Dec 25, 2019
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#interview with the vampire#iwtv#amc tvl#sam reid#jacob anderson
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Lights Out: The Enigma at Eilean Mor
On December 26th 1900 Captain James Harvey’s ship the SS Hesperus made its way through the waters off the west coast of Scotland keeping an eye out for the 75ft tall tower that would signal the end of the journey for himself and his passenger Joseph Moore. Moore was a replacement lighthouse keeper and his turn to keep watch at the lighthouse was starting a bit later than usual due to storms earlier that week. He and Captain Harvey were sure that they man waiting for them was anxious for his turn to go back to land for a little while but when they arrived at the small island it was immediately clear something was wrong. The flags normally flying to welcome them were missing, horns and flares went unanswered, and there were no enthusiastic hands waving to them from shore. As they docked and walked up the 160 steps Moore later reported saying he had a feeling that something terrible had happened. He was right.
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Read the rest of the story in Hushed Up History Volume I, available now through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com!
An early 1900s postcard showing the Flannan Isles lighthouse
9/4/26 Fact or Fiction
Statement #1: John Cena will compete in another official professional wrestling match in his life. FICTION - At this point I can't see any reason why Cena would have another match as he has his post-wrestling career sewn up and already ticked off his Bucket List (even if his heel turn was the worst example of bungling the hottest storyline in years since the InVasion...), so there's nothing really for him to do other than stat pad...and his stats need about as much padding as Aletta Ocean's bra
Statement #2: You can explain in kayfabe why Smackdown’s champion and top contracted star, Cody Rhodes, is able to show up at a recent live Smackdown 10 minutes before the show is scheduled to end, in a company bus, and being less injured than other prompt superstars like Chelsea Green or Drew McIntyre. FICTION - It makes as much kayfabe sense as Triple H being dropped 50ft from a crane at Survivor Series in 2000, only to show up on Raw the next night with only a Band-Aid on his forehead
Statement #3: You can also explain, in kayfabe, why Smackdown GM Nick Aldis can tell Sami Zayn that there is no more room for him on the Wrestlemania card, yet a few days later on RAW, Seth Rollins, who was only minutes prior medically cleared to wrestle, seemingly gets a new match booked for Wrestlemania with Gunther, who also had been MIA for multiple weeks. FACT - Sure, if the kayfabe reasoning is that Nick Aldis cannot count, got a bump on his head so forgot that his job involves creating matches, or that he is prejudiced against gingers
Statement #4: Will Ospreay vs. Kenny Omega should main event this year’s AEW ALL IN PPV. FICTION - While there's no doubt Ospreay/Omega is the exact sort of match that should headline AEW's annual supercard, there's still a lot of very good arguments that the company's champion should headline - and I feel that MJF is going to retain the belt at Dynasty, which could set the stage for MJF/Ospreay at Wembley instead
Statement #5: The Don Callis Family in AEW is too big, and that’s a problem. FACT - I posted that meme about being marked safe from the Don Callis Family to my Bluesky in October last year. Since then they've added Jake Doyle and Volador Jr, so yeah they have too many members - especially since the only ones who really matter are Kyle Fletcher, Konosuke Takeshita and his world's slowest face turn, Kazuchika Okada, Mark Davis and Hechicero or, to put it another way, I have legit forgotten that Trent Beretta and Wardlow are members, which is never a good sign
Statement #6: WrestleMania would be better if it went back to being a one-night event. FICTION - The toothpaste is already out of the tube, so having two three-hour shows is pretty much normalised compared to the nearly five hour endurance test that was WM💩which somehow felt like it was three times that length given the booking was Vince at his spiteful worst. Does having the show over two nights risk diluting the event by having some matches which don't belong on the card? Sure...but don't pretend that was an issue even when WM was a one-night affair thanks to the mentality of trying to get everyone on the card so there were a bunch of tag team and six-mans up and down the card for years, for example The APA & Taz vs Right to Censor on the WMX7 card, let alone some outright clag such as The Kat vs Terri on the WM2000 card
