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Wild that Ozzy Osbourne got in the WWE Hall of Fame before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Sad but not surprising given that she suffered two major injuries in a little more than a year. Her announcement feels similar to Azumi Hyuga in that either one of them could have kept going but at this moment in their life it just felt like it was time. On the Omega/Rossy stuff, it's probably going to blow over because the people who are most upset are ones that weren't going to follow, much less pay to watch, Marigold anyway. Out of all of the promotions entering a "New Era", TJPW at least feels like it's legitimately entering one:

Bubba @KawadaSmile gonna have to update it to BECKY MUST POSE now.

Becky Hogan making the trending topics on Xwitter is funny tho

Taz vs Benoit has me hyped. Backlund v Fujiwara and Madea v Allen are also huge.

Bossman showing everyone who da man is! Heenan feels a little slighted by Savage so arranges a Rude Awakening for the champ. Spivey wastes no time showing how valuable he is to the Dangerous Alliance. Rockers fight off the big men to hold on to the gold. Andre and co with a big win to close the show.

I would've preferred Liv just for the sake of something somewhat fresher, plus the obvious history with Rhea. But they love to make Liv a choke artist. Rumble 23 goes over an hour and is the last one eliminated. Rumble 24 returns from injury at #30 and is the last one eliminated. Elim Chamber, pins Bianca then is immediately the last one eliminated. Tonight, here we go again.

Card Announcement: UWF Newborn - "Fighting Base Korakuen" April 27th, 1989 Tokyo, Japan Korakuen Hall Masahito Kakihara vs Kiyoshi Tamura Manabu Yamada vs Erik Paulson Peter Senerchia (formerly known as Taz) vs Chris Benoit Masakatsu Funaki vs Tatsuo Nakano Dennis Koslowski vs Victor Zangiev Duane Koslowski vs Salman Hashimikov Volk Han vs Andrei Kopylov Kazuo Yamazaki vs Aleksandr Karelin Bob Backlund vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara Akira Maeda vs Bad News Allen

Gio is probably on the way out too, methinks. They want to give Kaiser a shot on his own and Big G is obviously SD! bound to be a Cody foil at some point, so I imagine he will be given his walking papers, sadly. A weird show that was very shtick-filled based on what I was able to see.

I didn't know Link had a son. Seems to know what he's doing. Atlas and the Cuban get heated. Durante & Wolfe look like a couple of Pitbulls. Miss Peaches certainly seems to have Bruno's number. Shocker in the main event as Captain Lou turns on his man to hand the title to Renesto.

Wrestling at the Chase Central States Wrestling Friday 4-22-1989 from the Chase Park Plaza Hotel St. Louis, Missouri Announce Team: Jay French and "The Professor" Marty Goldstein Match #1 Jason Sterling pinned Kevin Clark. The barefoot Canadian and son of the Missing Link proved to be a tough individual against an equally tough opponent. Following the match, the two shook hands in a show of good sportsmanship. Match #2 The Cuban Assassin and Omar Atlas brawled to a Double Disqualification. Both veterans refused to listen to the referee. Match #3 Anthony Durante & Gary Wolfe defeated The Allen Boys. Tag team action with two very young teams. Promoter Bob Geigel came out during a break in the action and announced the main event as a title match for the Central States Heavyweight Belt. In honor of all those who have wrestled at the Chase in the past, the match would be a purely scientific affair! Match #4 The Interns w/Downtown Bruno lost to The Sandman & Ray Odyssey w/Miss Peaches. It could have gone either way but Miss Peaches took Bruno out of the picture which pushed her boys to victory. Match #5 Central States Heavyweight Title Match Tom Renesto Jr. w/ Lou Albano won over Ricky Santana to become the CSW Champion. One would have thought a scientific match would be more advantageous to Renesto but Santana was up to the task and showed his mat skills. Back and forth the two went with several near pinfalls to get the fans out of their seats. Albano with some trickery, passed a roll of quarters to Renesto before distracting the referee to allow Renesto to cold cock Santana. Ricky Santana was not going to kick out of this one. Tom Renesto Jr. won the title. The fans did their best to inform the referee but to no avail as Albano yanked his man from the ring before someone changed their mind.

