BomberPat

really perfunctory episode of Dynamite. Nothing felt like it added anything or escalated anything going into All Out, which is a mad showing for the go-home show. They're doing Will Ospreay vs. Jon Moxley, which is a champion vs. champion match, a match between a guy who had his neck broken and career almost ended by the other guy - months of storyline between Mox and Ospreay with Will as a member of the Death Riders, and then Mox endorsing Will going into the All Out match, and you wouldn't know any of that from this build. It's being treated as a purely competitive deal between two wrestlers who have been kept apart, not a clash between those characters. There's been more focus on mad lad Gabe Kidd and the fucking United Empire in the build to this match than there has on the fact that it's Jon Moxley vs. Will Ospreay. Underneath it all, there's the question of what their relationship actually is now. There's the question of whether Ospreay learned enough from the Death Riders to be able to beat Moxley; a real "I taught you everything you know, but did I teach you everything I know?" set-up. There's the question of how much Mox now likes and respects Will, how far he is prepared to go to try and take him out, vs. how much Will has really forgiven Moxley for breaking his neck, and how far he would go to get revenge once he's actually in the position to deliver it. But they're not exploring any of that. Even after the Death Riders took out Francesco Akira last week, after Gabe Kidd has been threatening to murder Ospreay every week, Will's still doing friendly babyface "thank you Jon Moxley" promos. They finally got it so right with Ospreay vs. Omega after wasting months of time with the Death Riders bollocks, and I figured going to Will/Mox was just to round off the hanging threads of that storyline, but they've been taking it so slowly that I'm more convinced than ever they probably see out the rest of the year without finishing the Ospreay/Death Riders storyline. And if the plan isn't for Cope and Cage to turn heel, then Adam Copeland is fast becoming the worst babyface in the company. The promo he cut on Steve Borden was so obnoxious and condescending, and really counter-productive for a guy they're trying to build up as a future babyface star. The whole tone of treating a challenge for the tag titles as some kind of personal slight is just the least babyface behaviour going. And he wasn't much better in the three-way face-to-face, because he can't get through a promo without talking how important and legendary he is.

yeah, being able to see it in court would honestly be the dream at this point. I doubt it ever remotely goes that far, his claim form is amateurish bullshit, and he's said he's going to submit all the emails he's received as evidence - all they will prove is that he's consistently refused to engage with anything we've asked him to do, and usually in a really shitty and unprofessional way. That he's trying to claim we've failed to honour policy, when I've repeatedly quoted the policy at him to explain how he hasn't followed it, yet still thinks he's in the right is mental. The only part I have any sympathy for is that there's a month between him submitting the claim and us starting to process it. But that's because he sent it by post, despite no indication being given that he should do that. I can't blame him for not knowing that we're a team who largely work remotely and don't receive post, but when you've had an Excel file emailed to you, it's just common sense that it should be submitted by email, and that if you do send it by post instead, it wouldn't hurt to say "I've sent it by post, could you confirm receipt?", or even to ask that you have the right address! But even then, I lost any sympathy based on how he's behaved since then, and even if the delay were his only complaint, there's no legal recourse to that. I've sent all the paperwork and a timeline of events to Payroll and our Legal department for them to deal with, so it's likely completely out of my hands now. Explained it all to my team in our Teams chat so everyone could have a good laugh about it. I imagine he will continue to email us, as it's clear ours is the only email address he has and he's not smart enough to find someone else's, so I expect I'll hear from him again.

