My conspiracy theory:

Punk's injury is a work. He faked it because he knows Roman would cheat to win, so he interferes with the WM main event to make sure Cody wins. He wanted Cody to win so that he can have a clean win over a worthy opponent at Summerslam, or teased out to WM41.

Lots going on at SmackDown tonight.

 Ghaz wrote:

Spoiler:

From what I've been seeing, it's only because CM Punk is injured as he was Seth's planned opponent at WrestleMania. Rock vs. Reigns was planned for either Saudi Arabia or WrestleMania XLI.

 bbb wrote:

Spoiler:

They should not go with another part-timer for the champion and Reigns should not continue as champion.

The way to do it is Cody vs Reigns for the championship. Rock demands Roman wins clean or he must face him for the title of Head of the Table.

I love how after Darby Allin's promo at Dynamite last night Cody isn't only the biggest baby face in WWE, but also in AEW.

Could it be that WWE recoloured CM Punk's Pepsi tatto so both halves are blue?

https://www.wwe.com/superstars/cmpunk


This is hilarious.

Original Four Horsemen member Ole Anderson has passed away at the age of 81.

Shawn Spears (f.k.a, Tye Dillinger) is back in the WWE, showing up on tonight’s episode of NXT.

 Ghaz wrote:
Original Four Horsemen member Ole Anderson has passed away at the age of 81.

While sad to see him go, 81 is a good run - and an absolutely phenomenal one for a Professional Wrestler.

Just noticed that Virgil has passed away as well

Yeah, two more gone. :/ RIP. Couldn't have been more different guys, based on what I know about their careers.

I skipped Elimination Chamber, but did watch AEW Revolution.


In summary: Super. AEW properly deliver on PPVs. 9 matches, all absolutely top (with the possible exception of Storm/Purrazzo. It's a real shame that the women's match in particular was a bit of a low point for me. Because they have a strong womens roster. Julia Hart, Willow Nightingale, Hikaru Shida, Yuka bloody Sakazaki, ...heck, get Nyla Rose back into the title picture. But either way; really cool PPV, really good wrestling.

Then I watched the "season premiere" of Dynamite.




I was a bit of two minds on the first half of the Dynamite, but then it got really good.


All is well.

That wasn't Taven, Sigur - it was Kyle Fletcher.

Yikes, I thought I might be wrong on this but didn't wanna look it up. Sorry to Mr.Fletcher and Mr.Taven.

I zapped through TV channels, as old people tend to do the other night and Collision was on! What was even more surprising - Angelico on TV! It's been ages! Big fan of Angelico. It's such a shame that he isn't on tv more often.

Dynamite was fun.


Woah, what's going on with Stardom. Very intriguing. Interested to see where Agawa's new promotion is going. I know very little about Stardom, but some of the names rumoured to leave and go with him are huge.

Well, I can only repeat myself - Dynamite was fun, wasn't it.

TJPW is seeing a bit of a changing of the guard it seems, but it was to be expected. Still. Times they are a-changing.

Are we getting in the mood for Wrestlemania weekend? I'm watching some old Wrestlemania stuff, any suggestions? Just watched the Firefly Funhouse Match. Still one of the finest bits of special wrestling to date. Easily up there with Hyper Misao Produce Show - Hype, possibly even better. Great creativity, daring and a selfless John Cena. Oh, and great use of archive footage. Now I'll try Wrestlemania 12.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's my Wrestlemania Predictions, becuase I'll be gone to a wargames show in Germany until Sunday:


Day 1:

The Rock & Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes & Seth Rollins -Rock/Reigns.

World Women‘s Title Match: Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Becky Lynch - Ripley. Sure, "but who's gonna beat her?" i don't know, I'm not too fussed (heck, have Liv Morgan beat her ). But I don't need to see a Becky run right now to be honest.

Intercontinental Title Match: Gunther (c) vs. Sami Zayn - Sure, I love Sami Zayn as much as the next person, but it'll be Gunther.

WWE Tag Team Title Ladder Match: The Judgment Day (c) vs. DIY vs. The New Day vs. New Catch Republic vs. Austin Theory & Grayson Waller vs. The Awesome Truth - I hear they'll split the tag titles again. Which is a very good idea. So assuming that I'll go with Awesome Truth (because they've been popular lately I hear) and Austin Theory and Waller. I want them to be twinky dicks and heel it up.

Jey Uso vs. Jimmy Uso - Jey I think I went with.

Bianca Belair, Jade Cargill & Naomi vs. Damage CTRL - Well. Well, well, well, well, well. Normally I'd say Damage CTRL because they rock and they are a team (mostly). BUT this is Jade Cargill's first PPV match. Her and Belair will have some sort of butting-of-the-heads, but they will win eventually.

Rey Mysterio & Dragon Lee vs. Dominik Mysterio & Santos Escobar - Dominik and Santos got this. Rey can go on a long holiday. It just sucks for Dragon Lee, who is the bee's knees.



Day 2:

World Heavyweight Title Match: Seth Rollins (c) vs. Drew McIntyre - McIntyre. MAYBE it'll have something to do with CM Punk, maybe not, either way, Seth will lose, go on a bit of a hiatus and return, dressed like a person and ridding himsel of that The Mask gimmick.

WWE Women‘s Title Match: Iyo Sky (c) vs. Bayley - BAYLEY.

WWE United States Title Match: Logan Paul (c) vs. Kevin Owens vs. Randy Orton - Now I realize that this Mania could mean that my top 3 peeps in the WWE could go home with titles around their brilliant waists. However, of the three only Bayley will get her title. Randy Orton get another US championship run before retiring. And Logan Paul gets nothing but kicks to the scrotum.

LA Knight vs. AJ Styles - LA Knight. Yea. He desperately needs to win something.

The Pride (Bobby Lashley & The Street Profits) vs. The Final Testament - The Final Testament are AOP, right? Anyway, they win. Lashley and the Street Profits can get over any time.

WWE Undisputed Universal Title Match: Roman Reigns (c) vs. Cody Rhodes - The grand-son of a plumber, the roller codester, the american nightmare: Cody Rhodes.



Also, I just saw a spoiler for Collision:


It's going to be one heck of a weekend. Which other shows are happening that weekend? Josh Barnett's Bloodsport and surely a GCW thing, right? I think there's a TJPW thing in the US as well?

I pretty much agree with your predictions.

Have tickets for Wrestlemania Saturday so been busy most of the day working on signs. Looking forward to it.

fwwooooaaaaaarr, you'll be on the telly! Make a Battle Brush Studios sign, will you.

Looking forward to that 'mania. It will be lovely.

WrestleMania was cool. Literally. We only had tickets for night one so we're quite happy to watch from the comfort of home tonight. Seems like the weather will be better tonight, so that should be nice for the folks there.

We got our signs on the pre-show, so that was nice.

It looks like Jacob Fatu (a cousin of the Bloodline) is on his way to the WWE if the following is correct:

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1557054/top-free-agent-saying-signed-wwe/

WM night 2 is fantastic so far. I'm expecting the night to end on a let down, so we'll see what happens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Logan Paul still needs to get in a bin on general principle.

WWE’s roster spend years learning their craft, and coming up through the little leagues. Some Internet knobend has no business on a PPV.

He brings eyes to the product from his massive following. It benefits both Logan Paul and WWE.

It’s not as if WWE doesn’t have masses of existing talent, without having to resort to stunt casting of an utterly pointless human being.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Logan Paul still needs to get in a bin on general principle.

...

YES. He's an arsewipe. Like DUDEWIPES. But worse. Because he's worse than anything else. He is the worst. On every level. And I actually mean that.



Anyway, Wrestlemania 40 / XL rocked. Hard. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I may not like the Logan Paul circus, but I will acknowledge that he is one of the best celebrity professional wrestlers to date.

I mean, he’s better than Machine Gun Kelly, who WWE were briefly obsessed with.

But this is akin to expressing a preference to having my knee or foot shattered with a sledgehammer.

 Dysartes wrote:
I may not like the Logan Paul circus, but I will acknowledge that he is one of the best celebrity professional wrestlers to date.

That is true, which makes it even more annoying. He facials are excellent, he's darned nimble for being such a big boy and I actually find it funny how it still riles me up that he stole the Buckshot Lariat as a finisher. Btw, what's one of the few things I have to critizise his wrestling for - he does a bit too much in terms of other's finishers and spots. But I'm glad that WWE at least rather quickly caught on to how the fans feel about him and people like him.

There was this guy in that bottle. Also some streamer. Obviously he's a total clown and a pest. He gets kicked, people cheer. Why is it that these clowns still are so popular and are so successful financially if everybody hates them? Sure, it's a wrestling audience who don't like celebs coming in and ruin the party. But if you ask around - everybody hates youtubers/streamers/influencers, right? And most of the big ones even are proven to be idiots and scammers. It's so weird.

But I don't want to get too annoyed. I watched this GLORIOUS Wrestlemania in 4 sittings with friends who have a coughy/vomity toddler, so it was rather short sessions. But it worked alright. Funny thing is that I liked night#2 even better than night#1 I think, even though on paper night#1 had stronger matches.

Night #1




Night#2




Great wrestlemania, enjoyed it from start to finish.

 Sigur wrote:
The singing of the hymn was pleasantly un-annoying.

That was the United States' national anthem. Typically WrestleMania's open with America the Beautiful because Vince wanted it that way, but in the USA all sporting events start with the national anthem. I'm guessing they did it to show that Vince isn't in control anymore as well as to have it seem to be more like a traditional USA sporting event.

 Sigur wrote:
Lots of green in this wrestlemania, not sure why. Surely something american sports related.

This WM was held in Lincoln Financial Field which is where the Philadelphia Eagles play. The green was to tie WM to it's location in the Eagles' stadium.

 Sigur wrote:
This became very clear to me especially after his entrance. What the heck was that.

A tradition in Philadelphia is the Mummer's Parade every New Years Day. I cannot express how awesome it was for Mummers to come out with Seth. It was amazing. It's a whole day long parade put on by ordinary folks who spend the year making elaborate costumes and planning song and dance numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Parade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsQUoLQBig4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyKK8KxOs5U
https://www.youtube.com/live/PQjsmKfF6M4?si=CvyEubJjkgfGzM_s&t=1867

 Sigur wrote:
...but in large parts due to the special ref, Bubba Ray Dudley. I know that he spews some ...opinions on his podcast and that many wrestlers dislike him, but I listened to him talk on Jericho's podcast years ago, and he really impressed me with his insights. So I kinda like the guy, or at least hold him in high regard in terms of 'getting it' (as far as I can tell).

I love Bubba as a wrestler and performer and knowledgeable source about the industry. There's a lot of folks in the business who don't like him, but It's so hard to be able to tell what's a legitimate reason to dislike him and who's just complaining for their own reasons.

 Sigur wrote:
And look, US audiences also do the song now. Which is nice

There were a lot of UK folks there (and TONS of international folks). I ran into several when I was there night 1. I wouldn't doubt they got the ball rolling and everyone else joined in.

Truly this was a fantastic WrestleMania.

Major spoilers from SmackDown:

 Ghaz wrote:
Major spoilers from SmackDown:

Spoiler:

Jimmy Uso looks to be out of the Bloodline, while Tama Tonga is in. The question is does the Tribal Chief know this?

@bbb: Okay, the Mummers thing was news to me. It's funny; us watching were thinking if it's some sort of carnival's guild of Philadelphia. Seems like that's what they are exactly. Never thought that sorta stuff existed in the US. Glad you enjoyed the Wrestlemania, despite the temperatures.




So....do we wanna talk about AEW showing the security cam footage of the thing? They certainly didn't do themselves any favours. I feel a bit smug for having been able to identify Chris Hero on the video. I think that thing was a sort of benchmark for how old/knowledgable you are. I recognized the wrestlers and Chris Hero, but not Jerry Lynn. So I'm intermediate AT BEST. And I'm kinda scared about becoming more of a Jim Cornette as time passes.

Anyway, airing the footage wasn't a very good idea, FTR are good at talking. More positive AEW things: Yuka Sakazaki re-debut last weekend. It was great, she did the things she does.

I want AEW to succeed, but they are making it really difficult to believe in them.

Just... don't do stupid things? Maybe? Please?

The whole Jack Perry thing is a total mess, storytelling-wise.

Is he meant to be a heel or a face? He was playing the "Scapegoat" as a heel, but if he actually was scapegoated then surely he should be a face as he has actually had an injustice inflicted upon him to be pissed about?

And then, where does this story go? Perry has beef with Punk and, presumably, the AEW management who made him a scapegoat. So, that would be the Bucks? Who are heels, and also the people bringing him back? or is it Tony, who is not a wrestler?

I commented on a post on Reddit that this is like if the WWF brought in Nailz talking about how Bossman abused him in prison whilst Bossman was in WCW.

Tony Schiavone not knowing what city he was in last night was really annoying. They were airing from Truist Arena on the campus of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, KY and Tony kept repeating that they were at Northern Kentucky University in Northern Kentucky

However for the non-cooperative floor mat during the Danielson/Castagnoli vs. Hobbs/Fletcher match.

Yeah, I'm just glad when we got Dynasty over with and are off to Double or Nothing(?) and maybe the whole CM Punk stuff dies down. I think it's a very good fit for the Bucks to be heels; I'm not a huge fan of them being EVP heels. In general I'm not a huge fan of management-based characters. No idea how a "CEO" could ever be a face. Oh well

Anyway, I believe that AEW can do really, really well, they just have to let go of some things. And fix some other booking things.



edit: Holy crap, Jon Moxley is IWGP World Heavyweight Champion!?

edit: Holy crap, Jon Moxley is SUCH a good talker.

edit: Holy crap, Strickland's jump to get rid of ALL the security people at the end of Dynamite was something I'd never seen before. And THEN he lands like he did. Phhhhhhwooooaaaarrrr.

WWE released Xyon Quinn, Jinder Mahal, Veer, Sanga, and Xia Li over the weekend. Does Dakka think any of them will end up on AEW?

Xia Li is a possibility, and maybe Xyon Quinn - I doubt we'll see Jinder/Veer/Sanga in AEW, but maybe in TNA?

I think that Jinder would be great in TNA. All of them, really. Don't need to see any of them in AEW; AEW should do things with the people they got.

Also, Jinder is unlikely to want to go to the company ran by the person who called him out on twitter as not being worthy of a title shot.

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1489157/aew-ceo-tony-khan-blasts-wwe-raw-angle-heated-social-media-posts-talent-respond/

oh, that thing. Meh.

Danielson v Osprey goddamn

haven't really been following AEW much recently but the hype i was hearing about that match last night got me to check out the show, and, goddamn were people not overhyping it. when it was finally over, it felt like i had been holding my breath for the last 15 minutes straight

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
Danielson v Osprey goddamn

haven't really been following AEW much recently but the hype i was hearing about that match last night got me to check out the show, and, goddamn were people not overhyping it. when it was finally over, it felt like i had been holding my breath for the last 15 minutes straight

I concur.


On the whole I was a bit miffed with the audience around the first third of Dynasty. They looked like they're sleeping, many people left before some of the earlier matches (okay, I have to admit that I skipped Jericho-Hook as well, but I only paid for the PPV, not for a full seat at the venue!), but later on the were WAY into the whole thing. Good PPV. People LOVED Swerve Strickland.

Well, Dynamite happened. Tony Khan's dad looks like Walter Matthau in Dennis the Menace.

They were back to that open air place in Florida, which always looks a bit small. And it always reminds me of 1.) First time I saw Shoko Nakajima "in action" and 2.) that Hangman vs. Brian Cage match for some PPV a few years ago (2022?) where Brian Cage wore some sort of Terminator costume which made him look way less hard than he probably anticipated. He's among the most physically imposing men anyway; he should be the last one having to play dress-up (*horrid flashbacks to Adam Page dressing up as Master Chief(?) sans the helmet* *horrid flashbacks to Nyla Rose, dressing up as Mega Man X WHEN SHE WAS A HEEL*). But okay. Anyway, fun dynamite. Shame that Moxley shaved his head now. At least he also cut the beard too. Because the "bald head, big beard" thing still is too prevalent and thus to be rejected. (just a personal and probably silly opinion).

i didn't see the show, but i caught some clips of the thing at the end. hilarious angle. i hope this goes far

 Sigur wrote:
They were back to that open air place in Florida, which always looks a bit small

Daily's Place. It's an amphitheater attached to EverBank Stadium where Daddy Khan's football team plays and only seats 5,500 according to Wikipedia.