I see the terminally online Liv Morgan fans are having a meltdown over someone objectively far more popular and far better in every single way winning the world title over her

He's the Mary Sue of pro wrestling to a fault.

I see a lot of comments to that degree on Twitter or the Discord channels I visit.

Who does this? I enjoy Ospreay's big matches for the high octane stunt shows that they are, but can't say I see more than superficial similarities between him and 90s AJPW.

I find the Lucharesu criticism odd when Dick Togo finished higher in the 2016 poll than the likes of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Terry Gordy. Granted, not a lot of Lucharesu guys made the final 100, but I don't think it completely ignored the style.

I find it interesting that @InYourCase brought up Ospreay's 2019. At the time, I also thought of him as among the best wrestlers in the world, but with the caveat that it overexposed him in my eyes to what he tended to do. Something like that can make the extraordinary dives feel much more ordinary than they should, and I put a lot of the blame for that on the guy who constantly does them. He worked three singles tournaments that year, along with major matches on New Japan's big shows, and I didn't get enough of an impression that he changed up his style, moves, and approach to different opponents to not get bored of him. I understand that to some, that last sentence might sound absurd. He is definitely capable of a lot of great things, but it may be a case of whether he was inclined to demonstrate those capabilities in the frequent opportunities given to him, or to keep honing in on what was working for him at the time for that audience. Some of these responses to his criticisms are very odd to me though: The perceived bias on flying moves didn't stop Rey Mysterio or Jushin Liger from being ranked 5th and 6th in the last GWE. I don't see some of the more modern-day candidates expected to jump up the list in 2026 like Kazuchika Okada, Kenny Omega, or Darby Allin getting much pushback because of their use of dives or springboards. Would Kobashi's moonsault count as a flying move? How about a top splash like how Eddie Guerrero, Mitsuharu Misawa or Hiroshi Tanahashi used in their respective primes? I think everyone expects Bryan Danielson to rank #1 the next GWE and he's still doing flying moves long after the concerns about his concussion history and general health started. It's great that Ospreay can throw great-looking strikes, but maybe like with the flying moves, the issues seem to lie more in the way they utilize such moves in their matches. I agree that his elbows and forearms look great more often than not, and yet I'm not interested at all watching the striking exchanges he has play out. "Misawa's elbow is God" not just because it looked stiff, but because it fucking levelled the guys opposite him. I recall Jumbo lying on the outside for minutes after just one, or Kawada collapsing after taking some to convey how much damage they hold. Then again, Misawa and Ospreay are very different types of wrestlers. Shibata's another example: often he'll take a handful of elbows from his opponent before knocking them down with just one. The last few times I watched Ospreay, he likes to show how good his strike looks and sounds, soon followed by trading elbows 50/50 with his opponent no matter their size or stature. This is not how I'd like to see him go about such talents and part of what makes him so frustrating. I haven't seen all of Ospreay's AEW matches, though I don't think any of them were about building sympathy bar the last 5 minutes of his recent one with Danielson. Nor why him being the "most over guy in an American promotion" discredits selling complaints like he wasn't well-received from the moment he came on having signed to AEW. I do agree about a limb not having to be useless if worked over, but I'd also like that limbwork to have had some kind of meaning in the grand scheme. In my eyes, Ospreay just isn't particularly interested in selling past in the moment. Like @corwo mentioned, the man took a disgusting Turnbuckle Brainbuster that left welts on his back, but no mark on the rest of the match, which happened to be a goddamn back-and-forth.

Is there such thing as objective greatness in a subjective art form? Selling doesn't just look like garnering sympathy or limb work rendering bad wheels useless. For me, delayed selling can be just as bad. I saw Ospreay pop up from a turnbuckle brainbuster within seconds in the recent Takeshita match, and that's just one example among countless egregious no-sells he's done over the years. I also want to push back on the progression aspect of this. Ospreay wrestles minute one like minute thirty. He doesn't convey exhaustion, or weightfulness in any regard.

