BomberPat

5 minutes ago, thescottishchamp87 said:

I think there more to this as Sean McMahon who was behind OWE UK is behind NothingElseOnTV.  

Well, then he's deleted their Twitter account too, by the looks of it.

He's also changed his Facebook profile and cover photos to all black, probably in the hope that no one will track him down.

None of this really feels like the actions of an honest promoter inconvenienced by visa issues, does it?

"OWE UK" did Tweet out an email address to use for refunds. Now that their account has been deleted (and the promoter's too, by the looks of it), that seems more dubious. "Delayed rather than cancelled" is like "you'll be able to use your ticket for a future event"; it's promoter-speak for "we can't afford to give you a refund".

I'm assuming none of the OWE lot are coming over now, but there's American talent booked on those shows - depending on if/when flights were booked, and who paid for them, they could be massively out of pocket if they can't get replacement bookings at such short notice. And it won't be easy, considering everyone else on the card will be after them too.

Absolutely have to mention Dustin Rhodes here. More "holy shit, he's still great" comebacks than anyone.

1 hour ago, JNLister said:

* Refuse to follow the law and see what people do about it

It'll be this. The story of politics in the last few years is of people realising that the "rules" are just a gentlemen's agreement and that you can break them more or less without consequence.

It's all about 77 year old Jimmy Valiant.

The "problem" with Hogan has always been that he works to a formula. It means that if he's put in there with interchangeable heels, he can work a Hulk Hogan match, and it'll always be functional. And if he's put in a controlled, structured environment like his match with Vince or The Rock, he'll be great.

But if he's put in against someone else who works to a formula - Flair, Triple H, Undertaker - if the two don't gel, it's pretty much unsalvageable. It's the same reason Goldberg/Undertaker was never going to work - they both have "their" match, and there's absolutely no middle ground where the two can slot comfortably together. 

Jericho's more diverse, and more adaptable, but he needs the right opponent to be great - and I think that's always been the case with him. To look at the Okada match, specifically - I think Okada's strength is that his own style is inherently very simplistic, and he tends to weave his signature spots into his opponent's match. Okada vs Suzuki is a Minoru Suzuki match, vs Shibata is a Shibata match, vs Omega is an Omega match. That doesn't work with Jericho, particularly at this point in his career, when he's also the guy who needs to wrestle his opponent's match to be great.

Shamrock had a match with Dan Severn in Australia over the weekend that got rave reviews. Hoping that surfaces somewhere.

4 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

 ditch this 'I'm still cool, guys!' rockstar shit. He looks like a parody now. 

Isn't that kind of the point? He's a heel. We're not supposed to think he's a cool rockstar, we're supposed to think he's a middle aged man who thinks he's a cool rockstar.

As irritating as it is, I don't necessarily mind walking someone through how to do things - you have to learn somewhere. But she's useless.

Nothing will get me annoyed quicker than having to repeat myself. She was trying to find a students' information on our records, and asked me to show her how to do it for the umpteenth time (there's a step-by-step guide on the exact same page she's using, but no, I have to explain it). I tell her how it works, she's nodding and saying "yes" to all of it. Two minutes later, she says it's not working - I look, and she's entering the student surname in the student number field. Both are very clearly labelled, and if she'd taken two seconds to actually stop and think, she'd recognise what she's doing wrong.

But it's little mistakes like that every five minutes, usually accompanied by her saying, "I don't think the system is working properly". Yeah, it can't be that you're getting it wrong, or not paying attention, it has to be that "The System" isn't working. Obviously.

Completely burned out on the current job. I don't hate it, but just struggle to get remotely motivated any more, and small problems that never used to bother me now grind me down all day. I have a new colleague who, in theory, should be lightening my workload, but I spend so much of my time answering the same stupid questions over and over again that it feels like I get less done than before.

To make matters worse, I just saw an advert for as close as I could get to a dream job in Jersey - Animal Records Administrator at Jersey Zoo - which just plays to most of my strengths professionally, is in my favourite place, and exactly the sort of thing I want to be doing. But it's only 20 hours a week, which I can't afford to do, and a six month contract, so can't really take the risk - particularly as I have a three month notice period.

So that's left me miserable, as it feels like dangling a carrot of a job I'd be happier in.

He has a decent stand-up special from way back when, though admittedly I haven't watched it in more than ten years, so it might not have aged well.

Between Two Ferns was good fun, though. I'll always remember him asking Hillary Clinton, "do you ever look at what Donald Trump is doing and think to yourself, 'well, I could afford to be a little more racist"?.