cunt's actually done it. Yesterday evening, we got a county court claim from him. It's absolutely riddled with spelling mistakes, so at least I can rule out ChatGPT. He is claiming that the "failed to contractually honour their own regulations". Which we didn't - literally my last email to him is quoting the specific regulations he hasn't followed. He then complains that we asked for itemised receipts, "which is not appropriate and disproportionate for the amount claimed". Aside from the fact that nowhere I have ever worked would allow you to claim expenses for any amount without an itemised receipt, the card receipt he did submit (which, again, is expressly against the regulations he's claiming we haven't followed, which I quoted to him) is for a totally different amount to what he's claimed for, with no indication of even where it's from, and he's done nothing to respond to that question at all. He then says "their final response after 4 months of non payment was to request me got complete more paperwork for lost receipts". Typos aside, the only reason that was our "final response" is because he told us not to bother replying, and refused to fill out the paperwork. The paperwork he only had to fill out because he was refusing to provide an itemised receipt. I gave him three options - he provide an itemised receipt (which he insists is impossible because "cafés don't provide itemised receipts", which must come as news to the hundreds of other people successfully managing to claim expenses), he complete a form justifying why he was unable to provide an itemised receipt, or I ask that Payroll process the remainder of his claim for travel expenses, but not the £10 being disputed. He has completely refused to engage with any of it. He's trying to claim his expenses, plus a penny interest for every day since he "submitted" the claim - by which I assume he means when he posted it to an address he took a best guess at, and then didn't tell anyone - and the cost of his court expenses. It's funny, because it's so ridiculous, but it's wasted so much of my time dealing with this cunt.

He didn't get the job, thank fuck. I copied Payroll in to his email to clarify the process, Payroll said what what was required, he said he "wasn't about to engage in more bureaucracy to make up for <the university>'s failures". I'd almost want to be in a courtroom as he tries to take the high ground explaining how he's been screwed over by people who have repeatedly told him that if he just did the bare minimum he would get his money, and told him exactly what the process he needs to follow is. He kicked off about the lunch part being £10 for a "meagre" lunch, as if we're somehow responsible for what he chose to eat as well, and then insisting that he didn't get an itemised receipt because "cafes don't give itemised receipts". Which is both bollocks, and fails to explain why the amount he is claiming for doesn't match the amount on the receipt

I think that's part of it. A lot of university staff, especially those who have been around a long time, just have an expectation that every little thing will be done for them, and resent having to lift a finger themselves. I get claiming for food if you've had to travel for work, if you're at a conference, staying overnight, anything like that. This bloke has been on a train for less than an hour, and come in for an interview day, with a decent break for lunch. If he wouldn't ordinarily pay for lunch on a working day, there's nothing stopping him packing a lunch at home and bringing it with him. It he would ordinarily pay for lunch on a working day, why are we paying for this one? He's replied again, saying that my response was unsatisfactory and that he will "let a district judge decide". The email is, as usual, really shitty, full of spelling errors, and doesn't engage with anything I actually said. He just keeps repeating that things are "unsatisfactory" or a bad experience, or how badly he's been treated, without ever addressing the points that he hasn't actually submitted any of the paperwork I asked for, and hasn't engaged with any of the possible solutions. I would put money on, somewhere down the line, a ridiculous ChatGPT-generated "legal challenge" showing up. He seems the type.

fucking exhausted today. Everyone's a dickhead. Someone came in for an interview a couple of months ago, somehow got wind that somebody else who interviewed was given permission to claim for travel expenses, so insisted they be allowed to as well. For context, the person who was given permission got a flight to London from Dundee, the guy complaining took a twenty minute train. He's also claimed for lunch, which I don't think he was entitled to, but the head of the school he was interviewing for permitted it, and asked that I send him the appropriate paperwork. I sent him the claim form, and a few weeks later he sent a shitty email saying "still not paid" with a sad emoji. Not the model of professionalism. I said we'd never received the expense claim back, it turns out he'd printed it out and posted it, and not told us. Our team largely works remotely, we're not a regularly manned office, and we don't get regular post. Nobody ever posts us anything, so we're not in the habit of checking the post room. This bloke, rather than filling in an Excel spreadsheet and returning it by email to either the person who emailed it to him, or to the email address it explicitly tells you to send it to on the form, printed it out, filled it in by post, half-guessed the right address to send it to, and then mailed it to us without thinking to reply to my email saying that's what he'd done. One of my colleagues was in the office when I found this out, and helpfully went and collected his form and scanned it for me to upload to Payroll for processing. Payroll queried it, because he hadn't submitted proper itemised receipts with his claim. He was claiming £10 for lunch, but the receipt associated with it was for a single payment of £27, wasn't itemised, no indication whatsoever of where it was from, what it was for, or how it related to his claim. I emailed him to say that we hadn't been able to process his claim because of this, and he replied saying "life's too short", and then threatening to contact our new Vice Chancellor to complain about how badly external candidates are treated. Proper dickhead behaviour. I intended to reply to that email with a copy of his claim and his receipt, making it clear that they didn't match up, but I've got more important things to be doing than constantly dealing with this knob, so I had left it a few days. Today, he emailed threatening to take us to county court to get his expenses repaid, and that we would incur this court cost, and all this additional legal action he was threatening if he didn't get his money back within 48 hours. What happened to "life's too short", then? All this over a claim for less than forty quid, that he'd have had back months ago if he'd just actually done what he was asked to do.

