I used to blog. A lot. But once I was able to figure out how to turn my office into a podcast studio, the writing stopped. I could record a show and get all my thoughts and takes off my chest so quickly, whereas writing took much more time. And honestly, it’s a more vulnerable exercise. You write something. Re-read it. Hate it. Start over. Write it, delete it, and think harder.

I do more podcasts than ever. So why come back to writing now? Here’s the honest truth: I turned 50 a few months back, and I want my brain to work properly in this age of AI. I’d be a hypocrite to pretend I don’t use AI. I’ll probably run this post through something AI-related to spot-check for my human errors. AI will help me organize thumbnail graphics. But it won’t help me write something that comes directly from my experiences.

So there’s the preamble. And now, my first post is about wrestling, which is sort of funny in a way. But I’m not just going to write about wrestling. I’m going to write about sports (Go Valkyries!). I’m going to write about music and movies. And we’ll see what else raises my heart rate ever so slightly.

You can check out my thoughts on the AEW PPV that’s the framework of my first piece on the latest episode of The Fight Game Podcast. My friend Jeremy Finestone is my co-host. He also hosts Speaking of Strong Style, our network’s New Japan Pro Wrestling podcast.

1. Watching wrestling with Dave Meltzer never gets old

It doesn’t get boring. Or tired. I never take it for granted.

It was sometime in 2014 when I first watched wrestling at Dave’s house. I was in the process of moving. Everyone who has moved before knows that when you move, you have to turn things off at the old place and then on at the new place, and there’s a little bit of time where you don’t have access to your entertainment. I moved out on a Saturday, and cable (before streaming) wouldn’t be ready at the new place until Monday. However, there was a WWE PPV to watch, and I wouldn’t even be able to order it. On a lark, I emailed Dave.

I’d been a subscriber to Dave’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter since either 1999 or 2000. But I’d also read him prior, when he was writing for The National, a daily sports newspaper. My dad would pick it up every day and, when he got home from work, drop it on my bed. I read a column one day by Dave Meltzer, and it was about wrestling. Huh? Since when did a sports page cover wrestling? Sports and pro wrestling seemed antithetical; you know the whole real versus fake issue.

Dave reported that WrestleMania VII wasn’t actually going to be held at the LA Coliseum. It was going to be moved to the LA Memorial Sports Arena. And he said it was mostly because of the lack of ticket sales in such a large outdoor building. It wasn’t just because of the hokey excuse that WWF (at the time) was going to say it was, which is that they were worried that the turncoat Sgt. Slaughter would be harmed. They said it was for “national security reasons,” which doesn’t fly because even if it was moved out of the bigger building, the show would still be a public event.

I don’t have Dave’s reporting from The National that week, but this is what he wrote in the Observer in early 1991.

As the story sorts itself out, it becomes more apparent that while there is something to the security problem, the real reason for the move was lack of ticket sales.

(Folks who listen to me on Wrestling Observer Radio already know the story of the first time I came across Dave’s work indirectly, but we’ll save that story for another day.)

When I realized I could be closer to the wrestling business through reporting like this, it extended my wrestling fandom much further than it would’ve had I been left in the dark. It’s the main reason why I still watch and cover it today.

Back to the day that I first watched wrestling at Dave’s. I knocked on the door. It wasn’t Dave who answered. It was John LaRocca, who later became my longtime podcast partner. John had just started his own promotion, Premier Wrestling, and invited me to one of his shows a few weeks back. John had just started watching shows at Dave’s as well, and just like that, we had monthly PPV viewing parties. Over the years, we’d meet some of Dave’s friends, like Other Dave, who brought tuna fish sandwiches from Subway, and Edward. Other Dave has since passed away. His presence is missed. Edward stopped coming several years ago.

We’ve since turned the PPV parties at Dave’s into a monthly hangout with new friends. The new crew is close, so close that they were all invited to my 50th birthday. We created community.

Fast-forward to last night as we were watching AEW WrestleDream at Dave’s. It was only Jeremy and I and another Other Dave, who I’d first met at a New Japan Pro Wrestling event in San Jose back when he was writing for a Fresno newspaper. The show, as you’ll read, had some great moments, and to experience it with the biggest wrestling fan and best reporter/historian in the business is always fun. It never gets old.

2. “Go Jericho Go”

The subtitle of this could be “Watching your favorites get old.”

I’ve actually told Chris Jericho this story before. I once went to work wearing a Chris Jericho shirt that had the words “Sexy Beast” on the front. My team knew that I was a wrestling fan and would wear wrestling shirts now and again. Little did I know, one of our main investors was in the office that day. My manager let me know that I should probably wear a jacket over that shirt while said investor was there.

Jericho enjoyed that story. But the reason I mention it is because that shirt came out in 2003 or 2004. That was over 20 years ago. And Jericho is still wrestling on PPVs in 2026. His opponent at WrestleDream was Nick Wayne. Nick was not alive when my shirt story happened.

Jericho vs. Wayne is a mid-card program, but one that I’ve paid close attention to. Yes, since I was one of the original Jerichoholics, I pay attention to most things Jericho. I’ve also known about Nick Wayne ever since he was a little kid, when his father, Buddy Wayne, was on Figure Four Daily with Bryan Alvarez.

