CavemanLynn

Those numbers need the context of venue capacity or tickets released; 8,437 in Chicago might look good and 883 Hamilton bad on volumes alone, but for all I know, Chicago capacity could be 20k and Hamilton 1k, in which case Hamilton would be doing amazing.

39 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

Sung to the tune of the Hokey Cokey.

19 minutes ago, JLM said:

Ah well, it's a bit of a thinker you see. Once it clicks it makes loads of sense.

So his name is William, right. However, due to the number of syllables and the name "William" sometimes sounding a little bit archaic to modern ears, this is shortened by some users of the name William to the shorter and less formal sounding "Bill".   So that's where the "Bill" comes in.

However, that is not the only thing we know about him. What we can also observe is that he is a man of considerable size. If you surveyed 100 people to choose a descriptor for him selecting from the multiple choices "Small", "average" and "big", you'd find that the vast majority of them would go with the latter.

The marriage of those two ideas in perfect harmony is what has led us to this name. 

Hope this helps. 

Wait a minute...

OK, I think I got it.

My point was, since he ditched variations on Big Cass, W. Morrissey and Big Bill just haven't struck me as catchy, interesting, marquee names. Big Bill is the kind of name you'd give an aw-shucks yokel character, not a chiseled tower of man. Even the Big Cass name only gets a pass because that was the name he had when he first came into view.

12 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

Yeah, he's great. Wrestles like a proper big man, barely bumps (his opponents have to really earn it), cocky as hell but also, brilliantly, will absolutely stooge/show arse when needed. The skies the limit.

Chalk up another win for DDP. By all accounts, Big Bill's another guy who was in a real bad place, but Dallas stepped in, got him clean and healthy, and apparently released a ton of potential we hadn't seen before. I've even turned around on his jeans and boots look (it helps that he's got the body of Michelangelo's Levi's model), but I just wish he could find a decent name.

I dipped into the main event based on the response on here, and I think it went the ideal length. Yota is like the main event form of Takahashi, stripping out the "I'm well mad, me" silliness to be a grinning golem. It was a great dynamic against the stoic SANADA, although maybe a bit of a risk, having a more colourful guy as one of his earliest defences, hence the Yota chants from the get-go. The match itself was fairly standard NJPW main event stuff, elevated by the unknown element that was Tsuji. Whatever happens on NJPW's Young Lions' excursions is obviously working.

2 hours ago, TildeGuy~! said:

He looks loads better in the trailer.

 

Standing at the entrance chatting to no one and throwing gang signs and NOT doing his lairy 10-year-old march down the ring?? Fuxake.

I think a lot of people bought into the Four Pillars as an investment in a future based on homegrown stars. But they let all four cool off with meandering booking, and then hotshotted what should've been a year's worth of separate angles and marquee matches into one multi man clusterfuck.

45 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

In the past year in the *needs help* category there's been QT Marshall, Sonjay Dutt, Pat Buck, and Tony Schiavone into titled positions. Mike Mansury hire, Madison Rayne & Sarah Stock for the women's division, Moxley & Jericho's extensions that led to more creative input, Will Washington's hire, and now Bryan Danielson on the creative team.

Either the problem's Tony and it's about getting him to step away or we're already to the point of too many cooks.

Or those names aren't any good at it. I think Mox is an engaging presence and killer on the mic, but if you listen to his most recent podcast appearance with Renee, he states he doesn't see himself as a coach so much as there to critique of he's approached. That's not the attitude of the kind of creative mind AEW is missing. He even goes on in detail about all the in-match storylines he can tell that are different to the norm, but that is based on more wrestling in the ring, where you have 10-20 minutes of two guys fighting, rather than 30 minutes of an angle split episodically over 4 weeks.

I'd be interested to know which prominent names are booking stuff not directly involving themselves.

23 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Perhaps Tony Khan is over-stretched. Perhaps he’s used up his best ideas. Whatever the case, I think the best thing he can do right now is draft in some new faces to help book storylines. 