411 Wrestling Fact or Fiction: Will John Cena Ever Wrestle Again? | 411MANIA | Wrestling News, WWE & AEW Results
25/4/25 Fact or Fiction
Statement #1: The endings to Wrestlemania 41, both Saturday and Sundays nights, were dumb. FACT - So dumb, in fact, that last year's repeated insistence that WWE was under new management immediately became suspect as WrestleMania ended on the sort of note that Vince would have thought was a brilliant idea no matter how many fans were trying to burn the stadium down. Yet somehow that wasn't the dumbest idea that WWE had over WrestleMania Weekend, as that honour goes to thinking that having Terry Heathcliff being a racist chode to various members of the WWE roster was exactly the sort of programming the event needed
Statement #2: The Wrestlemania triple threat match between IO SKY, Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair is one of the best matches you’ve ever seen. FICTION - Was it very good? Absolutely. Was it one of the best matches I've ever seen? No. There's, like, eighty Bryan Danielson matches ahead of it for a start
Statement #3: WWE made TNA champion Joe Hendry look like a geek at Wrestlemania in his quick loss to Randy Orton. FACT - ...and now we go back to asking whether we're sure that Vince is actually out of the building, because while Hendry getting steamrolled by Orton in three minutes can be called a bad call, the real damage was Michael Cole's comment after the match about how Hendry got his WrestleMania Moment™ which absolutely reeked of the sort of thing that Vince told his commentators to say in order to piss on the fire of any Undesirables
Statement #4: NXT Stand and Deliver should be on the Thursday night before Wrestlemania weekend. FICTION - Honestly, there's an obvious issue with this: airing TakeOver on Thursday cuts the legs off TNA, the company who NXT is supposed to be working with instead of doing things like jobbing out their champion in short order at WrestleMania before moving NXT special events to the night Impact airs. The logical decision would be to move it to Friday, since go-home episodes of both Raw and SmackDown tend to suck anyway so may as well give us some good content on the Friday before WrestleMania instead
Statement #5: Tetsuya Naito leaving NJPW in 2025 is not a big loss. FACT - While the optics of losing Naito do make it seem like a big loss, the Naito of 2024-5 is nothing like the Naito of 2016-18 who NJPW repeatedly chose to sacrifice at the Temple of Okada, because for the last few years Naito's performances have often felt halfhearted which has not dispelled the belief that he became Default Ace due to the likes of Omega and Okada departing and Tanahashi winding down his career
Statement #6: WWE events (PLE/PPV) were more enjoyable when ring mats weren’t covered in 9+ ads and the downtime between matches wasn’t twice as long as the actual matches. FACT - When it wouldn't surprise me to see one of those Hero Wars giantess fetish ads airing somewhere at or around ringside during a WWE match, you know the advertising has gotten more ridiculous than the average J1 League kit, and on a personal level I always find excessive crowbarring of advertising and/or product placement takes me out of the experience faster than my WiFi disconnecting, which is why I can't watch the opening ten minutes of Skyfall without hearing Bill Hicks' Artistic Roll Call skit in my head at the sort of volume usually reserved for Rammstein gigs
Was the ending of Wrestlemania 41 dumb? Jake Chambers and Kevin Pantoja debate this and more in the latest Wrestling Fact or Fiction.
14/3/25 Fact or Fiction
Statement #1: John Cena had the best heel turn of all-time at Elimination Chamber. FICTION – No matter which way you look at it, Cena’s heel turn cannot be considered the best heel turn ever. Case in point, the head says that Hogan’s heel turn in WCW and the formation of the nWo is the go-to answer for best heel turns in wrestling because that caused a monumental shift not just in WCW’s booking but in the industry as a whole as it made WCW the hot product… but then my head remembers that Hogan’s heel turn led to my least favourite booking trope in wrestling, namely the post-match beatdown segments which last longer than the match which preceded it, which I hated when the nWo did it, I hated it when Evolution did it, I hated when The Authority did it, I hated when the Inner Circle did it, I hated when the Bloodline did it, and I hated when I laboured this point by at least two stables too many.
Yet while the head says Hogan, the heart says CM Punk’s heel turn in the summer of 2005 as that was a hell of a lot of fun and the ROH fanbase genuinely believed that Punk was the egotistical hypocrite he was portraying, which as we all know is nothing like what he’s like in reality as the last two or three years have demonstra…oh.