14 hours ago, TheToeSucker said:

Are we then meant to think that the WWE's "horsewomen" are as legit as The MMA Horsewomen?>

How do you mean "legit"?

5 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

How often has Triple H used his 'King of Kings' music? Is it just one he pulls out for big WrestleMania matches or was there a period where he had it regularly?

Cracking piece of entrance music, that song.

I'm pretty sure there was a brief period where he used it regularly, around 2013, when he first started using the "King Of Kings" nickname. 

Since then, there was a time (maybe he still does this) when he was using "King Of Kings" if he was there in a non-wrestling capacity (i.e. as one of The Authority), and "The Game" when he wrestled.

3 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

Completely agree. It's felt the last few years that too many matches feel the same. Built on a base of dives, superkicks, "MMA" leg kicks and armdrags.

WWE do a decent job of managing it through their road agents but it does slip through. I think it's come about as the average size of the guys working has come down and they've come through the same development centre.

It is worse in AEW, mainly because some cunt insists on screaming TOPE SUICIDA after every one like it's the first one he's ever seen.

I think coming through NXT/the Performance Centre, and then the over-exposure of WWE TV style, is the problem. Wrestling used to be a really diverse range of styles - one of my favourite things about watching mid-90s WCW is seeing how they span southern wrestling, WWF style main events, lucha and Japanese junior stuff all in one show - but has become increasingly homogenous. 

But, beyond that, it's about agenting/production. I've been backstage at very small indie shows where they have effectively a sign-up sheet on the wall, with things like "suicide dive", "apron bump", "fighting in the crowd" and so on, and wrestlers sign their names against them to say they're planning it in their match, so you know when you're risking repetition. Or where, before the doors open, the promoter asks everyone, starting with the main event, if there are any spots they want protecting for their match, so not to be used elsewhere on the card. 

It's such a simple thing, and something that frustrates me so much when I see people not manage to adhere to it. Repetition of key spots is my biggest bugbear in all of wrestling.

It's a little different for shows like All Out, where it's got a "supercard" feel, and the crowd are already effectively a captive audience, but my rule of thumb is that a show should be an exercise in teaching people how wrestling works. The opening match shouldn't have anyone leave the ring and should end clean. The following match might have people leave the ring, maybe the heel gaining an unfair advantage by taking a breather on the outside to stall for time, and maybe including some cheating, to establish what the boundaries are. Third match? Then you've taught the crowd that the match happens inside the ring, but that a bad guy might try and use that to his advantage by breaking things up for a while - and that's when you throw in a dive from the babyface to show that the heel can't get away that easily, but maybe end the match on a heel finish to show that sometimes, cheating works and bad guys win. Everything after that is basically left wide open, within reason, as now the crowd understand how things work. That's - very broadly - my philosophy, anyway.

19 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

JR pointing out the fucking Topes in every match during a PPV main event is also hopefully ringing some alarm bells about their quality control.

Not that it excuses them, but it's a cross-industry problem. NXT UK Takeover was full of identical suicide dives in concurrent matches, and had the Crippler Crossface used in three matches, two of them (IIRC) one after the other.

Asterix in multiple languages is fantastic, just to see the different ways they approach the pun naming conventions.

5 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

There's been no video packages explaining their past, no mini-documentaries on what happened to Player Uno and Stupefied, nothing.

Honestly, I'd rather them barely do more than allude to them having been the Smash Bros. The people who need to know, will know. Excalibur can, like he did when they first appeared, say "I know who they are!", without naming them.

But I'd rather, if they're going with the Dark Order gimmick, they just establish them as wholly new characters. But unless I've missed something on the YouTube stuff I don't watch, they've given them no promo time or character development whatsoever. So I still don't really know who or what the Dark Order are, in AEW terms. And if they're going to be a legitimate heel threat, it's definitely too soon to have a team like the Best Friends risk undermining their credibility as scary heels by calling them "Spooky Perverts". But at the moment, that's all they are - Spooky Perverts.

I'm hoping once they have TV, there will be more of an effort to teach the audience who people are, and the extent to which the AEW version of themselves is informed by, or separate from, their former personae. Because while it's clear that we're expected to know that, for example, Shawn Spears is Tye Dillinger. But are we supposed to know that Evil Uno is the same Player Uno from CHIKARA, or are we supposed to see him as a brand new character for AEW purposes?