This is a key point. AEW absolutely does NOT need any more knee-jerk signings to parachute into the cards and bloat the already-heaving roster; it needs some extra hands on the book to give their great talent something decent to do. They invariably deliver good quality in ring, it's just mired in shite, uneven builds, low or ill-defined stakes, and muddled intentions, outside (tellingly) of anything involving the Elite.

Quantumania and Thor Love and Thunder before it should be a warning to Marvel - ffs, forget your contracted entries and if a director doesn't want to make another production liner, just let them go. Waititi clearly threw his together in a fortnight and then proceeded to be a cunt about it afterwards re: stressed out CGI dev teams, and QM was so clearly Peyton Reed's Fantastic 4 treatment reskinned that nothing and no one looked like they gave a shit. Seeing Jonathan Majors' Kang after both the wrongun allegations and Chukwudi Iwuji's stellar turn as a genuinely complicated, unstable but undeniably evil villain made Kang look even more petty and mopey in comparison. Having an argument with yourself/ves, being supposedly omnipotent but struggling in a punch up with divorced dad (and fxxx me, how the MCU has aged Paul Rudd) < obsessed egotist who'll destroy billions of his own creations when his interest moves onto the next thing.

26 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Yeah Men of The Year were (like most of the roster) massively underutilised. Also Scorpio Sky offers barely anything worthwhile as a singles guy and is unworthy of the multiple singles pushes he's had, but with Ethan Page he actually seemed to find the perfect niche.

As for CM Punk drawing ratings/selling tickets...yeah ratings and ticket sales were better when he was there but the product as a whole was much better and hotter too so I think it's pretty hard to determine. It's not like ratings and tickets massively dropped off when he was off TV, it's been a very slow and steady decline.

I'd also say that it might not necessarily have been Punk not being there that caused the drop, but the fact that the manner of his departure threw months of planned programming up in the air, leading to unfocussed, fast-tracked, chaotic shows. Couple that with WWE finding their feet again, and it wouldn't surprise me if some wrestling fans, having to choose at that time and leading into Mania season, turned over to WWE and haven't come back. I wouldn't blame them - AEW can be hit and miss at the best of times, and it's arguably taken from Punk's departure to just a month or so ago to start hitting a stride again.

Have the timeline of stories about Benoit ever confirmed how much of that later sadism and paranoia was there before the steroids and head trauma?

Benoit is one of the guys I think less of in terms of in-ring as time goes on. Just like Dynamite Kid (and to a lesser extent, Rollerball Rocco), and later Davey Richards, the spectacle is in how hard they're going, both from a work rate perspective and a stiffness perspective. It's amusing watching the occasional interviews with guys who worked with them, who laugh nervously about how "hard" they made them work from the first bell, while their eyes tell you they hated it. It seems reductive to point to the common physical traits of short stature compensated by massive muscular over-development, but it's mad that they're from the same school as what turned out Bret and Owen Hart, two arguably far better workers without any of the stiffness, thuggery or apparent self-loathing. Kid might have been knocking blocks off with his hook lariat, but it was Bulldog giving guys taps with the inside of his bicep to rapturous applause later.

Benoit may well have been an utter cunt before anyone got hold of him, but he must have been subjected to an environment that exacerbated and accepted if not downright encouraged that kind of behaviour. Violence begets violence, and I can certainly imagine a comparatively diminutive colourless kid like Benoit being subject to some heinous bullying and stretching. Something/someone made him choose to work the way he did, to continue with the headbutts and high-angle drops well after he knew what they did to him. Then the cheers come, and they validate that approach.

Benoit was a perfect storm of all the shitty attitudes, egotism and madlad bullshit that was/is rife in wrestling locker rooms. 15 years too late that we had #SpeakingOut which tried to publicly broach the archaic attitudes and abuses.

My concern is that, if small scandals keep coming and are treated in much the same way by the press as the big ones, then those big ones become relatively less scandalous and prone to outrage. It's all part and parcel of desensitisation, where it all becomes "oh, another one <shrug>", and the perp can go quiet for a week to let the media stream wash it away.

