WeeAl

It was a terrible fight. Absolutely not the statement win that you would think it was. He took Lewis down with ease, and poor Derrick had nothing for him. But Almeida really didn't ever have Lewis in a lot of trouble, nor did he do any damage at all. The takedowns weren't hard enough earned that it showed a good test of his cardio either. Not sure we learned anything about either man that we didn't already know. 

Glad to see Nicolas Dalby get the win. I like him. Usually in action fights and this one was no different. He had to weather a storm in the first round but he out toughed Bonfim and then took him to the woodshed in the second round. 

8 hours ago, Gay as FOOK said:

Man Edge looks crap in that poster. He looks like some dude having a mid card feud with Matt Morgan on TNA. He's the one guy where the haircut really didn't do him any favours. Gotta be full profile with his arms up and a trenchcoat on these posters to look the star. 

I thought Edge was about to have an asthma attack on Dynamite this week he was that out of breath. 

Yeah I agree with Dai here, folding Bellator into PFL is the move, or not buying it at all and scooping up the bits you want after it folds. Bellator have lost their TV deal, so now the first port of call will be finding anyone that'll take a chance on a bust third brand at a time when all these media companies are cutting spending. 

1 hour ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Normal football club.

 

Jesus Christ. Obviously this situation is doing everybody loads of favours. 

Alistair Black and his dimmer switch can fuck off. 

I'd be well up for that. Something nice and fresh for both men to get their teeth into, right when they would need it. It'd be a fascinating pairing actually that I would have a hard time seeing how it would fare out. 

Part of the problem is going to be that Jones will be out that long (again) that Aspinall/Sergei are probably going to want to fight/defend the interim belt as well. Otherwise they are going about a year without a payday. Whilst they are probably both getting some of a bump for this, neither will be on a champion's contract for it until they win the belt. Can they afford to sit out if they aren't injured? I expect one of them defends the IC belt against Cyril Gane in the spring/summer. 

I feel for Stipe here in this one. This was the only fight left for him as well that must have held any interest at his age. He probably won't be getting/won't be taking the fight with Jones in a year's time if it's back as a possibility. 

Interim titles eh? Gotta love 'em. The Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight divisions are a special breed of fucked up all of their own. Even Tony Khan would give himself a headache if he was to make this shit up to this extent. 

Is that in an MMA Fight? Or some kind of weird mix rules thing? Or Karate?

Today is the day we all knew would arrive sooner or later . . .

https://www.mmafighting.com/2023/10/25/23931315/jon-jones-injured-sergei-pavlovich-vs-tom-aspinall-set-for-interim-heavyweight-title-at-ufc-295

Jones tears his pec, both he and Stipe are off the MSG card. Well, I for one, am shocked. 

It's thrown me that this is on this afternoon. I'm glad of that though, as next weekend I'd end up seeing spoilers before the fight (like is going to happen with Ngannou and Fury). 

United are playing at the same time though so I'll probably start watching the main card, pick it back up at HT and then again at Full time. That way I can still fast forward through the mental amount of down time. 

Name value alone the top two fights are better on a poster than what they were replacing, but in far from ideal conditions. I'd love to see Volk do it, but despite absolutely giving up on  putting doubt near his name some time ago, there's no getting around that his prep will be less ideal for this one than the previous. Let's see. 

For Kamaru I think this is a last roll of the dice at being a top guy. He can vault himself back into a really strong position in a new weight class with a win here. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the winner here get Strickland next and jumped ahead of DuPlessis.  Adesanya is taking time away, Pereira has moved up. 

For Usman I think this was a sensible gamble, whereas for Volkanovski? He has the most to lose of any of the four men in the top two fights. He was always going to get another crack at the title at Lightweight, but losing this one might mean he never gets to prepare for another go at it. 

My guess is Islam wins by a slightly, slightly clearer decision than the time before. And Chimaev to KO Usman. 

Fingers crossed for Johnny Walker that the next time he falls over, it's a tumble into a spinning heel kick onto Ankalaev's chin. 

Yeah, that fight, despite how short it was, still told us more about Grant Dawson's ceiling than what is to come for Bobby Green. 

Good to see Drew Dober doing Drew Dober things. Though I think that could have been doing with being stopped a bit earlier. 

Joaquin Buckley put a bit of a beating on Morono, especially in that third round. Hopefully he can channel a bit of Jared Cannonier with this weight class change and go on some kind of a run here. 

