Wrestling

AEW DARK: September 21, 2021

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The PG Era Rant for AEW Dark Episode 109 (“Even the B Shows Are Awesome!”), September 21, 2021.

From Orlando and the self-named All Elite Zone.

Your hosts are Excalibur and Taz.

TONIGHT! We’re headed to AEW Grand Slam and it’s LOADED! Bear Bronson takes a shot at Eddie Kingston! FTR face a pair of 205 escapees in Curt “Stallion” Rogers and Anthony Greene! Daniel Garcia steps in with the firebrand of the Dark Order, Alan Angels! Santana and Ortiz take on Chaos Project! And it’s a Wingmen vs Dark Order doubleheader! JD Drake draws Colt Cabana, while Reynolds and Silver face Nemeth and Avalon!

PLUS — Big Swole, The Factory, The Bunny, Shotty and Brock, Lance Archer, Tay Conti, Joey Janela, Wardlow, and NEGATIVE ONE IN THE HOUSE!

COLD OPEN: Wardlow says he will remind everyone that this is his world.

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The Roman Reigns Experiment Needs To be Ended ASAP

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Seriously; they had a perfect chance to A. Make a new star even bigger and B. End the Roman Reigns ratings poison experiment by having Big E beat Roman last night on Raw in an impromptu unification match, complete with having Big E beating Roman bloody and throwing him AND Heyman into a garbage dumpster after the match to sum up that Vince was listening to fans and ending this abortion of a run now, while he still has a company that he can sell to the highest bidder. 

Would have made Raw must see by having a major moment happening (meaning more viewers due to Raw being restored as the A Show and establishing that anything CAN happen there), elevate Big E as a top guy by having him end the reign of terror and give him a boost to his credibility as a top guy, and more to the point, give actual fucking stakes to Big E vs Finn Balor at the next PPV as to whether or not Big E will lose or if they will screwjob things so the titles split again with Finn as Smackdown champion and Big E as the Raw champion, along with (assuming there is a draft) Brock something to do as far as which title he'll challenge for now that he's back and him struggling to get by without Heyman around, as far as Brock's asshat behavior coming back to bite him now that he doesn't have Heyman protecting him from the consequences of his behavior. 

Jesse Baker
Yeah!  Why won’t they just bow to your will and end this terrible Reigns experiment already?  

The Punch-Drunk Tuesday Night Thread

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I ended up watching the Monday Night Football game and checked out only a bit of RAW, proving I’d rather watch the evitable Lions loss than RAW 90% of the time. Although I did see some of the opening tag team match. Why do I contribute to a wrestling blog again?

Nevertheless, your homework for tonight is to discuss favorite arcade shoot-em-ups. Super Smash TV is up there, but my pick might still have to be Contra. NARC is an honorable mention.

The Nintendo Fun Club. Join it.

Dreamer on Dark Side of the Ring

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Scott,


Forgive me if you've already gotten this, but I just watched the Plane Ride from Hell episode this weekend and read about Tommy Dreamer's apology for his tone deaf comments regarding Ric Flair.

While it may have made for compelling television, do you think that this will make other wrestlers leary of participating in this show in the future.  My point being is the producers of the show probably knew how these commets would be viewed and decided to include them in the episode instead of leaving them on the cutting room floor.

As always, your thoughts on this are much appreciated.


Never underestimate the ability of wrestlers to say something stupid at any moment.  Trust me, there’s always someone willing to risk it in order to pimp their Instragram or get bookings.  

Tetsuya Naito out of the G1 tournament

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How much longer do you see Naito wrestling?
He’s had knee issues in the past and done pretty much everything there is to do in New Japan as far as IWGP championships and G1 tournament victories.
One reason could be, when he recovers, to be the next to “break down the forbidden door” and have another five star classic with Omega, but other than that would do you think there is left for Naito to do?

Probably not much.  But man, can you imagine the math that Gedo is going to need to do now?  

Roman’s Fate

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If Seth Rollins was the one to finally dethrone Roman, do you think it would work in properly reheating him or would it be disappointing ?

2.) if Rock does ever face Roman, who should win in your opinion ?

No one should be beating Roman, least of all Seth.  He can be Universal champion until he decides to retire and go make movies like Cena. 

Getting the chop

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Hey Scott, following the recent Dark Side of the Ring episode how do you think the fans and wrestlers are going to deal with references to Flair and his legacy? For example, if someone does a chop in the ring will the fans still give it a “Wooo”?


I think so because ultimately Dark Side isn't like mainstream news coverage in the same way something like Benoit got.  There's lots of people who still haven't even seen the episode, myself included, and won't know the specifics of what he was alleged to have done.  

Does he get a championship for worst statement ever?

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Hey Scott,

I'm sure you've already received emails about Ric Flair's statement:

https://twitter.com/RicFlairNatrBoy/status/1440111242274918401?s=20

But could this possibly be the worst statement ever?  I don't even know where to begin.

1 – First, his entire defense is based around a guy that Flair openly states lies 99% of the time.  “He lies about everything, but he's telling the truth about THIS” is a super strange and weak argument.

2 – He openly acknowledges all of the terrible things he's done, as if that proves that he's not capable of doing worse.  Again, “I've done countless awful things, but I didn't do THIS awful thing” is a really weird flex.

