Tag: observations

I saw my first GCW show and it was pretty good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I like to pretend like I’m some wrestling mark hipster, and know every single indy wrestler out there, I’m not even close.  I don’t even know where half of AEW’s roster originated from, and when guys like Daniel Garcia or Wheeler Yuta show up, I have no fucking clue who they are.  I went to an indy show back in November and saw names like Effy and Marti Belle and had no idea who they were, much less aware that both were title holders in other promotions.

Honestly, up until the episode of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring about Nick Gage, I had no idea what Game Changers Wrestling was.  And based on the episode, where Nick Gage basically repeatedly killed himself in all sorts of deathmatches, I frankly wasn’t enthralled with GCW, and came away with an impression that they were a promotion that was determined to one-up ECW in terms of violence.

But then after Zack Ryder was fired from the WWE, and Matt Cardona eventually showed up at GCW after a masterful troll job, impersonating Jon Moxley who had been bouncing anywhere and everywhere he wanted, I began to see GCW showing up on the general internet radar of professional wrestling, beyond the exposure they got on Dark Side.  Eventually, Cardona would dethrone Nick Gage as the promotion’s World title, and whether they want to admit it or not, it was off to the races for GCW.

Eventually, the actual Jon Moxley would really show up, and beat Cardona for their World title, which brings us to present time, where thanks to a lot of cross-promotion with talents from AEW, Impact, Ring of Honor and whomever else, GCW had drummed up enough exposure and attention to where a filthy casual like me was very intrigued and interested in their supposed major biggest show ever, The Wrld pay-per-view event.  The card looked intriguing, and I was genuinely interested, and excited to catch my first ever GCW show.

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What I feared might happen, happened

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sad.  One of my former reports from my old job texted me to let me know that they, and numerous other members of my old newsprint team from my old job were all being laid off.

This is something that I figured could eventually show up on the table, but seeing as how over the last six years I was there, I never saw, or heard of anywhere in the company that did any sort of laying off, I didn’t think that it would actually happen.

It’s funny, when I had planned on leaving the company, my ego and I had hoped that it would get a modicum of respect and acknowledgment.  I’m not saying I was ever the most important cog in the machine that was my team, but I did design the work process that kept us afloat throughout the transition into the Ford Pinto of software we were forced to use.  However, when I had announced my notice of resignation, we were already in the first week of a two-week notice from one of my production counterparts, and unbeknownst to me, my other production counterpart was a week away from announcing their two-week notice.

Suddenly, I was the Stephanie Tanner middle child of resignations, doomed to be unnoticed, and worse off, I begun feeling concerned that this power vacuum that was forming due to the departure of 3 out of 4 managers on the team was going to no longer put the team in a defensive mode until they could staff back up, but now put them at risk of being potentially liquidated, and the work outsourced.

Ever since the pandemic rose and my team specifically took some lumps throughout the last two years because the print medium isn’t as agile and adaptable as digital ones, there was concern throughout the team about the security of their jobs.  I had, honestly opined that I felt that everyone was safe, solely because of the ironic fact that we all had knowledge of the aforementioned Ford Pinto of graphic design software, so it’s not like any joe-schmoe could be hired off the street to do our jobs.  And for the last two years, in spite of how much of a pain in the ass it’s been, our team had navigated the bumpy waters of pandemic retail, and come out no worse for wear at the end of it.

But now, with the Great Resignation™ hitting our team specifically and creating such gaps in the team, I can’t say that I’m surprised to see that liquidation and outsourcing has begun.  The company as a whole clearly soured on the print medium, which was my impetus for starting to look for a new job, aside from the fact that I hated the fuck out of my boss, but none of it changed the fact that I still cared about my team and that all these talented designers all deserved better than they’ve been dealt.

I do feel a little bit of guilt that there is the possibility that my departure, along with the departure of the other managers made this happen, although I have no clue to whether or not this was always on the table in the first place regardless of if we were there or not.  But when the day is over, I still have to, and I did, put myself and my family above all else, and it turns out that I dodged an extremely close bullet.

