CavemanLynn

The worst thing this episode did for me was made the Mandalorians not cool. I get that they're a shattered people making do on a(nother) dust planet, but what we got here was a bunch of nerds in badly-coloured outfits emptying rounds into a lake. All the wheezing and grunting going on when they were climbing the rockface was as if they hadn't worn their costumes before. maybe that's the point, that the Mandalorians are too reliant on their armour (and the Armorer), but there's surely a better narrative way of getting that across than "their helmets suck for extreme sports".

That's two or three episodes now where the Mando bits appear to have bookended the non-Mando stories Filoni wants to tell but knows he doesn't have the stroke to ask Big D for money for. This series doesn't have either a clear arc or fun monster-of-the-week. Even Pedro Pascal seems to be reading his lines off a card on Teams. It's a dud for me so far.

I can't say what he is a product of that makes him the way he is, but he seems to be the victim of a desire to be respected and lead conflicting with a lack of self-awareness and empathy. Being a locker room leader would come with a lot of power, but also a lot of pressure and responsibility, and he seems to equate acting like one to being one, but cracks under the pressure of what it actually means. I'm reminded of RVD's anecdote about coming back to WWECW after a suspension and Punk calling locker room meetings having been on the main roster for just weeks. RVD's likely embellishing, but he'd be telling the story differently if there was an idea that Punk had introduced himself to and befriended a couple of the respected roster members before trying to calling shots.

He simply doesn't seem to know how he comes across. Having made a career on "real life" gimmicks based on speaking "truth to power", he doesn't have the ability to make cryptic or tongue-in-cheek comments without them being construed as the serious thoughts of an angry man. His AEW was great guns, but it can't have been coincidence that his press conference meltdown came after a run of incidents of his aging body failing him. His demeanour being way more relaxed in that setting further added to the feeling that THIS was the real CM Punk.

Promo'ing is a skill, that Punk undoubtedly has in spades, but the press conference suddenly cast his whole run up to that point in shade. As far as I was concerned, the measured but impassioned, hook-filled promos were just that - promos, designed to draw me in - and as soon as the facade dropped, I felt an idiot for believing him and that he was a man of his word. He wasn't interested in working with the young up-and-comers, or testing himself, or whatever. He worked with two of the pillars, then went into the title picture, then couldn't handle the fact he wasn't his old self and dealt with that by lashing out at everyone else. He was Eddie Kingston without the fat lad charm.

Goldberg again, but him vs DDP at Halloween Havoc '98 is a minor classic. I've heard Goldberg himself really rates it as well, thanks to DDP really giving him an education and working his nuts off. It's classic wily veteran vs unstoppable monster stuff, with DDP being chucked around by Goldberg at every opportunity, while the finish, made extra special by Heenan and the comms team really bigging it up, is focussed on whether Big Bill can get Page up for the Jackhammer even after smashing his own arm into a turnbuckle.

29 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

El Gigante/Giant Gonzalez v Great Muta.
Never knew this match happened.
 

 

Lovely stuff. Great watching Muta build the entire match out of the mist, then visibly breaking character when Gonzales couldn't even lie down in the right place for the moonsault.

Obviously I've never had to live at the size of Gonzales or Andre, but the way Gonzales moves here fascinates me. He moves like a lumbering idiot, but without working that into any kind of gimmick or coordination. He doesn't seem to know where he is, or to make even a whip off the ropes look legit. Would he have been trained like this, was standing up that much of an effort at that size that moving was a strain, or was he genuinely not intelligent?

Getting shit signed is a massive part of geek culture now. The one comic con I ever went to, in London about 4 years ago, all it was was queues of men with guest-relevant Funkos to get signed. Stanley Tucci and Hayley Atwell left twiddling their thumbs because they weren't rendered in plastic tat.

Proles getting uppity with their strikes and what-not? Best make capitalist politics into a game show. You see, we're all having fun really, aren't we, serfs?

WCW by that stage had been reduced to WWE Raw-lite. I remember when we used to watch RAW and Smackdown off a mate's tape, then switch over to the DSF decoder to watch Nitro, and I remember seeing Bischoff and Russo in a ring with red ropes, a massive square tron surrounded by shiny scaffolding, and thinking, "This is just Raw, isn't it?" Add to that the attempt to make beloved WCW stalwarts heels, constant shooty bollocks, and crash TV that was already years past its prime, and the WCW people (now) fondly remember was all gone.