Even in terms of the potential of the vaunted Cena Heel Turn, there were so many better times to do it: the obvious one was turning heel on The Rock for pretty much the same reasons he turned on Cody and it has to be said WWE did lay some groundwork there as we had Michael Cole hammering home Cena having his Worst Year Ever because his PPV win/loss record was nowhere near as bad as when he was wearing the colours of local sports franchises to get cheap pops only to back away from the setup the moment he won at Twice in a Lifetime, while the favourite scenario of pretty much every wrestling Youtuber a decade ago was having him cheat to end The Streak which never came close to being an option, so instead what we wound up with was a part-timer in the headline spot at WrestleMania in 2025. Has anybody said “New Era” yet…?
Statement #2: The Wrestlemania 41 live audience will boo “heel” John Cena. FACT – As amusing as it might be to have the crowd cheer Heel Cena (Heena?) which causes Michael Cole to throw up his arms thinking live crowds exist for the sole purpose of trolling his commentary, the reality is that a crowd actually being allowed to boo John Cena for the first time since Dawson’s Creek was on the air is likely to do so with relish, knowing full well that for the first time in decades the phrase “Bizarro World” will not be uttered by any commentator.
That being said, working on the basis that Cody wins (LOL) there will likely be a “Thank you Cena” chant that breaks out after the match, because at this point Cena isn’t the overpushed Vince avatar which is why fans turned on him so hard for well over a decade and the fanbase has had a chance to miss him, or at the very least the crowd will respect Cena for coming back when he really didn’t have to and, unlike Batista in 2014, isn’t being placed above somebody the audience clearly wants in that position in a way that made that year’s Royal Rumble a fascinating trainwreck in its latter stages.
Statement #3: Cena’s run will be so good this year that he actually won’t really retire. FACT – …but for a different reason, as while I see the heel turn being something Cena wanted to tick off his bucket list (and probably wanted to tick off his bucket list at least a decade ago) I can’t see it being what he wants to end his career on, so I’m wondering if they’re banking on “Thank you Cena” chants after the match and using that as a basis to build towards a match at SummerSlam where Cody & Cena team up against The Rock and… somebody who I honestly can’t think of right now, which certainly makes sense given SummerSlam will be over two nights this year so there’s room for other title matches and so forth across both nights so nobody would be bumped off the card so The Rock can ten minutes devoted to his entrance or whatever.
Statement #4: The “who attacked Jade Cargill” storyline is a good one. FICTION – Fun fact, this was the hardest question for me to answer. Mainly because I couldn’t decide which of the seventeen snarky comments which immediately came to mind to post, which necessitated me having to lie down in a darkened room for a half hour due to the migraine this caused.
Is a “Who attacked Wrestler A” storyline a good one? Obviously yes, provided the performer is compelling enough that they can keep the audience engaged for the weeks if not months it takes to come to the conclusion like finding out who ran over Austin and how long it would take to circle it back to Triple H anyway, or for the storyline to peter out and be quietly dropped and we’re supposed to forget such as the age-old question about who attacked HIDEO in the NXT parking lot.
And this just isn’t going to happen with Jade Cargill, because it feels less like a storyline to build to her return from injury that Austin’s run-in with the bonnet of a car was, and more like a cover to send her back to the Perfor2mance Center due to her debunking the argument that “aura” is more important than wrestling ability due to some of her performances over the last year being far worse than any of her clunky displays during her zombie TBS title reign and actively diminishing from Bianca Belair at this point.
Statement #5: You were excited to see the Hardy Boys back in a WWE (adjacent) ring in NXT. FICTION – While I was always an Edge & Christian mark above all else, back in the days where I would listen to rapcore unironically I was still a huge Hardy Boyz fan. And I needed to say this before I say anything else because, honestly, I haven’t felt excited by the Hardys for so long that my malaise may actually be of legal drinking age here in the UK as the vast majority of Hardys matches feel like what Now TV subscribers must experience when streaming Hardys matches from the Attitude or Ruthless Aggression Eras due to the matches almost looking like the matches they used to have only at a fraction of the speed and with certain spots having the very real danger that we might see somebody’s pelvis shatter into dust on a move they used to execute with such aplomb back in the days where we the PS2 had three GTAs rather than the modern world where GTA V has three PlayStations, or were part of the Broken Universe which I just could not get excited for once it became watching Matt Hardy’s forced meme for the week, leaving us with matches which are presented as something that should be exciting but in reality is as disappointing and mildly dispiriting as booking a holiday and then learning that your flight will be departing from Heathrow Terminal 5.
