Tag: wrestling

Kairi, and the long overdue IWGP Women’s Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I heard the news that KAIRI (FKA. Sane) had become the first-ever IWGP Women’s Champion, I was both pleased and disappointed.

I liked Kairi Sane when she was a part of the WWE; she really captured the imaginations of those who watched her rise in NXT through the Mae Young Classic (which they really should consider doing again), and I enjoyed her development into the main roster where she formed an entertaining team with Asuka.  She could work and had charisma, and I was disappointed when it was revealed that she did not re-sign with the WWE, but understandable given the circumstances of her wanting to go back to Japan.

Needless to say, I’m happy for her that she’s the inaugural IWGP Women’s Champion because I always liked KAIRI, and I think she deserves it.

However, at the same time, I’m perplexed and mostly disappointed in the fact that in 2022, is when New Japan Pro Wrestling had finally decided to create an IWGP Women’s Championship.

Sure, NJPW never really had a women’s division at all, often outsourcing their need for women talent mostly to Stardom, but as the rest of the world continued turning, NJPW remained in the Bronze Age as far as gender equality went.  Which is doubly ironic, because Japan is home to such a deep well of female talent, both Japanese and foreigner alike, with most of the latter ex-pats coming to Japan on their own fruition as it’s known to be such a robust scene to grow as performers.

For as much of the weebs of the world think that Japan is this magical culture that can do no wrong, the fact that there’s never been an IWGP Women’s Championship until now is just a little microcosm of where they as a culture truly are behind the times.  And it’s not even just about wrestling, it’s the simple fact that as culture, Japan is still extremely misogynistic.  Sure, they’re no draconian Sharia law country, but they’re still a hundred years behind the United States, and we frankly are mediocre at just about everything.

Either way, I’m pleased with KAIRI becoming a champion once again, but it really is kind of pathetic that it’s taken this long for NJPW to even have something of a women’s championship in the first place.

I don’t think Kenny Omega’s heart will ever be with AEW

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was perusing through my YouTube recommendations, and I came across this clip of Kenny Omega challenging Will Osperay, and what caught my attention was the fact that it was dated just a day ago.  Perplexed, I bit, and I watched this not just impressive for Kenny Omega, but a very impressive promo in general, where yep, Kenny Omega was challenging Will Osperay, at WrestleKingdom, New Japan’s version of Wrestlemania.

It was a very thoughtful, impassioned, and good promo, that doesn’t just flex Omega’s fluency in Japanese, but just the whole package of delivery, context and dialogue were fantastic.  It was without question one of the best promos he’s cut in ages, and without any doubt, better than any promo in English he’s ever cut for AEW; that company he helped found, and is an EVP for, regardless of what kayfabe stripping of titles Tony Khan might have declared.

What I’m really getting to is exactly what the title of the post is; no matter what he accomplishes in AEW or the role he plays in AEW, I just can’t believe that at any point, his heart will ever truly be in AEW, because Kenny Omega is such a monumental weeb that has already given his heart to Japan, and by proxy, NJPW.

Forbidden doors and all those buzzwords that love to be thrown around in the current era of the business, but it’s just silly to me that AEW’s (arguably) biggest star is loaning himself to NJPW, and if I’m a betting man, will probably put on the greatest match he’ll have had over the last 3-4 years.  Dave Meltzer will jizz out 7+ stars to describe the match, and international buy rates of the show will probably benefit from this match being announced. 

And it will all be under the umbrella of another promotion.

NJPW will own all the footage of the match, and AEW won’t be able to show any clips of it.  Omega will go from having a mega Broadway of a match against Will Osperay in the Tokyo Dome, and then two weeks later be selling for Orange Cassidy and the Best Friends in Nassau Coliseum with the Young Bucks, whom I also don’t think they really care nearly as much about AEW as much as they do their YouTube channel.

The Oracle (me) says that Omega does the job, because he’s still kind of on the mend, on the later stages of his career, while Osperay is still very much rising to his prime, and logic dictates that another promotion’s guy shouldn’t beat the house talent, but when it comes to AEW and their relationships with other promotions, it always seems like they usually win out, even if it means Omega absconds with the IWGP United States championship.  It’s not like they haven’t done it before.