5 hours ago, Loki said:

The fight scenes in Wick 4 were great, but as a film it was too long and too much plotty po-faced talking.  Cut 40 minutes and it would have been better.  

My sentiments exactly when my brother and I were coming out of it. This was what we differed on as we chatted about it afterwards. It fell into this modern trap of just going on and on and on. There's no need for a straight up action film to approach anything near that duration. It's a stunt show - keep it snappy. 

The three best spots on this show were MJF building up to and hitting the bodyslam, the four way abdominal stretch in the six man tag, and the jumper spot in the main event. Hopefully more of those people that kill themselves on a routine basis begin to incorporate some more of this type of thing. 

Yeah I came across that last night or the night before maybe, think it was through ESPN's MMA IG page. It's a video of Costa in the hospital and then at home, with a 3/4 circle of stitches all around his right elbow. Caption being, if I remember correctly, that the fight is in jeopardy. Jeopardy? You mean tantamount to a death row sentence if he were to step in there like that with Chimaev. Card's cursed lads. 

Not overly surprised at that. It looked pants on paper too. The Bellator curse continues. 

I'm not getting it like the rest of you are. I think it might depend how much of a fan you were of the Wyatt Family, leading to being more interested in an act like this. I have no interest in them. I hope it changes if they are going to be regularly featured, but that they ended up in this spot, a PPV tag match against the hottest double act in the company (pre injury) is just a mental decision in my book. 

The Kingdom are just lucky who they happened to have a past with, as these two guys aren't much cop at all either. They play their parts well as lackeys, but that's absolutely what they are, this generations Edgeheads. MJF if he ever faces them should beat the pair of them with one Kangaroo Kick in the first 10 seconds and go back out for a spin on his boat. 

Who the fuck are TMNT, what was that promo all about and why did they not have turtle shells on their back? 

Didn't think this was much of a show at all really, way too much going on that I had little to no interest in. 

(Writing all this not having seen the PPV or this week's Dynamite yet - the best thing for the promotion may be some more regular big shows, but they should have expanded Rampage to 2 hours instead of doing Collision. There's too much stuff going on which is making it a nightmare to follow. If the regular PPV's meant that they were shorter, 3 hours maximum, then that would help a bit I guess.)

Exactly the same feelings as you do Wand, about Lins and Morono. Both just feel like templates for create-a-fighter in a video game mode. Find the two of them dull as dishwater. Luckily enough both are paired with exciting fighters here. I've a feeling that main card could be looking at 3 first round KO's. I've gone and fucked it now, but there's some potential for fireworks in most of those fights. 

That's a scary KO there. The type that changes the recipients career in the blink of an eye. 

Hopefully works out for Brunson and he can nab the odd win and some nice pay cheque's at the end of his career. 

Lads, I can't catch up these days. Between life getting in the way before and after I went away on holidays, it's been an absolute pain in the arse trying to get caught up on all the wrestling, sport and all that carry on.

The last UFC card I got watching was before Holloway/Zombie. I haven't been able to make time to go back and watch any of that stuff in between. I'm not even going to try now, I'm just going to reset and maybe catch what handsome Drew does this weekend. 

Hopefully Dawson wind here too, as we know Bobby Greene's ceiling, but at least we'll be able to get a bit more of an idea where Dawson stands in the pecking order. 

57 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

 

There's a massive amount of wastage in the civil service and the NHS. 

Oh absolutely. Part of that is a wasteful culture, but a large part of it is the constraints of the system that's been created. Two such examples. 

A masterkey recently broke for one of our stores. Needs to be locked due to the chemicals and machinery that's kept in there, and that on the other side of the store you have a double door that opens to the outside of the building so, you want the internal door to be lockable as an extra measure. Problem being several people need access to this store, so I wanted more than one new masterkey cut in case of loss, it snapped etc. Again, knowing the arm would be put in, I still didn't expect a bill of more than £100. Turns out there was an excuse that the centre didn't want spare master keys floating around, so I had to look at alternative options. One being a key box on the outside of the wall. That was dismissed too.

We ended up getting a combination lock put into the door, as the other two options had been culled by various people.  Of course the combination lock, which I was told was the choice I had to go for, was the most expensive option of the three. When the supplier and contractor got hold of it, purchasing and installing said lock turned out to be £750. I'd have been more than happy with three keys at £20 quid a pop. 

