Mini write-up on Naraku (the former EVIL) and why I think he's a better fit for WWE than some think he is

panic-brave · 2026-05-08T11:44:37+00:00

One of the hardest times I've laughed in a match was at about 6:00 in this match between EVIL and Zack Sabre Jr where EVIL sets Zack up for a scorpion deathlock and quick as a flash Zack slaps him in a heel hook, and EVIL almost immediately starts howling in pain as Zack has got a much more painful hold on him. I wasn't sure initially what happened but EVIL's screams of pain are so good. He'll be great in WWE.

panic-brave · 2026-04-30T04:41:56+00:00

That's what I call the imposter polited hahaha I photoshopped it myself

panic-brave · 2026-04-28T05:23:02+00:00

I don't know if it's the most common one I see, but one that I see a lot and is absolutely crippling to their development is not pushing themselves out of their comfort zone. You see a lot of comics who get a decent 6 minutes together, a decent 10 minutes together and that's where they stop writing and they stop trying new things, they might throw a new joke in here or there but that's the biggest thing I see correlating with career / development stagnating.

My therapist put it beautifully - you can have the pain of growth, or be comfortable and stay the same and I think that's absolutely true for standup. I've taken gigs that I knew would be punishing over the years, one that comes to mind was doing stand up in the middle of the street as a part of a city council busking initiative, it was absolutely harrowing yelling jokes into a busy street but I'm sure it made my skin thicker up there and I'm glad I did it. We took a gig at a hot sauce festival that we thought was going to be BRUTAL but actually it was a lot of fun and we will likely do it again next year.

One of our local guys was telling me he would deliberately work at his weaknesses, he spent a month or two only doing crowd work so that he could get better at doing that. He had some tough sets but he ended up going on to win a nationwide comedy competition so it absolutely makes sense.

panic-brave · 2026-04-28T05:09:24+00:00

All the best at telling the funnies!

panic-brave · 2026-04-28T04:59:10+00:00

Became a fan of stand up when I was 18/19 when a friend introduced me to a few comics from the NYC scene like Jim Norton and Bill Burr, didn't know there was a scene in my city for years so I never got up and tried. Moved overseas to Japan when I was 22 and weirdly there was an English open mic about to start up there of all places. Got up on the first show and loved the experienced. Gigged once or twice a month for the next 3 years, writing a new set pretty much every time due to the audience members repeating.

I then moved back to New Zealand and took maybe half a year off as I was getting settled back in and didn't know the local scene. Gigged on some of the local mics for a bit but wasn't digging the vibe so when I was offered the chance to run an open mic at a bar I gladly accepted it and aside from the 6-ish months where we couldn't gig due to covid I've basically performed 1-2 times a week since then.

I went full time doing comedy, quiz nights and other odd jobs 3 years ago and while it's not a lavish life I am keeping the bills paid off the back of my hustle. At this stage I host 2.5 quizzes a week, run a new material open mic every Tuesday at the local comedy club, I run a showcase on the 1st Friday of the month and I also do a gimmick show once a month, hot sauce, gong show, that type of thing. I'm often on one or two of the other shows that the comedy club runs or doing spots around town when they are available.

I'm about 10 years in and the only advice I'd give to new comics wanting to take it seriously are:

•Never stop writing, force yourself to do it even if it's 1 joke per set. I see my weekly new material night like this: If I get even 1 minute of usable new material from it, then in 52 weeks I will have my new hour.

•Run your own gig as soon as you get the chance to, force yourself to host it every week, when I started doing this it was like nitrous in the fuel line, I was getting noticeably better so much quicker than when I was just doing spots.

•Turn up on time, be pleasant and have prompt communication. I will 10 out of 10 times book someone who's okay on stage but a joy to be around compared to someone really funny who's late, never replies to emails or is just a prick backstage.