Statement #6: The Sami Zayn / Kevin Owens feud peaked long before their Unsanctioned Match at Elimination Chamber. FACT – For me at least, my favourite iteration of the Owens/Sami feud was the 2016 edition, as that started at the Rumble with Sami as a surprise entrant and him eliminating Owens, carried through them tearing each other apart during the Intercontinental ladder match at WrestleMania, gave us a damn good match at Payback and culminated with a superb match at Battleground where Sami finally proved he could beat Owens and was so determined to that he blasted him with a pair of Helluva Kicks to make sure he got the job done, as that had everything you needed: great matches, a storyline which could have written itself but the two made that that much more compelling t2hrough their character work, and it finished with the perfect emotional peak which the storyline needed yet did just enough to make you doubt it would never happen which can be summed up with the following gif…
Did John Cena have the best heel turn of all-time? Jake Chambers and D2KVirus debate this and more in the latest 411 Wrestling Fact or Ficti
21/2/25 Fact or Fiction
Statement #1: Jey Uso’s Royal Rumble win is in the Nakamura / Del Rio / Sheamus / Edge B-level category. FACT - Is he going to be challenging Cody at WM? No? Then by that definition alone he's going for the Opening Match Title, aka the Night One Title
Statement #2: You have watched a WWE PPV / PLE from a private corporate box. FICTION - Closest I've ever been to a private box is sitting in the press box of the local magistrate court. Got a pretty good show that day, mind...
Statement #3: Charlotte was the right call to be the first woman to win 2 Rumbles. FICTION - So much for that NEW ERA, eh? Then again, let's not pretend that Black & Gold NXT isn't where Charlotte began being an overpushed bore with zero character or anything
Statement #4: Kevin Owens losing ANOTHER title match at the Rumble was really uncool, even if the match was good. FACT - Owens has had a lopsided win/loss rate in title matches ever since he was fed to Goldberg, and it's certainly starting to get to the point where his being announced as a challenger is a borderline spoiler alert, which just plain sucks given he'd be money with the belt
Statement #5: The Berzerker really should have won at least one Rumble. FICTION - The obvious issue is that, once he got to the main event of WrestleMania, he'd have won the headliner...by count out, which would be such a wet fart booking-wise the crowd would simply shrug and file out of the arena in silence
Statement #6: John Cena will ultimately be remembered as a movie star like The Rock rather than a generational WWE superstar like Hogan or Austin. FICTION - Cena's been in wrestling far longer than he's been in movies, which is the exact opposite of The Rock, so he's going to have to be in films for like thirty years to address that, which pretty much guarantees he'll forever be seen as a wrestler-turned actor while The Rock is seen as...well I won't say "actor", that would imply he has the range to play a second persona
Statement #7: You believe in Joe Hendry… to win the WWE Title one day. FICTION - Do I think he deserves a shot? Absolutely. Do I think he will get it? Let's be honest: Hendry's Scottish, which means the big one will forever be just out of his reach, because fate loves to kick the Scots when they're up, down, or somewhere inbetween
Statement #8: Here’s a great idea for a Rumble match innovation: once a wrestler is eliminated, they can stay around the outside of the ring and if they can somehow pull someone out of the ring then they can take their spot. FICTION - That's an idea that Vince Russo would think is golden...which is also a fine suggestion for what sort of shower should be taken on that suggestion
Statement #9: Pro-wrestling basically peaked with Mini Mankind, Mini Vader and Mini Goldust. FICTION - Wee-LC or GTFO