And if you were wondering if there were any actual rules to the WWE draft, well it looks like these are the rules:

WWE wrote:RULES OF THE DRAFT

Champions on each brand will be protected and are not eligible to be drafted. As a result, Damian Priest, Becky Lynch, Awesome Truth and Sami Zayn will remain on Raw. Cody Rhodes, Bayley, A-Town Down Under and Logan Paul will remain on SmackDown.

Even though their status as champions allows them to go to both brands, WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Asuka and Kairi Sane are eligible to be drafted. They will be assigned to that brand if they lose the titles.

Friday’s SmackDown will feature four rounds of draft picks being announced. Each round will consist of the brands making two picks apiece for a total of 16 picks being announced (8 for SmackDown and 8 for Raw).

Monday’s Raw will feature six rounds of draft picks being announced. Each round will consist of the brands making two picks apiece for a total of 24 picks (12 for Raw and 12 for SmackDown).

SmackDown will have the first pick on Friday, and Raw will have first pick on Monday.

Rosters will go into effect on Monday, May 6, two days after Backlash France.

FRIDAY’S AVAILABLE DRAFT POOL

AJ Styles
Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn
Alpha Academy (Chad Gable, Otis, Akira Tozawa and Maxxine Dupri)
Andrade
Bianca Belair
Bron Breakker
Cedric Alexander and Ashante “Thee” Adonis
Ivar
Jey Uso
LA Knight
Liv Morgan
Nia Jax
Randy Orton
Ricochet
Seth Rollins
Shayna Baszler
Sheamus
The Bloodline (Roman Reigns, Solo Sikoa, “MFT” Tama Tonga and Paul Heyman)
The O.C. (Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson and Michin)
Zoey Stark

* NXT Superstars will be eligible to be drafted.


MONDAY’S AVAILABLE DRAFT POOL

#DIY
Apollo Crews
Braun Strowman
Bronson Reed
Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell
Chelsea Green and Piper Niven
CM Punk
The Creed Brothers (Julius Creed, Brutus Creed and Ivy Nile)
Damage CTRL (IYO SKY, Dakota Kai and Kabuki Warriors)
Drew McIntyre
Final Testament (Karrion Kross, AOP, Scarlett and Paul Ellering)
Giovanni Vinci
Imperium (Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser)
Jade Cargill
Judgment Day (Finn Bálor, Dominik Mysterio and JD McDonagh)
Kayden Carter and Katana Chance
Kevin Owens
Legado del Fantasma (Santos Escobar, Angel, Berto and Elektra Lopez)
LWO (Rey Mysterio, Carlito, Dragon Lee, Cruz Del Toro, Joaquin Wilde and Zelina Vega)
Naomi
Natalya
New Catch Republic (Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate)
New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods)
Odyssey Jones
Pretty Deadly (Elton Prince and Kit Wilson)
Shinsuke Nakamura
Tegan Nox
The Pride (Bobby Lashley, Street Profits and B-Fab)
Tiffany Stratton

* NXT Superstars will be eligible to be drafted.

I think it's great they're clearly explaining the rules.

Will be interesting to see if Judgement Day moves to Smackdown while Priest stays on Raw.

 bbb wrote:
I think it's great they're clearly explaining the rules.
....

Agreed! Thanks for posting them, Ghaz!



@StudentofEtherium: Jungle Boy seems to be much better on the mix now, and that grin while he was embracing Tony Khan was good.




So the mayor of London said that if he's getting re-elected he'll look how he can get Wrestlemania to London! I'm very much looking forward to watching Wrestlemania broadcast from the lovely city of Jeddah...

 Sigur wrote:
So the mayor of London said that if he's getting re-elected he'll look how he can get Wrestlemania to London! I'm very much looking forward to watching Wrestlemania broadcast from the lovely city of Jeddah...

Looks like he got a "Let's talk" reply back from Triple H.

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1569848/london-mayor-pitches-hosting-wwe-wrestlemania-receives-intriguing-response/

Well, it would be quite something. A question to all of you: Would you want to watch a Wrestlemania live? bbb and surely others have been there before, I'm sure it's quite a spectacle. I have to admit that I haven't been to a Wrestling show more than 18 months, but somehow I'm more interested in attending small, local shows. Maybe it's just because that's the best we can get here like once in a year and once every 4 years WWE comes around for a house show. What's your take on that?

granted, i'm an american, so i could theoretically do it any year, but i don't have any desire to. it's a whole lot of travel and expense for what is surely a fun experience... but not fun enough to justify that. i live nearby a couple of cities that get wrestling often, and a friend of mine regularly attends both AEW and WWE ppvs, so i think that would be the better experience compared to going so far out of the way for mania

You miss a lot without commentary and what the cameras capture. Everyone was extremely confused by the main event from night one because there was no count out. We had no idea Dwayne threatened the ref.

With Wrestlemania, especially outdoors, they have a tower over the ring. Our seats had one of the pillars directly in our way, so it blocked our view a bit which was annoying.

Ultimately, I'd have preferred to watch from home, but my kids and brother-in-law really wanted to go. I only live 30 mins from the statium (depending on traffic), so it was easy for us to get there and back.

My wife lost her cell phone on the way to the restroom, but fortunately it was turned in to lost and found so I had to drive up and grab it that Monday. Some folks from out of town lost their keys and were waiting to see if if they turned up. That must have sucked.

Can someone please tell Tony Khan it's not the 80's anymore

AEW CEO Tony Khan Calls WWE 'The Harvey Weinstein Of Pro Wrestling' On NFL Network - Wrestling INC

Khan appeared on the NFL Network on Friday to discuss the draft, as well as his kayfabe injury, and took a shot at AEW's competition once again. A video of the interview with Khan on the network was posted by a user on X.

"We are the most successful sports startup since the AFL, pre-merger," Khan said in the clip. "There has not been a challenger brand that has gained as much market share as AEW in many, many, many years. We are like the Pepsi of pro-wrestling and we're up against a really evil juggernaut. WWE is our competitor. That's who we're facing. AEW is like the Pepsi of pro-wrestling, WWE is like the Harvey Weinstein of pro-wrestling."

Seemingly shocked that Khan compared WWE to the disgraced media mogul currently serving time for rape and sexual assault, the hosts quickly deflected Khan and asked "what's the prognosis" of his neck injury. Khan said fans would have to tune in to AEW on Wednesday to find out. During the first round of the draft, NFL analysts mentioned Khan's kayfabe injury and explained what happened to non-wrestling fans. They mentioned that Khan "became the first-ever NFL executive in a draft room, shaking off the effects of a piledriver." "WWE Raw" commentator Pat McAfee also mentioned Khan wearing the neck brace on his ESPN show, without mentioning where Khan took the move.

nah this rules. keeping kayfabe alive in 2024 is great, especially for an angle that was already red hot

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
nah this rules. keeping kayfabe alive in 2024 is great, especially for an angle that was already red hot

But mangling a metaphor to try and equate your opposition to a serial sex offender is not.

And I'm not sure you can really say the angle is red hot when the show dropped below 700k viewers and has been on a pretty consistent downward trend (except for the week they showed the CM Punk footage).

nielsen ratings are a dead metric. that only tracks the metrics of people who watch the show live on TV in the US, and leaves out stuff like next day views or other countries or people watching online. "people who have cable in the US" is an increasingly small metric so it's no surprise that AEW's numbers keep dropping (for context, they were still one of the highest viewed programs of the evening

 bbb wrote:
You miss a lot without commentary and what the cameras capture. Everyone was extremely confused by the main event from night one because there was no count out. We had no idea Dwayne threatened the ref.

With Wrestlemania, especially outdoors, they have a tower over the ring. Our seats had one of the pillars directly in our way, so it blocked our view a bit which was annoying.

Ultimately, I'd have preferred to watch from home, but my kids and brother-in-law really wanted to go. I only live 30 mins from the statium (depending on traffic), so it was easy for us to get there and back.

My wife lost her cell phone on the way to the restroom, but fortunately it was turned in to lost and found so I had to drive up and grab it that Monday. Some folks from out of town lost their keys and were waiting to see if if they turned up. That must have sucked.

Oh, that is a good point. Some of the more 'dramatic' matches surely are a bit confusing from the ranks. And I heard some chants of "turn the light off" and "we can't see" at WM again.

If the kids and the rest of the family wanna go though I absolutely understand that there's not really much of a choice. And I'm sure they had a whale of a time on the first day. Good thing the cellphone showed up again.


@StudentofEtherium: Yeah, I guess it's mostly about who you go with. Originally I was planning to "go to All-In London or Japan or something" this year, but in the end was too lazy and too stingy to do anything so far. Well. But I got expensive seats for the WWE house show this week. Should be very interesting. And I hope to attend indie shows round here. My personal bar is "they have to have a wrestling ring". So it's pretty low.

house shows seem like the gold standard for attending wwe events in person. my city is on the house show circuit so it's entirely possible i end up attending one of those down the road

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1572463/every-2024-wwe-draft-pick-monday-night-raw/

The supplemental draft picks that occurred overnight after RAW went off the air:

#25: Odyssey Jones – "Raw" (again)

#26: Dijak – "Raw"

#27: Apollo Crews – "SmackDown"

#28: Kayden Carter and Katana Chance – "Raw"

#29: Natalya – "Raw"

#30: The Creed Brothers (Brutus and Julius) and Ivy Nile – "Raw"

#31: Giovanni Vinci – "SmackDown"

#32: New Catch Republic (Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate) – "Raw"

#33: Tegan Nox – "SmackDown"

Spot the people the writers don't have huge plans for - unfortunately, in a few cases there.

 Dysartes wrote:
Spot the people the writers don't have huge plans for - unfortunately, in a few cases there.

You mean like Dijak?

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1573410/newly-drafted-wwe-raw-superstar-not-re-signed-company/

Well, in general - the message I get as a viewer is I should be interested in the people who get drafted on the show, and that the people in the supplemental draft aren't as important.

Mind you, it helps when the draft actually shakes things up...

Heyho, I've just come from the house show in Vienna. So much better than 5 years ago. Unbelievable. The absolute crème de la crème was there. Becky, Cody, Damage Control, Orton, Jade Cargill, Tama Tonga, Sami Zayn, Gunther and so on. Initially I was a bit worried they'd bring loads of recently called-up NXT people I'm not familiar with yet, but nope. All A-league main roster people. Really impressive



Short notes from memory (nothing necessarily new here):

.) Cody is great and exactly where he belongs
.) Jade Cargill is smaller than I thought. I had imagined her to be about 2.30m tall.
.) J.D. McDonagh bumps like a madman. You really can't accuse him of lacking commitment.
.) Ludwig Kaiser is very, very good at the sports entertaining. Weirdly, Sami Zayn seemed a bit to run on auto-pilot. Btw, here's how to get heat in Austria: Be German. Works every time, without fail. They had a winner of a prize draw out, being interviewed by Byron Saxton (who once more did a great job). She said she was from Germany, and the hall erupted in boos as if she'd just cut a vicious promo. That was a bit much. Also, the Austrian flag stuff. But it's okay.Wrestlers wrapped themselves in the Austrian flag were US-born, and they have quite a different relationship to their national flag (entirely positive) than we got here (ambivalent).
.) I like Nia Jax. She's good at what she does.
.) The most over people in 2024: Randy Orton (who is a funny, funny man) and R-Truth (also a funny man!). What a world we live in.
.) I'm worried about L.A. Knight. I'm getting the impression that apart from "yea" there isn't all that much to him, which is a shame. Because he's really good at the wrestlings AND the talkings.
.) I don't love the "yeet".
.) Asuka is fabulously good in the ring and also at standing next to the ring, watching her tag partners. She's always doing something. You see that on TV too, but last night it stood out to me as well. Very observant, quick-thinking lady.
.) I never was a big Dakota Kai fan, to me she was "the lady who got her arm broken by Nia Jax and is a bit like a fragile Bayley with less charisma" for years, but she's also very good at all the audience interaction stuff..
.) Jade Cargill and Bianca Belair seem like very nice people. In general the 3-women tag team (DMG CRTL vs. Cargill, Belair and Naomi) reminded me reminded me of similar matches in TJPW. Wrestlers hopping along with other people's entrance music, generally just a vibe of the people in the ring having fun.
.) Chad Gable is a legend. He had a match against the Hometown Hero Gunther. Interesting constellation, because with this pairing it's not very easy to sell Gunther as a babyface and especially Chad
Gable as a heel. But ok. They did it. It worked anyway. And the current presentation is definitely better than "Shorty G", who was heavily pushed last time WWE came to Vienna. Dark times.

Anyway, a great night was had. This time I paid about twice as much for the seats, but it was worth it. Because the 'cheap' seats at Stadthalle Vienna are like EUR 75,00 anyway, so getting seats along the entrance ramp thing for just under EUR 140,00 isn't bad at all. Also: lovely companions and drinks.... it all worked out nicely.

Triple H Touts WWE SmackDown Crowd In Lyon Being So Loud They Got Noise Warning Alerts - Wrestling INC

Watching SmackDown and the crowd reminds me of some of the louder post-WrestleMania crowds

 Sigur wrote:
Heyho, I've just come from the house show in Vienna. So much better than 5 years ago. Unbelievable. The absolute crème de la crème was there. Becky, Cody, Damage Control, Orton, Jade Cargill, Tama Tonga, Sami Zayn, Gunther and so on. Initially I was a bit worried they'd bring loads of recently called-up NXT people I'm not familiar with yet, but nope. All A-league main roster people. Really impressive



Short notes from memory (nothing necessarily new here):

.) Cody is great and exactly where he belongs
.) Jade Cargill is smaller than I thought. I had imagined her to be about 2.30m tall.
.) J.D. McDonagh bumps like a madman. You really can't accuse him of lacking commitment.
.) Ludwig Kaiser is very, very good at the sports entertaining. Weirdly, Sami Zayn seemed a bit to run on auto-pilot. Btw, here's how to get heat in Austria: Be German. Works every time, without fail. They had a winner of a prize draw out, being interviewed by Byron Saxton (who once more did a great job). She said she was from Germany, and the hall erupted in boos as if she'd just cut a vicious promo. That was a bit much. Also, the Austrian flag stuff. But it's okay.Wrestlers wrapped themselves in the Austrian flag were US-born, and they have quite a different relationship to their national flag (entirely positive) than we got here (ambivalent).
.) I like Nia Jax. She's good at what she does.
.) The most over people in 2024: Randy Orton (who is a funny, funny man) and R-Truth (also a funny man!). What a world we live in.
.) I'm worried about L.A. Knight. I'm getting the impression that apart from "yea" there isn't all that much to him, which is a shame. Because he's really good at the wrestlings AND the talkings.
.) I don't love the "yeet".
.) Asuka is fabulously good in the ring and also at standing next to the ring, watching her tag partners. She's always doing something. You see that on TV too, but last night it stood out to me as well. Very observant, quick-thinking lady.
.) I never was a big Dakota Kai fan, to me she was "the lady who got her arm broken by Nia Jax and is a bit like a fragile Bayley with less charisma" for years, but she's also very good at all the audience interaction stuff..
.) Jade Cargill and Bianca Belair seem like very nice people. In general the 3-women tag team (DMG CRTL vs. Cargill, Belair and Naomi) reminded me reminded me of similar matches in TJPW. Wrestlers hopping along with other people's entrance music, generally just a vibe of the people in the ring having fun.
.) Chad Gable is a legend. He had a match against the Hometown Hero Gunther. Interesting constellation, because with this pairing it's not very easy to sell Gunther as a babyface and especially Chad
Gable as a heel. But ok. They did it. It worked anyway. And the current presentation is definitely better than "Shorty G", who was heavily pushed last time WWE came to Vienna. Dark times.

Anyway, a great night was had. This time I paid about twice as much for the seats, but it was worth it. Because the 'cheap' seats at Stadthalle Vienna are like EUR 75,00 anyway, so getting seats along the entrance ramp thing for just under EUR 140,00 isn't bad at all. Also: lovely companions and drinks.... it all worked out nicely.

Glad you had a great time. I really need to get to a non-televised WWE show sometime, I hear they're mainly about fan service and having a good time.

Yeah, it's really good fun. This is what I like so much about watching live wrestling every now and then. It is a different thing to the TV product. Funny thing is how the wrestlers still mostly seem to work towards the 'hard cam side'. We were sitting along the isle, but most wrestlers spent much more time at the opposing side, which would be the side of the isle which usually is where the camera would point much more than to the other side.

