Tag: wrestling

Does this mean I’m fatphobic?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I went to a wrestling show with some friends.  Not just any show, but a WWE show – NXT’s Great American Bash to be specific.  It was the first of three shows the E was running in Atlanta over the weekend, and although I was interested in either of the other two shows, GAB won out because:

  • NXT is the most fun brand in the company
  • I could only really afford tickets to one show
  • It was held at Center Stage, which is basically my all-time favorite place to watch wrestling; I would watch a show put on by Somali pirates if it were held at Center Stage

All shade about the WWE, their parent company TKO and their predatory decimation of the fan experience aside, I was looking forward to this show a lot, because I’ve always had good experiences with NXT, I always love watching wrestling at Center Stage, and it was a small reprieve from parenting for an afternoon with some friends.

The show itself was decent; a little below my expectations as far as NXT goes, not to mention this was technically a PLE, which meant that I would’ve expected a little bit more.  But considering how much B-or lower tier wrestling I see in this building, the level of polish from a WWE show is evident.

However, my biggest complaint of the whole event and getting to the point of this post was simply the fact that I had the unfortunate misfortune to have been seated next to an extremely obese person whose body continuously transcended the boundaries of their own seat, and I had to spent nearly the entire show rubbing shoulders and legs with this person and it was rather unpleasant and had a tangible negative influence on my general enjoyment of the show outright.

Let me also point out that Center Stage was built in the 60s and hasn’t really changed much since then, meaning the seats haven’t been renovated and maximized like on an airplane, meaning reduced in order to shoehorn as many people in as possible.  They’re actually very generous and comfortable seats, when seated next to ordinary human beings.  Just for context at being able to picture the size of the person that effectively put a damper on my entire experience.

Now before anyone can immediately accuse me of being a fatphobic asshole, I do believe large people have the same rights as everyone else.  They shouldn’t be denied the ability to enjoy things like live experiences and travel because of their size.

However, I do think that society has been way too quick to deem obesity and all other forms of habits of excess as, addiction, and labeling addiction as a disease, instead of what I think it is, bad habits gone rampant with those with them lacking the willpower and fortitude to try and break them.  The fat guy seated next to me wasn’t fat because he has the disease of addiction, he’s fat because like so many stereotypical wrestling fans, he’s a guy who doesn’t exercise, watches too much tv and eats way too much shitty food, and is completely at peace with such lifestyle.

When my friends and I got inside the arena and we were heading up to our seats, I knew it was going to be unpleasant when we got to our row, and he was sitting in one our seats, because the friend he came with was also a big guy, and in typical bro mentality, if you can give a bro space, you give a bro space, but this was a WWE show that was known to be 95%+ sold out.  He was quick to vacate and move to his actual seat and wasn’t a dick about it, but I knew that one of my party was going to have take one for the team and be the unfortunate one to have to sit next to him.

And seeing as how this show was my idea, and it had a way higher cost than what my friends were probably thinking, who aren’t nearly the wrestling fans that I am, I quickly decided that it should probably be me to be the one to eat the shit sandwich, because I’ll do my best to find enjoyment in the show itself, but I’d feel like shit if one of my friends who was probably more there to hang out and casually watch, had to be the one whose experience was ruined by having 3/5 of a seat to watch from.

If being pissed at having to sit next to a guy like this, oozing into my personal space makes me fatphobic, then I guess I am a little fatphobic after all, because there’s not one iota of me that doesn’t believe anyone, whether they believe that they’re fatphobic or not, wouldn’t be absolutely miserable in the conditions I was in. 

I paid a lot of money to go to an event I was really looking forward to, and my general enjoyment of the whole thing was completely sandbagged by virtue of having to sit next to a morbidly obese person whose physical mass was all up in my business for the entire show.

I know it sounds like a terrible, shitty thing to say or write out, but it’s the honest truth, and I don’t think many people in my circumstances would feel differently.  I do not hate the guy for being large, and he has every right to be there as all other paying attendees were.  But I am disappointed and upset with his life’s choices that led to him being the size he was, and disappointed that I was the poor unfortunate soul to have to end up sitting next to him.

I like to believe that I’m not a fatphobic person, seeing as how I could definitely afford to lose 30 pounds or so myself, but I’m also not going to lie and say that my experience at NXT wasn’t neutered by having the unpleasant feeling of a morbidly obese person all up in my space the entire show.  It sucks because this is one of those things that nothing can be done about, because it’s not like when you’re buying tickets for any sort of show, there’s specially designated sections for larger people.  It’s basically just a massive game of Russian Roulette whenever you purchase a seat(s) to anything, and pray that you’re not next to a large person.