Statement #10: The run of creative Rumble endings stopped after the 2004 match (except for the 2011 Santino fake-out) and from now on all we’re ever generally going to get again are these one-on-one superstar showdown deals. FICTION - Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, may I direct your attention to the 2018 Rumble where the final six was played as What Vince Wants (Reigns, Cena, Orton) vs What Philadelphia Wants (Nakamura, Balor, Mysterio) and when it got to the final four it turned into Vince (Reigns, Cena) vs NXT (Nakamura, Balor)
Statement #11: Since both of them have a had a pretty dull year, Roman Reigns probably shouldn’t have lost the WWE Title to Cody Rhodes at Wrestlemania last year. FACT- He should've dropped the title to Cody at WM two years ago. The final year of Roman's Reign of Terror was so padded it was impossible to give a shit about anything as it was obvious they were giving Cody a second WrestleMania go-round. And Sami was still the more logical choice to beat him, anyway
Statement #12: You have seen the future, and its name is Dominick Mysterio. FICTION - Working on the basis Dominik's character isn't going to have any major changes, that says he won't be the future - because his title reign would get boring pretty quickly
Statement #13: If the Hulk Hogan who won the 1990 and 1991 Rumbles was in a modern one, he would easily throw all the small-sized superstars of today over the top. FICTION - He'd have been barred from competing due to having radioactive piss. What a shame...
Statement #14: More people would have cared about like a Maven vs. The Boogeyman match at the 2025 Royal Rumble than that 2/3 Falls Motor City Machine Guns vs. DIY match. FICTION - Have we really gotten to the point that we've forgotten that The Boogeyman stopped being entertaining the moment the bell rang? Also, your MCMG slander will not stand here
Statement #15: Main event-ing the Saturday show is not really main event-ing Wrestlemania. FACT - While on a technicality people can say they headlined WrestleMania, the reality is that there's only one WrestleMania headliner match every year - and it's the title match that's been the focus of their booking for months if not the entire year not just of the programming, but also the one that's front and centre of the PR campaign
Statement #16: You don’t recognize Hacksaw Jim Duggan or Braun Strowman as real Royal Rumble winners. FICTION - Duggan counts. He's been a surprise Rumble entrant entirely because he counts
Statement #17: You wouldn’t have cheered so hard for Knockouts Mickie James and Jordynne Grace entering previous Rumbles if you knew that it would lead to TNA officially becoming a seeder system for the WWE. FACT - If I could find an Evolve fan and gauge their opinion on half their roster being announced for the Cruiserweight Classic to compare I would...but has anyone ever met an Evolve fan in the wild?
Statement #18: It’s never gonna happen for the Street Profits like it did for the Usos. FACT - Not least because I can remember the names of both Usos, but with the Street Prophets I seem to be incapable of remembering both their names at the same time
Statement #19: Starting with 5~10 wrestlers in the ring would be a good innovation to liven up the Rumble. FICTION - The Rumble works best when the various stories slowly unfold, for example in 2001 we managed to have several stories unfold within the first ten entrants: Jeff Hardy at No1 and then Matt Hardy at No3 that had them team up to eliminate Bull Buchannan (and later Faarooq), Matt and Jeff fighting each other, Drew Carey's appearance and faceoff with Kane, Al Snow attacking Raven when he took a powder to continue their feud, the Hardcore division run the Rumble for a bit prior to Kane going Beast Mode. If you had the same Rumble open with five or ten wrestlers it just wouldn't have worked that way
Statement #20: A random mid-carder or a “jobber” will never win a Rumble. FICTION - Albert Del Rio won one, the biggest one fact, and he put the "mid" into midcard
Statement #21: Despite her size, Roxanne Perez will be a successful star on the WWE main roster. FACT - I merely need to point to Alexa Bliss' success, as she's just as tiny as Rosanne Perez and she was second only to Charlotte for a while...in the ways that can be construed as both a good and a bad thing?
