Released on $10 Patreon today was the latest team match-up, with two new teams debuting.

SPOILERS FOR FINAL EXAM VS. THE EXPERIMENT

The two new teams are the Final Exam, which included Lon Harris and Paul Oyama, and The Experiment, who are Marc Edward Heuck and Eliot Dewberry.

The match was good, but I really wanted to talk about Lon Harris.

He was fantastic.  Previously, Lon Harris had played the character of “The Professor” and was snooty and was a film snob.  He formed teams with JTE and his brother, but neither really took off.  Last time we saw Lon, he stormed off the set and it was unknown what he was going to do.

Then, there was a cut scene with Lon and Winston Marshall, the manager of S.W.A.G.– the team that drafted Lon, and we got a hint of the new character that Lon is going to play.  There is no more of the academic.  Now he is the Delinquent.  Drinking alcohol, lacking any motivation, ready to give it all up, Lon is completely different than the last time we saw him.

Then, watching this match, Lon was on fire.  Not only with the trivia, but with his character work.  As The Delinquent, Lon was funny as Winston and Paul tried to keep Lon from wandering off.  Lon played it as if he had never seen a Schmoedown before and was even surprised it was being filmed.  He acted as if he had no idea who Shannon Barney, KOrruption manager and manager of The Experiment, was.

He seemed refreshed from the last time I saw him and he showed it in his game.  I am very excited to see Lon continue this character and to see where he goes with this.

Lon was not the only new direction shown in this episode.  Paul Oyama dropped the leather jacket and sunglasses and brought a new approach with his attitude.  Oyama was more likable here than at any point last year.

We also saw the continuation of the storyline of the break up of the Wildberries with Shannon and Marc Edward Heuck tormenting Eliot Newberry.  At some point this season, this is building up toward Josh Macuga returning and saving Eliot from the evil KOrruption.

The team league looks to be off the charts this season, with a ton of new teams joining the fantastic carry over teams.  Such a powerful group of teams.

This match will be available to all on YouTube this Thursday.

SPOILERS FOR SCHMOEDOWN THROWDOWN

Season 7 of the Movie Trivia Schmoedown has come out hot.

One week out of one of the greatest single title matches in the Schmoedown history, they are at it once again.

Kristian Harloff, attempting to provide the best content available for $10 and above Patreons of the MTS, had announced that they wanted to do more Schmoedown Throwdowns, live streams of matches from Collider Studios.  The first of which took place on March 7, 2020 and it was a doozy.

In a number one contender match, former champions KOrruption (Mike Kalinowski and Chance Ellison) took on The Family (Drew McWeeny and Andrew Ghai).  This match was strong and showed how competitive both teams were.  KOrruption pulled out a 36-31 victory as they broke a tie game by answering their 5-point question in the third round.

As competitive and entertaining the match was, the biggest news happened in the post interviews.  The wonderful Jenn Sterger returned from her AEW duties to conduct the backstage interviews and chaos ensued.

After speaking with the rightfully braggadocios KOrruption, managed by Shannon Barney, who spent some time ripping on the reigning team champions Founding Fathers (Dan Murrell and John Rocha) Jenn suddenly found her hands full with The Family.

An interview with Andrew Ghai is always a challenge, but this shock wave was created by “The Godfather” Drew McWeeny.  The Family is a member of the faction called The Usual Suspects, managed by Samm Levine, McWeeny’s former team championship partner (in Above the Line).  However, Samm could not attend the match this Saturday and assigned team faction member Jeannine the Machine to take his place.  McWeeny expressed some frustration after the loss to KOrruption.

[Responding to Sterger’s question about being beat up over the loss] “I wouldn’t say that I was beat up over it.  I’ve just reach a point where I’ve realized something. Um, you know I was promised a lot of stuff by a lot of people,” said McWeeny.  “I think I’d feel better if my manager had shown up, and I feel, in general, like, maybe, just maybe, you guys can do this by yourselves.  I think I’m retired, folks.  Have a good day.”

