Author: dtm666

I ramble about things.

AEW Dynamite (March 1st, 2023): So Cold That Montreal Winter Feels Like Ghost Peppers

Yeah, we’re going there.

So three things of note to place on this show. Jon Moxley cut a great promo hyping his Texas Death Match with Hangman Page, Hangman Page returned the favor with a great promo of his own despite the less than stellar mic quality, Christian Cage cut a superb promo challenging Jungle Jack Boy Perry to what he calls a “fight” – which is followed by Jungle Boy digging Cage’s grave; them fightin’ grave diggin’ – and the show closed with Bryan Danielson, with only four minutes to spare, cutting a great promo trying to sell people on the idea of a 60-minute Ironman match with MJF, even going so far as to not let Max get a word in and even threatening to kick his fucking head in, which causes the crowd to chant that very thing.

Beyond that, the rest of the show was a chore to sit through. The Battle Of The Cassidies – Orange vs. Bill – was a good opening match, but then you had the Ladder Match that saw a ladder break and half a dozen refs holding the thing up so that Powerhouse Hobbs can grab the inflatable brass ring to earn a TNT title shot next week. And then there was the tag-team battle royale, which was more like a tag-team Royal Rumble than the traditional Casino format that they usually employ. And that match was won by the team of Orange Cassidy and Danhausen.

Well, the good news is that Orange Cassidy is getting a PPV payday. The bad news is so is Danhausen.

Oh yes, there is a PPV from AEW this weekend. Despite the fact that I’ve had two posts mention said PPV – both were written some time ago – I had almost forgotten about it because this company has been cold for a while and this PPV has maybe one match (Hangman/Mox) that I’d actually want to see while the rest of the card seems like it was tossed together at the last minute. Even the 60-minute Ironman match for the World title comes across as something that has you asking, “Who would actually want this?”

I’m not one of those doomsayers that declare AEW dead every time they have a bad show, but I will say that the TV has gotten so cold that every time I take a whiff of that cold Montreal winter breeze, it feels like I’m taking three of those fucking One Chip Challenges. Sitting through this show was like sitting through a bad episode of RAW and that is NOT a feeling you should be aiming to replicate under ANY circumstances.

Yeah, not a great show on its own and not a successful push for the PPV despite a couple great promos. Looks like this is another PPV I’ll be skipping out on for the time being. Maybe ol’ TK should his company a favor and let someone else have the book for a while so he could focus on his Rot Of Honor promotion that he’s desperately trying to make people care about.

State Of The Blog – March 2023

Quick little update for the month and that’s about it.

First off, video reviews will uploaded every Tuesday and Friday for the next month. Nothing major planned on the horizon, though I’m hoping for something special to come up towards the tail end of the month. Won’t say anything until we get there, however.

PPV Musings will be posted every Wednesday, as per usually the case. This month, I’ll be covering the AEW PPVs I missed out on last year before eventually tackling this weekend’s Revolution PPV. If I end up watching an weekly show, I should have some thoughts on it a day or two later.

In case anyone cares, no, I will not be watching Ring Of Honor. Not that there was much interest beforehand, but to stick the show behind the paywall gives me even less incentive to pursue that show.

I want to try and get a Sunday Gimmick Table out this month. This one’s going to be a different beast from the usual format, because it also features archival footage that you probably haven’t seen before unless you’ve been around these parts since the dawn of time. I’d recommend lowering your expectations, otherwise.

Got a couple addition bits in the works. Might not be up this month, but could be up next month. I am hoping to expand the palette so that it goes beyond just gaming and rasslin, which seems to be the rut this thing is stuck with.

There will be a DTM-Cast at the end of the month and it’ll open with the long-awaited (not really) Q&A. I may also continue my thoughts on the Picard series going on now and by the time we reach the halfway point, I might turn that into a post you can read.

Other stuff might pop up… key word being might.

AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door (June 2022 PPV)

First off, hope you all had a fine holiday and new year. Second off, I want to give a quick thanks to my old buddy who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, for he was able to put together a sweet little DVD package allowing me to watch the last three AEW PPVs that I missed out on last year, including Full Gear, Forbidden Door, and the highly controversial All Out PPV.

So we’ll be covering these PPVs for the next couple weeks, starting with the AEW/New Japan crossover show, Forbidden Door; which took place a few weeks after AEW’s Double Or Nothing PPV. I wasn’t exactly sold on the concept, plus key people I would’ve liked to have seen on the show were out with injuries, and so my interest waned and I skipped out on the show. It turned out to be the first AEW show that I had missed, though it wouldn’t be the last.

Now that I’ve seen the show, did I miss out or not? Let’s find out.

Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara & Minoru Suzuki defeated Eddie Kingston, Shota Umino & Wheeler Yuta in a tremendous opening six-man contest.
ROH Tag Champions  FTR defeated IWPG Tag Champions Great O-Khan & Jeff Robb and Roppongi Vice in a Winners Take All 3-way to retain their ROH titles as well as win the IWGP titles, thus beginning a long, long, long, long, long, long, LONG road to FTR going after the AEW titles so they can hold them all. I think they are still waiting for their shots as we speak.
Pac defeated Miro, Malakai Black, & New Japan guy Clark Connors to win the inaugural AEW All-Atlantic International World Western States Heritage championship in a four-way match. Someone else from New Japan was supposed to be here, but he got injured and they slapped in Clark Connors in there. Honestly, they should’ve stuck with a three-way between the AEW guys, but someone had to take the fall and poor Clark was our victim de match.
Sting, Darby Allin & Shingo Takagi defeated The Young Bucks & El Phantasmo in a fun six-man that featured Sting doing a dive off the entrance stage on top of the bucks and that other guy.
AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa defeated Toni Storm to retain the title. We needed a women’s match and New Japan didn’t have a proper women’s division (does STARDOM count? Honest question) so we got this, which looks so out of place that it stands out automatically, which is incredible. The match itself was a thing that happened. Nothing particularly noteworthy.
IWGP United States Champion Will Ospreay defeated Orange Cassidy in a pretty good match to retain the title. This is followed by a beatdown from Ospreay’s mates.
The debuting Claudio Castagnoli defeated New Japan’s Zack Sabre Jr in a good match. This was supposed to be Danielson, but he was hurt, so we got Claudio. Good pop for Claudio.
IWGP World Champion Jay White defeated Adam Cole, Hangman Page, and Kazuchika Okada to retain the title in a four way.
 Jon Moxley defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the AEW Interim World Championship – a.k.a. I’m keeping the belt warm until reigning champ CM Punk comes back so that I can kick his ass on a random episode of Dynamite.
Forbidden Door had great wrestling and was a good showcase of some New Japan guys to the AEW audience who normally wouldn’t watch that stuff – though the crossover is obviously there. This was a show that if all you wanted was great wrestling and a chance to see some New Japan guys outside of New Japan, then this was the show for you. But watching this months after the fact, I never felt that I missed out on anything more than some great wrestling. Despite the hype and the crossover, this didn’t feel like a big deal. It was, for all intents and purposes, an AEW B-Show PPV event similar to the old Fyter Fest and Fight For The Fallen shows from 2019, except those were free.
That said, if they do another one of these next years, maybe I’ll be more inclined to watch it then, but it depends on the context and the matches offered… and no more of this interim garbage, okay?

DTM-Cast – Episode #230

Click here to download the MP3.

If you just want to hear about my live WWE experience last weekend, just skip to the forty-five minute mark and that’ll cover the rest of this 90+ minute show. Otherwise, I’ll touch a bit on Armake21, the recent Nintendo Direct, some quick thoughts on the upcoming DC Universe line up from James Gunn… and yes, we also talk about Picard. Debating on whether that’s going to be a regular thing from here on out, but there you go.

Still no Q&A segment. Maybe next month.

00:00 – Introduction And Quick Armake21 Thoughts

06:00 – Star Trek: Picard 3×01 and 3×02 Thoughts

16:12 – Nintendo Direct Stuff

24:30 – DC Universe Ramblings

35:01 – Thoughts On The Jeff Hardy DUI Case Closing

44:45 – My Live WWE Weekend Experience

FIN

Case Closed On Jeff Hardy’s Latest Drunk Driving Offense

Source: https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/jeff-hardys-license-suspended-for-10-years-dui-case-closed

So once upon a time, there was a guy named Jeff Hardy. He did rasslin’ things. He also did drug things. He apparently got off the drug things… or so his family says. But then he caught drunk driving. And so he was doing the court thing for quite a while until recently, when Jeff pleaded no contest and the case was closed.

Jeff Hardy’s full sentence is as follows (copied and pasted from the F4WOnline article linked above):

– A 38-day county jail sentence with 38 days credit for time served
– Two years probation
– $4586 in fines and court fees
– A 10-year suspension of his license
– Two years with an interlock device and 90-day vehicle impoundment
– Court-mandated DUI school or drug rehab program
– Community service

So now that the case is closed, cue the folks wondering when Jeff Hardy is going to get back to the rasslin’ thing. And if there is any good sense in the world… not for a very long time.

Will get back to this soon…

WWE Elimination Chamber 2023

Second night in a row that I’m attending a WWE show… it’s a PPV, this time around; the Elimination Chamber PPV or whatever they’re calling it. Make no mistake, however; the Elimination Chamber may be the gimmick that the show is named for, but neither Chamber match is the focal point of the main event, as beloved underdog and hometown favorite Sami Zayn challenges the dominant Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. This was a major turning point in the story of Sami Zayn and the Bloodline and the way I saw it, there were only TWO ideal scenarios that you could go from here… but did they actually go there?

Unlike the Smackdown musings, I did watch the PPV as it aired on the WWE Network and so there’s a little more structure. And honestly, there’s a couple live notes I could toss there, but on a whole, there’s not much too to it. I think the crowd reactions translated well to television. Maybe a couple localized chants from our section didn’t quite make the cut, which is a shame because you had the one guy who constantly chanting for Mami and there were a couple random chants here and there – see the Smackdown musings because they’re the same chants pretty much. But on a whole, no complains on how it was presented on television other than the usual quibbles about the shitty N64-style graphics for the entrances as well as some of the more atrocious camera work during the Men’s chamber match.

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