Tag: wrestling

MJF and the new AEW American Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A week ago, I tuned into AEW Dynamite #250, because I bit the bait at the idea of MJF vs. Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland vs. Kazuchika Okada.  Now the Swerve and Okada match was a stinker and a schmozz, giving credence to Arn Anderson’s adage that two talented workers don’t mean they’ll have any chemistry.

But the MJF and Will Ospreay match was definitely an instant classic, and if Dave Meltzer and the Wrestling Observer had any credibility anymore, I’m sure the match probably got like some convoluted number of like 6.69 stars in his meaningless rating rubric, but the fact of the matter was that it was a great match, resulting in a surprising title change of Ospreay dropping the AEW Intercontinental International Championship to MJF, which I kind of wasn’t expecting.

I intended on watching this week’s Dynamite, I mean BLOOD AND GUTS, because it was something I could do while I ate my dinner, but the TBS app appears to have been developed by RealPlayer and I ended up missing the first 15 minutes of the show because it simply would not stop spinning and ultimately required me to restart the app and re-login in order for it to get working again.

It turns out that I missed the only good thing about the show, which was the opening segment where MJF tossed the International Championship blet into the trash, and unveiled a ridiculous, gaudy new championship blet, aptly called the AEW American Championship, hilariously with no AEW logo on it anywhere.

The man truly continuously grasps at low-hanging fruit storylines and plot devices, but repeatedly knocks them out of the park with his above-average mic, promo and character work, and it’s hilarious that he’s always opening, because you know he’s bouncing from the arena as soon as his work is done for the night.

The strap has the stars and stripes of the United States flag, and the side plates read Better Than You (And the UK) And You Know It on one side and Only Country That Matters on the other side.

It’s an abomination of a championship blet.

So naturally I want it.

Regardless of what it’s called officially, it’s still basically another United States championship, and I don’t know why, call it patriotism or whatever, I’ve always been drawn to US Championships, and I have one from most promotions where there’s been one; WCW’s, WWE’s and even New Japan’s.  I also have the NXT North American blet, and it seems appropriate that MJF’s American Championship blet would be a good addition to the collection.

However, AEW’s replicas, at the low end is $599, and I’m sure a replica would be of high quality, but that price point is just a real bitter pill to swallow.  The most I’ve ever gone on a blet is $550, and even that came from pool of house money when I was doing internet surveys obsessively for two years.

It’s not even available yet, so we’ll see what happens in the future to whether or not I’ll manage to get my hands on one of these things, but despite my self-anointed status as a premiere blet collector, I still don’t have any AEW replicas, mostly on account of their egregious pricing, but if I were ever to start with any, the MJF American Championship seems like the most likely to be my first.

TIL: Mercedes Mone’s creative control clause

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t watch AEW’s Forbidden Door (3) pay-per-view because one, who in the world actually pays for a ppv anymore these days, two, the card seemed entirely way too predictable, and I called like 90% of the card correctly and 100% of the singles matches, and three, there were probably 3-5 other things that I’d rather have done with that time in my life instead.

Naturally, as stated, the card was ridiculously predictable, and much like the years before this one, almost all of the New Japan guys and all of the CMLL guys from Mexico took the losses in their matches, and for some reason, AEW keeps feeding Orange Cassidy to the next big thing in New Japan, with it being the very obvious Zack Sabre, Jr. who was one of two NJPW guys to actually come out with a W.

For obvious business reasons, it was a foregone conclusion that Jon Moxley was going to drop the belt to Tetsuya Naito, because fuck if NJPW would allow a guy in another promotion to continuously hold their top prize any longer than this, but good for Mox to be able to lay claim that he’s held World championships in the WWE, AEW and NJPW among numerous other titles he’s held in his career.

But if there were any other guarantees on the night, it was that Mercedes Mone was without any question, going to defeat Stephanie Vaquier and walk out with the NJPW Strong women’s championship, and be a double champion.  I mean really, I don’t like to bet on things, but if I knew of a safe and legal way to gamble, I would’ve felt comfortable dropping like $500 Mercedes was going to take the W in their match.  I mean the NJPW Strong women’s championship was basically created for her, and if not for a Shrek-green Willow Nightingale legit injuring her, she probably would’ve been the NJPW Strong champion when she debuted with AEW.

Back to the title of this post though, it was afterward through scuttlebutt did I learn that Mercedes Mone actually has creative control baked in to her AEW contract.  Obviously, this doesn’t look like anything to anyone who doesn’t follow professional wrestling, but basically it means that Mercedes Mone has legitimate legal veto power over the way she is booked in the company.