I'm a sad, old NEERRRD, so I threw up a Too Sweet-ski when Tama Tonga walked by, and I think that maybe his evil smirk was directed at that. Or maybe just part of his entrance.



edit: speaking of being a sad old NEEERRRRD, I'm just watching Backlash. During an ad break they showed clips and stills from the shows from the European tour now, and in one of the picture there's me! Well, my hand. But still - i'm on a WWE PPV.

Feels daft typing this, but AEW Stars Kip Sabin and Claudio Castagnoli are doing a demo game of the new Age of Sigmar 8pm CDT on 16 May on Warhammer’s Twitch channel.

Utterly surreal!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Feels daft typing this, but AEW Stars Kip Sabin and Claudio Castagnoli are doing a demo game of the new Age of Sigmar 8pm CDT on 16 May on Warhammer’s Twitch channel.

Utterly surreal!

Knew that Claudio was a Games Workshop fan back when he and Shayna Baszler visited Warhammer World but didn't know about Kip Sabian.


It's nice to see GW reaching out to celebrities like Claudio and Kip to show that miniature wargaming isn't just for nerds (plus it helps GW as well ).

was a bit baffled to see this when someone shared on discord, but i guess i'm intrigued enough to check it out

Ha, GW even advertise it on their AoS FB group.

I never got the concept of "I like X and I like Y, so I want my X and Y to mix, because it's ought to be good". Maybe it's just me clinging on to anything that gets me away from the world of these effin little puppets even just for a bit.

Just a bit of the ol’ Razzle Dazzle, innit.

With GW getting ever nearer to breaking into the mainstream and the potential to become a pop culture Juggernaut ala Star Wars and Star Trek (with an arguably deeper and more fun universe), these sort of “cool people play and love our games too!” are a cheap and effective way to get eyes on.

I mean, seeing Shayna Baszler wear inspired gear in the ring is one thing. But for her and Henry Cavill to visit Warhammer World is a degree or five above.

To think in my day the highlights were Bryan May and son in WD, and me selling Bob Mortimer some stuff for one of his kids 🤣🤣

 jreilly89 wrote:
Eh, haven't been a big fan of wrestling since the Attitude Era. That being said, I have great memories of Stone Cold, The Rock, Kane, Undertaker, and Mankind.

I'm from the cowboy styled randy savage era and none of the modern wrestlers can compare. I mean its all show and all but that man was just entertainment personified.

Also brett hart for some reason I always liked, perhaps because he was so out of place in his goofy pink lycra, the man looks like a crushed pineapple today though.

I never really saw Bret Hart in action, but I like the guy. He took things seriously (for good or for bad), he had a proper background in wrestling, he was a plausible babyface and even a plausible heel. Didn't watch much Brett Hart matches, as I said, but if I go back to that time (new generation era?), I'll usually end up watching a Brett Hart match. Like the one against Steve Austin with the double-turn (I've seen that in real life once, in a women's match. Local bubbly lady vs. French blonde woman who won over the crowd. Surreal experience, but very fun, since at shows like those it's usually very, very clear-cut who's good and who's bad and it stays like that), or the 60minutes ironman match vs. Shawn Michaels. Brett Hart is the man.

As for Randy Savage - when ever you feel down or unhappy I suggest watching Randy Savage promos from the period you mentioned. It WILL improve your mood. Watched even fewer Savage matches than I did Brett Hart (he sure was ahead of his time though, that Randall Keith Savage ), but I must have watched hours of his promos. Speaking of promos - Jack Perry got way better at talking now. And if you'd asked anybody 2 years ago if Jungle Boy could grow even some sort of beard you'd gotten laughed out of the building. Now he's got a big'un.



Anyway, I wonder when I will stop enjoying wrestling because it changes and will wistfully think back to the glory days of the mid-to-late 2010s.


Well, a big weekend lies ahead of us! King/Queen of the Ring on Saturday, Double or Nothing on Sunday. It will be _lovely_. Any predictions personal highlights you look forward to?

I'm looking forward to Logan Paul getting battered, but I'm sure it'll be more annoying and upsetting than anything else. As usual with that guy.
King of the Ring finals I assume will be Orton vs. Gunther and I'm hoping for Gunther to win it. I'd prefer for the finals to be Gunther vs. Tama Tonga, but okay. Orton is MASSIVELY popular. The people I watch WWE stuff with absolutely adore the guy, any audience anywhere in the world does as well, and even I came around on the guy in the past 2 years or so, but Tama Tonga is new and they should use him as much as possible. Either way, Gunther should win the thing to keep him 'relevant'. He should instantly smash the tacky crown on the RAW thereafter.

Queen of the Ring finals should be Lyra Valkyria vs. Nia Jax with Jax winning.

Lynch vs. Morgan - I strongly assume that Lynch retains, even though I'd very much prefer for Morgan to get another title run.

Zayn vs. Reed vs. Gable 3-way match - that'll be lovely. We will see Chad Gable do physically impossible things to Bronson Reed and Sami Zayn wins. Everybody will love it, because whereever you go in the world, people love a Sami Zayn victory. And right they are.

I'm really liking those HHH 5-match cards. Not looking forward to the ads in between, but okay. It'll be lovely.


And the nicest thing is how different AEW PPV cards are! So the next day we get Double or Nothing! 10 matches, and what matches we got to look forward to!

Moxley vs. Takeshita, IWGP eliminator match: Takeshita will win this one, I'm fairly certain. After a gruelling BATTLE.

Copeland vs. Black: Aw yes. This will be lovely and I hope it won't be too long. It's almost easy to forget, because he's got so few singles matches, but Malakai Black is such a cool wrestler. Even when I didn't like his persona much, when ever he was in the ring, I was fully convinced of the guy. And he looks scarier than ever before.

Toni Storm vs. Serena Deeb: IIRC Storm toned the wackiness of her matches down now, which is very welcome. She'll win.

Trent Beretta vs. Orange Cassidy: I want Beretta to win this. With him, they got a pretty cool 'dark horse' upper midcard heel going, they just have to keep on pushing him. And I think we all can do with a little Orange Cassidy pause for a while.

Chris Jericho vs. Hook vs. Shibata: That Chris Jericho, amirite? The Learning Tree /Jericho vortex(?) sounded SO stupid and everybody was SO tired of seeing him leeching on to promising up and comers (Hook, not Shibata ), but now he turned it into something pretty funny again. I have no idea how he does it. Anyway, I kinda expect Jericho to win this via Big Bill related shenannigans (btw, Big Bill, eh? He's good. Jericho was on commentary on this week's Dynamite. In between, they stuck a mic in Big Bill's face - i doubt this was planned - and he talked good and proper! ).

Bang Bang Gang vs. Death Triangle: Battle of the amazing entrances. Death Triangle to win. Rey Phoenix looks scary. Glad he isn't bigger.

Willow Nightingale vs. Mercedes Moné: Moné is a heel. And will win. And I kinda hope that Stokley Hathaway and Kris Statlander align with her in the future. Be a stable, but DON't be about money or contracts or crap like that. Nightingale gets proper messed up and takes some time off (no worries, she'll get plenty of title runs in the future, she's great.).

Anarchy in the Arena Match, The Elite vs. Team AEW: That'll be fun and insane and The Elite wins. Maybe with the help of a returning heel Hangman?

Swerve Strickland vs. Christian Cage: I think that this will be better than we expect it to be now. Compared to the other matches on the card and on paper this looks very predictable and not like an insanely great match. But especially those tend to turn out really memorable in AEW PPVs.

Roddy Strong vs. Will Ospreay: Something for the afficinados for sure. This might end up being the strongest wrestling match of the night. And somehow I think that this isn't just a stop-gap thing for Ospraey. I'm having a hard time thinking that Strong wins against Ospreay, but I feel like this might start a program against the Undisputed Kingdom and a returning Adam Cole. Which would be cool, but now I'm starting to think that maybe this also triggers an MJF return, and I really don't want to see an Ospraey-MJF tag team run. Oh well. Let's keep it simple: Ospreay to win, followed by an AEW-typical beatdown by the heels. Somehting like that.



WWE's PPV will be very nice (despite the Saudi Arabia thing). AEW's PPV will be amazing, but possibly overfraught with stuff. In general I find myself being able to sit through these new-stylee WWE PPVs without a problem, but these huge (and always amazing) AEW PPVs I often have to pause throughout. Maybe it's because I watch these on my own and can't really make time to watch it all in one go though. Anyway, it'll be a lovely wrestling weekend.

not gonna be checking out this weekend's shows due to travel, but i recently watched Marigold's debut show and it was all-around fantastic. one of the best joshi shows ive seen. has me very enthusiastic about the future of the promotion. definitely recommend checking it out

I anticipate Cody vs Logan will be a good match, but end in a DQ when Brock Lesnar returns and causes a ruckas to set up Cody vs Brock for summerslam.

 bbb wrote:
I anticipate Cody vs Logan will be a good match, but end in a DQ when Brock Lesnar returns and causes a ruckas to set up Cody vs Brock for summerslam.

Remember that if Gunther wins the King of the Ring tournament, he gets a world title shot (presumably against the champion on the brand that he's on) at SummerSlam which would be against whoever holds the title after the Cody Rhodes v. Logan Paul match .

Gunther is on Raw, so if he wins his title shot would be against Damien Priest.

 bbb wrote:
I anticipate Cody vs Logan will be a good match, but end in a DQ when Brock Lesnar returns and causes a ruckas to set up Cody vs Brock for summerslam.

WWE isn't bringing brock back until the lawsuit goes away (and depending how that goes, possibly never)

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
not gonna be checking out this weekend's shows due to travel, but i recently watched Marigold's debut show and it was all-around fantastic. one of the best joshi shows ive seen. has me very enthusiastic about the future of the promotion. definitely recommend checking it out

I watched half of the Marigold show yesterday, and it looks really good. Tried my best to memorize names, but failed to do so (apart from the big ones of course). Going to stay tuned on that one. It's not often we get to see a new promotion of that calibre emerge. (and since we're talking about joshi stuff, I was gutted to learn that Hikari Noa left TJPW. Somehow all my favourites seem to leave the promotion, and I'm not quite happy with other things. So maybe Marigold is the thing to watch in the near future. Maybe it's just time to watch some 'serious' joshi wrestling.) Should be interesting to see how the roster develops.


@bbb: I heard the Lesnar name being thrown around, but I doubt it will happen. But then I've been surprised by Lesnar returns the past years too, so let's see.

I'm a-okay with a Gunther-Cody programme, but somehow I think that maybe The Rock will throw his weight around to have a Cody-Rock-match for Summer Slam? Btw, i heard rumblings about Summerslam becoming a 2 day event? Please say it ain't so.

2026 Summer Slam will be 2 nights. Speculation I've heard is that 2026 Wrestlemania could be outside the USA, so the 2 night SS would be to give a 2 day event to the USA as well.

 Sigur wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
not gonna be checking out this weekend's shows due to travel, but i recently watched Marigold's debut show and it was all-around fantastic. one of the best joshi shows ive seen. has me very enthusiastic about the future of the promotion. definitely recommend checking it out

I watched half of the Marigold show yesterday, and it looks really good. Tried my best to memorize names, but failed to do so (apart from the big ones of course). Going to stay tuned on that one. It's not often we get to see a new promotion of that calibre emerge. (and since we're talking about joshi stuff, I was gutted to learn that Hikari Noa left TJPW. Somehow all my favourites seem to leave the promotion, and I'm not quite happy with other things. So maybe Marigold is the thing to watch in the near future. Maybe it's just time to watch some 'serious' joshi wrestling.) Should be interesting to see how the roster develops.

i was really sad to hear Noa was leaving, too. thankfully, even with her getting more and more bookings in the US, it seems like Maki Itoh isn't going anywhere, and i can't imagine Hyper Misao ever leaving

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Sigur wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
not gonna be checking out this weekend's shows due to travel, but i recently watched Marigold's debut show and it was all-around fantastic. one of the best joshi shows ive seen. has me very enthusiastic about the future of the promotion. definitely recommend checking it out

I watched half of the Marigold show yesterday, and it looks really good. Tried my best to memorize names, but failed to do so (apart from the big ones of course). Going to stay tuned on that one. It's not often we get to see a new promotion of that calibre emerge. (and since we're talking about joshi stuff, I was gutted to learn that Hikari Noa left TJPW. Somehow all my favourites seem to leave the promotion, and I'm not quite happy with other things. So maybe Marigold is the thing to watch in the near future. Maybe it's just time to watch some 'serious' joshi wrestling.) Should be interesting to see how the roster develops.

i was really sad to hear Noa was leaving, too. thankfully, even with her getting more and more bookings in the US, it seems like Maki Itoh isn't going anywhere, and i can't imagine Hyper Misao ever leaving

Yeah. Hikari Noa is a loss, Nao Kakuta (best entrance theme in wrestling) is retiring, Sakazaki left for AEW and instantly be injured (is there something different to AEW rings than there is to Japanese ones? I vividly remember Miyu Yamashita almost slipping off the apron twice in one of her AEW matches.), ... okay, Saki Akai retiring didn't bother me that much, even though Neo Biishiki-Gun was a fun stable to see every now and then.

Itoh seems to work tremendously well in this weird TJPW/GCW zone. I'm not the greatest fan of hers, but she undoubtably has 'it' and is a huge boon to the promotion. And she's got a ton of overseas experience now, which clearly shows in how she carries herself in the ring and how she interacts with the audience. Each time she's in a match you can see that she's just a level above in terms of that stuff.

I fully agree about Hyper Misao. I imagine she's the Undertaker of TJPW. Home-grown talent, strong gimmick, locker room leader (even though of course it's more than silly to assume what the locker room is like and somehow I think I don't really wanna know anything behind-the-scenes there), and she seems to be into bringing in her own ideas.

So yeah, Double or Nothing was great. Didn't see King/Queen of the Ring (yet?), didn't finish Marigold Fields Forever yet, but Double or Nothing was great. AEW do know how to do a PPV.

As for Dynamite: Dang, that Jericho has done it again. I was DREADING how they set up a talk show segment in the ring. That's one of WWE's worst tropes I think. But it was entertaining. The Learning Tree thing won't hold up long, but for now it's really well done. I wasn't keen on seeing the headhunter Bryan Keith with Jericho, but him being 'the bad apple' (another horrible thing WWE did in the past: heels making bad jokes and then doing the doubling-over laugh. But okay. I really like Big Bill right now too.) and very aggrevated adds a fun dynamic to the trio. AND it spares us Jericho matches, maybe.

Sky Blue I'll probably never like, even though on a superficial level I should. But that's okay. Interesting how they still didn't pull the trigger on Moné being a heel.

Trent could become an amazing anti-hero once he's done with the Don Callis family.

And I love piss-taking heel Okada. Who would have thought that apart from being a pretty charismatic wrestling machine, he can also pull off the funny heel stuff that well?


edit: I just learned that Mei Saint-Michel is the same person as Mei Suruga is. I never noticed that. The mind is boggled.

Just catching up on clash at the castle with friends. THe show is lovely so far.

Friend just told me a really funny story: Their 2.5 year old daughter really loves listeneing to Sami Zayn's theme (as any human with two hears connected to a heart does). Recently they went her to the kindergarten, they passed a sticker of Karl Marx on some lamp post and the daughter asked herif that was Sami Zayn. She said that at this point she was very proud of her parenting.

WWE are advertising Call of Duty Mobile. Which sounds like the two worst things combined into one. But that's just my opinion.



Yeah, Clash in the Castle was perfectly nice. Also: the RAW afterwards, eh?

The Wyatt Sick6 intro was cool, but ultimately it has to make sense in the ring. If they can bridge that gap then they'll have gold.

Sorry Sigur not everybody likes Sami Zayne. I've heartily disliked him from day one and I personally don't know anybody who likes him and I know quite a few people who love wrestling.
I can't say what it is about him I don't like, I'm assuming it's everything. Any time he's on a PPV or just regular show the channel is either changed or at least muted. Sorry to burst your bubble about him but I bet there's nobody in entertainment land that everyone likes, there's always someone that doesn't click with you.

@bbb: Very, very, very valid point about anything Wyatt-related. The Wyatt family worked in the ring as well as outside. Everything since then..... tricky. I thought that the Fiend matches (apart from the Hell in a Cell one with the mallet and everything during the pandemic era) weren't half bad, but ultimately it's about the wrestling. And even the Wyatt Sick6 will be measured on that in the end.

