State Of The Blog – February 2022

For the second month in a row, we’re doing another longform State Of The Blog… although I wouldn’t expect this one to be long winding as the other one. Still, for future plans and the likelihood of those happening, here’s the gist.

Video Game Reviews
Tuesday will kick off the 2022 run of reviews with Dragon Warrior II on NES at 9 p.m.. A lot of time went into trying to polish up the footage for this thing, hence the late start. Following that, three more reviews will be posted on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, also at 9 p.m. EST. After that, the plan going forward is to adopt a three-review-a-week format, so every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will feature new reviews. Some weeks will be Monday-to-Friday five reviews, usually denoting special occasions. The long game is to eventually hit 1000 reviews by the end of the year. We’re currently at 840. Do the math. Place your bets as to whether I’d actually make it that far.

PPV Musings
Wrestling PPV Musings will continue to be published every Wednesday and the majority of them have been written ahead of time, with the only exceptions reserved for whatever current shows are going on. I even have stuff ready for the first couple months of 2023, so this is one area that I don’t foresee any issues with unless something comes up that merits my attention. (I doubt that.)

Slideshow Movie Reviews
For the three people wondering, yes, Slideshow Movie Reviews will be making a return sometime in March and will adopt a weekly schedule for at least the short term. I have about ten of these dubbed, half of which comprise a cult favorite series from years past. I’ve also got a couple written reviews planned for the future involving a couple other films, but I don’t want to say more than I need to.

Phantom Posts
Not much to say in this regard. I’ve posted a couple Dynamite musings from the latter end of 2021, which you can check out in the AEW tab.

Video Commentary Restoration
Sadly, work has stalled as of late. Part of it is due to time constraints, part of it is due to content ID concerns, and part of it also involves technical issues that makes restoring some of these older files a bit more difficult. This has also affected the restoration of certain reviews as well. If there’s any significant update, I will let you folks know, but for now, things are going slow.

That’s about it for now. See you all next month… or check out the other stuff in the meantime, of course.

AEW Dynamite (Jan. 19th, 2022): Is Vince Russo Writing Cody’s Promos?

Not gonna lie. This last Dynamite show was not one of the stronger shows that AEW has put out. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a bad Dynamite show or anything that would set me off the rails, but compared to the usual output, I would definitely place this in the lower tier entirely skippable segment of Dynamite episodes, where there was some good stuff, but nothing you’ll remember the next night.
I did enjoy the Jon Moxley promo that opened the show and when the first words to come out of his mouth is telling some heckler to go fuck himself without getting bleeped on the live feed, I smiled. Really heartfelt words from Jonathan Good about facing demons and dark cloudsas the crowd sat in silence and apt attention, only reacting when needing to. And of course, he goes full Mox about being thirsty and only drinking blood. Good to have you back, Mox.
On the other hand, that Cody promo…
Okay, honest question here… did Cody secretly hire Vince Russo to write his promos because this seems like the sort of thing he would do? Talking about backstage stuff, using “insider terms” like “turning heel” or “real life friends” to try and give the impression that “this is real shit” but come across as even faker than the fake shit that’s supposed to be fake? Because this sounds like the sort of thing that Russo would write for promos to try and nab the casual audience he thinks likes this sort of stuff, when all they want is background noise while they’re doing something else. Good lord, this was deathly dull… and it’s a shame because Cody is usually a good talker, but his talking points as of late have been turn-the-channel dull.
Other than those two bits… eh. I like that CM Punk/Shawn Spears match; that went about as long as it needed to. Everything was just… eh. Oh well, better luck next time. Apparently, Friday’s Rampage was somewhat better, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t know how to watch Rampage on my TV that isn’t on a shitty TSN app.

WWE New Year’s Revolution 2006

Last year, WWE debuted a new PPV to the calendar; New Year’s Revolution, which was the first WWE PPV held in Puerto Rico. A year later, WWE would hold their second annual New Year’s Revolution in the exotic land of… Albany, New York.  Well, it certainly is exotic.

Fun fact: I have never watched this PPV before. I have seen a couple matches from it by virtue of DVD compilations and such, but never the full show.

Continue reading “WWE New Year’s Revolution 2006”

WWE New Year’s Revolution 2005

So let’s dive back to 2005… which began with WWE needing to crown a new World Champion on their RAW brand… except they really didn’t because… well, we’ll get into the background in the actual musings, but with WWE’s New Year’s Day PPV having come and gone, I figured it’d be a good time to revisit their brief run of PPVs that weren’t the Royal Rumble.

I’ve already talked about this show years ago and I’ve provided the above link for the sake of context and comparison.

The first New Year’s Revolution emanated from Puerto Rico, which marks the first time WWE held a PPV in that country. You’d figure that would be a neat annual tradition to hold a PPV there every year, but the following year’s edition would be held in some random American city. Oh well.

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AEW Dynamite (January 5th, 2022): Tee Bee Ess

Yeah, it’s a new era as AEW Dynamite moves to TBS… and so we have a generic banner for these Dynamite musings. Hell of a show, too. Good enough for me to want to write a quick musings on it and not save it for a phantom post down the road.

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WWE Day One (January 1st, 2022 PPV)

And so here we are. A new year is here and who better to kick off the year with a bang than WWE with their New Year’s Day PPV?

Allegedly the brainchild of CEO Nick Khan – responsible for such wonderful WWE moments such as Miz getting eaten by zombies, Vince McMahon’s egg stolen by Austin Theory, as well as the near hundred releases due to “budget cuts” during their most profitable months ever – the idea is for WWE to hold a PPV on New Year’s Day going forward.

But before we get that far, let’s check out this show first, which is billed as a “premium” live event instead of a PPV. Yeah… “premium.” Whatever you say, pal.

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