In other words, if she shows up to the arena one day, and Tony Khan says to her, “Hey Mercedes, I’m going to have you lose tonight to Kris Statlander and drop the TCM belt to her” she could actually say “no, that doesn’t work for me brother” and force TK to go back to the drawing board and book a better scenario for her, and there’s really nothing that he can do about it.  He can’t flex his position as owner of the company or that he’s the boss, because he gave her creative control in her contract.

For context, there are only two other instances I can think of where wrestlers had any degree of creative control in their contracts, which was Hulk Hogan during his time in WCW, where he had full creative control, and where he has been alleged and accused of various instances where he utilized it in order to maintain a high-stature within the company.  The other was Bret Hart, who had a degree of creative control baked into his WWE contract if he were ever to be on his way out, so that the company couldn’t bury him on the way out and make him look like a putz going to another employer.

Hart really didn’t get to use his control due to the Montreal Screwjob, but Hogan, as mentioned was alleged to have flexed his power numerous times throughout his WCW tenure, and there are many stories and accounts out there from former colleagues and wrestlers who claim that he did.

What I’m getting at is that it’s a really dangerous sword to give to just anyone, because there’s never any guarantee that someone with it, won’t just go into business for themselves and ensure that they’re always in a position of looking strong and prominent, and suppress the rise of any potential partners to draw money with.

And yet, Mercedes Mone has creative control in her deal.  I don’t care enough to dive deeper to find out just how much of it she has, or what if any conditionals exist with the deal, but the point is she still has it, and I can’t help but feel that that’s a really dangerous thing to give to a person like her, whom for all intents and purposes I do like as a performer, but I also think she’s kind of a spoiled entitled brat who has demonstrated a tendency to cry foul and walk away when things haven’t looked too great for her character’s portrayal.

I mean, even before I found out that she had creative control, I would’ve bet a large sum of money that she was going to beat Vaquier, but now the perception is murky on if it happened because it was the best business decision, or if it happened because she pulled her CC card and made it happen.

Even before finding out she had CC, I had already fantasy booked her future where she would undoubtedly go on a blet collecting saga, because that seems to be the well that AEW and TK seem to repeatedly dip into in order to cement guys as legends, like they did with Kenny Omega, and also did with FTR, and it seems like they’re doing the same with Mercedes Mone.

Without question, she’ll probably collect one of the women’s titles from Ring of Honor, whether it’s taking down Athena for the ROH’s women’s title, or perhaps she’ll keep her sights on television titles, and be the one to part the ROH Women’s TV title from Billie Starkz.  And then when Stephanie Vaquier comes back for a rematch, she’ll probably demand that it can’t be for free, and that she needs to put her CMLL Women’s championship on the line for a shot to get the NJPW Strong women’s blet back, and then collect a fourth belt.

And as long as AEW has their open door policy with NJPW, this keeps the chances alive that Mercedes will go on to re-capture the IWGP Women’s championship, or maybe she’ll stealthily slide her way into the partnering Stardom promotion, and start hoovering up blets there too.

Eventually, it culminates with her setting her sights on Toni Storm and the AEW Women’s championship, and despite the fact that I think Storm has been the legitimately best thing in the entire company, all it takes is a little bit of flexing of that CC clause, and she’ll complete the god-tier run of collecting blets.

Would it be best for business?  Probably not.  But when you give an inmate creative control, you put yourself in a position to where that doesn’t matter if that’s what they want.

And as a fan, that wouldn’t work for me.  Brother.

I think the Bloodline has DJ Tanner Wrestling’d

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Only the longest of my zero readers know that DJ Tanner Wrestling-ing is my personal evolution to jumping the shark, and in the case of this particular topic it’s relevant since this is yet another post about, professional wrestling.

Anyway, over the weekend the WWE did their best to surprise the Universe by introducing Tanga Loa into the company, when he interfered during the Bloodline vs. Kevin Owens and Randy Orton tag match.  A few weeks ago, they had brought in Tama Tonga to join forces with Solo Sikoa, whom the storyline has as being the guy now assuming control over the Bloodline, with the long-deserved hiatus of Roman Reigns after Wrestlemania. 

And with that, both members of the Guerillas of Destiny (GoD) have made their way to the WWE after a long and fruitful career overseas in NJPW.  Both have aligned with Solo, and are representing the new age of the Bloodline.  I doubt that they’ll still be called GoD once the dust settles from their arrival, but to those that are familiar with them, they’ll always be GoD.

Personally, I’m high on GoD, and loved their work in Japan.  It was the highlight of the evening when NJPW had a tour stop in Atlanta, where the main event was the Guerillas winning the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team championships, and above all else, I love that they’re the son and the adopted son of the baddest man on the planet, Haku.  That alone gives them a 10 in toughness, because I can’t imagine anyone raised by Haku would be anything short of being the polar opposite of a pussy.

