We're still in troubling times, gang. I haven't wrote in here in a while now.... I am quite proud of my Turkey short story and that's probably why I haven't wrote in this in a bit... because I don't want to "turn the page" on Turkey yet and bury it down in this blog too soon. It entertained me to write it, as I'd hoped, and I hope it entertained others who read it. It is a fitting short story for the times, I think. Themes of the story are relevant to this moment in our current ever-on-going human history.
But, it's time to "turn the page" and continue writing about other moments of our times and other diversions of the age. One main theme of this blog, over the decade, has been "turn to page" as a sort of coping method in life... just keep stepping, keep going forward. My story "The Journey" uses that as one of its main themes, as well.
Let's turn the page on Turkey, and explore other interesting things, shall we?
There's things people have been making in these lonesome times that have made me laugh (or feel other emotions) and I think I would like to commend these people in this month's article. There's no real rhyme or reason to today's format. I just want to talk about some things over the the last two months that I found to be interesting or uplifting entertainment during these difficult times.
In the case that the content is a fiction show... I won't write spoilers for the show... for I suggest you watch the show in question.
The Entries are the Following:
-Neil Sedaka's Daily Concertos from his Living Room to All of Us.
-Tim and Eric's New Smash Hit Sit-Com: Beef House
-Dinosaur Dracula's Epic Anthropological Opening of a Can of Spider Man Pasta (c. 1995)
-Wrestling!
Neil Sedaka's Daily Concertos from his Living Room to All of Us
I can't say Neil Sedaka was a big name for a person from my era... he's quite before my time. I heard about him from the Gilbert Colossal Podcast, which as a historical resource is always great. He was interviewed by Gilbert and Frank on that podcast and played some of his music on the show.
It has become part of my daily routine to listen to Neil Sedaka's "mini-concerts" each week day since around late April. He is a truly great singer and piano player. He is a National Treasure's National Treasure!
It's such a great variety of music and it is so honest and nice. There's love songs, upbeat numbers, Alice in Wonderland, and Super Bird. I'm just gonna say this... Super Bird from 1972 is a SUPERB song.
He does Super Bird in this One....
I don't really know what it is about this man sitting in his living room, in a different color t-shirt each day, but it's so simple and good...
"When I told the people that I could really fly,
They said that little boys ain't supposed to lie. Poor little super bird sitting on the ground, No zoom, zoom, zoom, when anyone's around.
Fly, fly, fly super bird, super bird. While you're young super bird, super bird. There's time enough to wreck your dreams.
Have your fun, super bird."
-Superbird
There's times during these troubling times that I wish I could just zoom n' fly around like a young Super Bird... but there's no Santa Clause or Green Cheese on this moon, man. There just isn't. This song is very fitting for our times. I know how that young Super Bird feels in this song... that Super Bird is all of us!
Neil Sedaka deserves a Content Award for his daily concerts. They are so simple, honest, and good. They have become part of my daily routine during these troublin' times.
-Tim and Eric's New Smash Hit Sit-Com: Beef House
Beef House was released earlier than planned because a ground-swell of fan-demand literally demanded that the Beef be released!
This, as mentioned in the intro, will be a spoiler free mention of the Beef House, for it is still very new... and I suggest people watch it. Be forewarned though, it is a parody of sit-coms... and more so than any other sit-com parody in history. The themes and "b-plots" it explores can venture into areas of absurdity and all-out grossness... so if you don't want diarrhea-related sub-plots in your family-friendly sit-comsthen the Beefness of this Beef probably won't suit your palette.
To keep this spoiler free, I was thinking of doing a Beef Season One MVP, and measure all the merit won inside the Beef House by each of the Beef Boys as individuals... and award one of them with an MVP award (a la Sports)... or in this case a MVBB (most valuable Beef Boy)... but then I realized that was the wrong thing to do.
It's as Tennessee Winston Luke Fortenberry III, so gently put it, that the Beef Boys are "all for one... and one for all!"... so for me to measure the merit of each individual Beef Boy and award only ONE of them with the MVBB would go against everything the Beef Boys stand for. The Beef Boys are in that Beef House (with Detective Megan Dungerson) together and their credo is to support one another and watch out for each other.
Awarding a merit award to only one of the Beef Boys was the wrong route to take whilst I was thinking about this section... this MVBB... most valuable Beef Boy.... must go to ALL of the Beef Boys AND Detective Megan Dungerson!
I hope this has multiple seasons as Season One was only six episodes. I think this six-pack of Beef was just to test the beefy waters to see if this experiment will catch on and if there will be a public outcry for the Beef.... so if you want more six-packs of the Beef, I suggest you all watch the Beef House!
I can see why they would only make a short order of Beef to test the Beef Waters before going for a full order of Beef... this show is a weird concept. If you're a fan of sitcom parodies... some previous examples are Seinfeld, Curb, Always Sunny, Married w/ Children, etc..... this sitcom parody has more out-of-control elements that you don't see on those parodies... Beef House has some light swearing (especially from Ron Austar) and a heapin' helpin' of Rangus.
So, another Content Award in these troublin' times must be adorned to everyone involved in this show for making a great show!
-Dinosaur Dracula's Epic Anthropological Opening of a Can of Spider Man Pasta (c. 1995)
I'm not sure how many anthropological minded readers we have here today, who enjoy viewing artifacts and relics of past times to fully understand the march of humankind on a chronological level.... but this next entry is from the world of Anthropology.
Writer Dinosaur Dracula, took to twitter on April 16th of the year 2020 to ask the public at large if it was interested in seeing what the pasta inside of a can of Chef Boyardee Spiderman Pasta from 1995 looked like. He requested 1995 retweets for him to open it (the can was from 1995 so the retweet request amount is logical).