Statement #22: Despite her size, Lash Legend will NOT be a successful star on the WWE main roster. FACT - While she's shed the deserved criticism that she was receiving 2-3 years ago, I still can't see her breaking into the group of favourites at the head of the division such as your Horsewomen, Rhea or Belair - but crucially also can't see her breaking into the pack just behind them who get a fair shake such as Iyo, Kairi or Chelsea. In other words she's going to be somewhere between Piper Niven and Zoey Stark
Statement #23: I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the women’s Royal Rumble match only needs to have 20 entrants. FICTION - While the first couple definitely felt like they were trying to find anyone they handed their belongings to in a garbage bag in the previous 5-10 years to fill out the pool, these days they can fill out the thirty spots with little to no problem
Statement #24: Logan Paul will win the 2026 men’s Royal Rumble match. FICTION - Hopefully he'll be unable to perform due to the fallout of his crypto scam/feeding children lead/the after effects of his long-awaited boxing match against a combine harvester/the revolution having him pretty high up the list of who should be against the wall
Statement #25: Liv Morgan will win the 2026 women’s Royal Rumble match. FICTION - One thing I've noticed with the booking of the women's Rumble is there's only three people who are ever likely to win it: one of the first three entrants, a surprise entrant, or...Charlotte fucking Flair. For the former we have Bianca Belair in 2021 from No3, Rhea Ripley in 2023 from No1, and Bayley in 2024 from No3, while for surprise entrants we have Becky Lynch in 2019 and Ronda Rousey in 2022. Why do I bring this up? Easy: if Liv Morgan enters at No4, she's not winning
Statement #26: You will watch both the new WWE Evolve show and the LFG reality competition show. FICTION - Wasn't the complaint (one of the complaints, anyway...) from 7-8 years ago that it was becoming exhausting trying to actually keep up with all the content WWE was pumping out at the time, which had people legit choosing which of raw or SmackDown to drop from their watching habits? No idea why that suddenly popped into my head...
Statement #27: HHH’s booking is super boring. FACT - Watching somebody pushing their favourites gets boring a lot quicker when PPV cards are pared down to just the five matches most months, and that's before the identikit builds for programs, i.e. all of Cody's seem to be about Dusty and/or him leaving "The Other Place", all of Punk's seem to be about how nobody backstage likes him, all of Charlotte's being about there being a title match going free that weekend...
Statement #28: John Cena is a really nice guy who should have a really nice ending to a really nice career. FACT - ...although I'm going to play with the definition of nice ending as I don't feel that it should be winning a title and then hanging it up, instead it should be a match where the fanbase who has had time to miss what Cena can do with the right opponent and can give him the send-off that he's earned, and that's a sendoff that can be given since we're far removed from the days of CENAWINSLOL
Statement #29: CM Punk will face Stone Cold Steve Austin at Wrestlemania one day. FICTION - It's as much a pipedream as expecting a Punk feud to not be weeks of "Nobody backstage likes you" and other variations of doing that internet shit on TV that Punk suddenly doesn't seem to have an issue with...
Statement #30: You kinda forgot about AEW. FICTION - Literally watching Grand Slam after I post this, damning indictment on ITVX's upload schedule which this sentence may be seen to be...
Was Jey Uso the right choice to win the Royal Rumble? Dino Zee debates this and more in the latest Wrestling Fact or Fiction.
