The DakkaDakka Pro Wrestling Discussion Thread

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**Dysartes**

Just what was needed - a year after dropping a boatload of people from their roster in the early stages of a global pandemic while making record profits, WWE are at it again.

**bbb**

I'm shocked they dropped Billie Kay. She's had a bunch of screen time and has been so fun. Peyton is a shock too after the promo she cut on Raw Talk got so much buzz.

**Dysartes**

I'm shocked that Samoa Joe has been let go - even if you just kept him as a commentator, he's gold.

I can see AEW potentially picking up Peyton/Chelsea and maybe Billie (though in her case I'd expect her to need to work on her in-ring skills with Dustin & co). Mickie I think might go to the NWA.

Samoa Joe is a bonus for whoever picks him up, and Kalisto isn't a bad shout. Blake is horrifically unlucky - how the hell is RyKKKer the last Forgotten Son standing? Not sure what the future holds for Bo or Mojo, either.

**A Town Called Malus**

Good for Billie and Peyton. WWE was frankly moronic to break up the Iiconics and as usual they had zero plan for what to do with them afterwards.

**Sigur**

I think that Mojo can go pretty much anywhere. Make him a free agent and he can go travel the world. He'd work well in Japan, Impact, NWA, anywhere. Big, athletic guy, looks like a proper wrestler. I think that he can do pretty much anything. Maybe not top-of-the-card stuff, but

Samoa Joe and Mickey James are an asset no matter where they go, same with Calisto. If Bo Dallas wants to keep wrestling he could do a great "toxic positivity" sort of gimmick again. More topical than ever.

Chelsea Green will do great in Impact.

The IIconics will stick together and go somewhere. With their banter they can also freely hop between promotions, but really, I think they should be on TV. Off to Impact with you, and make that show amazing.

Or something like that.

Tucker can get any tag team friend he likes and be off and do great things. I don't see him as a solo dude; he looks too nice for it. But what do I know, maybe he'll surprise us all with proper good character work.

I don't have to see everybody in AEW. And with their working relationships with Impact and NWA there's loads of crossover potential anyway, so things will be fine. Honestly, with the people fired just yesterday you could almost start a proper good promotion from scratch.

**Dysartes**

On the upside, despite some rumours that it might happen, we don't appear to have seen further releases on Friday.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Fed up with Midsomer Murders, for now, I’ve dived back into the WWE Network, with In Your House - Revenge of the Undertaker.

I think this would be just before the Attitide Era, and the proper Monday Night Wars.

It’s....kinda weird. Opening match is Legion of Doom vs Owen Hart and British Bulldog. It was only back in 1997, yet none of the athletes are still with us.

All four were big names when I was a nipper, and WWF first hit British shores. As Dad refused to let us have satellite, I only ever collected the picture cards.

Yet, on the same billing? Stone Cold Steve Austen, who I consider to be a fairly modern wrestler. Also Mankind, who was very much about 6 years later when I had my own Satellite link in my room (cheekily, Dad used to borrow it to watch Scottish Football).

Oooh, one of the matches is Bret Hart vs Austen.

As you might’ve guessed, I’ve not looked it up on the internets, so don’t know the full card. But it’s pretty ace!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Burger Me! It’s a very young Dwayne Johnson! Billed as Rocky Malvia.

**Dysartes**

Were the crowd doing the "Die, Rocky, die!" chant at this point?

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

I don’t think so? To be fair, I was mostly just blown away. Rocky Malvia vs Nation of Domination.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now onto NXT Take Over “Stand and Deliver”.

Not sure who the opening act were, but they gutted Adam & The Ants “Stand & Deliver”. Mostly because they stripped out the Burundi Beat element, and the “huhs” which sucked all the character out the song. Bad cover artist, BAD! DIRTY! In your bed, on your rug!

**Alpharius**

To be fair, "only back in 1997" is now 24 years ago, so there is that!

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Quiet you!

**Alpharius**

Ha!