The retweet requests were achieved in mere hours after the tweet went out. It is possible that due to the troublin' times we are in and the myriad of people at home contributed to the this achievement gaining momentum so fast... but deep down I don't believe that... I know, deep down, many people have an anthropological nerve in themselves and don't even know it. The deep need of humanity to see the effects of time on Spider Man pasta led this to going viral.
I regard this as one of the most striking presentations of anthropological value of recent times. It is a sight to behold, in the passage of time sense, the effect time had on something as simple and relatable to as Amazing Spider Man Chef Boyardee Pasta from 1995.
The press had a field day with this! If you search for "Man Opens 25 Year Old Can of Spider Man Pasta" on a search engine... you'll see that many MAJOR news outlets reported on this event from all around the world!
So, if you were living under a rock or something (and honestly if you were living under a rock in these troublin' times that's totally okay and commendable of you, actually)... here is the twitter thread where he opens this can of 1995 Spider Man Pasta:
So, let's issue the third Content Award to the Opening of the Can... which captivated the entire world for an entire week.... and I am not exaggerating... it DID captivate the entire world.
Wrestling!
I know it has become a joke that "Wrestling" was deemed an "Essential Service" in "Florida" ... and, to an extent, I have to agree that it is a little strange that Wrestling was deemed as such. Personally, I can't say it is an "essential service" during these troublin' times and agree with most of the people poking fun at this.
I noticed Andy Richter had a funny bit on this on the "Conan at Home" show... and other people have made fun of this... with good reason.
That being said, I think it has been done professionally, with limited access to the stage, as only performers and crew are allowed on set and no fans are in the building. It is being filmed for TV rather than a live audience.... which is a benefit in Wrestling as it still manages to work as a TV Show instead of a live event if the case need be. I can't say the same for other events. The Korean baseball they are showing on TV is okay but is being played in empty stadiums... and if you watch Korean baseball with fans its a much different event than without.
Personally, I don't think Sports will work in empty stadiums, it is too Ghost-Towny, I feel (maybe it's just me, though). Yet, I do think Wrestling has managed to find a way to work without a live studio audience. The locales they are putting the matches in, I think, is successfully making the event seem less strange that there's no live audience. The "Boneyard", The Fiend's Parallel Universe, The Young Buck's Pool-side Estate Match... and recently Kenny Omega and Matt Hardy taking on Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara in a Jacksonville Jaguars empty stadium all-around-the-premises match.
This may even work for Sports... I mean let's say, you play Football or Baseball without fans... but you play the game at a very very scenic locale... like uuhhhh... the Grand Canyon or something. Maybe seeing Baseball on the Grand Canyon would be a cool gimmick in the "Empty Stadium Era" as opposed to a ghost town stadium. Replace the fans with scenic scenery. I'm not sure... I'm just putting it out there. I could see it working, briefly for a while. I can picture baseball at the Grand Canyon and other scenic vistas, can you? Hittin' homeruns into the beautiful gorge instead of the stands. You know?
It is working for Wrestling, to an extent. I notice a lot of the greener wrestlers are still doing crowd work for a non-existent crowd which really looks odd to an audience viewing at home. All in all, the "empty arena" era of Wrestling is different but it's something.
I want to specifically commend K. Omega, M. Hardy, C. Jericho, S. Guevara, the Inner Circle, referee B. Remsburg, and everyone like the camera crew for the main event on AEW's Dynamite the other day.... it was definitely the most interesting thing that has happened in the Wide World of Sport in MONTHS!
Kenny Omega back flipped off of a hydraulic construction lift, Matt Hardy was placed unwillingly into a freezer only to emerge from his icy tomb as the Essence of the One only Known as Damascus to seek revenge on his enemies, people hit each other with baseball bats and traffic cones.... and then Sammy Guevera was hit by a golf cart (or military-grade golf cart from the looks of it)... all on LIVE TV!
Now that's something else, right there. I really really really wish to commend all involved in the main event of AEW Dynamite for that... which I must say... in this Sportsless entertainment world right now ... it was the most exciting thing I've seen in months!
Video Excerpt of the Event in Question!
Conclusion
Okay so, that's four things I thought were really great lately. There's been others but I think those four are the most fourest that other people would enjoy as well.
Personally, a big one for me, has been TSN airing old Montreal Expos games on TV instead of new baseball games... but Expos nostalgia is very deeply personal to me ... I'm not sure anyone else would be super interested in it. They showed Tim Raines and the Expos beating the New York Mets in 1987 the other day... and I was literally captivated by every SECOND of it.
Another thing lately has been the Rise of Leslie Jordan ... who has become a social media icon of late. It's nice to see him taking his prominent place in the pop world as he deserves it.
I hope you enjoyed my article, ladies and gentleman, please stay safe in these troublin' times... and please check out some of the things mentioned in this article. There's something for everyone here. All these artists, I think, are being very experimental in a time in the world where entertainment is important yet difficult. I think all the four entries in this article share that trait of being "experimental" in a difficult time and I think all their efforts should be noticed ... and that's why I wanted to give all four entries some sort of Award for making great things in the world.
It went on a long time, it seems mostly due to taking a while to get going, by talking about other stuff in the intro. I don't want to do that this time.... but there's matters in the Combination Attack field that I feel need to be talked about before we start rating Tag Finishers in this essay.
Re-reading my 2017 ratings of Combo Attacks has left me with woe and with red in the face. I am appalled that I didn't include a move from a movie that probably is the SOURCE of my deep respect and intrigue with Combination Attacks and Tag Finishers.
I feel a sense of personal shame and am actually appalled at myself for leaving something out of that article....and that something is... The Crossing of the Streams.