1 hour ago, Statto said:

It's funny, when they were in NXT UK (a show I kept watching WAY longer than most) I thought they were amongst the least remarkable acts even there, and I was surprised when they got a go in proper NXT.

I gave up being a regular NXT watcher around the time they showed up there so didn't see too much of them in Florida, but what I did see made me think "actually, these guys aren't so bad".

Then they show up on Smackdown and they're fucking great. Trying to figure out if it's my perception that's changed or if they have got that much better.

I think certain acts just work in certain environments. WWE seem to acknowledge this too, with the example I always go to being Elias getting the call up super early because they knew he was a main roster guy who'd get lost in the higher-workrate NXT at the time. I still think Pretty Deadly are lacking technically - they're curled up all the time, that butt bounce lungblower move is fxxxing stupid, and for an athletic-looking guy, I haven't seen Elton get anywhere near high enough for the neck breaker on the tag finish they do every match - but character wise, as personalities for TV and for the smart in-ring angles and spots like that one, they're top notch. 

FPTP is also always going to favour the "side" with the most unity. Labour, Greens, et al all broadly carry policies I support, but any one of those parties is going to carry a smaller percentage of that non-Tory vote. "Government" and "not the Government" is reductive, but that is essentially the position our system has put us in, and will always favour the incumbent majority gaining the highest percentage of a dwindling disenfranchised electorate.

I'd love for them to find a spot for Archer as the big meaty crowd-pleasing wrecking ball, the kind of guy the faces can call on when the angle calls for a tank to help overcome some indomitable heels.

Of all the twenty-year-old tropes to bring back, I'd love it if they could do something with him like New Jack's later ECW run, just steaming out and having wild cartoon weapon brawls with no rules while music blares throughout.

He's a big man, but proper high energy when he turns it on and was one of the best at knowing where the cameras were and playing up to them for the fans at home. A few people have said on here in the past that, for all his heelish mannerisms, he still comes across as that cool aging rocker in the bar who'll hang out and stop anyone from getting too rowdy, but you know if push comes to shove and he has to start swinging, all hell'll break loose. No title chases, just there for a good fight if you need him.

It's a shame AEW has massively overplayed their hand with No DQs and blading, really.

GOTG3 was excellent fun, better if not more surprising than 1 but WAY better than the two-people-talking-in-the-Volume dud that I thought 2 was. A rollicking adventure film, zippy dialogue, and a proper evil bad guy. Big Dave is everyone's dad. Not a ton of MCU connections to worry about, nicely episodic to break things up, Nathan Fillion back in great nick, green angry Zoe Saldana in leather, and Chris Pratt actually getting the balance right between MCU snark and his natural goofiness. Warning re: the villain though - regardless of how you feel about mistreatment of animals (which does me in anyway), there are some very heavy emotional and violent scenes in this, and a particularly grisly reveal. It also feels like a proper farewell from James Gunn. Highly recommended.

Don't turn up til 4 hours later. Say you're Axl Rose.

Wear a lampshade and go as Sia.

"New Meg. Old Chum."

Poetry.

1 hour ago, Tommy! said:

Is it? 

It's them openly saying they're happy with what's been put before them.

Id say that's a big statement if you don't agree.

They haven't stated what has been put before them, or reiterated what Progress policies they have specifically been assessed against. There's no detail in this statement to confirm it's any more than a handshake and a wink between industry mates, one of the very problems Speaking Out highlighted.

Don't the chemical workers use PPE? 

Our ward had a surprise switch from Conservative to People's Independent Party, a small group of financiers and business owners who ran on the sole pledge of protecting the local Green Belt from development. The wife stated "Rather grey than Red", which I expect to be many's attitudes at the moment.

That fan art (I assume?) is tremendous.

I fear that whoever fantasy-booked earlier about Cody doing the standard loss route until winning the MITB will be right. It won't matter about momentum or natural/organic fan favourites or hard work and over-achievement; at the end of the day, here's five other guys that haven't done that who still get a shot at a shot. What's the point in trying?

Just now, Infinity Land said:

Started watching this week's episode and a welcome return to the black ropes. Couldn't stand the red, white and blue.

DER TERK ERR RERRPES