Two-Night King of the Ring 2021 instead of WrestleMania? And Hellboy 2019

 *Blog post started on January 14, 2020.

The Disgruntled's Real Championship Wrestling blog needs a wrestling related post. I could say that "Sucker Punch" was pretty much a wrestling project, but "MMA is for those who cannot spell Pro Wrestling". That is still the favorite AAW Pro shirt that I own.

The timing for this need could not be worst. We are essentially in a holding pattern because WrestleMania season is about to begin. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa is supposed to be the location so that they may allow fans, and after Wrestle Kingdom 15 getting to host 12,000, I think WWE will successfully push this through.

I guess the Thunder Dome could work out fine. Does WWE really want a loud crowd to hijack the showcase of the immortals when they could just continue to pipe the crowd noise in? Still, for the biggest show of the year, you need life for it to work. We cannot have another two-day spectacle at the Performance Center. That synthetic arena vibe at WrestleMania 36 killed everything except the cinematic matches. It would have been better off at the empty Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino. Was Linda McMahon's cabinet position the only repayment Vince McMahon received for keeping that property operating in the late 80's?

Since we are still in the pandemic, I imagine that WrestleMania will again be two nights. There will not be any indie shows to ride off its coat tails. My question is: Is it special enough for two nights?

Wrestle Kingdom has built up two main event stories that require both nights. Last year's Mania was two nights just to make it seem important. Night One did not effect Night Two. Unless there is going to be a title unification, what story worth two nights is there?

I wonder if the WWE fans are over the disappointment of "WrestleMania 4". The sloppy tournament is not appreciated by most. Even with four hours to run, 18 matches was too many to expect half of them to get the time to be classics. But with nine (knowing WWE, possibly 10 hours), is there a better time to reintroduce The King of the Ring?

It is good to just type "out loud". This was originally going to be a blog about tertiary titles that sound unique enough to bring to major promotions. For some reason, I thought that would be how to make WrestleMania special.

I think what AEW wishes they could have are tournaments like NJPW's G1 Climax. That is not practical for them since they are a long way from being a touring company even in non-corona virus times, but I think the idea of making the product feel more like a sport is the charm of the tournament that made the likes of Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, and Tetsuya Naito.

This hardcore American wrestling audience wants more spectacular matches for the sake of spectacular matches instead of blood feuds. We do not need a story to have Cesaro and Daniel Bryan go 25 minutes. If this was not the case AAW Pro would still be a place for trainers in the Midwest to showcase their students instead of serving as a preview for what will be seen on NXT and AEW in the next three years.

*Blog post returned to on January 20, 2021.

When I have not been editing, lining up new guests, and binging Jeff Goldblum movies for "NinetyForChill.com: The Podcast", I have tried to get my mind back on wrestling. A part of my brain is always on wrestling since I used my podcasts to take digs at Hulk Hogan and CM Punk, but it has been burned out quite a bit. Yesterday may have been the most important edition of Impact on AXS TV, but I was too exhausted to make it through Private Party versus Chris Sabin and James Storm for the Impact World Tag Team Championship's number one contendership.

This could be because of watching and reviewing "Hellboy (2019)" as a midnight movie (I just had to reference it on "Episode 2: Jurassic Jeff Jezebel Owes Me Eight Bucks", but I will say, the piped crowd noise is not helping the audience to stay involved with. To make canned noise work, you have to be able to shoot around the lack of live people interacting with the product. Stadiums benefit from the advertisements that cover the empty seats. Who is to say there are not live fans in the upper decks? According to NBC, Ralph Wilson Stadium's 6,700 fans sounded like 67,000.

If a crowd of 6,700 did sound like 67,000-person gathering, this country is never getting over the pandemic. Wrestle Kingdom had 12,000 people who followed social distancing and mask practices. They were committed to clapping to give the noise the boys required to excel with no spit spread. They are doing well at Daily's Place, but not so much when it comes to the Dawg Pound or the Bills Mafia. Did we win our independence to abandon Anglo/European discipline?

And that is an excellent transition to why the masses will not accept a revival of Ring of Honor's "Round Robin Challenge". After three of those event, ROH decided to abandon this concept which is sad. In principle, who would not want to see Drew Gulak, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Adam Cole face of against each other in three separate matches? The best concept deserves the best showcase.

Sadly, people do not have the attention span to accept drama where they must keep track of circumstances or accept draws. Win or go home is so much easier to understand. Since WrestleMania is officially two nights this year, it is time to make King of the Ring the best pay-per-view premise once again.

FMK: Wrestle Kingdom 15, @Marty Scurll, The OCHO: The NEW Real Secondary Championship

 *Blog post started on January 4, 2021.

I somehow ended up with a three-day weekend, so productivity was not a primary concern. If anything, the schedule left me worried that a furlough is coming up at my retail job. After December 27, the curbside pickup shelves were pretty barren. The upside to this is that it should have at least made the "weekend show up and walk out" coworker have to be counted on. What a way to celebrate a birthday. This seems like inverse karma, but I will enjoy it however it comes.