@Jaxmeister: Oh, that's interesting. Thanks for the comment. I loved Sami Zayn right from NXT times (and retroactively he stuff he did before that). Actually, I found your comment to be helpful, because I'm always very suspicious of things which are broadly popular.



Right, t'was the eve before Forbidden Door, with its tons of matches, some of which being dreams. Typical AEW PPV then. Here's my predictions:

Six Man Tag Team Match
Hook, Katsuyori Shibata & Samoa Joe vs. The Learning Tree (Big Bill & Chris Jericho) & Jeff Cobb - Joe vs. Jeff Cobb! oh yes! Ermmm... I'm afraid that Jericho wins at PPVs. But I hope for Joe's team to win. I think it would also be more entertaining if Jericho tried to come back from the defeat and argue how he actually didn't lose or something.


Six Man Tag Team Match
Hiroshi Tanahashi & The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster) (w/Billy Gunn) vs. The Elite (Kazuchika Okada, Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson) - I assume that Tanahashi (and The Acclaimed) will win this one. More interesting in terms of storyline (Just have Tanahashi pin Matt Jackson), more wholesome, and I assume that The Acclaimed have to be established as a tag team again.

Singles Match
Hechicero vs. MJF - MJF.

Owen Hart Foundation 2024 Men's Tournament Quarter Final Match
Bryan Danielson vs. Shingo Takagi - Ooooh. Oooooooh. Ooooooh. Lovely. I'd love for Takagi to win this.

Singles Match
Orange Cassidy vs. Zack Sabre Jr. - I hope for ZSJr to win this one.

AEW Women's World Title Match
Toni Storm (w/Luther & Mariah May) (c) vs. Mina Shirakawa (w/Mariah May) - Yeah, Storm wins this one. And maybe we can then slowly move on from her championship. Again, she's great at the character, I just don't care for it in relation to the women's title.

AEW TNT Title Ladder Match (vakant)
Mark Briscoe vs. El Phantasmo vs. Konosuke Takeshita vs. Lio Rush vs. Jack Perry vs. Dante Martin - Heck yes, that should be good, eh? Jack Perry wins this one.

AEW TBS Title / NJPW STRONG Women's Title Match
Mercedes Mone (c) vs. Stephanie Vaquer (c) - Moné.

IWGP World Heavyweight Title Match
Jon Moxley (c) vs. Tetsuya Naito - Naito will take it home. I love Moxley just like anybody else (or at least the people who do ), but I don't see too much to gain from him holding the IWGP title. And it's getting really a bit problematic for Naito. He's not getting any younger or less hurt.


AEW World Title Match
Swerve Strickland (w/Prince Nana) (c) vs. Will Ospreay - Strickland will win it again.

Lovely Forbidden Door, great Dynamite. Thigs are well.

That MJF-Ospreay match on Dynamite 250 was insane. If you like pro wrestling you'll enjoy that.

I was hearing about that. wish there was an easy way to check out matches dynamite without subscriptions

I'm not sure if it is the whole match, but AEW have a nearly 23 minute video on their YouTube for that match.

 Dysartes wrote:
I'm not sure if it is the whole match, but AEW have a nearly 23 minute video on their YouTube for that match.

It's not. The match was close to an hour long.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
I was hearing about that. wish there was an easy way to check out matches dynamite without subscriptions

The rest of the show was very good as well. I enjoyed the Moné-Rose-match. Good to see Nyla Rose on TV again. And there was that boy in the front row who was a megafan of Moné, cheering her throughout the match.



Last match was perfectly good as well.

Also - in AEW you can almost bet that some commentator who isn't as well-versed in the ways of the New Japan will talk over exactly the important bit of Suzuki's entrance.

Nick Wayne in profile looks exactly like Lucky Luke.

Woah. Miyu Yamashita vs. Shayna Baszler (quite fittingly wearing pre-heresy world eaters gear. She knows what she's doing.) at Bloodsport XI. Thanks, Josh Barnett, HHH and everybody else who's got something to say in this. Never thought I'd see that match-up. I'm never quite sure if I really, really like Bloodsport or if I don't. I tend to veer towards the 'like it a lot' side, but it certainly is different.





So anyway. Summerslam is coming up! Are we excited? Drew/Punk should be amazing. I'm just not very happy about Rollins being in there as well. I used to be really into him, but the outfits and the cackling and the song ..... he bugs me. Still an amazing wrestler, but everything around it is just so uninteresting.


Here's my tips for the MASSIVE (for the HHH era) card:
Damian Priest (c) vs. Gunther - Gunther wins, the Judgement Day implode.
Bayley (c) vs. Nia Jax - Aw yes. We'll party like it's ...2016? When Jax was new in NXT and Bayley was afraid of her (but in a good way, not in a Bayley post-main-roster-debut way). Jax wins.
Liv Morgan (c) vs. Rhea Ripley - This will be lovely, Ripleywins, the Judgement Day implode. This might lead to a babyface-Dom, which seems impossible, but I think that's what's going to happen.
Cody Rhodes (c) vs. Solo Sikoa - Cody retains.
Logan Paul (c) vs. LA Knight - LA Knight puts Paul into a barrel, nails it shut, sends it off a huge waterfall, at the bottom of which it explodes and that nitwit is no more. LA Knight wins.
Sami Zayn (c) vs. Bron Breakker - Breakker wins in a spectacular fashion, is the new Brock Lesnar.
CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre - Phew. Incredibly hard to tell. Punk wins, I'd say. Possibly with Rollins interfering.

It'll be a lovely show.

Jack King's interview with MJF on Cultaholic is very entertaining. Good to have the old MJF back. It's not a super-innovative thing, it's not a super complex thing, but he's just so good at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgSewhip_2I

Swerve v Danielson was incredible! also a huge fan of MJF and Ospreay

Sid Eudy, best known as Sid Vicious or Sycho Sid has passed away at the age of 63 from cancer.

If you're into wrestling, Chris Van Vliet put up an interview with Jesse "The Body" Ventura that's well worth your time.

Yeah, Sid Vicious was just an impressive dude. Even if you weren't into Wrestling you knew him and you knew that he was bad news. 63 is way too young an age to go.

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
Swerve v Danielson was incredible! also a huge fan of MJF and Ospreay

Yup, it was really good. I enjoyed the whole show actually. Dynamite was fun too.





I just learned that there's a documentary about Q.T.Marshall from 2017 called The Wrestler. This is why you should always browse the full library of sites such as midnightpulp.com.

About All In itself:

The main event was great. The fact that the Danielson family was there was smart, the daughter is all show business, you can tell because she put on the squeaky pink hood so you can always see exactly where she is. Strickland is just super all round. You could also see that at last night's Dynamite during the promo with Hangman. His moves, his demeanor, and I love how he's not funny. There are little bits here and there, showing that he's got this sparkle in his eye (and I think he doesn't do funny stuff because that would mean that he'd have to smile and he looks too nice when he smiles), but overall I very, very much like that he's taking this thing seriously, and I prefer him as a heel-ish dude.


MJF/Ospreay was pretty predictable, but of course great. Those two can't do wrong. Garcia was a surprise to me, his promo on Dynamite was very strong. To be completely honest, it looks a little bit funny that these two blood feuds (Swerve/Hangman, MJF/Garcia) emerge now as at WWE Punk/McIntyre is going on. But to be fair, the Swerve/Hangman thing predates that, and a wrestling feud should look like that. It's either for the title or for personal reasons. Neither are for the title, so it's personal.


Hook/Jericho was totally ok. By now we know what a Learning Tree match looks like, and I'm never quite sure wether or not that's okay. Because I'm sure that Jericho is acutely aware how people feel about him. So he changed his character accordingly, so it fits the sentiments. But is that a good thing? Nice to see how popular Big Bill was with the UK fans.


Moné vs Britt Baker was also ok, Camille is a very good additional element. With the red and very painfully pulled back hair, Camille looks like the red lady from Farscape (Jools?). Moné is just very, very good, the whole nonsense with the glove was funny. Other than that, I'm still not that crazy about Britt Baker, and she impressed me exactly once: when she was with the commentary team after a match at the very beginning of her wrestling career (even before the broken leg) and was obviously frustrated beyond any kayfabe. And she made some comment that she was in the wrong place even behind a mic. She may have gained some sympathy from the stuff with Rebel when the foot was broken and from the death match (and I think it's impressive when people do that for us), but I just don't warm to her and don't find her convincing. Not in the ring, not on the mic.


Gauntlet match was fun. Good idea for in-between matches at a PPV like this.



Had completely forgotten that there would be a Coffin match! It was fun. Brief. Which is good.



Trio's ladder match was chaotic, as was to be expected. Gosh, do I wish the House of Black had a bigger role. But the Trios titles in general always seem like a bit of a dead end. Tiny ladder was funny.



Tag Match Bucks vs Acclaimed vs FTR. Gosh, I wish FTR would play a bigger role. Still not hugely into The Acclaimed, but I'm just no fun.


Either way, all good fun, good show, very speedy, not overly long.



edit: GCW announced Kylie Rae vs. Maki Itoh for September 14th for their "Bad One" show in Detroit. Pretty rad. Not really a dream match, but an interesting one. I've been a fan of Kylie Rae for a bunch of years now and despite of what ever is going on and keeping her from Wrestling at times it's great that she comes back all the time. And Maki Itoh is just a spectacle. I'm not even the biggest fan of hers, but the "new age charisma" moniker does apply. She's like the Miz with pig tails.

good lord, All Out was fething brutal. everyone was out for blood tonight— and i love it!

highlights of the high were Ospreay v PAC, Stat v Willow, and the two main events. Ospreay v PAC was exactly what i expected, in the best possible way, but Stat v Willow absolutely surpassed my expectations. that match is everything i want out of women's wrestling. it was brutal and horrible and gorey— and i want more! very well might be my match of the night

which is saying a lot considering what those last two matches were. goddamn, Jack Perry has elevated himself so much over the last year. was shocked at just how well he kept up with DBD... and even more shocked when i saw Mox choking him out with a plastic bag. on a show full of hardcore spots, that was was made me most squeamish. yeesh

oh, and then Swerve and Page. these men were made to kill each other, and god damn did they try tonight. always love a match when a cinder block comes out, and that needle spot was something i haven't seen before. incredible way to close out the show

All Out was just insane. All In seems to be the big, fun summer show, and All Out shortly thereafter becomes the really rough one.

The last two matches were proper impressive on every level. Mostly a visceral one.



However, Pac-Ospraey was probably the nicest match, I agree. And it's great to see Statlander getting into her new role proper. Most of these matches had a long, plausible [within the realms of wrestling] build-up to them.

I think that I may have enjoyed All Out better than All In actually. AEW PPVs always deliver amazing wrestling. And on top of that we live in a world in which WWE PPVs also are great as well! Which is a great position for us to be in. Now if New Japan gets back on top of things again it would be lovely. And on top of it all, we have GCW, Stardom, TJPW, ... the only problem being - who's got the time to watch it all!?

 Sigur wrote:
All Out was just insane. All In seems to be the big, fun summer show, and All Out shortly thereafter becomes the really rough one.

The last two matches were proper impressive on every level. Mostly a visceral one.

Spoiler:

That bit where Swerve held the remains of his burnt-down childhood home in his hands... that was pro wrestling proper. That whole match was insane, but you can't say that it was just self-serving shock value stuff - this was warranted by the storyline.

However, Pac-Ospraey was probably the nicest match, I agree. And it's great to see Statlander getting into her new role proper. Most of these matches had a long, plausible [within the realms of wrestling] to them.

I think that I may have enjoyed All Out better than All In actually. AEW PPVs always deliver amazing wrestling. And on top of that we live in a world in which WWE PPVs also are great as well! Which is a great position for us to be in. Now if New Japan gets back on top of things again it would be lovely. And on top of it all, we have GCW, Stardom, TJPW, ... the only problem being - who's got the time to watch it all!?

and don't forget Marigold! been meaning to find the time to watch that second show they did a couple months ago

Yeah, I was going to list Marigold as well, but so far I only watched their very first show. Hope to catch up on their other ones (assuming there are more than just the summer one?) at some point in the near future. Time really is a factor here, because you can't have wrestling just on in the background whilst painting or something. Sometimes I put something without commentary on (I find the sounds of bumping and ring-running and so on rather soothing at this point. ), but usually I have to pay full attention to that stuff.

Which is why I appreciate watching with others. Then there's no excuse for getting out one's cellphone or just browsing the interwebs whilst watching the graps.

A lot of wrestling websites are saying that the Lucha Bros. have signed with the WWE.

 Ghaz wrote:
A lot of wrestling websites are saying that the Lucha Bros. have signed with the WWE.

i've been hearing that the last week or two. guess it's a done deal at this point. curious how they're going to be used (this plus MCMG going to WWE must mean they're trying to revitalize their tag tea division. which happens every other year or so at this point)

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
A lot of wrestling websites are saying that the Lucha Bros. have signed with the WWE.

i've been hearing that the last week or two. guess it's a done deal at this point. curious how they're going to be used (this plus MCMG going to WWE must mean they're trying to revitalize their tag tea division. which happens every other year or so at this point)

Word is that the Lucha Bros. will go straight to the main roster (SmackDown, supposedly), while the Motor City Machine Guns are expected to go to NXT.

I'm not fond of these detours to NXT for new signees, even though they are veterans. But okay.

Honestly, I'm kinda excited to see the Lucha Bros in WWE. As much as I enjoy AEW, their roster is so full, and WWE's tag division, all the Blood Line stuff aside, feels a tad thin. So they are a great addition. Just please keep the Lucha Bros away from the LWO and so on. Just have them rock. WWE got Rey Phoenix AND Dragon Lee now. AND Penta. Great get. I'm very much looking forward to the Lucha Bros. doing great things in WWE.

Btw, looks like Yuka Sakazaki is next in line for the AEW women's championship. Good stuff.

Well, NXT is the third brand now, and not quite the development ground it once was.

And for my money? It’s been where the best matches can be found for a decent while now.

I just can't bring myself to watching NXT post-black-and-golden era. I hear that there are some good matches, but I'm too afraid of Chef Michaels' storylines and all of that. I think I'd rather watch RAW than NXT. Which 5,6 years ago would have been an absurd thing to say.

To be fair, it’s been ages since I watched, so I may be thinking of a past era.

If Rey & Penta want to try their hands in WWE, I'm happy for them - but having already heard that it sounds like they're getting new ring names, my confidence in how WWE will handle them is... dubious.

How long until they're fed to the Bloodline 2.0, I wonder...

...though I do hope we get a #DIY vs. "Lucha Bros." match where they're given 20-30 minutes to bring the house down at some point.

That sounds awesome, but doesn't Modern Day WWE kinda not allow that kind of match, more or less?

Crazy almost over the top acrobatics are more or less not present, with only one or possibly two of these types of moves allowed in most matches, for Health and Safety reasons?

This is why I have concerns - if you're going to hire the Lucha Bros., you should be hiring them to have Lucha Bros matches, surely?

Heck, I doubt Penta's going to be able to use the Fear Factor, given it's a package piledriver - something which would also rule out the stomp-assisted variant they tend to use as a tag team finisher.

 Dysartes wrote:
If Rey & Penta want to try their hands in WWE, I'm happy for them - but having already heard that it sounds like they're getting new ring names...

Under Triple H, new wrestlers tend to be renamed while established wrestlers get to keep their ring names.

Yeah, to be honest I'd be surprised if they got new names. Because they're a big deal. As for different matches.... yeah, that's way more likely.

 Alpharius wrote:
Crazy almost over the top acrobatics are more or less not present, with only one or possibly two of these types of moves allowed in most matches, for Health and Safety reasons?

That's just good storytelling in my opinion. Keeps the high spots and acrobatic moves special and impactful.

I watched the Netflix Docuseries on Vince McMahon.

It very much feels like a Netflix documentary, in that it presents this 'weird and wacky world!', but doesn't really say all that much that wasn't very, very publically known already. What it does well I think is be an introduction to the history of WWE from the early 80s to now. One might almost view it as a intro to them showing various WWE programming (depending on where in the world you sit, I assume) from 2025.

Otherwise - especially for people who are into wrestling (and who the hedge else would watch this unless their better half talks them into it?) - it's just some more video 'content' to sit through for a few hours.

Hello, hello. Bad Blood was quite something, wasn't it. It's the HHH era good and proper, it seems. They're being very, very smart about how they put PPVs together. Not to mention the smartness in making up that Crown Jewel belt. This way they can give the Saudi money some title change and still keep it basically non-canon.