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

More outside the box, I'd like Tony Khan to channel his inner early '00s indie nerd and it be LuFisto for a garbage brawl, or Allison Danger, but could just as easily see it being him channeling his mid-00s TNA nerd and it being Angelina Love. 

The last part here is what I thought, especially with former stablemate Madison Rayne now backstage.

Mystery or not, a Jade victory should be a foregone conclusion. The idea that someone can come in from outside the company and win the big belt while the existing roster are (supposedly) vying for a shot is pretty rum.

18 minutes ago, gmoney said:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/08/game-dystopian-mirror-uk-dan-douglas-duke-smoochem

I work with the guy who made this, one of the nicest blokes you could ever meet. 

"Corbyn plays Thatcher's Techbase in Wetherspoons" and "Keir Starmer orders a drone strike on a field of alpacas from the Great British Bake Off tent" did me in. The man's doing God's work.

On 2/24/2023 at 7:52 AM, Harry Wiseau said:

On the subject of Tunnocks, if you leave a comment on their "Contact us" section of their website then you may receive something in the post in the following days....

I've not seen anything online backing this up as a 'campaign' of any sort, so how did you find out about this? Was it really just a weird dream and an email??

18 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Established 1890. Closed 2023 due to being too nice with freebies.

Never fear. It's Big Shop day tomorrow, and the cake tin's running low.

It definitely feels like Filoni is disappearing up his mythology. I know that the popularity of Mando and Grogu was always going to make the canvas bigger, but I miss the vibe of the first season, where each episode felt like a fun one-shot of a Western or Samurai adventure. Now we're in generic EPIC territory, where Mando and Grogu seem like bit players to get viewers to watch whatever story they think they want to tell. The use of the volume couldn't be more clear, either. A bomb-ravaged planet, but there's still a perfectly flat landing area next to the entrance to the ruins? And those ruins inhabited by cavemen, wild animals and cyborg scavengers for decades, but they still don't even need to climb over any rubble to get from A to B? The matte paintings over the final credits were especially galling, as they looked GORGEOUS. So why they had to smear everything in generic darkness so we couldn't see anything, I don't know.

22 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Are we doing answering questions with questions?

Maybe? 

The point was that yes, Cena gave Roman the corporate talking-to, but I don't think that angle directly relates to Roman's later run of form as the Tribal Chief. Any subsequent fire under Roman by being publicly belittled by a proxy for his bosses is irrelevant without a followup of positive booking decisions supported by his own performances. The difference there as well was the massive upside Roman had in and of himself, which in my opinion Theory does not.

28 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

How's that worked out for him?

Did the angle birth the Bloodline? 

7 minutes ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

*Sigh*

Everyone knows that when you wear heels, you put the ball of your foot down first to avoid the "ka-lump" sound.

But I'm not running a marathon; I'm being sexy.

10 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I was once at a seminar where we spent upwards of an hour learning how to move around the ring without "disturbing the boards" for that exact reason - how to walk, roll, even jump around the ring while avoiding making the kind of impact sounds that would take away from the sound of a bump. I was absolute shit at it.

Nice Guy John? This was the return of the the John Cena who corporate bussed in to tell Roman Reigns he couldn't do "his job."  As good as he is when the bell rings, Cena's always been a corporate yes-man, a middle class WASP covered in his own sponsorship. I'm not aware of a previous instance of reverse psychology working in an angle. To me, it was the epitome of tell-don't-show, manufacturing agency via a literal call to action, rather than it being a logical realisation. Cena's spoon-feeding someone who doesn't have an engaging personal storyline with anyone else on the roster.

Who's the heel and who's the face here? Is Cena the heel for being a bit of a dick and leveraging 15+ years of push to embarrass Theory into stepping up? Is Cena the face because he's given a naff twat some tough love? Is Cena the face because he's Cena? Is Theory the heel for challenging a beloved but "retired" hero? Is Theory going to be face for listening to a bigger boy and doing what he's told??

I don't understand the Austin Theory experiment anyway - we're years deep in giving him tentpole Mania matches, but he's shown absolutely nothing to warrant it. I assume he has the gift of gab backstage because he doesn't have it anywhere else.

10 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

"You will be denied access to the UKs modern slavery system" 

You what mate?

Capitalism? 

*Slavoj Zizek sunglasses gif*

10 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I hate that rolling pin attempt spot wrestlers do, the one where they roll about doing multiple pins in a row, because it never actually results in a pin so you're just watching them go through pointless motions.

