Tag: wwe

Is there a more perfect show than Batman the Animated Series?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is more of a rhetorical question because the answer is no, there really isn’t.  Obviously this is subject to personal preference, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one out there who has this particular opinion.

I had finished watching WWE Elimination Chamber, and it was a pretty mediocre show overall; although the men’s and women’s chamber matches had outcomes that I didn’t get right, the Becky vs. AJ and the Balor vs. Punk matches were very obviously predictable.  Danhausen being the mystery crate reveal made me feel like the whole buildup is this generation’s Gobbledy Gooker, but probably more accurately the WWE’s need for a wacky character they can push towards the younger audiences and kids to help move merch and gain wider appeal.

But the overall feeling I had once the show was over was general disappointment and apathy, but mostly disappointment that mythical wife had actually paid real money for ESPN Unlimited so that I could watch PLEs, and it just so happens that the first one I come across is a relative clunker.  I think it might be a safe bet that once Wrestlemania passes, to pull the plug on the service since we already have like four other services we’re subscribed to.

Anyway, seeing as how the night wasn’t quite too late even though I would benefit from getting more sleep than I do on the regular, I felt like I didn’t want to end my television watching experience with an underwhelming wrestling show, so I switched to HBO Max where I knew that they had the entire library of Batman the Animated Series, and where I’d been watching an episode here or there, because it was perfect in the sense that it was high quality content that I’d already seen a million times and could multitask during, and the episodes are just 22 minutes, which means they’re no major time commitment.

It was while watching the episode of Clayface’s debut, it dawned on me that the reason why I seem to feel that Batman TAS has become somewhat of a default fallback, is because of what I just said, that it was the perfect show.  Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but holistically, the show is just perfect, in just about every other way as well.

Art direction, execution, writing, music, an entry of DC comics storytelling, light years ahead of its time, parading around as a kid’s show.  Believe me, I have seen every single episode of the show, and I’m having a really difficult time at thinking of any episodes that are actual 100% clunkers, with no redeemable quality to them, and by that criteria, I can’t say there are really any.  Sure, there are some episodes that I may want to skim or possibly skip, like the one where Batman is gassed by the Penguin, and he has to be saved by some kids, but by and large, I anticipate myself going to really enjoy the steady, gradual and methodical rewatch of Batman TAS with an episode or two every now and then.

And anyone who knows me knows that I almost never rewatch anything, because there’s so much content out in the world, lots of which I want to watch, that I very seldom go back and rewatch anything, because that time could be spent imbibing on something I haven’t seen before.

But Batman TAS?  It’s perfect in just about every subjective and measurable metric, and the most important thing is that it’s extraordinary ability to chase any shitty example of viewing media and bring me back believing that there’s good television out there, and that there’s really no bad time to catch an episode of the TAS.

I guess OnlyFans wasn’t as lucrative as she had hoped

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of turnover in the professional wrestling industry.  Budget cuts on account of oversaturation, poor television ratings, general societal changes where the industry just isn’t as hot as it once was, etcetera, etcetera.  However, I have this belief in wrestling that even if a talent is released, they are always one idea and a phone call away from being brought back into the business.  Over the years, we the fans have witnessed such revivals countless times, and as long as a released talent doesn’t go out of their way to scorch earth and set fire to any bridges they used, there’s always the possibility that they will be back, and hopefully to more success in the future.

Well, when the WWE released Cora Jade, she didn’t take it particularly well.  From the moment she was released, she was up on social media taking shots at the company, vaguebooking over some of the colleagues and personnel she wasn’t a fan of, and after the initial shock and resentment period that most people whom might have been fired from their jobs might harbor, Cora Jade didn’t really stop.  Seemingly at times, she would go out of her way, or inject herself into debates and discussions about the business in order to keep taking digs at the WWE, and how she didn’t need them, and how her future endeavors would definitely be more lucrative or make her more famous and in demand than if she had remained a WWE superstar.

Needless to say, it’s apparent that nobody in her personal life had ever told her the importance of not burning bridges, and that there is definitely a time and place for popping off, but it’s really generally not wise most of the time.