I also occasionally suffer from the same weird blind spot at times - totally omitting an entire decade when thinking back to the late 90's when calculating time.

It is like the early 2000's just disappeared!

**Sigur**

No loss there, if you ask me.

**Strg Alt**

Poor Mickie James.

https://youtu.be/AIpJyZbi67U

**Sigur**

Yus, but she called'em out on that, the PR hitsquad (Triple H and Stephanie) swooped in and fixed it now.

WWE seem to have hired a Hollywood ad person again, pledging to turn things around and do all sorts of broad collaborations for the mass market appeal. Which of course fills people like me with dread and general unwell feelings.

But let's wait and see.

**Sigur**

Hello.

Three things:
.) I enjoy AEW Dynamite very, very much. Makes me laugh.

Maybe I would prefer if they were a bit more serious, but anyway. I enjoy the thing, so things are cool. Splitting up Miro and Kip Sabian is a move I welcome most fervently. No go split up Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler!
.) Fire Pro Wrestling is on sale on Steam and I bought it. The night after I bought the DLC bundle. What a game. No idea if I'll play it much, but potentially one could spend their life in it. First wrestling video game I ever bought too! The first night i played the training missions which at some point drove me insane (throwing people into turnbuckles and then run after them and do something to them is tough). The other night (now with DLC) I started the single player campaign game as a Junior Heavyweight in New Japan. It's really hokey.

But that's okay, because the great teacher you have to deal with is Jushin Thunder Liger, all in ring gear, and creepily-grinning Kushida. That's okay though because Kushida might be my favourite New Japan wrestler. Anyway, playing these missions for a bit got me a bit of a feel for the game and that actual matches might be possible. Mistiming a tope suicida and flying on yer face while the other dude walks away was never that fun. Big downside: You can choose from a ton of places of origin in that game, including hell and so on, but NOT Austria. How am I going to play Walter or Otto Wanz?!
.) No English commentars on Wrestling Dontaku 2021 makes me sad.

That's the news.

Just watched the Moxley-Nagata Match. Cool, but I sure hope that Wild Thing is a one-off and doesn't become Moxley's theme. Now for the rest of this week's dynamite:

Spoiler:

Somehow that show made me sad. Which must be a first for Dynamite.
Cody's America promo was just that. Do AEW really have to resort to that lame old stuff? It was very, very carefully worded, but still: it's a U-S-A! U-S-A! vs. foreign Heel thing. I generally have a high tolerance for Cody's over the top promos, because usually they're excellent. But all the USA stuff and THEN getting all choked up about himself just because he mentions his yet-to-be-born daughter is just absurd. And to top it all off he's taking on the American Dream name. Yikes. The good thing to be taken from this though is that Anthony Agogo is going to get a high-profile match at a PPV.

The Tag Team match was great. Amazing. It's so easy to detest the young bucks. On several levels, funnily. Of course there's the shoes, and we all know that paying lots of money on sport shoes is douchy to the extreme. Good heel stuff. Playing Shawn Michaels is good heel stuff too, even taking it to the most obvious of levels later on with the "I'm sorry, I love you". Maybe there was a kick-out too many in this match, but either way, it's been great. I did like the Styles Clash.

Pac vs. Orange Cassidy was good, as was to be expected. I'd like for AEW refs to count faster if everybody's outside the ring, but that's just me, and I think it was during commerical break too. Wasn't a fan of the triple threat stipulation at Double or Nothing. WWE is doing that a lot right now, and it doesn't necessarily add much. But it'll be three top dudes in the ring and it'll be good. Geez, Omega is also grating a little. Can we please have some serious and scary baddies too? Thank god Miro won the TNT championship now, so maybe there's a chance for that now.

Did not like the Pinnacle/Inner Circle segment a lot. Heck, it's been a year since Stadium Stampede now? Crazy. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that a whole lot. Let's see. Loved the first Stadium Stampede, not sure if they can redo that as well.

