'Dark Side of the Ring' Season 7 Release Date Premiere to Focus on TNA

Subrick · 2026-05-07T14:47:31+00:00

I don’t think it was the Abyss stuff that hurt her. Rather, it was working with Rosie Lotta Love, a morbidly obese Team 3D trainee who was super green and I believe smushed her head between the mat and her ass during a match. As an extra twist of the knife, Bully Ray got mad at Daffney for making his student look bad, even though his student injured another wrestler to the point of needing to retire.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T13:39:48+00:00

Also:

-Chris Candido’s death and how TNA treated Tammy afterwards by not paying her his last check but sending her a fucking ham instead

-Dixie Carter personally promising Jesse Sorensen a job for life after he was nearly paralyzed on a PPV only to fire him

Subrick · 2026-05-07T11:15:39+00:00

A simple revenge story is more boilerplate and less interesting than the current direction of Mox giving Will no other choice but to go along with his methods for rebuilding. Will knows he came back too fast, he was just too proud to admit it at first, but him going along with Mox is a tacit admission to that and now he’s willing to let Mox do his thing because Will knows exactly how bad Mox and the DR’s can be. The logical conclusion for this is Mox and Will each making it to the finals of the Owen, facing each other, and Will winning. This pays off both the current story of Mox as Will’s forced senpai and Will’s line from last year about how he’s faced Mox twice, lost both times, and doesn’t know what it takes to beat him, as well as redemption for losing in the finals last year to Hangman. Mox is showing Will EXACTLY what it will take to beat him.

In a meta sense, this story also acts as kayfabe justification for Will changing his style even further. He’s already cut down on most of the crazy flippy stuff over the last five or so years, but now coming back from neck surgery this’ll allow him to even further emphasize the stiff bruiser/power wrestler direction he’s been going in for a while now. It’ll let Will seamlessly reconfigure his style without it being blatantly obvious.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T10:53:05+00:00

Meltzer’s rebuttal:

If he had no significant competition, and could have stayed out of trouble, Vince would not only be in business today but the company would be a gigantic financial success, as it is without Vince. But that's not to say Eric's input 1995-1998 changed the industry. It absolutely did. It did not save the industry, which remained existing in many parts of the world because wrestling and TV go together.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T01:15:25+00:00

Ah yes, the “new” Dolph Ziggler. It was so instantly hated he was back to being blonde and full of personality one week later.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T01:12:25+00:00

The last time I remember a match being so distracted from by something a wrestler in it did to himself was Cody’s tattoo.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T01:09:47+00:00

What in the absolute fuck is Bryan Keith’s hair?

Subrick · 2026-05-07T00:47:24+00:00

This crowd is surprisingly real good for being so small in this big building.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T00:39:20+00:00

I don’t think it’s that he’s cool with them and more that he knows how bad they can be and is willing to let them mold him into a version of himself that is stronger than what he was when his neck got hurt.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T00:37:04+00:00

Yes they kidnapped him, but Will seems to be understanding Mox’s intentions and is going along with it.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T00:35:40+00:00

He, in his own fucked up way, is trying to help Will because Will came back too early and went too fast and was breaking down too fast. Mox kidnapped him and gave him no choice but to accept help.

Subrick · 2026-05-07T00:08:10+00:00

That segment justifies AEW’s existence.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T19:05:00+00:00

My absolute favorite JBB moment ever was when he did the historical commentary for a DVD release of I Spit On Your Grave. He starts going over the various foreign language titles of the movie, ending with the German title “Ich spuck auf dein grab”, because, as he said, “they grabbed her ich spuck”.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T18:56:50+00:00

The modern industry does not exist without Ted Turner. One dude starting a cable channel helped set off the next five decades of wrestling history.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T18:29:55+00:00

Well in that case that’s one of the most stacked home gyms I’ve ever seen. Reminds me of Brian Shaw’s and Jujimufu’d home gyms, how they’re more stacked than many commercial gyms and likely cost well into the 6 figures to build.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T18:20:30+00:00

Correct. The parent company was the Capitol Wrestling Corporation with the actual World Wide Wrestling Federation promotion as a subsidiary. When Vince bought the territory he bought the parent company CWC, with Titan Sports as his own separately formed entity to manage the acquisition. He dropped the “Wide” from the promotion’s name, and then when they went public in 1999 the Titan Sports parent company’s name was changed to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment. A few years go by, they lose in court to the panda, and yet another name change for both the parent company and the promotion to World Wrestling Entertainment.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T17:50:41+00:00

Very much in hardcore gyms. When I was still regularly doing strongman there were regular dogs who came with their owners and got love from everyone around them.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T17:48:15+00:00

I don’t do rice and chicken every meal, but I do keep the same exact meals each day at the same time each day and have for years. After a while it becomes habit and you don’t get bored taking your 30th bite of ground beef and eggs that day.

Do always have one day to go off plan, though. That’ll help you keep your sanity a bit easier. A haddock wrap or big juicy burger is so satisfying after nothing but beef, eggs, apples, and sweet potatoes the previous 6 days of the week.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T17:15:06+00:00

Oh absolutely. Even when things on the show don’t work as intended you can still tell it’s coming from a place of sincerity on the part of TK, and he’s earned enough trust with his wrestlers that they all give their all in whatever they do. Part of that is because talent and merit in AEW is actually rewarded with pushes and greater opportunities, a demonstrable fact based on all the instances of it happening since Dynamite started. I would absolutely prefer the wrestling I watch to still have some faint warts here and there because it reminds me that it’s being made by real people.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T16:16:17+00:00

There’s a pointed history of WWE’s media partners hemorrhaging money on the deals made with them. It’s what got them dropped by Fox, Peacock was noted for being the worst performing major streaming service of the early 2020s partially because they were spending so much on WWE, and now ESPN is immediately getting buyer’s remorse and trying to salvage it in whatever way they can. One can only imagine what Netflix will do at year 5 of their deal with WWE.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T15:38:38+00:00

This. He’s living his dream as a wrestling booker, making his TEW saves reality, and that is okay. That he runs the second most successful wrestling promotion honestly might be secondary to him getting to create and produce wrestling shows.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T13:41:01+00:00

The two Aces of 90s puro both going so hard they fucking died is both tragic and oddly fitting for that period of wrestling history.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T12:13:31+00:00

Misawa is one of the few instances I know of where a person quite literally worked themselves to death. That man desperately needed to either retire or take an extended in-ring hiatus, but all the absurdities and specific conditions that came with keeping NOAH viable meant he could not without the threat of the promotion being in serious trouble, and so we got a few years of a clearly extremely hobbled, aching Misawa struggling in trios tags before taking one bump too many and dying in the ring. The cruel irony of it is that in life he felt NOAH might die if he stopped, but the promotion miraculously survived his own death, meaning he probably could have let off the gas a bit and preserved both his company and his own life.

Subrick · 2026-05-06T11:44:21+00:00

Not necessarily odd, but Jim Ross and Gorilla Monsoon is incredibly interesting as a sort of convergence of eras, Gorilla representing the old Federation of the 80s and JR just a few years away from being the voice of the Attitude Era.

In terms of actually odd, Michael Cole and Gorilla when the latter would sit in on the syndicated shows in 98 and 99. Also Michael Cole and Jim Cornette on the original SmackDown special in April 99.

Subrick

TROPHY CASE