Milkman

Moderates who hate Trump are going to vote for whoever is running against him. Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate among all democrats.Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate among independents. The fact that this kind analysis also ignores is that there's about half of the country that doesn't vote at all. That think every politician is the same and none of them will ever have any effect on their lives. Guess whose campaign is speaking to those people?

I don't know where these narratives come from that Bernie can't win come from but they're proven less true every single day.

Don't worry, he will.

Some New Beginning in Osaka thoughts, specifically the top 3 matches.

Hiromu/Lee and Moxley/Suzuki were two of the most atypical New Japan matches I can remember seeing in a while. I can't recall the last time I've seen anything in New Japan quite like either one of these. Hiromu and Dragon Lee have faced each other so many times at this point that every match between them seems like an attempt to ratchet up the absurdity in some new way and they definitely succeeded here. You could have given me a thousand guesses of how this was gonna start and I never would have guessed a near 15 minute chop battle. A very different but great match for these two. Dragon Lee teasing the Dragon Driver a couple times but never being able to hit it made me think Lee is winning BOSJ this year and then using it to beat Hiromu for the title at Dominion.

Moxley vs. Suzuki also very much lived up to the hype. Suzuki was REALLY laying those forearm shots in on Mox and was very clearly having the time of his life in there. I'm sure there are some who are going to find this a little too goofy and be annoyed by a lot of the no-selling but I thought it was a ton of fun. The post match stuff was just as exciting as the actual match for me as well. I never expected a Sabre-Moxley feud was where New Japan was taking this next but I'm completely all in for it.

Then with the main event, we got the more typical New Japan match and unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed by it. The action really picked up in the last 10 minutes or so, especially when Naito got busted open but just when it started getting good, it was over. And it took way, way too long to get there. I'm not against the 30 minute main event NJPW formula at all (Okada and Taichi just had a great one last week) but this was paced way too slowly and there was way too much stalling in the beginning. I get that KENTA is a heel and he's suppose to be frustrating but there's a point where it goes too far and is just not enjoyable to watch. It speaks to a problem I've had with KENTA since coming to New Japan. His character work has been great and he's probably my favorite heel in wrestling right now but his matches almost always fail to live up to that character work. Not a bad match or anything but if Naito didn't get busted open, there would be no reason to remember it.

Two good Rumbles definitely carried the show. Becky/Asuka was a good match in front of a shitty crowd, would have been a great match in front of a better one. Bryan getting a passable match out of Wyatt shows what a miracle worker he is. Less said about the rest the better but overall, not a terrible show at all.

Worlds Collide wasn't Takeover level but still a fun exhibition style show.

Balor/Dragunov was slightly disappointing, a solid match but the crowd had no idea who Dragunov was and the match itself didn't really help much. They had to have known Balor was gonna be over huge with the crowd and should have had Dragunov work more heelish here.

The Crusierweight Four Way was a really fun spotfest and the Devlin win was a great surprise. Devlin deserves much better than NXT UK purgatory, hopefully this is a way from him to escape.

DIY vs. Mustache Mountain was just about as good as it sounded on paper. There was a lot of goofy feeling out process stuff in the beginning and even though some of it was funny, it did drag a little bit. But once the match got going, it didn't let up and was a good reminder of how good the tag division in NXT was at one point.

By far the biggest disappointment of the show was Ripley vs. Storm. They were in a bad spot on the show and didn't get a lot of time at all but even beyond that, these two just don't seem to have much chemistry as none of their other matches before this were anything special either. Thought this could be a good showcase spot for Toni but came off as just a tune up for Ripley before Belair.

On the flip side, Undisputed Era vs. Imperium completely exceeded my expectations. This was an amazing match, right up there with the Shield/Wyatt Family six man from 2014. It was especially impressive considering Wolfe got (literally) knocked out of the match 3 minutes in but these guys barely missed a beat. Everyone stepped up and WALTER left looking like an absolute megastar, which was much needed after that Survivor Series debacle. This was the first WWE match since his match with Tyler Bate last year where they seemed to actually understand how to use this guy. Came out of this desperately wanting to see singles matches for O'Reilly and especially Roddy against WALTER. Was jumping out of my seat every time Strong and WALTER were in the ring together, need that match immediately.

This was the kind of week that I think everyone was hoping for when this whole Wednesday Night Wars business started. While I wouldn't say AEW or NXT this week were blow away amazing or anything, both were super solid, very watchable wrestling shows that didn't I feel like an idiot for watching. That's all I'm really asking. Not to do the corny "the real winners are the fans" shit but thumbs up for both shows this week. Good shit.

By far the best thing on either show last night was Cameron Grimes in the main event looking like a total star. The sky should be the limit for this guy.

Watching AEW continues to be a frustrating experience. After a great show to kick off the year last week with a bunch of no nonsense great wrestling, we get a complete stinker of a show with pretty much nothing but nonsense. The Riho/Statlander match was up there with the worst segments on Raw every week and it was absolutely not the fault of either of the people actually in the match.

@devise22: @wmoyer83: PWG still exists but yeah, it’s very much not as relevant as it once was. Part of that has to do with lots of their stars being signed by WWE and AEW but another big part of it is their business model. BOLA happened in mid September this year but still the only way to watch it as of right now is ordering the physical Blu-rays from their site. Something that the vast majority of wrestling fans are not gonna do in this day and age unless they’re serious super fans. They also ran just 8 shows this year, the least they’ve ran since their first year. Super Dragon clearly doesn’t care about expanding the audience for whatever reason, which was kind of an endearing part of PWG in past years. It felt like a cool club that you wanted to be a part of it but now with so many wrestling options that are so much easier to watch, it’s just been overshadowed, even if when they do put on shows (and people get to actually see them) they’re still pretty high quality.

Ospreay/Hiromu and Okada/Ibushi were both incredible last night. I see White/Naito being polarizing but I liked it quite a bit even if it was definitely a step below the matches before and after it. I still don't think much of Jay White but thought it was an awesome performance from Naito.

Moxley/Archer was a very fun brawl and the Liger match surprised me with how hard these old guys were willing to go. The tag matches in between were a little throwaway but overall, very little to complain about, a great show and I can't wait for tonight.