thing is, I don't think Rey looks to AEW and other people's success there with any jealousy. I think he's completely WWE-pilled, and sees it as the pinnacle of the industry. There's a reason Dominik was fast-tracked to WWE without getting any experience elsewhere, and that Aaliyah is set to do the same. I've heard Rey talk about Randy Orton as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, and one of the best to study and learn from. I think he's like Cody Rhodes - he had that independent run between WWE runs, went and worked AAA, NJPW, the first All In, was making sweet money (he was quoting around $20,000 a booking at one point), but deep down it was only ever about proving his worth to WWE, showing them what they were missing. It's weird thinking of this guy who was absolutely revolutionary in ECW, was a big part of AAA feeling exciting and fresh, and then a cornerstone of one of the best parts of WCW, that he just a WWE guy inside and out now. Sort of like AJ Styles ending up being a company man.

the amount of bollocks Rey has been involved in is baffling for a bloke who seems to have a pretty good sense of his worth, and hitched his wagon to Konnan for as long as he did - there should be no one better at cynically navigating the wrestling business and milking it for all it's worth. I'm left to assume that he genuinely trusts that they were all good ideas. I don't know where he would sit as an all-timer. I try to shy away from that kind of categorising of wrestlers and wrestling. But he did more than anyone to bring elements of Lucha Libre into American wrestling, and was easily the most successful at adapting from Lucha to the American TV style, and that counts for something - not only that, but he arguably achieved it multiple times over his career; in ECW, in WCW, in WWE, and arguably in Lucha Underground and again in WWE when he returned. There's a handful of wrestlers who were so good at what they did that they forced WWE to bend around them. Rey, Kurt Angle, and Bryan Danielson are the three that really come to mind - I remember William Regal saying that Danielson getting over in WWE meant that everyone else had to up their game to be able to match him in the ring, and Rey had a lot of that to him too, that he became a bit of a measuring stick for whether you could have a "good match" or not. It's hard to picture another 5'3" luchadore getting to a point in his career where The Undertaker is happy to have a competitive match with them.

Dean Malenko agented the Jerry Lawler/Michael Cole Wrestlemania match, so he has that working against him.

