Bix

It's basically a reflex to indicate I'm not muted but I also react that way during in person conversations

Some people have defended Dave saying that he was saying that the implants have negatively affected her actual athletic performance. I don't believe that Dave had said that. That would certainly be a more legitimate avenue of discussion, but even if it was his intent, that's not something where he needed to be euphemistic, and there are better euphemisms ("Since she debuted on SmackDown...), anyway.

Aren't all of the stories about the late demand about the closed circuit locations?

...who's lying?

As many people as there are in wrestling who have probably committed sex crimes, there are very few that are actually registered sex offenders, and even less who are still active in wrestling. THAT'S the point. Yeah, we all think Lawler's guilty, and more strongly than before because of the stuff I got from the Louisville PD earlier in the year (which I've since learned was maybe not supposed to be released to me, but that's another story), but he wasn't convicted of anything and isn't a registered sex offender. Rance is on the registry, has talked/joked(?) about being "into all ages, as long as they're developed" on podcasts as recently as three years ago on top, etc.

First of all, this whole "background check" discussion needs to be clarified to determine if we mean actual paid criminal background checks or not. Rance is on the sex offender registry and articles about his arrest etc were at the top of search results for his name. Where the Omega thing gets dicey at this point is that on top of his weird defensiveness and combativeness from the jump, two years ago, Alex Jebailey (the head of CEO) posted an Instagram pic of himself, Omega, Michael Nakazawa, and Rance together with a caption saying Omega made the introduction so he could rent the Rance's ring to use as a stage. Omega is claiming that this isn't the case and he figures that Jebailey decided to credit him because he was "the wrestler." That...doesn't really make any sense, and Jebailey hasn't given his side yet (I have an email out to him). Plus it was Omega's show that he was very public about producing himself and, even setting aside Rance and Epic's issues, putting a non-NJPW match on first was such a bad idea that it makes a lot more sense if it was part of a deal that came with Rance's ring/ring crew. And other stuff, like the match conspicuously not having ring intros, sure makes it seem like SOMEONE knew about Rance. I should have more on this point (as well as the whole thing) coming in an article, but the short version on Rance himself is that by all indications, he seems completely unrepentant, joking on podcasts about being into underage girls and telling people (both in and out of wrestling) wildly inaccurate accounts of the facts of his case.

I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything? Lots of big stories don't necessarily result in immediate action.

There's very little on this week's show if that helps. And yeah, this is one of the better deep dives so far. So much of this stuff is barely even talked about...was it even known that Jim booked MPPW for a while?

But it's not like WWE isn't running the Garden, though. They're not doing TV or PPVs there because the origination fees that MSG tacks on for broadcasts are onerous.

I half wonder if this is by design on ROH's part to build a lawsuit dossier. After all, look at how much the threat of going after WWE for tampering scared them off for a while. So many guys left ROH and took a very random slate of indie dates while biding their time.

Cru Jones was longtime Georgia indie guy under that name.

I just meant they have a huge slew of women whose whole purpose is to wear almost nothing and dance around as the camera man zooms in on their asses.That's also not what I was talking about.

Oh. https://deadspin.com/court-records-wwe-doctor-who-sued-cm-punk-had-sexual-r-1826818551

I didn't know male wrestlers were a marginalized group. My favorite part was during the Twitter arguments when he said he already addressed people mentioning MMA earlier. He hadn't. Look, obviously it would need to be thought through VERY carefully. You wouldn't want to kill off the existing women's groups. But so much of what's changed in Japanese wrestling is, in the grand scheme of things, due to changes in the country's media landscape. The one company with network TV (even in a bad time slot) is by far the top group in a country where pay TV adoption is negligible, and everyone else isn't able to pick up the slack from print media exposure anymore. It's not a coincidence that Pro Wrestling Noah went from a legitimate top promotion (albeit in something of a slump) to being in trouble basically overnight when NTV cancelled it's 50+ year wrestling tradition. Newspaper and magazine exposure were a huge part of the scene in Japan, but, well, it's 2018. The women's scene falling off a lot more steeply than everyone else had a lot to do with the number of promotional splits, yes, but can AJW losing Fuji TV in 2002 really be discounted, either? It's a different world. NJPW is trying to be an international company and the females presence on cards being scantily clad valets who the cameras shamelessly leer at isn't going to fly everywhere. Especially not in countries where the response to a subway groping epidemic would be more than "let's open up women-only subway cars." Better to act BEFORE it actually becomes an issue that impedes the expansion. Especially when all of the other major promotions worldwide, including their sister promotions, have women's divisions.

