Based on what shows up in YT, they review modern-day material mostly, never really seen indications they do shoot interviews. I do find they’re perfectly happy to give props where due with the current product. Cornette historically hated Sami Zayn from working with him in the indies, thought he was one of the biggest pains in the ass out there behind the scenes, and then Zayn got so good during his part in the Bloodline storyline that Cornette cheerfully conceded that he was one of the best things going in wrestling. So while his rants are his bread and butter, I do get the sense he is honest in his reviews.
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Yah, it’s mostly a review format. Sometimes I enjoy his reviews of AEW more than the actual matches. He can be a bit overbearing at times, he has derogatory nicknames for a dozen or more guys. For example, Orange Cassidy is Pockets, and he Cornette absolutely hates him.
His review of the last Omega/Ospreay match was pretty interesting. It was a great match, but Cornette was pretty critical b/c those guys were doing a ton of dangerous spots. And Cornette points out how this will severely limit their careers, diminish post-wrestling QOL, and that’s if they avoid serious injury. At the end of the day, I think he really cares about these guys, but it can come off as just bashing.
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well they have one next week and a month from now, think it’s more than 6
Would add that the reason I don’t subscribe to Cornette is that I truly don’t wish to make a full-time hobby of hating something. I have spilled a whole ton of digital ink on angry posts about the modern product, but it did come from a place of lifelong love for the art form and a desperate longshot hope that it could still be something that I love. But - and I’m sure I’m in part making this post defensively because of comments I’ve occasionally gotten elsewhere online, even though they were probably exclusively by people who won’t read this post - no part of me goes in wanting to hate this stuff, wanting to be proven right in my negativity. I want to love it. Wrestling executed at its highest level is wonderful. But I’m also not going to gaslight myself into seeing something that isn’t there, or to give a dishonestly positive take to any of it. So I’ll click on a link if it happens to appear in front of my face and looks interesting or entertaining, but I’m not going to put it in my weekly listening, because I’m not really watching current wrestling, and I suspect I’ll have gone to a level of personal cynicism I don’t want to arrive at if I’m just listening to the skewering of wrestling without really watching wrestling itself.
Without making any absolute declarations of never watching again, etc., this is as close to full submission as it gets. The bad elements have gotten a foothold. They’ve got momentum. They win; I lose. It sucks, but it’s not worth spending a significant amount of time tilting at windmills anymore.
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well it’s different
keeps getting way more athletic
not as cool though unless you like flippy stuff or stuff that used to be saved for special ppv’s that are on regular tv–the technicians aren’t quite there either–most guys aren’t good on the stick but that’s standard–it’s hard. They just don’t have that guy now who moves the needle. Maybe never will, it just keeps declining in overall interest, too much stuff is out there for our attention.
Are there any good podcasts that deal with the subject matter that “Dark Side” deals with, or old school/territory guys in general?
I think it’s gonna be 7.
The main 4 are Revolution, DoN, All Out, and Full Gear.
Last year they added the Forbidden Door show with NJPW, which continued this year.
All In was a special event b/c of Wembley, but looks like it will continue next year at Wembley.
The 7th event (in a month) is a special anniversary show for Inoki’s death and is another show shared with Japan. Not sure if it will be ongoing or no.
allout is sunday
it doesn’t have a main event yet
is it cassidy vs mox? I mean it’s rough a cole/mjf rematch?
wait, miro is back looking at this card
oh right chicago so punk vs well I don’t know they didn’t set this up? well anyone he had a fight with backstage will do in a pinch
I’m a regular listener to The Lapsed Fan. Their humor can be very hit-or-miss and is completely bloated with inside jokes at this point, but nobody dives deeper (as you would see from the insane runtimes of their podcasts), and they do tremendous research work. They devoted several episodes to the Benoit tragedy, they covered the Owen Hart tragedy well, they did a whole series about the slow-motion Von Erich tragedy in WCCW (these episodes are called “The Lamentable Tragedy of World Class”). They don’t exclusively cover dark stuff, they also just dive into the backgrounds of shows and stories, etc. (they did a long Montreal Screwjob series), but they don’t shy away from the tragedies. The Owen one was their first crack at something deeper, and it got a positive enough listener response that they kept going. Could be worth a look if you haven’t heard any of their stuff yet.
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Honestly, Cornette is best at that. He’s reviewed every Dark Side episode and given a bunch of additional perspective from his own experience. He just did an hour on Terry Funk on his most recent podcast, a lot of which was stuff from the 70s and early 80s. The last couple of weeks, he’s told long stories about a particular month of his early career in Memphis.
The podcasts are really insanely long, though, lately they’ve been coming in around four hours. Worth it for the ad reads, though.
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I guess it’s Punk v. Starks? Although that build has been hit or miss as well. Or maybe they do a Punk v. Jungle Boy Broken Glass Match or something.
Stat v. Ruby Soho is a random ass match. Luchasaurus is terrible.
I guess Miro v. Hobbs could be good and Omega v. Takeshita could be amazing. Not a big fan of Mox, but I guess that could be a good match vs. Pockets.
Just weird that they went from having 5 PPVs all of last year to now having 3 in 5 weeks.
According to Alvarez, Punk and Perry are both suspended for All Out. In Chicago.
That’s not going to be good for the gate at all.
Is he going to be stripped of his Fake Real World Title?
At least tony did something about it (regardless of who or both were at fault)? I call it progress.
getting stripped of a fake belt would be hilarious
In another update, Nick Hausman of Haus Of Wrestling reported that when CM Punk landed at Heathrow Airport ahead of AEW All In on August 26, no one from AEW was there to meet him. Hausman wrote that there was no car service for Punk. When he texted a number AEW gave him for the driver, it reportedly bounced back as an invalid number. Per Hausman, Punk wound up finding his own way to the hotel.
Punk was threatening to quit, in the heat of the moment, due to his frustration. Punk has expressed his desire to have a “drama-free locker room”
what a shit show
I listen to Cornette on Youtube, since they break down episodes into snippets and I can listen cafeteria-style. He has two podcasts and I think one is dedicated to watching wrestling stuff and one is for answering questions from listeners.
I will listen to some of the reviews of things he watches, but I strongly disagree with a lot of his AEW takes. (Orange Cassidy is my current favorite wrestler, for example, and I hope the long-term program is for him to take the title off of MJF.) I enjoy more his stuff about old wrestling. I especially enjoy listening to “Guess the Program” segments, where Brian Last reads him a program and Cornette tries to guess the year and location.
Cornette is overly obsessed with how wrestlers look. My theory is that is wants women wrestlers (and he still calls it “girls” wrestling) to look like what he wants to fuck and male wrestlers to look like what he wants to watch his wife fuck, unless they are supposed to be ugly monsters.
All-In London was supposed to be more like the early Wrestlemanias. (Or like the first All-In.) The point wasn’t to have matches that were significant within storylines, but just to get people on the card so that Brits could see all of these people live. This was not the event to blow off a major feud.
If one exists, you could probably find it referred to in this thread (which I’m not reading for you).
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Hey it turns out that territory my dad used to work the camera for has a wiki page
I guess I could have linked to it. Wrestling fans are pretty obsessive about documenting things online.