Stiva

Will Shawn Spears' 7th gimmick finally get him over?!

Absolutely. And, I think there's something to be said for the progress that has been made where these women feel that they're safe to come forward and tell these harrowing stories in public. Obviously, we're far from where we need to be but maybe, in all this harrowing and awful news, that can be something where, from this generation onward, we can see a wrestling industry devoid of all of this? Maybe that's overly optimistic and I would love to read and listen to a women's perspective before saying that. But this minor exorcism feels like a positive step, regardless.

It'd be really funny if they had to shut down for a month, they showed a ton of old PPVs and they attracted much better ratings than the current embarrassment.

I feel like I don't want to say too much about this because, even in this closed space, I feel like my voice as a straight, white man is distracting from the voices that actually need to be heard but Scurll's "apology" is skin-crawling. Using the UK age of consent as a crutch when you were a 26 year old man involved with a 16 year old woman. Yeah, it's the age of consent but why was she at a party? Why was she drunk at 16? The idea that he feels those two caveats are an excuse of sorts is legitimately stomach churning. For some reason, and I don't mean to prescribe severity to each individual accusation, but this one feels especially seedy and evil. But, the idea of not watching wrestling as a result of this is a large crater to navigate. This current wave and scene is clearly awful but just how bad was it in the 90s and 80s? How many women from then have stories similar, or worse, than what we're hearing now? I feel like we had to answer this question post-Benoit; how do we navigate our fandom and appreciation of one wrestler in light of horrifying circumstances? How do we now, navigate and justify our support and fandom of an entire industry in light of these accusations? And how do we do the same with the wrestling that has gone before? This week has shown that wrestling has systemic problems, ingrained for years. How do we approach 80s and 90s wrestling with that thought in mind? All of this clearly had to happen and every single victim has my support, no matter how insignificant that might be, but I really hope that, going forward, these are questions that we ask ourselves as we evaluate and re-evaluate pro wrestling, as best as we can.

For early SMW that isn’t mentioned too much, that incredible Heavenly Bodies/Fantastics backstage brawl that ends with Cornette’s car window being smashed. Cornette follows it up with an all-timer promo the following week.

Dug this week's show and I echo the love for the twist with Abadon. I'm still halfway interested in Brodie and The Dark Order since it feels like someone gathering the troops for another assault after losing a battle. Uno and Grayson winning the belts and FTR/The Bucks having to go through the other two DO teams first could be a fun 3 week program. Omega kneeing Dustin in the face with that overly-dramatic leapfrog was pretty frightening but Dustin turning it into part of the match is why he's the best. Britt Baker sending a message that just said "This woman needs Jesus" had me rolling, along with Swole's Undertaker impression. AEW really understands that comedy has it's place in pro wrestling and it never overshadows the real angles; Orange Cassidy dropping all his shit and going after Jericho was a perfect example. We had some MJF comedy and Britt comedy so he just got a measure of revenge and had a good show closing angle. Ricky Starks doesn't do too much for me in-ring but the guy has fantastic presence and is such a natural promo. He's going to be a great addition to the MJF/Jungle Boy/Darby/Sammy Young Guns group. And my final prediction is that we get Heel Cody with his own "Horsemen" of him, FTR and one other with Arn as the modern day JJ. With a heel turn caused by Darby Allin finally getting one over on him and taking his title. Cody offers the usual handshake routine and then kicks the shit out of him. Book it, Tony.

There was a story last month how they were going to use the planned London shows to debut him.

I imagine, with it being taped, every single second of Edge/Orton will have been pored over and edited to the point where it probably will be pretty good. Meltzer said it went 30-35 but neither man has 35 minutes worth of stuff to fill a match so I’m guessing it’ll clock in at 20-25 in the end. But I bet Styles/Bryan is better.

I was just about to chime in with Kingston as a personal pick. I can't think of a time where he hasn't brought something great to a match and he's one of the most underrated sellers (not bumper) of all time.