I am excited for their arrival in the E and the sheer potential they bring by both being in the company, but at the same time, I still can’t help but have this feeling that they’ve caused the whole trajectory of the Bloodline to DJ Tanner Wrestle, mainly because of the simple fact that they’re not actual bloodline to the Anoa’i family.

In fact, they’re not even Samoan, but Tongan.  I know that white people can’t tell Asians and island boys apart, and there are a lot of similarities between the cultures, but the fact of the matter is that Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa aren’t related to the Anoa’i family nor are they Samoan, so having them be a part of the Bloodline seems kind of shark-jumpy in my opinion.

I know that Haku is super tight with many Anoa’i members, and as Rikishi once said, us island boys have to stick together, but it does feel like a little bit of a cop out to just slap GoD into the Bloodline and hope that nobody questions the genealogy here just because they’re all from island origins.

Sure, they did it already with Sami Zayn being the Honorary Uce, but the difference here is that they weren’t trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t Samoan and related to an Anoa’i, and I’m not saying that they might not do the same with GoD, but so far, they also haven’t made any attempt to dispel it either.  I have this suspicion that unless they get some heat from any Polynesian groups, who demand specificity, the WWE is just going to hope that fans at home assume that GoD are Anoa’i and don’t question it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked that GoD are now a part of the E.  They will inject a viable tag team into the division of whichever show they land on, and I’m sure fans are already salivating at the idea of an inevitable GoD vs. the Usos matchup, because a Bloodline civil war does seem like it’s the obvious end game coming once Roman Reigns’ vacation is up.

It’s just details matter to me, and two guys whom aren’t even blood-related themselves, joining up with a faction called the Bloodline to which they’re not related to, seems a little DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey in my opinion.  I get why they did it, and honestly from their perspective, as far as being fast-tracked to the main event and making money, they’re probably not sweating it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the execution of it, holistically as a whole, does seem forced and just a little bit DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey.  Creative might surprise me and spin a magnificent story, as they did over the last two years of Roman’s reign, but seeing as how they blew the wad at Mania, I’m not optimistic that this long-term story will be worth the wait if all the moving parts happen in the manner that I think they will.

A work story that made me happy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, I used the above wrestling gif in a work group chat thread, and it was 100% topical and relevant to the conversation that we were having.

I can’t remember the last time I felt more satisfied in my professional life.

Shoutout to the company for not putting a purchase limit on an on-sale item and not anticipating that an ambitious customer would literally purchase 600 of them and completely derail an entire promotion. 

We’ve already found their eBay listing, re-selling them at a profitable price point, but there’s nothing the company can do about it, except marvel at one man’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Does a Popeyes title make Chris Jericho the Nueve?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the appealing card on paper, I didn’t watch AEW Dynasty.  Frankly, I don’t know how I’d watch it, or any true pay-per-view event anymore.  I don’t have cable, so it’s not like I can call an automated system and pay over the phone.  I typically refuse to download anymore apps, especially to watch a singular event, and frankly, the WWE has conditioned me over the last few years of just how convenient it is to have a singular service where I can get these events included, and it’s about as easy as it is to tune into something on Netflix or Disney+.

All the same, I was intrigued by the card, to where I took the effort to seek out results, on the same night in which it happened.  Most everything happened close to how I’d have predicted it, showing that my decades of watching professional wrestling has gotten to where I barely need to watch the product to know what’s going to happen anyway.  Okada over PAC, the Bucks over FTR, Ospreay over Danielson, and I figured Swerve was finally going to dethrone Samoa Joe, because you just can’t keep feeding a champion the same guy three times in a row and expect the result to just continue to be the same.

But amidst the results was one thing that caught my eye: Chris Jericho defeats Hook to become the new FTW champion.

So the question I have is, does Chris Jericho winning a Popeyes title (unsanctioned) count towards his world title count?  After all, it does say “World Champion” on it and frankly, even in the ocean of championships that AEW has floating in its pool, between Hook, Jack Perry and Brian Cage, the holder of this Mickey Mouse blet has done some good work.

That being said, that would make Chris Jericho no longer the Ocho, but the Nueve; I doubt such will happen, but it is still funny to hypothesize the silly wrestling logic.

But even funnier will be the fact that despite it not being a sanctioned championship that “counts” in the AEW canon, I think it’s a safe bet that Chris Jericho is still going to elevate it to the point where it’s going to get some substantial television time and attention over a number of the men’s championships the promotion has in circulation:

    • • ROH World (Mark Briscoe)
      • ROH Tag Team (Mike Bennett & Matt Taven)
      • ROH Television (Kyle Fletcher)
      • AEW Trios (Bullet Club)
      • AEW Tag Team (Young Bucks)
      • AEW TNT (Adam Copeland)
      • AEW Continental Crown (Kazuchika Okada)
      • AEW International (Roderick Strong)
      • AEW World (Swerve)

Because that’s what Chris Jericho does, he elevates things, regardless of how much the fickle AEW fanbase seems to have turned on him, and are giving him the old Big Show treatment of pretending like they want him to hang up his boots.  These are the same fans who will be bowing in the crowd and chanting positive things like “you’re the great-est” when he actually does hang it up, but a guy like Jericho also doesn’t care, because he understands the most important thing about working is the ability to get a reaction at all, and he’s a man who has thrived under fan hate in the past, and will undoubtedly do it again and again until he’s done.