8 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

Well, I might as well accept defeat at this point. The Dark Order are not getting over. What works in a community center in Canada in front of a couple hundred fans who watched these two go from lovable babyfaces to an indy Ministry Of Darkness, obviously isn't going to work in an arena full of people who weren't watching CHIKARA or PWG pre-2013 (despite the fanbase's insistence of being smart and knowledgeable about the non-WWE product and all that). The Dark Order isn't a good gimmick for this audience, and it's made worse knowing that they'd be insanely over just working as their original Super Smash Bros characters.

There's two things going on here - one is something that I noticed from All In; where they book indie talent that exist outside of The Elite/PWG sphere, the crowd have seemed fairly down on them, so I don't think they're as "informed" as they might like to think. There definitely doesn't seem to be much of a serious following among the AEW diehards for CHIKARA, or pre-Elite PWG, for example.

 The indy Ministry of Darkness gimmick just doesn't work because they can't do a clean break from Super Smash Bros. If they're not doing a video game gimmick, he shouldn't still have a name referencing his origin as Player Uno, Stu shouldn't be dressing up as Kratos, they shouldn't have henchmen named after a Minecraft baddy, and they shouldn't have a ton of their moves given cute video game reference names. It seems like they want the advantages of having new characters to play with, but don't want to risk losing any credibility they've already gained under their earlier gimmicks. And I think that's a balance AEW will continue to struggle with as they work out just how much they can afford to assume prior knowledge from their audience.

Bea visibly sandbagged Sadie on a gorilla press in that match. 

None of us know the full story of what went on backstage, or anything more than the social media gossip about what went on in Japan, but it's clear that Bea wasn't cooperating when they were in that match. And if the heat stems from Bea and Ospreay calling Sadie unprofessional, then it's a bit rich to actively try and sabotage someone's TV debut.

42 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

Bate kicking out of a power bomb at one as though he was about to start Hulking up, to then straight after take the fall after a clothesline. Like, what on earth?

Tyler took WALTER's biggest move, managed to power through, but it took his last ounce of energy - having just wrestled for the better part of an hour, including lifting a man twice his size on to his shoulders - to do so, and he had nothing left after taking the clothesline. It couldn't really be simpler.

It wasn't Gargano vs. Cole, it was a million miles away from "near falls for the sake of it". Actual true "near falls" I could think of maybe four or five in this match, tops.

I don't see how you can complain that you're not buying into every fall because it doesn't feel like it could be the finish, but then in your next breath complain that Bate took a fall to a move you weren't expecting to beat him, that's all.

On 8/11/2019 at 4:11 PM, LCJ said:

Netflix have got a Lupin the 3rd feature length cartoon from 1979 called “the Castle of Cagliostro”. Was quite surprised to see it on there as Lupin the 3rd isn’t very well known in the UK (or the US for that matter). The animation still looks good today. Definitely not a kid’s cartoon though.

It's an early, pre-Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki film - released in the early '90s in the UK, as manga/anime started to make waves here, and Ghibli in particular started garnering attention. Probably made its way on to Netflix as Ghibli are quite resistant to putting their stuff on streaming services, so they'd have gladly taken any Miyazaki work they could get their hands on.

Watched the first episode of Carnival Row last night. 

It feels like someone half-remembering a China Mieville book. All big fantasy ideas, but painted in a palette of exclusively grey. Every cliché imaginable, and dripping with the sense that it thinks it's being far more clever than it is. I'm willing to give it a chance in case it picks up once an hour of exposition is out of the way, but it's not got off to a great start.

Considering they're using the Fae/other mythical beasts as an allegory for refugees and oppressed minorities, I'd have liked to have seen a little more diversity in the types of mythical creatures, and the types of people portraying them. Half of them being given "begorrah begorrah" Oirish accents (because they're magical fairy people, obviously) I can already see getting on my nerves as it goes on.

Katherine Ryan's first Netflix is special is fantastic but, yeah, second one is naff. I don't know if it's the pivot to trying to sell stand-up to a US market that made the difference, but it's just dreadful.

Chapelle's new stuff is shit, and being lauded by tedious people who'd probably hate it if they couldn't weaponise it as agreeing with them. To think that a guy who walked away from millions because he was uncomfortable with how some of his material was being received would just resort to lazy slurs and "political correctness gone mad" bollocks. Light-years away from, "game, blouses", in any case.

I watched the film last night in preparation for the series, having not watched it since I was a kid and it terrified me. While the puppet work and so on is masterful, the opening narration is a mess, and the whole film is just a mess of cliché and exposition. I have no idea how it's ended up garnering a sequel/prequel series, but I'm still going to give it a go.