And it’s shit like this that really makes me averse to leave the house, and go out and experience things.  Inevitably, other people have the ability to ruin everything, whether they’re doing it deliberately or not.  I maintain that there’s no better place to watch wrestling than at Center Stage, but after an experience like this one, I might have some pause the next time NXT rolls around, because it will be packed, it will be expensive, and my chances of ending up in a situation like this one are tremendously higher than any of the other lower-tier wrestling shows that’s book there.

Why the Mercedes Mone blet collector gimmick isn’t as impressive as it looks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw that Mercedes Mone was scheduled to fight Zeuxis at their Grand Slam Mexico show, I knew right away that Mercedes was going to walk away with yet another blet.  That’s the problem when someone is booked so invincibly over the last two years, that after a little while, no match seems remotely debatable to what the outcome is going to be. 

And I know that the mouth-breathing troglodytes of the internet wrestling community are always debating on whether or not Mercedes has creative control (AKA makes the call on their own wins and losses), and I really don’t care enough to seek out the answer for myself, but it’s also not like those who believe she does have it, doesn’t have reason to believe it.

Typically, I love blet collector gimmicks, and as a collector of wrestling blets myself, I always appreciate seeing it done in actual industry storylines.  I loved when Ultimo Dragon walked out of Japan with ten championship blets at the Super J-cup, I was a big fan of when Lance Storm when on a collecting spree upon arriving in WCW, winning the United States Canadian championship, the Cruiserweight 100 Kilos or Less championship, and the Hardcore Saskatchewan Hardcore Invitational Title in short order.  I loved when The Miz was holding both tag team championships at the same time as holding the United States championship, carting three blets out every show.  Even though he turned out to be a colossal asshole, I liked the journey of Austin Aries amassing a bunch of blets, and I was a big fan of when Matt Cardona became the King of Independent Wrestling, collecting blets like he were Ultimo Dragon.

AEW has dipped into this well a few times already, with Kenny Omega holding three world championships concurrently (AEW, AAA, TNA), as well as when FTR had their greatest year ever, holding the ROH, AAA and IWGP tag team championships, and I did enjoy those as well, in spite of my oft-criticism of AEW as a whole.

Which brings us to the present, where Mercedes Mone has been hoovering up blets like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones, currently carting around six straps: AEW TBS championship, RevPro Women’s championship, Queen of Southside blet, the AEW Owen Hart Memorial women’s blet, the EWA Women’s championship, and the freshly won CMLL Women’s championship.

Ordinarily, six blets does sound impressive, but my issue is that several of these blets are mostly useless, and (are trying to) make her look more impressive than she really is.  In my opinion, the TBS, RevPro and CMLL straps are the only ones with any actual value, but the other three blets are basically decorations and aren’t real championships:

  • Owen Hart Memorial Championship – this is strap that is awarded to a tournament winner, and isn’t actually defended. Britt Baker carried it around for two weeks tops after winning it the first year, as was the case with Mariah May a year ago, before dethroning Toni Storm for the actual AEW women’s championship.  While Mercedes is still lugging the women’s strap around to boost her blet count, the men’s winner Hangman Adam Page held the men’s strap for two seconds to acknowledge and pay respect to the late Owen Hart and then gave it immediately back.
  • Queen of Southside championship – I don’t follow the British scene much, but a little research shows that the Queen of Southside championship was deactivated in 2019, with its actual value being merged into the RevPro women’s championship. Not sure why the physical blet was still being hauled around six years later, but because it’s been kept around that long, means Mercedes is more than happy to do the same, again to make her look more impressive than she is.
  • EWA women’s championship – I’d never even heard of EWA in my life prior to Mercedes winning their women’s championship, but I suppose that is the point. Based out of Vienna, Austria, they’re an indy promotion more than happy to utilize Mercedes’ name to boost their exposure, and she’s more than happy to carry their championship in order to boost her collector status, even if this is basically the equivalent of Norman Smiley invading a backyard wrestling group and absconding with their tin foil championship blet

In all fairness, the three that do have value, are still respectable championships, and put her on a similar tier of collector as Kenny Omega and FTR, but I just don’t like the fact that she’s hauling around three blets that are mostly useless with the intention of making her look more impressive than she actually is.

