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As they mentioned on Between the Sheets either this week or last: traditional Japanese booking involves guys returning from injury losing their first match. I kinda shoulda seen that coming, which is the best kind of shock booking tactic--the one that makes you slap your forehead afterward.

I'm watching and waiting for what happens to Kevin Dunn. If he goes, or "retires" himself, then I'll believe that Vince is really gone. How much of the change in Smackdown verbiage is due to Vince's declining involvement and how much of it is just McAfee being McAfee? He's a fanboy, but he's never been a guy to give much of a fuck about WWE Newspeak.

Oh, the dude is going to be yelling instructions at his pallbearers, no question.

WWE literally removed Brock from the Smackdown preview on their website, dude. You don't think that would have had people going "WTF?" And if SRS and Alvarez had either ignored it or said, "Something's happening but I can't say what" until after the fact, they would have been pilloried for that, too. What Alvarez reported is what happened: Brock walked out and they attempted to get him to return. And "kermit" on reddit, who's a confirmed insider who doesn't have a newsletter to hawk, corroborated the story as well.

Honestly I turned the TV off in disgust after the 3-count, so by the time they got to the post-match it was already too late for me.

When you pride yourself on wins and losses and records mattering, you don't get to play the "I lost, but I stood tall afterward" card. I would say this eclipsed that Orange Cassidy-Matt Hardy lumberjack match as the worst-booked result of a major match in AEW history.

The complete non-JIP version of Bret Hart vs. Tom Magee has been found. It aired on Middle East TV and turned up in that footage that's been getting posted lately.

No, that's FTR-Briscoes.

It's hard to measure in that specific case because Brett Sawyer, while competent, is not and never has been anyone's idea of a world-class worker. It may not be the best possible Jake match, period. But it's probably the best possible match that Jake or maybe anyone else could have had with him.

Jake has the Sawyer match (which is like ****1/2 or so and almost entirely due to Jake), the Steamboat match from Boston (which is also a very "Jake" match), and the Flair match from Mid-South. I suspect Jake's stock would go up if we had more Omni footage, especially if we found a long match against a guy like Ron Garvin.

I don't think so, because they set up Ruby Soho's possible involvement in the pre-match video. That was definitely a waste of the first "heel knocks out Aubrey Edwards" moment, though.

I'm not so sure Flair going 50/50 with the likes of George South didn't hurt him when Crockett was in the middle of a wrestling war and the other guy's champ was vanquishing monster after monster. If I were booker in that spot...yeah, I'd tell them, "Great match--now go back out there and do it again the right way." No, I'm not saying it was the lone reason among the myriad why Crockett went bankrupt...but I sure don't think it helped.

There's an honest to God chance we get an AEW-NJPW dream PPV with no Punk, no Danielson, no Omega, and no Okada. I know real life intervenes but that's absolutely unfathomable. Like, seriously, if you can't secure Okada for a late-June American PPV, don't fucking book a late-June date for the show. No one would have minded if they'd announced this show for October or whatever. All that said, I thought this was a really strong episode of Dynamite. Not every segment hit--JAS leeching off of Moxley and Tanahashi was staggeringly unnecessary--but most of them did. Ospreay-Harwood was fantastic and basically enough to make it a thumbs-up show on its own.

G-1 Climax is 4 blocks of 7 this year. Some notable first-timers include Filthy Tom Lawlor and JONAH. Only one AEW representative, though, and it's Lance Archer. Hopefully things are less up in the air next year and AEW can plan on Danielson being gone for a month. Deep lineup but maybe a minor disappointment given the lack of fresh names. The Japanese fans were hyped to see Archer come back, though.

Yeah, I don't really mind Tony being selfish in this situation. His guys are going to be sticking around. That Rampage was as good as Dynamite was weak. All the matches were excellent (well, the Lethal/Singh squash was what it was, but as squashes go it was fine). Red Velvet might now officially be my favorite worker in the women's division--she has cool offense, she bumps and sells great, and for her experience level she's good at the little things and fundamentals to boot. The two best non-match aspects of this show: 1.) Just having Excalibur & Tazz on commentary, and 2.) There was one dive on the entire show, by Ospreay in the main event.

