Jason Bryant

Pick up my annual Preview Guide at wrestlingpreviewguide.com - it’s great for winning and hosting things like this. This year’s won’t be available until Tuesday(ish) before D1s.

I will tolerate zero Ollie hate. He’s awesome.

I feel like this is a real life Dave Skylark situation going on ...

Having only been to Moscow in Russia, I didn’t find the subways to be notably better than anyplace else I’ve traveled overseas (I’ve been to 29 countries). I found the old Russian subway cars pretty unforgiving and the subway itself reeking of cigarettes - which isn’t uncommon in Eastern Europe and Russia. From my experience, the Moscow subway is pretty easy to navigate, despite not knowing much Cyrillic.

I made a simple New Year's Resolution to read more books. I'm starting slow, trying to read a new book a month. As an avid podcast listener, I have to get back into the habit of turning pages. January: I completed Prisoners of the Castle by Ben MacIntyre, which chronicles the numerous stories of the escape attempts from Colditz, a German POW camp housed in an old castle. February: Currently reading Trash Talk: The Only Book about Destroying Your Rivals That Isn't Total Garbage. I was interviewed for this one, so it was sent to me and the author reached out to come on the show to talk about it. So when I have a guest on the show who wrote a book, I want to read the book so I'm educated on the topic. This one dives into the psychology of trash talk, interviewing some of the great sports villains across the ages. I'm about halfway through it. Pretty fun stuff and I get quoted in spots, although I do feel I'm being presented there as a pro wrestling journalist rather than a pro-wrestling journalist. I also listened to an audiobook two weeks ago using the Libby app (local libraries) called Games of Deception by Andrew Maraniss, which talks about the first U.S. Olympic basketball team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler-run Germany. I'd previously listened to his book about the first U.S. Olympic women's basketball team in 1976 in Montreal, so while its about roundball, I dig Olympic sports history and that one featured a former great from my alma mater. I don't "count" audiobooks in this exercise as reading, because you're not actually reading.

We were the Bulls (or Islanders or Bull Islanders) and in my era, we played Bulls on Parade by RATM. Nationally ranked at the time, so my thinking was when we played it, it added that intimidating edge to the poor local team we were about to beat 78-3.

Yeah, this is a puzzling comment since Tommy and Kevin are still putting out episodes. They just released episode 453 this week. Their website and feed address hasn’t changed ever.

Wood Selig.

I hadn’t watched them really ever. Wife suggested it and boom. I can’t think of a time where I enjoyed an awards show as much - except maybe the first ESPYs and the 92 and 93 VMAs. I keep watching Fast Car over and over.

Because he's a play-by-play guy, he's not an analyst. They are two different roles. The color commentator goes into the weeds with technique, nuance. That's not what the lead broadcaster's role is. Shane's knowledge on the sport is more than the basic "down and distance" type of thing, but he's also not going to throw things at you that drown out the important things - the action on the mat. I will whole-heartedly agree with you on one point though - we aren't the target market. Hell, I'm fortunate enough to be a voice at the NCAA championships and I know most of the fans in the building know more about the sport from a technical point of view than I do - but my role isn't to explain the sport to people. It's "down and distance" with a sprinkling of stats, history and nuggets of information. I live in the weeds with the stats and records, but I don't with the technical parts of the sport. Those of us on the boards usually fall under the umbrella of "we already know about what we're watching" so you're right there. We aren't the target demo. I've spent a lot of time on the broadcast side for a number of sports - the guy leading the broadcast is going to focus on leading the broadcast and setting up the analyst. Too much inside baseball for a niche sport like wrestling would turn more viewers away than it would bring them in. We'd still watch, but that's about it.

Shane isn’t there because he’s a hype guy - he’s there because he works his butt off and earned the right to be the lead guy. He’s always “on” and his hype isn’t a schtick. Hype guys don’t do research and appreciate action like Shane does. He’s excitable and has a nearly unmatched passion for the sport.

I rarely wager, but when I do, it's usually $1 or a local beverage of choice. I mean, as of this posting, I have 653 posts on the new board - MOST of them are replies to threads started by other folks. I haven't started 653 threads. Cinnabon might have, though.

For the sake of not getting into Jimmy-isms. I'll then ask you this - Do you or have you ever read/use/browse X (formerly known as Twitter)? You posted it four minutes after I posted the answer, quoting a Basch tweet.

You clearly just saw me post this on X/Twitter and came here to ask the question, already knowing the answer.

That particular dual was small schools in Southwest Virginia ... which I was told it was actually three separate team-point deductions. I remember the situation because it made it as an item in my old wrestling column when I worked at the paper.

Negative points in a dual happens at least once a year across all levels of men’s collegiate wrestling. The victims are usually then underfunded or non-scholarship types of programs at the D1 level. I haven’t seen anything below -1 in recent memory. I saw a -3 about 20 years ago in a HS dual.

Sandy Son Norman?

Cael's middle name is Norman.

They have in the past. Not sure if that's changed in recent years.

None of the wrestling scenes in The Last Champion were shot in slow motion either.

Dark matches are matches that are live, but not televised. Events that are live, but not televised are called “house shows.” There might be a handful of dark matches tonight before the Royal Rumble, for example.

You don’t get buried in house shows, that is where you actually have development. That Indian sports website is also trash.

There is another video showing a view of the kid on top sinking in a choke and quickly pulling an arm under an arm, but I can’t seem to post it here from my phone. It was quick and the ref was on top of the position, before Brunson jumped in. So the discussion calling it a merkle isn’t fully accurate but no way do you put your hands on another kid. here’s the FB link to that post though … He shouldn’t be allowed to coach anyone’s kid, let alone his own if this is how he reacts to that quick of a position. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/gqjhkSUU2iHXkEL5/?mibextid=K8Wfd2

Yeah, I never saw it. I did some voice work for the background scenes, got an IMDB credit for it, but never saw this ever released.