Impact really is more than fine now. But the Impact Zone, especially the current smaller version (or any building they try to make look like it like Sony Studios the Canadian airplane hangar) is an absolute killer. They barely get enough fans to fill the side opposite the hard camera, the atmosphere is terrible, and the lighting is not great to try to hide the fan issues. I thought that the bigger, livelier crowd made it so that it wasn't as big an issue during the last PPV, but fixing the look and feel of the TV is the biggest hurdle they need to get over before they can fully rebuild. I'm not really sure if there's an answer. Pop is allowing them to use plenty of indie stuff that doesn't look major league, so maybe it's just a matter of doing something with some of the partner Indies? Shows with their key talent draw solid crowds all the time.

I mentioned this in the other thread, too, but Cabana never went backstage at WWE shows after the lawsuit was filed. He just grabbed dinner with friends who worked there. He may have even given his side on the podcast at some point. Whether or not Punk actually gave people ultimatums is not clear. That was one of the versions going around about Graves long before he tweeted anything, but he framed it in the Fightful interview as just Punk ghosting him. And I don't really see a reason to lie about that specific topic since the idea of a "quit WWE or we're not friends anymore" ultimatum makes Punk look worse. Regardless, that Punk ghosted a ton of people when he left WWE and froze out even more in various ways after to the lawsuit was filed is not in dispute.

"If everything is the best ever then nothing is" is my concern more than anything else. Even with the Okada-Omega stuff I've thought was great, I didn't get the GOAT hype whatsoever past the people most invested in NJPW fanboyishness having a narrative to build. There was nothing you could point to making them the absolute best ever past the degree to which they were athletically impressive (it's not Toyota-Kyoko, but they've kept an inedible pace) and the self conscious sports entertainment WrestleMania Moment spots. That said: I still haven't watched the whole match, but I woke up early in the second fall as the live stream was playing on my TV. From what I saw, it's an incredible match, and the degree to which they had the crowd was amazing, biting on the smallest things. I'll try to watch it in full in the next couple days, but it felt like it was by far the best match in the series and had a lot of what was missing from the previous "ZOMG best ever" Omega matches. It probably helps some that Omega is 100% a babyface now and is much better in that role.

Cabana never visited backstage after Amann filed the lawsuit. He went to dinner with two friends from the roster when they were in town. I don't give Punk much slack at all on this issue, but coming out of the trial, I *am* curious when he would have started to get discovery like the text between Amann and other wrestlers, messages. Maybe that got the ball rolling on him completely freezing out any remaining friends in WWE?

Yeah. It looks like they're doing EYFBO & Eddie Kingston vs. Homicide, Hernandez, and... someone. I guess Konnan or an emissary.I saw Homicide & Hernandez vs. EYFBO 2.5 years ago at the Rey-Ki show. First half was an excellent brawl all over the building. Second half was EYFBO getting the heat really badly. They're MUCH better now, so I'm to Switch around, Kingston is with Homicide & Hernandez while Konnan is with Ortiz & Santana I didn't realize I was that far behind. I'm still at the Eddie procures hookers for EYFBO phase.

Yeah. It looks like they're doing EYFBO & Eddie Kingston vs. Homicide, Hernandez, and... someone. I guess Konnan or an emissary. I saw Homicide & Hernandez vs. EYFBO 2.5 years ago at the Rey-Ki show. First half was an excellent brawl all over the building. Second half was EYFBO getting the heat really badly. They're MUCH better now, so I'm totally into this.

I listened to part of the WM7 episode yesterday while putting together a FOIA request (to see if they really asked the FBI for security help like Bruce said), and boy, the show sure has changed. It's a 180 from now in terms of Conrad being willing to confront his co-host/subject.

Didn't he briefly work as figurehead commissioner for Gary Hart's World Class II promotion after that?

I told Conrad in a Twitter DM that it was getting awfully close to defamation with the Dave thing in the Bossman episode and that he really needed to pull back for the sake of his show, so I can confirm that at least that part happened.

Conrad has been open about wanting to launch a podcast with Russo I'm his format if he could. So this is not at all an unreasonable theory.

Piper-Valentine is incredible. I can't even imagine how good all of the Crockett raw footage they have must be if we had no clue about this match and it's this great. Anyone else having issues with the Brisco video? At least on Android using the app to trigger Chromecast, it's playing the legends battle royal from 1987 for some reason.