It’s just that as an empathetic person, it kills me that people that I cared about are put in this unfortunate position.  The saving grace is that they still have nearly nine weeks notice, which gives them fairly sufficient time to begin looking for new jobs, and with the cards all out on the table, it’s not like anyone has to be discreet about it.  In fact, as long as they’re not insubordinate shitbags, all my old team that’s on the block doesn’t even really have to put up the front of being friendly or overly professional anymore, because the company is still going to rely on them to put out all the scheduled advertisements all the way up to Memorial Day.

And then they get a severance package, and fortunately the timing of it will still allow all of them to partake in the company’s semi-annual profit sharing bonuses which usually take place in March.

At this point, what I’m most curious about are the future statuses of other individuals on my old team, namely my old boss.  I don’t get the impression that they’re on the block like my old reports are, and I have this pessimistic suspicion that they probably didn’t fight very hard, nor are they remotely anything close to the type who would go down with the ship.  They have another channel under their umbrella, and I’ve long known that that one was their true passion, while my team was kind of the bastard they had to manage in order to have their role.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they in fact initiated this liquidation, because often said that their life would be peaches if they could get rid of newsprint, and could focus solely on catalog.  But these are things that I’ll never know, but the result of it all is still feeling terrible for a lot of talented designers who will soon be out of a job, and not help feeling a little bit guilty for helping push the boulder over the edge.  I don’t regret anything I’ve done in regards to seeking greener pastures before the shots were fired, but I’m still allowed to feel empathy for those I used to work with who were saddled by this unfortunate development.

I love what Matt Cardona is doing post-WWE

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I was ever a Zack Ryder fan.  The whole internet schtick, the fist pumps and self-aware but still over-the-top broeyness of his character, he was pretty much no better than Santino Marella, as far as caricatures of wrestlers they were.  I cringed when he had a US title run, and I winced even harder when he actually got a Wrestlemania Moment™ when he won the Intercontinental championship in a ladder match against way more worthy opponents.

When he was released by the company, I didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that I figured he’d probably end up in AEW, because at the time everyone who was leaving the WWE whether it was a forced release or future endeavored, was usually bound for AEW at some point.

And as expected, he did show up in AEW, under his real name, Matt Cardona.  However, after a fairly uninspired program where he teamed up with Cody Rhodes, he was quietly gone.  Scuttlebutt said that he was only brought in for a temporary program, but for the most part was not #ALLELITE™

A few months later, Matt Cardona’s name came up again, as he apparently had a massively gruesome deathmatch in a fed that I’d just begun hearing about, GCW, since Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring had just done an episode on GCW godfather, Nick Gage.  And despite Gage’s cult-like popularity in the ultra-violent GCW, he had still done the job to Matt Cardona, and made him the GCW champion.

What was pretty astounding though, was how Cardona introduced himself to GCW, which was under a mask, and pretending to be Jon Moxley, which royally enraged the fans, and GCW fans are already maniacal enough in the first place, but Cardona manufactured a perfect heat bomb that got fans nuclear hot about his existence, and the number one rule of professional wrestling is to elicit a response at all, be it cheers or jeers.

But Cardona became the GCW champion, which I shrugged off, seeing as how GCW would probably rank as like the sixth or seventh noteworthy promotion in North America, so it really didn’t seem like much of a big deal.  However, I did take amusement of this new persona of his where he was apparently feeding off of the hate for Zack Ryder, fans like the ones of GCW were, and basically trolling the entire promotion by doing shit like declaring himself king of death matches, and switching their belt for an obnoxious John Cena-like spinner variant.

Eventually, he’d lose the GCW title to the actual Jon Moxley, who supposedly showed up to an event to watch it, but was somehow roped into performing and then going over as champion, which kind of disappointed me since I was beginning to curry favor with Matt Cardona.

