sek69

Also reason #79089083 this pandemic sucks: now that Ken Shamrock is back in wrestling I want him and Minoru Suzuki to have a murder grandpa death match.

No crowd is what it is, I don't like it but it can't be helped so I've learned to live with it. Impact's production has always had a charm to it to me, it kind of adds to the "little engine that could" vibe the promotion has where you know they are very aware how the show looks but dammit they are doing the best they can.

I'm actually buying an Impact PPV for the first time in a long while, I'm all in on seeing where everything goes.

I mean, if he did say that it's not like he's wrong. But yes, Vince has been playing this game since the beginning. It was always JJ Dillon/JR/Bruce/some rando catering's fault I was fired but Vince loved me.

AJ believing Vince was unable to keep from firing the Good Brothers because *checks notes* "a guy he's fired several times said so and he couldn't override it" just adds to the mountain of evidence that he's not the brightest bulb around.

I wonder if Braun is this era's Diesel in the sense of his title run being sandbagged by being programmed with guys he had no chance of having anything close to good matches with.

Maybe it's just how I'm hearing it, but he always sounded dismissive of women making any claims. Perhaps it's just an overabundance of caution on his part not wanting to say anything actionable one way or another, but I just always got an undertone of "women be crazy, am I right?" when he talks. At the very least Dave at times painfully unaware of how he sounds when the culture is all about believing women when they come forward and his approach is more "there's very fine people on both sides" and it comes off sounding very tone deaf in 2020. And yes, in recent weeks with the Speaking Out movement, he has handled it very well for the most part (except for the Ospreay stuff arguably), but like I said before it took for almost all of England getting called out for being shitty to get to that point. Also the show he did with April Hunter seemed to be very eye opening for him in terms of the amount of garbage women just put up with to be able to work on a regular basis. I hope that gave him an understanding of where these women are coming from and how even speaking up is an act of courage in itself. Again, if Will Ospreay is getting assholes telling him to kill himself or other sorts of bullying that is also not acceptable. However if he's just being confronted with his shitty behavior, then I would not consider that bullying and I would hope he's getting the mental health he needs to help get things sorted.

Yeah saying "he doesn't need Taz" overlooks how great his promos built up the match. I'm sure it would have been okay without him, but he made it feel like must-see TV.

I don't expect the SWAMP MATCH to be any more or less ridiculous than any other Bray Wyatt match to be honest. Hell, after the amazing WTF-ery of the Cena match at Mania it might even be a let down. Eye for an eye just takes suspension of disbelief too far, and even if they get George Lucas to do the CGI it will still come off as extremely phony since no one is going to believe it's actually their eye being gouged. It does make me sad Vader isn't around to cut a promo on the both of them for being wimps, since he had his eye popped out at the start of a match and finished it anyway.

The way he's handled this and other cases, he's kind of pointing the finger at the accusers. Just like how he did with the Matt Riddle deal until the woman involved pulled out the receipts showing his first version of his story was BS, and AFAIK Dave hasn't mentioned it since (I'll admit I go to the WON board but perusing that place is like dunking your head in acid at times). It just seems that Dave's default in these cases is to give the men involved the benefit of the doubt even if it gets to the point there's no other way to look at what could possibly have happened.

No one deserves to be driven to suicide, but a cynic might point out that it's also a popular technique used by abusers to make their victims feel guilty about reporting what they've done.

Houston was an independent town, but featured a lot of Mid South since they were local and also it was a pretty hot promotion.

It should be mentioned that in addition to comparing Will's situation to Hana's, he also said Will's case is a matter of people wanting to be angry and not wanting to investigate. Okay then, it sounds like maybe Dave knows something the rest of us don't since all the available information points at Ospreay blackballing a woman because she accused his friend of rape. If there's some exculpatory information out there it would be far more useful to, oh I don't know, REPORT IT instead of trying to handwave it away or try to compare it to someone being bulled to suicide. Tut-tutting people who are upset at a guy for shithead behavior because they don't know some mystery info is some "I know something you don't know and I'm going to lord it over you" bullshit. I will say probably 99.9% of the people go after Dave about is either made up or just BS spread by carnies getting paid off it, but this has long been a weak spot of his. It wasn't that long ago that he was being all "women be crazy, right?" when Elgin had allegations against him a while back, and lo and behold it seems looking back that accuser was telling the truth since it's come out he has a pattern of behavior. Perhaps it comes from decades of listening to wrestlers talk about banging rats, but the tone he's taken with sexual assault accusers in the past has been clearly skeptical, and it wasn't until damn near the entire UK scene got called out did he seemingly realize that perhaps this is some shit that really happens.

Sonny Kiss has that charisma that makes you stop and pay attention to what is going on, and wrestling is always better when they have people like that.

So we're going to have to deal with Dave's reactions to sexual assault accusations when it comes to people he's a fan of. On yesterday's show he compared Will Ospreay to Hana Kimura in terms of being bulled on the internet. If you recall, Will got a woman blackballed after accusing his friend of raping her. It's not even a he said/she said deal as the promoter in question came forward and said "yeah we didn't want to pull her booking but we wouldn't have a show without Will". Yet Dave wants to equate it with assholes bullying Hana over a bullshit reality TV show. To be somewhat fair, Will has had depression issues and it's been a rough couple months for him, but Jesus Christ the audacity to compare the two in any aspect is just unbelievable.

The best part is when called out about it, Moose's reaction was to get upset at the people pointing out the negative and not focusing on the people training in the ring. It's really amazing the knack he has to be the most wrong possible in any discussion.

Am I the only one that noticed the camera seemed to be trying really hard to only shoot Tanahashi from the waist up? Seemed like they were trying to hide him limping around (at least until it became part of the match).

Welcome to 1992 WCW. I think it was less common to pay for a ticket than to get one comped at that time.

Taz is an underrated all time talker. Him getting everyone to believe his oompa-loompa lookin' ass was a legit badass in the 90s is a testament to how great he was at promos back then.

whew....it was Danny, not Jimmy.

Now that I think about it, this is best time for Vickie to return. In the year of the Karen, their leader has been summoned.

Heel being heel while tweaking a known critic of the company.

Mox sporting a Jimmy Havoc shirt is no bueno.

They might as well have neon signs every time they cut to Tully saying INCOMING ANGLE.

AEW has been adamant on not blowing the budget to sign one person, I doubt any of the non EVPs are getting WWE main eventer money other than probably Jericho. Another issue with the roster is that they were clearly gearing up for the second show TNT was set to give them, and then covid happened. I would gather neither side wants to launch a new show in the Pandemic Era so they got stuck with a bigger roster than they currently need. I assume that's why they have like 9-10 matches on Dark now to give people something to do.