It seems obvious that he’s basically repeating the same program he did with Cesaro Claudio Castagnoli, where he won the Ring of Honor World Championship, ducked him repeatedly and made him work to get back in contention, and then dropped the title back to Claudio, but with the title in a better place in which it started.

Chris Jericho hasn’t hidden the fact his desire to work with, and elevate young talent, and there’s no question that he’s going to accomplish such with Hook.  And by the time Jericho drops the title back to Hook in 5-6 months, the Popeyes title will probably be worth more than over half of the above listed championships, because that’s just the kind of thing AEW would let happen, having a meaningless blet become more meaningful than their own prizes.

Let’s talk about the WWE’s new tag blets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In one of those I should’ve seen it coming but I didn’t, the WWE has recently redesigned and unveiled new tag team championship blet designs.  Over the last few years, almost all the blets have been systematically been redesigned from top to bottom, except for the tag blets, which were still red for RAW and blue for Smackdown. 

Blets being in the middle of a reign didn’t seem to matter for when to unveil new designs, as Roman Reigns, Asuka and Rhea Ripley all received the new versions of the blets that they had held, but for whatever reasons, the Usos having the combined tag team championships on lockdown didn’t warrant swapping of those designs, but seeing as they were broken up and sent off to different shows seemed as good as time as any for the E to finally unveil new titles.

When the new World Tag Team Championships were unveiled on RAW, one I was happy for the Miz and R-Truth, two WWE lifers who are the consummate pros who do anything and everything they are asked for, do it well, and always manage to get absolutely anything over.  But two, my knee-jerk reaction to these blets were that I was relieved to see that they were finally gold blets again, seeing as how fewer things made the tag titles feel lesser-tier over the last 10+ years than the fact that they were bronze and then silver plates.

The shade of gold, amount of flourish and the weird griffin chimaera creatures made me think that this perhaps could’ve been a previous version or option of the World Heavyweight championship blet that ultimately ended up looking like a spin-off of the old WCW big gold blet in terms of its general shape and composition.

But overall, I do really like the new World Tag Team blets, except for one thing – the font they used on it.  Not digging the spiky, Glaive-like typeface they used, and it looks like they’re trying to be a 2005 RAW graphic package with it.  Furthermore, the type is just too fucking large, and much like my general aesthetic preference when it comes to clothing, I think when apparel requires too much text to explain it, then it’s design that is not optimal.

If the fonts were smaller, I could overlook the undesirable typeface selection, but overall, I’m pleased with the way the new World tag blets look.  Not sure if I’d want to own one, but typically a really good discount has gotten me possession of other blets I’ve felt similarly about.

Obviously, once RAW had unveiled new tag blets, among the first thoughts I had was pondering what Smackdown was going to do, because it was obvious that they were going to get a redesign as well.  But the question was, was it going to be carbon copies of the RAW titles, but with blue paint behind the globe and type?  Or was it going to be something completely independent?

Fortunately, the answer was just days away, when Smackdown unveiled the WWE Tag Team championships, with blets that looked completely different from their RAW counterparts.  Immediately, my eyes noticed the familiar shape of the center plate, which was an obvious throwback to older tag team blet designs, that had what I like to jokingly call the nutsack shape, because for whatever reason, the bottom has two bulges like a pair of testicles.

Regardless of the homoerotic comparison, my knee-jerk reaction was still positive.  I liked that it was a completely different design, and this will prevent any future embarrassing title swaps in future draft storylines.  It’s general design is much more muted and subdued than the World tag blets with its design being more etched and not molded.  In doing so, it does look like a cheaper blet in comparison, but as far as design goes, it’s a preferable design over its counterpart.

The font treatment is much more subdued and exactly how I prefer it, and the throwback shape of it is pretty much all that it needs to have to be the preferable of blets between the two.

What it all boils down to is if I had to pick one, which would I go with, and that would be the Smackdown WWE Tag Team blets.  The homage to the classic design is fantastic, and even though the World is the more detailed and nicer looking blet, the font is a turn-off for me

Either way, I’m glad to see that the E has redesigned both, because in the future when the tag blets are used as a prop or a means to reward two mildly over singles guys, at least they’ll look good holding some actual gold straps instead of silver-plated toy-looking blets.

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.