Destination America Brings More Action To The Ring Acquiring The Rights To RING OF HONOR’s Weekly Television Programming

27th May 2015 by Scott Keith

I'd say this is probably bad for TNA…

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 27, 2015           CONTACT: Nikki Suseck | 212-548-5452 | [email protected]   DESTINATION AMERICA BRINGS MORE ACTION TO THE RING ACQUIRING THE RIGHTS TO RING OF HONOR’S WEEKLY TELEVISION PROGRAMMING   (Silver Spring, Md.) –Destination America announced today that it has signed a national broadcast deal with professional wrestling league RING OF HONOR, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., bringing one of the most respected wrestling organizations to the only network dedicated to all-American entertainment. Destination America is now the one-two-punch to professional wrestling, adding RING OF HONOR (ROH) to its line-up after launching IMPACT WRESTLING in early 2015. RING OF HONOR has been delivering top wrestling matches for ten years with captivating hard-hitting stars such as Jay & Mark Briscoe, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, The Young Bucks, Maria Kanellis, Adam Cole and Jay Lethal.  Destination America will pack on the action beginning Wednesday June 3 with the series premiere of RING OF HONOR at 8/7c leading into brand new premieres of IMPACT WRESTLING at 9/8c.   "With the electric and intense matches that RING OF HONOR provides, Destination America is the network for fans to get an entire evening of jaw-dropping entertainment on Wednesday nights,” said Marc Etkind, general manager of Destination America. “RING OF HONOR showcases tenacity, athleticism and passion and it serves as the place where America’s favorite wrestling stars are born.”   “We are very excited to be partnering with Destination America for the broader distribution of the ROH programming,” commented Joe Koff, Chief Operating Officer – Ring of Honor Wrestling.  “ROH will now reach an additional 57 million households including those in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and other large cities where Ring of Honor is not currently airing.   ROH has a loyal fan base and is one of the fastest growing major wrestling franchises in the country.  With this great partnership with Destination America, we can continue to expand our footprint and reach while producing entertaining, original content and continuing to provide wrestling fans some of the best wrestling content available.”   RING OF HONOR will premiere on Wednesday, June 3 leading into IMPACT WRESTLING, making Destination America the home for wrestling every Wednesday evening. The first match will feature the Briscoe Brothers, Mark and Jay, as they face off with the House of Truth in the main event.  Also catch athletes of New Japan Pro Wrestling battle it out with the RING OF HONOR stars and follow former NFL lineman Moose compete against BJ Whitmer.   Since launching in 2012, Destination America has become one of cable’s top fastest-growing networks, and continues to earn telecast ratings records among key series.  In 2015 to date, Destination America has acquired over 50 million unique viewers. With top series that explore unique American cultures and ways of life – including Paranormal Survivor, Hillbilly Blood, Buying the Bayou, and BBQ Pitmasters – Destination America’s programming spans the nation from Alaska, Hawaii and Colorado to Louisiana, West Virginia and communities in between. To find Destination America, go to destinationamerica.com/watchda.   About Destination America Destination America is the only network to celebrate the people, places, and stories of the United States. The inclusive network targeting Adults 25-54 is available in more than 57 million homes, emblazoning television screens with the grit and tenacity, honesty and work ethic, humor and adventurousness that characterize our nation. Destination America features travel, food, adventure, home, and natural history, with original series like BBQ Pitmasters; A Haunting; Mountain Monsters; Buying Alaska; Buying the Bayou; and Railroad Alaska. For more information, please visit DestinationAmerica.com, facebook.com/DestinationAmerica, or twitter.com/DestAmerica. Destination America is part of Discovery Communications (Nasdaq: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK), the world’s #1 pay-TV provider reaching nearly 3 billion cumulative subscribers in 220 countries and territories.   # # #   Please visit the Press Website at http://press.discovery.com/us/da/programs/ring-honor/ for additional press materials Follow us on Twitter at @DestAmerica Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/DestinationAmerica Visit us online at DestinationAmerica.com     Nikki Suseck Discovery Communications w: 212.548.5452 c: 347.334.2403  

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Last Action Hero Redux

5th November 2013 by Scott Keith
http://www.avclub.com/articles/why-last-action-hero-failedand-why-it-deserves-to,105120/
One of my favorite topics — why Last Action Hero was such an underrated and fascinating trainwreck of a failure — explored by the AVClub.  I have a ridiculous love-hate relationship with this movie that I'm pretty sure I've talked about before, in that I know how ridiculous and terrible it is most of the way, but it's just such a COOL concept and I'm unable to look away.  Luckily Shane Black went on to make an more unambiguously awesome trainwreck with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, much in the same cliche-busting fourth-wall-wrecking vein.  But with Robert Downey instead of Arnold.
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DC Comics Action Figures

31st July 2013 by Scott Keith

———- Forwarded message ———-

Hey Scott, I know there's a ton of other comics fans on your blog. Every year, Mattel does a subscription service for DC figures – one figure a month, with the first three for 2014 scheduled to be 90s harpoon-hand Aquaman, Superboy Conner Kent, and Ice, with a Doomsday subscription-exclusive figure. Since the sub needs a certain number of subscribers to go through each year and is only available on the barely-advertised MattyCollector.com site, I was wondering if you could let everyone who reads your blog know about it. Subscription period ends August 19th.

