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CMLL has a curfew of sorts since the crowd takes public transportation (if you look up Arena Mexico on Google Maps you'll see there's not exactly a lot of parking nearby), so they have to end the show before the last train leaves.

I would think part of that would be due to them restarting the match made the fans not buy anything as the finish. Another part would be WWE has trained fans to believe babyfaces never tap (unless they're geeks) and Bryan/Miz was a face vs face matchup.

So Jericho just posted on Instagram that if Tanahashi beats him at WK (which he assuredly will), he'll get a shot at the AEW title.

It's basically submission or KO, like MMA rules.

Even then, you have companies as big and successful as Nintendo making baffling decisions despite North America being their largest market by far. Also the more successful companies (Nintendo, Sega, Capcom) have US divisions that while still answering to the Japanese HQ, have some autonomy to decide things that will work best in the US. New Japan has the same folks running the Japanese side calling shots for America and that's usually not going to work. They need a separate office staffed with Americans familiar with the NJPW product that can market it properly, with the Japanese side only having veto power if things are too expensive.

As a long time follower of the video game industry, Japanese companies not understanding the market in America is pretty much a feature rather than a bug.

I remember people being jealous that the UK releases didn't get subject to the blur-mania we got in the States when they had to change logos.

Don't sell Impact short like that, they'd certainly have fucked that up too! At least they handled it in a situation where everyone wins rather than just bigfooting over the indy group like WWE would have. They just bumped the match to next week and get an extra Riho match out of the deal.

Also their TV partner in the US got bought out by Impact (they would set themselves on fire before working with Impact again) and they clearly don't feel it's worth the cost to run on PPV here either.

Also it seems kind of odd that Hunter would rule in Gabe's favor, but he has seemed to the one guy who's played the game (pun only somewhat unintended) perfectly so far. Speaking of, Hunter let loose some howlers about how only the UK indies that were low quality with unsafe rings were being put out of business by NXT UK despite someone getting a career ending injury from a broken ring at a Gabe show.

No doubt the modern style takes its toll, but it's just rich to me that the coaches at the PC would take offense at someone going that route when they spend so much time putting folks through pointless drills.

Yeah, they'd rather him blow out his knees and shoulders doing strongman lifts and calisthenics drills.

I was thinking of all the different promotions that were on TV when I was a kid and wondered why I didn't get burned out then. I realized that every show I watched back then was an hour except for SMNE and that was only a few times a year. I was able to watch NWA. WWF, AWA, WCCW, and UWF every week since it would have been no more than 5 hours of investment max per week. WWE asks more of that by itself now. It's hard to get invested in a new promotion now since it's asking so much of a time investment as a buy in from the jump.

Japan didn't have the rash of drug deaths that US wrestling did, so there was never a big push for testing there.

It really is the most "WWE in 2019" thing that could happen, one of the better well executed slow burn angles paying off on a show almost no one watched.

Jesus Christ, Keith Lee catching Damien Priest mid-dive might be the most impressive thing he's done so far.

So Roddy vs Austin Theory was good, and I know Theory was in Evolve, but he's not done much of anything in NXT and Roddy the NA champ going 50-50 with him reminded me of how Flair would have competitive matches with jobbers on Saturday Night.

Askua geeking out over getting a Famicom (Japanese NES) mini is the quality content I needed on Christmas morning.

Yeah, it's set to be a dark match but the fact it's happening at all is nothing short of a miracle.

That's interesting for not only the obvious reasons, but how Bushiroad was pretty clear they wanted to keep Stardom and New Japan separate.

One thing about WWE is that I very seldom believe people when they are scripted to act tough, since it's obvious the people scripting have never been in real fights with people. I 100% believe when Joe says he knows about bad men and how to deal with them.

Longtime CMLL star Mr. Niebla passed away at the age of 46 earlier on 12/23, reportedly due to a blood infection. His was a sad, cautionary tale in lucha: someone with undeniable charisma that unfortunately saw his career derail due to a long battle with alcoholism. He was very popular with his peers, as seen by him always being brought back when he'd get suspended, but the increasing visibility of his escapades with CMLL streaming more of their shows (plus an incident where he went on a Fantasica Mania tour and ended up hospitalized due to a relapse) led to CMLL using him less and less as of late. He's been ill for a while, but I get the impression that folks were under the impression that was either just code for another relapse (CMLL would often claim injury to explain his absences), or if he was sick he'd be back because that's just what he's always done. Honestly, there wasn't any reason to think otherwise, since he did it so man times before, but it seems this time the abuse he put his body through all those years was finally too much.

It would be a shocker if a taped show two days before Christmas going up against a division-deciding football game doesn't get slaughtered. I'm sure WWE knew this (not that the game would be deciding a division title, but that the NFL has been flexing more important games into prime time slots at the end of the season) and just figured "fuck it".

Joe cutting a promo on AOP about how he comes from a line of bad men and the AOP aren't bad men but thugs was GREAT. That was some old school shit and it was awesome.

So the new WON mentions the plan for The Revival now is to turn them into comedy characters while also mentioning they haven't signed new contracts yet, implying the two are probably related. That's probably the most WWE thing I've heard in a while. Take two extremely talented guys and try to humiliate them for not wanting to resign after being completely botched on the main roster. The funny thing is this will probably end up backfiring on them since their fanbase has been whittled down to primarily just the hardcores who will know the company is fucking with them.