But I also think that there’s the possibility that this booking was reactionary to the WWE loaning out Shinsuke Nakamura to Pro Wrestling NOAH to have a match against the Great Muta who is kind of a (endless) retirement tour, since both events are on New Year’s, and if that’s the case then Osperay wins, with probably there being a fuckton of interference in order to keep heat strong for the future.

I could expound on a variety of opinions, but ultimately, it all boils down to this hunch, this feeling, that I just don’t think Kenny Omega’s heart will ever really be with AEW, no matter what Tony Khan pays or does for him to try and win it. 

I’d love to see the outtakes of the promo, because it probably took 28 takes at the part where he said he was surprised to have gotten the call from NJPW, because in reality he probably reacted like Stewie Griffin finding out he was going to Disney World at the opportunity to perform for NJPW again.  Frankly it’s like the best of both worlds for him, because he gets to keep his AEW paycheck going, but he gets to go to Mecca and perform at the Tokyo Dome against an incredible talent like Osperay.

If life were wrestling, Stacey Abrams turns heel now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never wanted to be a person whose gave much concern over politics, but maybe it’s a symptom of getting older, or the world is just getting so progressively fucked up that people like me are organically becoming more aware of them, but I’ve found myself caring enough to the point where when the political season starts heating up, I feel the need to ignore everything, because I care, and I’m treating the whole thing like how I treat sports game that I’m vested in.

That being said, I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised at the results of Georgia’s political battleground, namely the two key races that most people have been paying attention to.  Despite all of the available facts out there, Georgia unsurprisingly embarrassed themselves on a national stage, by having a legally brain-dead Hershel Walker garner so much voter support, that his deadlocked race against Raphael Warnock is now headed to a dreadful run-off race next month.

To my recollection, Democrats haven’t won a single run-off since I’ve lived here or paid any attention to, so instead of losing in November, Warnock seems destined to lose a bigger and more scrutinized race in December, because from what I can observe, the Democratic party can’t seem to put together a single winning strategy against the formulaic low-fruit smashing tactics of the GOP.

But the main point of this post is about Stacey Abrams, who lost for the second time to Yosemite Sam for governorship of Georgia.  I can’t say that I’m at all surprised by this outcome, but I was hoping that Sam’s bickering with the orange guy in 2020 would have done enough damage to him to where it might have shifted some voters to not vote for him, but when it really comes down to it, and the exit polls kind of confer, Stacey Abrams being both black and a female just makes it way too hard to overcome both racist and sexist reflexes of the Georgia voters that actually decided to vote.

According to census numbers, Georgia has about 7 million people who are of voting eligibility, but only about 4 million people actually voted.  Obviously, this isn’t to say that both Abrams and Warnock’s chances of victory would have been improved by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still frustrating to learn that nearly 3 million people just didn’t vote at all.  If I’m a Hershel Walker supporter, I’m just as frustrated by this, seeing as how the margin of voters between Warnock is what’s sending this to a run-off in the first place.

Either way, to no surprise, Abrams is taking her loss with dignity and class, as was the case the first time around.  She vows to continue to fight for Georgians, and is saying all of the right things that those in the political career should be saying.  But honestly, if I’m Stacey Abrams, and life were actually professional wrestling, at this point I’m fucking sick of Georgians, tired of trying to win Georgia, and I’m turning heel on the state and vowing to move onto bigger and better things.

3 million motherfuckers not voting at all?  What’s the point of Fair Fight when there are a bunch of people who just don’t want to fight at all?  Twice now, Georgians have left Stacey down by not turning up to the polls, and she’s basically had to eat a shit sandwich twice over now.

Abrams is no stranger outside of Georgia too, as she was one of the names that was on the short list of potential Vice President candidates.  Who’s to say that after jobbing twice to Dutch Mantell that she just stops giving a fuck about Georgia and doesn’t move on to bigger and better opportunities in Washington? 