It’s probably worth prefacing everything I’m about to say with the fact that Ospreay more than likely makes my top 100 pretty comfortably. I think there is a lot of good about Ospreay, or at least things I give him a lot of credit for. His desire to round out his game was very apparent by 2017. Something like the KUSHIDA BOSJ final from that year was a match at the time I remember being extremely impressed by because even as someone who watched a lot of his work in England, what he showed in that match wasn’t necessarily something I thought he showed in 2014-2016. He’s firmly one of the best bases I’ve ever seen. Some of the stuff I’ve seen him be able to base for with wrestlers who frankly aren’t very athletic and probably had no business attempting those moves, only were able to pull them off because it was Ospreay they were doing it to. He works SUPER hard night in and night out. Every New Japan tour stop or tourney, it always felt like he was busting his ass and I do give him a lot of points for that. A lot of issues that people I frequently talk about wrestling with have with Ospreay, I don’t always agree with but I don’t think it’s 100% rooted in wanting to be a “hater” or to be a contrarian just for the sake of pushing back on something people love. The selling gripes with Ospreay go beyond the idea of limb selling. It’s the space between big spots that are supposed to feel important that a lot of people feel like aren’t given the time to breathe or matter the way they’re being presented. There are absolutely people who will harp on his limb selling, but that’s not the entire crux of why people point to that as a flaw of his. As he bulked up and started to put more into his striking, he became a guy I did like watching in control during matches, because his offense was so great. Beyond the outwardly stunning stuff, something like his back breaker became really AJ Styles-esque. With that, I feel like he became extremely ambitious in trying to have these longer, epic matches with people who he has no business trying those things with like Ricky Knight Jr or Michael Oku or Shota Umino or Yota Tsuji. I’ve seen all of that RevPro run from the pandemic and on and it’s not something that bolsters his case at all. I understand the attempts to “make” those guys, but it all ultimately falls flat for me because it’s the biggest example of it feeling like Ospreay’s bigger=better mindset than finding ways to work around their limitations and making it just as effective. I’m a Bryan number 1 voter and this is one of the main criticisms I’ll see towards him so it’s not just an Ospreay ding. Another thing that is sort of dishonest to not mention when discussing him is the very legitimate reasons why people don’t like him. We don’t have to rehash all of it, but some of the stuff isn’t just petty grudge holding. Especially when Will is best equipped to work as a babyface, not being able to buy in because of not liking the traits he’s shown as a person is more than fair. If someone said Will was the best wrestler of the last 5, going on 6, years, I’m not really going to push back on that a lot. My issue is the sort of manner in which it’s said, that if you don’t feel this way about Ospreay you’re just a hater or you’re not paying attention or denying greatness. Over this span of time I think people like Darby, Danielson, Moxley, Kingston and a few others all have compelling cases for this. Even with European peers like Zack or WALTER as you mentioned, I’ll have both of them ranked as well and probably above Ospreay or at the very least they’ll be close to each other. Huge disagree on their best matches being with Ospreay, though with Zack I can understand that sentiment more. I don’t think that WALTER vs Ospreay match is even a top 15 WALTER match.

I liked Ospreay a lot better during 2016-2018 run. Since then, I think he has picked up some of the worst habits imaginable. I'll explain in detail down the line perhaps, but for now, I'll say he is one of the foremost purveyors of the "MCU all-action" style of wrestling that feels like an overproduced action movie or video game than a contest that conveys a sense of struggle. Ospreay didn't create that style of course. You can link it back to the house style PWG encouraged, but Ospreay has indulged in it, especially in America. He chases crowd reactions too much and forgets the psychology/selling part. My personal opinion is that people often confuse "high spirit" no-selling comebacks like Ospreay does and think it conveys psychology. 90s AJPW is often cited to justify what Ospreay does, but those guys executed it entirely differently.

I have no idea what "Pitchfork-style poptimism" means here. I don't see Sting as a shoo-in this time around. I'm not low on him, but there's just so many guys who meet similar criteria of "had a match series I like and was mostly solid for the rest of a long career." I like Vader/Sting, especially the strap match, but I don't think it's so great to guarantee Sting a spot. A few months back I watched Sting/Vader at GAB 92 back-to-back with one of the Vader/Kobashi matches, due to them both following a similar premise of Vader vs underdog who can do power moves. It was pretty jarring how much better the selling and offense was in the Kobashi match. Like I posted here 10 years ago, I continue to think the most interesting thing about him is how he managed to stay solid and not feel out of place in the main event scene even well into old age. Haven't seen his AEW run besides the retirement (which seemed more a case of great presentation than a great match), but I think he could land a spot if I really vibe with that stuff.