More information is available in this flyer: http://24.media.tumblr.com/9dc8667d4b9bbeead41944ded2156208/tumblr_mqiyy89IBl1rh91t7o1_1280.jpg

Thanks!

Joel

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Random Match of the Day: Action Zone Tag Match

8th January 2013 by Scott Keith

This might be one of the great “forgotten” matches in WWE/F history as you never hear about it in any “greatest” polls, but it truly is a great match with a hot crowd:
 http://www.wwe.com/videos/bret-hart-and-british-bulldog-vs-bob-backlund-and-owen-hart-actionzone-february-26072000

Sadly, WWE.com videos are not available to view for people of a Canadian persuasion, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this one and it was great. 

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Psychology or Action?

29th December 2012 by Scott Keith
Hey Scott, long time etc etc etc etc


I was watching two matches the other day in my ongoing attempts to educate myself on Puro, and I stumbled upon some very interesting points about wrestling in general I wanted the blog to chew on while watching a pair of Joshi matches. One match featured Megumi Kudo vs Aja Kong, the other was an Explosive Barbwire match between the same Kudo and Combat Toyoda. (Links are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBfx9yqZUU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW-Nwxwqps respectively)

The Kong v Kudo match was pretty entertaining, as Aja Kong is an awesome, high-caliber Vader/Samoa Joe style worker with a great skillset, blending well with the typical JOSHI FIGHTING SPIRIT~! of Kudo. However, there was some stuff in that match that bugged the hell out of me, namely a parity sequence at the start involving the wiry Kudo and the butch, dangerous-looking Kong. I thought it'd make a hell of a lot more sense to have a storyline of "Kong maims Kudo. Kudo gets brief comeback. Kong shrugs it off, resumes acting like total destructive monster heel by maiming Kudo more." would work. Then, Kudo used a series of armbars to neutralize the spinning backfist, Kong's finisher. Sound psychology, but they had Kong sell the armbars, which made no sense cause Kong, while a good seller, looks like a total monster that shouldn't feel pain from a glorified resthold. She then proceeded to do the finisher something like 6 times anyways with the bad arm for the eventual win, thus nullifying the whole point of doing the armbars.

Then, the other match came along, the Explosive Barbwire match, which was totally different despite featuring someone similar to Kong in Toyoda being Kudo's opponent. A lot of stalling was involved, and there were some rather simple spots like a test of strength, knuckle lock and irish whips where they tried to shove each other into the barbed wire in order to cause major damage to their opponent. This match, by contrast, told a really excellent story, in that both were trying to use their brain and simpler techniques to get their opponent into the Barbed wire, but the action was subpar, until they built to a hot finish leading to Toyoda kicking out of a very scary botched neck-drop powerbomb which would've left her wheelchair-bound in any other universe, then almost getting hurt again with a Vertebreaker for the pin.

I liked both matches though, which got me to thinking: Obviously, the best matches include both a quality story being told by the participants in the ring and solid, high-caliber action to build the story up. But really, which one is more important to have in a match? Is it sometimes better to have a match with jaw-dropping action but no real flow to it, or is it better to have a slow, methodical match that tells a strong story? Is less sometimes more when it comes to the point you want to convey to the audience with your booking?

Yeah, that's a toughie.  I think it comes down to knowing your audience and adjusting based on their needs, rather than doing the same thing for everyone. For me personally, sometimes I have patience to watch Randy Orton working a headlock for 15 minutes on John Cena, and sometimes I don't.  Mostly I don't.  So even by individual fans, reactions can vary wildly.  I'd like to think it's "safer" to err on the side of having a crazy action-packed match that can at least disguise weaknesses, but by the same token when something like that doesn't mesh it can go wrong FAST.  However, if you're actually trying to tell a story to the audience, it is often better to do something slower and more deliberate.  
What I'm saying is that wrestling is a very very tricky artform to master, especially with the variable of giant crowds of fickle fans sometimes changing plans that people had.  That's likely no help whatsoever, but that's what I got for you.

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Yes! Yes! Yes!…. I Mean No! – WWE taking legal action over use of Yes chant

4th June 2012 by Scott Keith

I know the WWE has been involved in some bizarre legal issues over the years but if this is true then surely it has to rank high amongst them?
 
"WWE has started to seek out "infringing uses" of Daniel Bryan's "YES" slogan, so that they can take legal action."
 
http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/news/240978/WWE-News:-Richie-Steamboat-&-Dean-Ambrose-on-the-Road,-Sid-Vicious-Teases-Major-Appearance,-More.htm

I'm assuming the nebulous 411 report would be referring to their legal monkeys going after bootleg t-shirts and the like, since the YES shirt is a big seller, although I should note that 411 stole that report word-from-word from PWInsider without any context.  You can't trademark a word (like "Yes") but you can trademark a shirt design, especially if it's an easy one to rip off like Bryan's.  And really, even if someone is doing an innocent "Yes" shirt on Cafepress, WWE can easily bully them into stopping.  If that's what this is about, I'm on WWE's side for once — you have to protect your trademarks or risk losing them.  
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