Frankly, I think it would tickle me delirious if Stacey Abrams were to go have a press conference on WSB to announce what she’s going to do next, and unleashing a scathing promo on the state of Georgia, that she’s sick and tired of trying to prop this sexist and racist backwater state up to civilized standards, and that she’s peaceing the fuck out of here, before dropping the mic.

As she gets down from the podium, a bunch of white rednecks in UGA sweatshirts are seen throwing Bud Light bottles and toilet paper rolls onto the stage, like a 1998 episode of WCW Monday Nitro.

At this point, I can’t say I’d blame her.

WTF is AEW doing #192

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There are a lot of times I find out of what’s going on in wrestling solely based on one of my close friends sending me a random text message commentating on something that he’s watching live and I’m not.  Just the other day, he sends me a message saying:

We’re going to see if we’re right about Jeff Jarrett being a company killer

I laughed because of the time of day it was and that it was on a Wednesday, I knew that Jeff Jarrett had finally decided to become hashtagALLELITE and that he had shown up on AEW.  The real question was who he bashed his balsa wood fake guitar on, because Jeff Jarrett literally does nothing other than that spot.

A quick Google search confirmed that Jeff Jarrett was definitely ALLELITE and had done so by bashing his balsa wood fake guitar over Darby Allin, which I probably could’ve guessed in maybe three or four tries, because for some reason, Darby Allin seems to be completely okay with being a gatekeeper for the company in which all incoming talent seems to gravitate towards, and usually beats the unholy shit out of him at some point.

Regardless, let’s get back to Jeff Jarrett, and the claim that he’s a company killer.  After all, the Jarrett family is somewhat low country wrestling royalty in the regard that they’ve been running promotions for generations now, but Jeff himself has been varying degrees of involved with primarily TNA which is now Impact! Wrestling, but also the NWA, Global Force, GCW and even with some appearances with New Japan.  At no point in his involvement with any of these promotions did they ever really light the world on fire, and only in his time with TNA was Jeff himself remotely close to being anything of a superstar in the industry.

The reputation comes from the fact that none of these promotions ever really benefit from the addition of Jeff Jarrett, feeding the narratives that the WWE put onto him that he was never really more than a mid-card ceiling kind of guy.  Furthermore, Jeff Jarrett has been around long enough, to where he’s gotten to be involved with various factions and trends throughout the years, but again, not in a particularly good way.

I ilke to describe Jeff Jarrett as kind of wrestling’s version of the Family Guy joke killer meme, where once Family Guy makes a reference to something popular, that thing is immediately uncool and dead in the water right then and there.  Jeff Jarrett had the misfortune of being added to the nWo 2000 stable during his time in WCW which lasted all of like a month; it’s easy to say it’s because WCW couldn’t book a fish into water, or that Bret Hart’s career was already over, but let’s be real, it was because it was Jeff Jarrett was a member.

Nearly 15 years later, after Jarrett had lost TNA and was spinning his wheels with Global Force, during a show in partnership with New Japan, Jeff Jarrett shocks (read: surprises nobody) when he brandishes a balsa wood fake guitar with the Bullet Club logo on it and bashes it over Hiroshi Tanahashi, effectively joining the evil gaijin stable.  Needless to say, all the coolness of Bullet Club flew out the window faster than the hopes and dreams of everyone trying to win Powerball, and the stable hasn’t recovered since.

Earlier this year, Jeff Jarrett has been clawing at relevancy in any way shape or form, derailing promotions left and right.  For all the exposure and life Matt Cardona had injected into GCW, all it took was Jeff Jarrett appearing on their THE WRLD ppv, where he buried Effy, and GCW hasn’t recovered since.  Jeff Jarrett was Ric Flair’s LAST MATCH EVERRRR, and it’s almost like the marks who put the show together were trying to hedge their bets by preemptively calling their Jim Crockett Promotions show a one-time deal, but it’s really like they’re restauranteurs who already saw the writing on the wall when working with Double-J and didn’t bother promoting anything beyond the single show, if it meant being associated with him.

Even the WWE wasn’t safe from the stink of Jeff Jarrett, as he was brought in for some reason to be a special referee for the feud between the Usos and Street Profits, and not long afterward, the Vince McMahon scandal blew up, and of all the people and shots that have been fired at him throughout the decades, really all it took was having to work with Jeff Jarrett that seems to have effectively killed such an unkillable career.

