Retris

@bigsocrates: While I agree with Kingston's spot, which was absolutely one where you saw there was no way a spot could be done without injury or catastrophe, Copeland's injury was a freak accident. It was just a regular spot where Copeland goes over a younger guy that deserves a push, but Edge hesitated and instead of doing the spot properly he decided to just fall on his feet which incidentally is more dangerous than the actual spot.

But yeah, while I hate to reference Cornette, there are times when the marks are in the ring. There's a big problem with wrestlers doing spots that are don't look especially good, but are genuinely dangerous. The Kingston spot is one of them, all the apron moves are another. The worst are moves where the person taking the move can't genuinely bump/ protect themselves or in anyway effect how the move ends up. Stuff like corner powerbombs, dropkicks to the back and shit like that. It's one thing to decide to do a move where you put yourself in danger, and another to do a move where you put your opponent in danger. Mone/Sasha is kinda notorious for doing moves in that vein.

This just puts Spencer's spiel about taking responsibility for Redfall in a bad light. While I don't doubt his earnestness, sometimes you need to know when to shut the fuck up. Acknowledging that you as a CEO are responsible when your company does bad is fine, but that's not taking responsibility. At the end of the day your kind words don't mean shit when the people you are soothsaying are the ones getting fired.

Tango and Roll7 getting shut down within a week is rough. Those two games were used as examples of how you can still make decent budget games that have a distinct art direction and try something new. But even all the critical acclaim and awards couldn't shield them from the grim reaper and the reality of the CoDification of the AAA video game field.

Tony Khan wearing a neck brace for the NFL draft and the NFL announcers talking about how brave he is for powering through is exactly the kind of dumb fun that I love about American wrestling.

They did not have to go this hard or this horny with this poster for All Together. But they did and it's glorious.

This is not a drill. Chuck Taylor finally got to say shit on live TV. The boyhood dream has come true.

@rebel_scum:At the end of the day, American wrestling is still lowbrow entertainment directed at backwards yokels. I don't think it's necessarily getting a free pass, it's just people realizing that it is what it is. It's the same thing with wrestlers' politics and for example how ready people are to accept that nobody at WWE knew about Vince until the lawsuits started coming.

@cornfed40: Like said, we really don't know whose idea it was. Occam's razor would point to the Young Bucks at least partially being responsible, since it's been their MO literally since 2009. They've been doing this for 15 years, so I'm just going to assume it's them.

@sombre: I'm guessing the reasons are threefold:

1) There's been rumors for a long while that Naito is working hurt. Might be more hurt than people thought.

2) Jon Moxley fucking rules.

3) This gives them a way to get the title on the Semen Cannon without having to do yet another LIJ internal implosion.

@av_gamer:But wouldn't that also apply to the Young Bucks and AEW since that's what we're talking about? The discussion is more about AEW than Punk.

@brian_: Speaking of. I genuinely don't think think this was Tony's idea. It's not really his style. His style is more of introducing new wrestlers and belts and then doing nothing with them, and filling shows with main-eventer vs. jobber matches that go over 10 minutes and really do nothing but waste time. On the other hand you've got the Young Bucks who've literally made their entire careers on the back of doing stuff like this, so I wouldn't really put it past being their idea.

Also, holy shit Jack Perry is fucking over. This genuinely seems to be working for him? Wild. People (including myself) were expecting the crowd to absolutely destroy him, but instead he had the Chicago live crowd eating out of his hand. He was one of the most over acts of the night. If AEW can manage to capitalize in the same way and get the non-smark heavy crowds into it this could actually work. I can't overstate how genuinely surprising Windy City was and this was the biggest surprise.

NJPW Strong constantly having better shows than regular NJPW is starting to make NJPW look even worse than they look on their own merits.

@bigsocrates: Yuuup. This and Ospreay cutting a promo on Triple H sure as shit makes AEW look second rate. This is DX invading WCW on a "tank" level of sad, and AEW doesn't have the luxury of spending literal decades of hyping it up to make it look better.

WWE almost had a disaster this weekend with Punk trying to make the weekend about himself, but they managed to avoid it by just powering through and ignoring Punk. AEW on the other hand tried to lean into it and it just made them look bad. We'll see if it pops a rating, but I don't think that rating's gonna last if it did as none of the rest of the show really gave anyone a reason to stay. I get that the Bucks are doing an even more meta heel gimmick now that their meta heel gimmick of "wrestling in a way to piss off wrestling purists" has gotten old, and I did find the whole thing (and the way it parodied Tony Khan) funny... but sheesh, nobody's talking about the segment and everyone is talking about the footage. Heck, they're not really even talking about the footage, they're just talking about the airing of it. Someone said that everyone had made their mind about the footage already and showing it didn't change anyone's mind and that's bang on the money: you can see Punk instigate the fight, you can see him fail to choke Perry, you can see him lunging at Khan but getting pulled away... but the people on Punk's (or anti-AEW) side still pretend that's not how the footage went. Facts or proof do not work on the internet.

I just can't get over how stupid this shit is and how it's distracting from the show.

So, as (I) predicted, CM Punk choked out Jack Perry in the same way he choked out his opponents in UFC. This begs the question... does Punk actually believe he should've won those MMA fights? That the ref should've stopped the match? Because holy shit. This was Hogan level of fibbing.