I think there's an argument that the women's title match could have main evented Redemption, because Kenny Omega vs. Kevin Knight wasn't a strong men's World Title match, but then the consideration there is for closing the show with the Omega/Ospreay/Death Riders angle. Looking at every PPV card, assuming that the women's matches they booked were the biggest matches they could have booked at the time (because it would be too much work and a bit mad to try and retcon those shows to the women's matches they could have booked), there's a few where the men's World Title match headlines and feels a bit lacking - Omega/Knight I already mentioned, but Hangman/Fletcher at All Out 2025 is another that didn't feel like the biggest match they could have run, but then the women's matches on those shows aren't strong enough to headline over them either. You could question whether the booking could have made them bigger, sure, but it's hard to say they warranted the main event spot over everything else on the card. Probably the two biggest women's matches they have ever run are Mercedes Moné vs. Willow Nightingale, and Mercedes Moné vs. Toni Storm. The former happened at Wembley on the same show as Ospreay vs. Omega, and the latter at All In 2025 on the same show as Hangman beating Moxley for the belt, and the Okada/Omega unification match, so while either of those matches could have main evented a pay-per-view, I think it's hard to argue that they could have main evented the pay-per-views they actually happened on. The only pay-per-view where a women's match was, I think, inarguably bigger and better than what actually main evented above it was Revolution 2025, with the Hollywood Ending between Toni Storm and Mariah May, where the main event was Moxley vs. Adam Copeland. But, again, we now know that it was Mariah May's final match with AEW, so I fully understand them not giving her that spot on the way out. I think it's only a matter of time before Mercedes Moné headlines a PPV. I expect her and Willow will be a main event in the not too distant future, and I sincerely hope I'm not wrong about that. Toni Storm, when she returns, could easily walk into a main event level storyline, assuming they nail the reveal angle of who took her out. If someone like Bayley ever jumps ship from WWE to AEW, with the right timing, that could be a main event angle for sure.

A lot of the focus on women's wrestling in WWE came off the back of Ronda Rousey; not just in the hope that they would sign her, or present her as a top star once they eventually got her, but because she was becoming a massive crossover name proving that a woman could headline in the UFC, and they were following that lead. It definitely feels like they stepped back from bothering to present the women as top stars once it stopped being politically expedient for them to do so. But the good thing is that - and this is a rare moment of me giving WWE credit - they have at least built up women's wrestling to a point that while the ceiling isn't as high as it was a few years ago, the floor is much higher than it's ever been, so it's never going to regress back to the bad old days of blatant titillation and advertised women's matches constantly being cut for time. With AEW, I'm amazed the women still haven't main evented. Mercedes Moné in particular is such a main event act that it's mad it hasn't happened yet. I do think that the Hollywood Ending would have main evented if Mariah May hadn't been on the way out of the door - you don't want to hand the competition the bragging rights of having just signed one of your main event acts. I have heard when it comes to AEW's TV at least that there's some pressure from WBD to limit to one or two women's matches per show on TV; presumably that doesn't carry over to PPV, though with them airing on HBO Max, I suppose it could? If you look to ROH as an example of what a Tony Khan-produced wrestling show without the pressure of TV companies and sponsors looks like, they have had women's matches main event, and often have multiple women's matches on a show. I wonder if WWE have similar pressures from any of their corporate overlords.

The story behind this is that Mike Quackenbush was writing for the PWI at the time, and pitched doing the top few names of the 500 as a non-kayfabe list that year and just rating the actual "best" wrestlers in the world, and the editor went for it, as they figured it would turn enough heads that more people would buy that issue than if they just said, "yeah, I guess it's Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin". Quack wanted Misawa to be number one, but the editor vetoed putting a Japanese wrestler the readership hadn't heard of on the front cover, and that's how you ended up with Dean Malenko in the number one spot. I think Dean was great, and it's a testament to how good he was that he was getting phenomenal reactions in WCW despite everything you'd think would work against him. He was obviously never going to be a big star in the WWF, but they at least found a niche for him for a while. My favourite work of his was as a tag team with Joe Malenko, though, and I do wonder how things would have gone for them if they had been a team in the States as well - I think they had one match apiece as a team in WCW and ECW, but otherwise Joe barely worked in the US at all. My understanding is that Joe and Dean don't speak, but I don't know how long ago that split started. Halloween Havoc '97 is fantastic, and even the flippiest stuff rarely feels like Eddy is waiting around for Rey to hit a spot, which can be the most frustrating thing in more modern matches. I think both wrestlers are the best ever at adapting from lucha libre to the American TV style without losing the spark that made them work as luchadores, and that match is probably the best example of it - they had other good ones much later in WWE, but by that point, as good as they are, they're both much more polished formula wrestlers in the WWE style. Halloween Havoc has the bonus of them still bringing something novel to the table, and still feeling like they had something to prove.

