AEW Dynamite (May 27th, 2026) – Double Or Nothing Fallout Boy

Well, it’s the Dynamite after Double Or Nothing and there’s also an hour of Collision that I didn’t watch because the PVR didn’t catch it, which means that I missed the Kris Stat/Hikaru Shida Lights Out main event. Can we not have these 3-hours just be Dynamite and not some weird combination of one show that TSN airs with another hour of whatever. This is reminding me of that Impact/ReAction experiment that TNA tried back in the dark days where they’d have Impact end in the middle of their main event and then people would have to watch another show to see the rest of it. Fuck off with that noise, man.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (May 27th, 2026) – Double Or Nothing Fallout Boy”

WCW Monday Nitro (May 27th, 1996) – You Know Who He Is, But You Don’t Know Why He’s Here (Also Last Update)

This episode is significant for two reasons. One is that it is the first episode of WCW Nitro to expand to a full two-hour program.

But the second reason this episode is significant is because of this man…

Continue reading “WCW Monday Nitro (May 27th, 1996) – You Know Who He Is, But You Don’t Know Why He’s Here (Also Last Update)”

AEW Dynamite (May 20th, 2026) – Double Go Or Nothing At Home

It’s the go home for Double Or Nothing coming up this weekend, which means let’s have the obligatory opening party match seeing the Bucks Of Jericho get their asses kicked by that fucking geek Rick O’Shea and his geek squad before the Hurt people come along to even the odds. This Stadium Stampede match is going to be a fun time for the people at home; not so sure about the people in the arena. We’ll see what happens.

Mark Briscoe defeat Tomasso Ciampa in an Anything Goes match and boy, if you wanted a relentless brawl between two hated rivals, this was the match for you. Tremendously heated conflict, the crowd was easily into the violence, and the right guy went over to earn a bit of redemption and revenge over the Psycho Killer person. This is, of course, followed by a brawl between Swerve Strickland and that Bandito person that is supposed to lead to an ROH title match… because Swerve wants a World title, but not necessarily the one that matters, apparently. Eh.

It’s not all fun and games, as Willow Nightingale has to surrender the TBS title due to injury and forfeit her spot in the Owen Hart Tournament, which is a thing that happens every year. I feel compelled to remind you that AEW has a tournament named after Owen Hart – who obviously never competed in AEW – because his widow wants nothing to do with WWE… and I don’t necessarily blame her, either. This is followed by a 20-minute draw between Jon Moxley and Kyle O’Reilly, which will lead to a no-time-limit match for Mox’s title (please don’t ask me which, I’ve forgotten) at the PPV. And then we have an interview with Stat and Shida, with Shida being a bit dickish. Hey, as long as Shida is getting TV time of worth, I don’t care where this story goes until it’s off the rails.

Six-woman tag match of little consequence follows before we get our main event of Darby Allin defending his AEW title against Speedball Bailey; a fast-paced, hard-hitting match that sees Darby retain the title and set the stage for our main event of Darby vs. MJF for the title and MJF’s head of hair… which I’d imagine Darby would want to cut and use as a wig… probably the most extreme thing he could pull off at this point. I mean, once you’ve climbed Everest, what’s left, really?

Apparently, there’s a Collision that follows this, but I didn’t catch it. Mick Foley will be making his AEW debut in the PPV preshow, for anyone who cares. How many mistakes will that guy make on the air, referring to guys by their WWE names or what have you? Should be an interesting trainwreck of sorts.

I’d imagine that I’ll try to catch the PPV this weekend in some form or fashion, although if that doesn’t end up happening, I’ll probably still do the post-PPV Dynamite before bringing this run of musings to a close. Either way, it’s been quite a bit of fun watching these Dynamites, which turned out to be quite entertaining shows that I was more content to sit back and watch rather than take copious amounts of notes.

Later, kids.

AEW Dynamite (May 13th, 2026) – Struggling With Words

A little late with this one, but to be fair, I had to play catch-up on a few things, a couple other IRL things also came up, and I’ve been getting more unwanted sleep. Regardless, I was able to watch this show via PVR recording and honestly had little to say about it.