But then he shows up in Impact weeks later, to get involved with a program with their champion, Moose, and the guy who used to be Big Cass in WWE.  Next thing you know, he’s in a world title program on Impact, even if he would eventually lose in a triple threat against Moose and Morrissey, but it was more of the same.  Fans someone have become conditioned to dislike Cardona, for what I’m guessing is because they all still see the obnoxious Zack Ryder character.

Somewhere along the way, Cardona also shows up at an NWA event, to jump their champion, Trevor Murdoch.  When I find out about this, I am salty, because this was actually an event that I had tickets to go to, since it was taped in Atlanta, but due to the rise of omicron, my tickets were cancelled and I didn’t get to go, but again, same story, unexpected appearance, jumps a world champion, gets nuclear heat from the crowd.

Now, I’m a big fan of what Matt Cardona is doing, and I don’t think there’s any wrestler out there that’s capitalizing on a career post-WWE than he is.  Sure, he touched AEW like most guys do, but when that didn’t work out, he didn’t quit and go get a job at Walmart like his old tag team partner did.  Instead he got extremely creative, and is low-key blazing an entertaining trail in lower promotions, but raising his stock all the same.  This is some Chris Jericho-like creativity in reinventing himself; he might not be making WWE money anymore, but he’s definitely in world title pictures in three different promotions, with nobody really being able to predict where else he’ll show up next.

Just a week ago, he was back in GCW, where he defeated Rhino; and because Rhino was the last ever ECW TV and World champion, Cardona declared himself the new ECW TV champion, and I have no fucking clue to where he procured the blet, but he still celebrated with it, all the same.

At this point, I’d lose my shit if Cardona shows up at a New Japan Pro Wrestling show, seeing as they’re currently touring North America right now.  Or maybe he’ll lay low and then show up at Ring of Honor in Dallas in April when they start their shit back up again.  Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t show up at Final Battle in December.  Hell, maybe he should wander down to Mexico and appear at a AAA event, and mix it up with their Mega Campion.

Nobody is embodying the potential for fun and excitement in this current wrestling atmosphere like Matt Cardona is.  The industry isn’t just the WWE and AEW, and their insufferable tribalistic fans.  There are so many other options out there, and with the sheer volume of talent that was cut loose from the WWE primarily, the indy scene is ripe with potential for all sorts of creative, fun and new possibilities, and there’s nobody capitalizing on all this potential than Cardona is.

I never really cared much for Zack Ryder, but I absolutely love what Matt Cardona is doing these days.  He’s trolling fans in promotions left and right, but staying relevant and at the tops of cards everywhere he goes.  And I hope he keeps it going and finds some real success doing it, because I think what he’s doing is awesome.

The subtle arrogance of unfriending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To my knowledge, short of third-party plug-ins or software, it’s not easy to really know when the people you know on social media unfriends you.  Maybe if you don’t have a generally high number of online friends and a pretty good memory, one might be able to notice the lack of a name or three in their respective lists, but for the most part, it’s not something that’s pretty easy to do, at least in my estimation.

I like to think that I don’t have a tremendous number of online friends, but it still encroaches over 100 people.  That said, it’s still easy to not notice when some names might not be present anymore, which seems to really be the only tell of when you’ve been unfriended by others.

Recently, a friend of mine sent out a group invitation for their wedding.  I hold this person in very high regard, so I will most definitely be making the effort to go to the wedding, in spite of it being numerous states away and will require the logistical efforts that go along with parenting young children.

As we have a number of mutual friends, out of curiosity I clicked on the members tab to see if I could get some hints to the people I may be coming across at the eventual wedding.  As expected, I saw quite a number of familiar names and faces, and felt a modicum of excitement at the idea of finally getting to see some people after many years and pandemic-related reasons for being unable to connect for a while.

And then I noticed something: next to some of these names that I thought I was already friends with, were +Add Friend buttons.  Now unless I’m missing something here, that means to me that I had been unfriended by these particular people.

