sek69

Funny thing is wrestling, even WWE, has done much better with presenting people of color on their shows as of late. I mean we had Apollo on Smackdown last night talking about his great grandfather being a king in Nigeria. AEW's biggest issue that I can see is that most of their acts that would appeal to young fans are still super young and green themselves, so it's kind of tricky to feature talent that may not be ready for prime time.

Seth *is* a natural heel to be sure, but WWE booking him to be whimpering in the corner at Bray Wyatt did him no favors.

Smackdown was good as usual, but these PPVs between the Rumble and Mania feel so useless since you know nothing major is going to happen. Fastlane only exists as a test run for Peacock and nothing happening on the show seems like it will matter at all.

I think it's more the underlings (the ones who know how to work the system like Bruce and Hunter) just redirect all the stuff they know Vince won't go for so they don't have to hear about it from him. I seem to recall more than one person who was close enough to be in contact with Vince having a "why the fuck are you bothering me with this" story,

Evolve taped a pilot show where they had people who are at the PC but haven't appeared on NXT TV yet, so kinda like the AA baseball to NXT's AAA baseball if you will.

I think they just let their people work indies as long as it doesn't clash with any AEW dates. I'm sure it builds a lot of good will with them though, since they are used to WWE playing hardball with everyone.

Yeah Vince is basically the Great and Powerful Oz (not the Kevin Nash version) at this point.

Since CMLL felt compelled to put a video out on their Youtube channel confirming their partnership with New Japan was still strong, I thought it would be interesting to see which companies are working with whom in 2021: AEW: New Japan, Impact, AAA (although they can't work with anyone in the US due to lawsuits) New Japan: AEW, CMLL, Impact, ROH (maybe? Marty Scrull just showed up here after getting fired from ROH, not sure how that will go down) Impact: AEW, New Japan, AAA (same disclaimer as above) WWE: Still has ties with UK indies but none of them appear to be running shows anytime soon It still amazes me how the business has gone from using footage from one territory to promote someone's arrival in another, to the WWF/E mindset of pretending the competition doesn't exist while at the same time doing everything to run them out of business, to Tony Khan using some form of wizardry to get multiple major promotions from across the globe to work together. Except of course CMLL/AAA, which will always be locked in an endless feud because CMLL is run by people who have legendary grudge holding skills.

Actually I was, come to mention it. The visual contrast of one guy doing all the fancy rasslin/flying while the other guy is just a tank that rolls over people always works for me.

I don't think anyone would seriously claim Anvil contributed as much as Bret, clearly there was a difference in talent there. The idea that Anvil was completely worthless is also worthy of derision IMO. He had his role to play and did it well.

Anvil was a good counterbalance to Bret, I always enjoyed tag teams that were a power guy and a smaller wrestler or flyer.

Maybe I got worked by her selling, but it sure looked like Britt got flash KO'd in that match. It seemed like there were spots where Nyla was doing the "pretend to do stuff while trying to see if the opponent is KTFO" deal.

Dutch Mantell followed up by saying it's believed he had a stroke/aneurysm of some sort.

Per Billy Corgan: It’s with a heavy heart that I share that my friend and brother in wrestling, Joseph Hudson, has passed away suddenly from an as-yet undiagnosed medical issue. NWA fans would know him as Jocephus as well as The Question Mark; where thanks to the great fans at GPB Studios in Atlanta, Joseph was able to receive the kind of support in the ring he’d always dreamt of. He is survived by a young son whom he loved dearly, and if anything would pain him about leaving this Earth it would be not being able to be there for his boy. RIP Joseph, love to you and Godspeed.

I would doubt most NXT signees ever meet Vince until they land on the main roster. Maybe the big name signees do, but I would suspect most only deal with the NXT office.

Nyla/Britt was a pretty decent match, the tournament has been good so far.

Jericho and MJF murdering Papa Buck was some pretty sweet heelin' too.

Speaking of people who look like others, here's Jake Hager with his "Giant Baba if he worked out a little" body frame.

Yeah I know that, but it seems like a signing like this should be for something more than a Youtube show.

I'm wondering of this signing means we're getting closer to the second AEW TV show getting announced.

It always seemed like you could tell who Jesse didn't like IRL since he would randomly go hard on certain people. Hogan would be the most obvious example of that.

I just got a little sad thinking of all the things they can do with him and then realizing they're just going to name him Slappy McSlapperton and only make vague references to him having family in the business.

Always have love for Big Poppa, but Rick Steiner suplexing fools is one of my favorite things in wrestling.

Also if this leads to Rick making an appearance in NXT to toss fools around it'll be worth it IMO.

Considering the environment and culture of WWE, it's always kind of creepy that they have to show all their new signees off in PROPERTY OF WWE PERFORMANCE CENTER gear. It's like they are low key bragging "these are our new playthings".