Thoughts on Netflix’s Physical: Asia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Spoilers inevitable]

When I saw that Netflix’s Physical: 100 franchise has branched off into Physical: Asia, I thought that this was an interesting twist on the series, especially if it were going to be solely team-based and never branched off into individual competition.  The nationalistic lean of categorizing competitors based on country seemed like a real intriguing way to be more than just a bunch of individuals trying to outdo one another, for the goal of being the Top-1 of Physical.

After watching Physical: Asia, I have to say that I found it to be completely enjoyable, and I tip my cap to the show for creating a series and format that I found to be captivating and often eliciting tension and excitement for me as a viewer, while also being wholesome and applause-worthy in a manner that’s really basically only possible in shows produced outside of America.

It’s not because Korea won the whole thing, although that does please me, in spite of the obvious bias accusations that I’m sure I’ll touch on later, but as a whole, the show was exciting, compelling, seldom dull, and kept me on the edge of my seat more often than being able to sit there and simply relax while watching.

Frankly, I thought Korea had no chance of winning, solely based on the hypothesis that the showrunners wouldn’t want to be accused of favoritism, and find some convoluted manner to eliminate them while not making them appear weak.  But at the same time, seeing as how Japan was also a contending nation, I figured they had no shot at winning either, because fuck if a Korean-produced competitive television show would allow Japan to walk away victorious, but more on Japan a little later.

What was the most refreshing part about the show, to me, is basically the same reason why my wife enjoys The Great British Baking Show – in spite of the competition, everyone is still cool to each other, and there’s a lot of sportsmanship and general respect for one another.  Even between the Koreans and Japanese athletes, there’s not any genuine hostility beyond the obvious notion that when it comes down to it, neither of them wants to yield to the other.  But otherwise, everyone is all about high-fives, hugs and fist-bumps when they’re not actively trying to eliminate others, and the respect and sportsmanship among all competitors is refreshing to watch, especially as Americans who are so engrained in seeing absolute shitheads and the filth of the earth competing in reality television because controversy creates cash.

However, in spite of the praise I have for the show overall, I did think that there was some fishiness to the format, that I’m sure people on reddit and other fan discussion forums have probably pointed out:

Continue reading “Thoughts on Netflix’s Physical: Asia” →

This shit gets ridiculous sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I chronicled how the week in which I was on a cruise with my family, was a week in which the whole fucking universe decided that they needed to get in touch with me, there were emergencies, there were fraud alerts, and I had no less than 69,000 emails, messages, chats and other alerts that took an inconvenient amount of time to sift through and deal with the most critical of issues.

Since I realized that the world most certainly does revolve around me, it’s been comical at just how predictably reliable it’s been that basically, when I am indisposed, unavailable, busy, or just plain not in a position to communicate, is when the whole fucking planet wants to communicate with me.

Case in point, I’m on a flight, connected to shitty WiFi.  I can receive texts and check email, but most all else is woefully unreliable, and I feel like I’m on the 2400baud modem that my old 486 was equipped with.  While on this flight, my boss DMs me despite my out of office being on, and since I’m not as smart as I think I am, I haven’t disabled notifications from Teams so I’m seeing them come through; additionally, there’s a ping for an impromptu business meeting, to which this sudden nature means something substantial, like someone critical leaving or having gotten shit-canned.  I don’t know and won’t know until I get back to the office but I am curious, but not curious enough to reach out to a colleague on a day off to find out.

A voicemail comes through, and it’s apparently my doctor’s office wanting to reschedule my annual that’s in two months, scheduled a month ago, because the American medical system is completely fucked, and I have to figure out what shitty appointment time probably three more months out I can get in on and hope the doc doesn’t schedule an out of office then too. 

And then I get a text from my sister telling me to call when I can, which is honestly these days tantamount to ask me to cure cancer as much of an aggrandizingly obnoxious ask to make of me.  But I can only imagine it pertains to my dad whom I just left after a fucking week of babysitting, so now I’m curious but can’t call because although I have shitty WiFi, making calls is still not something we do in the air.

It’s been like this fairly regularly since I realized that I control the universe.  No matter what I do, it’s when I try to take some time for myself is when everyone in my world starts trying to get in touch with me.

