NintendoLogic

One great thing about Baszler is that you never hear dueling chants during her matches. EDIT: Never mind, looks like I spoke too soon.

Velveteen Dream is what Sonny Kiss should be.

A lot of hardway blood in this match.

Why the hell would you do a tope into a ladder?

I can't remember the last Takeover with this little buzz. Maybe it's the lack of a main roster PPV to piggyback off of. Maybe the plight of the most recent call-ups has made people wary of getting too invested in NXT. Or maybe WWE has been so godawful this year that everything associated with the company has been tainted. Probably a combination of the three. Anyway, the top two matches are Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole for the NXT Championship and Shayna Baszler vs. Io Shirai for the NXT Women's Championship. I can't imagine anyone being interested in seeing Cole face Gargano again after they spent nearly 40 minutes kicking out of every move ever invented in New York. What more can they do to each other? And Shirai had a pretty great match with a much greener Baszler in Stardom a couple of years ago, but there will most likely be some nonsense with Duke and Shafir to prevent this match from reaching that level. Discuss. Or not, it's a free county.

The Cole comparison may not be particularly apt, but I was trying to think of an undersized indy guy who isn't particularly flippy and he's the first one who came to mind. My overall point is that there's nothing major league about Joey Ryan. The Rick Rude knockoff act is already bush league as hell, and it's not like he has size or ability going for him. He's indy for life, and the easiest way to get over on the indies is through shitty meme comedy.

In other news, here's what awaits us on Raw. The Brock boombox stuff was entertaining and got over, so of course they have to find a way to attach a McMahon to it.

Completely disagree. The dick stuff is the only reason people care about him. Without it, he's just a dollar store Adam Cole.

There's a world of difference between being merely effeminate (like, say, Velveteen Dream) and getting off on forcing your opponent's face into your ass. If a male wrestler did that to a woman, it would be regarded as sexual assault. Having a flamboyantly gay wrestler do it only serves to validate the most pernicious anti-gay stereotypes.

The thing is, extremely online types tend to vastly overestimate the wokeness of the public at large. Wrestling Twitter is not the real world. If you don't think an effeminate man who wears makeup and performs ass-based comedy spots is going to repel a lot more viewers than he attracts, I don't know what to tell you. Speaking of Twitter, Joey Ryan tweeted that Cornette needs to be cancelled for being homophobic, which led to Brian Last posting screenshots of past Ryan tweets making jokes about rape and pedophilia. It just goes to show that most performative outrage is complete horseshit.

Virus is facing Metalico in a hair match tonight with the added stipulation that the loser must retire. That's one hell of a stip to announce out of the blue. In other news, Wagner has gotten hair extensions to prepare for his match with Blue Demon Jr. at Triplemania. I guess that pretty much gives away the result.

It seems that Shawn Michaels never contacted Flair in the hospital and Ric is none too pleased. Also, he doesn't sound like he's all that committed to cleaning up his act. I guess he's just too set in his ways. Or maybe he figures his days are numbered regardless and is willing to sacrifice some longevity for happiness in the time he does have.

But Cody did plenty of things (stalling, an arrogant cartwheel, valet interference) that had nothing to do with settling a score and were solely for cheap heat. I guess can't really complain too much about the post-match since it clearly worked for the audience, but I definitely felt a disconnect between it and the way the match was worked.

The absolute madman Dave Meltzer gave Cody/Dustin the full fiveboy. Yet another nail in the coffin of the "Dave only likes matches with MOVEZ" talking point.

Sorry, but I can't see a full-blown exotico getting over in America beyond a niche audience. More importantly, I see it as a huge turnoff to a significant portion of the fanbase, particularly the lapsed fans AEW is aiming for.

In fairness, it's a lot easier to not be driven by money when you have no pressing financial obligations. Would he be able to turn down the Million Dollar Man if his house and truck weren't paid off? Regardless, I really want to know what Vince wanted Moxley to say that would have caused sponsors to drop WWE.

Does anyone else find Juice Robinson absolutely unbearable on commentary? To me, he's almost as grating and obnoxious as Jason Hervey.

You're telling me that Vince McMahon is out of touch and WWE's creative process is broken? Stop the presses! It's always great to hear detailed first-hand accounts of Vince's insanity, though.

No, when streams get shut down, most people just give up trying to watch. If they're interested in a specific match, they'll wait for it to show up on Dailymotion. It's safe to assume that the overwhelming majority of those giving feedback on the show watched it legitimately.

History has shown that the Veblen effect tends to apply for PPV prices. And Turner and/or B/R Live were really aggressive in shutting down illegal streams.

What would be your basis for this assumption?

Liger isn't a true freelancer, though. He's mostly free to book himself around the world in between tours, but New Japan has some degree of veto power. There's no way he'd be able to work a AAA show on a Friday night in Mexico City, which is probably the closest equivalent to the NXT/ROH situation. If they wanted to prevent him from working a show in direct competition with one of their business partners, they could have.

If true, that is absolutely massive. That's better than most WWE B-PPVs were doing before the launch of the Network, and that was when Raw had roughly twice as many viewers as it does now.

NJPW's relationship with ROH is completely one-sided, though. They're perfectly willing to stab ROH in the back when it suits them, like when they allowed Liger to work NXT the same day as Field of Honor. The only business partner they're loyal to is CMLL. Regardless, I hope the partnership continues so we can see Jeff Cobb in the G1.

Given the track record of Rumble winners, it stands to reason that the skills required to throw people out of the ring while avoiding being thrown out yourself are strongly correlated with the skills required to pin and submit opponents in standard wrestling matches.