Mini-sode: The Length Report

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Come on, Mox, we gotta get these whistles out of here. No, no, you can't. You don't have lips. Certainly not enough to blow a whistle. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, we. They're gonna finish up refurbishing the. The studio because of the new. The new logos and such, so we gotta get out of here. And Erica is doing some sort of something, but. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Oh. [00:00:29] Speaker A: Oh, shit. I think they're tear gassing the neighborhood. All right, let's go. Yes. Yes, that's right. Jingle amigra. [00:00:41] Speaker B: Hello, Goofs and Graps fans. I am. Oh, fucking God. Sorry. I don't know why my throat was doing that. Anyway, it's your girl. Erica Warrens. I had been doing the Continental Classic recaps every week, but it dropped off because, well, the timing, it got all fucky. And then between Christmas and New Year's, I was pretty goddamn busy. I am in Japan for the foreseeable future or the next four months or so, and with the main pod taking a break for the next week due to various illnesses, scheduling conflicts, and, you know, regular pod hosts being under siege by a bunch of dudes who grew up envying the brown shirts, I hope it's not too political. I didn't want to leave the feed entirely. Contentless. Content less. Contentless Less. That's not a word. Because we love our content, don't we, folks? So here's a few things I wanted to talk about and I'm going to make it your problem if you listen to it. First, the Continental Classic. It's been like four months at this point, but holy shit. It's been said that AEW's now annual round robin tournament has gotten better each year. And I don't think that really does justice to the 2025 edition. It was a masterclass in how to build a tournament like this. Each and every single match had value and the shorter time frame for the time first format with three points awarded to the winner of each match, leaves a lot more room for flexibility. If the most points a wrestler can win is 15, each of them can stand to win and lose, along with the possibility of tiebreakers and the like. I will give them credit. So, like the triple threat in the semifinals during the first year, I felt a bit like a cop out. And I wouldn't have been surprised if this year had gone the same way, given how close especially the Gold League wound up being. I did not expect the final four we got though. I, if you didn't know, have been howling naked at the moon for like Three to four months for the finals to just be Okada versus my beautiful kayfabe husband Konosuke Takeshita, and for Takesha to win. And then we would go on a whirlwind tour and have sex on all the continents, including Antarctica, but not in the place that you would do damage to like penguin nests. And we wouldn't. Anyway, the semifinals we wound up with for the World's End was surprising, but perhaps not unexpected. Takeshita won the Blue League and was going to wrestle Okada, who was the runner up for the Gold League. Kyle Fletcher won the Gold League and the runner up was Jon Moxley. So if you hadn't watched AEW for the last year, you would be forgiven if you didn't understand why there were four heels in the finals of the big Work rate showcase of the calendar year. Well, you did miss a bit. For one thing, Takeshita is in process of like a slow face turn that hasn't full fully materialized because bitchmaker Kazuchiko Okada has started his entire time, has spent his entire time in the Don Callis family antagonizing the younger wrestler. Fletcher is still basically a hero. And then Moxley on the other hand, is the special story of the tournament. That's like the Shock. Jon fucking Moxley orchestrated one of the greatest underdog babyface turns in the last 25 years of wrestling and did it purely through his in ring work. Though his post match promos through the tournament were also excellent and a big part of it. So Jon Moxley won the entire fucking tournament. At the end of the day like he's, he won the continental title. He's the continental champion for 2025. He beat Kyle Fletcher in the semifinals and then went on to beat Kazuchiko Okada in the finals. And the thing that made this unique was the entire crowd for the World's End pay per View was just begging him to win it. Like for months, crowds were on Mox's ass for tapping out. First to Darby Allen and then twice to Kyle O'Reilly. But somehow in the fires of the tournament first, Mox found that second gear again. Wrestled with the never say die abandon that he did before the Deathrider's angle started and was just undeniable. Like you could not watch the sky and not enjoy what he was doing. And it's. I've, I've been