When I’m at my desk, available, ready, and willing to communicate?  Fucking crickets

Hit the gym during lunch?  Ping
Go out for a run on WFH Fridays?  Ding
Spending time with my kids?  Bing
Driving anywhere, any distance?  Be-doop
Running errands with an objective?  Boop-boop

And so on and so on.  It’s one of those things that sure, nobody knows what I’m doing at any given time but all the same I still feel that fucking everyone needs to give my time some more respect and just leave me the fuck alone.

One of these days if I ever get to have a single god damn day sabbatical, I think I need to hole up in a hotel room all by myself and just sleep, shotgun a show, eat whatever I want to eat, and put my phone the fuck away except for to do shit that I want to do, because the conclusion I’m coming to while I’m blathering all this shit out in that I need to just not be so god damn plugged into so much shit.

I’m drained and I need a vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve often said in my life, if there were a such things as a mythical purgatory, mine would undoubtedly look like Reagan National Airport based on how much time in my life I feel that I’ve wasted here.  Even now, I am once again stuck here on account of multiple flight delays, probably because of some rain as if the stuff has never existed in the history of the universe.

And it’s not one of those old “well maybe if you actually paid full fares” accusations I used to get when I had a flight pass and could jet set on standby flights any availability I got, because that ship has long sailed and I’m on a full-ass fare and still dealing with the insufferable passage of time at DCA.

Anyway, as the title of this post so succinctly reads, I am drained and I am in need of a real break.  The week of Thanksgiving started off a little bumpy, but limped towards progress, the holiday itself was really personally fulfilling, and there were a lot of good memories.  However, my holiday started with a long-ass drive, concluded with a long-ass drive, and now I’m stuck at my personal hell just trying to get home, so I can get back to work without really having any time to have unwound or relaxed, at all.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m probably at that stage of life where a lot of people my age have to accept and understand the mortality of our parents, as well as the onset of babysitting, assisting, holding hands, arguing about independence while trying to not step on eggshells of frail personal egos and the fears of change and mortality of them themselves.

This past week was basically all of the above, trying to see if I could convince my dad to move into a home down in Georgia.  The place where I brought him allowed for us to do a trial stay for a week, and I loved the idea of doing over Thanksgiving, because I always made me feel very sad over the years of my dad being by himself on just about every holiday, and I could have him spend this year’s with me, as well as hope to see if he could accept the place as a viable landing spot to get him out of his current home which is too big, has too many stairs and way too isolated from any family members who are willing to help him. 

Although there were some good times during the week, like having my dad over for Thanksgiving and ensuring that he wouldn’t be by himself, and having him spend some time with my kids, his grandchildren, the end result is basically no real different than when we started.  Such wasn’t really unexpected, and I’m honestly not really surprised, but it’s still disappointing that all the time, care and effort I put into everything led basically nowhere, and at the end of the day I can’t make him make a decision, and it’s up to him to decide, something at all, no matter how much logic and truth my sister and I try to get into his head.

Needless to say, I am just drained.  My life in general operates at a pretty high stress threshold to begin with these days, and adding my dad and all his end of life affair footwork on top of it is perpetually overflowing me on a regular basis, and I don’t feel as if I’ve had a chance to unwind, decompress or just catch my breath in weeks.

I think I may have to use a vacation day in the coming weeks to just take a random midweek day off where I can not be the first fucking person up in the morning, get some actual sleep, and hopefully a feeling of actual physical and mental recharging.

Welp, I guess it’s time to really become an AEW fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The night before Thanksgiving, mythical wife and I were talking about how it might be nice for the girls to wake up and watch some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; they might be entertaining by the giant floats, maybe they’ll see some characters they recognize like Bluey or Pikachu, and the real motive from mythical wife was that HUNTR/X from K-Pop Demon Hunters was performing but the reality is that my kids love the film as well.  A cursory search showed that we could watch it on Peacock, which was good because we did have a Peacock login.

That is, until the following morning when I booted up the projector and opened up Peacock, there was the lock icon on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Seriously?  A paywall for this?

