Ascension, Luke Harper, and Sin Cara have been granted their releases.
Sorry to see Harper go, but the other guys were dead on their feet years ago.
As I understand Orange Cassidy, the concept is either a really lazy guy who just doesn’t want to bother to put in effort, or possibly his character is trying to project a “too cool for school” attitude, where he ends up putting more effort into acting like a cool slacker dude.
Probably the best match I’ve seen of his was him vs David Starr. Essentially David Starr, Serious Professional Wrestler, gets pissed off at his antics and just beats the crap out of OC until OC finally has to respond.
The full card for Wrestle Kingdom has been announced. This year it’s going to be a two-night event, and the card is stacked for both shows;
Night 1:
- IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Kazuchika Okada © vs. Kota Ibushi
- IWGP Intercontinental Championship: Jay White © vs. Tetsuya Naito
- IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship: Will Ospreay © vs. Hiromu Takahashi
- Texas Death Match for the IWGP US Championship: Lance Archer © vs. Jon Moxley
- IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa © vs. Juice Robinson & David Finlay
- CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano, & Yoshi-Hashi) vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens, KENTA, & Yujiro Takahashi)
- Los Ingobernables de Japon (EVIL, SANADA, Shingo Takagi, & Bushi) vs. Suzuki-Gun (Minoru Suzuki, Taichi, Zack Sabre Jr., & El Desperado)
- Jushin Thunder Liger, Tatsumi Fujinami, The Great Sasuke, & Tiger Mask IV vs. Naoki Sano, Shinjiro Otani, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, & Ryusuke Taguchi
Night 2:
- Winner-takes-all for the IWGP Heavyweight/Intercontinental Championships: The winner of Okada/Ibushi vs. the winner of White/Naito
- Chris Jericho vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
- The loser of Okada/Ibushi vs. the loser of White/Naito
- NEVER Openweight Championship: KENTA © vs. Hirooki Goto
- IWGP US Championship: The winner of Archer/Moxley vs. Juice Robinson
- RPW British Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr. © vs. SANADA
- Bullet Club (Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo) vs. Roppongi 3K
- Jushin Thunder Liger & Naoki Sano vs. Ryu Lee & Hiromu Takahashi (Liger’s retirement match)
Should be a fun couple of nights.
Robert Roode and Primo Colon (really!?) have received 30-day suspensions for Wellness Policy violations. First infraction for both.
A WWE press release announcing the 2020 inductions of Batista and the NWO (Hogan, Hall, Nash, and Waltman) to the WWE Hall of Fame has some interesting notes to it.
The press release notes that Batista, John Cena, Triple H, The Undertaker, Evolution, Ric Flair, Randy Orton, New World Order, WCW, and Monday Night Wars are all registered trademarks, although it does not say which ones WWE actually ones. On the other hand, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Sean Waltman are listed as unregistered trademarks, and apparently “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan isn’t trademarked at all, although that could be because, the last I heard, Marvel Comics owns the trademark to “Hulk.”
You can’t trademark someone’s real name.
I’ve seen a few Orange Cassidy “joke” matches and agreed with Corny until this. The story telling in this match is incredible.
Cassidy reminds me of an old Dolly Parton quote…“It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”
With Cassidy…“It takes a lot of talent to look this bad.”
In future matches, I’d like to see him get “serious” sooner. He’s not a great wrestler and his moves are sometimes too stiff, but he plays his role well in this match, as does David Star.
To paraphrase, I would prefer my pro wrestling to be realistic simulated combat but that horse has left the barn.
There is that time OC got in the ring while the Dark Order was outside beating up on Best Friends. He kept his hands in his pockets, bounced off the far ropes, dove on top of Dark Order, knocking them down like bowling pins, and stood back up, hands still in pockets, keeping the same “whatever” facial expression, shades still in place.
OK, I admit I’m becoming an OC mark. He’s only good for the occasional spot, but he’s like the anti-worker. He gets pops for not caring. He’s not going to get any main event attention, and there’s only so much he can do in the ring with the Persona of Aloofness. At some time everybody’s going to get sick of his angle, but he may as well milk the fame while he can.
Just found out AEW’s Jungle Boy is the son of late actor Luke Perry. Jim Ross is trying to rename him to Jungle Jack Perry which may make some sense. I could hardly tell you anything about Luke Perry but this kid looks like he could be another Flyin’ Brian, hopefully staying that way instead of turning into another Brian Pillman.
AEW is emerging slowly, and maybe it’s a very good thing to take it slowly and not burn out quickly. They need to separate the wheat from the chaff eventually, but first they need to let the wheat grow to maturity.
He reminds me of RVD with his attitude, and he should stay on the move like him so he doesn’t get stale with any one crowd.
He’s done that hands in the pocket jump with a flip over the top rope too. He’s got great athletic and performance talent.
Must… post… more… about… Orange Cassidy…
Here he is no-selling an interview with Chris Van Vliet.
I give that one a slightly elevated thumb.
finally watched some aew last tuesday the other night and its got ecw lite vibes to it buy there’s some sloppy ring and camera work to it tho … and Dustin Rhodes still has it in the ring … but the young bucks had a tag match against some Lucha type of guys and one of them was jumped over the top rope and either missed and the camera moved so no one saw it … or the cameraman missed it altogether because all you saw was the side of the ring
- Jushin Thunder Liger, Tatsumi Fujinami, The Great Sasuke, & Tiger Mask IV vs. Naoki Sano, Shinjiro Otani, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, & Ryusuke Taguchi
If that’s not a legends match I dont know what is… arent some of those guys around 50-60?
I remember when fujinami was iwgp and wcw world champ for a month or two in the early 90s (flair needed some time off and they had a talent sharing deal …)
'Tis. Liger is retiring at Wrestle Kingdom, so they’ve been bringing back a lot of his classic friends/rivals for his last few matches.
wow, I remember when him inoki and muta were the only Japanese wrestlers anyone knew because of wcw…
You don’t remember Prof. Tanaka and Mr. Fuji? Strong Kobayashi, Tash “Oddjob” Togo?
I do. But I’m an old fart who grew up in WWWF country before cable. Tanaka, Fuji, and Togo were all Hawaiian. I know Fuji never worked the Japanese circuit, not sure about any of the others. You did leave out Masa Saito (who teamed with Mr. Fuji in the WWWF, or maybe WWF, they may have dropped the extra ‘W’ by then), who was Japanese and competed in wrestling in the Olympics.
Ok, I gotcha. Yes, only Kobayashi and Saito had wrestled in Japan prior to their WWWF days. Inoki got some press in the early 70s but I never got to see him in action until the debacle with Ali.
Hiro Matsuda wrestled in the NWA during the 60s and 70s and became a trainer. He trained Hulk Hogan and broke his leg the first day. Matsuda liked to be stiff when training newbies to teach them respect for the business.
A well known story that has been questioned. Not Matsuda’s attitude, but the part about breaking Hogan’s leg. I’m sure he did lay some hurt on Hogan though.