sek69

His interview (out of character but his real voice is pretty similar so it was kind of jarring) with Chris Van Vilet was excellent. You can clearly see that he *gets* wrestling, and that he's someone who deserves all the success in life

When he was in ROH his matches were straightforward, and it didn't seem to hurt him so I would assume it would be the same here.

I did like how the announcers immediately recognized who Danhausen was (for the benefit of those at home who didn't) and not do the "who is that guy" nonsense WWE likes to do when someone debuts.

One thing I noticed is that it seems every wrestler loves Danhausen. Even Rock went along with it when he got tagged in his Twitter antics.

There's folks out there who crap on things people like, and there's always someone wanting to whizz in the punchbowl.

That's really cool to see. I know Danhousen isn't everyone's cup of tea but he's great guy who got some bad breaks (literally, in his leg) and I'm happy to see him land a contract.

I was surprised at the finish, but it's not like Cole is ruined by losing in a gimmick match.

Basically the Cleveland team's QB (Baker Mayfield) shit the bed when they played the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was coming in to it injured but it was still bad.

Also props to her for including the 90s Penguins logo on her Pittsburgh sports team jacket

Britt is awesome, the one town she can still get a solid heel reaction in

Pretty sure that was as close as they've got to the whole Colt Cabana deal. I suppose Colt must be cool with it now. Did him and Punk ever iron out their differences, or at least as best you could after the lawsuit mess?

They gotta pull the trigger on Wardlow tonight, the crowd's been begging for it and doing it in his hometown would make it even bigger.

Speaking of, we still thinking Johnny Wrestling is showing up in his hometown tonight?

Cleveland is on the shores of Lake Erie, so they do have beaches. They're all covered in snow and ice right now, but they exist.

I suppose one issue might be both teams are so much better suited to being heels, TK might be thinking there needs to be something major to justify one side being the babyface.

I wonder about that, just because both teams seemed to be pushing for it so hard when FTR was in WWE only for it to be barely touched upon. TK seems to like the slow burn builds, but somehow one of the more anticipated feuds got put in the freezer.

Well there's also the matter of everyone thinking he asked for time off when his kid was born, only to find out he only asked for that one week off and had been sitting around doing nothing. Clearly at some point he figured "well fuck it, if they don't have any use for me guess I'll ask for a release" which led to the infamous meeting. No one (that I have seen at least) has disputed that the meeting was heated and also that Ali is not someone known to fly off the handle, which leads to the speculation it must have been something real bad to elicit that level of reaction. I just don't see him getting that upset if he was being pitched the usual dumb but harmless WWE gimmick. Now you are correct that we don't know exactly what was discussed, but considering what kind of characters he was very adamant he did not want to portray and the mindset of the people who were doing the pitching, I feel pretty comfortable in my working theory on what was probably discussed. But hey, I hope I'm wrong. If it turns out Vince just wanted him to be Aldo Montoya 2.0 and Ali told him to GFY then I'll take that L. The last 40 odd years have taught me if you expect the worst from WWE management you'll seldom be wrong.

Interesting that Tiffany Stratton and Tony D both taking L's after weeks of all the new folks getting put over all the OG NXT people.

I popped for Sikoa sporting the Umaga face paint

Io cussing people out in Japanese every week is becoming my favorite part of NXT.

Sami is known to be kind of a pain in the ass, but at the same time his heart is in the right place so it seems like everyone just kind of got used to it. As far as Ali goes, we don't know exactly what was pitched, but you look at how Ali was described as getting into a heated discussion with Vince and consider Vince's history and Ali's outspokenness on what kinds of characters he's willing to play as a Muslim. It's not exactly a stretch to put two and two together and figure out what must have been discussed. Also funny you mention Sami, he's a Muslim too and I'd love to know if he's ever been pitched any stereotypical gimmicks. I'd wager the answer is no, and no one probably stops to think why that is.

If what we can assume from reading between the lines that he was most likely being asked to to some stereotypical and/or racist shit (his strong reaction seems to indicate that was the case as he was very vocal for a while that is something he would never do), he should have the right to GTFO of a company who wants him to do that regardless of the power of the almighty contract. Give him a 90 day non compete if you must, but keeping someone who made it clear they don't want to be there just makes the company look bad and potentially damages morale when they see a co worker who by all accounts is a top level person get treated like that. That's not even including the discussion that WWE contracts wouldn't hold up for a second in court (Brock proved that) and WWE gets by on knowing the high end of the payroll has no reason to rock the boat and the mid/low end of the payroll can't afford a drawn out court battle to challenge it.

She was posting pics on Twitter of her Dad just completely bro'ing out with Sammy and it was just adorable. Like I wanted them to adopt me because every shot of her family looked like they were all the nicest people on Earth.

It's a "me problem" for sure, but I can't stop thinking Griff is the love child of Lenny Lane and WCW era Jericho.

Astonishing (yet at the same time not) amount of WWE apologists on Twitter like "oh now you *want* WWE to release someone, I thought that was bad. Also I am very smart".