TNT championship match was alrigth (I have to admit that I kinda skipped through it, because I don't care for Darby Allin and I wasn't too happy with Miro's run so far, but it seems to get much better now that the gaming rubbish's dropped.

**A Town Called Malus**

New Jack is dead at 58 from a heart attack.

Don't like the guy at all but 58 is very young.

**Sigur**

Yeah, I heard. The world is a bit of a safer place now, I suppose, but that's no age to go.

**Sigur**

Heeeeeey, I watched Backlash!

Spoiler:

**Strg Alt**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
New Jack is dead at 58 from a heart attack.

Don't like the guy at all but 58 is very young.

He was unpredictable but a genius at the mic. See here:

https://youtu.be/-lXuIh_2hmE

R. I. P. New Jack.

**A Town Called Malus**

Strg Alt wrote:
A Town Called Malus wrote:
New Jack is dead at 58 from a heart attack.

Don't like the guy at all but 58 is very young.

He was unpredictable but a genius at the mic. See here:

https://youtu.be/-lXuIh_2hmE

R. I. P. New Jack.

Yeah, saw that in the Dark Side of the Ring episode about him. It is a great promo, and driven very much by the racism that he was experiencing.

If he had kept that kind of intensity and fire without also trying to murder and maim people, that would have been great.

**Sigur**

So are we excited for Double or Nothing 2021? I am. For most matches really; possibly all of them to some degree?

**Dysartes**

The Tag Team Championship match is the wild card for the four title matches, for me - I think I can predict the others, but I'm not sure what story they're going for in the medium term with Mox & Kingston.

**Sigur**

Yeah, from how I see it it's very, very unlikely that the Young Bucks lose the championships in this one. They got a strong tag division, and just had a "thrown together" tag team (Page/Omega) hold the titles for quite a long time. And we can garner some more heat for the Elite when the Good Brothers help out (the main event title match I think will work without any interference. Just maybe some Omega solo shennannigans).

I'd actually like to see Brian Cage win against Hangman or have the match end in a double count-out or something. Team Taz helping Cage against his will, leading to Cage splitting off and run against the rest of Team Taz. Nice little midcard feud, helping to promote Hobbs and Hook while Starks is out injured (if I remember correctly).

I don't quite get the appeal of Dr.Britt Baker, but I guess she'll get the title while Serena Deeb keeps hers in the pre-show. But at least we'll see Riho again. Not that I'm a huge fan, but that means maybe that Yuka Sakazaki turns up again as well, of whom I'm a fan. Not that she'll turn up in the pre-show, but having Riho back is good in general.

Miro/Archer should be good.

**Sigur**

Just watching the Double or Nothing Buy-In show. Wtf was the Britt Baker /Hikaru Shida video package/promos?

Did they turn Baker face the night before the PPV?
Oh, the Cody/Agogo video package is on now. Does ANYBODY except Cody view him as anything but the bad guy in this one?

Riho/Deeb just started. Immediately the crowd start chanting and make a lot of noise. That's very nice.

**Dysartes**

I didn't see Cody as the heel in the Cody/Agogo pairing, mainly because The Factory are being clearly portrayed as a heel stable.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Is AEW back with proper crowds now?

For those with the right memories, I tried it last year, but found the lack of Heat meant I wasn’t seeing it at its best, so not the right time to give it a whirl.

**Dysartes**

I know there were around 5k there for Double or Nothing at the weekend, and that Friday's Dynamite had more people there than they have had previously, so... maybe?

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Some crowd is better than no crowd, I guess!

Will give it a whirl.

**Sigur**

@Dysartes: I know, I know, but I really didn't like that promo, punctuated by the part in which he started sobbing because he was so stirred by himself mentioning that his daughter will be born in a few months.

It's very easy to love Cody, it's also easy to dislike him. That's what's so great about the guy.

There was a proper, proper crowd at Double or Nothing, and they were mighty good. Made the show, and it was lovely. The way the matches were arranged led to a tiny little slump towards the middle, but it picked right up again. A long, enjoyable show.