NintendoLogic

It was indeed. Zack Ryder may be yet another Cody nepotism hire, but she has no preexisting relationships with anyone in AEW that I know of. They must be desperate for bodies to fill out the women's tag tournament, because bringing in the woman who did this is about as close to the bottom of the barrel as you can get. Was Eva Marie not available?

I hold the Segunda Caida crew responsible. The wheels came off around the time they named Gargano/Almas their 2018 MOTY.

The fundamental issue is that being a developmental territory and being a super indy are inherently antithetical goals and that contradiction was bound to catch up with them eventually. They tried to split the difference for a while by having NXT serve as a finishing school for indy talent to prepare them for the main roster, but Vince's insanity made that untenable in the long run.

I always get Warhorse and Danhausen mixed up. There seems to be something of a boomlet of wacky face-painted wrestlers on the indies these days.

Update: 146. Kenta Kobashi/Johnny Ace vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue (AJPW, 6/5/98) This was GET's last shot at the tag titles, and they went out with a bang. A 30-minute match with Johnny Ace sounds like a dodgy proposition, but they make it work by limiting his involvement as the legal man. He mainly works the match as an assist character, performing double-teams with Kobashi and running in to make saves and cut off the other team. Anyone who thinks that Taue wasn't legitimately great and was just along for the ride in his classic matches needs to watch this match and compare his performance with Ace's. Make particular note of his attentiveness to the little things like his attempt to prevent Ace from tagging out and his subsequent attempt to shut down Kobashi's hot tag. The work on Taue's leg is a non-factor down the stretch, but he had plenty of time to recover on the apron and Kobashi and Ace never went back to it. I would say that leg work that doesn't factor into the finish is mostly fine in tag matches because tagging out and recovering on the outside provides a plausible out. It's far more problematic in singles matches when a wrestler has to either try to mount a believable comeback while being unable to stand or essentially blow it off. Kawada and Taue show why they're the kings of front-running as they demolish Kobashi in the end while preventing Ace from saving his partner. No team ever slammed the door on their opponents quite like the HDA. Another feather in the cap of the GOAT tag team. And Kobashi virtually single-handedly dragging his team to a match of this caliber is another bullet point in the argument for him as the overall GOAT. ****1/2

In 1992, the WWF had a jobber named Bruce Mitchell because they didn't like what he was writing about them in the Torch. After one of his matches, Gorilla Monsoon said that Bruce Mitchell had no place in the wrestling business.

I usually give Gedo the benefit of the doubt, but this KOPW title sounds like a miss. New Japan already has too many titles as it is, and the "challenger picks the stipulation" gimmick gives it the stench of a comedy jobber belt like the Hardcore title or the 24/7 title.

There's no Big Bang Catastrophe in DBZ that I know of. There is a Big Bang Attack, though. I suspect the name of Keith Lee's finisher is part anime reference and part...you know.

Well, "gaijin" hasn't been acceptable for use in Japanese media for decades. If you listen to Japanese broadcasts, they always say "gaikokujin" (the more formal/polite term). And keep in mind that Japan is a country where the national broadcasting service produced this video to explain Black Lives Matter to children. If a term is too racially insensitive for Japanese TV, it probably shouldn't be used.

In other news: So either he was severely gotten to by Pat McAfee or it was an attempt at a worked shoot that failed miserably. Also, we live in an era where heels have to apologize for being assholes.

Henry O. Godwinn and Phineas I. Godwinn

Speaking of nicknames, how long has Seth Rollins been The Black Hand of Raw? https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2020-07-27

Let's take this opportunity to celebrate the life and times of this great man.

I'm pretty sure the only people who ever said that were jdw, Ditch, and maybe a handful of folks who mindlessly parroted them. Personally, I don't know that Kawada and Kobashi ever produced a truly great match. It's probably my least favorite singles pairing out of the Pillars.

Why do people call non-Japanese wrestlers working in Japan gaijin? Why not just call them foreigners? I mean, I never see anybody refer to non-Mexicans wrestling in Mexico as gringos.

Update: 125. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue (AJPW, 11/29/91) I find it interesting that the tag matches in the Jumbo/Misawa feud pale in comparison quality-wise to the six-mans when the reverse is true of the Misawa/Kawada feud. The main issue, I think, is that Jumbo's main tag team partner was Taue, who was still a work in progress at that point. He wasn't as terrible as he's sometimes made out to be, but he was a clear step or two behind the other main eventers and had to be protected and hidden somewhat, which is easier to do in six-man matches. Well, it turns out that the last iteration of this particular matchup is the classic I was looking for. One of the things that sets it apart is Taue's marked improvement as a worker. There are moments of awkwardness, like when he hits a facebuster and then tap dances over to his corner to tag out, but he's fully embraced his role as Jumbo's goon and carries himself with noticeable swagger. Also, there's a stronger hook to build a match around in the form of the shiner on Misawa's right eye. Jumbo sets the table at the outset when he tries to sucker punch Misawa in the ropes but is rebuffed. Several minutes later, Jumbo hits a kitchen sink with even more mustard than usual, leading to a stretch of work on Kawada's midsection that he sells brilliantly. The shot of him gasping for air and struggling to hold himself up in the ropes after an elbow to the gut particularly stands out. Misawa has Taue in the facelock with about ten minutes to go, but he leaves himself unable to protect his face in the process, finally giving Jumbo the opportunity he needs to tee off. From there, he channels his inner Bill Dundee as he targets Misawa's eye with punches and rakes his face across the top rope and guardrail. Taue gets into the act as well, inadvertently foreshadowing his strategy in the 1995 Carnival final. As far as I'm concerned, the cardinal sin in wrestling is wasting the viewer's time. Taking 30 minutes or more to tell a story that could just as well be told in 15 is intolerable. In this case, though, while there were some lulls in the action, there was enough urgency and direction throughout that it never seemed as if they were dragging things out to get to the time-limit draw. Rather, it felt like both teams were going for the win and just happened to run out of time. ****1/2

I believe it was Scott Casey.

I actually remember liking Corbin's match against Bull Dempsey at that one Takeover quite a bit. He's not a total write-off, he just needs to be confined to short-ish brawls in the midcard.

Yeah, it was standard practice for the WWF to encourage (or more accurately, force) wrestlers they poached to ditch their former promoters and start up with them immediately. Not only would the dates they were scheduled for and no-showed hurt the promoters' ability to draw in the future, there would be no footage of them doing jobs on the way out that the promoters could use against them. Also, it's been established for decades that championship belts are the intellectual property of the promoter and not the personal property of the champion. Tessa didn't have a leg to stand on unless the $150,000 was for back pay she thought she was owed.

His promo skills would evaporate as soon as the writers sunk their claws into him. The prospect of some backstage interviewer welcoming her guest at this time followed by Kingston threatening to send his opponent to a local medical facility while looking away from the camera is too depressing for words.

Speaking of racial sensitivity, remember that report of Shawn Michaels getting into an argument before In Your House with a producer who insisted there was no systemic racism in America and everyone got treated the same? I think we know who it was.

In other news, the third hour of Raw did the worst 18-49 rating of any hour in the show's history. Nobody could have predicted that the masses weren't clamoring to see Orton vs. Big Show.

I was looking forward to Gang Warz 2.0 with the Forgotten Sons and the Lucha House Party.

Yeah, I can't speak to the veracity of any particular rumor, but a free agent woman wrestler with proven ability to work and get over should have promotions beating down her door. The fact that she has so much trouble getting booked indicates to me that there must be something that makes her more trouble than she's worth.

If 1993 Carlos Colon appeared in next year's Rumble, he really would be a youngster.