I mean, let’s get it out of the way. I largely enjoyed the show and there were some fun bits. Darby retained the AEW Title over Takeshita in a fun match before we get the contract signing for the PPV match with MJF, which is officially TITLE (Darby) vs. HAIR (MJF) at stake. As if you needed a dead giveaway that MJF is winning the title back because I doubt he’s going to be cutting that mop of his. There was also a really great match between Ospreay and Ace Austin, with Ospreay getting the win and also his training with Mox and his Death people continue, which I’m actually turning a corner on bit by bit… I’m waiting for this moment to be ruined, eventually, but that could be a trigger warning on my part. Kevin Knight retains his TNT title over the returning Brian Cage, who looked pretty good after a long injury hiatus… and then Speedball Bailey wants a shot at the AEW Champion next week, so we have our last Darby defense before the ride comes to an end this coming Sunday. And of course, the obligatory party match, which I largely skipped due to other stuff happening in the background, but I don’t think I missed much there.

Anyway, we’ve got the go home for Double Or Nothing coming up and if things work out, I might be able to catch the PPV this coming weekend and hopefully do some musings on it, since that’s the whole payoff of this mini sojourn of sorts through the Darby era of AEW World title matches. We’ll see about doing the Dynamite after DoN before closing out this run of musings, because June will be wrestling free.

WCW Monday Nitro (May 13th, 1996) – What A Slam! Bow… Ree…

We open the show with Lex Luger camping out so that he wouldn’t NO SHOW his scheduled WCW World title match against the champion GIANT. Give him points for effort, I suppose.

Steiners defeat Public Enemy in what seems like their 284,872,895th match together this year… I swear it’s like every other week, these two are fighting each other at some point in time. Could it hurt to try and get some other teams for these guys to fight? Maybe bring Harlem Heat back into the mix or something? This is followed by Chris Benoit beating Dave Taylor with a Dragon Suplex in a stiff match and then Randy Savage is BANNED from entering the building, which triggers a conversation between he and Mongo, with Mean Gene along for the ride…. which I don’t mind because whenever you need someone to sum up the situation with a clever quip, you plug in Mean Gene Okerlund and let the man rip.

Ric Flair beats VK Wallstreet in a quick match before sitting at what they call a VIP table at ringside to watch the main event, which sees THE GIANT retain his WCW title over Lex Luger via a CHOKESLAM THROUGH RIC FLAIR’S VIP TABLE… which causes Sting to come out and check on his buddy because WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON?!

Still too soon?

So that was Nitro; a fun little show with some fun stuff that did its fair share of setting up the upcoming Slamboree PPV, which… hey, you know what? If that’s up on the channel, I might give that a watch this week. Should be fun.

AEW Dynamite (May 6th, 2026) – Class Act Followed By Chaos

Show opens with Tony Schiavone and Sting doing a classy tribute to the recently passed Ted Turner and highlighting his contributions to wrestling. We then move on to Jon Moxley beating Juice Robinson in a title eliminator match that prevents Juicy Juice from getting a crack at Mox’s title… dude, there’s like thirteen billion belts in AEW; that’s too many for my raddled brain to keep track of.

Speaking of rattled brains, Will Ospreay continues training with the Death people, who continually have him do exercises hurting his neck because that’s a thing we need in wrestling. And then Orange Cassidy beat one of the FTR guys to earn a future tag title match… presumably after Double Or Nothing, but who knows with this company? And while we’re on the subject of rattled brains, here comes JERICHO to declare that the time for talking is over and he invites Ricochet to talk some more… okay. Anyway, this exchange leads to a Stadium Stampede match being booked for DoN pitting Ricochet and his band of geeks (two big guys following Ricochet of all people deserve to be called geeks, not even sorry) against Jericho and the Syndicate Of Hurting People In Business (Shelton and Lashley)… I guess we need more names to fill the slots to make this a ten-man, but yeah, sure, Stadium Stampede is always fun for a lark. Hopefully Aubrey Edwards isn’t anywhere near that match for Jericho’s sake. She is, after all, a shitty referee.

