WTF?! Daniel Bryan Danielson Medically Cleared To Return To Action

Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/smackdown/article/daniel-bryan-makes-huge-announcement?sf185073827=1

Well, that’s a genuine surprise. And here I thought I’d have to wait until his contract would expire to hear about him going to New Japan or whatever. But, hey, congratulations to Daniel Bryan Danielson for getting the clearance to do what he loves doing. Hopefully, he’ll be a bit more careful this time around… and hopefully, he’ll be the one inserted into the three-way rather than that Shane McMahon fellow.

I’ve said too much, haven’t I?

Remember Ataribox? Yeah, me neither…

(Quick update: Here’s a press release. A video is forthcoming.)

Anyone remember Ataribox? That new micro-console thing from Atari that was going to have a Kickstarter but then doesn’t have a Kickstarter? Yeah, me neither. But apparently it’s back in the news for some reason and now it has a new name; the Atari VCS.

But we already have a VCS. We don’t need another one.

For those who aren’t aware, the VCS refers to the Atari 2600’s original name when it was released in 1977. In fact, the system was only referred to as the 2600 when Atari released the ill-fated 5200 Supersystem. Even to this day, there are still people who will refer to the 2600 by its original name.

Anyway, in addition to a new name change, there’s also a new preview image, showing off not only the console, but also its two controllers. On the right, you have the Classic Controller that’s modelled after the original VCS joystick. And on the left, you have the Modern Controller, which looks the stock gamepad you get these days, only with an orange thumbstick and a shitty D-Pad.

Now Atari says there’re more details to come in April and for anyone who cares about this thing, this should probably get you excited for some reason. Personally, I’d be more interested in the reactions from the community than I am the actual console. I’ve already shared my piece months ago and I’ve seen nothing that would change my stance on the matter.

Engadget has (slightly) more details here.

On a sidenote, I’m currently recovering from a cold; hence the lack of videos. I’m hoping to get the last of the Mega Man stuff out by the end of the week, but I don’t want to jinx it out of fear that I might catch something else along the way.

WWF No Way Out (Of Texas) (Feb. 1998 PPV)

So here’s a musing that’s been hanging around for a couple years now and I may as well get it up there as a bit of a bonus to be published at precisely 3:16 P.M. Nobody is going to get that.

Fun Fact: The event was originally known as simply WWF No Way Out, but someone wisely saw that the initials for the event were very similar to WCW’s very popular and very profitable stable (as demonstrated in the banner above), prompting the addition of “Of Texas” to the title. Funny how they didn’t have that issue when No Way Out became the name of a February 2000 Pay Per View event. In any event, I bought the VHS tape of this thing when it was on sale at that HMV store (yes, kids. Canada has HMV stores) and long after it still bore any relevance. This was probably late-98 or 99 when I bought it. I honestly don’t recall.

In retrospect, I doubt there was any need to actually watch this since the February WWF/WWE PPV was/is typically the filler show between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania… but I guess I really needed to see that big eight-man tag-team match or something. I don’t know.

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WWF Survivor Series 1996

A buddy of mine suggested I do a musings on the 1996 Survivor Series since it features Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart. At the moment, the current crop of Wrestling Wednesday features is filled for the next couple months, but a quick musings done on March 16th (3/16. Get it? Of course you don’t.) shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

This is the first of two PPVs that I’m posting today. The next one will be posted twelve hours later.

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WWE Vengeance 2002

Once upon a time, a long time ago, back in 2000, I did a quaint little website called DTM Webstation… it was online, but rarely untouched until about a couple years later when I had regular internet access. Around that time, I started doing a series of commentaries quaintly titled “The Bite.” Essentially my own rambling blog before such blogging ease was available to the masses or at least any that I was remotely aware. The Bite commentaries covered whatever came to mind, but one of the things I did in those commentaries was do quick predictions for then-upcoming WWE PPV shows, from time to time. Once I started up the DTM Blog, those predictions became a regular feature and the Bite commentaries became… well, obsolete. This was a regular thing even during the early years of this blog before I eventually just went with straight up random ramblings on the various shows.

Those early predictions (along with some updated thoughts) were what I reposted onto the blog early on and subsequently linked to the Wrestling Stuff page. The problem with including those on that page is people who only read the recent musings will assume I’ve done similar write-ups in the past when it simply isn’t the case. As such, there’s been this massive disconnect between the current format and this older, antiquated format that was posted purely for archival purposes and does not necessarily reflect my current thought.

So what I’ve gone ahead and done is pull out most of my old DVD-Rs that hosted these PPV recordings and decided to give them a nice rewatch and I’d figure it make for a nice weekly segment here on the blog. And that’s what we’re going to do from here on out; every Wednesday, we’ll be looking at an older wrestling card from years ago and while the current format is to do the old WWE PPVs from 2002 to whenever I stopped doing the old format, sometimes I might veer off course and do another “old” show. (Newer PPVs, should I feel inclined to cover them, will not be part of this weekly package.)

So enough waffle; let’s watch Vengeance 2002 for the first time in sixteen years and live to regret it.

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WWE Fastlane 2018

Note to WWE Creative; If I’m going on a fast lane, it’s not so I can make stops along the way. But I guess I should expect this sort of incompetence from people who confuse the 25th iteration as an anniversary, but I digress.

Despite being on the “Fastlane” to the Road To Wrestlemania, we have another 3-hour digress featuring a bunch of matches that will do nothing to set up the upcoming Showcase Of The Immortals and will instead waste plenty of time to reach their foregone conclusions. I will be perfectly honest; I had no real intention of watching this show, but a trip to the Amerindian Museum in southern Quebec left me a bit queasy and I found myself lying on my bed watching the show to pass the time… which meant no work done on stuff that needed to get done, but I digress. (On that note, either expect videos to resume again on Wednesday, or maybe I’ll hold off until Friday and resume the daily stream from there.)

Anyway, Fastlane is otherwise significant as it is the final brand-specific PPV, as from this point forward, we’ll be getting monthly dual-brand PPVs that will last for ten hours and then we’ll wonder why nobody is watching their PPVs any more. Yes, I’m sure Network number will jump up because Wrestlemania is right around the corner, but how many of those folks are going to stick around after the fact?

Anyway… again… on with the show.

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Impact Wrestling: Crossroads (March 8, 2018 Episode)

The last time I sat down to watch an episode of Impact Wrestling… let’s just say it didn’t go over well and the end result was one of the longer tirades I’ve written on a wrestling show.

It’s been a year since then and there’s been yet another shake-up in management, a move to Toronto, and a massive reshuffling of the deck in terms of talent and personnel. And of course, the familiar claim to fame that Impact Wrestling survived another year. And while the product was once again under new management, I didn’t bother to watch their first show last month because it wasn’t a straight-up reboot or anything like that, but rather a slow shift. Things would change, but not outright and in a way that would feel natural rather than forced.

So I made the decision to bite the bullet and check out their Crossroads special; essentially an episode of Impact Wrestling with four major matches, including the first ever meeting between Impact World champion Austin Aries and Johnny Impact. I’ll be doing a general musings of the show, but I will also bring up a couple points from my last Impact viewing experience and see how this compares to that earlier (and lesser) venture.

For what it’s worth, I’m watching this off the Global Wrestling Network website, which shows the last few episodes of Impact for free. I’m on the fence as to whether I’d want to fork over another ten bucks for a monthly subscription, but on the other hand, there’s a whole bunch of TNA shows that I’d very much want to check out and I’ve got some free time coming up, so it might be worth looking into in the future.

But back to Crossroads… right after the break, of course.

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