A Friend of mine had to move a floor buffer one time in an admin building. A two floor affair. The only lift they had was one of those filing type lifts, fit to put boxes of charts and stuff in, but not a person. Unfortunately, the guy didn't lock the handle in place, and the handle dropped horizontally when the lift moved, pulling the buffer handle up through the plasterboard on the outside of the lift. He knew he was going to get in trouble for it, but didn't expect that they would threaten termination over it, using the excuse of the "extent of the damage caused". The extent being, a straight line hole in a plaster board wall going up a few feet. The price quoted by the contractor and the reason the fella was in such diff's, up until the union saved his bacon and calmed the situation down? £10,000.

One of the other guys in the department, joiner by trade, when he heard about all the fuss, offered to step in and fix it himself,  saying he could do it for £150. £180 if he wanted to keep a few quid for himself. Needless to say, he didn't - couldn't - get the gig and the budget got bled for another five figures. 

In the same vein as @ReturnOfTheMackand @SuperBacon have said there, our health trust got word today that we have to try and cut £25M in spending, between now and the end of the financial year, on such things as new/replacement furniture, equipment, stock, stationary, printing, travel, training etc. 

On the same day, before the word came down about the above, my boss had gotten our estates department to do him a favour and put up a small bit of an old bench in a repurposed area of the canteen, to try and fit some extra seating in via two or three bar stools that we were planning to purchase. He had recently gotten a couple himself for the house that were £70 for the pair from IKEA. Even though they are going to stick the arm in, it can't be too bad. 

So we went to the "proposed supplier" the first in line for the contract for such stuff. There's no prices on their website because you have to phone up, tell them what organisation you are and then you get put through to someone that deals with your account etc (so they can figure out how to charge, is the commonly held thought, right or wrong).

So, a single bar stool, that doesn't cook you breakfast, doesn't massage your back or give you a happy ending nor fuck all. It doesn't even look particularly nice. They want £587+VAT each. In Northern Ireland. The whole system is rotten to the core. Needless to say, our new coffee bar bench will now be repurposed again, as an empty storage shelf, for all the stock that we're no longer allowed to purchase. 

Not quite sure why people think Darby has gotten good on the mic. I think he's dreadful still and being in the same talking segments with someone like Christian shows him up on that front. Anyway, unfortunately Darby is likely to be winning here and ending Christian's reign before it really gets started. Unless Christian manages to put together a new group tonight with a bunch of people with dead dad's. Jungle Boy, Nick Wayne etc. Christian can adopt them all and retain his moniker as the world's greatest dad. 

I didn't like that Jay White and MJF segment at all. Felt like it went downhill once both started talking. Staring at each other from opposite corners, they had me interested then. I felt less invested by the end, which is not what they were going for I'm sure. I suppose it's a redirect and trying to come up with the new direction on short notice, but this is Tony's fault for having nothing else going on for his champion other than an absolutely worthless title defence at the PPV. MJF and White will knock it out of the park at Full Gear though, I'm pretty sure of that. 

Hangman and Swerve feels like it'll be pretty great tonight too. Both men need a win though. AEW, more often than not, put over the hometown guy (not always, as we've seen recently with Britt Barker etc) but it has me leaning more towards Swerve getting the W here. Hopefully we'll be looking at a series between them here though over the next couple of months. 

There's a particular spot that really needs to fuck off in AEW. Dives? Not what I'm getting at. Canadian Destroyer's? Gave up on complaining about that a long time ago. The spot I'm fucked off with? Post match handshakes. Jesus Christ. THREE of them on the one night? Another ROH trope that can do one. 

This ROH stuff needs to go too. Keep the world title if you want, but merge it with the pure belt. Unification of the TV/TNT, Tag, Women's and six man belts is a must. With the amount of gold rattling around in AEW, If you aren't a champion then you must be a jobber. 

It was clear as day that Mox was hurt right from the off. Match should have been ended on one of those rolling pin exchanges right away. Hopefully Moxley makes a recovery before long and it doesn't end up a Danielson/Cole type of lingering injury. I hope they keep the belt on Fenix for a bit now though, and try to run with the unfortunate situation and see what mileage they can get out of Fenix in this spot. Good time to separate him and Pentagon on TV as singles acts. 

Eddie beating Claudio was great. Really enjoyed that match, as well as the main event. The crowd were hot as hell for both matches. Not sure what's next for the four of them, but Claudio and Wheeler making themselves a weekly tag team, and Joe chasing the TNT belt would be fine by me. I've got to think it's Max and Cole at Full Gear?