I wouldn’t call WWE a poor environment for Bryan. He didn’t necessarily have the freedom he would on the indies but he got to have long, varied matches with just about everyone on the roster you’d want him to, complete with both an all-time face run (2013-14) and heel run (18-19)

I think Brodie Lee’s debut would have been a much more impactful moment had there been a crowd too.

I thought every match on Smackdown was at least good and a couple, the main and Gulak/Styles were great. What an incredibly stacked roster. If this show had any semblance of actual pro-wrestling booking, this crew would be remembered as fondly as the 02-03, 06 and 09 crews. Hell, even 2011 Smackdown.

The opening statement was a nice touch but AEW still feels like it could do better with black representation on their shows. Opening tag wasn’t great, really. Omega’s AEW run continues to be so inconsistent; I know it’s next to impossible to make Kip Sabian’s offense look good but that’s no excuse for that drunken stumble into the ropes after the drop kick. He seemed pretty slow for him too so I’m not sure if he’s carrying an injury or not. In front of a crowd, it would be even more readily apparent that Page is their first “homegrown” top guy though, he’s leaping off the screen. The Cage squash wasn’t as good as last week since it didn’t have Lee Johnson bumping like a lunatic but these squashes leading to title shots are pretty delightful in how old-school they are. Taz as the mouthpiece is surprisingly good too, I’m amazed he was sitting on commentary for years without trying it elsewhere. Lance Archer kicking the shit out of some random fellow in a wasteland was hilarious but they should totally keep up those vignettes until they build up someone in the baby face side to fight him. Part of me wants to see Jake Roberts come face to face with Broken Matt Hardy. Hardy meeting with Private Party gives me hope that they’ll debut the 6 Man Tag Titles when they get the second show. Sammy popping Jericho by singing the song a couple of lines ahead was hilarious. If Jericho is still good for a few potatoes a match, those boxing punches in the corner had to be bad for Cabana. The match was perfectly good TV fare, the right length with a good finish. I actually dig Cabana as a guy who has enough credibility to have competitive TV matches before putting people over. The Britt Baker segment was incredible. If she’s coming up with this stuff by herself, she’s a certified genius. Treating riding the wheelchair up the ramp as a fear of strength after not being bothered to do the actual hard work was a great gag. Butcher and Blade feel like the perfect first team for FTR to face since they’re a really underrated team that will match their style. It should be a genuinely great match. Dug the main event, especially all the continued hints at Cody’s heel side. Him blading after headbutting the wall was a fairly wild spot and I loved Jungle Boy going straight after it, as you would in a title match. I really like these 2-3 week spots that they do to elevate certain guys since they always have an improved standing after it, even when they’ve been defeated since it also establishes the hierarchy. Now that Cody has said the open challenge is open to workers not on the AEW roster, I’m guessing now that it’s how they debut Zack Ryder. Even though I’m hoping for a one-off Heath Slater appearance. I’m also making a prediction that we get an equivalent of the World Tag League in AEW at some point.

Yeah, this is where I am with Impact too. It’s a very competently booked promotion that has good ideas and uses everyone very well but it comes off as such a flat, product on TV, even before the pandemic. They felt like a hot deal after that great Slammiversary a couple years back but for whatever reason, that just wasn’t sustained.

I don’t know about that. For AEWs core audience, Adam Cole and Undisputed Era are the greatest thing in the world. He might not be a needle mover with ratings (who is?) but he’d make them a ton of money

Incredible. I also think it's worth mentioning that little Pepe never repeated an outfit in his time on the Nitro commentary desk. That dog had quite the wardrobe.

He was pretty god-awful, especially considering he had a US Title run. Jeff Jarrett seemed to find a decent formula with him by working over his legs so Mongo just had to lie around selling until he hit his clotheslines and piledriver. Speaking of which, it really is insane that he didn’t kill anybody with his tombstone. I thought he was a half-decent promo though. Even if he did only have one volume and crowds were always invested in his matches at least.

What news story or film from 1996 did Vince only get round to seeing this week to inspire him to do a drunk-driving angle?

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I had no idea it was out there. I’m about 50-60 pages in and can recommend it already.