But then I noticed that pretty much everything else had the lock icon on it.  Feeling a sense of dread, I clicked on the WWE tab, and sure enough, all of the wrestling content that I pretty much use Peacock exclusively for, all locked.  I double-checked the login to make sure that I was still logged in, and we were.  I logged out and logged back in, and couldn’t even make it to the menus I was in previously, because I was met with the plan options, and it’s apparent that Peacock had kiboshed the free tier that I was on previously, and it quickly dawned on me that short of RAW on Netflix which has been more mediocre than Kentucky Fried Chicken, I was now incapable of watching any WWE programming.

Thankfully for the morning of Thanksgiving, I could find some free livestreams of the parade on YouTube, so the kids could still see floats and characters, but it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth and started churning some gears in writing out this post in my head.

When the WWE sold and TKO came into existence, yeah, they made a whole lot of shitty business decisions that really fucked over a lot of wrestling fans.  But most of all that shit seemed to pertain to the live experience and I’ve long since cared about live events, and said that as long as they don’t fuck with my viewing experience, I’d be okay.

But then the E sold all their premium live events to ESPN, which held them hostage behind a tier-2 paywall that I didn’t have access to, so now I couldn’t see any of the big shows anymore, which definitely sucks.  But Peacock still would get all of the NXT shows which I always thought were usually better in the first place, plus they still had an extensive library of original content, so I would make do with just using RAW to keep abreast on the product.

And now Peacock has turned full heel and restructured their tiers to ensure that people like me no longer had a means to access WWE and NXT content, so again, my only remaining means of watching WWE product is now solely Netflix, and RAW hasn’t really been particularly good since it debuted and Hulk Hogan was still alive and got booed the fuck out of Los Angeles.

So, like the subject of this post says, I guess it’s time to go full tryhard fan mode into AEW, seeing as how I can still access their product reliably between HBO Max, where they run both their television and PPV products.  Or perhaps I can log in through a tv provider and get the AMC app and see if they’ll allow me to watch TNA.  Shit, I have a Roku, I could feasibly get NWA Powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for free there too.

But fuck if I’m going to pay even more money for 2-3 different streaming platforms just to watch WWE.

As I’ve said multiple times, the streaming wars have gotten so out of hand, that we’re rapidly approaching the precipice where the ensuing result is going to be a company to emerge from the ashes, where they’ll consolidate ALL networks through a singular service, for a single price, but all programming will be supported by advertising. 

And it will be called . . . cable2.

I don’t believe he didn’t know how poorly this would be received

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy basically says the majority of airline passengers are a bunch of slobs, encourages people to start dressing better when they travel at airports

Honestly, when I read the headline to this story, I couldn’t imagine that it was headed in any other direction than mass defiance, triggering and straight up rage-baiting from the federal fucking government.  To which it’s kind of sad, yet entertaining, but really more sad, that the federal government would go to the trouble to immaturely rage-bait as if they were a low-tier Instagrammer trying to get shock views with a poor take.

There’s no way Sean Duffy wouldn’t have known that posting a video, calling out primarily everyone who goes to airports in sweats, pajamas or otherwise comfortable clothes, and essentially blaming them for the uptick in disorderly conduct incidents at airports and on airplanes, wasn’t straight trolling.  As if he himself actually ever goes to airports for any other reason than to do his job, but he’s most definitely not flying commercial, with the rest of the pleebs, when he probably flies private, when for his own personal needs.

I mean it goes without saying that Americans today, more than ever, hate being told what to do, but telling them how they need to be dressing, that’s a tier above as far as triggering the defiance of modern America.  The response from the masses have been predictable and not at all surprising.

I’m sure all the fights and incidents have nothing to do with the fact that over the last two decades, the airline industry has been stoking the flames of passenger dissatisfaction, with all sorts of bullshit shenanigans such as cramming more seats into planes, reducing leg room, personal space, charging for bags, charging for snacks, and of course, the escalations of fares in general with absolutely no justification for doing so other than to line the profits of companies that are already billion dollar companies, among other things.

It’s totally because people are rolling into airports wearing sweatpants or pajamas.  Yep, makes total sense.  Hey, perhaps if we’re being encouraged to go back into the golden age of airlines, why not allow smoking on flights again?  Why not fire all the male flight attendants, and make sure all planes are staffed by attractive stewardesses instead?