How could I have over-looked what was probably the most ICONIC combination attack of my lifetime? When the Ghostbusters crossed the streams of their proton-particle-throwers in 1984's Ghostbusters.... it shook the foundations of all of which was known prior-to-then as being cool.
It was a FINISHER too! They combined their proton streams at the behest of Egon (who previously in the film told them NEVER EVER to cross the streams) to create a total particle reversal in hopes to teach that travelin' and destructin' Gozer how they did things downtown!
I am appalled at myself for overlooking this attack in my previous article. This may have even beaten Pentagon and Blackhole's attack if it was entered into that 2017 Tag Finisher Tournament. It probably would have pulled it out in the end and won.
If I as a tiny baby/child never saw this happen.... my brain probably would never have even been wired to wig over Combination Attacks at all! I would never have cared about Antipodes I, II, or even III.... or Piccolo firing a Makankosappo through Gohan's Kamehameha blast to give it an added piercing element to its naturally occurring powerful energy blast explosion.... or care or wig even a bit when Animal held a guy on his shoulders for Hawk to launch himself off the top turnbuckle to harm the opponent with a flying clothesline.
....without Ghostbusters One, and the Crossing of the Streams...it's possible that I wouldn't have cared about ANY of those great things even at all.
So thank you for all you've done for the Art and the Science of Combination Attacks, my sweet Ghostbusters One, I shall forever value your contribution to the field.
Alright so with that out of the way, that lament and regret, let's get started reviewing all of the great Tag Finishers that are occurring in modern times...wait hold up.... I have something inside of me, whether it's in my heart or mind, that needs to be said regarding the field of tag finishers... and it involves Chrono Trigger... specifically the new modern ports of the game.... that have re-named many of the combination attacks of the game... that I believe is almost blasphemous in nature.
Super Nintendo's Chrono Trigger was released in 1995, and it was the greatest game. Ports of the game have been made for many systems after its initial release so a new era of people can enjoy one of the Society's Greatest Video Games just like we did as youths in 1995. Now, each port seems to think they can translate the game better than Ted Woolsey did in 1995.
Let's get something straight now, okay? Ted Woolsey's translation of Chrono Trigger in 1995... is the OFFICIAL translation of Chrono Trigger, okay? It is. Fans can make endless "fan translation" patches to pretend to fix his "mistakes".... and the ports to newer era systems can pretend that they can do a better job localizing Chrono Trigger than Terrific Ted did in '95... but your works are all in vain. The SNES version of Chrono Trigger released in 1995...is the BEST version of the game. Period.
Changing the names of Dual and Triple techs from the original translation is threading a thin needle and almost stepping on the toes of history, I must say.
With some of the Tag Finisher name changes in the new versions of the game, I get them, I guess. Let's look at Doublevbomb. Now, here I understand why it might be in their interest to re-translate Doublevbomb into Double Bomb. At the heart of it, it makes sense, it seems like it should have been Double Bomb back in '95 but some programmer entered the name into the field and hit the "v" key instead of the "space" key. Okay.... I get why they would change this.
Then again, part of me doesn't. To 1995 enthusiasts of Chrono Trigger, this move is called Doublevbomb! For all that I knew back then, maybe Lucca had an uncle who with her father Taban would make explosives and junk...and her uncle was named Nabat Doublev and the family named the highly powerful explosive Lucca uses in conjunction with Robo in a combination attack a "Doublev" bomb to honor her uncle who contributed to the creation of the Tag Finisher in that small yet key fashion. No?
I'm not that upset over Doublevbomb to Double Bomb. Who knows, maybe it really was a typo in the original and the new ports are just fixing the typo... maybe Lucca doesn't have an uncle named Nabat Doublev. I get it. I'm okay with Double Bomb.... but there's one I'm really not Okay with and that's.... Bubble Breath?
They changed Bubble Snap to Bubble Breath? Why? Why in the name of anything would they change the Snap to the Breath? Now, I'm a huge fan of Bubble Snap. I used Bubble Snap a lot. Frog summons up a bubble-casing with his Water magic to encase Robo in a bubble... then the bubble gently floats up into the sky.... next, the weight of Robo gives and the bubble SNAPS and makes a noise similar to a SNAP! Robo then proceeds to fall from the sky, his metal weight picking up much momentum on the way down, until he crashes on top of the opponent...harming them.
That's a Bubble Snap! Where does anyone do any breathing here? No one is breathing here! No where! No how! No breathing is being done! Why rename this move from a Bubble Snap to a Bubble Breath?
It's things like this that make people's hair turn gray before their time. It really is. It really is. Re-naming Bubble Snap...... to Bubble Breath. I wouldn't be surprised if one gray hair on my head is directly there because someone thought it would be a great idea to re-name Bubble Snap. Would not surprise me in the least, friends.
Alright, enough with this, we better start reviewing and rating Tag Attacks of the modern times... wait though.... while we're on the subject of Super Nintendo ports to modern systems of classic games, we have to talk about Final Fantasy VI....
Final Fantasy VI is a classic and a Video Game's Video Game. To see the port they offer younger people of today's times to experience Final Fantasy VI is enough to make a whole head of hair gray on a person well before its time.
I don't want to get too much into it... if you are interested in seeing why the port is almost blasphemous in nature I suggest you read the following article written by a person who gets very esoteric into why the graphics are not good:
Young people are growing up playing bad ports of some of the most classic of video games.... and I think the reverberations and damage this will cause to the minds of young people will be felt for aeons (probably).
You don't need a Good Graphics degree from VidelectrixUniversity (or a similar institution) to know that giving young people ports of great games but with bad graphics is a recipe for a less-than-bright Tomorrow.
