Features
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The Brutal Poetry of the Dog Collar Match
I haven’t had a lot to look forward to in wrestling lately. Eddie Kingston’s AEW debut and later title match, yeah. Yano Season, yes. Roman Reigns’ first title defense against Jey Uso, of course. But beyond that, the grim specter of 2020 has cast a pall on everything I’d otherwise be hyped up about—there’ve been…
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Sublime Master Chef: Toru Yano’s Curry Reviewed
It’s Toru Yano Season, otherwise known as the G1 Climax, an incredible stretch of time where Toru Yano, my pick for wrestler of the decade, proves that he is, without question, the best wrestler in the world, taking on a rugged schedule, facing top opponents, and laying them all to waste without so much as…
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Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” Is Wrestling’s Greatest Theme Song
Among other things, last week marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Paranoid, Black Sabbath’s second album of environmentally conscious, doom-laden Christian metal. Unquestionably their biggest album, songs like “War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” and “Fairies Wear Boots” have been blasting in the trucks of dads who don’t understand the album’s not-exactly-convoluted lyrics from the time…
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Roman Reigns Is WWE’s First (Kayfabe) Response to the Pandemic
Roman Reigns is back, and it is good. I mean it, too. World Wrestling Entertainment shows, for all of their attempts to freshen things up—think Raw Underground, Retribution, NXT call-ups that’ve completely gutted that show, and Thunderdome—have been stale and airless, innovation (and alleged theft) aside. They needed something else, something more grounded in actual…
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Diesel Is the Greatest Wrestler of All Time
This is going to be one of those essays I periodically write about wrestling that’s of no consequence. It’s not recent, it’s not modern, and it’s not meant to be a grand statement about what wrestling can and can’t do—it’s just an essay about something I like because in 2020, as a person whose week-to-week…
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The Deadly Draw and the AEW Women’s Division’s Slow Start
This week, women’s wrestling promises to feature on AEW Dynamite in a major way, as the finals of its month long Deadly Draw tournament will be held on a special Saturday edition of the show. The tournament, an old wrestling chestnut where teams are randomly put together by the luck of the draw, has taken…
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Retribution and WWE’s Loose Grasp on Reality
WWE is in a panic right now. Their ratings are declining. The ratings of their chief competitor are climbing. They get roasted on social media every week for appealing to nursing home demographics, criticized for not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their appallingly large roster, dragged endlessly for how they’ve handled Coronavirus and released…
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In Praise of Taz, the Human Suplex Machine
For my money, Taz is the best manager in professional wrestling. There are a lot of managers in wrestling at the moment, particularly in AEW, where Taz plies his trade as the hypeman for Brian Cage and Ricky Starks. In my recap of this week’s Dynamite, I noted that Taz, in a very short period…
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The Eternal Heartbreak of Hard Times
There’s probably nothing new that can be said about “Hard Times,” the 1985 Dusty Rhodes promo that defines its feud, its performer, and its time. It’s huge, y’all, so big that it has a name, which isn’t true of many promos. You say “Hard Times” to a wrestling fan and it evokes something: the image…
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Who Are the People In AEWs “Which Kenny Omega Are You” Image Macros?
The AEW on TNT Twitter account (@AEWonTNT) is completely unhinged at the moment, posting a thread of images of Kenny Omega with a simple question: “Which_Kenny_Omega_Are_You?” Rather than asking its followers to tag themselves to an image, the way this meme usually works, the person running TNT’s AEW account has gone one further, posting individual…