Obviously, if I’m expending the effort to brog about it, I am taking it probably more personally than I should be, but honestly?  It’s hard for someone like me not to, because in spite of distance, time, or general lack of maintenance, these are people that I still consider friendlies in life, and at the very least would enjoy knowing the feeling is mutual enough to warrant keeping as friends status on their fucking Facebook pages.

I know that I didn’t unfriend them, because I don’t ever unfriend people, save for some pretty extreme circumstances.  In fact, I remember the last time I unfriended someone, and I regret doing it because I felt that I was pressured to do it and didn’t really do it on my own accord, but the circumstances were pretty extreme.  But usually if my opinion on a Facebook friend sours, or I’m just tired of the shitposting I think they do, then I just perma-mute them, or snooze them for 30 days at a time and repeat it every month.

Just because I don’t always like the stuff they post doesn’t mean I don’t think of them as at least acquaintances, because everyone is different in person than their online behavior indicates.  Outright unfriending people, at least to me, there’s an air of, I no longer wish to care about you any further, and that is kind of a shitty sentiment to pass onto someone else.  Maybe I’m making a bigger deal about this than I should, but it’s definitely some food that my mind has been thinking on for a day.

There’s also something subtly arrogant about unfriendings.  Because I like to think I know the people who have unfriended me well enough to be able recollect instances in the past where they’ve made posts about their intentions or acts of doing unfriending sessions, and up until the cuts where I didn’t make it, I could be subconsciously pleased that I was thought enough of to remain alive on their lists.

Regardless, the act of unfriending either comes off arrogant and/or is examples of recency bias, because it makes me think the people doing them think highly enough of themselves and their number of internet friends to where surfing the news feed is such a chore that they need to cull down the numbers to better filter the shit they want to see, as opposed to the shit that comes from their supposed friends, regardless of if they really want to or not.  Or, I feel like I’m getting cut, and people they’ve never met, or people they hardly know, remain, because they need constant attention, and don’t need a silent lurker like me to occupy one of their precious 5,000 spots.

Anyway, that’s my word vomit on this particular topic.  The reality is that regardless of my apparent unceremonious cutting from these peoples’ internet lives, I still don’t wish them any ill will or hold any genuine animosity towards them.  This is the equivalent of silently busting their balls at their arrogance of thinking they’re so important that they can’t possibly have a pleeb like me associated with them.

The chances are high that I’ll run into some of these folks at the wedding, if the stars line up and most of the people in this group also make the trip.  We might very well sit at similar tables, share drinks, stories, reminisce and possibly be in pictures together.  It will in all likelihood be good times, but back on the internet we may as well remain strangers, as long as they’re too good to remain friends with me online.

A wrestling analogy I’m proud of

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’ve ever watched much Impact Wrestling in my lifetime, whether they were NWA-TNA, TNA, TNA-Impact, Global Force Wrestling, or whatever iteration the promotion ever was under the ownership of the Jarretts, Dixie Carter, or whomever.  The peak of my viewership of the product was when a distant acquaintance and former schoolmate of mine, Sonjay Dutt was a regular performer, and I was curious to see a guy I went to grade, middle and high school with, live out the dream he always had as long as I had known him, in being a professional wrestler.

But in this day and age when professional wrestling seems to be doing pretty well, with the WWE and AEW sitting comfortably on top of the industry, there are all sorts of tiers beneath  the top of the mountain, and if I had to make a pick, Impact Wrestling would probably be the #3 promotion in North America.  Followed by other promotions like the NWA, maybe Ring of Honor again one day, along with a litany of even smaller independent promotions.

Much is being made these days with all the talent that’s been liberated (read: fired) by the WWE, and how AEW is hoovering up many of the names as soon as their non-compete clauses expire.  Personally, I think AEW’s roster is bloating to unstable proportions, but they’ve yet to collapse under the weight of their talent and their payroll yet.