Frankly, AEW/ROH missed the boat on really boosting Mercedes’ odyssey by not having her go after Athena’s ROH women’s championship, after their actual banger of a match a few months ago in the Owen Hart tournament, but considering Athena has been champion for over 800 days, it’s evident that they didn’t want to job her out just for Mercedes’ burgeoning ego trip, nor did they really want to cannibalize within their own ecosystem, at least not yet.

Instead, they’re going to feed their crown jewel to Mercedes, when Timeless Toni Storm, not long removed from winning back the AEW Women’s championship, will effectively become a transitional champion when she has to drop her blet to Mercedes, capping off the insane run of blet collecting.

Frankly, the real interesting story is going to be, when inevitably all the partner companies start wanting their blets back, what is going to happen with Mercedes.  Her whole career can mostly be defined by her massive resistance when it comes to taking L’s, which is undoubtedly the biggest reason why Sasha Banks left the WWE, and since she became Mercedes Mone, has almost never lost, and in fact has taken a fall just two times in the last three years, with one of them being on account of an improvised finish due to legitimate injury.

So it’s going to be a real telling story when RevPro, CMLL want their championships back, and it’s going to be an even more telling one when minor leagues like EWA wants theirs back, and Mercedes is going to be expected to not win a match in some backyard fed in Wien.  The Owen Hart strap will just magically disappear in the mass exodus, but ultimately all that’s really going to matter is the AEW women’s championship, which will undoubtedly be the last blet standing.

But still, Mercedes will be expected to do the business back to all the partners who have been helping boost her, and as history as shown us in the past, we can’t be too sure on if that’s going to work for her – brother.

WTF is AEW doing #412

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: AEW unveils the Unified Championship to be awarded to the winner of Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada, thus “unifying” the AEW All-Atlantic International championship and the AEW Continental Championship

Man, there’s a lot to unpack for me upon this topic coming up.  I know that I have a fairly unhealthy collection of replica wrestling blets, but I’m fairly certain that Tony Khan is worse than I am.  Almost to the point where I begin to have doubts on whether or not I want to continue my collection, because TK is running so many blets out there that it risks them all becoming meaningless, and ultimately uncool.

I mean, AEW has Mercedes Mone running around carrying five blets currently, with only two of them being remotely meaningful with the TBS championship and the RevPro Women’s championship.  But she’s carting around the Queen of Southside title which frankly nobody outside of England has ever heard of, recently went to Austria to win some backyard federation’s championship, but my favorite is that she’s carting around the Women’s Owen Hart tournament blet, which really was meant to be a blet to be shown like three weeks of the year, for the winner and maybe 1-2 weeks afterward.

Hangman Adam Page basically held the men’s title up once, and then immediately gave it back, while Mercedes is still slinging the honorary degree around like it actually means something, and it’s a shame that she’s inevitably going to overthrow Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s championship, and as much as I like Blet Collector gimmicks, Mercedes’ is just really kind of off-putting, given her station within the industry.

But this post isn’t meant to be about Mercedes Mone, but I was able to barf out these thoughts without having to dedicate an entire post to it in the process, but rather the fact that AEW has unveiled yet another new blet on television, and all I can really do is laugh and shake my head about it, even if it’s ultimately meant to kind of alleviate the excessive number of titles within the TK-verse.

The AEW Unified Championship is a hilarious name for a title, considering the titles in which they are unifying are for lack of a better term, mid-card titles.  In all other combat sports, boxing, MMA, and even the WWE, the term of unifying titles is typically reserved for unifying top prizes.  Boxing especially has had all sorts of unified world champions throughout its history, due to federations and promotions merging and separating and merging and requiring consolidation.  Even the WWE has had unified champions in its history, but always reserved for World championships, most notably Roman Reigns unifying the World and the Universal titles and then holding it for 1,000+ days.

But AEW is basically unifying two mid-tier titles, into a single one, but then best of all, calling it the Unified Championship.  It will have an A-tier name, but still have stemmed from B-tier titles, and inevitably, if they don’t swap the name of it at some point like they did All-Atlantic to International, the Unified champion will run into the AEW World champion, and what are they going to do, unify the Unified championship into the World?  Call it World Unified championship?

Honestly, I don’t really know what TK thinks, beyond when he’s going to get his next bump, but I dunno, you have the International championship, and you have the Continental championship, seems natural if it were to become the… Inter-Continental championship or something.