Alright, we better start this article soon.... because I am gonna have a full head of gray if I keep letting Bad Ports get to me soooo..... Let's Get Started......
Rating the Modern and Cool Tag Finishers and Combination Attacks of AEW Wrestling!
(Note: If a cool-cool move is over looked or forgotten to be included in the review.... please don't over-think it. In my first article in this field...I forgot to include the greatest thing ever.... so to color myself as a Forgetful Jones isn't an exaggeration by any stretch. I forget my own age sometimes.)
All Elite Wrestling's Tag Team wrestling is wicked and great... no one can deny this. Let's now look at some of the cool moves on display.
Re-iteration of Definition: A Tag Finisher is a fighting move
which combines the input and skills from two or more individuals to
form increasingly powerful combination attacks. Once two singular moves
are combined they thus become greater than the sum of their whole ...
they become ... More Better.
I'm not sure I can get photos or videos of all of these moves as some of these only happened like last week.... so the aesthetics of this article will be on the low-end... it is an in-depth review of these maneuvers in a more literary sense... I guess.
The Finalists for this year's Tag Finisher award are:
-Private Party - Gin and Juice -Proud and Powerful - Camel Clutch + Boston Crab Dual Tech Submission (+honorable mention)
-Young Bucks - More Bang for your BUCK!!!!
-Best Friends (accompanied by Orange Cassidy) - Center of Ring Group Hug
-Kenny Omega and "Hangman" Adam Page - V-Trigger + Lariat -SCU - S C U.... LATER!
-Jurassic Express - Double-Assisted Canadian Destroyer (+honorable mention)
Private Party
Gin and Juice
Marq and Isiah's Private Party may sound snobbish and the uninformed reader might think they are snobby bad guys... but they're not... they are good guys. It is a Private Party... but EVERYONE is invited to this party. This party has front flips, back flips, running back flips, running front flips, 450 swam dive flips.... and COMBINATION ATTACKS!
The best part, as stated above, is that Everyone is invited to this "private" party. It is very inclusive. Yet, if you're gonna imbibe though you gotta remember that what they're drinking at this party 'aint water, dude. It 'aint water, dude. It's probably some decent-enough-proof Hennessy... so if you are gonna imbibe at this party you should imbibe responsibly.
Private Party's tag finisher is their patented Gin and Juice. Here we see Marq plant the opponent onto the turnbuckle, nextly he deftly hurricane flips so his feet are wrapped around the opponent's head, he proceeds to re-flip himself which catapults the opponent off of the turnbuckle and into the trusty and waiting arm of Isiah...
....who hurricane DDTs the opponent's head into the canvas. Bravo.
With all these hurricane flips and hurricane DDTs.... how can an opponent cope? Quick answer is: They can't. The Gin and Juice doesn't just make them tipsy... it puts them down for a 3-count!
Raw Power: 71 Finesse: 89 Aesthetics: 87
Overall: 82
Proud and Powerful
Camel Clutch + Boston Crab (also we will talk about the assisted Vertical blood-to-head Suplex attack)
Santana and Ortiz are bad guys! They are in cahoots with Chris Jericho and his dastardly inner-circle. They play for keeps. They will whip you with a sock full of baseballs....they don't care. They are bad! They will slam 60+ year old wrestling legends right through tables! They are very bad! They will rake your back with their nails.... and they will preform brazenly powerful COMBINATION ATTACKS!
One they do is they suplex a guy but they don't finish the suplex, they get the opponent into a vertical clutch hold and just hold him in the vertical suplex but they don't even drop him! They just keep tagging in-and-out of the ring exchanging the opponent when their arms get tired! Oh my gooodness. If their arms don't get tired they never really ever have to drop the opponent, do they? No! The ref? The ref cannot do a thing because they are legally tagging in-and-out of the ring to exchange the opponent in the vertical clutch hold!
Meanwhile... what is the opponent feeling during all of this? His blood is rushing to his skull and brain! He has been upside down with his body back-to-front for what must seem like an eternity! Oh no! He must be passing out.
That's not the move I am entering them into this contest with though. I am entering them for their dual tech submission attack... the Camel Clutch + Boston Crab. Whereas one sits on the opponent and faces forward whilst the other sits on the opponent facing the opposite direction. They then start pulling on the neck and legs of the opponent in hopes of twisting him into some kind of a human pretzel. My gosh.... where is the humanity in all this, you ask? There is none. These men are BAD and they don't mind turning people into pretzels inside of the ring!
The downside to this submission attack is that you are only allowed 10 seconds inside the ring once a tag is made.... meaning both men can only be in the ring at the same time for 10 actual seconds. Will any opponent submit from an attack within ten seconds? Probably not. The ref will break Santana and Ortiz up if the attack goes on for 10 seconds under this rule.... this seriously limits the power of the otherwise powerful attack.
Raw Power: 90 Finesse: 72 Aesthetics: 83
Overall: 82
The Young Bucks
More Bang for your BUCK!!!
By Gawdness are these guys buck. The flips? Forget it.... just forget it. They flip like there is no tomorrow. They kick like there is no tomorrow. If you even blink while these guys are doin' it n' doin' their thang in the rang.... forget it... you missed at least 40 flips and 50 kicks whilst you blinked, dude. There's so much wild and crazy things going on while they wrestle that I recommend to the viewer of their craft that you don't blink.. unless you don't mind missing many a flip and a bevy of kicks during your 0.01 second blink session... then go right ahead and blink... I guess.
They have this one where Matt holds the guy in a pile driver hold and kindly waits... until his brother Nick preforms a spring-board front flip off of the ring apron with momentum help from the ropes... the momentum of the spring-boarded flip is then transferred into the feet of the opponent who is then thrust into a pile driver. Dang, that's buck.
