The Wrestling Podcast, Episode 16: Jeffrey Paternostro

For Those About to Man Mountain Rock, We Salute You

Do you like baseball, Dragon Gate and longing for Daniel Bryan's theme song to be "The Final Countdown" once more? Then you'll love the podcast this week as I have longtime friend and Amazin' Avenue blogger Jeffrey Paternostro on the show. We dish about Alberto del Rio, CM Punk, Toryumon and Dragon Gate, CIMA, women's wrestling and a lot of baseball talk. Is Curt Schilling a Hall of Famer? Do the Phillies have a good offense? Do I revel in the fact that in two months, Jair Jurrjens' ERA went up about a run? All that and more are tackled in this week's edition, the LONGEST episode ever.

Direct link for your downloading pleasure.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Enter the Dragon

Still the Champ

- Dragon Gate USA had a triple-shot of shows this weekend, culminating in an iPPV last night that had feed problems. Feed problems suck, but Gabe Sapolsky is making good on the customer dissatisfaction by throwing in a free viewing of their Open the Southern Gate show along with any purchase of last night's show on demand. This is how companies should operate. Anyway, the first night of action in Revere, MA, on Frriday was headlined by an Open the United Gate Championship defense by PAC and Masato Yoshino over YAMATO and Akira Tozawa. Saturday night's show on Long Island didn't have any title matches, but saw Ricochet defeating PAC and Rich Swann in what probably was a breathtaking spotfest of the main event. Last night's show looked pretty loaded. The Dirty Ugly Fucks of Sami Callihan and Arik Cannon took out Masaaki Mochizuki and Susumu Yokosuka, and the Ronin stable defeated the Blood Warriors group in an elimination match, with Johnny Gargano getting the final elimination on Austin Aries (giving him a receipt from Friday night's singles match where Aries was victorious). In the main event, PAC was unsuccessful in his attempt to corner the market in American DG gold, as YAMATO retained his Open the Freedom Gate Championship.

- Apparently, Mick Foley's exit from TNA on Thursday's show was more shoot than they let on at the time. According to several news outlets, and according to Foley's Twitter itself, he's out of TNA after "trying to change the creative process" and all that other jazz. While the fact that all the usual suspects are reporting this as news lends credence to it being real news, I am still suspect at the timing of it, ESPECIALLY given that Vince Russo has never met a worked shoot he didn't like. That being said, if Foley shows up on RAW in three months, then I'll readily admit that I was wrong, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that this is some elaborate work. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to your discretion, I suppose.

- Betty George, the first wife of wrestling icon and WWE Hall of Famer Gorgeous George, passed away Friday at the age of 98. Wow, 98, that's a hell of a run. Regardless though, I wish my sincerest condolences to her family and friends.

- Finally, this isn't so much wrestling news as it's site news, but I'm rebooting all the features on the blog. The Six Packs, the Best Move Ever, Know Your Indie Wrestlers... they're all going to start over again. What does that mean? Eh, just that I'll be repeating topics and such. But yeah, so if you see a repeat for any feature, you know now why, so at least I can point you to a warning rather than you going "BLOGGER Y U NO HAVE ORIGINAL TOPICS FOR FEATURES?"

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!