Vamp

The mini game thing is weird. I assume they were easier to cobble together than everything else they could have done. 

I loved Spiderverse but man it takes a long time to get to where its going. 

That said, it blows every other recent superhero movie out of the way. 

The MJF/Cole thing is amusing because it's very WWE and neither if them are particularly good at it. I'm not sure it's a deliberate piss take but if you take it as one it's quite entertaining.

The way they got there was bizarre though. Promoting the tournament as it it was happening on the show, then promoting a draw, then drawing 2 names and not revealing them and saying the draw was going to continue, just makes them look (in kayfabe) really disorganised. 

I'm glad we're getting Tanahashi vs. MJF as I'm much more interested in that the former against Punk. 

Punk's "I'm a Collision guy" line was weird. What does that even mean? Its like trying to explain why the crowd should be even more excited after the run in has happened. And it's obviously a meaningless thing to say because he appeared on the very first Dynamite after Collision. If they're trying to build it so that there's Collision guys and Dynamite guys they've already failed. Again, you've got a chance to not follow the worst tropes of your competitor and you've failed straight out of the gate. Its weird. 

The Jarrett match was great. I liked everyone in the Orange Cassidy tag but was bored shitless for some reason. That might just be me though. 

Tony S isn't paid enough. Someone should bottle whatever charisma Sting has where he's able to say any old nonsense and make it feel exciting. 

1 hour ago, David said:

The fact that Punk is one of the few wrestlers who hasn't died, been arrested or linked with sexual assault to have his own thread on this forum in a long time tells its own story. He's discussion-worthy. 

The "Tories are cunts" thread is over 200 pages longer. Why would the Elite want to work with Punk when they can do a match with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson? 

Seriously, what we talking, Extrawurst, Bloedwurst, Chorizo, Andouillette, Bratwurst, Kochwurst, 'Nduja, Sundae, Skilandis, Frikandel, Kielbasa?

You can't just promise a world class sausage and then not say what it is. That's TNA level of promoting that is. 

Stop talking about cars!

What type of sausage?

Hang on, photo opportunities? Seriously? 

How much is that actually played up in the results of his matches though. I remember him doing the whole "I want to face the young guys" things when he came in and proceeded to beat the hottest young star in the company in his first match. 

£4 for a sausage?! Daylight robbery. 

I actually thought Punk was worse in the ring than he was in the promo. Sure, the promo was predictable and nothing special but he was clearly out of position several times in the match and completely fucked by the end. That's not necessarily surprising, he's clearly got a lot of ring rust, but considering how the match was designed to protect him I can't see him being in a singles match anytime soon. 

There were a few negatives. There's something that feels a little WWE knock off about the show between the entrance set up, having Andrade and Buddy Matthews, Miro and Tony Nesse face off against each other. The former, while very good, also just made me think "Jesus, these AEW guys are very injury prone" considering both men apparently got fucked in this match, one who'd apparently just come back from injury, and the main event is already about a guy coming back from injury. I guess JR might have just really wanted to be there but there's probably a point where you should say to the old bloke who's collapsed and picked up a nasty shiner and whose voice is fucked that "actually mate, you don't need to fly to Chicago to call one match, maybe just sit this one out." 

I'm still not sure whether this is a B-show or not and I'm not sure if they really know. The fact that they didn't set anything up for future episodes kinda supports the idea that it is, but it did have a title change so who knows. 

Still, the Andrade match was good, Joe looked good, the women's match was fun and good booking and Tony Schiavone can carry off even the most utterly pointless segment. And hey, even if this show is mostly pointless (meaning it should be an hour like all TV wrestling shows should actually be) if its existence results in Dynamite being inspired to be good than everyone wins really. Punk can do what he wants for 2 hours a week, everyone who dislikes Punk can have a laugh at watching him do what he wants in front of a smaller and smaller audience each week, the people on the roster who don't want to put up with Punk's miserable face don't have to, the show that matters is inspired to be better, its win win really. 

Final thought, reimburse every ticket because that crowd did more to make that show than just about anyone. Take it out of whatever they're paying Punk. 

Tell me more about your world class sausage. 

Someone on Reddit has apparently got hold of it early. They've posted some vague screenshots as proof, but nothing that they've said is particularly surprising. It's a very shallow game, limited CAW options and might get dull quickly. 

I'm still planning in getting it, because that's pretty much what I was expecting, but there's already people regretting their pre-orders because they'd got carried away with what it was going to be. I don't think their price point has helped. 

I'm kinda looking forward to fans who have no idea who Elton John is pouring over the lyrics for subtle references to the Punk and Elite situation.

To be honest, I'm starting to think they always intended this to be a B show. They've got the B show commentary team (I love Kevin Kelly but that's what it feels like), a lame card, an unimportant main event, the intro features the champion for a second suggesting he's not going to be there much and if you take Punk off the card you'd think it was the B show. 

It's kind of interesting that they've hyped his first thing back as a match rather than a promo. I'm sure he'll still do one, possibly one of his "they don't want me to say this" promos after the match. I can't help but think people are going to be more interested in what he says than him winning a 6 man tag. 

Presumably by this stage his promo could be written by an AI though. "I love professional wrestling. Ice cream! I'm all about the young guys! Unlike everyone else. Ice cream! Playground insult. Ice cream! I told them I wanted to do this and this because I'm really cool. Like ice cream! Who likes ice cream? Shoot! Ice cream." 

For some reason my brain immediately went to trying to decode what that was an abbreviation for. 

I got as far as cum farter before finally accepting it was just smashing two names together. 