They did a simple yet effective Triple Tech with Dustin Rhodes where both Bucks preformed a reverse-thrusted round-house Super Kick and Dustin stood in between and preformed a simple yet devastating front-thrust kick. A triple kick... to one face!? That's a massive attack, bubba.
Their entry in this tournament of techs is the More Bang attack... because it is uniquely buck. It is simply a sight to see. My eyes have seen some uniquely cool things over the years, ok? I'm not like a guy who just exaggerates and just like says stuff, you know? I've seen cool stuff like rock and roll concerts and naked-ass ladies and stuff over the years that I'd deem as being very very very cool.... so when I say something is cool or buck... I mean it? You know?
More Bang is COOL. There's so many back flips and front flips it's almost as if I cannot even conceptualize what a flip is anymore after they preform this. There's A LOT of flips. A lot of them. Flip after flip after flip after... after FLIP!
I'm not joking that momentarily after seeing More Bang... I cannot conceptualize the meaning of "flip" for a brief period. If you came up and asked me what my favorite Flip Wilson character was within a few minutes after seeing More Bang for your Buck... I wouldn't be able to answer because my brain would be unable to process the word Flip. I'd be like... "What Wilson?".... and then like a few minutes later I could answer you after my conceptualization as to what "flip" meant returned to me. I'd be like "Oh....Geraldine. That's my favorite Flip Wilson character. Yeah. Sorry 'bout that, I had a mental lapse for a moment, old friend."
There's so many flips it's like they got the Star in Mario Three on NES and knew they only had Star Power for like a few seconds so they pressed the jump button as many times as they could just to see Mario do an insane amount of flips!!!
Raw Power: 73 Finesse: 95 Aesthetics: 96
Overall: 88
Best Friends (accompanied by Orange Cassidy)
Center of Ring Group Hug
In this incredible maneuver, Best Friends, one Trent(?) and one Chuck Taylor, invite their familiar acquaintance one Orange Cassidy, into the ring to display the strength of their friendship.
It is pondered by many how connected Orange Cassidy is to the Best Friends as he is never announced as being a member of the Best Friends as they approach the ring. It is clear that only Trent and Chuck are Best Friends and Orange Cassidy is just an acquaintance of theirs that they oft-times hang out with.
I wonder about this as well, I mean, is Orange Cassidy just too cool for the school and is the one who wants to be introduced separately... or is Trent and Chuck's Best Friendhood so pronounced that to include Orange Cassidy in the Best Friends would only serve to water down the strength of their friendship by including a guy who just wants to hang out sometimes? It's a great mystery...
..but, I think if Best Friends were to throw a party and they invited everyone and Orange Cassidy, they would see the biggest gift would be from Orange Cassidy, and the card attached would say....
..."Thank You, For Being a Friend...."
It is safe to say the damage of this move is limited but... if this were to be used in a video game universe, this move would boost their attributes for a set amount of time.... a lot. I'm talking like +25% to their melee damage, +25% to their melee defense, +25% to their super move attacks, +25% to their super move defense, +25% to their agility, +25% to their luck stat too, and their special move bar increases at 2x rate... all this for a full 2.5 minutes of gameplay time. Damn, that's a powerful boost.
In that sense, say you were playing like a Tag Team Story Mode where you take any team, start at the bottom, and work your way to fight the champs to win the belts... an unbeknownst player might think "why would I take the Best Friends and Orange Cassidy? Their base stats are very bad like 10 to 15 points lower than the best teams to choose from in this tag team menu screen...." ... yet lo, woe, and red in the face will be that hapless video game enthusiast for not choosing a team that has a Tag Move that boosts their stats considerably ... and thusly making them one of the strongest teams in the game with enough experience points.
Raw Power: N/A Finesse: 72 Aesthetics: 93
Overall: 82
Kenny Omega + "Hangman" Adam Page
V-Trigger + Lariat
This attack is nothing short of a Massively Powerful Combination Attack. Let's look at each of these moves in a singular sense before we look at them in a combined and powerfully-combined sense.
The V-Trigger is a frontal running knee-strike... it sounds simple but it is so much more than its description. These can wake you up. Kenny doesn't finish matches with this attack... this is just a powerful running knee to the face to wake the opponent up... so said opponent is not tired and groggy when he experiences Kenny's One Winged Angel buster. These knees'll wake you up in the morning! If you're at work and you're on your third cup of cheap-but-free work coffee and still can't keep your dumb eyes open... call Kenny Omega to come down to your work and get him to knee you in the face! It'll wake you up!
What awaits the opponent in this attack once he's been awoken from his groggy slumber by a V-Trigger? A spring-board apron-flip momentum-enhanced... LARIAAAAAATOOOOOOOH!
A spring-board flip Lariat like that is NOT designed to wake you up... it's designed to put you down for the 3-count, compadre.
I've seen them do this from multiple angles. One time they connected with the V-Trigger AND the Lariat at the SAME exact TIME! Imagine getting a V-Trigger wake-up call and a Lariat smash at the same time!? I've seen it done by a drunken Hangman who needed M. Jackson to hold his beer for him while he flipped and lariatted.
Speaking of Hangman and his proneness to imbibing on drink... it seems like it is causing descension amongst Kenny and Adam. Hangman's drinking has caused some awkward in-ring moments between the two combatants. Some accidents involving Adam missing opponents and hitting Kenny... and even Hangman leaving Kenny Omega HANGING on a High Five. I was shocked when I saw the hang on the five. It left me feeling empty inside. I remember as a youth of 17, at a cool concert, one of my first, leaving someone hanging on a high five... and I never found it in my own heart to forgive myself. The regret over a left-hanged five is a greater regret than most understand.