I mean, it’s no secret that AEW has absolutely refused to adopt that name, seeing as how the WWE Intercontinental championship is one of the most coveted prizes among those in the industry, but it’s not like they own the word or anything.  NJPW for the longest time had their own Intercontinental championship, and they built that title into something equally as coveted within the company, thanks to guys like Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito.

And perhaps NJPW has been spending too much time with TK, because they dropped the name when they unified it with their World title, and in an attempt to re-create a mid-card title, have only produced the woefully uninspiring IWGP Global Championship, but designed it to look precariously similar to the old, white-strapped IWGP Intercontinental blet.

Back to AEW though, it’s funny that the Unified Championship is just a merger of two mid-card titles, because within the company and all adjacent companies, there are still a whole litany of other B-tier prizes, and C-tier prizes within the TK ecosystem.  The TNT Championship, the ROH World and Television championships, and the revolving door of straps from other promotions that their talents drag onto AEW television, like the NEVER Openweight, the IWGP Strong championship and the RevPro World championship.

Would the Unified champion be like a Borg and just go after other champions to unify their championships into the Unified?  Or what if a Unified champion takes an L to another champion, does that keep the titles separate, or does the winner take the Unified and unify their titles? 

So many question marks!

Of course, the true motivation behind all this hullaballoo most likely stems from the fact that the two titles being unified in question are currently held by Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, two of the biggest stars within the company.  And TK seems to have this belief that the importance of them coming together for a match actually needs the incentive of both guys carting championship straps around, and decided that two guys with blets need to be fighting over a new blet, despite the fact that they have had some of the greatest matches within the last decade, whilst in NJPW.

If I had to put money on it, I’m guessing Okada is going to be winning, and becoming the FIRST-EVER AEW Unified championship, because Omega is banged up and doesn’t need to be taking on a champion’s workload and frankly, Okada needs the professional rub more than Omega does.

But I would also wager that, even though it won’t be for long afterward, despite the fact that the Unified championship was introduced to remove two blets from play, I would bet that Okada will show up at least once, carrying all three blets on television, like when Eddie Kingston was carting around a ton of blets at one point, because Tony Khan appears to have a bigger hard-on for championship blets than I do.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: The ultimate flex and power move

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

KHOU: Houston teen achieves the rare Ivy Sweep – accepted into all eight Ivy League schools, then proceeds to turn them all down and pick MIT

I know there was a #TRYHARD who had 155+ acceptances and $6M in scholarships that I already declared the queen of the #SZN, but let me introduce y’all to the king.  It really doesn’t matter how many cumulative schools he was accepted into and how much in scholarships he’s been offered, because he achieved one of the most rarest feats in the game, the Ivy Sweep; as in this nerd was accepted into all eight Ivy League schools, making him the ultimate enemy to slacker Asian kids, because he is the boy that all Asian parents envy and fantasize over having, and measure their own failures of children against.

However, the story gets even better, because not only did King #TRYHARD accomplish the Ivy Sweep, the kid also decided to hold a press conference to announce which school he was going to attend, like he were LeBron James in The Decision, or was some big dick sports recruit picking which school they were going to go play for.

And then, the story continues to get even better, because in the midst of his massive flex, he pulls yet another power move, by stating that he’s not going to go to any of the Ivy League schools he was accepted into, and declared himself to MIT.

He also hid his MIT shirt behind a thick ass coat, and did an unveiling like he was joining the nWo.  But instead of being a jacked wrestler or an athletic blue chip prospect, it’s just some dumpy Asian kid who basically looks like the default build-an-Asian that everyone can imagine in their heads when they think of an Asian nerd.

Y’all can’t imagine the shit-eating smirk of amusement on my face reading about this #TRYHARD and the bullshit he pulled.  I love it all too, because he flexes his academic prowess and superiority by getting into eight of some of the hardest universities on the planet, but then immediately takes a big steaming shit all over them by rebuffing all of them at the same time, and then picking MIT, the geeky little brother to Harvard, basically.

It’s funny, I came across this story before the announcement was actually made, and I noticed in the article, to stay tuned until 1 pm local time, where the announcement was to take place.  I try to plan my writing out, and I had actually prepared this photo to use to accompany this post to exemplify the nerdy arrogance of an uber-dork getting his moment to shine in the sun, but then after seeing the highlights of the video package of this kid’s press conference, and I was just like, wow, I didn’t think this whole story could possibly get any better than just being a nerd who achieved an Ivy Sweep, but how wrong I was.