Punk-Drew surely was the match of the night. In terms of wrestling I really liked the Ripley-Morgan match. I'm becoming more and more of a fan of Liv Morgan, even on an in-ring level. And she can talk and emote in funny ways.

Unfortunately, Bayley vs. Nia was not a good match. Like everybody else, I'm a big fan of Bayley's, and I actually like Nia Jax as well, because she adds something to the women's roster nobody else does.

The host segments I did not get; the Chelsea Green bit was just mean and out of nowhere.

Gunther had a guest spot. Really good to see how well he talks now and how he's being pushed. Unfortunately this seems to lead to a Goldberg match, but okay. Can't do anything about it and it'll go away again soon.

Main event was a Bloodline match, carried out by people who know their craft and are very good at that style of match. I also do like a match-up in which a tag team dominates over two thrown-together main eventers.

Bad Blood was average to middling, but that HiaC match was off the charts amazing.

Anything they can do to make Crown Jewel inconsequential to the overall product is a win.

Have tickets to Oct 21 Raw, so have to start thinking of signs.

Bad Blood had a dude hold a "Walk With Elias!" sign, so that's out, I'm afraid.

I'm sure that a Dakka Dakka sign would be allowed by the forums elders.

Am I the only one who can’t take Dominic Mysterio seriously? Not in terms of wrestling skill. But as a character. Like Liv and Rhea are just mucking him about?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Am I the only one who can’t take Dominic Mysterio seriously? Not in terms of wrestling skill. But as a character. Like Liv and Rhea are just mucking him about?

Yeah, I mean he is a comedic heel really. Not in the way that he's a cool, joke-cracking dick, but a major-league twerp, and that he is really good at. During the match the people I watched with raised the question whether Liv Morgan is just using him as part of her revenge tour thing, and I would kinda like that, but that would also go hand in hand with Dom basically becoming a de-facto babyface, which would take effort to make work. To be honest though, I'd also like to see Morgan and Dom just be a pair. They look cute together.

Woooahahhahaa, Wrestledream came and went, and what an interesting event it was. I'm still enjoying the differences in PPV booking between WWE and AEW. A super-tight package of purposeful matches (plus lots of advertising) vs. a lovely buffet of loads of different things pro wrestling has to offer, even though one might not like everything presented to the same degree.

Things I didn't enjoy as much: The women's match didn't do it for me. Not a huge fan of Mariah May as a champion and I'm feeling a bit of Willow fatigue and the outcome was rather predictable. Making this the only women's show on the main cards made it a bit more bitter for me too. The Darby Allin match was just that. I'll probably just never become a fan of his, so I'm not too sad about his latest PPV matches all having been very swift and inconsequential (boy, would I like to see the House of Black being presented a bit better. Maybe not as a faction, but just as a tag team or Aleister Black as a singles wrestler.). Also, I was okay with AEW doing 4 PPVs each year. Not hugely into having a PPV so soon after All In and All Out, mostly due to cost.

But that's all minor points. It was a rather lovely show with some amazing matches, and - as mentioned above - just a great mix of different things. Of course the Beast Mortos is 20000% cooler than Hologram. Btw, last night I tried to look up when Angelico had a TV match last, and was surprised that it was very recent. A swift Collision affair in which he put Hologram over. Angelico should be allowed to do more on TV.).

Heel Moxley is great.

Here's people I'd like to see do more on AEW TV/PPVs: The Beast Mortos, Shelton Benjamin [great fan of his], Angelico, Yuka Sakazaki. I might add Athena to the list as well, because she rocks and the RoH men's champion is mostly on AEW tv as well anyway, but on the other hand it feels like she holds RoH together, and has been doing so for years now. And I heard Penelope Ford is back now, so I'd like to see her do more. I think she's really good at being a mid-card heel lady.

Oh, and the ending was extremely interesting.

 Sigur wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Am I the only one who can’t take Dominic Mysterio seriously? Not in terms of wrestling skill. But as a character. Like Liv and Rhea are just mucking him about?

Yeah, I mean he is a comedic heel really. Not in the way that he's a cool, joke-cracking dick, but a major-league twerp, and that he is really good at. During the match the people I watched with raised the question whether Liv Morgan is just using him as part of her revenge tour thing, and I would kinda like that, but that would also go hand in hand with Dom basically becoming a de-facto babyface, which would take effort to make work. To be honest though, I'd also like to see Morgan and Dom just be a pair. They look cute together.

It definitely feels deliberate. But, as an arguable Nepo-Baby I just hope it doesn’t backfire on him career wise when the stories inevitably change.

Mind you it’s been a while since I last watched outside of instagram clips, so I accept I’m not seeing his usual in-ring performances, just carefully curated highlights to drive his character.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Sigur wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Am I the only one who can’t take Dominic Mysterio seriously? Not in terms of wrestling skill. But as a character. Like Liv and Rhea are just mucking him about?

Yeah, I mean he is a comedic heel really. Not in the way that he's a cool, joke-cracking dick, but a major-league twerp, and that he is really good at. During the match the people I watched with raised the question whether Liv Morgan is just using him as part of her revenge tour thing, and I would kinda like that, but that would also go hand in hand with Dom basically becoming a de-facto babyface, which would take effort to make work. To be honest though, I'd also like to see Morgan and Dom just be a pair. They look cute together.

It definitely feels deliberate. But, as an arguable Nepo-Baby I just hope it doesn’t backfire on him career wise when the stories inevitably change.

Mind you it’s been a while since I last watched outside of instagram clips, so I accept I’m not seeing his usual in-ring performances, just carefully curated highlights to drive his character.

It's been years since I watched a WWE weekly show, but I see the guy at PPVs and he's doing alright there. I could see him being the cowardly leader of his own heel faction, I could see him as a cowardly manager, I could even see him doing a sort of "unlucky Corbin" thing. I think there's some potential for some sympathetic doofus character in there as well.

Wow, so Sadiq Khan is the only one out there holding a WWE and an AEW title now?

So apparently Malakai Black is not leaving AEW. Phew. I can't think of many other wrestlers who in theory never interested me, but completely win me over with their in-ring stuff every single time I see them. Looks hard as hell, knows how to wrestle in all aspects. Great asset to AEW.

Other observations from Dynamite:
.) Is Ricochet really tall or is Powerhouse Hobbs not as tall as I thought he was? When Ricochet brought him back and they walked side by side Ricochet looked way taller than I thought.
.) I really wanna see Shelton Benjamin be presented as an equal to Bobby Lashley. Benjamin is great. Maybe they'll manage to make them different enough by making Benjamin throw people around and Lashley running into people real fast or something. This somehow is the image of them I have in my head. Kinda like the tag team cyclopses in The Messenger.
.) Really liking the Brian Cage/Lance Archer tag team.

The Bloodline is getting stronger with reports saying that WWE has signed Lance Anoa'i.

 Ghaz wrote:
The Bloodline is getting stronger with reports saying that WWE has signed Lance Anoa'i.

Question is - which one?

 Sigur wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
The Bloodline is getting stronger with reports saying that WWE has signed Lance Anoa'i.

Question is - which one?

That is the $64,000 question...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
SmackDown just introduced the Women’s United States Championship.

After last week's Bandido vignette I was VERY concerned and sad. After this week's I'm on board. Reminded me of the vignettes before Wardlow's debut.

Been to the 'rasslin last night. Prater Weihnachts-Catchen. It was rather lovely. Peter White's final match and retirement had the weirdest finish ever. Maybe I missed something, but it went down like this if I remember correctly: The baddies used a steel chair during a ref bump bit to torture White's padawan in the ring, White grabs the chair, ref comes to, sees him with the chair, DQ finish, the baddies win. Bit of discussion, the other referee comes out, the ref's decision is reversed and the goodies win! And that was it. How odd. Afterwards Peter White said some nice words, which was nice.

As usual the whole thig started with a big old Royal Rumble, so we get to know the wrestlers. It featured local hero "Yugo Boy" from the World Underground Wrestling people who wrestle at Weberknecht bar in Vienna regularly.

Then we had a LOVELY tag match between Team Visegrad (from Poland, basically kinda like latter Moustache Mountain) vs. Team Energy from Austria, Space Cowbow somethingsomething and the Austrian Wolverine Chris Colen. I like them. They aren't remarkable, they're just good at the wrestling thing and make for good goodies. Also: willing to bleed. Very entertaining match; the moustachio'd heel got over by being a funny heel based on "I'm handsome, you are not". Brought a mirror on a stick with his entrance, holding it in front of people who boo him enthusiastically, giving them a thumbs-down. Classic. Also asking the crowd "Am I pretty?". Very solid. Good times.

Georges Khoukaz vs. I think Fabio Ferrari. The former, billed from Aleppo, Syria (topical!) I remember as a big heel 1.5 years ago. I also remember running into him at the toilets as he washed Tajiri's black mist out of his face in the sink then. Now he's a babyface, his beard glorious, and he's very tall and good. Fabio Ferrari is THE solid go-to heel on these events. He's been at almost every single live wrestling event I attended (WWE houseshows excluded ).

Women's Champion Lexa Velo, German, meaning instant-heel is out injured (still came out for a promo, SHOOT ATTACKED my sister with a baseball cap. Dastardly.), so the match was for the contendership. Moxie (pretty much local, always the heel vs. the flown-in opponent. Interesting ring gear.) vs. Heidi Katrina from the UK. The latter being just a pro and a vet and all of that it seemed.

Martin Pain vs. Gianni Valetta. Very cool match. Martin Pain is a madman who will jump off the top turnbuckle at any opportunity. He's not even a small or slight guy. Gianni Valetta (from Malta!) is very fun. Does headbutts and then sells it. That's something I like.


You know what sucks though? If you're sitting at a wrestling show and after the Royal Rumble one of the wrestlers (done for the night) sits down in front of you, his (quite obviously very new) girlfriend on his lap and they just have a good time for the rest of the night. Meaning nobody behind them has a good time. That annoyed me a fair bit, but I couldn't come up with any useful arguments to stop them, because how would you? Technically I saw what's happening in 80% of the ring, but still kinda annoying.


Anyway, still a fun night out.

Rampage/Collision: Toni Storm is back, first match on Rampage, many people were up in arms. What actually happened: It didn't matter, nobody lost anything, Harley Cameron won much from this. Collision: Very interesting character developments, very cleverly done. This might give us the best of both worlds (character stuff, in-ring stuff). Very glad to see Toni Storm (non-timeless) back, and they're doing interesting things with that character.

Heyhey, happy new year.

Fun little story: my sister watched the McMahon documentary on Netflix, wants to make a serious effort of getting into WWE stuff again. Her and her BF decided to watch some stuff, decided to watch some Bray Wyatt match, because he was possibly one of the flashiest characters of recent years. Very sensible. The match they chose was the Wrestlemania match with Randy Orton, with the floodlights blinding the audience and the projected maggots and such.

Way to start 🤣🤣

Quite so! Have we ever talked about the first matches we ever watched in this thread?

For me it's a bit hazy since I had a bad cold, I had the TV on and RAW came on after the film I'd watched. I very vividly remember seeing Dean Ambrose for the first time (it was right after Rollins had turned on The Shield), but I think the first match I watched was the Usos vs. the Wyatt Family. Possibly a trios tag team match with Ambrose along with the Usos on one side.


Oh, now that I think of it - anyone of you seen anything WWE on Netflix yet? For Germany/Austria (probably Switzerland too) we have to wait until bloody mid-2026 for that stuff, because until then the rights for broadcasting are with a private German TV company....

I honestly couldn’t say.

I’ve been in Wrasslin’s orbit since the mid or late 80’s, but never had WWF/WWE on my telly, as that was Sky Sports.

Sky One would get the highlights show, but with all the fun bits cut.

And even before that? Big Daddy and Giant Hastings could be found on ITV’s World of Sport.

My first match was probably back when the WWF (yes, the WWF) had a Saturday morning show amidst all of the cartoons and the announcers were Vince and Jesse. The wrestlers were still characters like Hillbilly Jim and the Killer Bees.

 Sigur wrote:
Oh, now that I think of it - anyone of you seen anything WWE on Netflix yet? For Germany/Austria (probably Switzerland too) we have to wait until bloody mid-2026 for that stuff, because until then the rights for broadcasting are with a private German TV company....

New content begins with the RAW on Monday, Siggy, but I'm given to understand that quite a bit of back-catalogue stuff may be up already.

Not sure when we'd get it in the UK either, off-hand, but as I don't have Netflix I haven't looked into it.

i probably saw some matches here and there before being a fan, but after deciding "i should get into wrestling", the first match i saw was the opener for TJPW Grand Princess 2022. a bit of a recent one, compared to the rest of the threat

 Ghaz wrote:
My first match was probably back when the WWF (yes, the WWF) had a Saturday morning show amidst all of the cartoons and the announcers were Vince and Jesse. The wrestlers were still characters like Hillbilly Jim and the Killer Bees.

Same for me, but in the late 80s.

I've never actually watched a wrestling match unfortunately!

But the first one I saw on TV I think was a Rick Flair match because I remember thinking that blonde haired cheating guy had a lot of charisma XD

 Ghaz wrote:
My first match was probably back when the WWF (yes, the WWF) had a Saturday morning show amidst all of the cartoons and the announcers were Vince and Jesse. The wrestlers were still characters like Hillbilly Jim and the Killer Bees.

Same here, I think!

I'm also fairly certain Randy Savage was on that show - he became a favorite of mine on the spot with that top rope flying elbow!

The things that used to be sure-fire finishing moves!

 Dysartes wrote:

 Sigur wrote:
Oh, now that I think of it - anyone of you seen anything WWE on Netflix yet? For Germany/Austria (probably Switzerland too) we have to wait until bloody mid-2026 for that stuff, because until then the rights for broadcasting are with a private German TV company....

New content begins with the RAW on Monday, Siggy, but I'm given to understand that quite a bit of back-catalogue stuff may be up already.

Not sure when we'd get it in the UK either, off-hand, but as I don't have Netflix I haven't looked into it.

It's all up and being advertised pretty heavily on netflix in the UK. Not only the new stuff, but huge portions of the vault of raw, smackdown and PPVs.

WWE on Netflix.

Any UK early adopters able to consider if, finally, I might be able to watch Raw and Smackdown in an up to date, not a month behind so the PPVs make no sense manner?

Because that would be nice.

Smackdown will be the tricky one, as that hasn't moved to Netflix.

Someone with the platform will need to comment on the rest, though.

 Dysartes wrote:
Smackdown will be the tricky one, as that hasn't moved to Netflix.

It's moved to USA from FOX.

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a63348232/wwe-netflix-schedule-2025/

Seems like it will be on UK Netflix at 1 am on Saturday..

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Sigur wrote:
Oh, now that I think of it - anyone of you seen anything WWE on Netflix yet? For Germany/Austria (probably Switzerland too) we have to wait until bloody mid-2026 for that stuff, because until then the rights for broadcasting are with a private German TV company....

New content begins with the RAW on Monday, Siggy, but I'm given to understand that quite a bit of back-catalogue stuff may be up already.

Not sure when we'd get it in the UK either, off-hand, but as I don't have Netflix I haven't looked into it.

It's all up and being advertised pretty heavily on netflix in the UK. Not only the new stuff, but huge portions of the vault of raw, smackdown and PPVs.

Nice! I don't expect for it to have all the libraries and maybe do that dastardly thing streamers do to switch out the programming at a whim. But let's wait and see.

Okay, I'm on the Harley-Cameron-as-a-babyface-train now.

 Sigur wrote:
Okay, I'm on the Harley-Cameron-as-a-babyface-train now.

Same!

She's really leaned into it - full speed ahead!

Yup. And you can tell she's a proper lady by the fact that she can rap, but chooses not to. Take the rapping away, get her away from QT Marshal (and improve the in-ring stuff a bit, for which I'm sure QT Marshal is actually useful behind the scenes) and there ya go!

Julia Hart got really good (or good enough at the very least) as a wrestler, I'm sure they can do the same with Cameron, but for the lower midcard. I could very much see her become the R-Truth of AEW, and I mean that with great respect and sincerity.

Collision!

Toni Storm.

I know it is a bit of a spoiler, but quoted for truth and for the fact that it made me laugh out loud!

Pretty sure there was none, pretty sure that getting beat up kinda fills her Timeless Meter until she turns Timeless?

Good stuff!

 Alpharius wrote:
I know it is a bit of a spoiler, but quoted for truth and for the fact that it made me laugh out loud!

Pretty sure there was none, pretty sure that getting beat up kinda fills her Timeless Meter until she turns Timeless?