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I can’t believe that this was absolutely anything other than a classic rage-baiting troll job, except that it’s coming from within our own government.  Like some defiant shit influencer who wants to throw shade, except in this case it’s coming from a 54-year old man(-child).

Honestly, this is all probably part of a larger, more nefarious plot, in order to force more martial law into things that ordinarily never needed it.  Duffy rage-baits the traveling nation, many predictably start dressing up like even bigger slobs at airports in defiance.  Airlines have little choice but to enforce their own dress rules, leading to more irate customers, passengers, and causing more incidents.  The National Guard suddenly has to start showing up at airports, and funding somewhere more essential is depleted in order to support.  Hashtag ‘Murica.

Not feeling particularly thankful these days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few times, I’ve seen memes about how dads in general often suffer depression in silence, primarily on account of the fact that nobody cares about their feelings or emotions.  Family, friends, the royal everyone, either people are too wrapped up in their own lives to concern themselves about the emotional/sanity state of some other men, or there’s some credence to the umbrella statement that nobody cares about the feelings of dads.  And occasionally, there are times where I kind of feel this, and I’m just to broke ass poor to afford therapy, and I try to find it in exercise and writing.

Here’s a transcription of what I vomited to my phone because I was having a shitty morning and I felt like I wanted to write about it but didn’t want to chance it to forget the things I was thinking because I was in the car and I always think well in the car, which of course I do, because it’s a place and time in which I am completely incapable of jotting down my thoughts, because life really loves to fuck around with me when I’m generally unavailable:

It’s one of those mornings where nothing is going right. I am thankful for nothing. Forgot to eat breakfast because my kids got up early because they’re sick because every time we send them out of town they come back sick which sucks.  Work sucks, family sucks. Technology doesn’t work.  It’s frustrating.  It’s raining, I’m not feeling very thankful, family in disarray.  I don’t have time to catch up on anything.  I have to clean my house but I live with slobs and kids.  I can’t Black Friday shop.  I can’t have time to watch wrestling or Pluribus or Peacemaker or Netflix.  I never have any time for myself.  I bend over backward for everybody, nothing is ever reciprocated.  My mind is in a dark place.  Everything is frustrating.  Venting to nobody is cheaper than therapy, gym and writing is my therapy.  Memes about dads who suffer in silence and nobody cares feels very poignant and true.  (My) Dad is being weird about his possible future home, ungrateful and lecturing me about my flaws.  BP is getting worse and not sure if it’s just medication or stress and it’s affecting shit like my vision and health

So yeah, a lot to have unpacked to my phone through diction, but at least I was able to more accurately get a lot of shit off my chest and be able to look at it and analyze the things that are eating at me, and it’s not lost on me the irony of complaining about not having any time to do certain things, and then prioritizing writing about complaining about not having any time when I could be doing something more leisurely and entertaining instead, but that’s just how eternally important writing is to me over just about anything else.

But yes, to the point of the subject of this post, I’m not feeling very thankful at the very moment.  Things are very volatile, draining, and not good for my levels of stress, and I’m sure which are contributing to my escalating blood pressure issues, which is its own chicken and egg situation, where I don’t know if the increased stress is causing my BP to increase, or if the increase in my BP is what’s causing me to feel like I’m falling apart physically at times, with headaches and degrading vision.

I have to clean my house up for Thanksgiving, which seems like an extremely daunting task because everyone I live with is a slob and the house is perpetually bordering on needing to contact Discovery to reboot Hoarders: Buried Alive, or at least it seems to me, and of course there’s only one day to do it, although I could be starting it now but it’s just so daunting and I’m depressed that I can’t bring myself to do it without giving myself at least a little bit of time to brog and vent first.

At the very top of the list of stressors though is my dad being down in Georgia testing out a facility that he could very well potentially move into, which in one hand seems like the best end of life option, but on the other hand it means he’s close and accessible to me, and he’s already been weird and a pain in my ass in just the first few days of spending a ton of time with him.  Honestly, I don’t think things were as daunting in my life until this shit started ramping up, and I feel like it’s a contributing factor; the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my BP elevating, and probably necessitating an alteration in medication.

