NintendoLogic

I'd just like to point out that the role of the Fingerpoke in WCW's demise has been greatly exaggerated by revisionist history. If anything, it popped business in the short term as Superbrawl did either the third or fourth biggest buyrate in company history. It was the Hogan/Flair double turn at Uncensored that did the real damage.

So that Jay White promo might not be a work. Rumors are swirling that his contract is up at the end of the month and WWE is making a serious play for him. Anyone who signs with the E at this point surely has to be going in with eyes wide open, so I can't say I'll feel sorry for him if things go south. But if he wants to just make bank and surf for a few years a la Nakamura, who am I to knock him?

Good thing there hasn't been anything like a mob storming the Capitol to draw people's attention to the news and away from wrestling. AEW just can't catch a break lately.

The third hour doing better than the second among 18-49 viewers is what stood out to be. Is Goldberg the real Demo God?

I've never been a Dump fan. Garbage brawling is fine in small doses, but you have to back it up with some actual wrestling or at least strong non-weapons-based offense to hold my interest. The only straight wrestling matches I've seen Dump in are tags where Bull Nakano does all the heavy lifting. And stabbing people with scissors and the like has no place in pro wrestling as far as I'm concerned. She does have an awesome presence, but so did Sid (who incidentally was also fond of scissors).

That's only really the case after she wins the red belt and supplants Bull as the ace of the company. If you look at her 1990-91 work, it's pretty much all crowd brawling and international objects. As best I can tell, the Aja-as-Dump-clone talking point dates back to when Dave saw her live for the first time in 1990 (and again, it was largely accurate at that point). Dave seems to have a hang-up that makes him reluctant to reconsider first impressions, and when someone of his stature says something, there will inevitably be folks who lack the knowledge base to draw their own conclusions taking his word as gospel. For what it's worth, he's always said that Aja was a better worker than Dump.

Why does Goldberg think Drew has no respect for the legends? Didn't he spend most of last year defending the legends from Orton? On the plus side, WWE managed to get the rub from a mainstream celebrity.

Even if WWE does offer to raise people's downsides, seeing the company perform mass releases in the face of record profits surely had a chilling effect on the locker room. All the zeroes on a contract don't mean much if the money isn't guaranteed.

Calling her a cheap knockoff is a bit much, but I'd agree with describing her as largely a Dump clone in the early years of her career. By the time she came into her own as a worker around 1993, I'd say she was a synthesis of the best elements of Dump and Bull, with less emphasis on workrate than the latter but far more actual wrestling than the former.

Update: Aja Kong/Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto/Kyoko Inoue (AJW, 6/3/93) I can't think of any other instances where I'm significantly higher on a joshi match than the overall consensus, but this just about knocked my socks off. This is the best I've seen the Aja/Bull team look, as they deliver an absolute mauling to the other team while giving up just enough to make it a competitive match rather than a glorified squash. The two things that kill most joshi matches for me are the interminable stretches on the mat where they're blatantly killing time and shifts in momentum coming too suddenly and easily. Neither is an issue here. Other than a few restholds, this is all action. And the Aja/Bull team mostly dominates throughout, with the closest thing to a sustained advantage from the other side coming after Hokuto catches Bull coming off the turnbuckle with a Fujiwara armbar that looks like it should have dislocated Bull's shoulder. However, Bull manages to turn the tide with her trusty nunchucks. There's a fair amount of classic-style joshi weapons brawling, including with a sword (which Hokuto uses as a bludgeoning instrument rather than a stabbing one), but it never descends into a Dump Matsumoto-style circus. There's also some cool learned psychology, most notably when Aja and Bull counter Kyoko's reverse tope by shoving her out of the ring. I'll admit to being picky in my wrestling tastes, but I think I'm pretty easy to please. And a match with sound big vs. little psychology and no downtime or overkill will always make me a happy camper. As of now, this is #100 on my list. ****1/2 EDIT: Upon further review, I think I drastically overrated this. It's still a pretty great match worth checking out, but it's borderline at best for an all-time top 100.

It can also all be chalked up to him being loaded 90% of the time during that period.

