NintendoLogic

My man Aleister taking nothing but L's since being released.

Scheduling it on the same night as the Pacquiao fight (in the same city to boot) is certainly a curious decision. Rumor has it there'll be a double main event of Reigns/Cena and Lashley/Lesnar. LOL building new stars. Also, I can't imagine anyone in their right mind excited by the prospect of Roman and Cena squaring off again after the shitpile of a match they had four years ago.

I knew the Grizzly Smith episode would be brutal, but the speculation that he might have had something to do with his daughter's disappearance still knocked me for a loop. At least on the episodes with exceptionally dark subject matter (Benoit, Pillman, Grizz), they go out of their way to try to end with some kind of silver lining.

The problem is that when his preferences and his prejudices collide, the latter invariably win out. He seems pathologically incapable of giving "girl's wrestling" a fair shake, so he usually ends up skipping Serena Deeb's matches when he watches AEW even though she's probably the best worker in the company at the style of wrestling he says he likes.

The thing is, people with this mindset have no shot at WWE in the first place. You have to be driven beyond reason to bust your ass on the indies racking up miles and building up word of mouth to earn a shot at the big time. If you just want a decent steady paycheck, you'll nope out of that life well before arriving on WWE's radar. Also, almost nobody comes out of wrestling set for life. A few million in the bank sounds like a lot until you realize you have to spread it out over 40 or so years. And even if you have more than that, it doesn't take much (divorce, bad investments, medical emergency) to put you underwater financially. Just ask Hulk Hogan or Lex Luger.

I thought the plan was for Warrior to be the dynastic champion and for Hogan to be the older living legend, the Sammartino to Warrior's Backlund.

I don't think giving someone a no-cut deal would stop Vince from getting rid of someone if he really wanted to. He'd just come up with a trumped-up reason to terminate them for cause like he did with Oliver Luck.

Of course this goof refuses to take the slightest steps to halt the spread of a deadly virus because he's so pro-life.

Aleister was on Zelina's Twitch stream today. He said that Vince was always high on him but his character just never clicked on the main roster for some reason and he doesn't know why. Looks like that son of a bitch Johnny Ace strikes again.

By the way, SRS is reporting that talent is increasingly speculating about a potential sale. If that's the case, then dumping Braun makes a lot more sense. A seven-figure contract for a non-draw with shot knees is the kind of thing you'd want to take off the books to make your bottom line look better.

After Zelina Vega came crawling back too. That's cold as ice. By the way, Fast 9's box office was down 85% in China despite Cena's apology. The lesson in both cases: never kowtow to tyrants.

Maybe they meant to hire Barry Horowitz and Laurinaitis got the wrong guy again.

Maybe Shanna's too busy fighting Islamic terrorism to return to the ring. Had Kong done a thing in AEW since they dropped the Nightmare Collective?

The only "This is awesome" chant I've ever liked was when fans did it while Brock was beating the shit out of Roman at WM31.

I decided to check out the tag title match after hearing about the controversy over lax enforcement of the rules of tag team wrestling. I'm All Japan ride or die, so well-executed double-team action is right up my alley. Both teams have to be committed to the concept for it to work, though. If the heels are double-teaming, the illegal babyface should be running in to break it up. Kingston looked like a total chump just standing there on the apron while the Bucks were knocking Moxley around.

She was just doing what she had to do to protect her spot, brother.

Mark Henry and Lio Rush in the same company again? That ought to be interesting. Henry will be a great asset for the company as long as he doesn't have a stick up his ass about Respecting the Business.

For those who don't follow basketball, there's been an alarming number of incidents of fan misbehavior (throwing things at players, spitting on them, yelling racial abuse) during the first round of the NBA playoffs. There has also been a number of fights in the stands at MLB games. If that's how fans of non-worked sports are behaving with things opening up again, just imagine what it's going to be like at wrestling shows.

He was considered a can't-miss future star before he left. The fact that they sent him on an excursion when he was only 20 shows that they expected pretty big things from him in a hurry. But he ended up not really doing anything in CMLL.

I don't know where this idea that Okada was initially shaky post-TNA comes from. The Dome match against YOSHI-HASHI sucked, but the title change against Tanahashi and his first defense against Naito both delivered big-time. Also, Master Wato hasn't exactly set the world on fire since returning from CMLL.

Willie Urbina (the guy who mocked Shida's accent) has been fired by AEW. Glad to see a zero-tolerance policy for that kind of bullshit.

Actually, Inoki was the one who ended the arrangement because Fritz Von Erich offered him a better deal. Japanese money is what kept the WWF afloat during the first year of national expansion. And if they do get ring time, it'll be on the Largo loop in front of a bunch of drunken rednecks chanting racial slurs. Not the most conducive environment for in-ring improvement.

I thought the Warrior episode was a letdown, to be honest. They barely touched on the horrific views he espoused and mainly talked about how he let success go to his head and wasn't faithful to his wife, which is small potatoes as far as wrestling's dark side goes. I wonder if it's because you can't really knock a guy for being a right-wing nutjob when you have Jericho as a narrator.

This is the first of four consecutive weeks of Dynamite airing on Friday at 10 PM due to the NBA playoffs. After that, it airs at 8 PM on a Saturday (June 26th). It won't be back in its regular time slot until June 30th. That alone justifies the move to TBS. Hopefully this month of preemption won't lead to a significant erosion of the viewing audience.

Dave is emphasizing that there's a real good chance nothing comes of this, so let's not jump to conclusions.