I saw the card for Impact’s Hard to Kill PPV, and thought that damn, that’s a pretty loaded card.  Numerous championship matches, and what I really like is how Ring of Honor champions are just kind of randomly showing up at other promotion’s shows, to defend ROH blets, and Jon Gresham only adds to the credibility of the card.  In a different point of my life, I’d literally drop what I was doing and hop on a flight to Dallas to try and watch this with my brother, that’s how decent of a show I think this has the potential to be.

AEW has been doing a lot of impressive stuff over the last few weeks, and I hear the chatter, but as I’ve made fairly clear that I just have a hard time caring about the things they’re doing.  In all fairness, I have a hard time caring of what the WWE is doing lately too, but the difference is that I still have Peacock access and can see their PPVs.But despite my general ambivalence towards Impact historically, I’m finding that I’m rooting for them in the midst of all these wrestling promotional battlegrounds.  And I made an analogy that made more and more sense the more I thought about it, and I have to say that I think it’s pretty accurate.

The WWE is obviously the Yankees; they have money, they have history, and they’re the biggest baddest franchise in the business.  AEW is the Dodgers, who are blending all sorts of new-school strategy and flinging obscene amounts of money out on the market to bring in top-tier talent to bolster their roster, even to excess.  But that makes a promotion like Impact, the Oakland A’s, a cash-strapped promotion that does well enough, but has to really maximize the value out of every asset they have and try and play smarter than the richer competition in order to survive.

And when it comes to sports fandom, who doesn’t appreciate the plucky underdogs, especially when going up against the big bad rich opposition?  Hoping for Impact to do well has no consequence or conflict to any allegiances if I had any, and when the day is over, the successes of other promotions outside of the WWE and AEW are better for the industry as a whole.

Whenever wrestlers are released from WWE, most of the time I’m usually like, man that guy/girl would be perfect for New Japan, or Impact, but just about everyone ends up in AEW, due to the money they’re flinging.  I don’t hide that I have these general ideas about promotions, and I think most big white oafs always stand a chance at being the next big bad foreign heel in NJPW, and if there’s one thing that Impact has always done well historically, is that they’ve always cultivated good women’s wrestling.  Even long before the WWE did, Impact doesn’t get enough credit for their contributions to women’s wrestling, and Hard to Kill has some pretty good women’s matches on deck that I most definitely wouldn’t take a piss break through.

Almost makes me think I should perhaps seek out some replicas of the Knockouts Tag Blets, so that my girls can be double champions.

Letterkenny S10 = Ocean’s Twelve

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Most people who’ve ever seen Ocean’s Twelve, the sequel to the remake of Ocean’s Eleven, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt and a massive ensemble cast, might remember that it was kind of a stinker.  The plot was weak, it hardly had a fraction of the pace, charm and rhythm that made Eleven such a fun movie, and the general consensus was that it was about as good of a sequel as Super Mario 2 was to Super Mario Bros.

There was a popular theory that part of why it was such a stinker was that it was basically a working vacation for the cast.  George Clooney supposedly has some property out in Italy, and making a sequel to Eleven, and having it take place in Italy was basically a convenient way to have a big ass working vacation on someone else’s dime, while enjoying the sights of Lake Como in their downtime.

And in the grand spectrum of the trilogy, Twelve really didn’t need to exist.  It basically was an excuse to have an Italian vacation, and everyone in it got a generous payday out of it.

Well that’s how I felt after watching the, thankfully short, tenth season of Letterkenny.  Just a few months ago, I blew through the entire series, seasons 1-9, because it was everything I wanted in a show at the time.  Short episodes, clever writing, a little bit crass, a little bit of heart, and just easy to watch and entertaining.

After I caught up, I became one of those fans, who was excited to hear that there was already a tenth season in the works.  And I was very pleased to see when it had dropped right around Christmas, and I made it a priority to watch, which says a lot considering I have so little downtime as it is.