The only time that back-and-forth rolly-rolly stuff ever worked for me was this match from WoS. The young-uns on the board will roll their eyes, but to be clear, this match is from 3 years before I was even born. The sequence of fast counters works when you've spent the entire match (and indeed, build your entire style) on any of those moves being a match-ender:

Note the match also includes a lovely bit of grumpy commentary from Kent Walton, ripping into the "sleazy" newspapers out the back of Fleet Street claiming none of the lads get hurt.

10 hours ago, Carbomb said:

Another variant of that that I enjoyed was the original Ebessan vs. Jushin Liger - as Liger drops to the canvas, Ebessan comes off the ropes, stops, and toe kicks him in the face, yelling "Don't be stupid". Liger returns the favour shortly afterwards in a similar spot.

I'm sure I saw Scott Steiner do this more than once, either a kick or a full-on elbow drop across the neck, depending on how he was feeling that day.

I also misread that post as "Luger", which was a very different image.

Quackenbush would throw in a successful drop-down once a season, but would usually catch the guy as he jumped over him rather than taking the ankle pick.

The crux/cruxes (cruces?) of these misused spots is guys not wrestling to their size, skill level, place on the card, or story, ALL fundamentals. I get the impression that guys don't want to lose to a solid basic technical pin because they think it makes them look weak, or more likely, weakER than their opponent. Everyone has to be good at everything, they seem to think, which is why everyone ends up working the same aside from an escalation of legitimate risk. I know the business 'evolves', but c'mon, guys.

The icing on the strike exchange cake is when one of the little guys decides to end it with three strikes in a row, grabbing the other guy's neck so he can't sell and not moving his feet so he has to lean in and club him in the throat from too far away. And then running away to the ropes while the opponent is looking right at him.

So your strikes couldn't knock him down AND you're an idiot? JFC. 

3 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

It's one thing I really like about AEW, to be honest. A lot of acts have multiple ways they can win the match. The Coffin Drop doesn't always get the job done but the Last Supper might. Danielson won his first 5/6 AEW matches with different moves. Then even lower-rung guys like Chuck Taylor have moves like the Awful Waffle which you hardly see but are really well-protected.

That's a good point, from the perspective of wrestlers' signature moves, but I'd like to see the fundamentals getting a look-in for finishes. An Awful Waffle might devastate an opponent in terms of "energy bar" wrestling, but a locked-in small package would get the three count too.

22 minutes ago, Cheapheat said:

I always thought not having finishes from those multiple roll up/near falls is silly. If the company (or wrestler) could  established that could be the finish it would be hot as hell. Otherwise it's a lot of people enjoying counting to 2. 

100% agreed. Unless it's your finish, a surprise/cheated rollup, or a best-of-X, it's just a bloke slapping the canvas. I'm sure this stems from some training I've heard, where the two-count supposedly synchronises with the audience's heartbeat and artificially accelerates it, generating 'excitement.' This sounds like someone getting excited by a much better match, and trying to manufacture that same reaction robotically.

Just a couple of pins from non-finishing moves would be nice. Bret was, obviously, the master of this, saving the Sharpshooter for the real feud-enders, but Ricky the Dragon was also great at it too. A personal fave of mine is a throwaway match from one of the minor WCW TV shows - it's Barry Windham vs Larry Zbysko, where Barry was feuding with the Enforcers. The match is a load of nothing, with Larry doing loads of stalling (Barry in shoots says Larry really wasn't up for taking a single bump at this point). Barry's used sunset flips in loads of matches in the past, but as soon as Arn Anderson comes through the curtain to do the slow, intimidating heel interference walk, Barry spots him, immediately dives over Larry for a tight sunset flip pinfall, and rolls out of the ring with a smile on his face. A huge pop for the surprise finish, and made the face look smart and super-competent.

Two packs of Wafer Creams and an autograph from The Ann. God bless the good woman. 

And shame on yous "expecting" replies. You must be pure of heart. 

7 hours ago, LCJ said:

Looks shit and fake AF too. Not the only wrestling move that wouldn’t work in a real fight of course but has to be up there as one of the least believable moves in professional wrestling for me.

Tell that to Razor and HBK, who made it a lynchpin of their ladder matches and it always looked boss. Another example of a quality stunt move being ruined by future generations mucking it up.