Well...that's exactly what he's doing. The problem is, he's booking his TV not like a TV show but like one of those John McAdam compilation tapes he'd get in exchange for doing his website. As in, it's *all* "greatest hits and angles" and almost no filler. But when booking week-to-week TV, you *can't* do wall-to-wall "great matches" and angles if you want any of them to stand out. You need to have the bulk of your interviews go off normally so that it actually matters if one gets interrupted. You may need to actually do DQs to show that there are consequences for cheating and interfering (or dispense with the gaga entirely if you're insistent on all decisive finishes). I know it's a TV-based product now and those old tapes were a live event-based product, and I'm not saying he needs to "slack off" and intentionally hold back, but not every interview needs an interruption and not every match needs a post-match beatdown or staredown or confrontation.\ Tony has a habit of picking one of those old angles--Sammy Guevara smashing up Dan Lambert's car or belt is right out of the Memphis studio--but not really managing to get there organically. It's, "Let's have Sammy smash up Lambert's car just like Lawler with Dundee or DiBiase with Duggan" and then it's left at that to be inserted into the show. There's little, "How can we build to the point where Sammy smashes up Dan Lambert's car?" Instead of, "Hey, let's build up Marina Shafir over the course of a few weeks and then book an attack to set her up for a title match against Thunder Rosa," it's "I want to book Rosa vs. Shafir this week, so let's pre-tape an angle to air after we've announced the match and then book the attack after the match is over." A lot of AEW is built on a gross misinterpretation of Eddie Graham's "seven course meal" of wrestling card booking. A proper seven course meal is not a burrito followed by a steak followed by vegan lasagna followed by chicken parmesan followed by...The courses have to build and build and maybe back off a bit at times--appetizer to salad to main course to palate cleanser to second course to dessert, etc., and serve different functions instead of being a smorgasbord of fans "picking what they like." Look, I watch Dynamite every week and Rampage some weeks (since Rampage often conflicts with work). I order most of the PPVs. I like the product, and I don't think things are so bad that Tony has to reinvent the wheel here. But some of his booking problems have really started to become more glaring ever since Revolution, and last night's Dynamite in particular I found to be a clunker--a great main event, albeit one I didn't particularly care to see, saved it from being one of the worst episodes in the show's history.

Booing the content of Cole's promos and then chanting right along with his catchphrase seems pretty Pavlovian to me.

And it's not just that Adam Cole sucks, which he does--it's that he's horribly, horribly, horribly overexposed. AEW usually cycles guys off TV for a bit if they lose big blowoff or gimmick matches, but Cole was right back on TV after both Revolution and his Texas Death Match, none the worse for wear either time. When was the last time he wasn't on a damned Dynamite? Is he still popular? Fuck if I know or care. When has PWO ever concerned itself with who's popular when actually reviewing shows?

Tony Khan is proving himself to be a fine matchmaker. I'm no longer convinced that he's a particularly good booker. All the really compelling and logically-booked stuff seems to always revolve around Punk and/or MJF (and I say this as someone who hated MJF's promo last week--both the material and the delivery itself). O'Reilly-Moxley was a great match, hands down, no questions asked. "Great matches" in the star-rating sense are a dime a dozen nowadays. Give me a match that I'm compelled by and invested in who wins or loses that's *almost* as good as that one instead.

Quick: someone introduce Sammy & Tay to the works of Jerry Lewis.

Well, I didn't like a ton of the Loose Cannon Pillman stuff, either. I had the same reaction in Prodigy chats in 1996 that I did tonight--what is the POINT? What match are we building to? Where's the money? And it's not that I care about a promotion making money per se, but I want my wrestling segments to be building to something that *I* want to see and maybe be willing to pay for. Yeah, I know what Pillman was going for--a fat contract. Well, I don't give a fuck about Brian Pillman's finances. What was in it for us, the viewer? I don't think WCW had a clue and I'm not sure Pillman really did, either. The only guy who actually tried to utilize Pillman in a way to build to a match that people might care about and pay money to see was Heyman.

I THOUGHT HIS DELIVERY WAS *SHIT.* YOU HEARD, ME, ABSOLUTE SHIT. And that fucking "don't you dare cut me off" part to the production assistant...I've heard Michael Cole PPV ad-copy reads that sounded more organic and "real."

While I agree that that match could have fit in fine on the Buy-In, Kyle had injured Sting on Dynamite a few weeks ago, so it wasn't exactly lacking build or a story.

Some people are pointing out that Jake was already removed from the AEW roster page, but going by the Wayback Machine, he never appears to have been added at all. Which is weird, because he got an "...is #AllElite" graphic which usually means you're a full roster member.

No, and even in real time on Prodigy I was about the only person speaking up against it because I don't know what in the name of holy fuck it was supposed to accomplish other than to go, "fooled you." I mean, now, I *do* know what it was supposed to accomplish--get a fat contract for Pillman. But if he's not cutting me a check, so I don't give a shit--what was the Loose Cannon thing leading to on-screen? At least Heyman seemed to know where he was going with it.