(I remember many years ago seeing a ".gif" that really spoke to the realness of what I am trying to describe. Lemme see if I can dig it up by searching for it. Yes, I found it. It is this ".gif": HERE.)
Opponents think they can prey on this perceived non-unity between them... I'm sure SCU is thinking they will easily defeat them and regain the titles in their re-match with them by isolating the drunkard Page... yet you never count a team like this out for the count no matter how low their morale is or how drunk Adam Page is... because their Tag Finisher is lights outingly POWERFUL.
It is MASSIVELY POWERFUL.
Raw Power: 98 Finesse: 82 Aesthetics: 84
Overall: 88
SCU
S..C...U.... LATER!!
Socal Uncensored are good guys. They are a marching band from Southern California University. They held the tag team belts for a long while after they won the inaugural tag team tournament to kick off AEW's first year.
Is there any better alliterative string of words in our language that is better than Tag Team Tournament? I mean, the joy that springs to the breast of humankind when those three Ts come together in alliteration is completely and utterly magnifique, n'est ce pas?
Scorpio and Frankie's magnificent finisher involves Scorpio athletically spinning an opponent off of his back thus propelling incredible momentum outward and off his back....and into what... right into Frankie's knee strike. A sure-fire method to cap off an excellent bout. 1, 2,3 .... it's over.
I don't want to forget to mention the third member of SCU, one C. Daniels, who I thought had a very great redemption of his talent recently. After messing up an Arabian Moonsault, the Lucha Bros. endlessly scorned and scoffed at Daniels... many thought the regret and shame over botching said Moonsault would lead Daniels down a path of darkness.... but he overcame! He executed the Moonsault a few week later! He didn't give up! Never ever give up!
SCU also had a very touching display recently by honoring the late great Kobe Bryant by adorning his #24 during their match.
Raw Power: 85 Finesse: 80 Aesthetics: 81
Overall: 82
Jurassic Express
Double-Assisted Canadian Destroyer
Jurassic Express consists of a large-yet-loveable giant Dinosaur Man, a wild Mogli-esque wild jungle child, and a scrappy scamp who apparently live together in the forest behind the junkyard.
They got a cool cool move where after a crazy dive onto guys outside the ring by Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus launches Marko Stunt unto the already dazed opponents with a Gorilla Press Slam... which is great.
Their entry is the double-assist on the Canadian Destroyer. Whereas Looch and JB swing Marko back-and-forth to create a great deal of centrifugal force of which is key in enhancing the utter devastation of the Canadian Destroyer. It is a very physical move in two ways. It employs the laws of physics... and it is physical like ... you know what I mean. Sorry guys. Some of these paragraphs are getting stale, homeys. Gonna wrap this up. Sorry, Jurassic Express... if you got the lead-off spot in this essay instead of the end-spot you would have had better paragraphs. Raw Power: 73 Finesse: 84 Aesthetics: 86
Overall: 82
Post Writing Tally:
*Young Bucks: 88* *Kenny Omega and "Hangman" Adam Page: 88*
SCU: 82 Jurassic Express: 82 Private Party: 82 Proud and Powerful: 82 Best Friends (accompanied by Orange Cassidy): 82
Dang, it is a tie. Who woulda thunk it?
Conclusion
Okay, I know I already have qualms about who was left off the list. Some of the best wrestlers in AEW are 1-on-1 guys so cracking them into the tournament would be too hard. I know I left one of my favorite tag teams on the show, The Lucha Bros., off of it... I should have got them in. Lucha Bros. vs. Young Bucks matches on AEW have been nothing short of a Piston's Hurricane and of Straight-up Fire.
Their women division is amazing... sadly I couldn't work it in, either.
I didn't manage to work in my favorite thing I have seen on AEW... which was the 4.5 Man vs. 4 Man combined 8.5-man synchronized suplex.... which was get-out-of-towningly Great.
I selected the ones to do only after writing a lot of other stuff before I even started... I wouldn't regard this as an expert's opinion. I'm not a licensed Wrestling Journalist and I do not have a Wrestling Journalism degree from any of the top Wrestling Journalism schools... so if you read this don't think it's like a definite thing or anything by a Wrestling Savant.
The first time I did this in 2017... I left the greatest thing ever out of the tourney... so if anything cool was left out of this article ... it's not surprising by any means.
Let me once again thank Ghostbusters One. If Harold Ramis never asked his friends Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Ernie Hudson to cross their proton throwers to form a singularity of intense particular-reversing beam cannon.... I probably would never have wigged to any Combination Attack...
....I probably wouldn't've wigged at all... to any of it.
Okay, I'm still on a nostalgia bend to be honest with you readers. My favorite things from my halcyon youth-related days of yore were basically Sports (with a heavy tilt towards Baseball), Video Games, and Wrestling. I don't lump Wrestling in the Sports world category, I consider Wrestling, even though it is a highly athletic display of skill, out of the Sports genre and more in the performance art entertainment genre.
I'm getting back into Wrestling lately which is something I liked as a kid that I never really kept up with as time marched on. A lot of Industry Insiders and Wrestling Speculators are on the edges of their seats of late ruminating about a development in the Wrestling world... namely they are openly pondering whether the AEW (All Elite Wrestling) is going to make a splash.
They have a lot of good wrestlers, they have good methods of presenting their art to audiences, and apparently have some deep pocket funds to build a budget around. You can't really say this about any Wrestling promotion in recent memory who's not the behemoth industy-leading promotion we all know of.
Everyone is watching AEW, waiting to see if it's just another flash-in-the-pan or if it is on to something....
