garynysmon

In fairness though, its neither the default state of wrestling to have one juggernaut enjoying a monopoly-like market share.

Personally I think Durrant is a step above both King and Bunting, but you never know.

Pretty interesting episode of Don Callis’ Killing the Town podcast with Josh Mathews this week. Fascinating listening if you’re into the art of commentary as it goes into how the WWE announcers are taught etc. Despite not being his biggest fan, it made me appreciate the art a little more. Also, delved back into the Lapsed Fan’s past shows and found good ones on the WWE Battle at the Royal Albert Hall and UK Rampage 92 (If you have many hours to spare!).

I don't think its a bad thing always, but there are obvious exceptions For instance, AAA/Lucha Underground and Impact share a lot but I don't think there's much crossover in viewership there, so no one is being over exposed (or exposed at all in the States since Impact moved to Pursuit...) Personally I think that ROH have been way too reliant on their relationship with New Japan and now they've lost the big name Americans to AEW, it seems to have lit a fire underneath them. May not be a bad thing in that case.

Yup, would agree with all of that really. A lot depends on if AEW are going to be doing house shows. You'd imagine they would if its a full time promotion, but it may be a slow burner. AEW are hardly going to be arsed if some of their midcard wrestlers are seen on Bein Sports or Twitch are they? Meltzer seems to think they won't go live every week and will opt for of tapings, at least to start off with.

AEW have signed Joey Janela and MJF but apparently both will still be allowed to carry on working for MLW. Seeing that Impact and MLW already seem to be happy to share talent (with AAA and Lucha Underground also in the mix), I wonder if we're heading for a situation where ROH and New Japan act as one booking block, MLW and AEW (and maybe Impact) forming another and the WWE obviously plodding along as they are. Interesting times. I don't recall a situation where so many promotions were working together.

Can't say that I'm shocked. The network they're on has as much prominence as some of the religious channels on Sky. Mind you, I wouldn't expect them to go anywhere. With the Fight Network losing UFC rights soon, its even more imperative that Impact stays on their channels which are currently in the process of being expanded to more countries. I lost a lot of interest last year, but the first episode of the year (which ironically no fucker saw) and the Homecoming PPV were great.

It may be a less than subtle dig at the WWE’a 50/50 booking. Personally I don’t think you need to be that elaborate, TNA tried something similar with a league table during the Bound for Glory series which was well intentioned but came off as a bit meh.

That would explain it! Anyway, watched a bit of Championship Wrestling from Arizona over the weekend and quite liked it.

Always thought it was a bit cringe tbh. While I’ve been watching some of the BDO, I’ve been more transfixed by episodes of the Indoor League on some obscure sports channel on Sky called Front Runner. Has anyone else watched it? I remember my Dad mentinoning it as the forerunner to televised Darts tournaments on TV but its a thing of pure joy. Last night’s episode, which I Sky plused, was from 1976 and featured some arm wrestling from a Leeds working mens club, a darts match between two women called Jean and Barbara and Leighton Rees’ first TV apperance. It looks like something that would be right up @PowerButchi‘s street tbh.

What I loved about Tony Green was how he’d pretend that the PDC didn’t exist and would enthusiastically go apeshit when a BDO player hit 100, just a week after Gary Anderson and Phil Taylor were hitting 180’s for fun down the road at the Ally Pally.

Well apologies then. I know they'd been carrying out some tests but wasn't aware it was a full blown channel until they started doing a song and dance about it last week.

Probably the closet thing we'll ever get to a return of the Wrestling Channel, but the Fight Network relaunched in the UK last week. Featured on channel 192 from 9pm every night, it seems to be showing a lot of Impact Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Hollywood, Preston City Wrestling and Smash Wresting from Canada and various MMA and Thai Boxing. The listings seem all over the place though. Its also on Freesat but not sure of the channel number, with noises that it may be launching on Freeview at some point too. If you're quick. last Sunday's Homecoming PPV is on at 9pm, followed by this week's Impact (which is usually shown every Sunday at 9pm).

I'm sure there's some kind of irony that things are really looking up for Impact and now we get all this uncertainty over AEW. I enjoyed Homecoming and the subsequent episode of Impact and like the direction they're heading. Financials, as always, is the main issue though. I can't say I'm exactly relaxed to see them basically begging the fanbase to take out a paid or amazon prime subscription to the new Twitch channel and fear this is just a way of making up the meagre revenue they were getting from Pop TV. I'd hazard a guess they aren't getting much, if anything from Pursuit if that's the case.

What’s great about that first clip is that it’s obviously all ad-libbed. There are plenty of examples during his early years in the WWF too. Can you imagine many today being able to carry that off? Most either haven’t been taught in the first place or the knack has been lost due to laziness and the dependency on over scripting.