Okada retains his belt over Bryan Keith and he also wants a shot at Darby… how long before Double Or Nothing hits because that’s going to be a fun one if it happens. Meanwhile, Shida-san and Kris Stat make short work of Harley Cameron and that Mina person… Shida-san being somewhat sneaky about some less than honorable deeds. Methinks she’s turning on Statlander soon and that’s probably a good thing. Hopefully, Statlander learns from Sting’s past mistakes on how NOT to be an idiot babyface and see the turn coming.

And in the main event, AEW World Champion Darby Allin retains his title over TNT Champion Kevin Knight in another stellar outing. Probably not as crazy as the last two main events, but still a fun, fast-paced match that showcase both guys’ talents immensely. At this point, the recording cuts off because Dynamite is technically over and the PVR didn’t record the Collision portion of the program, but what ended up happening afterwards is that Darby challenged MJF to put his hair on the line if he wants a rematch or else he can fuck off. MJF delivers his answer next week. Should be fun.

All in all, a fun show. Perhaps not quite as eventful as I was hoping it’d be… probably because they saved all the important bits for the Collision portion of the show, but I went away largely entertained. No complaints, really.

WCW Monday Nitro (May 6th, 1996) – Struggling To Jump Off Early

Folks, we’re about a couple weeks away from calling this experiment quits… but honestly, I’m not sure that I’m going to hold out if THIS is the caliber of Nitro waiting for me. Even in its hour-long format, there’s only so much bad wrestling I can put up with before I turn the show off and move on to something else… which I can easily do because there’s more than enough good shit on the Youtubes that I can load up and clean the palette of sorts.

We open with a Macho Man/Hugh Morris match that ends with Macho choking Morris with a jacket for a DQ or something. We then have Dean Malenko getting a win over Jushin Liger in the only really GOOD match on the show and it’s not even the best match of either man’s career. Sting beats Steven Regal in a so-so match, but I think their GAB match is better. Giant was supposed to defend the WCW title against Luger, but he no-showed, so here comes HACKSAW JIM DUGGAN to get his shit in for a bit before getting CHOKESLAMMED by the Giant for the win… and then a bunch of people run in, Sting runs in, traps Giant in the Scorpion until Jimmy Hart hits Sting with the Megaphone… and NOW Luger shows up, everyone runs away, and we wonder WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON?!

Too soon…?

Yeah, I wouldn’t categorize this Nitro as “bad.” Compared to some of the stuff that WCW would churn out in its dying days, this is probably tame… but it’s also below the standards of these fine shows I’ve been watching this past year and I’d hate to see things fall off the rail before they’re supposed to fall off the rails with the Scott Hall thing. It’s almost as if this show is daring me to quit while I’m ahead… but you’re not fooling me, Nitro 96. I know you’ve got some fun stuff, ahead… maybe… maybe not… we’ll see, I guess.

AEW Dynamite (April 29th, 2026) – Better Maintained Road To Double Or Nothing

There was a part of me that wanted to hold this musings off until Saturday. See, because Saturday is May 2nd, which is the Rock’s birthday, you stupid son of a bitch… so let’s celebrate by talking about an AEW show. Obviously, we’re not doing that… but I’ll probably play the Fight Forever game on Saturday instead… or do a quick match there. I don’t know…

Anyway, we’re continuing the Road To Double Or Nothing, which is nowhere near as poorly maintained as the Road To Wrestlemania was. Hey, if nothing else, these Dynamite shows have been entertaining enough to warrant continuing these musings for the short term, which will probably last until Double Or Nothing. Last night’s show wasn’t a big show, by any means, but still a fun one.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (April 29th, 2026) – Better Maintained Road To Double Or Nothing”

WCW Monday Nitro (April 29th, 1996) – Gigantic Triumphs And Brawling Brits

Another week, another episode of WCW Monday Nitro… this one is available on the WCW Youtube channel and has been since last year. And it’s a pretty significant episode in some ways.

Continue reading “WCW Monday Nitro (April 29th, 1996) – Gigantic Triumphs And Brawling Brits”