C.S.

Time for the TRUE main event, featuring YOUR NXT North America Champion and the man who drew this house all by himself (okay, well, with Mami) - DOMINIK MYSTERIO! I hope he retains. Wes Lee isn't a star. I like Ali, but Dom is a STAR. You're not wrong. How is Damon Kemp so much better at this than his rapist brother?

I dunno... He exceeded my (granted, rock bottom) expectations. A star wasn't born tonight - and I'm not convinced he ever will be one - but if he gets a Wardlow push tossing lightweights around like he did after the match, it could work.

The Rapist looks like Jonathan Gresham next to Baron Corbin. He didn't embarrass himself, but he doesn't excite me either. Still, it's a win for him, because he was smooth and solid. Lame finish though. Nothing about this was ever a blood feud that would necessitate a double-DQ. He looked better after the match tossing Cruiserweight-sized dudes around. That's always a winning formula.

Main Event - WWE NXT Championship: Carmelo Hayes © vs. Ilja Dragunov TRUE Main Event - NXT North American Championship: Dominik Mysterio © vs. Mustafa Ali vs. Wes Lee NXT Women’s Championship: Tiffany Stratton © vs. Thea Hail NXT Tag Team Championship: Gallus (Mark Coffey and Wolfgang) © vs. Tony D’Angelo and Stacks NXT Debut: Gable Steveson vs. Baron Corbin Weapons Wild Match: Roxanne Perez vs. Blair Davenport Pre-Show Match: Nathan Frazer, Dragon Lee, Yulisa Leon, and Valentina Feroz vs. Noam Dar, Oro Mensah, Lash Legend, and Jakara Jackson

Rhythm and Blues too. Even if Greg did change his gimmick to match Honky's, it was still odd. I assume Ax is the talented one in your mind? While I don't think Crush was that bad - maybe limited, but he handled himself well enough - Bill Eadie has a major career as The Masked Superstar long before ever becoming Ax. Rock 'n Sock was rightly one of the first mentioned, but Stone Cold and Mankind is a great forgotten example of this.

Regal and "The Earl of Eaton" Robert (Bobby) Eaton is a classic example.

Even though this adversely affects the quality, Tony is wise enough to realize than ROH-only shows would not draw an audience and would only be a money pit.

Part of me wonders if MJF and Starks both bounce after their contracts are up.

Oh wow, I had no idea. What an awesome accolade for the greatest voice of our generation. I still have no idea why AEW hasn't scooped him up. Anyway, I've seen every "Rocky" - except, ironically, the one with Hulk Hogan in it - but I've yet to watch any of the "Creed" movies. Eventually, I'm going to binge them all - including the completely unexpected recent director's cut of "Rocky IV." LOL. Are you making a joke, or are you the dipshit from the other board? I called him "pal" too. If you're said dipshit, PM me.

I'm arguing with an idiot on another message board who claims WWE 2K20 (a broken, buggy, indefensible, irredeemable disaster of a game) is better than AEW Fight Forever. If someone wants to say they prefer 2K22 or 23, that's at least a reasonable take, but 2K20 was a catastrophe. His big response: the eyeroll emoji. Exchanges like this make me glad that PWO exists. Things can get heated here, but it's respectful and intelligent for the most part.

I'm still salty that "Das Wunderkind" Alex Wright never made the transition to WWE after WCW went out of business.

He's 18 years old. I didn't see the match, but he looked really smooth in clips. Of course it helps that Swerve was there as the veteran. What was wrong with the kid?

Brian Pillman Jr. is apparently gone. He looked like an absolute dork in his feud with MJF, but he also exposes AEW's complete inability to pivot when something doesn't go according to plan. Why not even try a heel turn to see what would happen? (Or did they do that on Dark/Elevation and I missed it?)

I can help with this, at least. Left and right on the d-pad (the arrows, not the sticks) will make scrolling much faster.