Good stuff!

Cheers.

It's interesting, Collision really is getting lots of attention and becomes a show one's gotta watch. Here are my great suggestions for Tony Khan for booking the women's roster:


"Dear Tony Khan,

Hope you're well. Get the tbs title on Yuka Sakazaki already, get Moné into the title picture, bonk Toni Storm on the head again so she goes back to be rock&roll, get the title off Maria and put it on Hikaru Shida, Amber Moon (yeah, Billie Starkz becomes RoH women's champion!) or Julia Hart. Can be a transitional champion, if they want they can put the title on Moné soon again, just give her a different theme song, less dancing, and get rid of the CEO thing.

Thanks, lots of love,
Sigur


P.S.: I couldn't help to notice that you didn't reply to my last e-mails. Please confirm that this is the correct adress."

Hi, erm, *checks notes*……..kids?

I’m back in the WWE saddle.

I fear I’ve missed the glory days of The Judgement Day, in the best possible way.

If I had to sum up Dirty Dom, and indeed his Judgement Day?

All mouth, no trousers.

It’s a good show like, but their incompetent villainy escalates it. Match started off a bit humdrum, but it was a trick!

They're a good stable of antagonists, aren't they. They're like Dark Elves (including the colour scheme, come to think of it), and thus perfect recurring, but ultimately self-sabotaging villains.

Speaking of Dom, the other day I watched the 2024 Royal Rumble on Youtube, it's on the WWE channel, with commentary by the Judgment day, R-Truth & Damien Priest, The NXT guy, and Bron Breakker. Bron Breakker seems to be a nice man and incredibly boring in his whole "I'm a professional company man" persona. Anyway, interesting to see the match again, and the commentary is funny, especially so Dom and R-Truth. The latter is a given, the former really shows how much Dom has grown over the past years.

I try to get back onto the WWE train, but somehow I just don't watch as much wrestling as I'd like to in general.

 Sigur wrote:
They're a good stable of antagonists, aren't they. They're like Dark Elves (including the colour scheme, come to think of it), and thus perfect recurring, but ultimately self-sabotaging villains.

Speaking of Dom, the other day I watched the 2024 Royal Rumble on Youtube, it's on the WWE channel, with commentary by the Judgment day, R-Truth & Damien Priest, The NXT guy, and Bron Breakker. Bron Breakker seems to be a nice man and incredibly boring in his whole "I'm a professional company man" persona. Anyway, interesting to see the match again, and the commentary is funny, especially so Dom and R-Truth. The latter is a given, the former really shows how much Dom has grown over the past years.

I try to get back onto the WWE train, but somehow I just don't watch as much wrestling as I'd like to in general.

The commentary by Drew was also pretty funny, especially his decision of when to leave and stop commentating on it.

Oh yes, CM Punk wasn't bad either. His character seems to be incredibly close to himself. With Drew you know he's always in character now, and masterfully and cleverly so, with Punk it seems like he's in character too, but it also seems like he just is that guy. But as for doing the whole "in character despite internet silliness" in 2025, Drew McIntyre and Dom are really, really good.

Royal Rumble!

Watched the women’s and the tag team match live.

Women’s Rumble was superb. Some treat names on show, and Alexa Bliss has returned. Lots of nonsense, and a nice way for me, on my return to viewing, to see some new names.

Tag Team Match was odd. I really enjoyed the wrestling, but the crowd didn’t seem to give much.

Also, entrance music that isn’t rock music doesn’t sound right to me.

Rhodes vs Owens. Love a good ladder match, and this was that! Both guys gave an excellent showing. Definitely top class wrasslers, who know how and when to really sell a squelching.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Men’s Rumble was also fun.

But please, enough Logan Paul, yeah?

So far I watched the women's rumble, tag match and the Owens/Rhodes slaughterfest. Men's rumble tomorrow night.

Women's Rumble:


Tag Match


Rhodes/Owens LADDER match




about logan paul: As mentioned above, I Haven't watched the men's rumble, but I hope it's just 29 dudes kicking the snot out of this twerp.

Both rumbles felt pretty authentic to me. And I dunno if it’s just I’ve been away for so long I don’t know who’s hot, who’s tepid, and who’s simply making up numbers, but they felt like anyone’s match at the right times.

Them trying to book Charlotte Flair as a face is certainly a choice when the champions on all three brands are really loved at the moment and it seems people are still a bit bored of Charlotte instantly getting to step into main event scene whenever she comes back.

It's kinda like when Cena came back from injury way ahead of schedule. Gets a momentary pop before the audience remembers they were fed up of super-Cena booking and returned to boos. Or when Roman returned from his leukaemia treatment and got a warm welcome before things returned to the pre-Tribal Chief status quo of boos.

Well, Charlotte getting a title shot more or less upon return, and Charlotte getting the title isn’t necessarily the same thing.

Sure, we’ve precedent. But that was during t’dark times. I’d say there’s a decent likelihood she’ll be champ. Or, it’s a way for newcomers to know she’s a big deal (and a bloody good wrestler), so her Wrestlemania loss helps get her over as Face or Heel, whichever way they play it.

Charlotte can be a good worker, but she also has a habit of checking out of matches, and throwing an in-ring fit when she feels like it (see: vs Nia Jax, and/or the silly title swap segment with Becky).

There were a good handful of women in that match that deserved the win over her.

Let Charlotte come back after the Rumble, derust, work and lose some feuds, and then win the 2026 Rumble? I might've been OK with that.

Her teleporting back in and automatically getting the prize? No yeet.

I'm a-okay with that to be honest. She's at a level at which she shouldn't have to lose in a feud against say Bianca Belair or anybody else. They shouldn't use her much on TV until Wrestlemania, maybe a lovely singles match at Elimination ´Chamber, but I think that Alexa Bliss, Lyra Valkyria and others can carry the day-to-day in-ring and promo stuff.

Of course Charlotte gets a big pop on her return, but she's a natural heel, that's true.



Just finished watching the men's rumble.

I'm going to jump in on this talk. I used to watch WWF back in the mid 90's through to about 2004, around the time I graduated high school heh.

I haven't had cable or anything where WWE has been broadcast so this new thing where RAW is on Netflix seemed like a good way to catch up on stuff.

I tried to watch the first episode of RAW that aired on Netflix and I was like "..... this is boring". I'm personally used to RAW being 50 minutes long, 4-6 matches during the show. I THINK the first episode on netflix was close to 3 hours long? And only had 4 matches? I seriously counted the time that The Rock spent on screen before he started talking and it was like what.. 5 minutes? 10 minutes?

And while I didn't watch wrestling when it was the era of John Cena, I know who he is because of the pop culture bleed, but I don't know who this Roman Rains guy is. His story seemed kinda boring to me. I saw they mentioned he had "the most wins ever" as a champion or something like that, and that doesn't make for an exciting story if you know the guy is going to win every match.

There's just so many pacing problems going on. I don't know if I'm going to watch any more of the new episodes of RAW.

One thin I did enjoy was I saw there's old archived RAW episodes available to watch, I have watched three of the first episodes of RAW that are available on Netflix. I got more action and excitement in a 50 minute episode of the archived RAW episode than I got from the new episode, so I think I will keep watching those.

What I hope will happen is that more of the archive becomes available on Netflix, like the golden age from the 80's, and everything from the 90's, and I hope they put out the NCW Archive? The alternative wrestling company that Macho Man and others who quit the WWF joined. That dominated over the WWF for many years, and it was eventually purchased by the WWE, so they could show the archive of those episodes and it would be excellent.

I also hope they make the PPV event archive available on netflix.

EDIT: WCW, that's what I was thinking of, man it'd be great to have that on netflix.

They had all of that on their own streaming service. IIRC rumours are that eventually WWE will slap a bunch of their own stuff onto Netflix as well (but knowing streaming services it'll be made available and taken down again at a whim, so very unreliable), but not anything by other brands, even if WWE own the video libraries. WWE right now is on a major high again since HHH took over. The way he and his people book shows is very different, (most of all PPVs), but very effective. Very much story-focussed though. Especially that first Netflix episode was meant to introduce new or lapsed fans to the product, so I think after that you'll probably see more matches again and be shown why somebody might be impressive rather than being told why they might be impressive.

Checking out WWE's Vault Youtube channel might be worth a look; I hear they currently put lots of old stuff on there for free.



It might be worth checking alternatives to WWE, if you prefer more matches, like AEW, New Japan Pro Wrestling, TNA or GCW. There currently is a huge array of televised wrestling to choose from.

Charlotte made an appearance on NXT last night, confronting Bayley, Roxanne Perez and NXT Champion Guilia. Worth a watch if you can find it online somewhere. Also...

‘WWE Evolve’: WWE and Tubi Launch Wednesday Night Wrestling Program to Highlight New Talent - Variety

For the future of wrestling, WWE is looking to the past. WWE and Tubi announced the launch of a new weekly wrestling show, “WWE Evolve” which will premiere Wednesday March 5, at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. “Evolve” gets its name from the defunct wrestling promotion Evolve, which was purchased by WWE in 2020 following a five-year partnership.

“WWE Evolve” relaunches as a showcase of in-ring action for up-and-coming WWE prospects, including talent from the recently established WWE ID program, a developmental program that works to provide indie wrestlers a more seamless transition to WWE.

So NXT when NXT was NXT, before it became NXT?

Excellent. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, when I first got WWE Network, it was NXT that really appealed to me. Smaller crowds, talent hungry for the opportunity.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I'm going to jump in on this talk. I used to watch WWF back in the mid 90's through to about 2004, around the time I graduated high school heh.

I haven't had cable or anything where WWE has been broadcast so this new thing where RAW is on Netflix seemed like a good way to catch up on stuff.

I tried to watch the first episode of RAW that aired on Netflix and I was like "..... this is boring". I'm personally used to RAW being 50 minutes long, 4-6 matches during the show. I THINK the first episode on netflix was close to 3 hours long? And only had 4 matches? I seriously counted the time that The Rock spent on screen before he started talking and it was like what.. 5 minutes? 10 minutes?

I've admittedly been watching Professional Wrestling for a long (long!) time, but was RAW ever only an hour long?

I'll also admit that there are pacing issues at times these days, but they 'need' to pump out the content (per their contracts, I'm sure!), but yeah, most wrestling weekly shows probably should max out at 2 hours.

 Alpharius wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
I'm going to jump in on this talk. I used to watch WWF back in the mid 90's through to about 2004, around the time I graduated high school heh.

I haven't had cable or anything where WWE has been broadcast so this new thing where RAW is on Netflix seemed like a good way to catch up on stuff.

I tried to watch the first episode of RAW that aired on Netflix and I was like "..... this is boring". I'm personally used to RAW being 50 minutes long, 4-6 matches during the show. I THINK the first episode on netflix was close to 3 hours long? And only had 4 matches? I seriously counted the time that The Rock spent on screen before he started talking and it was like what.. 5 minutes? 10 minutes?

I've admittedly been watching Professional Wrestling for a long (long!) time, but was RAW ever only an hour long?

I'll also admit that there are pacing issues at times these days, but they 'need' to pump out the content (per their contracts, I'm sure!), but yeah, most wrestling weekly shows probably should max out at 2 hours.

raw has been at least two hours for my entire lifetime, but back before the attitude era, it was a single hour

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
...
Excellent. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, when I first got WWE Network, it was NXT that really appealed to me. Smaller crowds, talent hungry for the opportunity.

It's also extremely interesting to see newer wrestlers learn fundamentals and get better in the ring. Extremely refreshing if the alternative is watching trained-to-perfection WWE style wrestling.


Just a shame nobody's got the time to watch indie wrestling with all that stuff around now.

Hopefully this time we won’t see promising new talent in NXT utterly wasted on RAW or Smackdown.

HHH knows his onions, and if memory serves was the power behind NXT’s throne. So I’ve hope!

 Ghaz wrote:
Charlotte made an appearance on NXT last night, confronting Bayley, Roxanne Perez and NXT Champion Guilia. Worth a watch if you can find it online somewhere. Also...

It's probably not the whole thing, but there's at least a partial clip of it on the WWE page for that episode of NXT.

 Alpharius wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
I'm going to jump in on this talk. I used to watch WWF back in the mid 90's through to about 2004, around the time I graduated high school heh.

I haven't had cable or anything where WWE has been broadcast so this new thing where RAW is on Netflix seemed like a good way to catch up on stuff.

I tried to watch the first episode of RAW that aired on Netflix and I was like "..... this is boring". I'm personally used to RAW being 50 minutes long, 4-6 matches during the show. I THINK the first episode on netflix was close to 3 hours long? And only had 4 matches? I seriously counted the time that The Rock spent on screen before he started talking and it was like what.. 5 minutes? 10 minutes?

I've admittedly been watching Professional Wrestling for a long (long!) time, but was RAW ever only an hour long?

I'll also admit that there are pacing issues at times these days, but they 'need' to pump out the content (per their contracts, I'm sure!), but yeah, most wrestling weekly shows probably should max out at 2 hours.

Looks like around 1996 is when they switched to 2 hours, but man, watching these 1 hour long archive RAW episodes on netflix makes me think they should have stayed at 1 hour.

I just realized that the reason I don't remember 1 hour RAW was that was the period of time I gave up on Wrestling - I picked it back up after moving to California in...1997!

The more you know - and thanks for the history lesson!

BanjoJohn wrote:

What I hope will happen is that more of the archive becomes available on Netflix, like the golden age from the 80's, and everything from the 90's, and I hope they put out the NCW Archive? The alternative wrestling company that Macho Man and others who quit the WWF joined. That dominated over the WWF for many years, and it was eventually purchased by the WWE, so they could show the archive of those episodes and it would be excellent.

The whole back catalog is available on Peacock in the USA.

 bbb wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:

What I hope will happen is that more of the archive becomes available on Netflix, like the golden age from the 80's, and everything from the 90's, and I hope they put out the NCW Archive? The alternative wrestling company that Macho Man and others who quit the WWF joined. That dominated over the WWF for many years, and it was eventually purchased by the WWE, so they could show the archive of those episodes and it would be excellent.

The whole back catalog is available on Peacock in the USA.

Peacock has it? I need to check that out, but is Peacock still free or do I have to pay? I kinda got interested in this whole thing because I was already paying for Netflix, so I could watch stuff again without having to pay more money, but I wasn't interested enough in paying for WWE streaming or other streaming services.

I have thought about what some of you have said and I'll try giving this new RAW a few more shots, I'll probably watch two more episodes before I decide if I want to keep watching, if they haven't been as boring as the first one that premiered on Netflix then it is worth trying to watch some more.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Watched feb 3rd RAW episode. Here's just some of my thoughts as I'm watching it, feel free to ignore/skip. I'll put it in a spoiler


I guess some of the stuff I saw, the in between match talking/story stuff I find hard to care about because its been 20 years since I've actually watched wrestling regularly. I don't know any of the new wrestlers, and the women (while athletic) seem very goofy and over-the-top that can sometimes work with men but seems odd with women wrestlers. 2 hours definitely was better than the 3 hour premier. But if I was editing/co-ordinating the show, without changing how many matches or segments that are actually in the show, I would have found a way to cut it down to 1 hour 30 minutes, do things like reduce down-time, cut the moments of silence/cheering shorter, make the matches a little shorter. I dunno how to describe it, it just feels like a lot of time is padded in between everything.

I think I'm going to see if there's a 2 hour episode from the raw archive that I can watch to see if the pacing feels different, something from like. 97 or 98 or 2000 ish.

Well, it's Cut Day in the WWE again. Wrestlers cut are:

Authors of Pain (Akam and Rezar)
Paul Ellering
Blair Davenport
Cedrtc Alexander
Sonya DeVille
Isla Dawn
Giovanni Vinci
The Good Brothers (Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows)

So Isla Dawn gets them a nice article on the BBC, and is cut within 6 weeks? Sounds about right,

time for G&A to show up in New Japan, and then AEW, and then end up back in WWE. as it goes

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
time for G&A to show up in New Japan, and then AEW, and then end up back in WWE. as it goes

Anderson is currently out injured, so it may be a while for them to show up in New Japan.

However, expect Cedric Alexander to show up in AEW as word is that MVP, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin are already lobbying Tony Khan to have him join the Hurt Syndicate once his 90 day non-compete clause is up.