Regardless, with her bridge particularly singed, she embarked on an endeavor that would mostly ensure her being able to generate income utilizing one of her more prominent wrestling attributes: her body, and starting up an OnlyFans account.

Of course, she went way out of her way to put over OnlyFans while still taking digs at the WWE, as if she were trying to convince herself on top of all of her social followers that OnlyFans wasn’t something to be ashamed about.  Unsurprisingly, she seemed to be shot out of a cannon when she started, because of course she was quick to boast about her earnings by making a post about the luxury car that she was now capable of affording.

I mean, Toni Storm and Jordynne Grace both made gobs of money when they were on the platform, however, neither of them were shitting on the business while they were doing it, they were just capitalizing on a money-making venture while they awaited their next opportunity, which inevitably came, since the two of them were way better wrestlers than Cora Jade was, and they actually had something to offer their respective companies.

So honestly, it was a little surprising to see Cora Jade emerge back in TNA, under her old name, Elayna Black.  She had made such a big deal about how much she was over the professional wrestling industry, that even if she really didn’t want to step away, many in the business might be turned off by her general lack of appreciation for the industry, but here we are anyway.

The funny thing is that over the last few months before the return of Black, I actually hadn’t heard much from her, as far as the algorithm went at feeding me content.  And considering that she came crawling back to the industry that she said she didn’t need anymore, it leads me to believe that perhaps the OnlyFans train wasn’t doing as well as she had thought it was going to do, and that perhaps it might not be a bad idea to remain in the pro-wrestling space.

Either way, it must kind of suck to be Elayna Black/Cora Jade.  She had a great big Gen-Z crashout after she lost her job, and made herself look like an idiot with all of her bridge burning on social media.  Relegated herself to selling risque pictures of herself to creeps, but when that well seemingly began to dry up, she came crawling back to the business she had spent the last year trying to bury.

Owned.

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

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it will be called . . . cable2.

PWI be drinking that blet kool-aid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I get it, but I really really don’t like it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ICYMI: John Cena defeats Dominic Mysterio, wins the Intercontinental championship for the first time in his career, becoming a Grand Slam Champion with less than five appearances left in his career

Lord, I always heard that this was a possibility during the whole John Cena retirement tour, and it was always something that I had hoped really wouldn’t happen.  And with the clock winding down, I thought we had hit the point where it couldn’t possibly happen on account of the lack of time remaining on Cena’s tour in order to make the handoff of the IC title remotely meaningful.

But, the WWE is all about creating moments, and short-term bursts of dopamine for fans, and long gone are the days where openly outgoing talent would eat a shit ton of losses on the way out, including the last one, to really drive home the notion that nobody is bigger than the business, and to metaphorically pay back the industry by booting future stars by taking losses.

I’m not saying John Cena hasn’t been taking his share of L’s over the last calendar year, and for the most part, I’m of the opinion that the retirement tour has been handled pretty well and I’ve found a lot of it to be enjoyable, but I have to say that the most recent development in the tour is one part, that I absolutely disagree with and do not like, at all.

Dominic Mysterio has been so carefully curated all year long, protected and booked so brilliantly, winning the Intercontinental championship at Wrestlemania, and then Mexico’s AAA Mega Campeonato, all while navigating through Liv Morgan’s injury, the Judgment Day’s tumultuous camaraderie, and being chased by guys like AJ Styles, Rusev and Penta.

He has defeated all challengers throughout the year, and has shown tremendous growth in character, and honestly, has been one of the only male performers I really bother to keep tabs on.

Feeding him to John Cena, and losing the Intercontinental blet at this stage of the game is something that disappointed me tremendously as a fan, and really makes me wonder if E Creative™ really has a good idea where they’re going with this, or if they’re just eager to check off that very last feel good accolade for John Cena, as to make sure he has every single honor there could be, even if it meant coming at the expense of one of their most valuable long-term assets in Dominic Mysterio.