• They need to drop the Casino Battle Royal gimmick. Pre-shows shouldn't start with me feeling like I need to grab a notepad to jot down everything the ring announcer is saying. Very little drama, as individual entrants don't get enough of a "holy shit, it's them" reaction. The first one made a bit of sense as they were gimmicking it up to fit the Vegas theme, but why do it in Chicago? This match was worse than the men's one on the first show, because it was so unstructured, with so little focus on what individual women were doing - the biggest eliminations, and big staredown moments, just felt like they happened at random, poorly paced and poorly shot. Bea Priestley waiting around on the ring apron to get eliminated by Britt Baker was embarrassing. Mercedes Martinez is superb, and I hope they keep her around.
   
• Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy are the breakout stars of this promotion. The pop when 'Saurus tagged in, and his first flurry of offence, was superb - it's such genuine fan adoration, too, it doesn't feel like being trying to be cool, they just love their act. I think they could do without Marko Stunt being part of the act, but the way they basically used him as a weapon in this match was fine. As long as Stunt isn't getting a ton of offence in, there's a spot for him, but he should be a Spike Dudley, not a Rey Mysterio.
   
• PAC vs. Omega was, nasty dives into the guardrail aside, superb. Fantastic to have PAC on the show, as thus far too much of AEW has been wrestlers the audience will cheer because they're cool indie guys, so it's good to have another proper irredeemably shithouse of a heel around. Loved the finish - made PAC look like a killer, but also raised questions about Omega. They seem to be going with an angle where his usual routine - a string of big moves to set up a well-protected finish - isn't working for him, and he's going to have to change up his gameplan. If that's the "sports-based presentation" they're talking about, I can get behind that.
   
• Loved the Cracker Barrel Crash, even though it probably wasn't "good" by most measures, it was just good bonkers fun. I know he's not well liked around here, but I love Jimmy Havoc managing to go almost the entire match without taking a single bump while the other two are killing themselves. What a pro.
   
• Ladder match was too much. I'm burned out on those teams against each other, it wasn't half as good as their Triplemania match, and it just brought out the worst excesses in everyone involved. Some creative and insane spots, but so few of them mattered, because you were just waiting for the next one. It was always going to be that, though.
   
• Cody vs Spears was a typical Big Cody Rhodes Match. Tully was great value for money, and MJF made sense given the story to be Cody's cornerman, though Cody's going to look early '90s Sting levels of gullible when MJF eventually turns on him - which I was expecting in this match, which made it hard to get invested at times as it felt like, "this can't be the finish, something else has to happen". When MJF eventually turns, it'll be another weird step in the Cody Rhodes heel/face dynamic - one of the most obvious heels on the roster will have to visibly turn heel, on a guy who already had Shawn Spears turn heel on him moments after a match in which he worked heel. 
  Cody's strengths lie in this kind of story-heavy match, but it still felt like it was lacking, and trying too hard to be an epic story - they still suffer a little from doing too much "Tell, Don't Show"; Shawn Spears turned on Cody on the second show, so they're having to cobble together backstory by having the announcers tell us at great length that they've been best friends for 13 years or whatever. But the audience have never seen them be best friends, so it's difficult to buy into. They do the same thing with Britt Baker and Bea Priestley as "hated rivals" - just telling us they are every five minutes isn't going to make it so.
   
• Main event was fine. Largely very back-to-basics and simplistic, which it probably needed to be. I'm starting to warm to Hangman Page as a Magnum TA cowboy babyface, but it didn't feel like he delivered at that level here. His promo in the build was fantastic old-school face work, and Jericho getting his eye busted up to call back to that injury was a nice touch. Jericho was the right choice to win, but it's all about how they book Page from here to get him back to this point, but as a more viable contender. That will be the first real test of AEW's ability to make stars, and tell stories.
  
  And, fucking hell, I joke about the Judas Effect all the time, but the mad bastard has got it over. First person to kick out of that is going to be a made man.

EDIT: Another couple of thoughts on the women's battle royal - Teal Piper has absolutely no business being in the right now, you can tell she's barely started training. 
If Brandi Rhodes is able to eliminate some of the biggest threats in the match by herself, why does she need Awesome Kong as her back-up? Is she a cowardly heel who hides behind her bodyguard, or a noble babyface standing beside her husband, or a competent wrestler in her own right? She basically didn't interact with Kong in the match at all.