10/1/25 Fact or Fiction
Statement #1: You believe you could declare a new match that you are watching live for the very first time – while reviewing a show for 411 – as the best match of all time. FACT - The phrase instant classic exists for a reason, because sometimes you're watching a match and find yourself leaning forward, as you're getting into the action, or even biting at the false finishes, and you know that you're watching something great long before Reddit or Twitter tell you it was great in the days afterwards, or for that matter you can switch off the commentary failing the lesson "Show, don't tell" by telling you the match is the greatest of all time ten minutes in. Case in point, let's grab the Zayn vs Nakamura match from NXT: that took place in front of the smarkiest, most determined to get themselves over crowd that WWE had at the time, and they shut up and got into the match because it was that good that it made them sit down, shut up, and watch
Statement #2: High-concept gimmick matches, like the Royal Rumble, cannot truly be reviewed on the same 5-star scale that you use for traditional pro-wrestling matches. FICTION - The most simple reason this can't be the case is that if you can have a sliding scale of Royal Rumbles, with 2001 an example of the match at its very best while 2015 is an example of the match specifically engineered to piss off the people paying to watch it so they shut up and fall in line, which establishes that there is a ceiling and a floor for rating the match. But then we get to the meat: plenty of regular stipulations have multiple moving parts and nobody has any issue calling them five star matches, most obviously tag team and three-way matches, and there's plenty of six-man tags over the years that have had people raving that demonstrate you can increase the number of moving parts and nobody has trouble rating them highly - and then we take a step or two more, and ask if there are WarGames or TLC matches that people would rate that highly, and once again you will always find people who do even though there's not only an increase in moving parts but also certain other aspects which move the stipulation away from the most standard of match formulas, and considering there's certainly parallels with the layout of WarGames matches and the Royal Rumble, coupled with the Rumble often having the same number of moving parts as a tag, three-way, or multi-man tag then there really are no issues with rating it by the same criteria as other matches
Statement #3: By standards you use to review matches today, Savage vs Steamboat at WrestleMania III is a 5-star match: FACT - I take it that saying "Because it is" isn't a sufficient answer? Well then, the obvious reason why Savage/Steamboat can be considered a five star match today is because the match genuinely looks like you could drop it onto a modern wrestling card and it would still hold up, and considering so much of WWE's product of the time was looking dated even by the time Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels were in their ascendancy and certainly looks dated now at a time where one of the participants of those horribly dated spectacles is best known for getting the ever-loving shit booed out of him on Netflix
Is Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat at WrestleMania III a five-star match? Ryan Ciocco, Theo Sambus and Steve Cook debate this and more in t
23/12/24 fact or Fiction
Statement #1: You’re expecting big things from the second season of Squid Game. FICTION - Unless the money from the promotional tie-in at the Tottenham Stadium for the next couple of home games provides funds for a starting-quality defensive midfielder, because Yves Bissouma is the Katy Perry of defensive midfielders at this point
Statement #2: Movie adaptations of a Broadway-style musicals like Wicked are usually better than seeing the original stage version. FICTION - Broadway productions don't suddenly stop halfway through and tell you to come back next year for the second half, nor do they have blatant astroturfing campaigns to get their Letterboxd rating as high as possible. Oh, and their leading star isn't a one-woman PR apocalypse as they can't seem to open their mouth without insulting their audition partners or accusing fans of using AI to erase them from the film. Seriously, fuck Wicked
Statement #3: They can’t realistically make a Smile 3 that follows up on the ending of Part 2, so instead the next movie in the series should be a prequel. FICTION - It's a horror franchise, of course they can find a convoluted way to conjure a sequel. There's decades of evidence of this being a thing
Statement #4: You prefer comic book TV shows to be more procedural, like the CW shows, rather than the prestige and serialized style of HBO and Disney. FICTION - Here's a list of adaptations I've watched in the last few years which are neither: Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, Dr Stone, Lycoris Recoil...and now I remember I've used Crunchyroll, like, once in the last six months as the platform is utterly broken
Statement #5: Nosferatu will be a Best Picture contender at the Academy Awards next year. FICTION - The only way that might happen is if critics keep referring to what is an obvious horror film as a thriller, and maintain that delusion thirty years after it won a couple of Oscars as if the Academy might take Anthony Hopkins' gold baldie back. But if they insist on it being a horror film, the Academy will continue pretending it doesn't exist
Statement #6: Movies and TV will get higher ratings, bigger box office and be more subversive and interesting during Trump’s presidency. FICTION - Don't Look Up is the perfect example of why this won't be the case: because the registered sex offender is such a ridiculous figure to begin with most attempt at satire have to make him that bit more ridiculous, so instead of being subversive instead all you have is broad farce that just doesn't hit the way that it should. Ditto goes for attempts at satirising the actual president, who as Don't Look Up and Glass Onion demonstrated attempts at satirising tend to be very surface level instead of going in two-footed on the Apartheid-era white Afrikaant with daddy issues, remarkable levels of projection that can only come from a regular on Epstein Island, and a crippling inability to accept the word no from business partners, underlings or any woman
Will Nosferatu be a contender for Best Picture at the Oscars? Jeremy Thomas and Joseph Lee debate this and more in the latest Fact or Fictio