Make no mistake though, when this really boils down to is undoubtedly money, and although he made the Ivy Sweep, I’m going to assume that none of them were remotely close to offering up a full-ride, which is what MIT is doing.  And considering his Asian background, free > everything, including the Ivy Leagues, and he and his parents are probably ready with all sorts of rebuttals to justify why their boy is not going to Harvard or Yale.

What’s also funny is that this #TRYHARD’s area of study is computer science and engineering.  Sure, such fields could be pursued at some of the Ivy League schools, but really if that’s the route he wanted to go, he really needed to end up at a place like MIT or any school where technology is at the forefront.

But now that I think about it, it was all probably part of a great ruse by this #TRYHARD and his famiry; flex the Ivy Leagues when discussing school, and try to force institutions like MIT to want to “poach” him from them, by offering up perks like a free ride, so that they have to be the pursuer and not give off the notion that MIT is probably where he wanted to end up.

Really, at the end of the #SZN, it’s not really going to be who the biggest #TRYHARD is, but what story is the best to come from it.  As of right now, the obvious front-runners are the girl who cleared 150 acceptances and one from every state, the dork who essayed himself out of nearly every application he tried, and this guy.  Recency bias aside, the flex, the power move, and all the antics and theatrics behind it, make this a hard contender to try and top this #SZN.

WTF is AEW doing #387

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first saw this shirt, I thought it was a joke, a bad photoshop from some shitty wrestling shitposting meme account or something.  But nope, it’s very much real, and actually available to you for the low, low price of $29.99 plus tax and shipping, which means it’s basically a plain white t-shirt for somewhere just under $40.

Of course I know that there are all sorts of brand name designers out there who have been peddling plain white t-shirts for upwards of $100+, but they’re often times players in the egregious fashion industry, whom most of them have earned the right to hawk their shitty wares for exorbitant prices, and people not smart enough to realize that they’re being fleeced will actually buy them.  But yeah, them, they’re not a professional wrestling promotion, whom most equate their product and their merchandise as tantamount to carny shit, and only exist at that price range solely on the basis of inflation.

Yes, I can see the Property of the Death Riders wordmark on them, anyone (with a magnifying glass) can see it, but the point remains is that AEW’s merch team has basically posted up the absolute bare minimum effort in an actual product available to the public.

In the past, I’ve called out other bullshit cash grab products like Faarooq’s DAMN shirt which is basically just the word DAMN written on the chest in Rockwell Bold, and the B-Team’s signature shirt, which was obviously deliberately shittily made to help sell the fact that Axel and Bo were B-tier talents, but still turned into a screen print and peddled for $30 a pop (plus tax and shipping).

Well, Property of the Death Riders joins that club of some of the worst wrestling shirts in history, without any question at all.  Like, I’m becoming desensitized to a lot of the weird and silly shit that AEW does that I have a hard time grasping because I grew up with the WWE, but to offer up a plain white shirt with the tiniest of logos as an actual product definitely stands out in a sea of weird and silly shit, at least in my mind.

Here’s the funny thing though, as I’m typing this out, there’s a part of me that actually does admire the fact that in spite of the overall bullshit this shirt really is, as far as utility and being able to wear it out in public outside of wrestling shows or flaunting fandom, this shirt actually probably a GOAT.  Being a plain white t-shirt, it’s a perfect undershirt, and the lack of any design whatsoever on it means that there’s zero concern of any design being visible behind an opaque white dress shirt.  And 10 times out of 10, whenever I’d be wearing a plain white t-shirt, it’s tucked into dress pants, and the dorky little Death Riders wordmark wouldn’t be a factor at all.

But I’m not really fan of white t-shirts in general, because white fabric is like this ticking time bomb where they’ll slowly turn yellow from absolutely no other reason than existing, and any exposure to air, water, moisture accelerates it, and even more so when exposed to human oils or perspiration.  I literally had a few white tees that were still in their Ziploc bags, completely unopened and unworn, and when the day came where I felt the need for one, and ripped open the sack, it was yep, yellowed with age.

White t-shirts are basically for weddings and funerals, or any other instances where I’d need a specifically white t-shirt underneath a more priority garment.