calling it on Blue sky and on the pod. The one of the best face turns I've seen in a single night because he literally had the crowd eating out of his Hand. Like, if you have not seen World's End, go watch it. Like he, he had an injured ankle in his match with Fletcher. His front tooth got chipped. And then he's still doing like his, his swagger around, stomping around Terry Funk style, tough guy shit and doing like baby face suicidas. And just like everybody ate it up. And like I did not see anybody just being like, oh, man, I don't buy this Moxley. I hate this Moxley. This Moxley sucks. No, everybody loves this Moxley. This is the Jon Moxley everybody loved. And then to cap it all off, you have Bryan Danielson on commentary. And this is a man that a year ago at the same pay per view, he retired via attempted murder with a plastic bag over his face. He tried to kill him. He tried to kill the man. He took his title and retired him. And nobody could deny that the real Jon Moxley had shown up for World's End. Even Danielson was like, this is the guy. This is him. And then to top it all off, he just cuts this fiery white me babyface promo where he puts over aew. He puts over every single man who entered the Continental Classic and participated and fought and that just everybody in it was proving a point that he had been trying to make with the Death Riders for the last year. And three weeks later, I guess four weeks, three weeks, I can't count it still stuck. Like the Death Riders. I mean, if you saw, if you've seen the last edition of collision on the 18th of January, they're still nominally heels. They might be turning face. Like the whole faction might be turning face, like ever. Like everyone still hates Wheeler. Yuta Marina is terrorizing Toni Storm being a share cow every chance she gets. And Claudio is still abusing Claudio. Sorry, Claudio is still abusing Orange Cassidy when he can. Daniel Garcia is like just this intense little guy there. And Pac is a face. I mean, after the Darby match and like the, the thing before that, Pox a face against Darby. Jog on, Bonnie lad. Eat my. Like, Mox is ushering in a return of the Continental title formats. So he's offering up 20 minute eliminator matches. If you pin him or you last the 20 minutes, you get a title shot. No one's at ringside, yada, yada, yada. It's like they're practically faces and they're going to be faces because they're about to start feuding with the Don Callis family. But it's been awesome and it's kind of shown. Jon Moxley was always right. And like that, that was his philosophy going is like, I am right, I am correct. And he proved it. Like, he won the Work Rate Kick Dudes in the Ass tournament to prove it. And I think at this point, like, he's one of the best to ever do it. If you disagree, okay, it's okay to have differing opinions in wrestling. Even if some people are wrong. We all have the same blood throwing through our veins, except for Jon Moxley because it's usually bleeding from his face. And that's the, the CTU portion of this little, this little, this little gimmick I'm doing now. So the other thing I want to talk about is my experience at Wrestle Kingdom 20 mostly because of the main event, but I'll take a moment to say some other thoughts on the show. If you have gone to the Patreon, you might have heard our, our live viewing of it. But like, this is just my pardoner. This is just my raw, unfiltered thoughts on it. And it was an experience. Like I went to the Tokyo Dome last year for Russell Dynasty and it was not, it was not nearly the same thing as what happened here. Like this, this was a whole other level. I loved getting to see Chris Brooks make his Tokyo Dome wrestling debut in a title match, even if it was the pre show. But like, he wrestled for a title in the Tokyo Dome and he lost. But hey, Chris Brooks, Tokyo Dome it. And it was a great match. Like, I don't really have a whole lot to say about the undercard, to be honest. Like, Dave Finley kind of shot the crowd with the minigun. That was kind of cool, I guess it was kind of like, you know, in the movies about ancient Roman battles. Like you have like the rain of arrows falling down. But like, in this case it was Dave Finley shooting us with a fake gun. It's cool. Like, a lot of people died and it's fine. They're not going to talk about that in the recaps of the show. But you know, rip to all those people who died to David Finley, Jake Lee was in that match. I'm not the biggest fan of Jake Lee. Some people are. He's fine. He's not my thing. He's. He kind of sucks. His current gimmick does not do anything to hide about the fact that he sucks. What else? Oh yeah, the Rambo was on the match. The Trio's Rambo. That was a thing. The four way junior title match