It also takes a big crap all over all of the guys who have been chasing Dominic Mysterio throughout the year, like AJ Styles, Rusev and Penta, because Dom has been going to war with them all year, cheating and beating them dirty, but then he takes a 10 minute loss to John Cena like it was 2013 all over again, and there’s something about the whole act that makes me feel like a year’s worth of booking has been disrespected and peed on just a little bit.

Like, the Intercontinental championship doesn’t benefit John Cena at all.  He literally has no time to boost it or elevate it beyond what Dom has done with it, because last time I checked, he has three appearances left.  And I doubt that his last match will also be for the Intercontinental championship, so that means he has to drop it within his next two appearances, and in my opinion, fewer things erode a title’s prestige than rapid changes, at least not without a good narrative behind it, and I feel like the E is really pigeon-holing themselves right now with this not-well thought out Cena IC run.

Basically, no way it’s going to any of the 16 guys in the Cena Last Match Tournament, because it defeats the purpose for having a tournament in the first place, if one of them is going to suddenly get to have a match, a title match, against him before the last match.  And outside of them, there’s really not a lot of names that are just spontaneously ready for the Intercontinental title much less worthy to get a win on John Cena, genuinely one of the greatest talents in the history of the industry, which is a topic I may touch on in a future post.

I feel like the only real option is to drop it back to Dominic Mysterio, where Dom will win on account of there being a metric fuckton of interference from the rest of The Judgment Day, the Americanos, and he’ll win dirty with an obvious foreign object, but at that point the question is why they had to have him drop the title in the first place, other than to placate a superficial career milestone?  They derail an extremely strong title run and snuff out its momentum.  Even if he wins it back, the mystique of his first run is completely reset, and it’ll feel like a holding pattern until the next contender is ready, instead of like the run Gunther had with it, where it just felt like nobody was ever going to beat him.

Either way, as much as I have enjoyed the John Cena retirement tour, I will die on this hill that him taking the Intercontinental title off of Dominic Mysterio was not the best idea, and smells more of pandering and fan service than being a careful and calculated choice that would be worthy of being in the next season of UNReal.

Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few year and change, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company’s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.  Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they’re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.

I often said to my friends that I didn’t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I’d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.  Over the summer, I went to NXT’s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.

Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn’t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don’t really have many qualms with how they’re operating the company.  But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can’t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I’ve missed the last two major events.  NXT remains on CW which I don’t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven’t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don’t have the means to watch whatever channel they’re on now.  RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it’s hard to stay engaged when they’re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.

In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.  Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.  Obviously, I’m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.

All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT’s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.

It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can’t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.  The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I’d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I’d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn’t a mega arena, and it wasn’t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.

And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.  Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don’t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that’s how I felt with the opening match of Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.  No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.

*What’s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I’m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they’re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.  Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.

Mariah May Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women’s North American title, and I’m pleased that she’s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page’s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph’s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it’s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.  But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don’t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.  They’re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.

Honestly, it’s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it’s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn’t stand out in comparison.  Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn’t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.  Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that’s it?

But let’s really talk about Tatum Paxley’s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women’s championship.  Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn’t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.

However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I’m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women’s champion.  I think she’s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I’d be lying if I didn’t stop and let the look linger on her; she’s cute as hell.

But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women’s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.

Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.  It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.  Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they’re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.

Wrestlemania XLIII in Saudi Arabia? Thanks I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I heard the rumblings that Wrestlemania was going to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2027, I had two thoughts run through my mind:

  1. This was always going to happen eventually, I guess most of us wrestling fans didn’t expect it to happen just yet. When the WWE got in bed with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most fans saw a gamut of dollar amounts being thrown around as the cost of the union, with the only thing in common being that they were all ridiculously high with absolutely nothing measured in millions, but billions.  There was always talks and rumors that eventually Wrestlemania would make its way into the kingdom, but honestly I figured that at least Europe would have gotten a shot to host a ‘Mania before Saudi Arabia, but as is the way of the world, money talks.