The first episode ties up the plot that season 9 left off on, but then Ocean’s Twelve basically began immediately after that.  Each episode left me scrunching my brow and wondering what the fuck was the point of what I had watched.  Even before I started discussing it with my friends and ultimately seeing what the geeks in the AVClub thought, I could feel this sense that each episode seemed to be almost checking off boxes in making sure all of the signature characters of the show got a little bit of screen time at varying points, and given the short nature of the season, and the limited amount of running minutes they had, it really did feel like a parade of cameos instead of any semblance of a coherent season.

But the agenda of the season becomes very apparent five episodes in, when it’s mentioned that Shoresy is headed out of town to go play hockey up north.  Of course, everyone knows that show creator, Jared Keeso, plays both Wayne and Shorsey, and it’s a little eye-rolling to know that he is just a smidge pulling a power play by using Letterkenny to promote another show, that just so happens to be starring, himself.

Not to mention, the truly DJ Tanner Wrestling-shark jumping moment where Wayne has a brief moment with Shoresy; I couldn’t help but cringe at the pinnacle of poor flexing done by Keeso in this very moment.

The aforementioned geeks in the AVClub applaud the season as going back to their roots, and to a degree I can understand the necessity of deconstruction so that more potential storylines can emerge from the roots, but I can’t help but feel that this entire season felt like one giant flex by Keeso, where he and all his cast mates could shit out a half-assed season get paid for it, and with the ultimate intent of it all being for the season to serve as a vehicle to promote a spin-off series.

I’m still a fan of the show as a whole, but if we’re being honest here, season 10 of Letterkenny, really doesn’t seem like it ever needed to exist in the first place at all.  Another one-off special, call it New Years or Boxing Day, could’ve sufficed fine to be Shoresy’s meal ticket to his spin-off, and saved viewers like me, the scrutiny of mediocrity.

Cobra Kai x Champion is straight fire

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In my perception, athletic apparel company Champion, is kind of B-level.  In the past, they used to be among the pinnacle of the industry, being the official uniform sponsor of the NBA, among other notable partnerships.  But as time passed, I don’t know who initiated the changes, but Champion kind of fell to the wayside; the NBA seemed to allow individual teams to make their own apparel partnerships, and in most cases, Nike was the brand making jerseys and other apparel.  UnderArmour emerged, and the field began to get very crowded in athletic apparel.

Champion, kind of became a second-tier manufacturer in my eyes, and they weren’t nearly as cool as the aforementioned Nike, UnderArmour, or Adidas, among others.  When I went to Braves Spring Training for the first time, I always thought it was cool that their ST venue was called Champion Stadium, but didn’t realize until I got there that that was on account of the Champion brand sponsoring it, with their wordmark being on the façade of the building.

It made me tilt my head at the low-key lameness of it, in spite of the cool name.  The Braves have since moved out of Orlando, and fleeced the people of Sarasota to build them a $175M facility, but the point remains that even they, abandoned Champion too.

When I saw the mass unveiling of Cobra Kai training gear in season 4 (above image), my jaw did a quarter drop, at just how fucking baller and awesome some of it looked.  As much as I think the Kyler Park character is a total choad and a disgrace to Koreans, the shirt he and Kenny Payne and that rando white guy in the back are wearing, is a training shirt that I must have if/when they become available to the public.  And as the scene unfolds, you see that everyone is wearing some form of Cobra Kai gear, some more obvious than others, but they’re all, straight fucking fire.

And then, I noticed the Champion logos on everything, and suddenly, I’m like okay, okay…  If ever there was a way to climb out of mediocrity, associating themselves with a popular IP like Cobra Kai seems like as good of idea as any, if there ever was one.

Now, I’m no longer thinking Champion is such a B-tier brand, and was actively googling to see if and when there was a chance that all this baller gear was ever going to be available to the public.  And if this link is accurate, then yes, there will be.

Anyway, while I’m on Cobra Kai, let’s talk about season 4, and I think it’s safe to say that there will probably be spoilers written out.

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