I would genuinely question anyone's ability to analyze wrestling if they don't see the overwhelming greatness in Ospreay at this point. He might not work your preferred style, but there is an objective greatness to what he's been doing over the last five years that cannot be ignored. He has yet to fail. Everywhere he's worked, he's wound up being a top guy, and I think that really matters. He is one of the best junior heavyweights in the history of New Japan. He had really intricate matches with KUSHIDA, elite-level high-flying matches with Ricochet, big room juniors matches with Hiroumu, and then a bunch of hidden-gem stuff like the MOTYC against Taguchi and the Shibata match. This is all before 2019 when he started to transition into being a heavyweight. You can't draw up a better year than the one he had in 2019. He was so unbelievably good in that year's BOSJ, now working as a veteran of the division and leading lesser-experienced guys like Robbie Eagles and Bandido to tremendous matches. That all concluded with a legitimate dream match between he and Shingo that was such a no-doubt 5 star match. In all my years of watching wresting, it remains one of the most satisfying matches I've ever watched. It is here when Ospreay, to me, became an undeniably brilliant wrestler. He found this harmony between what his mind wanted to do and what his body was capable of and he's been riding that wave ever since. He bulked up, worked the G1 that year as a fish-out-of-water, and immediately proved that he could be a top heavyweight in NJPW. This is where I really start to scratch my head with Ospreay criticisms. If you didn't like him as a junior, whatever, I think you're wrong, but there's an obvious bias around anyone that even thinks about incorporating flying moves into their arsenal that I've come to accept it. As a heavyweight, Ospreay throws vicious strikes. Like, this is the type of thing that this forum should be celebrating. He started throwing such a mean-looking elbow that a large segment of the English-speaking NJPW fanbase wanted him to stop doing the move because they thought he actually concussed Kota Ibushi. I thought that was a good thing when it happened in FUTEN? The selling complaints are such nonsense. It especially falls on deaf ears with me now that he's the most over guy in an American promotion and he's done it by routinely building sympathy within his matches. I will never buy into this idea that once someone works over your leg, it needs to be rendered useless for the rest of the match. That's ludicrous. These are athletes. I have no problem buying into the concept of them being injured, but not paralyzed, by chop blocks and the like. Perhaps his greatest strength at this point, and this has been true for his entire heavyweight career, is that Ospreay as a Misawa-like ability to progress matches. You saw it with both Omega matches. You saw it with the Shingo matches. You saw it with the Danielson match. He can work for a half hour (or more) and never have it drag. I've been watching the guy for a decade and there's plenty of tags and trios and lesser singles matches where he's been great, but Ospreay is akin to a Misawa or a Hashimoto: his best work is done in the biggest moments. In terms of his peers, I am a ZSJ voter and (likely) a Gunther voter. I should first note that the best matches either of those guys have had have been against Ospreay. I love ZSJ, he has more longevity than Ospreay, but Ospreay has lapped him in terms of his overall package. Again, I love Zack. I cannot fathom an argument that he's had a better career than Ospreay. Same for Gunther, who again, I love. At some point, when he gets over in every room he's in, when the best wrestlers in the world do their best work against him, and when forward-thinking critics can't stop throwing praise at him, shouldn't it be obvious that he's one of the 100 greatest wrestlers of all-time? I'm not even saying you have to like him as a wrestler. But how long can people dig their heels in on a guy who ticks so many boxes that we look for in high-level performers? I I don't particularly like Hiroshi Hase or Yoshiaki Fujiwara, but I vote for them, because they are overwhelmingly great. I am still bothered over how dismissive this specific voting pool was of lucharesu and junior heavyweight candidates 10 years ago, though, and I fear a similar trend happening with Ospreay, which would just be maddening. He's so comfortably a Top 50 wrestler to me, and realistically, he'll probably finish in the Top 30. There's nothing this guy does poorly. His candidacy at this point is so much more than just the sheer volume of great matches - which by the way, are some of the greatest matches I've ever seen. He's everything you should want in a pro wrestler.

My GOAT Cyclops finally being acknowledged

Just give Sami the book and see where things go. With Santana coming back TNA is stacked on the men's side of their roster, they somehow need to get quality women.

And now Von Wagner is gone. Huh, that's a weird one, it seemed like they had bigger things planned for him.