I'm almost at the end with Eddie Kingston in RTE, and I haven't gotten a chance at unlocking either Show or Brodie. Maybe I lost the wrong matches or picked the wrong options? Who knows. Also, if you don't beat Show in three minutes (not sure about Brodie), you're fucked because the game auto-saves after that, and you have to start all over again. That's pretty annoying. If I'm wrong, and I hope I am, please help a good brother out. The Owen grind feels quasi-disrespectful, even though it wasn't intended that way. Cody and Aubrey, thankfully, are easy to get - as you said (I already have both).

That's entirely subjective. I wanted a fun game with old school pick-up-and-play gameplay that wasn't the dire dogshit WWE 2K has been feeding us with a shovel for years, and I got that. Does that mean there's not room for improvement? Of course not. CAW is awful, even by the standards of 20 years ago. I'm not as hard on Road to Elite as most people are, but I never put much stock into thinking it would be anything special in the first place. It's a fun diversion. What I do hate is grinding to unlock a bunch of wrestlers - and whatever else - that should have been playable right out of the gate. Fight Forever isn't perfect, but at least it's not boring like almost every WWE game over the past decade has been. WWE 2K22 was briefly on PS+ Extra, and I loathed it with the intensity of a thousand suns. Broken, unintuitive, completely irritating in just about every way. I believe there's a trial for WWE 2K23 now, but I don't care enough to bother. @The Man in Blak's post covers the pros and cons of Fight Forever nicely.

Nowhere is charging $90 for it, are they? It's $60 for the base game (either physical or digital). I paid $70 and change for the Elite Edition (digital). Whether that's worth it is its own debate, but it's definitely not $90 that I can see - unless, maybe, you mean outside the U.S.? Then I don't know.

This deserved more replies. A big "what could have been" with his career. He was never a "super worker" or whatever, but he had great personality and charisma.

Lots of red and orange options, @Blehschmidt, but definitely a distinct lack of decent beards to use them on.

I will check the red part and get back to you, but I can tell you now that beard styles in general are disappointingly limited.

My early impressions of AEW Fight Forever: Everything looks smooth and solid, very easy to pick up and play, fun. I played Eddie Kingston vs. Orange Cassidy and me vs. PAC. CAW is very limited (so no Kamala for me), but it's good enough for me to create a reasonable facsimile of myself. Not exactly realistic to my body type, etc., but it's wrestling, so I guess I'm on steroids now. Haven't tried Road to Elite yet, or whatever it's called. Cody needs to be unlocked. Probably a few others. Cool feature: When you create a CAW, you get the "...is ALL ELITE" banner, but it goes by quickly, so I hope there's a way to see it again so I can screenshot it.

No worries. But definitely post it here when it's up. In the meantime, I'll play it tomorrow and post my initial impressions.

Preloads for the PS4 and PS5 version are now up! PS4 took about an hour for my friend to download. PS5 took me mere minutes. I have access to both versions (digitally). Looking forward to reading your review on the 28th!

Konnan addressed it on his podcast. https://itrwrestling.com/news/konnan-slams-aew-stars-for-their-recent-conduct/

Only a few more days until the first major non-WWE wrestling game in decades... I just took a look at the site, and I really like that these reviews dive into a game's accessibility or lack thereof and is honest about whether the game was completed or not. No idea if this is you - I'm guessing not, since someone else reviewed WWE 2K23, and I assume that's you - but this seems like a fair review of Cannon Dancer: Osman. https://gamecritics.com/jeff-ortloff/cannon-dancer-osman-review/ I ended up importing Cannon Dancer: Osman physically. It's not as great as I was hoping, but I don't regret getting it or anything. The WWE 2K23 review is also great, but I can't say whether I agree or disagree because I haven't played it. I've been sick of WWE games for a while now. WWE 2K22 was briefly on PS+ Extra, and I hated it instantly. Everything about it just irritated me, for whatever reason. Here's hoping Fight Forever is more my vibe.