So, hopefully Tony Khan knows what he’s doing in getting into bed with Jeff Jarrett, because as history has proven throughout the millennium, doing business with Jeff Jarrett has often come with some seriously bad consequences.

WTF is AEW doing #177

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not that I don’t want to watch AEW when it airs, it’s just that I’d rather be doing one of the fifty other things that I could be doing with what spare time that I actually have when I have it.

Typically, highlight packages on YouTube are how I best keep touch with the pulse of wrestling, and when things seem compelling enough, I’ll look for video on demand or make a conceited effort to watch. 

Needless to say, that very rarely happens, and it’s not just with AEW, but with WWE as well.

And then I see things like this populate on YouTube, and I’m left scrunching my eyebrow and thinking [title of post]?

I kind of feel bad for both the guys in this very unfortunate pairing of thumbnail and subject line, regardless of it were deliberate or not by the digital media team of AEW.  Billy Gunn probably watched with a tear in his eye and piss and vinegar in his mouth as D-Generation X celebrated some 25 year anniversary on a very recent edition of RAW, and Swerve is probably just another of many former WWE guys who is feeling increasing regret over being quick to jump to AEW after their releases from WWE before Hunter came back.

And now one of them is kayfabe abducting the other in a strange storyline where four black guys are clumped together, fighting each other, seemingly over an over-the-hill white man who once made a name for himself as Mr. Ass, but because he’s at the elder statesman point of his career, he’s now “Daddy Ass.”

I’ve said it once, and I’ll undoubtedly say it thousands more times, if there are ever reasons why I’ll always have a hard time taking AEW seriously, this is definitely one of them.

WTF is AEW doing #169

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

He’s got a point you know: Dax Harwood, one half of the current ROH, AAA and IWGP tag team champions, FTR, gets on a mic (at a NJPW show) and reminds AEW owner Tony Khan that they still work for him, and that they should be booked, brother

The takeaway I get from this story is that Tony Khan literally has no ability to book a wrestler beyond the thrill of the chase.  FTR is one of numerous examples in AEW’s short history, where talent is in pursuit of some form of greatness, be it a feud, one championship, or multiple championships, and eventually they achieve it, but then absolutely dick or butt happens with them after the payoff, and it’s a matter of time before they’re basically on Dark: Elevation, or like in the case of FTR, forced to rely on other promotions to actually get any screen time.

If the way Tony Khan books AEW is any indication, any person who has the courage to become involved with TK, I feel bad for them, because he will undoubtedly wine and dine, woo and pursue for a year, and have probably the biggest rager of a wedding ceremony there possibly could be – but then he will absolutely and completely forget about his spouse in a week. 

Hangman Adam Page’s pursuit of the AEW world championship was a fantastic ride, but once he actually made it to the top of the mountain and dethroned Kenny Omega, TK literally had no idea on the planet what to do with him, eventually feeding him to CM Punk, unceremoniously at that.  Wardlow’s journey to be freed from under MJF’s employ was one that was pretty decent and allowed Wardlow to really show his in-ring talents, but after he squashed MJF, TK has no idea what to do with him either, other than having him squash Scorpio Sky and taking the TNT title from him, barely after he had won it, and now Wardlow is completely directionless, picking random fights of the week, solely because he has the network blet.

The All-Atlantic championship had more qualifying and tournament matches to crown its first holder, than the title has actually had television time with PAC, whose duties are split, because he’s also a third of the Trios champions, whom hasn’t seemed to have had any screen time in their own right since winning the supposedly coveted championship.

I mean, with 15-17 championships currently circulating within the company and only three hours of network television time a week, it’s no surprise that they’re having a hard time getting all these supposed commodities some screen time, but at this point it’s more humorous than anything at how goofy the booking of AEW is, in spite of all of the actual talent they really do have on their roster of like 150.

And it really doesn’t matter how good or accomplished the talent is; Hangman was a world champion and FTR literally is holding three tag team championships at the same time.  Once TK has booked the thrill of the chase narrative out of a guy(s), he simply has no idea what to do once it’s over, and unfortunately the default reaction appears to be neglect. 