I tried to find the old thread, and looks like it was maybe closed, or otherwise just long dead. AAA have announced the first of three Triplemania cards for this year - for the uninitiated, Triplemania is their big Wrestlemania-like show, at least in theory. Since 2022, they've split it across three events over the course of the year - one in Tijuana, one in Monterrey, and one in Mexico City - with an overarching theme or tournament; in 2022 it was a "Reverse Mask Tournament", where the losers advanced to the next round, culminating in a Mask vs. Mask match at the Mexico City show (if you saw photos of Pentagon Jr. soaked in blood holding Villano IV's mask, that's where that comes from), and last year's was a similar gimmick of tag teams of rivals where losers progressed into a mask/hair match in the final (though that was one fucked around by Rush playing politics, so the final ended up as a four-way). This year's theme is "Origenes" - effectively a '90s nostalgia gimmick, bringing in a bunch of old names from that era. Given how often AAA brings old-timers in for major spots, it's not that clear how much different this is than anything else they do. There's no tournament or through-thread beyond that, so it's likely to be even more of a mess than the last couple of years. El Hijo del Vikingo is currently out injured long-term, so has had to vacate the Mega Championship, after a record-setting 833 day reign. During that time, he had no meaningful feuds, very few memorable matches beyond the kind of moves that would have been GIFed and gone viral even if he were in an opening match, and now had to vacate without losing the belt. So the title is now vacant, and will be on the line in the main event of Triplemania between Nic Nemeth and Alberto del Patron. Alberto is semi-regular with AAA now, but is not good. Nemeth is a guest, and likely won't show up again - if he wins, he might pop back in to drop it at a future show. The match was overdone and stale ten years ago, and I doubt it will attract much more attention from an international audience (which is usually the point of bringing in big US names to these shows, rather than appealing to the live crowd), to whom Alberto is more or less a non-entity now, and Nemeth can be seen in more potentially interesting matches in TNA, NJPW, and on the indies. The only positive here for AAA is that circa 2011 is when WWE TV was arguably at its hottest in Mexico with Del Rio on top, and Ziggler as a recurring opponent, so they might be hoping they can do something with that. Here's the whole card: Vampiro was in the worst match I saw last year at a Triplemania, and one of the most illogically booked matches at another Triplemania. He has since quit and returned to AAA, and is now on a "retirement tour", with the largest possible air quotes. Latin Lover is in his corner - they set up a match pitting Lover and Vamp against Jeff Jarrett and someone in 2022, it never happened. He's teaming with Pagano, who has been his on-again off-again partner, rival, protegé for the last couple of years, and none of it makes sense. Psycho Clown is one of AAA's biggest stars, but they have utterly run out of ideas for what to do with him. He and Sam Adonis blew off their long-lasting feud in the hair vs. mask final of last year's Triplemania, and to thank them - and Sam especially - for going through with that, for Sam losing his hair, and putting up with the Lucha politicking of Rush and L.A. Park that led in and out of that match, they're just in a meaningless "US vs. Mexico" match. Negro Casas was a huge signing when he jumped ship from CMLL to AAA; he was seen as a CMLL lifer. The tide has turned completely the other way since then, and AAA is losing talent constantly. He allegedly jumped ship because he wanted to team with his family (including Psycho Clown), and do intergender matches alongside his wife Dalys, which wasn't an option in CMLL. He's not really been treated as a major star in AAA, and has largely been an odd fit for their style of Lucha. For the most part he was feuding with Nicho el Millionaro, the original Psicosis, and while he has tagged with Psycho Clown, it's been on lesser shows, never Triplemania. The surprise partners here are unlikely to be anyone of note - it was implied that they might be relatives of Casas and Wagner, which gives quite a few options, but it will likely be whoever happens to be available. The last time Dr Wagner Jr showed up at Triplemania, it was him and Andrade El Idolo assaulting Psycho Clown in 2022, and that got no follow-up and he just randomly showed up again last month. I expect this is aiming for a Wagner/Casas family feud leading through the three shows, but I'll be amazed if Dr Wagner Jr makes all of his bookings.