Everything else, like work pissing me off, my kids being sick, me being exasperated with technology, etc, that’s all just background noise.  It’s the bullshit that takes an annoyed mood and turns it into bad ones, ragey ones, and the over the top frustration which lead to limit break diction rants into my phone like the one up above.

All the same though, the timing of it all, while we’re on the cusp of Thanksgiving, has me feeling not very thankful for a whole lot right now, even though there very much is, I’m just not feeling it at this very specific moment in my life.

PWI be drinking that blet kool-aid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: Pro Wrestling Illustrated drops their Top-250 women wrestlers, topped off by Mercedes Moné

I had to laugh when I saw this list, because not only do I disagree that Mercedes Moné isn’t the #1 female wrestler this year, I barely think she’s top-5, and mostly on account of industry impact and not necessarily strength of work.  Also, I always love how whenever people make all-industry encompassing lists, there’s always what seems like some forced integration of talents from promotions not in the Americas.

Obviously I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I have this suspicion that short of having infinite time on your hands, there aren’t a lot of people who contribute to a North American publication are always up to the minute on all of the wrestling going on in AAA, CMLL, New Japan and in the case of this women’s list, Stardom.

Don’t get me wrong, any time I see Stardom highlights, they’re incredible, they’re intense, and Japanese women work with a level of stiffness that would make Fit Finley, Vader and Gunther wince and cringe while watching.  Their level of in-ring work probably eclipses a lot of the women on PWI’s or anyone’s top-women workers lists, but the problem is that most people aren’t on top of their product like they are with the mega promotions of the Americas, and I say all this to preface and cover the fact that when it comes to listing talent, I simply cannot factor them in, due to general unfamiliarity.

But if I were to make a top-5 or top-10 list, it all starts with Iyo Sky, whom not only is the best female wrestler of 2025 in my opinion, she’s frankly the best wrestler in general throughout the calendar year.  She’s had incredible matches all year long with Rhea Ripley, Stephanie Vaquer, Naomi and Bianca Belair, and I’m still hard pressed to think of a single match this year better than Iyo vs. Ripley at Evolution.

#2 is Toni Storm, because she’s not only the hard carry of AEW’s entire female roster, she’s arguably the most entertaining talent they have on their entire roster outright.  I know I get critical about AEW in general, but there’s no questioning my love for Timeless Toni, and she’s simply the greatest character to have emerged from that land of chaos.  But the main reason I don’t rank her above Iyo is that when it comes to in-ring work, Toni is nowhere close to Iyo’s level.  Which is ironic, because young Toni was an absolute technician in the ring, but over the years, she’s clearly put way more work into her character, and less in the ring, and maybe it’s just the general green-ness of AEW’s women’s roster, it’s harder to find high quality matches that don’t devolve too hard into props, weapons and gimmick, versus just straight great wrestling matches.

#3 goes to Stephanie Vaquer who had the year of all years, having won three* different championships throughout the calendar year.  She’s a counting stat monster, having won the NXT North American and NXT Women’s championships, and then moving up to the main roster where she eventually won the WWE Women’s World championship.  She’s also a master technician in the ring, and frankly in pure technical skill, she’s probably better than Iyo, but she also hasn’t been really tested into a real masterpiece, save for her match against Giulia in NXT.

*I don’t count the blood money Saudi blet as a championship

#4 would be Rhea Ripley, for whom was the main reason why Iyo is #1, because it takes two to tango, and her and Iyo are basically one of this generation’s rivalries that could be on the echelon of Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock or Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, because the two just have such nuclear chemistry where every time they get in the ring together, it’s brilliance, regardless of if there’s an extra player involved or not.  Frankly, the only reason she’s not higher is because she didn’t get as many matches, and with talents like Vaquer which helped push Iyo over the top.

And #5 is where I’d put Mercedes Moné, and like I said, it’s mostly on account of her impact on the business and not necessarily her strength in the ring.  She’s (still) horrible on the microphone, and staying on the train of AEW nerfing women’s technical skill, her in-ring work in AEW is nowhere as clean as it was when she was still in the E.  It’s ironic that AEW keeps spamming the narrative that it’s where the best wrestle, but that must apply to men only, because a lot of the women known for great talent, aren’t having their best work under the Turner banner. 