wasn't good, but, you know, shows entrance music. Go listen to that. House of Torture just kind of has like the best entrances on the whole show for the most part. Things that were really, really, really good On Wrestle Kingdom 20, Sayakambitani and Shuri, they like went out and tried to kill each other. They aura farmed on the entrances and then they like beat. Beat the out of each other for like 12 minutes. And you could have put that higher on the card and I would have been happy. Good. Really, really set the high bar for women's matches for like the rest of 2026. Evil House of Torture. Again, he kind of showed why you put him in spots with someone high profile, but an experience like Aaron Wolf, because that was bonkers. Like, what a debut for that guy. And I don't care what Ellis says, it's impressive that he actually won the gold medal without a broken freaking neck because Kurt Angle is a goddamn moron who fumbled his wife to Jeff Jarrett. Sorry, I have something in my throat. You know, if they handle Aaron Wolf well, that dude is going to be a big fucking star for them because he's already a big star. Then the double title match between Yota Tsuji and my husband, Konosuke Takeshita was like, it was a very modern New Japan main event war. And it went back and forth, people hitting each other's finishers. It looked. It was really good. It was really fun live. It was a big moment for New Japan because they were finally putting the title on one of their young guys. Like, this was a guy that came up. Yotasuji is a guy that came up through the dojo. He did his excursion, he did his time. They've decided this is the guy we're gonna go with. He's gonna be the new generation face. Takeshita is having a rough week at this point. He. He had lost the previous weekend in the semi finals to Okada, and now he just lost the IWGP world title. And you know, I'm kind of into a punished soup arc, if I'm being honest. But like, he's beautiful. So like when he suffers, I feel good about it. All right, so the. The main thing that everybody's here talking about, the Wrestle Kingdom finale, the main event, this is what is going to be. This show is going to be remembered for forever. And it was the final match of Hiroshi Tanahashi's career, and he was facing against Kazuchiko Okada. And Tanahashi was good, but Okada probably turned in a performance for the ages too. And it was just a roller coaster of a match. And like, while I was Writing this script out, I was still getting emotional talking about it. And it's been like four, three or four weeks later. Tanahashi knowing he was not up to the task of taking on Okada anymore, but just fighting his heart out. You have like Okada healing it up, smirking, flipping off the crowd, doing all the shitheel stuff that we've grown to expect from him on TV every week. And then Tanahashi just breaking out three musketeers offense, stuff like back he did Shibata's penalty kick. Crowd was just going fucking nuts when he started, you know, indicating that he was going to do Nakamura's boma. Yeah, like the crowd was just willing him onwards. And he's like, keep fighting, keep fighting. Don't stop. Don't let it fucking end. He kicks out of a rainmaker and like the crowd, it's hard to articulate which it was like being in a crowd like that, because in front of me there were two women with Tanahashi retirement shirts who were like, into everything. There was a foreign guy next to me. When I say foreign, like, I mean, like, he was not Japanese and he was just taking pictures the whole time. Like, that was really his main focus. But like. And there was like various levels of interest throughout the crowd around me through the whole thing. But like for this, this match, like, everybody was on the edge of their seats. Everybody was willing Tanahashi on. They're just like, come on, Tada. Come on, Tada. Come on, Tada. Ganbatte. Ganbatte. Tada. And he kicks out of the rainmaker and the place goes nuts. And there's like this belief, there's this. There's this knowledge in the crowd. Tanahashi's not done. He's going to win. He is going to fucking win. And like, I'm. I'm still sort of tearing up thinking about it because like, we all, like, I bought into it. I thought he was going to win for a second. And even it was if he wasn't going because they kept calling out the times. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Like, it's like, this is going to go. This is on for so long. It's going to keep going. Don't let it end. Like you don't want that moment to end and that maybe, maybe in this moment he was going to actually overcome that challenge. And God, the actual magic of the match comes as Okada looks inside himself and realizes he can't. Tanahashi doesn't. He can't kill Tanahashi like this. And Tadahashi doesn't want to die to this. Die. I say die. Like he's not still alive with a dork ass haircut. And like, if you haven't seen Tanahashi's new haircut, he looks like a Japanese politician who's going to tell you some things about the, you know, declining birth rates. But yeah, Okada. Okada just reverts to the old Okada, the pre AEW Takata. He. He hits the drop kick, he goes to the top rope and he. He fucking jumps like he's. If you. If you watched aew, when he does his elbow drop spot, he just sort of falls this time. He jumps, he jumps and drives the elbow right into Hot Tanahashi's heart. And he gets up, he does the actual rainmaker pose. Like he does not flip off the crowd. He doesn't do the bitchmaker. He does the full rainmaker pose. Rainmaker's Tanahashi. And that's it. It's just. It's just the most Ike. It's the. One of the most emotional things I've seen live ever. And I have still not really fully comprehended what I saw. I just know that I saw a piece of history. And the realization that Tanahashi's match at that point was. He couldn't have Shibata there because for all the reasons that Shibata can't wrestle a full match in New Japan, he couldn't have Nakamura there because for all the reasons that Nakamura can't wrestle a match in New Japan. And there's a lot to be said about that, but he had Okada and only Okada was left who could end his career. And so he hits that rainmaker. One, two, three, and that's it. People in the crowd were. I'm not even kidding, they were sobbing like they. They knew it was coming, but they were just like overjoyed and they were happy of it. And the. The lasting image of this show, despite everything I saw, everything else is just Tanahashi post match laying on his back and his hands are over his face, crying. And I have a picture of it. And if I can talk Ella into it, I will. I will make that picture the. The promo image for whenever this gets released. This has gone on way longer than I intended. And well, Wrestle Kingdom kind of went that way too. There was a retirement ceremony immediately after the match. If you know anything about graduation retirement ceremonies in Japan, they are designed to make people cry. Everyone cry, everyone, as much as possible. This succeeded. Tanahashi absolutely lost his. When Shibata's music hit, and that was definitely a highlight. Ibushi showing up with Kenny Omega was a real surprise. I wanted him to stay in bed because he was limping the whole way down because he broke his femur. Like, God damn, man, just stay in bed. Like, I, like, I appreciate why he did what he did, but, like, he didn't need to walk the ramp. Incredible show. It set an extremely high bar for big wrestling events in 2076. It's. It's astronomical. Like, you can say what you want about the undercard. Like, the undercard was definitely overwhelming, un, underwhelming. But, like, the women's match, Aaron Wolf versus Evil, the double title match, and then Tanahashi's retirement, like, those. Those matches on their own are more than enough to put this into show of the year contention early. And I think it will take a long while for something to truly equal it in any possible good faith. It was. It was a great show. No notes. I. I wasn't even. Like, I. I left the match. I. Look, I. I left Tokyo Dome. I took a long. It was a long ride back to Yokohama. And I wasn't even mad when, like, a dude slid into my DMs asking for nudes and then turned shitty when I told him to just, like, tell me one of his hobbies first before I let him see my girl. Nick, I ain't even mad. Like, I wasn't. I was a little mad, but I wasn't that mad. Wrestling is great and it's great. It. When it's great, it's just the best. I'm sad that we weren't able to talk about Dynamite this last week. I love John Cruz. Throw your shoes, Adam. Bonnie, Ladd, Davis and Doyle. We should just call them dnd. Except unlike the game Dungeons and Dragons, they're actually really good. And I. I look forward to them. MJF vs Bandana ruled. That was, like, the kind of match that reminds you why Max has the spot. He does. He's not just 90s humor and spray tan. The dude can work. And bandido is, like, incredible. He should. He should be champion someday. Anything else from the show? From Dynamite? I don't know. It was solid. The main event ruled. Oh, collision. That Deathriders promo from Jon Moxley. Holy shit, that Jon Moxley promo. Fucking golden. He's one of the best. Solid show. Solid Dynamite. I haven't watched Collision. And you know what? That's all I've got for you right now. So, you know, keep yourself safe. Keep the people that are important to you. Safe. Ring bell. Ring bell. Ring bell. And happy wrestling, everybody. No. [00:24:38] Speaker A: No. I swear to God, will stansel.