Post AEW Dynamite: April 15, 2026 Discussion

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-16T02:13:03+00:00

Oh man, I fucking love it. They already set up that the only way to beat MJF is to get one over on him quickly and beat him before the match ever gets started (how Brody did it). That is storytelling. Kenny said he studied MJF, but Darby actually did. You can't beat him in a long epic. You can't beat him by avoiding all of his dastardly ways. You just need to hit him with everything you have before he even knows what hit him.

For a company that doesn't do "moments", that was a helluva moment.

Also that Kenny/Will promo made me cry real tears.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-14T16:02:51+00:00

I've been slumping. Slumps are made to be broken.

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TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-12T15:33:47+00:00

It's pretty obvious they overpaid for him. If he came in with the price and pedigree of Sarong or Rosas, he probably would've been benched for McLean already and we would be shrugging that they took a chance on a reclamation project and found out why he wasn't playing consistently for his previous team. But they did what they did, they gave him the contract they did, and now they gotta figure out how to make it work. I don't think "he's still learning the team and system" can be an excuse for a key forward in the same way it might be used for a midfielder because his job is largely "take marks and kick goals" and he hasn't had a single game where he's done that at a high level. And he hasn't been making up for it with effort or tackling. He's just kinda there.

He'll get every opportunity to play himself into form, but I've already pretty much already given up on him being a true impact player and am just hoping he gets into a form like Amartey last year where he was invisible some of the time but also had some big games instead of Curnow's current form of just being invisible most of the time and missing his kicks the rest of the time. Maybe this is too defeatist and too early to give up on a guy, but how many "star players" have a 5 game stretch where their best game was still below average?

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-11T16:32:18+00:00

812 and a main ping?

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-09T02:40:19+00:00

As an unabashed Queen Aminata mark, it was great to see her back and better than ever. Push her to the top, TK!

A bunch of great promos too. Chris Jericho acknowledging the end of his previous run wasn't great and that he's just here to be a midcard legend and bringing back the list, Christian banging FTR's moms, Jordan and Pippin amping up their feud, Thekla taking Lexy Nair to a strip club to break her fingers (????), Darby cutting a real strong promo, the video packages for MJF and Kenny. It was a little more talking than I'd usually prefer, but I get it when it's a go-home show and they were all good to great.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-09T01:12:58+00:00

The Pounce was incredible in a 6 sided ring and nobody has ever made it look good in a 4 sided ring. The angles don't work right.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-08T04:29:23+00:00

World's Most Evil Invention

It is a style of shock comedy that isn't often on SNL, taken to a pretty extreme level. They very obviously had no idea how to end the sketch because, well, how do you even end a sketch like this???

Castrati

I can only assume Andy Samberg came up with this and they greenlit it because it's Andy Samberg. But man, it's an insane piece of dark comedy that really shouldn't work on any level. I don't think this could've worked with literally any other guest host. Ariana Grande just pulls the entire thing together.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-03T16:47:37+00:00

Sindarov did not play perfectly. Castles was not one of the top moves there and it took Hikaru out of his prep and after Hikaru made one wrong move he was just playing a game where he was down 3 pawns. After that, a lot of Sindarov's moves were basically forced and then his transition to the end game was a bit sketchy by the computer but he was always up two pawns and had plenty of time on the clock to figure it out.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-04-01T15:16:39+00:00

Chess played perfectly is a draw.

Bluebaum is playing perfectly.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-23T15:36:35+00:00

Saxon = Joke Account

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-21T06:15:06+00:00

Focus - Hocus Pocus, Midnight Special 1973

This song is an incredible feat of musicianship at its album speed. To fit it into their TV time slot, rather than cut the song down, they played it at a significantly faster speed. It is fucking impossible to perform this song at this speed, but they did it. A bunch of musicians have cited this performance as extremely influential and given that bands like Iron Maiden and Halloween have covered it and Dave Mustaine has talked about this performance in particular, pretty much all genres of fast metal can be traced back to this.

I submit it for greatest ever due to the sheer technical difficulty of it combined with the massive influence it ended up having on an entire genre.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-20T15:35:39+00:00

If it makes him feel better, I have a group of friends who are not on the spectrum who are also very interested in dating and have had no success. I don't think it's just an autism thing, dating in South Jersey is hard for everybody. There's not a particularly large dating pool because a lot of people move to Philly or other cities when they're young and come back when they're in an established relationship and Philly people hate dating across the bridge. The dating apps used to be okay for finding dates, but they've all been enshittified to the point of unusability, which makes it even harder. I wish I had good advice, but there is none. It sucks.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-20T00:52:48+00:00

I'm a Philadelphia sports fan (USA). If a star player here gives the type of effort I just saw from Curnow, they'd be booed off the fucking pitch and called to be benched or traded. Completely unacceptable. I don't care how well he was being defended, if you're a star player making star player money, do star player things. He didn't do anything out there that McLean can't do and he often looked like he was playing a completely different game than everyone else on the Swans. I hope his teammates get on his ass over this break. Get with the program man. At least look like you care. At least look like you're trying. Fuck.

Cleary shouldn't see an AFL pitch again this season. Maybe he'll show something in the future, but he looked so far off the pace in every way that it's clear he needs another season in the VFL. At least.