3 – Perhaps worst of all, he doesn't even seem to realize or recognize that even if the particular accusation of him forcing the flight attendant to touch him is false, the act of walking around and exposing yourself to somebody is beyond inappropriate.  Like, he doesn't even apologize for the fact that he did that (and no, this wasn't a normal or acceptable thing to do in the early 2000's).


I don't know that anything will ever truly finish off Ric Flair, but I think this is enough to show me that he's not a good guy.

Flair desperately needs to channel Hogan here and just go underground for as long as possible until everything blows over.  I don't think there's a right play here for him.  Just shut up, Ric.  Obviously AEW isn't going to risk killing their brand over him at this point and probably won't touch him with a 10 foot pole for a long time, if ever.    

The SmarK Rant for WWF Superstars – 01.15.94

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The SmarK Rant for WWF Superstars – 01.15.94

Oh yay.  I was led to believe that they’d somehow managed to get the rights to their own show back and we’d be seeing 1986 Superstars of Wrestling added to the Network today, but NOPE, it’s just more of stinky old 1994 Superstars instead.  Who’s ready for more Lex Luger?

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Monday Night Raw – September 20, 2021

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Monday Night Raw
Date: September 20, 2021
Location: PNC Arena, Raleigh, North Carolina
Commentators: Jimmy Smith, Byron Saxton, Corey Graves

It’s the go home show for Extreme Rules and in theory that should mean that it is time to actually add something EXTREME to the card. It would be nice to have the show actually live up to its name, though I think you can guess what kind of stipulations we are going to be seeing. Let’s get to it.

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AEW ELEVATION: September 20, 2021

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The PG Era Rant for AEW Elevation Episode 29 (“Tonight on FOX: When Wrestling Friendships GO BAD”), September 20, 2021.

From NewArk, New Joizey.

Your hosts are Tony, Paul, and the King.

TONIGHT! Good friends become better enemies! Team Factory’s QT Marshall takes on Team Nightmare’s Dustin Rhodes! The Dark Order continues to fracture as Evil Uno and Colt Cabana face Alan Angels and Preston Vance! And New Jersey’s boys go one-on-one as Joey Janela tackles Sonny Kiss!

PLUS — Gunn Club, Orange Cassidy, Hikaru Shida, Thunder Rosa, Santana/Ortiz, and Private Party!

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Monday Night Open Mic

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Hello Blog O’Doomers!

I hope everyone is doing well and had a great weekend in this final day and a half of summer.

RAW is live tonight and with Monday Night Football back on the schedule, the sports entertainment show has decided to boost things up a bit. New Day vs. Bloodline is on the match list and any time The Tribal Chief brings himself to RAW it’s an important show.

Scott has dueling Nitro and RAW reviews from 1996.

I haven’t watched the full Dark Side of the Ring episode yet. It was a busy weekend. But I will tonight and have that review available tomorrow.

Lions-Packers is the Monday Night Football match.

Here’s Cornette talking about the Plane Ride from Hell episode.

Keep it Clean.

What the World Was Watching: WWF Prime Time Wrestling – June 18, 1990

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Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan are tonight’s hosts.  Monsoon tells Heenan that he does not appreciate how he left last week’s show.  He says that he has seen Hogan and he is okay but could be doing better.

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Joshi Spotlight: GAEA Second Battle & Champ Forum

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GAEA SECOND BATTLE:
(4/15/1995)
* More GAEA Japan goodness, as Chigusa does a tag match alongside her Mini-Me, Meiko Satomura, against some LLPW invaders on one show, and then two months later, we check out the match everyone wanted to see- a Dream Slam rematch between ’80s icons Chigusa & Devil! Plus more from the Angry Teenager Division!

I wasn’t sure if I should split this into two reviews (1500-ish words each) or one big one, so let me know which y’all would prefer.

GAEA NEO SOUL 3 ON 3 MIX:
TOSHIE UEMATSU (GAEA), SONOKO KATO (GAEA) & YASUKO KURAGAKI (JWP) vs. MEIKO SATOMURA (GAEA), TOSHIE SATO (GAEA) & TOMOKO KUZUMI (JWP):
* So this is six rookies piled into one match, with two GAEA girls joined by a JWP girl each, and we’re joined in progress, so I miss announcements and thus have to use process of elimination here. Uematsu’s in green & Kato’s in blue, so Yasuko is in black/blue. Meiko’s in red & Sato’s in white, which makes Kuzumi the black/pink one. Okay, so the JWP girls are in near-exact gear- suuuuuuuuuure makes things easier.

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Vince McMahon hates wrestling

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“Wrestlers” and “wrestling” are reportedly on the list of words World Wrestling Entertainment wrestlers are banned from using. Do you think the National Football League, Major League Baseball & the National Basketball Association should adopt a similar strategy?

I dunno, I don’t find NFL or NBA to be particularly entertaining.  

OC vs Hardy

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People seem convinced that Hardy is getting a haircut but surely OC losing (or being cost the match) is the smarter play. They can do the deal where OC nonchalantly sits down, makes himself comfy, whips out a magazine, gets shaved and then gives a thumbs up
while Hardy goes mental because OC is no-selling the haircut. OC would probably look pretty cool with a buzz cut and if he doesn't, then it wouldn't take too long to grow his hair out again anyway.

I can see just that, actually.  Good call.