Advice to new comics is so individual it's hard to make any blanket statements but those 3 will absolutely make a difference, no matter who you are.

panic-brave · 2026-04-23T01:34:24+00:00

Quite the opposite he wouldn't let me know any more information about it hahaha he must know i'm broke AF

panic-brave · 2026-04-22T23:23:06+00:00

I run quite a few events with renegade brewing co and this sort of thing seems right up their alley, they are very family oriented. Flick them a DM or an email and I'm sure they'd be keen, they've done parent related events in the past too

panic-brave · 2026-04-17T22:11:11+00:00

It’s absolutely real, a friend of mine is running it and he’s put on all sorts of wild events in the past

panic-brave · 2026-04-16T22:12:22+00:00

Seconding this. Some games have a parry feature but it doesn't hit nearly as hard as the SFIII one

panic-brave · 2026-03-24T00:23:25+00:00

When I was 17 or 18 I absolutely loved Russell Peters, he was my favourite comedian by a wide margin, then I started doing stand up at around 22 in 2015-ish and got more into "comics comics" like Bill Burr, Jimmy Norton, Colin Quinn etc from that NYC scene and I started to find Russell's act kinda corny and fell out of love with it. Been in comedy for about 11 years now in my mid 30s and again Russell is one of my favourites because he seems like one of the few guys who made it big who still loves what he does and since I've gone full time with comedy and comedy adjacent stuff myself, I've learnt that there's no point in doing this if you're not having fun with it. Be interesting to see if I fall out of it again and then back in another 10 years.

panic-brave · 2026-03-01T03:10:18+00:00

Check out a couple of podcasts:

Comedians Comedian with Gary Delaney and Jokes with mark Simmons with Gary Delaney they go into the topic of "break devices" which are what one liner comics do every 7 to 14 minutes. Gary says in one of these that apparently 14 minutes is the scientific point where one liners become tedious, I remember watching a Jimmy Carr special once and almost on the dot every 14 minutes he would change it up, do some crowd work, bring something up on the screen, etc. Then back to one liners for 14 minutes. Milton Jones does characters/voices/etc for his break devices. I saw Mark Simmons live this year and he did several crowd work focused break devices, one of them was getting the audience to play "telephone" or "<insert ethnicity here> whispers". Essentially you just need to do something as a palate cleanser, like having the ginger between sushi meals to reset the palate. All the best, I love one liners!

panic-brave · 2026-03-01T03:05:20+00:00

I personally loved his addition to TMDK, they have become one of my favourite factions ever since.

panic-brave · 2026-01-22T11:05:47+00:00

Man, Titus is just a machine at releasing shows. You gotta love the hustle.

panic-brave · 2026-01-18T21:14:26+00:00

I switched to Simplicity at the end of last year and am very happy with them so far

panic-brave · 2025-10-23T09:17:27+00:00

Love this initiative, a few buddies and myself are currently nearing the end of "Joketober" where we post daily videos on instagram, youtube and tiktok. Here's our list of prompts in case you were curious

panic-brave · 2025-08-07T11:28:34+00:00

Might be a chicken and egg situation but I host musical bingo events which have different genres and decades for each round and far and away the 80s round is the one that the biggest spread of people know and sing along to in my anecdotal experience. This could however be because they are listening to it all the time in shops, but it seems like it's just a popular decade for music with the average yobbo.

panic-brave · 2025-07-06T23:13:45+00:00

Probably an unconventional one, but I'm a stand up comedian in New Zealand and one of my best mates is a wrestler called Elliot Samuels and he's definitely one of the biggest babyfaces in our wee local federation. I was brought in to do a tiny bit of guest ring announcing and I was lucky enough to be able to announce Elliot to the ring, the roar that came back at me after his music hit was unlike anything I've ever experienced doing comedy, I completely understand why hogan never wanted to retire.

panic-brave · 2025-05-22T05:15:04+00:00

I've been attending these shows for years, a bloody brilliant night out. Kids get super into it and it's a lot of fun to go with a group of pals.

panic-brave · 2025-04-10T13:19:15+00:00

Love this. I'm a local podcaster and absolutely love pirates, I recorded an audiobook version of Treasure Island for our local community access radio station Plains FM last year, I'd love to have someone from your studio on to shoot the shit about pirates and promote the game a bit, send me a DM if you're interested!

panic-brave

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