Retris

Tony Khan wearing a neck brace for the NFL draft and the NFL announcers talking about how brave he is for powering through is exactly the kind of dumb fun that I love about American wrestling.

They did not have to go this hard or this horny with this poster for All Together. But they did and it's glorious.

This is not a drill. Chuck Taylor finally got to say shit on live TV. The boyhood dream has come true.

@rebel_scum:At the end of the day, American wrestling is still lowbrow entertainment directed at backwards yokels. I don't think it's necessarily getting a free pass, it's just people realizing that it is what it is. It's the same thing with wrestlers' politics and for example how ready people are to accept that nobody at WWE knew about Vince until the lawsuits started coming.

@cornfed40: Like said, we really don't know whose idea it was. Occam's razor would point to the Young Bucks at least partially being responsible, since it's been their MO literally since 2009. They've been doing this for 15 years, so I'm just going to assume it's them.

@sombre: I'm guessing the reasons are threefold:

1) There's been rumors for a long while that Naito is working hurt. Might be more hurt than people thought.

2) Jon Moxley fucking rules.

3) This gives them a way to get the title on the Semen Cannon without having to do yet another LIJ internal implosion.

@av_gamer:But wouldn't that also apply to the Young Bucks and AEW since that's what we're talking about? The discussion is more about AEW than Punk.

@brian_: Speaking of. I genuinely don't think think this was Tony's idea. It's not really his style. His style is more of introducing new wrestlers and belts and then doing nothing with them, and filling shows with main-eventer vs. jobber matches that go over 10 minutes and really do nothing but waste time. On the other hand you've got the Young Bucks who've literally made their entire careers on the back of doing stuff like this, so I wouldn't really put it past being their idea.

Also, holy shit Jack Perry is fucking over. This genuinely seems to be working for him? Wild. People (including myself) were expecting the crowd to absolutely destroy him, but instead he had the Chicago live crowd eating out of his hand. He was one of the most over acts of the night. If AEW can manage to capitalize in the same way and get the non-smark heavy crowds into it this could actually work. I can't overstate how genuinely surprising Windy City was and this was the biggest surprise.

NJPW Strong constantly having better shows than regular NJPW is starting to make NJPW look even worse than they look on their own merits.

@bigsocrates: Yuuup. This and Ospreay cutting a promo on Triple H sure as shit makes AEW look second rate. This is DX invading WCW on a "tank" level of sad, and AEW doesn't have the luxury of spending literal decades of hyping it up to make it look better.

WWE almost had a disaster this weekend with Punk trying to make the weekend about himself, but they managed to avoid it by just powering through and ignoring Punk. AEW on the other hand tried to lean into it and it just made them look bad. We'll see if it pops a rating, but I don't think that rating's gonna last if it did as none of the rest of the show really gave anyone a reason to stay. I get that the Bucks are doing an even more meta heel gimmick now that their meta heel gimmick of "wrestling in a way to piss off wrestling purists" has gotten old, and I did find the whole thing (and the way it parodied Tony Khan) funny... but sheesh, nobody's talking about the segment and everyone is talking about the footage. Heck, they're not really even talking about the footage, they're just talking about the airing of it. Someone said that everyone had made their mind about the footage already and showing it didn't change anyone's mind and that's bang on the money: you can see Punk instigate the fight, you can see him fail to choke Perry, you can see him lunging at Khan but getting pulled away... but the people on Punk's (or anti-AEW) side still pretend that's not how the footage went. Facts or proof do not work on the internet.

I just can't get over how stupid this shit is and how it's distracting from the show.

So, as (I) predicted, CM Punk choked out Jack Perry in the same way he choked out his opponents in UFC. This begs the question... does Punk actually believe he should've won those MMA fights? That the ref should've stopped the match? Because holy shit. This was Hogan level of fibbing.

@fisk0: Heck, I might be remembering this wrong but isn't the reason they pivoted from supernatural horror to sci-fi in Resident Evil / Biohazard solely because they felt they were veering too close to just copying Alone in the Dark? Because originally RE was supposed to be a remake / sequel to Sweet Home, which is very much a haunted house game.

I genuinely like this remake. It has it's problems, the full pricetag being the biggest one, but all in all, it's a decent game of a smaller scope. I thought the story (at least the Emily side) is genuinely captivating and well written, managing to capture that Lovecraftian feel but with a more modern twist to it. The games I'd compare it to are the Sinking City and Deadly Premonition, but unlike those games this doesn't fall into the trap of trying to create an open world with lots of busywork, so the pacing feels better. However, I do agree that the combat is just kinda meh and the puzzles could be more elaborate. For me, I'd kind of drop the combat entirely as it kind of causes that Tomb Raider (2013) ludonarrative dissonance where you shoot up samey monsters by the dozen, but in cutscenes it's an entirely different story of your character questioning their sanity. The combat just doesn't add anything to the game... and I've got to say, even though they don't phone it in, the big name actors don't really add anything either. I do love the voiceovers for every written piece of lore in the game.

@bigsocrates: To make it clear. I don't think him big timing a cop is anywhere as bad as the female trainee case (or the cases of him being proud about abusing girlfriends and female fans [read: the carnie term for them], while claiming to be a feminist). It's just that he has a long history of just constant horribleness that he gets a pass on because him being an asshole backstage translates well to him playing an asshole on camera.

Like, I get that most of the CM Punk appeal has always been that when you give him a mic there's this sense of danger to his promos, that he might blow up at any time, that makes him really appealing. But it's never been that appealing to me, especially after realizing his MO. I don't find a dude bringing up smark talking points about his opponent to be entertaining. Heck, I watched that promo him and Drew had last week and Drew fucking smoked him and his retort being bringing up Vince just made Punk look bad in my opinion. That's the thing, when against a promo guy like Drew or Eddie or heck, even Hangman, he just ends up looking desperate, and not in a good way.