A Rhodes Legacy of Immense Proportions
I didn't know it was gaining the steam it was until only very recently. If I saw people talking it about on trends on social media ...I just thought it was another independent wrestling thing like the half dozen other ones out there. Then I saw something that blew me away .... big time.
Before I talk about this match, I want it to be known that I'm not a very big fan of extremely pointlessly violent wrestling. I don't understand why an entertainer needs to incur ludicrous amounts of personal human damage and suffering just to make a crowd go "Wowie!" for like 3 seconds. I really don't.
Historically it is the wrestlers who can't make fans go "Oh Wow!" in any other way who turn to needlessly hurting or bleeding all over themselves. A good example would be Captain Lou Albano who I think is a very entertaining man (both as Super Mario and as a Manager) but if you watch old clips of the Captain wrestling in the seventies ... you very quickly realize he was not really a terrific stuntman by any definition. So what did he do? He cut big huge holes in his face and bled all over the ring to make the crowd go "Wow!" which worked too but not in the same way a Bruno Sammartino could do it (by making you root for him to win) or an Andre the Giant could (by being a Human Wonder) or a Tiger Mask could (by being an acrobatic stuntman) ... bleeding all over yourself is a pretty gruesome and exaggerated substitute when you think about it.
Hurting yourself excessively is not interesting to me either. I like guys like Mankind but I think it was guys like him that took hurting yourself to get applause by a crowd a bit too far. You really don't need to jam all your teeth into your nose just to make a crowd happy for a few minutes. You really don't have to go that far, guys. I feel extremely uneasy clapping or cheering people on who are doing this to themselves.
That being said, despite the excessive blood involved, I still will say with 100% honesty that Cody Rhodes vs. Dustin Rhodes at "Double or Nothing" was probably the most emotional match I've ever seen in Wrestling.
They had a few vignettes leading up to it, clips put on their youtube site, of the rift that had arisen between these two... and then the rift culminated in violence at Double or Nothing....
Yes, the blood is pretty uhhhh.... bloody here. But this blood, it's telling you a story. It's the combined blood, sweat, and tears of two once-seperate but now-once-again-whole Brothers, both sons of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes ... their blood and sweat and tears of the once common bond of their Ancestor Dusty ... flowing .... and then Cody tells Dustin that he can't retire yet ... that he can't rest yet ... and with the spirit of the Dream in the AIR ... the common bond of Brotherhood is renewed! Ooooooooh.... it's too much. It's just too much for old me. I need a second, I just need a second to recoup after watching this again.
Hard times. Hard times. There's always gonna be hard times. I know both of these men have seen Hard Times ... but with enough Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Trust ... they will always dig out of that hole, they will always swim back to the surface and learn to breathe again. There's still going to be Hard Times down the road for not only them but for all of us ... but I know in my heart that we will always find a way ... we will find a way to dig out, n' climb up, n' with nothing more than a deep love and trust in our hearts we can all walk past these Hard Times after Hard Times after HARD TIMES after HARD TIMES!
Now that they are a tag team, a united force, and with the triangulation of The Dream peering down from above ... can this triangulative force... this Tri-Force of a tag team possibly be bested in the squared circle? I'm not sure it can be.
Their next opponents are the Young Bucks, a brash youthful duo who are not to be taken lightly... who's high flyin' acrobatics, dynamic team work, cool outfits, and wicked tag finishers make for one of the most electric combinations in Sport.
Even if the Young Bucks wear the coolest of suits to the ring (which have included Street Fighter regalia and Elvis inspired regalia of late), even if their acrobatic tag maneuvers are both aesthetically awe-inspiring and equally physically devastating ... can they overcome a Tri-Forced Unity of Brotherhood and Ancestry bonded by the blood of previous struggles? I don't know...
.... I guess we'll have to wait for Fight for the Fallen to find out.
Kenny Omega
After being admiringly blown-actually-away by that match above... I started to look into the other athletes on the AEW roster and one that really really stands out is Kenny Omega.
I'm sure this name is severely familiar to wrestling afficiandos and the like ... but I haven't been following the wrestling world for over a good decade and he's not even on in America he's famous from Japan Proresu circles. There's a lot of good things in the Wrestling World in the last decade that are totally foreign and unbeknownst to me, it would seem.
Watching Kenny Omega matches from Japan over the last few weeks, I have to say that this guy is the complete package in Wrestling terms. He's a great stuntman, he has the look for the Wrestling World (that look that makes all the ladies go crazy!), he can be Good or Bad depending on what the situation calls for, he is incredible and synchronized with his cohort in tag team competition, and best of all ... he can do all this without really taking it super seriously ... which is a very unique ability that is usually only reserved to total stalwarts (such as Adam West).
I think along the way a lot of the actors in Wrestling start to forget that there is an inherent silliness to the art of Pro Wrestling and start to take it way too seriously. I think the most fascinating thing to me about Kenny is even though he is really a Complete Package in Wrestling proficiency all-across-the-board he is able to completely just break character and remind the audience that this is entertainment and you don't have to be taking it life-and-deathingly serious.
There's some very silly Kenny Omega matches in Japan. Very silly ones. There's one where he fights a puppet...
Personal Aside
I want to briefly interupt this section and relay to you a personal anecdote that is not related in large to the current section.
I used to make youtube videos with my friends in the day, zombie stuff, and we'd just go to a field and fool around. You start to notice when you make low budget entertainment that you need to be pretty inventive at times. If you're gonna make a short film on $0 dollars of budget ... you start to think of what you can get out of anything around you. You start squeezin' juice from turnips, bruddah.
One of the ideas I had for me and my friends to make fun but incredibly cheap youtube web-a-sodes was an idea called "Fruit Wrestling."