For some reason I've bought tickets for Wembley so figured I should probably start watching AEW again. Its obviously been longer than I thought by the fact that no one has mentioned how knock off WWE the set is. Guessing its been that way for a while. 

Real fun little show. All wrestling shows should be an hour anyway but this also had the benefit of having fairly different matches for the whole show. That's what wrestling should be. 60 minute variety show. 

The fans reacted to a women's match! How long has that been happening for? It's still bizarre to me to see Emi on TV, even if she is great, because he feels so suited to small venues. 

Whoever designs NJPW belts now should be put in the ring with Suzuki. That TV title is fucking awful. 

They could end up really regretting the air horns. Clearly plants to make the match stand out, which seems like a good idea, but then you don't want actual fans bringing those fucking things to every show. 

Schiavone is still the best. JR would still be better backstage but whatever. 

Totally here for the Audrey mixed tag match. I know it's a bizarre way to build up to her being a playable character in the video game (especially when you can't do the match they're building to) but I love this kind of panto shit. 

Very Tory heavy. And nutty. Demographics are changing though. 

The Tory council helped a lot. The old leader and Johnson were quite chummy and they would deliberately underfund Hayes and Harlington because they had a Labour MP. Homeless people were picked up by the police in Uxbridge and dropped off in Hayes because it might look bad on the PM. 

Johnson was also paraded around libraries and events like Uxbridge's saviour saving the town from the evils of HS2. When the council managed to piss off the Polish community Johnson was parachuted in along with the Polish ambassador (who clearly found the whole thing hilarious). 

The only thing that actually seemed to dent his popularity was lock down  where he fell for the left wing fear mongering. 

1 hour ago, johnnyboy said:

Just as likely Johnson is stepping down because he'd probably lose his seat at the next GE.  This way he can still return as the unbeaten saviour.

I see people saying this a lot but, well, have you been to Uxbridge? 

Unless you're staying up to watch it live. Then you can't.

Big Bill is the closest either promotion has had to a proper wrestling name in ages. Although whenever someone says it I do have a split second where I assume that's their personal nickname for Goldberg. 

Not having shared creations seems bonkers really. Fire Pro had that, and I sort of assumed the low res, fairly basic wrestlers were a way of making them quicker to download. 

Still, people seem very hyped on this game. I saw someone earlier talking about the groundbreaking features which included the mini games and the ability to customise wrestlers. Others have convinced themselves that they'll add a stadium stampede match later in their version of a battle pass. That'll at least tide them over to get enough copies into fans hands. 

And to be fair it does look like a fun nonsense game to play with friends. I'm not convinced it has much depth as a single player game and I think that might hurt them when it comes to the DLC market post game. 

At the end of the day a lot of wrestling fans, including myself, directly or indirectly encouraged/supported/enabled/ignored a very toxic work environment that led to a bloke murdering his wife and son. Whether that's because we cheered the style that led to his brain turning to mush or because we bought t-shirts for a guy who openly abused a new wrestler on PPV. 

You can accept that and stop watching, accept that and support a different wrestling environment (although which one I don't know), accept that and keep watching or ignore the reality of it and believe in a conspiracy theory or believe that you can separate your enjoyment of his wrestling from what he did. 

Those latter two are probably easier. And having him in the Hall of Fame would probably provide those people with a "it's okay that I still enjoy him" moment that makes them feel less complicit. They can still fuck off. But I get it. 

Maybe it was just my school but we did study Ireland and the troubles. Actually I don't think we ever studied the monarchy. If we did it never left any impression. 

That might have been because my history teacher, also the deputy head, couldn't be arsed with any of that. I remember her having an argument with a parent when she told them their kid couldn't wear facepaint to school on St. George's day and saying "it's a made up story about a dragon." 

Having said that I'm pretty sure all of the first three years were spent learning about both world wars to the point that I can't even watch a war movie without thinking "oh for fuck sake, not again." 

I'm a bit fed up with "yeah, maybe AEW did hire a guy who was a nasty piece of work but WWE does it too" as an argument to be honest. 

I agree with the argument that wrestling is better with an alternative, but that also means that wrestling would be better with a company that is an alternative backstage as well as onscreen. They could have created a promotion that encouraged wrestlers to unionise, that gave all wrestlers medical insurance, that had strict hiring policies, etc. They could have had a company that created an amiable workplace with mediation and a decent HR that stopped wrestlers from getting into scraps like it's still the 70s. They could have offered a true alternative for the wrestlers. And yeah, they've done some good things, just as WWE has over the years, but they could do more. But I'd imagine most people on here don't compare their moral standard to Jeffrey Dahmer and go "well, I'm better than him." And if you do judge the morality of AEW on a sliding scale you can't then grumble about other people's sliding scales allowing more shite than yours. You can't go, I've ignored 5 examples of shit behaviour over 5 years but you've ignored 50 over 50 years so you're clearly a fanboy. That's not how it works. 

It's that kind of bullshit logic that led to wrestling fans calling Bradshaw a bully while Benoit was chopping the shit out of Daniel Puder and encouraging people to exercise until they puke. 

I'm not saying you have to boycot your favourite promotion, or not buy their shit, but just don't use shit arguments to brush it away. You can criticise AEW for getting things wrong and still be a fan of WWE. You just have to acknowledge that both are shit and, like all human beings, you're shit too. But maybe, just maybe, if enough people point out that something is shit than that'll trickle and eventually it'll be slightly less shit. 

Not making this the AEW version of WCW Saturday Night with a new version of the spaceship doors is an unforgivable mistake.