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(watching Rampage now) JR seems especially pissy tonight. Maybe he's salty Iron Mike was better than him on commentary?

I know Tyson is a huge wrestling fan, but I'm always surprised when he starts marking out.

They're doing an old school battle of the giants build which is one of those things that always seems to get over.

I know this isn't breaking news, but Rey is great.

LE GA DO

Good lord, Natalya is a wardrobe malfunction wafting to happen.

Dude was insanely over in NXT, if they manage to pull that off on Smackdown it's going to be something.

I know it's nowhere near the top of the list but Sami not being able to go is another reason the Saudi shows suck.

Of course, but MBS loosened up enough restrictions for the vast majority of Saudi youth to see him as a breath of fresh air after being ruled by strict old men since the Grand Mosque Seizure in 1979. He may be a monster, but the man knows how to PLAY THE GAME-UH and was able to read the room that the public was looking for changes in government.

On the positive side, there apparently were large WE WANT SAMI chants from the crowd which is amazing when you think about it.

From a purely cynical standpoint, MBS is super popular among young folks in Saudi so it's good business to do something like that. From every other standpoint, yeesh.

Also it's pretty funny how the narrative became "journalists are spinning for the Elite" when Dave has been very clear that while he's asked them multiple times the only thing he's got from them was that they couldn't comment. If anything his initial reporting came from the Punk side, what with claims the Bucks kicked the door down or whatnot. I think @Big Pete's take is probably right that poor Larry probably got hit with the door as dogs are wont to do, and I could see known animal lover Omega being concerned about that.

Said owner was in the middle of a press conference so they got the person who's widely seen as Tony's right hand person. I can see the line of thinking that they wanted to bring the person highest up the food chain who wasn't busy at the moment.

The Elite bringing Megha with them would indicate they weren't itching for a fight, since she's the exact last person you'd want to witness shit going down. Just using Occam's Razor would suggest they went with the head of HR to find out why he took a giant shit on the company and them personally right after a PPV where he won the world title in his hometown. As Dave reminded me the other day, Punk was actually in a fairly good mood during the whole press conference despite what he was saying, and actually said if anyone had a problem to come talk to him. Maybe Punk was taken off guard by someone actually taking him up on the offer, who knows.

Yep. It's been kind of forgotten due to how popular she got that in the immediate aftermath they were still trying to keep her as the heel she was prior to getting her face smashed and not going with what was catching fire.

It's not an apples to apples comparison. Yes, there's been guys who've been held back, but again it's assuming the women are on equal footing. For the most part, women's level of push came down to their willingness to get fake boobs and (allegedly) fool around with Vince. Getting to the level of having your career derailed because Vince didn't understand the appeal would have been a step up. Let's not forget even after that they still tried to turn her heel only for the crowd to reject that shit like Mutumbo.

More and more it's looking pretty clear who was in the right and it's really *really* upsetting to the folks that have weird hate boners for the Elite.

If the playing field was anywhere close to equal, I'd agree, but it isn't so it's really not fair to judge her or any woman by the men's standard they haven't been allowed to reach until recently.

I wonder what Shibata's actual condition is. It seems that New Japan just has an abundance of caution (understandably since the dude had a brain bleed on his watch), and as long as he works smart he should be fine doing a match or two.

I always wondered if that "Vince brought wrestling out of smoky halls" was intended to include all those MSG sellouts Bruno/Backlund/Graham had or not. It would be funny if it all came from Vince Jr being mad they taped TV from the Ag Hall.

It's also a pretty unfair comparison considering AJW was pushing women wrestlers as idols while Wendi Richter got fired despite being a big part of Rock n Wrestling for not signing a contract put in her face while she was on her way to the ring. Women's wrestling wasn't taken serious in the US until the NXT women got too good to ignore and started stealing the show nearly every time. Even then main roster WWE had to be dragged kicking and screaming to go along with it (and only then if it could be retconned as Steph Invented Feminism). So yeah, Becky Lynch didn't reach the heights of the Crush Gals, no shit. She got super over only after an extremely questionable heel turn attempt and Nia Jax being a sloppy piece of shit. She took the lemons WWE was trying to give her and made lemonade like no woman in WWE had before.

Women sports (which we will include pro wrestling in for this argument) tends to get significantly less media exposure than their male counterparts regardless of their ability, which allows the "well they just aren't at the level of the men" argument to get a foothold. Then you get cases like the UMass women's college basketball teams and the US Women's soccer teams which go on impressive if not historic runs only to get the "yeah, but it's *women's* sports though" as if that is a disqualifying factor. In pro wrestling, women's matches were largely seen as either just eye candy or the sideshow to the sideshow like midget matches. The oddity on an otherwise "normal" card. So there is going to be an inherent issue judging women's wrestling historically since it really has only been taken seriously outside of Japan for less than two decades. Having someone like Becky Lynch potentially fall off the ballot when she was clearly the #1 draw of the #1 company would be an amazing slap in the face to the whole idea of women's wrestling. Even getting to the point where she did is practically HOF worthy itself considering the way women in wrestling historically have been treated.

I would think the locker room would probably be more open to Jarrett than Punk, since Jeff has shown he's willing to listen to the youngin's and not just be like "if you don't do it the way I say you're stupid".

So it looks like TK hired Jarrett to do what he was doing in WWE, arranging live events (on top of whatever on camera stuff he ends up doing). So if nothing else it appears Tony is starting to realize letting other people handle shit is a good thing.

We can all laugh but I saw several AEW folks on Twitter being all "that one is for the boys" so it looks like this was a make good to the locker room for the whole Punk fiasco.