At this point, McWeeny walked out of the interview, leaving Ghai and Jeannine with their mouths open.  This opened the door for a gloating Kalinowski to come into the interview to rub the salt into the wounds.  Kalinowski made reference to the time he left his team, DC Movie News, because of lack of support.  He took the opportunity to challenge Ghai to a one-on-one match in Houston in April.

Ghai, never off balance for too long, apologized to Kalinowski for his own behavior during the DC Movie News break up and told Mike that it wasn’t his fault.  Offering a hug, Ghai kept telling Mike that it wasn’t his fault, finally accepting the challenge.  The apology may not have been too sincere.

This was shocking.  It was also turnabout.  Twice now over the last couple of years, Drew McWeeny has had a team partner up and retire on him.  First, Samm Levine retired from active game play while they were Above the Line.  They were also the team champions at this point, causing them to forfeit the titles.  McWeeny has been unsuccessfully chasing those belts since that split.

Then, last year after the defeat of The Family by Shazam (William Bibbiani & The Kid) for the Ultimate Schmoedown Team Tournament victory, Ghai, frustrated over his inability to get those titles back for McWeeny, announced his retirement.

Ghai changed his mind on retirement, but there were still several weeks/months that McWeeny did not know what was going to happen (although the match where Ghai retired aired only days before the match where he reversed the retirement, the team match was pre-taped and had occurred in real time considerably earlier).

This shocking announcement from McWeeny has opened a ton of questions.  Is this McWeeny actually looking for a break?  Is this storyline?  Will McWeeny try to force a trade from Levine?  Is The Family completely broken up?  Will we get a Samm Levine-Drew McWeeny pre- or post-scene?  The announcement from McWeeny was extremely well done because I did not see it coming and, since the studio audience went completely silent when it happened, they did not see it coming either.

This match also saw the return to form of snarky heel Mike Kalinowski.  There was no breaking character from Mike this week as he was in full heel mode and was doing some top line work.  The idea of some of the wicked promos between Kalinowski and Ghai leading to the Houston event makes me giddy.

The excellence of season 7 of the Movie Trivia Schmoedown continues on.  Get all of the great trivia entertainment by joining the Schmoedown Patreon at patreon.com/schmoedown.

Tonight, we had one of the great Movie Trivia Schmoedown Championship Matches of all-time as the current champion, Ben “The Boss” Bateman defended his recently won championship against the G.O.A.T, the 3-time former Movie Trivia Schmoedown Champion, “Dangerous” Dan Murrell at a live Schmoedown event in Atlanta, Georgia.

SPOILERS from this point on…

In an epic battle, trivia vs. gamesmanship, old guard vs. new guard, faction-mates inside the Finstock Exchange, Horsemen, Dan Murrell reclaimed the Movie Trivia Schmoedown Championship in sudden death overtime, 27-26, to become a four-time singles champion.

Dam Murrell is certainly the greatest player of all time and should be the first player named to anyone’s list of Schmoedown Mt. Rushmore.

Ben Bateman has become one of the more strategic planners of the league.  There has not been an angle to a match that he has not considered.  He had been on a massive run at the end of season six of the Schmoedown as he won the Ultimate Schmoedown tournament and won the singles title against former champion Paul Oyama in a dominant performance at the Spectacular in December.

Ben had a lot of history going against him tonight.  Not only was he staring across the stage at someone who is widely regarded as the best to play the game, but Dan had some other seemingly insurmountable facts.  Dan Murrell is undefeated at live events (including last year’s Free-4-All).  Dan Murrell had never lost a match in which he was challenging for the championship.  His career record was a masterful 13-5 with 8 KOs.

However, Ben Bateman has a drive to be the best ever and he knew that, if you want to have a chance to one day call yourself the G.O.A.T., you had to defeat Dan Murrell.