There’s something psychological about watching someone you grew up watching and realizing you’re now close to the same age. How do they do it? My knees crackle when I walk. And while I still lift weights to stay strong, running is out of the picture with osteoarthritis in my knees.

While wrestling should be a younger person’s game for the most part, it’s fun to see who is still savvy enough to get it done when they should be retired.

I feel somewhat the same way in the tech world and corporate America. At some point, I’ll age out. Maybe sooner rather than later. It’s probably a little weird to look at wrestling in the same way as your own profession, but I think there are some parallels.

As the great American philosopher Mickey Goldmill once told Rocky, “Nature is smarter than people think.” Find your why. Do things that inspire you. And you can tell, wrestling still inspires Jericho.

In this match, Jericho and Wayne had a fun and engaging back-and-forth that was perfectly put together, with Jericho pulling out all of the tricks, including wearing a cup so that the low blow that Wayne has been using to beat him wouldn’t affect him. But even in outsmarting the youngster, he still lost, and Nick Wayne came out of the feud bigger than he was before it.

3. AEW’s ace and dealing with grief

I did several podcasts with AEW’s heart and soul, Jon Moxley. It was during the pandemic. I hope he got a kick out of it. I thought it was one of the cooler things I’d done in podcasting. If I had known then everything I know about podcasting now, those shows would’ve blown up. Instead, they are a fun memory and a cool experience.

Those podcasts were mostly related to the UFC. Moxley is a giant UFC fan. When Jon saw that I had a podcast network called Fight Game Media, he put two and two together and figured that he could talk about the UFC with someone. After the aforementioned Dave Meltzer and I had finished interviewing Moxley one time, he wanted to stay on air to ask me about Fight Game. At first, I thought he was fooling. Or just being a nice guy. I think I waited a few days to reach out to him and said something like, “Did you really want to do a show together?” He said he did. I still didn’t believe it was going to happen.

And yet it did. We did a handful of them. And they were pretty fun, yet surreal at the same time. I knew there was a time clock on them because the second the pandemic was over, he was going back on the road.

As we got to know each other a bit, I sensed he felt comfortable with me. He wanted my feedback on chapters of an early draft of his book and even used my blurb in the commercial for it. He joined my UFC pick 'ems game that I did with friends.

Post-pandemic, Dave and I did a show with him. He was in the process of relocating his family. You could tell his mind was going in a few different directions. And then he entered an inpatient alcohol treatment program immediately after. He left his very public entertainment job to better himself and stepped away from the pro wrestling limelight.

For such a man’s man type of guy, he’s also a vulnerable person. His ability to let his guard down a bit and allow his humanity to shine is one of his most endearing qualities.

It’s been three weeks since the sudden and tragic passing of one of Moxley’s crewmates and friends, Pac. I don’t know this for sure, but I would bet real money that folks in that AEW locker room are looking to Moxley for guidance in how to handle their own grief.

Moxley is showing folks how to handle it in real time inside the squared circle. On AEW Dynamite last Wednesday, in an interview with Renee Paquette, his real-life partner, he displayed his grieving on camera, with Marina Shafir telling him the only way out is through.

In his match with Mark Davis on this show, we saw an insane bloodbath, but underneath all the blood was Moxley being vulnerable again. He was dealing with his grief inside the ring for everyone to see. The storyline was exactly what Marina said. Moxley got through it.

4. Ilja Dragunov and the art of the surprise

Tony Khan is usually pretty great with surprises. The best one ever done in my wrestling memory was at All Out 2021, when Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole debuted on the same night.

The trick seems to be for the surprise to be a surprise for some, but not for all. Fans these days have access to so much information, and Tony Khan uses it to his advantage. Fans who follow websites like F4WOnline/Wrestling Observer and Fightful Select have enough information to make some very good educated guesses about any teased surprises. And when those fans start talking about it, it makes it more interesting to the more casual fans who aren’t as up to speed. So in that way, the surprises are hyped up, not necessarily by AEW, but by the fanbase. And when that wrestler comes out as the surprise, everyone can say, “I knew it!” Who doesn’t like being right?

On Saturday night, the latest surprise joined AEW. Ilja Dragunov isn’t going to be the next Bryan Danielson. But he can be another great player for them. He was often injured in WWE, but when he wasn’t, he was one of their most entertaining wrestlers. And he’s even better in person than what comes across on television. I can’t wait to see what Khan has in store for him.

5. Will Clockwork Carnage stick around?

Will Ospreay’s new creation debuted in AEW at WrestleDream. The match was fun and chaotic and led to some shotgun pinfalls. It didn’t take three finishing moves to pin someone in this match.

It also set up some future title contenders, which was the best part of the match. But I don’t think this match, as a PPV main event, is AEW’s version of the Royal Rumble, a match that they can use as the pillar of a yearly PPV.

I think it will be more like a Casino Gauntlet match, where if you need to create a title contender, you can throw people into the carnage.

Will Ospreay won the match and retained the AEW World Championship, pinning Adam Copeland seconds before the clock expired. That gave him three points while almost everyone else had two. The match also set up future title matches with Copeland, Samoa Joe, and possibly Darby Allin.

Overall, this was the main event, but as you can tell, I had more interesting things to write about concerning this show.