Back to the Death Riders white shirt, the jokes just write themselves, as far AEW’s fanbase is concerned.  The schlubs who will be willing to plunk down the cash to get these bad boys don’t have to worry about them yellowing from age, because they’ll rapidly turn from the sweat, nacho cheese from Daily’s Place, and vape juice they’ll be exposed to, accelerated whenever they see Toni Storm, Harley Cameron or Skye Blue.

All these observations, without even having to even scratch the surface of what failure the whole Death Riders faction has turned into, because when they formed, they had a ton of momentum, but as is often the case with Tony Khan booking, there’s no focus, no end game or no execution, and all members of the group have been swirling around doing dick and butt for weeks, with no end in sight.

It really is incredible how Jon Moxley in NJPW took his Death Rider persona and absolutely slayed over there, but bringing the name to AEW and making it a group has been absolute death to the brand and identity of it completely.

And I don’t really get it either, the whole white t-shirt thing was Bryan Danielson’s, and the Death Riders basically smothered him and killed his career, and suddenly Mox picks up the whole white shirt thing, acting like a jacked psychotic Andrew WK or something?

As the subject of these posts goes, jesus, wtf?

Once again; the path to the IWGP World Championship has been opened up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WCPW: Miro AKA Rusev finally released by AEW after contentious dispute

Man, how quickly time flies sometimes.  Much like seeing the end of a professional athlete’s contract, it’s hard to believe that it’s already been five years since Miro, formerly Rusev in the WWE, jumped ship to AEW and is already on his way out.

Most of my zero readers know how much of a fan I was of Rusev, to the point where I didn’t really speak ill of his jump to AEW, and desire to see him succeed there as well, just because I liked the guy.

I was genuinely happy for Miro when he won the Popeyes TNT Title from Darby Allin, giving him his first championship with the company, hopefully to be of many, but we all know how that all turned out.  Like many have witnessed throughout the years, once the luster of newness wears out on whatever big acquisition AEW has, Tony Khan has absolutely no idea what to do with all the talent he amasses, and in some cases, guys take the time to rest and recover from their choice of lifestyle as professional wrestlers, but in lots more cases, talent just sits and rots, and become reliant on independent bookings or wrestling at Flatbacks or Natalya’s new Dungeon in order to keep their skills sharp.

Miro kind of falls into both categories, where he got hurt for some of the lengthy time in which he hasn’t been used and on television, but there’s also a tremendous amount of time in which the guy has been sitting around and doing nothing.  When careers head in this direction, it’s more of a disservice to keep a worker employed and doing nothing, versus giving them the release they want, and the ability to seek exposure and bookings from parties who want to use them. 

As DDP has opined numerous times, in this business, exposure is key, and every day when you’re not on television is writing your own death sentence, which is why he refused to sit and cash Turner paychecks after WCW was liquified, and opted to take a 50% pay cut but immediately be thrust into the WWE ecosystem.

Anyway, the wait is over, and Miro has been officially freed from the shackles of AEW, and the world has once again become his oyster as far as resuming his wrestling career.

So once again, I revisit this old post that I wrote in 2020 when he had been freed from the WWE, about how Miroslav Petrov Barnyashev is now free to fulfill his professional destiny of becoming the next great New Japan Pro Wrestling evil foreigner, but also become the IWGP World Champion along the way.

I don’t like my odds, seeing as how New Japan has kind of been swirling in mediocrity for quite some time now, having been gutted in talent by mostly Tony Khan and AEW, but from a holistic standpoint, I still think New Japan would be an incredible journey for a guy like Miro.  The man is monster worker with discipline and seeming tons of respect for the industry, which should lend him a quick path to earning respect in the Japanese puroresu scene, and as much as things change, there’s no changing something that ain’t broke in NJPW, by making an evil foreigner the threat to the world championship, and becoming a mountain for the next great Nippon hero to ascend and conquer.

I just think a guy like Miro could really thrive in a place like New Japan, and be the change the company needs to steer them away from the remains of Bullet Club and all their stale creative.  Miro could just be this monster from a foreign country to wreak havoc on the promotion, crush the G1, ascend to WrestleKingdom and demolish Hiroki Goto or whomever they have as the IWGP World Champion at the time, and become that insurmountable obstacle over the next indeterminate amount of time, before he’s ready to pass the title off to someone else.

But the reality is that he ends back up with the WWE.  He’s always a Triple H phone call away from being brought back in with a good idea, and whether it’s through NXT, or maybe a stop over at TNA, but I think for a guy as talented as Miro, all roads lead back to Rusev, and Rusev’s home is the WWE.

