NintendoLogic

According to PWI, Maria Kanellis informed WWE that she was pregnant after she and Mike signed their new deals. They obviously can't do much to her, but if this segment is any indication, MIke's going to be eating a ton of shit over the next nine months.

The argument that the wrestlers are adults making their own decisions doesn't really work when the wrestler in question is part of management. It's pretty clear that the workers themselves aren't going to check themselves from taking unnecessary risks, so the pressure to rein things in has to come from up top. When one of the bosses is out there killing himself, it has the opposite effect.

Good news for those who hope for AEW to be a serious product and not a cartoon freak show: Tony Khan says no to intergender matches.

I think the rise of AEW has made the Impact/ROH/MLW-style mid-major promotion obsolete. They can't really base their products around workrate because most of the top workers have been locked down by the big companies and the ones they do have are likely to bolt once their contracts are up. So they have to focus more on shtick, but that pretty much limits you to a niche audience.

Nobody here is blindly negative toward AEW or wants them to fail (other than Herodes, I guess), but wanting them to succeed doesn't mean sticking your head in the sand and ignoring problematic tendencies. To wit, this is the second event in a row that the preshow has been a disaster. The tag match was fine as a showcase for Private Party, but the rest was irredeemable dogshit. The Dark Order and the librarian crap need to be either drastically retooled or dropped entirely, because they both went over like a lead balloon and doubling down on something that clearly isn't working is a McMahon tendency. And some random schmuck (which is what Jebailey is to anyone outside the FGC) having a comedy hardcore match and walking away without a scratch makes it all look like fake play fighting that anyone off the street can do with a bit of practice. If that had to be on the show, it should have been a dark match solely for the live audience. The main show was much better (and even then, matches with barbed wire and thumbtacks are going to drive away far more fans than they attract), but that's part of the problem. The preshow is going to be a lot of people's first glimpse of the product, so the focus needs to be on appealing to a wider audience and not goofing off with self-indulgent inside jokes. I guarantee you there were plenty of lapsed fans who checked out the preshow and will probably never give AEW another chance based on what they saw.

AEW is claiming that the chair was gimmicked but something went wrong. If you watch the footage, Cody does appear to instinctively flinch right before impact, causing him to get hit by the edge of the chair rather than the presumably gimmicked seat. Of course, it would have been simpler and safer for Cody to just put his hands up to block the chair like a normal person would if they saw someone swinging a blunt object at their head. But hey, if he wants to scramble his brain to try to get Tye Dillinger over, more power to him.

The main event was repulsive. Taking off an opponent's boots so you can drive his bare feet into thumbtacks can only be described as torture porn. That kind of garbage has no place in a civilized society.

MOTN so far. Great way to get over both Allin and time limit draws.

Yeah, the preshow was pretty wretched. Nothing on it would have looked out of place on a 2011 TNA show.

Was that Justin Wong in the audience?

Cody/Allin is my sleeper pick for MOTN. Allin might be the best in the world at taking a beating, and we've seen that Cody can deliver one.

One of the true standouts from the ridiculously loaded 2014 G1. They begin by colliding with each other like a couple of runaway freight trains and never let up from there. Although the match is worked fairly evenly, there's no doubt that Honma is a massive underdog. Every time Honma achieves a minor victory, he reacts like he just won the lottery, while Shibata never seems concerned that that match might be slipping away. It's as if he figures that Honma's willingness to turn himself into a human missile means it'll only be a matter of time before he crashes and burns (which he does in particularly brutal fashion). The violence and intensity are what drive this, but the underlying intelligence is what makes it a classic. There are no mindless counters or transitions, and the desperation in Honma's face makes this feel like a real life-or-death struggle rather than a macho pissing contest. This is almost certainly the pinnacle of modern strong style.

It's actually for a slightly different reason. Vince's brain worms have decided that there can be no wrestling during commercials, so the 2/3 falls matches are so they can have commercial breaks in between falls.

Seth Rollins appeared on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast yesterday. I haven't listened to it so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the quotes I saw, but it sounds like he really dialed it up, dawg.

The Trump administration's vetting of Linda McMahon got leaked today. The contents will be old hat to seasoned connoisseurs of WWE sleaze, but it's still an entertaining read. https://graphics.axios.com/docs/white-house-vetting-docs/Linda McMahon Backgrounder.pdf In other news, Rusev continues to spit hot fire on Twitter. Styles/Ricochet has some potential, but everything else advertised for Raw sounds like a crashing bore. Business as usual, in other words. I'll probably be checking out Kazunari Murakami matches. Anybody got any recommendations?

I don't know if that's a viable roadmap with the way he torched the company after they gave him as classy a sendoff as they've given anyone. If anything, he ensured that anyone who wants to leave will be buried six feet under on the way out.

It looks like Rusev has gone rogue. Or maybe this is some worked shoot nonsense. Either way, we're even further into 2000 WCW territory.

Lionheart (the British wrestler who got his neck broken taking a Styles Clash, not Chris Jericho) died the other day. All the signs point to suicide, which makes it especially awful.

If I can play devil's advocate, it could be that Dana considers the Ultimate Warrior to be like Captain America or Duffman, an immortal icon who exists independently of the actor who plays him. Also, I don't know if Hellwig can be considered the greatest bigot in WWE history when Dick Murdoch worked for the company and was literally a member of the Klan.

Considering what happened to Scarlett the last time she worked AAA, I don't think she'll be returning any time soon.

Pretty hard to beat going from Okato to the Rainmaker.

Imagine how much of a fuckup you have to be to get bounced from a promotion where Low Ki, Jim Cornette, LA Park, and Teddy Hart all work with no issues. Good riddance to that goof.

Bix intimated on Twitter that Maria's contract was a payoff for playing dumb when the Massaro sexual assault story came out.

Dave refused to give Naito/Ibushi at Dominion a star rating. I guess he finally reached his breaking point.

So far, they've blown even the most optimistic projections out of the water. I don't think anybody realized there were so many people out there who loved wrestling but hated WWE and were desperate for an alternative.