FTR coming in brings yet another dimension to a tag division that should be set for the next 18 months easily, it’s a crazily stacked division. Lee Johnson should have a job for as long as he wants it; he bumps like a machine and made Cage look like a monster. What a great squash to establish him. Britt is one of the best personalities on the roster, maybe the best. The wheelchair is a great heel touch and it’s so disappointing that there isn’t a crowd to respond to it. The battle royal was fun but if he didn’t before, he feels like even more of a wasted spot now that the roster has filled out nicely. The one thing I do love about AEWs battle royales is that almost every elimination follows a story or builds to something. It’s so simple but it’s another example of them giving a damn. Giving Jungle Boy the shot next week is a nice way to build on his match at DON. I popped for just about everything in the Pep Rally. For five guys that felt thrown together, they’ve really grown into an amazing stable. Ortiz is incredible: eating a wrap with ear protectors on is a hilarious image. Mike Tyson vs Chris Jericho is the summer program I didn’t know I wanted and the pull apart was really good. Fuck it, add Belforte and Cejudo to the tag division and have them put Havoc and Sabian out of my misery Also, if Vickie is there regularly, they need to put her with a heel. Even if it's just to be their personal ring annouincer.

They would have a better shot if they dressed Matt Riddle as Edge, Cesaro as Orton and let them go at it.

Natural Nightmares vs Reynolds and Silver has some strong WCW Worldwide energy. A jobber team busting out whatever new offence they learned that day, a good hot tag from Dustin with the tiniest sliver of an angle running through it. NN would be a great Saturday Night super team

The July show was set to be their London debut and would feature the debut of Anthony Ogogo apparently. I was planning to travel for whatever show they’d put on over here so that’s unfortunate but obviously not unexpected at the moment.

Some stray thoughts: The ladder match was not at all great and was far too bloated with 9 wrestlers. Scorpio, Darby, Cassidy, Fenix/Janela, Luchasaurus and Cage would have been a much less convoluted line-up. MJF/Jungle Boy is a great match-up; one fantastic face and one fantastic heel is really all you need. Archer/Cody was overlong but Tyson popping for everything was great and I’m glad Cody finally won a big match. I think there’s still legs in the feud so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s dropped after this show like Cody’s other feuds. They are really trying with Spears and I still can’t see it. He’s a solid hand but they need to get back to giving him a tag partner and start building some tag feuds outside of the title programs. Nyla Rose has really improved dramatically since Dynamite’s debut. She carries herself so well now and was able to sell and bump really well for Shida when she had to. It makes some sense to get the title on a face since I assume the plan was for Shida/Britt over the title this time but that’s obviously scuppered. Shida’s Tifa cosplay stirred something inside me also. Moxley/Brodie was really good and felt like the match Moxley/Hager was supposed to be. Especially with Mox going wild on the cut and Brodie coming back every time until the choke. They’re really doing an awesome job at making Moxley a badass, tough as nails baby face champion. The Moxley/MJF program is going to be money and I’d be tempted to hold off on it until we have a live audience again. Hangman Page riding a horse into a football stadium is a top 5 entrance, no matter what way you swing it. Sammy really is the unsung AEW MVP. I can’t recall the last time he was involved in something that wasn’t fantastic. Santana and Ortiz were similarly great; they were having the time of their life. I’m hot and cold on Omega but I really enjoyed concession stand brawler Omega since he used just about everything he had available to him in nasty ways. The Hardy stuff was fantastic, I don’t care. Everyone fully leaning into it is what’s making it work. The whole thing felt like a bizarre continuation and evolution of the concession stand brawl, completely helped by the commentary, even JR, cracking up and loving it. I honestly think you could have The Inner Circle and Elite + friends orbit each other for another year in various permutations and it wouldn’t grow stale. I honestly think that may be one of the most genuinely enjoyable things I’ve ever seen in wrestling. Really solid show that surpassed all expectations after a so-so build. Now that they have the whole crew back, the roster is looking pretty deep, aside from the women, and the top of the card could throw up a lot of interesting possibilities.

Chuck Taylor has been out of this match for about 5 minutes for a reason that I can’t even remember