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Also not sure why Morrison is rocking the Captain Marvel hairdo.

Oh god, they went from Papa Shango vomit last week to Hogan seeing Warrior in the mirror. I can't wait for Bray to come back as the Black Scorpion.

Miz better get Kofi'd tonight.

Also how WWE is it for them to have the guy who's with Bad Bunny do a match with the guy who's seconded by the MAGA white supremacist.

Yeah they mentioned Ibushi would be the first champion of the new title, which sounds like it may have been one of those "lost context in translation" things, Also maybe now that the Forbidden Door is open, the US title will be the 2nd title? Once everyone gets their vaccine of course.

New Japan announced the heavyweight and IC titles are being combined into a new title to be known as the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.

Well not the f bomb, but Tony did say their partners assured him there would be no problems and since there was problems he was putting it up on Youtube. So basically, yes.

Dave mentioned that the NWA is doing a TV taping March 21-24. Your guess is as good as mine who's going to be there other than Nick Aldis and Sareena Deeb (assuming she's still women's champ then).

As awesome as Hall of Pain Mark Henry was, the last thing WWE needs is more retirees coming back.

Well the indy boom (pre COVID anyway) had a pretty substantial increase of LGBTQ+ and minority wrestlers out there that helped draw from bases wrestling not only usually would not market to but sometimes go out of their way to drive away. People still have it stuck in their minds that all wrestling = WWE and just because they are driving away fans at record numbers that it means pro wrestling in general is.

I know it's easy to bash the NWA and especially Billy (ask anyone in the music biz what their opinion of him is), but I dug the show and most what they did worked for me, I hope they land on their feet somewhere.

Well MAME (arcade emulation) has been ported to every conceivable device out there, so you can play it pretty easily now. Also I just picked up RetroMania Wrestling the other day too, it's funny to read the Steam reviews that largely praise the game for being like WrestleFest and one guy who was really pissed that it's a modern game that looks and plays like WrestleFest.

I always was of the opinion that Miswa deep down did really think he was trying to create a new star, but his top guy wrestler brain just wouldn't let him do it. I mean, he not only was the ace for a long time, he was considered one of the best of all time if not *the* best ever, and guys with the drive to reach that level normally can't just flip a switch and start putting guys over.

Each channel has access to their own stats in terms of location/age/gender. I'm sure someone in Google has a master list, but any individual channel owner can see who and where is watching their content. Its why WWE went all in on India since something crazy like 70% of their Youtube views come from there. I've heard other creators mention they can see the age range of who watches their videos too.

I don't dislike Gino's announcing, and he seems like he's a great guy IRL, but he comes off like someone trying too hard to be Jesse Ventura at times which makes him look low rent.

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.