In my exceptional idea, the FWC (Fruit Wrestling Challenge), all we needed was some old matresses, a field, and some fruit from the grocery store. It's not hard to procure wares of this nature, you know? Now get this ... the FRUIT (actual fruits) are the Good Guys and us human actors would play the Bad Guys. We'd make some vignettes with Johnny Banana (an actual inanimate banana) where the banana would be all surrounded by ladies and being all cool ... and then we could film a short promo where one of the human actors would threaten to smash n' peel Johnny B. in the center of the ring! For the match you could have tied the banana to a string and like whipped it around and then it was incumbent upon the human actor to "Sell"* for the banana and LOSE to it.
This idea never came around to fruition, so to speak, but I think, as stupid as it sounds, it would have been funny.
(Note: "Sell" in wrestling means making an opponent's maneuver seem wicked and damaging when they preform it on you.)
Back to Kenny Omega
I was watching a Kenny Omega match in Japan the other day where he "Sold" for a puppet and it's basically what my idea of fruit wrestling was supposed to look like.
Man, Kenny can make a puppet look good in the ring, which is a skill, a skill that should actually be a prerequisite to be a Pro Wrestler. You should learn in wrestling training how to lose to a puppet.... you really should.
Those guys in those wrestling schools, who teach wrestling, should ask their flock of rookies the first day of class, "Yo, when you were a kid and wrestled your pillows in the basement ... were you ever able to LOSE to the pillow or did you just beat it up all the time?"... and any rookie who tells you that they were able to lose to the pillow should be shortlisted as having above-average Wrestling IQ.
You know who I would have LOVED to see wrestle a puppet? Mr. Perfect (Rest in Peace, My Perfect Friend)... Curt Hennig is maybe the best "Seller" of moves I ever saw. Ric Flair and Rick Rude (specifically selling the Atomic Drop in Rude's case) come to mind as well .... but man Mr. Perfect could sell those moves, man.
If you punched Mr. Perfect he was liable to do triple figure-skatin' lutzes all over the place, flop over the top turn buckle, looked dazed and disoriented for the briefest of moments, and then do it all over again. Mr. Perfect vs. A Puppet (or a banana even) could have been a "five star" match as they always say these days. I truly believe Mr. Perfect could have earned five stars losing to a puppet, 100%.
On the contrary, wrestlers who can't "Sell" are missing a valuable skill and have a huge flaw in their act. There's room on a roster for a few "impervious to pain" people ... you have a tag team like Road Warriors, a nut case like Ultimate Warrior, and a literal dead person a la Undertaker ... and that's enough impervious to pain people on a roster at any given time ... like three or four. I get it that if you punch Hawk, Animal, the literally titled ULTIMATE Warrior, and a Dead Person that they won't feel it... but once everyone starts being this character wrestling gets boring pretty fast.
The other thing in Wrestling I don't get in terms of "No Selling" is regional-specific No-Selling ... where people are like ... "Oh I won't lose a wrestling performance in Albuquerque." I see online there is a VAST tonnage of "Screwjob" videos and intense-takes and "shoots" on it ... I, to this day, have no idea why "the Screwjob" thing is a big deal. I don't.
Can you imagine a traveling theater group is going around North America doing "Hamlet" and the guy playing Hamlet's Father's Ghost one day wakes up and says ... "Hey, we're in Tucson! I don't want to die in Tucson! I have uncles here!" ... and he breaks script and doesn't die ... and then none of the other actors know what the heck to do because the play makes no sense now. The other actors are thinking ... "well now what do we do for all those ghost scenes?" ... and the guy's all "I don't care, all I know is I will not die in Tucson! I'll die and be a ghost again next week in Denver!"
Losing is surprisingly one of the biggest skills to accept and learn in wrestling. It's a performance, it's the emotion, the story, the acrobatic wicked moves, the colorful managers at ring side that make it what it is ... not if you win or lose... really. It's very different from say football or baseball where winning is everything. The storytelling in wrestling is more important than who actually wins or loses.
Kenny Omega can do it all ... and on top of all his talent he is still able to let a puppet beat him up. Someone get this man some kind of award. I was reading this guy plays Earthbound (History's greatest-most video game) once a year. That's cool. A lot of his moves are video gamed themed too. I dunno, man, this guy gets it. He really does. He gets it.
Kenny Omega is cooooooool. He's a very valuable asset on a Wrestlin' Wroster.
Conclusion
I'm weighing in with the opinion that the AEW is onto something and a lot of old fans are gonna get behind it and new fans too.
I don't think it is a gonna flash up for a few months and fizzle out. I think due to some of the financial security of the investors, the interesting personalities on the roster, and the brief glimpses of what it is going to be... that it is probably gonna have some lasting potential. When they start airing their TV show on old-school broadcasting I think it will tame down and add more reality-show elements but will still be good.
One thing I wanted to mention but forgot to is that the Updated 2019 version of Dusty Rhodes and Sweet Sapphire is about I'd say 10 million more times sexier than the 80s version. Brandi Rhodes and Cody Rhodes are going to produce some incredibly good-looking offspring if they mate, my word, and by gawd, are they ever. They're a real life couple, right? I don't think they are like a kayfabe-couple ... I think they are a real-life couple.
I also think the competition is going to be a GOOD thing for the wrestling industry. I think we'll see some interesting developments in the wrestling world in general due to the initial hype of AEW.
I still want to make Fruit Wrestling Challenge which despite how dumb it sounds on paper it is actually very smart and good. How it plays out in my head is pretty cool. The things the human heels do to poor poor "Precise" Paul Pumpkin is virtually in the realm of the atrocious ... seeds and guts EVERYWHERE ... wait a pumpkin isn't even a fruit ... nevermind.
This article was pretty short ... I might do two this month.
