Wrestling

I’ve lived in big modern apartment complexes with decent courtyards, but this post is on target despite the existence of exceptions. And even my apartment courtyard was a restricted access area, only open to apartment residents. I spend a lot of time thinking about back to office, hybrid work, remote work, and so on. As is usually the case, Charity Majors has good thoughts on this. Her company is fully remote and distributed, and I believe that was true even before the pandemic; like many of us, she’s found that you still need that physical presence from time to time. Here’s how she does it. ...

I was chatting the other day about how I’d book an AEW round-robin tournament and I thought I’d expand on the subject somewhat here. Background: most US pro wrestling tournaments are single elimination. There’s a bracket, and if you lose you’re out. In contrast, the big Japanese promotions tend to run round robin tournaments, where you earn points for wins, and the wrestlers with the most points face off in the finals. ...

We’re a pro wrestling blog now! I enjoyed my first DEFY show enough to make it a regular thing. Last night they ran Seattle again, with Jeff Cobb on the show, which was more than enough to get me down there. It didn’t have any surprises like Moxley showing up but it was perfectly good indie wrestling and I’m looking forward to the next one.

I hit DEFY Wrestling: Mad Kingdom last night. Right before the pandemic, I had tickets for a DEFY show starring The Great Sasuke, plus they co-promoted the Super J-Cup show that S. and I went to in 2019. I thus had warm feelings, plus I’ve heard good things about them, plus Eddie Kingston was main eventing and like so many other fans I’ve been really impressed by his AEW run. So I decided to take a calculated risk and go out to an event. It was pretty fun! Overall it wasn’t an exceptional show, but three of the matches were good to excellent and every match had something to like. I liked it enough to subscribe to their Patreon and I’m thinking I’ll make this a monthly excursion.

My whole week has been pretty much New Japan Pro Wrestling’s G1 Climax tournament for the last couple of weeks. 19 shows in a month, it’s kind of a crazy pace. This is their big heavyweight tournament of the year every year and for a while it looked like it might not happen but they managed to get a few critical wrestlers back into the country and here we are! ...

Professional wrestling is both a commodity and an art form, and that’s why I can sit in an audience of less than a thousand people in a small ballroom in Tacoma and watch one of the best wrestlers in the world do his job. Will Ospreay is a British wrestler. He’s 26 years old. In 2007, he was a 14 year old watching this Latino kid called Amazing Red, who in turn was wrestling up and down the East Coast in a string of independent promotions and, for a while, in TNA. Whether or not TNA was the big leagues depends on who you ask. Either way, Red had the room to stretch the boundaries of his craft and Will was soaking it all in. He dressed like Red. He recorded YouTube videos of himself replicating Red’s moves. ...

True fact: tens of thousands of Londoners happily attended professional wrestling shows during the 1930s. This resurgence in the “sport” was thanks to one Sir Edward Atholl Oakeley, whose autobiography I really gotta read. (In his later years, long after his wrestling career ended, he became the 7th Baronet of Shrewsbury. Wild life story.) He dubbed his wrestling style “All-In,” since it allowed for wrestlers from a variety of traditions. Sir Oakeley always maintained he was promoting real sporting matches, but given that US pro wrestling had already become mostly staged by 1930, it seems pretty likely that All-In wrestling matches were also fixed. This phase of British professional wrestling history lasted under a decade. By 1940, the quality of the wrestling had degenerated as demand rose. It became more a spectacle, less a sport, and unacceptable in the eyes of civil society. By the time promoters were running mixed gender matches, judges were handing down decrees preventing public shows. Let’s talk about gaming!

It’s the week for rich businessmen to enter the political fray (original), huh? Of the two, I find Linda McMahon’s (original) decision more interesting. Stephen Pagliuca is a fairly bland guy with a fairly bland background. Linda McMahon is also fairly bland, and she’s going to face the same questions (original) about her loyalty to her party, but her background has somewhat more spice. Her Web site is funny. You can barely tell her last name is McMahon, which is probably for the best. It’s not about Linda McMahon, it’s about Linda, who is barely related to that guy who shows up on your TV on Monday nights yelling at wrestlers. The WWE is merely “a company,” not a sports entertainment juggernaut or anything like that. It’s a pretty tasteful chunk of the Web. ...

Of note: The Triumph and Tragedy of WCCW -- more or less the von Erich story. Interesting probably for the documentary more than the wrestling. Stone Cold Steve Austin’s Life and Legacy -- no match list, but the description sounds tempting. The Shawn Michaels Story -- some repeats, no Bret Hart matches (?), but worth it probably for that hour long match with Cena alone. Said match is not included on the 3 DVD Cena set coming up soon, btw. ...

At the time I write this, the solid facts are that three people are dead: Chris Benoit, wrestler, and his wife, and their seven year old son. When I heard that news last night I was devastated. Chris Benoit’s death alone would have hit me hard; add a family tragedy to it, and the news horrified me. But it’s worse. The preponderance of evidence is that Chris Benoit killed his wife and son.