With how I like to ideally lay every one of my blogs out, we are do for a wrestling one. It has been a week since Brodie Lee has passed, so I think I should be able to write about the business in a calm place. Having to put out my year end blogs ("A Call for Podcast Guests and Honorable Ninety-Minute [or 97 min] Film Discoveries of 2020" and "Best 2020 Ninety-Minute [or 97 min] Film Discoveries for Chilling") when it came to sub-100-minute cinema let me avoid the topic.

Unfortunately for pro-wrestling, a lack of productive fandom was present. WrestleTalk and WhatCulture released a lot love with year end lists, but since I work a day job and January 4th did not fall on the weekend, I have not seen any of Wrestle Kingdom's first night. Fate's bigger kick in the teeth is that the bank's five-day work week regardless of Saturday coverage means I will have a day off in the middle of the week. Sadly, that is Wednesday, thus I cannot watch eight hours of wrestling in one sitting tonight to be up to speed.

I blame fate, but now that I am the third most powerful person at the branch (That does sound like being the third tallest on an "NBA Jam" roster.), the wisdom should have been their to request those days off in advance. Not watching Wrestle Kingdom 15: Night 2 live is inexcusable for someone who has essentially become nothing more than a mark. Thank the gods for COVID-19 so I can just proclaim any non-signed talent is in the same status as I. If you are finding booking because of lack corona virus restrictions, you have a priority issue or an inability to accept reality. And that sounds like the pot calling the kettle their word.

*January 5, 2021

A pot of coffee has been brewed at the bank. It is not for me. The new hire needed it to plow through the regulatory training and the new father only had three hours of sleep. Though, since the new dad talked about finishing "Cyberpunk 2077" (as a nomad) last night and restarting (as a corpo), I doubt the son was the reason for that. This is all a long way of questioning what kind of wrestling fan I am. Surely I could have stayed up and watch the live stream of Wrestle Kingdom: Night 2 and not be any worse for wear.

I did work through Night 1, and it was a pretty solid card. My change would have been Will Ospreay defeating Kazuchika Okada because you should not let both up and coming talents loose out. Hiroshi Tanahashi put over the young upstart Chris Jericho the year prior, so he should not be made to lose to The Great-O-Kharn. Okada got to delay the Kota Ibushi ascension last year, so he should not be hurt by doing the favor. Call me old fashioned, but your Super Bowl is suppose to be the end of the story not the beginning. Are we working towards Okada giving Ospreay his win back next year?

Surprisingly, WrestleTalk did not cover the event. They are based in London. No one would have to stay up all night to watch it. At worst, you are waking up at six in the morning. It is your job guys. We all wake up at least an hour before the time clock needs to be punched. I am not regretting being a patron with the laziness being displayed.

They may have been covering it live on the Wrestle 2 channel, but if you do not even do predictions video for the second biggest show in wrestling on your primary channel to promote your secondary, did you really care.?Cutting those ties to a #SpeakingOut name (Will Ospreay) are we?

At least you can still count on them in regards to Western wrestling news. Knowing that Raw was would be the only show be covered in their daily news video, they mentioned that Marty Scurll coming to terms on his release from Ring of Honor, along with his #SpeakingOut allegation. I am just stuck wondering why Jay Lethal is still on the ROH payroll.

Reddit...Marty Scurll...if you want to see a sick pro wrestling entrance look him up

I do not want to come across as insensitive about abuse in the wrestling business. With what I gathered from the Marty Scurll situation was that he was just disrespectful to someone he was intimate with. If an accuser is not pursuing the predator criminally or civilly, I am open to overthink what happened. This comes from me being in a situation where I did nothing wrong except feel concern for someone who was coked up, angry, and dangerous. We reconciled over that incident, but are either of us admitting fault?

Most people who have heard my story seem to believe me, but I was definitely seen in a better light before hand. In retrospect, I should have been standing up for her and place myself in a position to understand her motives and fears, and making it clear that what she did in her past that did not involve the night in question should not lead to any assumptions about her. This thought process has lead me to unfollow a lot of Johnny Depp fans who think Amber Heard is evil thus Warner Bros should have canned Mera instead of Grindelwald. If she is not mentally stable or has any degree of PTSD, what she says cannot be called a bold-faced lie.

So, yeah, I want to see Scurll in AEW as soon as possible. He sounds more upstanding than Rick Swann. Scurll has never inspired a woman to run away from him to the point where authorities got involved. Scurll has undoubtedly been an asshole in the past, and it seems like he has paid for it. Unless the ROH deal was guaranteed money. If that is the case, I could see not booking him until Full Gear 2021.

I think my stance is better flushed out in my blog post "Postponing (Not Cancelling) @TheProductDS and the Disgruntled's Real Women's Champ" or anything under my #SpeakingOut category. If anything, I hope my views on the subject maybe evolving. COVID-19 has kind of ruined my chances to find parties with a better understanding of victims or have their own experiences of abuse. That is a scary statement, but I have found that most of us are dealing with trauma from abuse of some sort. Mine is documented in "#MeToo and the Disgruntled’s Real World Champ Part 4".