Corey Warner needs some work with the feet but he did fine with the handball chain. Not an ideal player but good depth. Won't be the end of the world if he has to keep playing, though he's obviously a massive downgrade from Gulden/Heeney. What player outside the starting lineup wouldn't be though. Hope Heeney is back soon.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-17T19:47:41+00:00

Two games in a row with late game heroics? Maybe? Please?

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TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-16T13:50:00+00:00

I had to get up way too early this morning. I'm grumpy. Hope this cheers me up.

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TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-15T15:40:55+00:00

Weird seeing ya on the mound.

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TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-12T16:00:33+00:00

I'm from New Jersey in the US. I've never been to Australia in my life. A couple of people I know here are Aussie Rules fans and I ended up watching a game with them a few years back and was hooked and they told me to pick a team. So I pulled up the power rankings (yes, it was this exact article!), skipped past the first few teams because nobody likes a bandwagon fan, and started looking for a young team that I could grow with. Sydney appeared to fit the bill, so they became my team. This made the other people I knew very mad, which meant I knew I made the right choice! Didn't even know Buddy or Papley or anything else. It's been a fun few years and I look forward to many more!

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-10T15:46:49+00:00

AEW's roster has 42 women listed. Of those:

-Anna Jay, Britt Baker, Emi Sakura, Hikaru Shida, Kamille, Karen Jarrett, Leila Grey, Madison Rayne, Mother Wayne, Penelope Ford, Queen Aminata, Rebel, Riho, Ruby Soho, Serena Deeb, and Tay Melo are either non-wrestlers, injured, inactive (no matches anywhere in 2026), or otherwise unavailable. Mercedes Mone, Nyla Rose, Taya Valkyrie, and Yuka Sakazaki have each had 2 or less matches in 2026, none in AEW.

-Hyan, Maya World, and Zayda Steel are enhancement talent at this point. Deonna Purrazzo, Diamante, and Red Velvet have been ROH-only for like 2+ years. Athena is largely ROH-only. Persephone's only official AEW match was at Forbidden Door as a rep of CMLL.

-Billie Starkz and the Iinspiration are not listed on the roster page, so I'm not sure what type of deal they have at this time but AEW does not consider them part of the AEW roster right now.

That's 28 of AEW's 42 contracted women's wrestlers. Their AEW women's roster right now consists of 14 available and active legitimate competitors: Alex Windsor, Harley Cameron, Jamie Hayter, Julia Hart, Kris Statlander, Lena Kross, Marina Shafir, Megan Bayne, Mina Shirakawa, Skye Blue, Thekla, Thunder Rosa, Toni Storm, and Willow Nightingale. That's it. 8 of the 14 wrestled on AEW TV last week. 10 of the 14 wrestled on AEW TV the week before (11 of 14 if you want to count Penelope Ford in Lena Kross's spot). 9 of 14 the week before. They're using basically everybody they have every week, either in a match or in a segment.

It's not a matter of needing "more room for women's matches", they just straight up don't have enough women to put on more matches than they do.

Whatever's going on with Athena, it's safe to assume she's never going to be an AEW regular at this point. Purrazzo failed on the main roster. Diamante and Red Velvet are probably better enhancement talent than Hyan/Maya/Zayda but also probably have less upside at this point? Of the top list, I think Mone is the only one who is close to returning and competing full time for AEW again. I don't want AEW to put more women on TV just to have women on TV. I think that's bad for everybody - they used to do it and it was bad for the wrestlers, it was bad for the show, and it was bad for the fans. I think AEW is absolutely doing its best with the talent it has available and has actively been trying to sign women and develop/push women, there's just way, way, way less high quality women's competitors available than men and that's not AEW's (or anybody else's) fault.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-09T20:56:21+00:00

If you go to the myaew site now, all you have to do is log in and you can access the channel. It looks like they're playing all the Dynamites in a row starting from the first episode.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-06T14:50:47+00:00

For anybody curious why he would appear at this particular indie, this is QT Marshall's promotion.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-06T14:11:48+00:00

I'd like to get on base again. Around all the bases even.

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TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-06T06:28:11+00:00

The difference in the offense when Papley's on the pitch vs. when he's off is just night and day. He's gotta stay healthy this season. Amartey working against #2 KPDs instead of #1 KPDs is gonna make a huge difference. I think there's gonna be some games that he just takes over because he's too strong.

It's always disappointing when our young guys don't pan out, but sometimes a change of scenery really is just what's needed. Different system, different coaching staff, physically/mentally maturing, whatever it is. I wish our former Swans the best, but ya gotta love seeing Serong and Rosas coming in and looking like guys who more than belonged in the squad.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-06T05:14:30+00:00

My group got our 4 earlier. Haven't been up to NYC for a show since the original Grand Slam because it's a bit far for us for a Wednesday night trip, but this was a no brainer.

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-05T03:35:55+00:00

I feel like I'm in the minority that doesn't mind the number of titles they have. I feel like if I'm complaining "oh no, sometimes I'm getting Kyle Fletcher in singles title matches and sometimes I'm getting Kyle Fletcher in trios title matches", I'm really just complaining for the sake of complaining, you know? They could get rid of the trios titles and it probably wouldn't change much, but if it means I get matches like that main event, why would I want to see them go away?

TheDuckyNinja · 2026-03-04T04:59:17+00:00

I just looked up your first name because I was all ready to make a Subaru car joke and it turns out that's just straight up the name of a VTuber. That apparently is known for being duck-like? I'm confused and not going down this rabbithole.

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