The Gaffer

2024 is the year of ICOPRO.

It's not like they didn't do brawls all over the buildings during the Dunn era of production but I love the subtle differences in the spontaneity now, exemplified in that Sami entrance. The area's not been preset with those queue belts cordoning the fans off to the sides, you're not getting cuts to hide the actual movement through a bland hall that connects that presentable TV set concourse to the presentable TV set 'arena'. You've got wrestlers literally batting through crowds and the building Raw takes place in is an actual environment, not that weeks shell that a TV set is made inside. Love that shit.

Yeah, not a "That's it! World War 3!" person but this doesn't feel good at all.

Could do this all day but here's a few favourites. Have tried to stick with imagery I find genuinely impressive or weirdly evocative other than just "Here's the albums I like...:

Hap births!

I've not looked up any of the reception it has been getting so I'm glad I've not just gone mad in my high opinion of it, because lord knows I don't watch a lot of TV. Minor punchline spoiler but episode 4's...

Watched the first episode of Fallout there. Might be one of the best fan service from source material adaptations in recent memory. It's an absolute riot. Looking forward to getting stuck into the rest.

Not going to lie, it was my first time seeing the Final Testament at WrestleMania and I thought they looked cool in that entrance. Admittedly, as someone who reads video game novels you'd be better off wiping your arse with and still thinks Mudvayne were a pretty neat idea, I'm an absolute sucker for wafer-thin edgy tech goth shit.

Not a general AEW thread I know but just to chuck in some more positivity, I needed some cheering up tonight so I watched All In from Wembley again. Well...not all of it...but sort of like how I'd watch back X-Seven. Skim here and there, but sit there entranced for the best bits. It's interesting now how even on the night it sort of felt like the biggest night in company history came maybe a year after what actually was their biggest creative and momentum high point. All In seems like a show in spite of itself. Something built up on the good faith of shit that happened before its build up. But I don't mean to be negative about it. It's...insane. It's equally mad as living in a WWE boom period. Such a good show. Totally mad. The two guys in your main event coming out in the sunshine on the pre show to a molten response. They've always done that. Can they do it again? Fuck knows. But it'll be equally mad either way if that was it for them.

That felt like a preview of the post-Klopp era tonight from Liverpool. It's been a bit of craic, I suppose.

Can't believe this cynical, shit segment has inspired some more endless, Pro Wrestling is a Twat, "Just remember you're watching something that I'm well above now" chit chat.

Yeah I'd go so far as to say if they see a slight increase or decrease for the show it'll probably be completely arbitrary rather than circumstantial, despite how people will analyse it. There'd need to be a significant jump for any of this to have meant anything, I think.

Well that was a bizarre bit of television. I didn't think we'd actually get footage so I didn't have a reference point to sort of project how it might look or feel which it made it all the more strange. That live crowd footage is something though. WrestleCrap and "This would be in The Death Of..." are such outdated reference points, but they've genuinely created a monster one there. Historic and noteworthy from the perspective of a company's history, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Incredibly I don't feel like taking on the responsibility of any negative emotions myself for it as a stunt. I'll leave that to the dickheads who thought it was a good decision.

It's wrestling. No matter how far down the dark path you go, you just have the good guy from the tag team take enough of a beating that the bad guy - struggling with his conscience halfway up the ramp - eventually says "Fuck it", pelts it back down to the ring, and helps his road brother out. Fans will always eat it up.

Yeah it's because they couldn't get Austin but the conscience angle makes about as perfect a wrestling sense as you need there, I think. He's the on and off screen locker room morality guy, seeing the new authority figure come in and throw his weight around abusing his power. There was a promo baked in a few weeks back which foreshadowed the whole whacky Avengers ending too, where Seth was going on about Roman having a vice grip on the title in comic book terms like it was this cosmic grip that needed to be vanquished. Batshit, but that's what they're going for I guess. It's classic WWE-catches-up-on-culture. They're probably currently working on the technology to keep all their top stars on ice so that they can do shock entrances and spam finisher all over the place at WrestleMania 50 too.

All Khan said was that it's definitely backstage footage. The graphic doesn't mention Punk, a brawl or an altercation of any kind either. I think the most likely scenario is that they do one of those "No lies were told" bait-and-switches where footage from around the brawl - but never explicitly showing it or Punk - are shown and it's used as a prop/lead in to a worked angle.

This banal surge of Arsenal gloatposting is giving me a rash.

I saw it as Cody weighing up the situation and thinking "Sure, what's the worst that can happen, but let me take your one as collateral when you do it." Basically just gives them some good visuals to stick into the vignettes whenever Rock returns and they decide to build to the match.

They've pretty much already come out the losing end no matter what they do. It's pretty spectacular. Somebody said it on another page as well - and even though I didn't mind the promo in isolation - especially coming a week after Copeland's "We're the positive wrestling guys!" schtick it's just horrendous, completely hilarious decision making.

Think you might be pulling yourself back in, chief.

He's a lifer at a place where he's probably surrounded by a hundred people a week he considers family and loves it. You go on suffering sometimes. In fact, I hope Samantha Irvin is the one to narrate The Passion of the Cole on Peacock next month.

Crying Era has got me again.

I tried watching Punk/'Taker back last week because they chucked it up on YouTube and I was shocked at how awful the commentary was. It's like a reversal of that "You don't know how much of a good thing you have until it's gone" mentality. I knew it was bad at the time. It was a pubic domain opinion on WWE. We all agreed it was bad. But watching it back now - with it finally, officially being a bygone era - it's crazy how much it dragged its arse across the carpet of one of the matches I thought was a high point of those years. And I realised with a genuine pang of pity for the guy that my fixed image of Cole for all those years involved no movement because he wasn't permitted any. Hunched shoulders, focussed voice, taking a constant bollocking on the cans. He was like one of those greyscale, plugged-into-the-system slave people you see depicted for dramatic effect on conspiracy videos. JBL to the right delivering the big "We hate our audience" lines. King to the left doing his passionless face thing. Can you blame any of them for emoting? Of course it's all real. Anyone within shouting distance of gorilla's going to need talk therapy until at least WrestleMania 50. They probably have a dart board with Satan's face on it on the way out the curtain. People have probably been sneezing as a joke in booking meetings for months now.