At least let FTR win the AEW tag blets again, and be quadruple champions before they’re eventually booked to start dropping the titles back to their respective home promotions, because it would be pretty baller to see two guys lugging around eight blets.

WTF is AEW doing #137

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After hearing about, and then seeing the visuals of Chris Jericho defeating Cesaro Claudio Castagnoli for the Ring of Honor World championship on AEW Dynamite on TNT TBS, that was the first thing that I said: wtf is AEW doing?

Then I came to the realization that I say this almost on a weekly basis, because the promotion is always doing some weird questionable things on a weekly basis except for the precise single AEW taping that I was physically present for, where absolutely nothing substantial occurred except an amusing squash match between Brody King and Darby Allin. 

Ordinarily, I’m typically in favor of most things that benefit Chris Jericho.  Notwithstanding his unfortunate political alignment that has increasingly come to light over the last few years, I can still (mostly) separate the wrestler from the guy, and it’s safe to say that I’ll be able to say that I was a fan of the performer, his impressive body of work and his timelessly impressive ability to be creative, inventive and stay relevant no matter the decade.

And with an official ROH title reign now in his pocket, Jericho joins an extremely exclusive club of guys that have held gold in WWE, WCW, ECW, NJPW and ROH, with the only other guy being to my knowledge, Bubba Ray Dudley.  Jericho may never have held TNA/Impact gold before, but Bubba has also never held an AEW title before, so it’s kind of a push for being the most decorated champions of all time.

But maybe it’s because it’s AEW and it never seems like there’s ever an endgame in sight for their seemingly random booking, but I’m more left with the feeling of wtf is AEW doing, over trying to analyze the rationale for having Chris Jericho defeating Claudio for the ROH World title.

Traditionally, logic would say that Claudio is getting a push by dropping the ROH World title, as ROH is unfortunately seen as a tier below AEW, so alleviating him of a second-tier championship frees him up to pursue AEW’s bigger and grander prizes.  But AEW doesn’t seem to know what to do with their World championship, since CM Punk can’t stop being a diva or trying to sabotage the company, so it just keeps ending up on Jon Moxley’s shoulder and is barely worth its weight right now, so it begs the question on whether or not it’s even worth pursuing.

Giving it to Jericho makes a little more sense, because it gives him one more notch on his mantle, of being the most decorated guy in the business, but at this current juncture of his career, where Jericho is seemingly content to be a star-maker, the hope is that the ROH brand will get a young technician to grow and rise to challenge Jericho for the ROH World title, to where Jericho can do good business with. 

However considering ROH still has no television and is completely reliant on AEW programming to advance their stories, it’s probably not going to be nearly as good as the potential of it is on paper.  My guess is that ultimately it’ll be Daniel Garcia vs. Chris Jericho, but it’ll come at the expense of imploding yet another Chris Jericho stable, and the likely alienation and scattering of a bunch of decent workers in the process.

Such a narrative is one that requires logic, something that AEW doesn’t seem to have.  With its World championship in the shitter because their long-term investment went berserk and got into a physical altercation with three executives who were also three of the boys, which was never a good idea in the first place, who also happened to immediately tank the six-man championship that the entire promotion was building up for since day one, the company’s entire main event picture was decimated in a single night.

And for a company with like 15 titles in active circulation, you’d think some of these guys would actually get some television time with them right?  Take PAC for example, the guy is hands down one of the top-3 workers in the entire promotion, is holding the brand new, All-Atlantic Championship, is also co-holding one of the brand-new Trios blets, you’d think he’d get some screen time right?  No way!  After winning the title in June, he doesn’t make his first televised appearance with it until August, and that’s on Dark, and literally this past Wednesday was his first-ever Dynamite defense of the title.  The belt has literally been seen more at non-AEW shows than it has been at AEW shows.

So I suppose with such a tumultuous roster, something’s gotta happen somewhere, so why not start with this, but damn if it just doesn’t seem like something interesting as much as it’s wtf is AEW doing, again?