  2. Regardless, I hate it. I’ve always been vehemently opposed to everything in regards to the WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, and the only reason why I spite-watch the shows that they hold out there is that over the last few years, they’ve actually woven storylines into the Saudi shows as if they were going to Birmingham, Alabama for a PPV, and I have FOMO on any progressions in them.
    Yes, I know that makes my wrestling fandom a little bit (more) gray, but at the end of the day, I’m still a fan of the business, and I like to consume as much of it as I can, even if I don’t like the town they’re in.

But I am not a fan of the Saudi culture, which no matter how many billions they dump into the world economy to try to change the world’s perspective on them, doesn’t change the fact that they exist in a reality where women are full-stop, a full-ass tier beneath men, and there is absolutely nothing a woman could to do change the status quo.  Forcing them, as well as all visiting women to adhere to their bullshit laws of being completely covered up and probably other nonsensical things that would probably result in a beheading if violated.

Furthermore, they’re a culture of extreme homophobia, transphobia and just plain opposed to the LGBTQ+ community entirely.  Frankly, they’re just a culture of extreme prejudice in general, and early on in the arrangement, it was known fact that if Sami Zayn were to even step foot in the country, he would probably be killed, due to the conflicts in Syria and him being a native Syrian.

Honestly, I know I’ve said my piece about how I feel about Saudi culture, and I don’t much see the point in typing in circles and doing it again.  I just hate that the WWE has finally pulled the trigger on SaudiMania, and we’re less than two years again from the showcase of the immortals™ having to be broadcast from a culturally backward country at very likely an extremely inconvenient time to account for time zone, and I’ll probably get completely spoiled to everything by the time I can get to watch it, because not only can the internet never shut the fuck up, the WWE themselves has a really nasty habit of firing off emails in real time to the show, announcing critical results in order to hock their shitty overpriced merch powered by Fanatics™.

However, I had another thought while pondering this post: if there were ever a time for AEW to launch a genuine tactical strike against the WWE with the sole intention to gain industry footprint, I think this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Like, AEW books a show on the same weekend, entirely to counter and challenge SaudiMania.  Absolutely load the card, spread it over two nights.  Collaborate with everyone, especially since all the smaller and indy feds that love to book in the WWE’s gravity during Mania weekend probably won’t be able to do so if they’re in fucking Saudi Arabia, in order to help stack the card.

Hold it at EverBank and not Daily’s Place, where they could fill probably 50-60k, which would be a huge economic win especially since April is not football season, and since Daddy Shahid owns the team, it’s probably basically a free venue less the cost of event operations.

Run it free with existing subscription on HBO Max with any additional charge, to mitigate one of their biggest handicaps against the WWE, which is the fact that they effectively still operate on a pay-per-view model.

Capitalize on all of the western and global WWE fans who probably won’t be able to get into SaudiMania for fear of getting beheaded or just plain not being able to afford the royal cost of tickets.  Emotions are already high and resentful towards the E for running in Saudi, and if there ever was a moment in time to try and flip any fans, this would absolutely be it.

Over the last year, WWE hasn’t been shy about running counter to AEW, even though they claim that they don’t view them as competition.  And maybe it’s because they are still kind of the little brother in the real/unreal rivalry between them, AEW has for the most part avoided running shows on dates that the WWE had “claimed.”

But I’m just saying, I feel like if there was ever a chance for AEW to take the offensive and have it do some noticeable impact, running a mega show right on top of SaudiMania’s dates, could possibly be effective.  A combination of fan resentment and the likely time difference could lead to it running almost entirely unopposed, and if they deliver, could have some massive effectiveness at closing the gap with their competition.

I’m not saying such would make me a massive AEW fan for life, but I think I’m in a position where I’d prefer to see the E take a ding for their poor decision making, and if it means supporting their competition, so be it.  I don’t hate AEW by any stretch of the imagination, I just find their brand of product to be puzzling at times, but it does not meant that I wouldn’t want to see them succeed as well.  AEW being prosperous is good for the industry as a whole, certainly more than an arrangement with fucking Saudi Arabia.