With all of my Disgruntled's Real Championship title histories seemingly always ending up associated with sexual trauma of some kind, I think I would be one hell of a shoot interview. Do the marks ever get those? But this blog post does not seem long enough, so lets get our current DRCW Championship.

If only I had decided to stay away from WrestleTalk this morning, I could have just transitioned into this topic based on Jon Moxley's Wrestle Kingdom promo which I hope leads to him facing off against KENTA at Revolution 2021 (I think I tweeted @tonykhan with "Full Gear". I was clean and sober, so that is a bit embarrassing.). That would be a nice throwback to the glory days of ROH not the Sinclair-owned era of picking and choosing of persona-non-grates.

FMK: Movies, Wrestle Kingdom 14, Sleep

 

*Post started on January 6, 2020.

Thus far, there is still nothing new to complain about in 2020. Well, teaching children to play bad fundamental football (You knee in the end zone or signal for a fair catch. Play until the whistle.) at the Buffalo Bills' expense and the team I abandoned the Ditka-less Bears for being ruined despite a rule that was suppose to allow them to stay in the playoffs two years running, but I need to shake of my fandom for a sport that we should not encourage children to play.

My better quarter (Eva the Cat gets half) did not want (I prefer she did not.) to drive 30 miles just to get the rent money, so I am barely liquid, hence I could not get into too much trouble. It was nice when she was not around when I got off work so that I can get comfortable and tell her to enjoy the video game or pro-wrestling, but that has been the way it has been for the past four months. There is no reason to blame it on the new year...unless you want to add my third method of using the alone time, developing new Buffalo sauce recipes to stock my kitchen for the annual resolution of eating something Buffalo-related everyday of the year.

Manager's Husband: I was going to cut out bleu cheese for lent.

It sucks when the most obvious time to call someone a pussy during poker night is also the most inappropriate time.

All-in-all, I had a good weekend. We watched "Valerion: City of a Thousand Planets" on Friday night.

My first legitimate complaint of 2020. If I can run a website for $156.35 a year, the remnants of Europa Corp. should be able to be online and to recognize my digital copy redemption code, regardless the settlement for Luc Besson being Pepe Le Pew. At least that covers up Dane DeHaan's feature length impersonation of Keanu Reeves and the "Top Gun" Kelly McGillis/Tom Cruise-like chemistry he had with Cara Delevingne. "Top Gun" meets "Star Wars" would be a good way to describe the flick.

I watched Wrestle Kingdom 14 Night One live Saturday morning.

Not the results I would have gone with, but Okada versus Ibushi was able to keep me awake. When Osprey dropped the Junior Heavyweight Championship to Takahashi, it left me worried for ZSJ retaining the British Heavyweight Championship against SANADA on night two. Naito was the easy pick for the Intercontinental Championship and the three remaining LIJ members were vying for the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship. To leave SANADA without gold would look weird. Thank the queer gods for night two.

Saturday night was day job poker night.

It was fun getting reacquainted with Malort and I may have a better understanding of the thought process of my girlfriend as she outlasted the majority of players. If you include waiting an extra 10 minutes for her to get out of church, I might understand more than I wanted to.

I slept in Sunday and got an evening shift in at the retailer.

For not being on the schedule the past two weeks, it is just good to know that I still have that job.

Sunday night was devoted to Wrestle Kingdom 14 Night Two once the girlfriend said she did not want to do anything.

The abundance of single matches kind of took the luster of night one. We watch marquee ZSJ matches to see outrageous submissions, so a pinfall took all the wind out of his title defense. I left pumped for Moxley versus Suzuki. KENTA ruining the celebration after the redundant main event makes made me wonder if Wednesdays should be devoted to catching up on NJPW World content. It is going to be tough to keep cable after the rate jump.

Once Sunday ended, all of the doubts crept in. Well, they appeared before the retail shift, but I am tough. I could ignore them for close to half the day.

The doubts are about my seemingly stagnant relationship. I am the only one who does anything to care for the household. My beloved goes through the motions and only considers what affects her. If it does not bug her, it does not matter. Her living with me is just me spoiling her because I will take everything into consideration.

It is always new things that bug you. You have to tell me about them.

If you take the time to consider how something may appear to someone else, I should not have to tell you.

It makes me wonder if I need to change my relationship on Facebook, just so interested parties do not track her down. Maybe I am just self sabotaging myself. If someone looks her up on the social media platform, they are doing it to tell her how much of an asshole I am. When I have been coming to the conclusion that I am not a good person, would that be a bad thing? She needs to know.

Once work and wresting were done with, I was in a position to get six hours of sleep. I am welcomed by her snores and her undiagnosed sleep apnea facing my side of the bed. 20 minutes later of wondering why I am dealing with this, I no longer have half of the bed. Fortunately the guestroom's bed is firm. Unfortunately, Skimble the Cat followed, so my preferred company that I lowered the bed for was going to stay curled up in her throne.

As I got comfortable there, I realized that the two of us do not seem to have enough in common. If we did, it would not be a constant going to bed at different times and finding THE bed unbecoming. Again, if it does not impact her, she pays it no mind. Introducing her to new things seem pointless because she does not want to take the time to pay attention to anything she is not passionate about.