For me, the Bret/Owen cage match works more as a thought experiment ("If wrestling were real and you had to win a match by escaping a cage, what would it look like?") than a wrestling match. If anything, it should have put the nail in the coffin of escape-the-cage matches because it laid bare the inherent silliness of the concept.

Happy New Year to everyone except whoever was setting off firecrackers on my street at 1 AM.

I've come to realize that matches in the 20-30 minute range that combine elements of technical wrestling, brawling, and highspots (the old Roy Shire philosophy) are the ones I find the most consistently rewarding. For my money, Bret was probably the best ever at constructing that kind of match. Like most wrestlers of this generation, Danielson is a victim of the disease of more. I'm hard-pressed to think of a high-profile Danielson match that wouldn't benefit from being at least five minutes shorter.

I have a feeling that the next step is going to be Mitchell resurfacing on Parler and complaining about cancel culture. The main takeaway from all this is that if the entire world except for Jonathan Snowden is telling you that your take is bad, it's not very likely that everyone else is wrong.

Mesias/Muertes has amply demonstrated that he doesn't need LU bells and whistles to deliver in the ring. He was even able to have great matches in AAA, which is a miraculous feat. Granted, that was a good while ago.

This is a cage match where the only ways to win are by pinfall or climbing over the top of the cage to escape. I've never cared for escape rule cage matches due to the inherent silliness of winning a grudge match by running away from your opponent. They only really work for me when they're done Bruno-style where the babyface beats the living shit out of the heel and then calmly walks out the cage door. Here, they made it work by keeping the escape attempts to a minimum. Notably, Claudio never tries to climb out himself and only goes up to cut off Brodie's attempts to escape. Overall, this is a pretty fantastic hoss fight where everything feels rough and uncooperative. Both men unleash stiff strikes and take hard bumps into the cage, with Claudio gorilla pressing Brodie into the cage in particular standing out. Brodie's domination in the opening minutes dragged a bit, although I liked the psychology of Claudio fighting from underneath and gradually turning the tide. The diving uppercut off the top of the cage at the end was pretty insane. Strong contender for best match in company history.

In case you missed it, Miz got his Money in the Bank briefcase back. Yet another reminder that nothing ever matters in this company. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens.

Meltzer said on today's WOR that COVID can be categorically ruled out because he was tested before every AEW event as well as many times in the hospital and tested negative every time.

Here's one of the more notorious moments in the promotion's history. I'll copy what I wrote in the Dark Side of the Ring thread: On a lighter note, Abrams also had Doc squash a jobber named Davey Meltzer.

I noticed the piece had a surprising number of typos, a telltale sign of a rush job. It felt to me like his priority was being the first one out the gate with his hot take so he could pat himself on the back for being a prophet if he turned out to be right.

Snowden's Ken Shamrock biography seems to be well-regarded, but I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

It's certainly natural to have questions whenever an athlete dies suddenly, particularly in an industry with a track record like pro wrestling. And widows of recently deceased wrestlers telling white lies to protect the business is hardly unprecedented. After Eddie Guerrero died, Vickie said his heart was enlarged because he was working out so much. But there's a big difference between asking reasonable questions in the wake of a tragedy and trying to shoehorn a tragedy into a preexisting agenda. Mitchell has been beating the "pro wrestling needs to be shut down during the pandemic" drum for months now, so he has an obvious incentive to want to tie Brodie's death to COVID. Engaging in speculation in the absence of either compelling evidence or specialized knowledge that would allow him to make inferences from lesser evidence ("I'm not a doctor") only serves to poison the well.

The dude deleted his tweet giving his side of the story, but according to him, he worked the first episode of Dynamite in DC and got paid $200. He then worked their shows in Champaign and Indianapolis and got paid $80 for each. If AEW stiffed him on a mutually agreed upon rate, they deserve to be called out. But he makes it sound like he simply assumed he'd be paid $200. Which, who the hell takes a gig without knowing what the pay will be? He also more or less said that he was booked as a favor to a friend of his in the company, which is why he didn't make an issue of it. I'm getting "production guy who said AEW was bullying him but was actually a huge creep" vibes.

What the fuck.