sek69

Any promotion with Bob Armstrong in a featured role is automatically good TV in my book.

Makes me wonder how much of SMW's successes were not so much in spite of Jim, but because of the talent they had there.

Heenan was great at being entertaining on commentary during squashes that would normally have been boring to watch otherwise. Jesse was the man for important matches, he made everything feel like it was the most important thing going on.

Not gonna lie, when I first saw this on Twitter I thought someone was using one of those "_____ is ALL ELITE" meme generator things until I saw it was the official AEW on TNT account.

Yup, that's why I've barely left the house much in the last year.

My brain completed erased any memory of a Taker-Mark Henry match happening at Mania, and looking at the recap now I remember why.

Sometimes I think we lose track of how Flair/Steamboat/Midnight Express matches must have looked to fans who grew up watching hour long Dory Jr matches. There was a monumental leap from the 70s to the 80s that isn't that dissimilar to the changes from the 80s to the 90s/2000s.

I seem to vaguely recall that the story was they brought Shawn in to do something, and he showed up completely trashed. He was sent home and that was then end of Shawn until he found Jesus.

I never knew he was a non drinker, that does certainly explain a lot. Even then, being the only sober guy in the room gets old quickly so it is a testament to his patience. I know he had a falling out with Shawn for a while when he was really bad, but even that seemed like it was more Hunter calling him out on being a mess and Shawn being resistant to getting help.

I remember there being jokes at the time when they divorced about "who's going to get custody of Arn". Also I suppose it must be a credit to Hunter that he's been friends with Ric for a long time, has probably bailed his ass out financially more than once, and doesn't seem to have got worn out by him yet.

I admit I am completely speculating and all the usual I Am Not A Psychologist disclaimers, but from all accounts it seems like it is emotionally exhausting to be anywhere in Ric Flair's sphere. Like his own kids sound like they are at the end of their rope with him at times, I can't imagine what it's like trying to maintain a friendship with the guy, I suppose Arn's a bit of a surprise considering how tight they were at one time, but I'm not shocked Tully, Barry, and Ole would be like "nah I'm good".

lol no, but the voice was so similar it was uncanny.

It seems like everyone who's been involved in running OVW has a lot of "WWE called us to change what we were doing with someone" stories so it seems at least he was pretty good at making lemonade with whatever lemons he was given.

FInally got a chance to check it out, and it was distracting how much the actress who plays Lia sounded exactly like Nia Jax.

I wonder if the plan is still to go back to having live crowds after Mania. It will be interesting to see how people react after WWE got to be able control reactions for over a year. I'm sure there will be a brief honeymoon period where everyone will just be happy to be back, but it's really going to be interesting to see how reality will match up with what WWE has attempted to create.

There's very few people on the planet that could believably ragdoll Braun, and Big Bob is one of those people. Nice MEATY MEN SLAPPIN MEAT match.

That segment got real awkward once it started feeling like a Flair family therapy session.

Randy coughing up black goo making me think Papa Shango is coming back.

So Dave cryptically said the deal with Keith Lee is "what everyone thinks it is", which could normally mean anything but that's been his code for COVID since that's everyone's first reaction to someone disappearing these days. So I would assume he was most likely not showing symptoms/testing positive when Mia was diagnosed but did at some point after.

It probably won't be super difficult for Canadians to get a US Peacock account either.

Dave mentioned on last night's show that the plan is WWE Network accounts are supposed to automatically transfer to Peacock. So I suppose if you pay for both you can cancel WWE Network now and just keep using Peacock. If you just have WWE Network alone, you might as well just ride it out. Also he mentioned that the Fastlane show in March pretty much exists to be a guinea pig to see if everything blows up when everyone tries to log in to Peacock for the first time, which is actually smart to do instead of having Maina be the starting point.

Reminds me of the whole Y2K issue. There absolutely *was* a real threat that shit would stop working properly when the calendar hit 2000, and a lot of programmers and other computer science type folks worked their asses off to make sure the damage was minimal only to have people (who largely had no idea what the problem really was or what work was needed to prevent it) turn around and say it was all hype or a hoax and there never was anything to worry about. So yeah, people working to fix a problem often ends up making some people think there was never any problem to begin with.

You know, what really is upsetting about that autograph signing is how it's not enough he wants to be stupid, but he's trying to force anyone who attends to be as stupid as he is. Can you imagine being a fan and somehow not being aware of his assholery, then finding out he expects everyone to get a face full of COVID for the privilege of meeting him? These kind of people (anti maskers) are always like RESPECT MY WISHES THIS IS MURICA, but God forbid he respects the wishes of anyone who wants to wear a mask. Also it should be pointed out he spells it as "v@x" in his Tweets instead of vax in order to get around Twitter's attempts to try to squash anti vax misinfo.

It all seems anticlimatic since this is a "see who loses to Roman" match.

Obviously the Asuka/Lacey match wasn't going to happen, but I wonder what's going on with Lee. I wonder if there's some sort of weird transfer of heat since Mia Yim apparently got COVID right before the Rumble and they just got engaged.