I chose August 9th, 1999 for an eppisode of the RAW Vault to watch, I guess it had a 2 hour timeslot on TV but ads and stuff that are cut out, left this episode as 98 minutes on netflix. I think the color commentators have more lively voices, and goodness I didn't know how much I missed jerry "the king" lawler as a commentator for wrestling. The rock comes out and starts speaking 4 minutes in, then thebig show and undertaker comes out and they start to fight at the 6 minute mark. 2 other guys come out and fight, then kane comes out and fights. oh wow yeah this was x-poc and kane era, I remember that. First match starts at 12 minutes in. Hardy boys interupt the match and attack christian (who is in a match against gangrel) Match ends at 15 minutes in, edge comes in to help christian. Lol a chef boyardee commercial with the rock. Jesse Ventura gives a little speech. HHH comes in with china. Lol sean michaels comes out. Second match starts at 34 minutes in. 47 minutes in the kane & x-poc match vs tag champs starts. x-pac and kane win, undertaker and the big show come out and start beating them up after the match. Third match starts around 58 minutes in, match over at 61 minutes in. Man some guy's getting his leg snapped in a folding chair after the match. Hmm Jericho interupts the rock's second speech. Fourth match starts around 78 minutes in, and the match ended in 2 minutes lol, someone got hit with a pet carrier through a table. fifth match starts 82 minutes in, big show vs the rock. Match ends in DQ because of outside interference heh. 91 minutes in the tripple threat match between HHH china and undertaker starts. Steve austin comes in, smashes HHH with a chain, puts china on HHH for the pin, and match ends right at the end of the show, undertaker is stunned because he had knocked HHH and china out of the ring. haha man that was a fun show.

Ok so i dunno, is it nostalgia glasses I have? is this show from 1999 better than modern RAW? 6 matches in 98 minutes, a few sneak attacks and whatnot, some story/drama but not a lot of down time. It feels like it was a better show back then.

It looks like AEW has released Malakai Black, Ricky Starks and Miro which is why they've been removed from their roster page. With the releases that WWE just made, they have room for any and all of them.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, Ricky Starks showed up on NXT tonight, so that takes care of where he’s going.

Shame about Gallows&Anderson. Unusual to fire a wrestler while they are recuperating. But I guess they were informed earlier onthat this would happen. I enjoy listening to their podcast (apart from the crypto currency stuff and investing into horrible crap companies like Palantir. And apart from the ghost stuff. Leaving not much to listen to really, but I really enjoy the two just talking. They're funny as hedge.)

Bea Priestley will be fine. Off to Japan (or home to the UK for a bit before that?) and things will be lovely.

Isla Dawn surprised me. Shame. I liked that tag team.




Good to finally have the Starks/Black/Miro situation resolved. Starks will be happier in NXT and fits that thing perfectly, Black can go back to the main roster and will be a big deal there this time around. Miro ...not sure. Somehow I feel like he's almost happier being a streamer? Who knows.


NJPW New Beginning in Osaka

So does Sheamus and Miro having a few pints on Twitter signal the return of Rusev Day?

 Ghaz wrote:
So does Sheamus and Miro having a few pints on Twitter signal the return of Rusev Day?

This is bigger than Rusev Day. Return of the League of Nations confirmed! Somebody call Wade Barrett!!!1

I just checked it NWA Powerr still existed (which I enjoyed for the first 2 seasons or so and when they stopped being on youtube, or even before that, I stopped watching because there was so much weekly wrestling on). It does, but it streams on Twitter now (after their short-lived tv deal. Shame that stopped.). Yikes.

Oops, Elimination Chamber is coming up again! Time goes by faster and faster. Here are my picks:

Elimination Chamber Match: John Cena vs. CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Logan Paul vs. Damian Priest vs. Seth “Freakin” Rollins. My money is on CM Punk. This may be absurd, but somehow I have a feeling we'll see Punk vs. Cody at Mania. I'm demaing at least 20min of everyone involved beating up on Paul.

Elimination Chamber Match: Liv Morgan vs. Bianca Belair vs. Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley vs. Naomi vs. Roxanne Perez. Alexa Bliss. First PPV match after her return, plus I think Ripley vs Bliss is an interesting pairing (if Bliss can keep up in the ring). Sure, Liv Morgan would be the more obvious option, and I personally would probably prefer her because she's so good, but I think everyone is a little tired of the Morgan-Ripley storyline. The fact that Roxanne Perez is being pushed like this is really impressive. I don't quite get it yet, but ok. Good for her.

Tag Match: Tiffany Stratton and Trish Stratus vs. Nia Jax and Candice LeRae. House show match that I'm sure will be better than we're all assuming right now. Nothing against Mrs. Stratus, but good thing Candice LaRae is there to carry her through the match if need be (because I wouldn't trust Nia Jax - as good as she is in her role - with that job ). I can't get on board with Stratton any more than I can with Maria May; I don't know why we're falling back on the diva stuff now. But ok.



Unsanctioned Match: Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens.This will - if the WWE bookers do it right - be the main event (or happen after the main event, because Unsanctioned and all). And it's going to be great.Zayn/Owens have been among my top favorites for a long, long time.They can do anything, they do everything (especially Owens, physically). It's going to be a great match. And Owens will win. Unless someone interferes in favor of Zayn....



As always, an extremely lean card, with great matches (as always, totally solid with storylines, except for the tag match) with a total of 1h of commercials in between.

I'm more of a MMA fan, but wrestling is fun to watch too, Undertaker will always be my favorite.

I don't know why, but ever since AEW started and I began to watch wrestling again, Cody has been the wrestler that sucks me back in.

Each time I dropped out of AEW due to some nonsense booking or a superhuman spotfest, my friend would tell me about some new feud Cody had going and I'd be straight back in.

I don't think he'll go down as a great like the Undertaker, but to a casual fan like me he is definitely Mr Right Now!

He is great, no doubt about it. A man who seems to know exactly what he does at any given second. And his career is just fascinating. For that alone he'll go down in history. He's an entirely different breed than the Undertaker who is THE Vince McMahon-WWE-bred timeless character dude (who also is well hard, a great wrestler and so on); Cody is more interesting in to how smart he is about things and how he left on his own accord at a point at which nobody did, especially not anybody in his spot, got himself attached to the hottest acts in wrestling, built something incredible and then returned to WWE on his own accord, with his own character, his own theme, his own name and pretty much instantly became the top babyface of the company. At a time at which being a popular, straight-laced (pretty much) babyface is extremely hard. I think his babyface character works so well because in his face you can always see that there's always that underlying heel which could come out at any moment, but it won't.

Just put Smackdown on.

This is the first time I’ll have seen an episode before the PPV.

Also? R-TRUTH FOREVER!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
...
Also? R-TRUTH FOREVER!

He's really, really good. And he's been wrestling in WWE in 4 different decades (debuted in 1999)!
Also: the Lie Detector is a bad-ass move. Like the whirling candy. I like when people do twisty stuff.

Elimination Chamber

The constant "Oh my god the natural athleticism" really gets my goat when they talk about Paul.

He's 29 and a multi-millionaire who has lived an easy life of luxury for the last decade. I'm sure it was really hard for him to go to a gym and train with all that no work he does.

He is of course just there to get heat. And there’s no denying it works.

But c’mon. We genuinely loathe him. He’s not earned our ire in the old fashioned way.

Hence I say get rid, and bring back Enzo Amore for us to utterly despise on a cellular level.

The type of heat Logan Paul gets isn't heel heat, it isn't even X-Pac heat.

It's Tess Blanchard heat, and you should never want the stink of that near your promotion.

@Gert: That dude from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in one season gained quite a bit of weight, was ripped in the next season, basically only to illustrate that this is totally possible as long as you're rich or have a company to pay for a celeb trainer and pre-prepared meals, 9 hours of sleep per day, have nothing else to do and no other real problems. Apparently. Logan Paul surely has a lot of discipline or at least drive to do all these things, but it's the very embodyment of the whole youtube-streamer-influencer stuff of the worst kind. He's constantly scamming people for money, he targets young people especially with crap products of which he must KNOW they're crap. And then tries to present himself to his audience as a nice, fun guy. He's bascially WWE's Saudi Arabia deal in human form and once more a reminder that companies will never act moral or immoral by they own definition. This is why law is required to keep companies from acting immoral and keep societies functioning.

Oh, as for Eliminiation Chamber - errr, I guess I'll watch it tomorrow night.

Come on guys!

I want to talk about...you know what!

It was a glorious Pod Shot.

In fact, Y’know wot?

Between “Dirty Dom” and that moment? We know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that WWE can produce absolutely superb heels. And in the case of “Dirty Dom”, deliberately not very good or competent heels.

Which only begs the question?

What. Purpose. Does. Logan. Paul. Serve.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In fact, Y’know wot?

Between “Dirty Dom” and that moment? We know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that WWE can produce absolutely superb heels. And in the case of “Dirty Dom”, deliberately not very good or competent heels.

Which only begs the question?

What. Purpose. Does. Logan. Paul. Serve.

Celebrity involvement to try and expand your audience and get attention from outside media. Been a thing since the rock n wrestling connection and the very first wrestlemania, or Andy Kaufman and his feud versus Jerry Lawler. It's a carnie business, always has been, always will be.

Pretty much that, and...

...he has almost 25% of the Youtube subscribers that the WWE's account has.

Presumably *some* of those people like him/are interested in what he's doing?

I guess?

.) Andy Kaufman --> cool dude.
.) Cindy Lauper ---> cool lady.
.) Liberace --> great looking dude.
.) can't think of any other rock&wrestling people. Er..... Mr.T. ....well... he was special.

.) Logan Paul --> a pest.





Well, I watched it all now.

Apparently, AEW is coming to Prime.

Yus. Going by what I read is that people in the US, Canady and UK will be able to buy their PPVs via prime?


I've been critical of Timeless Toni Storm when it comes to in-ring things, but I think that with the return of that character they fixed that. And a talking segment - especially when pre-taped - is always a spectacle. That thing with Maria May on Dynamite was cheesy, but just horribly entertaining. Also good to see that they're doing something with Maria May characterwise, even though it's just "ladies be cray-zeee, amirite?".

I liked the Outrunners thing too, but I don't love the constant mentioning of them actually being from the 80s. I was more willing to go along with Kris Statlander being an alien than stuff like that. That should be entirely unmentioned. Don't change a thing about their presentation, just leave all the "this is from 1987!" stuff away. Everybody gets it. Nothing worse than an entertaining thing being pointed out by a superior authority, because then we're back to Michael Cole saying "he's so much fun to watch, guys!".

Anyway, as for that WWE PPV

Women's Elimination Chamber match was cool.


The Tag Match was very house show-y. Do WWE still have pre-shows? Normally this would have been a pre-show match. But okay. Can't get behind Tiffany Stratton. Nia Jax is unique and good in her role. I was impressed with Candice LeRae. First, I really liked how they wore matching outfits, and she's more 'poison pixie"-ish than ever before. I like that pairing too somehow.

Owens-Zayn Unsanctioned match was pretty crazy. Not quite as crazy as Cody-Owens, but that's perfectly okay with me, because that was horrible. I would have preferred for it to go on after the men's Elimination Chamber match, but okay. Promos for the build-up were great. I love Owens as a heel who technically is right, but goes too far. I wish he'd stuck with that thing of him going to heaven because he's a good person and the other guy isn't that he did for about 2 weeks a few years ago. That's one of my favourite lines now, because it's just so heelish and crazy.

Men's Elimination Chamber match was great.

If Cena can somehow get across an attitude of Laziness, Disloyalty and Disrespect it would be fantastic!

Maybe a slow walk to the ring now, with new music, disinterestedly tearing up young fans' signs...

 Alpharius wrote:
If Cena can somehow get across an attitude of Laziness, Disloyalty and Disrespect it would be fantastic!

Maybe a slow walk to the ring now, with new music, disinterestedly tearing up young fans' signs...

This concept tickles me. Getting the name of the camera guy wrong....

Well, since I still have to catch up on AEW Revolution all I can tell peeps about is the live Wrestling I attended last weekend. Lugner City, Vienna. Lugner City Cup.

It was very fun. Very much a mix of things. Four title matches, no title changes. Was very surprised to see James Storm who had a very neat comedy match against Michael Kovac, who - moving towards the end of his career - does more character and comedy stuff. He's good at it though. Another guest star: Pascal Spalter, whom I hadn't seen in years (but I don't pay too much attention to German wrestling. My loss.). Yeah, several fun things, often a bit hampered by slightly annoying spots (an ankle injury, James Storm spanking the small lady [she'd been nasty, but still.. it felt a bit weird]. The host's husband, local politician of that extreme-right party, handing over prices [he did get boo'd though].). One funny thing - it seems like they ran out of Germans, so one of the matches had a Swedish guy had to fill in as a heat-seeking heel. I'm up for that, but I'm not sure if the rest of the audience is as into the Thirty Years War as I am. And eversince then, the Swedes generally have been very nice. Oh well.

Live Wrestling is just super cool. Initialy we'd planned to attend the WWE event here in Vienna, since they're doing that Wrestlemania tour, and I'm sure it would have been HUGE, but somehow the notification thing for the ticket website didn't work, so we only noticed the sale a day late, and all the good seats were taken, so we opted to forego that one. Instead we attended that local event. Having been to two WWE house shows and a bunch of local shows by now, I think I'd always suggest people to either get GREAT seats at the WWE event or none and go to several indie events instead. At least at the big venue here all the seats are expensive for WWE shows, but any but the ones that are closest to the ring or the entrance are just not a very good experience I thouhgt. Live wrestling is supercool, but I think that you get the most out of it if you're close to the action. That 'BANG' of people dropping on the ring is just magical.

watched Revolution last night. skipped the main event, but it was otherwise all bangers, no misses. the Hollywood ending was incredible, and it's amazing that the cage match was as good as it. needed to go for a walk after the cage match to cool down!

Sounds good. So far I've come up to the cage match. The guys climbing on top right away.

Hollywood ending match was impressive with some amazing visuals.

Tag Match was lovely.

Omega/Takeshita

Moné/Watanabe was good. Great showcase for Momo Watanabe who I was not familiar with because I know zero about Stardom. Still baffled how anybody would choose CEO for their wrestling persona. Is it a US thing? I my mind the associations with CEO are "overpaid corporate tool with little to no merit". This isn't a dig at Moné, who is a really good wrestler most of the time. The whole CEO thing just irks me. Maybe that's the point.

Okada/King was really good. Can't say much about it either. Okada can not have a bad match.

Hangman/MJF was a typical MJF AEW PPV opener and thus really good. Big fan of Hangman since the get-go of AEW (less so before that). MJF's vulnerable side at least added something to the whole thing. Not sure I'm necessarily a fan of it, but it probably is good on the whole.

Strickland/Ricochet was great of course. Wtf was that drummer? Why do we add these people to entrances if it messes up the entrance so badly? Why do we put a drummer with that very beat-heavy hip-hop song? I do love me some hiphop played on actual instruments; wonderful things can be achieved that way. But this was just distracting. Anyway. good match, nice, basic story.

Watched the rest of Revolution now. All lovely, I'm happy.

Ospreay/Fletcher Cage Match - damn. I love me some blood, and it's really stupid to critizise when getting lots of good stuff, but it almost felt a bit much on the same card along with the Hollywood Ending match. Either way, really good cage match with some good spots. One of my favourite things was Ospreay bending Fletchers fingers around the wire mesh or what it's called. Good use of the cage.

Main Event: Cope/Moxley for the heavyweight title. I'm perfectly okay with that.


For many weeks, it seems like the Death Riders storyline gets some critizism. I don't quite get it. Of course the 'reign of terror' could be a bit more terror-y. I acutally liked how at first they had all these geeks trying to stand up against them, being ineffectual, the younger pillars being ineffectual because they can't get on the same page, old people coming along (Cope),

Watching RAW, all the Cena stuff was good of course, but I realized something interesting - maybe it's just me, but does it seemt to you as well that Ludwig Kaiser's promos sound like Jay White's promos? Kadence-wise especially. It's funny.




AEW Dynamite! Good. If one's hankering for very good wrestling matches, Dynamite delivers. Very interesting how many perceived misgivings about Revolution were adressed by making the Moxley-Cope-match a streetfight with several icky and one absurd spot. And lots of people. And they bent the story in an interesting direction there. Also: Claudio Castaglioni holding the table half like a shield as his group makes their way across the barricade was a funny visual.

Also - Billie Starkz. First time I saw her was in 2022; she was surprisingly good then. Now she's got more years (and I assume excellent training) under her belt, along with a storyline which basically carried RoH, and she's the real deal. She's got the audience interaction down, the facial expressions and to top it all of - she's a good, natural babyface (without going in that 'divas' direction which for some reason seems to have been resurrected).The match with Moné wasn't perfect in some spots, but that doesn't really matter. They got a really good, upcoming talent there in Billie Starkz. And I'd love to see a Moné/Athena feud next.