There was also some controversy leading up to the event as Ben Bateman complained that, since they were in the same faction, letting Dan be managed by active player, faction-mate, team partner and one of the all-time greats, “The Outlaw” John Rocha was unfair.  Bateman claimed that Rocha’s knowledge of trivia would give Dan an advantage if dealing with a challenge, whereas the actual faction manager, “Bobby Gucci” Tom Dagnino would be unable to help at the same level.  This played out on SEN Live and other online shows, teasing a rift inside the Finstock Exchange.

The level of hype for this match had been unmatched.  Since Dan defeated William Bibbiani and “The Kid” Brendan Meyer at the last live event in a triple threat number one contender match, Schmoedown Chairman Kristian Harloff has been pushing the narrative that this could be one of the greatest championship matches ever seen in the Schmoedown.  They pushed this match for the last month a great deal on his Schmoedown Entertainment Network (SEN).  This was a case where the match delivered on the hype.

Dan had a perfect round one and led 9-6 going into the wheel round.  After the second round, Dan’s lead had slipped to 15-14.  Dan Murrell had spun the category Anne Hathaway and he missed a question about Colossal.  This was a huge swing in the match because, in hindsight, we know that, had Ben been able to steal that one point miss, the end of this match would turn out differently.  This was going to be a theme of the night.

In the third round, which is the betting round, Dan spun Opponent’s Choice and Ben chose Tyler Perry movies.  Ben bet 3 points and got the question right.  Dan, however, missed the question.  In a key moment though, Dan had risked zero points on the question.  It is not something you see often (in fact, I am not sure I ever remember someone actually betting zero points).  Last year, in a live show, had Jeff Sneider bet zero points in the category of Harry Potter against Paul Oyama, he would have won the championship instead of losing in sudden death.  Dan’s choice to not even risk one point was a second major moment in this match.

In the fourth round, with Bateman leading by two, 17-15, Ben destroyed Dan in the speed round.  Ben got 4 out of the five questions right.  The problem though was that Ben missed a MCU question about Black Panther and he lost that point.  If he had not blown that question, again, the end of this match would have changed.  Dan has not shown to be as strong in the speed round and that may be the chink in his armor.

With Ben up five points, the final round started.  Dan got his 2 point and 3 point question to tie the score.  Ben answered his 2 point question, sending it back to Dan.  Dan’s five point question was in the world of Rom-Coms and I know that is not one of Dan’s strongest categories.  That worried me, but Dan was able to answer the question, taking the lead,  25-22.

Ben answered his 3 point question to tie the game.  Then it came down to Ben’s five point question.  Unfortunately for “The Boss,” he drew a terribly difficult question about Judd Apatow and he was unable to answer it.  This took the match into sudden death, as many had predicted.  When you have two men this skilled, you wouldn’t expect anything less.

I have seen complaints that the five point questions were not equal in difficulty, but that is part of the game.  Ben chose his numbers and luck just happened to go against him and he got a very tough five point question.  It happens all the time.

On the second question of sudden death, on a question about Charlie Sheen’s co-star in the comedy Men at Work, Dan answered it correctly while Ben missed it and we had a new champion.

While Ben may be the future of this league, Dan Murrell continues to show why he is seen as the top performer in the game.  The term G.O.A.T. has been overused recently, but there are few competitors in any competition that can make an argument for such a distinction more than Dan Murrell, who, by all accounts, is one of the nicest, most respected and honorable people in the online space.   He is well-spoken, honest and totally respectful.  He is the clear definition of a “face.”  Kristian Harloff has said before that he would love to turn Dan Murrell “heel” (using wrestling kayfabe terms), but Dan has told him that he would not feel comfortable doing that.  That is because Dan Murrell is a good guy from the top of his FSU hat right on down through the flannel and jeans.

Dan has been teasing entering the Innergeekdom division as well.  He is currently Dan Two-Belts… could a trio be in his future?

Congratulations to the NEW Movie Trivia Schmoedown Singles Champion of the World… Dan Murrell!  Thanks to Ben Bateman for a match of all-time.  He’ll be champion again.