As a fan, I’d be stoked to see him back in the E, but one of these days, I’ll be even more pumped when I’m eventually right about calling one of these guys one day crossing the ocean and fulfilling their destiny to become the next great foreign IWGP World Champion.

Who does Roki think he’s fooling?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: .com makes a point to let everyone know that next big Japanese shit, pitcher Roki Sasaki will not be signing with the Yankees

Back in like 1998, there was an episode of WCW Monday Nitro where Bret Hart was cutting a promo in the ring with Mean Gene Okerlund, going on about whatever Bret Hart martyr speak he was gushing about at the time, most likely his beef with the nWo.  And then without any notice, Brian Adams, formerly Crush of WWE just meanders into the ring to confront Bret.

At the time, the nWo was wildly more popular than anything WCW-branded, and the nWo was seemingly adding new members left and right, whether they were WCW guys turning coat, or guys just coming into the company just being introduced as new nWo members.

Brian Adams was pretty much a guy that had been primarily a bad guy heel character throughout his whole career to this point, so he seemed like a natural fit for the nWo.  Furthermore, he came into the ring wearing all black and a black trench coat, and the most cliched trope in history at the time was opening a coat and revealing a nWo shirt underneath, oh what a dastardly bad guy.

Basically, Adams got on the mic and told Bret Hart that he would have his back in his plight against the nWo, but absolutely anyone with even just a quarter of a brain knew what was going to happen.  Neither Bret or Mean Gene were remotely convinced, and even the crowd, and WCW crowds were a very different breed of dumb wrestling fans, could smell the most obvious of rats in the history of attempted trickery.

Sure enough, they didn’t even bother to save it for a later segment much less a future show, and Adams opened his coat to reveal the nWo shirt that even Ray Charles could see was there, and Bret got a beatdown when the rest of the gang showed up.

Roki Sasaki is basically Brian Adams, and pretty much every baseball fan on the planet knows he’s going to end up on the Dodgers.  No matter what he says, no matter what bullshit media reporting is done that he’s “giving everyone a chance,” and trying to convince people that there’s a possibility he ends up anywhere other than the Dodgers.

A guy who probably speaks no English isn’t going to want to go to any place not a small market with absolutely no Japanese presence much less Asians in general.  He’s not going to Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and I highly doubt Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Oakland Las Vegas Sacramento, or Baltimore were any of the 20 teams that were reportedly interested because Japanese hot shits require this thing called money to even be invited into the conversation.

Japanese hot shits want money, and want comfort.  So they require a big market, preferably one with Japanese and other Asian people, to have some remote chance that they can get a taste of home when they’re playing abroad.  This is why New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles are always in the conversation whenever Japanese hot shits are on the market, but when it comes down to it, Los Angeles always covers multiple bases because they offer money, comfort of demographic, and the shortest flight distance to Japan, which is why they typically have the highest success rate at landing them.

Geography is undefeated. 

Nobody’s buying it, and nobody really even cares.  At this point, it’s more exasperating that they’re wasting people’s time at even bothering to exert time and energy into this sad ruse, and baseball fans just want him to go ahead and declare the Dodgers his choice of destination, have his shitty little press conference, put on his jersey and shut the fuck up so we can move onto the next storyline, or even the arrival of Spring Training.

Furthermore, the Dodgers have been low-key tampering with the whole thing, with golden boy Shohei Ohtani probably having all sorts of conversations and being in his ear trying to recruit him, since they were national team teammates.

Money isn’t going to be an issue, because the Dodgers would probably defer 60%+ of the contract until like 2040.  The only real issue is that the Dodgers frankly don’t need Roki, because they already have a full pitching rotation with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Balakey Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May, and eventually Ohtani himself, but there’s always the possibility that Ohtani just goes another season as just a DH while he recovers, and the Dodgers aren’t the type of team to not pick up a hot shit free agent because they have no need, so much as they can deny others from getting them.

The only question mark and viable alternative to the Dodgers are the San Diego Padres, who also fulfills a lot of the Japanese hot shit checkboxes, but they also play in paradise.  Plus, the fact that Yu Darvish is already there is the safety net that holds some legitimate weight for Japanese guys.

But if I’m a betting man, when Roki does peel off his black trench coat, I still got the Dodgers shirt on underneath.  In the cyclical ecosystem of baseball, the rich tend to get richer, before they eventually age out, crash out and bail out before they actually deal with any sort of adversity, many years down the line.