However, what Mercedes has been doing all year, touring the indies and getting out in the world and lighting fires, collecting blets not-withstanding, is unprecedented, and in a holistic sense, worth giving her some rank on a top-women’s list.  Bonus points for the rumored stories about how she’s donating a ton of her independent bookings to local charities of the places she’s touring, and despite my general critical skepticism of her, I do think she’s doing a lot of good with her platform, albeit while obnoxiously leaning into the heel persona, but deserves does deserve respect.

#6-10, I would put rank, in this order: Athena, Tiffany Stratton, Asuka, Naomi, Becky Lynch.

Toni Storm might be the hard carry of the AEW women’s division as far as presence and entertainment go, but Athena is honestly, the best pure wrestler that exists in the AEW/ROH ecosystem.  As far as my previous comment about how AEW nerfs talent, Athena has remained immune, and has demonstrated to have good, watchable matches with anyone she’s been paired up with, and her match against a motivated Mercedes Moné is probably the AEW/ROH women’s match of the year as far as I’m concerned.  The endless ROH Women’s champion might not have a large pool of talent to work with, but it’s not just for lack of better options that she’s been holding her title for nearly three straight years.

Tiffany Stratton, is one of those talents that as far as her character went, had a really quiet year in general.  After winning the WWE Women’s championship, cashing in on Nia Jax, she had one heated program with a 60%-ready Charlotte Flair for Wrestlemania, but really not much else throughout the rest of the year except repeated matches trying to carry Jade Cargill. 

I feel like one of the comps I think for Tiffy is that of Mr. Perfect, in the sense that her character work is still pretty uncomfortable and needs work, but once she steps into the ropes, she’s a natural in the ring.  She’s managed to pull off respectable carry jobs on Cargill, and didn’t get outclassed when in the ring with a master like Vaquer and frankly dropping the title in her fourth or fifth match to Cargill can only help her grow some more, now unburdened with the duty of having to be the champion.

As far as Asuka and Naomi rank for me, Asuka is very much someone on the upswing, having returned in the middle of the year, and has been one of the most entertaining and watchable character on television as she’s working the heel sempai role to Kairi Sane and gaslighting Iyo Sky, and if she pulls this off for a whole calendar year, there’s no doubt that she’s a top-5 next year.

Naomi on the other hand, would have been an easy top-5, as her heel turn, Money in the Bank win and cash-in, and rise to the Women’s World championship were all booked outstandingly, and she was really picking up steam and momentum to be the top female heel in the company, but ol’ Big Jim decided to derail her career once again, and she’s been knocked out of the ring for the next year on account of having gotten pregnant.  I mean there’s fewer better reasons to go on the shelf, but the unfortunate byproduct of it was that it happened right at the biggest push of her career.  But if she can come back and pick up where she left off, there’s little reason to believe that she couldn’t get back to that upper tier.

And #10 I have to give to Becky Lynch, even in spite of how unpopular she is among the unwashed masses of the internet.  Her character work has been upper-tier, playing the obnoxious, gaslighting heel, and her in-ring work will probably never be above a 6/10, but she’s one of the few workers, male or female, that still understands telling stories in the ring, working body parts and maximizing her skillset to work logical and digestible matches.  But she’s clearly accepting of what’s asked of her at this current juncture, which is to remain in the mid card, elevate the Women’s Intercontinental championship and bringing the best out of lesser talents, like her current endless feud with Maxxine Dupri.  As much as the internet pretends to hate her and call her shit like Becky Hogan, I think she’s a consummate professional and a team player and seems to be down and willing to do anything that is asked of her, and doing it well.  She deserves better than what internet fans and PWI think of her.

The point to this whole diatribe is that PWI’s women’s rankings are dumb, and they clearly put way too much weight in Mercedes’ blet count, and not nearly enough on the bodies of work and the impact of character development, ring talent and entertainment, and artificially injected some Stardom names to make them look worldly.