Sports Entertainment

Arbitrary said:

I was already only a casual but Moxley suffocating Bryan Danielson with a plastic bag was it for me. I'm out fuck you let me know when this clown's been fired or paralyzes himself.

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The whole thing with Moxley being a murderous bastard was that he would stop at nothing to be champion again, even killing off his closest ally. Suffocating a guy with a plastic bag isn't very "wrestling" but it was something that hadn't been done before that actually felt brutal and uncalled-for. Like throwing a dude off the top of Hell in a Cell a bunch of times until he has a tooth in his nose, and that match usually gets called an "all-time great match". In both cases they were doing something new and shocking that didn't have a whole lot to do with wrestling, and it got its point across.

Koushirou said:

I'm not so mad about him losing, but fucking losing to a tap out? They go on with this shit about his whole motto of "never give up" and he fucking gives up. Fucking stupid.

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In the end we all give up, like Kaines said. Despite the criticism, him smiling was what made it work. It was acceptance and "you know what? I've done enough". Cena is a GOAT-candidate, he earned that sort of character moment.

Woefully Inept said:

He really is trash. Cornette cracks up calling him Dick the Boozer. Take-a-shit gets me every time too. He's got some good ones for them all.

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Cornette's the one I'd describe as "trash", making fun of Moxley's substance abuse problems (which he has continuously fought against) is some real dick behavior. Takeshita is a top talent, dude's like a Japanese Bret Hart in wrestling style. I don't generally get that into Japanese wrestlers, unless they have a huge personality like Okada or a great theme like Ishii the Stone Pitbull, but even then Takeshita is guy I respect. I'd think he'd be one Cornette would actually appreciate since he's more of a pure wrestler.

Generally anybody that listens to Cornette just automatically has a dim view of anything AEW so it's whatever. He's to AEW what Rush Limbaugh was to Bill Clinton's administration in the 90's. Cornette poisoned the discourse well on that company and probably did more damage to it than anybody except for CM Punk.

Kaines said:

Yup. 100%

As an aside, HHH just became the Roger Goddell of WWE. The man will never hear a cheer again for the rest of his life.

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What prompted this? Because I was out of the loop when this was posted, and I know HHH is now the internet's whipping boy and can't seem to get a cheer anywhere and I have no idea why. (Edit: Oh, this was about Cena's last match? Lawl. No, it's something else. Maybe the fact that he participated in White House panels on healthy food and regulation of sports... oh no, God Forbid he lend expertise to something he can make a difference on)

Kaines said:

The stadium was very much NOT empty. They stupidly had LED lights bolted above every seat that made it LOOK empty. When they shined a spot light on the seats, they were ALL full.

And the ticket prices were LESS than normal SD/RAW ticket prices in the US.

Fucking hell, people, get your facts straight.

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Yeah, people getting factual shit wrong is an epidemic.

The LED lights and crowd-dimming made it look empty. It was full.

Crowd-dimming is my least-favorite trope to come out of the NJPW/AEW generation. Triple H likes it to "put focus on the performers" so it isn't going anywhere.

AEW Revolution 2020 (the last great show of the initial AEW golden era that everybody liked) did something similar with LED lights, but it ended up working for them because the lights were put on the armrests of the seats and not above them. Also the crowd was well-lit in that show.

Kaines said:

The ending to the Cena retirement match. Everyone was pissed about it. Especially those in attendance. Which is fine. People can feel the way they want to about the ending, but I didn't mind it. I also understand HHH will never be cheered again, so it's probably best they got his solo HoF enshrinement out of the way before this happened.

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Yeah but really? That's why he gets booed all the time? I think it might be more about him going to the White House (gasp).

Tarrant said:

Fine with the Rumble winners, But that crowd was dead af except for Roman, Brock and LA Knight.

Gunther is the new Orton I guess? Except more boring?

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Gunther is getting the push I was hoping would go to Rex Steiner (who inexplicably got renamed Bron Breakker). In Highlander terms, he basically got the Quickenings of Goldberg, John Cena, and AJ Styles. Outside of retiring Austin/Rock/Roman/Brock I don't know that there's any bigger set of Quickenings one can get.

And it all went to boring Gunther. Not Bron Steiner, not Jacob Fatu, not even LA Knight (which would have been a terrible idea but at least he's entertaining). The company should be building around Bron and Fatu. Imagine how big Bron would be right now if he'd retired those 3 guys, and kept the Steiner name.

Gunther will probably be retiring Orton too, so yay, what the fuck.


In other news, Wrestling Bios' "Reliving the War" series is about to end, he'll be putting up the Wrestlemania X-7 review and a wrap-up video soon if he hasn't already. It's a really great series, maybe the best Monday Night War series on Youtube (I mean scratch the maybe, it's probably without question). He covered from September 1995 to March 2001, more or less in real time, over the past five years or so. I think I saw maybe 70-80% of the episodes, because in the first couple of years I'd often miss a week. I wish I knew which ones I skipped, because now that it's over I want to see more. Ah well.

An interesting thing that he talks about in the wrap-up is that the viewership for this series declined a lot as the shows dipped in ratings/quality (mostly on the WCW side). A lot less people were tuning in for the 2000 shows, which told him that the WCW loyalist side of the viewership were tuning out. So basically the channel views almost perfectly mimicked the actual ratings during the Monday Night War.