NintendoLogic

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well-received Cody/Dustin has been. Even the folks on r/SquaredCircle and the F4W board are raving about it. I'm hard-pressed to think of a match that received such universal praise from workrate fans and non-workrate fans alike. Maybe the Hart/Austin submission match. Interestingly, both matches featured heavy blood during periods when blading had fallen out of vogue in the major promotions. There's probably some kind of lesson that can be drawn from that.

Are you seriously complaining about lack of representation in a promotion with a black female executive and a trans woman star?

New #1 for 2019.

I checked out out Cody/Dustin, and I'll add my voice to the chorus of praise it's been receiving. It was a textbook example of how blood can elevate the drama of a match. The opening minutes were nothing special, but it hit MOTYC territory after Dustin's gusher. The shot of blood pouring from his head like a faucet was literally Muta-esque. Cody did a good enough job of working over the cut, and Dustin's selling and hope spots took the match to another level. A lot of the spots and sequences will be familiar to those who've seen Dustin in WCW, but seeing them in today's landscape made them seem fresh and new. They probably overdid it with the nearfalls in the closing stretch, but I suppose that's unavoidable in this day and age. It's heartening to know that a match built around punches and blood can get over in front of an audience of Young Bucks fans. This'll be hard to beat for MOTY. This show deserves a thumbs-up based on Cody/Dustin alone. I'll admit that the pre-show had me fearing the worst. Between the production gaffes, the gimmick match with excessively convoluted rules, and the cringey backstage "comedy," I was having TNA flashbacks. But they seemed to get it together for the main show. The matches mostly delivered, and they did a great job of subverting expectations and delivering surprises that weren't just swerves for their own sake. I'm excited for the future.

All the streams I could find kept getting shut down, but it sounds like Cody/Dustin was a must-see. I'll be sure to track it down.

Excalibur is generating go-away heat with me with his insistence on referring to Britt as Dr. Britt Baker every single time.

The Elite making fun of WWE's worked attendance figures was pretty funny.

Dave didn't say that Omega was better than Steamboat. Someone tweeted at him that people didn't want to spend 60 dollars to watch an unproven entity, and he replied that calling Omega, Jericho, and the Young Bucks unproven in 2019 would be like calling Flair, Steamboat, and the Midnight Express unproven in 1989. He did say that Omega's matches with Elgin, Okada, Ibushi, and Tanahashi were better than Savage/Steamboat. I don't agree with that, but I will grant that it's probably the consensus view among those viewing the matches without the benefit of nostalgia. And Steamboat's matches with Flair and Savage really were closer to the modern workrate style than some would care to admit.

The date won't be announced until after the conclusion of Omega/Jericho, but it'll most likely be at All In 2 on August 31. PAC/Omega was supposed to take place at some point afterward. Apparently, AEW figured that even if PAC was still champion at that point, Dragon Gate wouldn't have a problem with him losing to Omega due to Omega's level of stardom in Japan. It was within the last week or so that DG made it known that they had no plans to take the belt off PAC and he wouldn't be doing any jobs while champion. But it's not like Bayley had anything to do with scripting that segment. And Cody should know the score given that he used to work for WWE.

The main issue is that, rightly or wrongly, the crowd at Double or Nothing would have shit all over a draw/DQ finish and Tony Khan didn't want that kind of reaction on his debut PPV.

There needs to be more discussion about how the ending of Wrestlemania took the wind out of Becky's sails. She was set up to establish herself as The Man and end the undefeated streak of The Baddest Woman on the Planet, and she does it by...pinning Ronda with a crucifix? With Ronda's shoulders clearly off the mat? It's up there with Sting/Hogan as a kneecapping of a babyface at their moment of triumph.

Even setting aside the Kuwait story, WWE doesn't come across well at all in the Observer obit. Not only did they throw her in the ring with no training, they prevented her from getting trained on her own when the injuries started piling up. Her family should seriously consider filing a wrongful death lawsuit if doctors discover CTE.

According to the latest Observer, it was USA's idea. They knew something had to be done to turn ratings around and had been pitching ideas as of late. Apparently, all the ideas were terrible, but Vince knew he had to use one of them and the 24/7 title was the best of the bunch.

New #1 selections for 2008 and 2009 (in the OP).

It's always amusing to hear broad sweeping pronouncements on military culture from people with zero first-hand experience, but sexual assault in the military is like sexual assault in the civilian world in that it almost never involves a stranger or a weapon. It beggars belief that some random schmuck would be able to drug and kidnap a celebrity with no one in the USO being the wiser. I'm all for believing women, but that doesn't mean being blindly credulous when there are details that don't add up.

I'll be honest, the story in the affidavit sounds pretty fishy to me. For a celebrity on a USO tour to be drugged and raped in a military hospital would require the complicity of pretty much the entire hospital. I find it implausible that something like that could happen without any kind of word getting out in the ensuing decade. The affidavit says that Ashley confided in Maria Kanellis shortly afterward, so she should be able to corroborate it one way or the other.

Can someone give those of us who aren't watching the deets on this new title?

I have to say that the Bayley cash-in was really well-done. I can't think of a better way to have a babyface cash in without it coming across as cheap.

A couple of recent news items: -Jordynne Grace has been working without a contract for the past seven months. They gave her one, but she never actually signed it. Apparently, they just realized this and have been scrambling to get her under contract. -A technical error led to Pursuit not broadcasting the main event of the last episode. The final 15 minutes consisted of a loop of commercials. I guess TNA is and always shall be TNA.

It seems like several of you owe Satin an apology.

90s AJPW only had four draws outside of the Champion Carnival. And I'm sure AEW won't have clean decisive finishes every week, only on the PPVs. Expecting people to pay 50 bucks to watch matches with weak cop-out finishes seems like a terrible business strategy. Draws and DQ/screwjob finishes are like blood in wrestling: they can be great when used sparingly, but no use is better than overuse.

I'm pretty sure they did it so that challengers like Hansen and Brody could lose without being pinned. The idea was that Bruno or Backlund would win by kicking their asses and then calmly strolling out the cage door. I don't know of any WWWF cage match that wasn't a feud ender.

I haven't seen so much as a millisecond of Game of Thrones and I still probably won't watch this live. The Network makes it too easy to cherry-pick after the fact, which is a necessity with these interminable 4-hour PPVs.

I have no real opinion on Satin's reporting one way or the other, but Sasha walking out on the company would seem to lend credence to the idea that she and Bayley were pissed about losing the tag belts.

According to Dave's Geeto obit, the Mongols idea came when he came across a book on Genghis Khan in a library. And as Ricky said, the success of the Mongols tag team led to legions of imitators the same way the success of the Road Warriors led to legions of juiced-up muscleheads in face paint.