In a different world where there was steady and constant tv presence and connected promoters and more of a cultural need for wrestling, I honestly think that he could have carried that banner in the 80s and maybe even onwards before handing it off to someone else. He more or less had their tricks down and was relatively skilled at seeing what was going on around him and incorporating it into his act, including the Jon Guil Don finishing move that almost no one else has ever done before or after. Crowds were behind him. He was credible against all manner of opponents. He captured that same sort of energy in the 80s. There's definitely a world where which it was possible. But this is the world we live in instead and obviously that didn't happen.

I’d rather it be Cole Karter again than that.

I'm really looking forward to them getting the new TV deal because that should give them more money to operate with and a little more freedom in how they structure things.

I’ve been loving less-is-more, make every thing matter MJF. (here’s my take on the Righteous match: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/10/aew-five-fingers-of-death-and-friends.html?m=1) I think I’m skipping Omega vs MJF though. Seems very much not for me.

100% agree. She’s gotten so good at reacting to everything. I like her a lot in the interviews with Maria as well.

I see it as a bonus coliseum video tape drop.

Bumping this to let people know that @El Boricua and I are covering 1989 and onwards over at Segunda Caida right now. http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/search/label/El Deporte de las Mil Emociones (and as it's already lapsed because the posts are so long and informative and I need to make a master list sooner than later, here is the first/intro post explaining what we're doing) https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2023/09/el-deporte-de-las-mil-emociones.html

Just skip matches you don’t want to see. There’s zero reason to ever watch a match you don’t want to on Dynamite. There’s zero reason not to watch a match you do want to see on Rampage. Etc. We’re all old. We don’t need to be part of the immediate discourse.

I meant you’d never hear the end of it from the kid. I was kidding though. There’s always another show.

When I was in high school, I couldn’t get my dad to take me to the Worcester show where Foley won the title for the first time. I never got over it. Trauma for life. You’re doomed.