I also liked the main event. Pretty sure it was the first time I saw a Megan Bayne match. Perfectly OK. Great match-up for Statlander. Toni Storm on commentary is very entertaining; I'm just always a bit worried that people like her on commentary overshadow the match. Because she's just super entertaining. I did like the character stuff towards the end though, where she got a bit worried actually, and then we got the little promo, and Timeless Toni Storm is really good at that. I'm becoming more of a fan of hers now than on her first championship run.

NATALYA vs. MIYU YAMASHITA announced for Bloodsport XIII, April 17th. Oh yeah. The times we live in.

Went to RAW in Glasgow and damn was it a great time.

Seeing John Cena, Rey Mysterio, CM Punk, Rhea Ripley, and Cody Rhodes all in person was amazing.

The matches weren't the strongest I've seen but it was still a good ratio of good vs mediocre. The finale between Penta and Breaker was a bit meh, but that led into the after-show, which was top tier fun.

Sounds like fun - and watching this on TV always makes me jealous as the European crowds are beyond electric!

Give us a rundown of what happened once the cameras were off!

Punk, Cody and Rey vs Judgment Day in a three way tag team.

CM Punk did a striptease taking his top off. Ref did a cartwheel when he ejected Raquel and Liv from the arena.

Finished up with Punk, Cody and Rey doing a lovely speech to the crowd thanking us for a great night.

That sounds class.

Yup, I love those shows from European venues. Always a hit, great crowds.



This weekend the Vienna house show took place, for which we didn't get any seats because the sale started earlier than announced. Oh well.

AEW Dynasty was really, really good.

I'm rather sure that the three-way would be my go-to match to show people who are interested in wrestling to win them over.

i was pretty disappointed with dynasty. i mean, it's still an AEW show, so the matches were great, but it felt like it had less highlights than usual

three-way was incredible, tho. easily match of the night, and worth watching the show just for that. i was watching the show on discord with some friends, and there was someone new to wrestling there— when he hit the avalanche OWA, they lost their gak

Aye, I'm back to watching AEW stuff on my own, because I don't wanna bother friends and family (even though one friend of mine got back into watching weekly wrestling, including AEW, so I might ask him in the future) any more. WWE stuff I watch with friends over Discord, but they're proper people, so don't have the time to watch different promotions.

AEW PPVs always deliver extremely high-level matches. Opener was great as well even though they did nothing to introduce us to Mr.Knight, did they? He did very well though, and Ospreay is very giving in these things. Maybe a bit too much? Not sure. I agree, it didn't have as many highlights as Revolution for instance. Which in my mind almost had too many highlights tightly packed together.

To be honest, I didn't watch much of the Fletcher/Briscoe-match. I'm not that into Kyle Fletcher (yes, he's very good at the wrestling. And he kicks out of a LOT of things. Which is a thing which slightly bothered me here and there in this PPV). I did watch the Cole/Garcia match, and it was super okay. Same with Jericho/Bandido. Jericho can be pretty darned good in the ring; it's really impressive. The ending was....alright.

Oh, the tag match. Big Bill and Bryan Keith vs. The Hurt Syndicate. Perfectly serviceable. Good showcase for Big Bill, who I think should be up for a singles run. The only problem I see is the hurt syndicate being SO bloody strong. I have no idea which tag team could dethrone them. Swerve and Hangman? Certainly not the Outrunners. This is something I don't get about some internet critizism - some vocal people on the internet claim AEW should have put the titles on the Outrunners when they were very new to AEW and their merch outsold everybody else's and they were super popular and all. That's no reason to put the titles on them. And I like the Outrunners, as mentioned numerous times before. That vignette in which they say hello to [sports players team XY] has one of my favourite sentences: "80% of it is mental. The rest's in your head!" (paraphrasing). Very funny indeed. Anyway, the tag scene should be very interesting the coming months.

Toni Storm vs. Megan Bayne was class. I like Penelope Ford's role there. Good to see her on tv more in general. Bayne is good.

Mercedes Moné vs. Julia Hart. Julia Hart is super good. Oh, is she ever good. When that slip-up early on happened I was very worried it might become one of _those_ Mercedes Moné matches, but it didn't and it was a good match.




Btw, where the heck is Wardlow?

Wardlow died on the way back to his home planet

Watched the main event on Dynamite last night and had to do a double take when Claudio Castagnoli made his way to the ring. Claudio (a well-known 40K fan) had his coat covered with purity seals

 Ghaz wrote:
Watched the main event on Dynamite last night and had to do a double take when Claudio Castagnoli made his way to the ring. Claudio (a well-known 40K fan) had his coat covered with purity seals

Yeah, he's been doing that for a while now. I think it looks pretty silly, but if he likes it...


Speaking of Dynamite:
.) Jericho segment: good!
.) Pac injury: daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. :( That sucks so bad.

Might have happened on the Buckle Bomb?

That type of move always seems so risky - even if 'done right' it looks like the recipient is in danger of an injury, and when done wrong...

It is the move the derailed Finn Balor's life in WWE...forever.

Wrestlemania Night One.

So far, fairly meh. The matches are fine (just done L.A. Knight/Jacob Fatu), but none have felt like a Wrestlemania moment.

No spoilers, obvs. But definitely awaiting a WOW! Factor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Charlotte v Tiffany was a solid match, but not yet feeling that Wrestlemania Pop.

Still, at least we’re being spared maggots being projected on the mat, because that’s just spooky crap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reigns/Punk/Rollins was really good fun!

Sky/Ripley/Belair. Absolutely superb. This was a proper Wrestlemania match. It also got Bianca Belair over with me, as whilst she’s great in the ring, I’ve never seen her this good.

And Y’know what’s nice streaming as catch up? Fast forwarding through all the guff.

Priest/McIntyre. Excellent match. Always pleasing to see heavyweights being athletic in the ring, especially two who are so good at Selling.

Orton/Hendry. Look out! It’s CAPTAIN BORING AND HIS ADAMANTIUM PLOT ARMOUR! Cannot stand Randy Orton. But even I could stand him, I’d still back Joe Hendry. Because we’re both Edinburgh lads.

Styles/Paul. Let’s just not, and say we didn’t. Skippity Skipping.

Love that Joe Hendry got to do both Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania.

...I'm still baffled as to why the Rock wasn't there to help finish this particular story?

Without his involvement as Mania...it just feels off, in terms of Cena's turn.

Has this been addressed anywhere?

You’re not wrong on that one.

I did enjoy the match, and both gave it their all and proved Why They’re Both Over With Everyone.

But that absence was weird.

 Alpharius wrote:
...I'm still baffled as to why the Rock wasn't there to help finish this particular story?

Without his involvement as Mania...it just feels off, in terms of Cena's turn.

Has this been addressed anywhere?

Here's a video when he explained on the Pat MacAfee Show why he wasn't there (1:22 minute mark)

The reason the Rock didn't show up was...there was no plan for him to show up?

Huh?

Not sure if serious...but, that is perhaps the dumbest reason possible to not show up.

Gotta disagree with Rock too - he definitely needed to be there to finish this chapter, and I think the majority of the opinion leans this way too.

WWE sure is putting out a lot of new shows...

I have increasingly formed the opinion that Dwayne has become less charismatic and more obviously narcissistic with age.

Contrasting with other Attitude Era stars such as Stone Cold, HHH, Mick Foley, Undertaker, Kane, etc., who have all largely either gained or maintained a high level of esteem in my mind.

 bbb wrote:
I have increasingly formed the opinion that Dwayne has become less charismatic and more obviously narcissistic with age.

Contrasting with other Attitude Era stars such as Stone Cold, HHH, Mick Foley, Undertaker, Kane, etc., who have all largely either gained or maintained a high level of esteem in my mind.

You're...not wrong.

But it still would have been nice to have him at Wrestlemania, to slowly nod his approval at Cena's heinous actions in order to become a 17 time World Champ!

I mean, he should have been. What's the whole point of all this "Cena sells soul to the Rock" thing if the Rock isn't even going to show up for the title win.

For those of you with a problem with the Rock's comments in the previous video, try his comments in the video below (at the 2:11 mark)

Ugh - that's one hell of a tone deaf comment from the Rock.

Hard to believe that he doesn't "get it" here.

this whole last week has done nothing but make me loath Dwayne. personally i have no nostalgia for him in wrestling, so i see him acting this way and just want him to go away

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
this whole last week has done nothing but make me loath Dwayne. personally i have no nostalgia for him in wrestling, so i see him acting this way and just want him to go away

It's a growing sentiment.

Great three-way TLC match on SmackDown last night between #DIY, the Motor City Machine Guns and the Street Profits for the belts last night. I can see why people were saying this would have been a better WrestleMania match than the New Day/War Raiders match. My only question is what happened to Tomasso Ciampa's beard?

I look forward to the return of his mighty chin badger.

 bbb wrote:

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
this whole last week has done nothing but make me loath Dwayne. personally i have no nostalgia for him in wrestling, so i see him acting this way and just want him to go away

It's a growing sentiment.

Yup, exactly my feelings towards the rock.




Right, hello, friends, I got through wrestlemania!

Night 1:
While the opener was OK, and Tiffany Stratton vs. Charlotte was OK, I just don't get the appeal of Tiffany Stratton. This character is throwing humanity back in its development, more so than Lacey Evans or Emmalina. The whole match was 'two blonde athletic tens in the same outfit' (nothing against Charlotte; she's class in the ring). Add to this the Grande Americano stuff (which I'm technically not against, but in combination with the other stuff on the card it was kinda exhausting. This felt like WWE 2017.This felt like a pre-show, full of unnecessary stuff. By the end, I was kinda sad. Most of the things on display made me feel nothing what so ever WTF was the entrance gear of the War Raiders? Was that some Clash of Clans thing?

Wtf, WWE acquired AAA. This is huge. Just huge.

Btw, I dislike Pat McAffee more than ever before. Not a fan of the 3 commentator booth in general, but McAffee adds NOTHING to the show, talks over stuff, mindlessly repeats catchphrases; he's what Michael Cole was in 2016, but more unnecessary.

Main event was very good. I mean look at the guys involved. Roman Reigns' facials are amazing at this point, especially in their interplay with Heyman's. Also: In Living Colour! Listen to their music, it's nice.



Night 2:
First match: great. With the CORRECT outcome. Really enjoyed the match.

As for Logan Paul . What an artless, unimaginative piece of crap. Not that we didn't know that already. Yes, the match was technically OK. Whoop-dee-doo. If I had heck-all else to do but to train, have AJ Styles carry me through a match and have months of preparation, backed up by very expensive equipment, chemicals and trainers, I might have an OK match with the greats of wrestling. This may draw me as a really sad nerd, and I'm willing to accept that, but first nicking the Buckshot Lariat and then the You Can't Escape routine..... it's just so cheap. And sure, yeah, Paul is supposed to be a 'heel' and make us angry, but the guy just disgusts me as much as his ridiculous drink, and all the other ridiculous stuff he sells, including himself. And it's not like WWE sold him as a bad guy to begin with. They thought he'd be cheered. He wasn't. He was hated from the get-go because of what he made his public persona. I don't wish anything bad on anyone, I just don't want him in wrestling or anywhere near my narrow little field of perception.

Now, let's go on to nicer things. Like McIntyre vs. Damien Priest. Lovely match. Video game ads are silly (even though I'm entirely convinced that Doom Dark Ages will be lovely. I recently played Doom Eternal again and had a LOVELY time.). One of the people I watched with was VERY impressed with the Slayer guitar man playing Priest to the ring because he adores him. Cool match.

I also enjoyed the 4-way between Penta, Breakker, Dom and Balor.

Orton's match was perfect.

Women's Tag championship match. I wasn't aware that Bayley was out injured. Feeling like some plans changed there. Anyway, lovely match, just right. I'm very impressed with Lyra Valkyria in general for months now; she'll be a big deal, at least I hope so (more so than other NXT call-ups of recent. Except for Giulia maybe, she's got that Japan-bonus with me. ). Those wings were amazing. I've seen many wrestlers attempt wings with entrances. Now these here were lovely. I loved the way they moved. Yes, it can be viewed as silly, but to me these were just aesthetically pleasing wings. Even better than Scurll's back in the day. So Lyra Valkyria's wings are the #1 wings in wrestling now. The feathers in her hair were a ton of fun during the match, flying everywhere with each hit.

Main event was very good too. That John Cena is excellent. Cody does the role perfectly as well. Not a fan of having the rapper in there, but oh hey.



So yeah, that was my experience. Bit mixed, but made up for on the second night. I never was a fan of two day events. Not for Wrestlemania, not for Wrestle Kingdom, not for Summer Slam. It's also funny how the originally pretty ingenious HHH booking on this event seemingly reverted to ...former days.



Peeked into the RAW after 'mania too.

If the following rumor is true, Liv Morgan may be missing some ring time in the near future...

it got announced that she's actually playing the lead in the new Takashi Miike movie

which is also pretty interesting, tbf. i'm more likely to see that movie than whatever marvel movie people think she would have ended up in

 StudentOfEtherium wrote:
it got announced that she's actually playing the lead in the new Takashi Miike movie

which is also pretty interesting, tbf. i'm more likely to see that movie than whatever marvel movie people think she would have ended up in

That doesn't preclude her from playing Black Cat in the new Spider-Man film, depending on how big the roles are for the two films.

In my hotel room, ensuring I’m all packed and nothing is forgotten before I fly home tomorrow. And I’ve got Smackdown on, via USA Network.

What fresh hell is this! Screen in Screen ads, meaning I don’t get the commentary!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In my hotel room, ensuring I’m all packed and nothing is forgotten before I fly home tomorrow. And I’ve got Smackdown on, via USA Network.

What fresh hell is this! Screen in Screen ads, meaning I don’t get the commentary!

The alternative would be the wrestlers going to a rest hold while they cut away from the match to air traditional commercials.

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1850127/backstage-details-large-round-wwe-talent-releases-came-friday/

New details have been reported pertaining to Friday's batch of releases from WWE. From the main roster, Braun Strowman, Shayna Baszler, Dakota Kai, Kayden Carter and Katana Chance departed the company, while "WWE NXT" stars Cora Jade, Jakara Jackson, Riley Osborne, Javier Bernal, Oro Mensah, Gigi Dolin, Eddy Thorpe, and Gallus were also cut from the roster.

Braun again?!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Braun again?!

I know right?

I think he might be injured at this point too, which is a double shot to the nards - and another black mark on the stupid "independent contractors" setup which I think is still a thing on pro wrestling?

 Alpharius wrote:
I think he might be injured at this point too...

That's what it sounds like according to this article on Wrestling Inc.

Fair play. He didn't do much, according to what I hear he got lots of money.


Shame about Baszler. She could be Stardom-bound, if she wants to put up with the schedule and the whole wrestling malarky still. Can't really see her anywhere else; MAYBE the New Japan Dojo in the US, if that's still a thing?

Not familiar with the NXT people to be honest.

Shotzi too :(

At least it sounds like Shotzi isn't a release, as much as a "Sorry, we're not renewing your contract when it expires" - which has the advantage, as far as I recall, of no 90-day no compete clause.

 Dysartes wrote:
At least it sounds like Shotzi isn't a release, as much as a "Sorry, we're not renewing your contract when it expires" - which has the advantage, as far as I recall, of no 90-day no compete clause.

Really it kinda should be the other way round if you think about it. No-competes should be void if the employing party is the one terminating the contract.

Just, nobody really has the money to fight it, and the one who did fight it (Brock when he was going to the UFC did a short stint in Japan beforehand) got WWE to settle and drop it rather than go through with the court case to enforce it in case they lost.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
At least it sounds like Shotzi isn't a release, as much as a "Sorry, we're not renewing your contract when it expires" - which has the advantage, as far as I recall, of no 90-day no compete clause.

Really it kinda should be the other way round if you think about it. No-competes should be void if the employing party is the one terminating the contract.

Just, nobody really has the money to fight it, and the one who did fight it (Brock when he was going to the UFC did a short stint in Japan beforehand) got WWE to settle and drop it rather than go through with the court case to enforce it in case they lost.

No. The non-compete is part of the contract that if you're released, you can't wrestle for 60 or 90 days. If the contract just expires, then nothing in that contract would still apply, including non-compete clauses.