It's wild how much the carny game has changed. Back in the 70s and 80s, when the carny game operated more on an international good ol' boy tax evasion entertainment system, you could test a random guy you met at a bar to see if they're psycho enough to join in your local sect of the carny scheme. And fuck, the way they talk about spot shows, I can see why they worked 6 days a week. What a sweet boomer life. We need to bring back skimming off the top. Our cashless society doesn't have enough petty theft anymore imo. Working 6 days a week also meant just about all of them got a clue. Also, Bockwinkel's damn good at making people mad at him.
MJF vs Max Caster, two accomplished pros. They're from an era of angel investors - money marks who are willing to fund their carny game for the sake of carny art, and both of these guys are carny artists. You get the scissoring, the "let's go max", the rapping, the kangaroo kick, the eye pokes, ect, ect - moves and carny gimmicks that they've both spent their entire careers getting over with crowds. This show isn't a championship match and, even if it was, it'd be obvious who's going over. This is a match that would never be booked for TV. Max Caster has fallen so far down the card that even an Acclaimed push couldn't pull him up. That's reality. For whatever reason, 1/2 of one of the only modern tag teams to deserve an audible during a championship tag team match, one of the best working carnies, is forced to sit his athletic prime at home and collect a lot of money. The only way his carny career can progress is if he joins the MAGA company. But fuck that. The MAGA carny company is downsizing and using AI now. They're psycho. I wish the same Saudi money marks who resurrected SNK would've bought the MAGA company from scat man. Wasting time at the autistic infinite money company and having occasional indie bangers for fun sounds like the right play in this economy. Ditto for the other Max. He's way better off in his current carny fed. Better to have an autistic boss who's a hugger than to deal with bootstraps boomers who want to make you read AI written scripts as "promos", which they will then fire you for.
I should also mention that carny schools weren't a thing during that AWA match - not that that's a bad thing. After the dismantling of the original good ol' boy system, carnies realized they could recoup costs. It's sorta like how improv students will pay for improv classes so they can start teaching improv classes and charge others to learn improv. Scientology has a good business model tbh. Good on Create a Pro for actually creating several pros. It's kind of like Second City when one of their alumni makes it to SNL.
Oh yeah, congrats to big tunes billy on the new NWA deal on Comet. I doubted the dicing episodes up into 42 minute chunks, but that makes for good TV.
I wish he'd stop wasting the Southern Six on a part time schedule tho. Even the extra matches with the Juggalos* aren't enough tbh. Promoters aren't paying for dark matches anymore, which could (this is pure speculation that I'm pulling out of my ass as an observer) create a carny skill gap. I can see why they'd want to block out games with spots instead of calling everything on the fly when they have so few matches in front of crowds to begin with.
*Violent J is another angel investor money mark with his own unprofitable vanity carny game league
I think about Jarrett & Dutch's PBS match a lot. The amount of reps to get to this level of smooth must be insane. Carnies need to link up with orchestras more often.