sek69

Yeah it was Cornette's rule that something was fair game to copy after 7 years, but to be far that was in an era where there was just one company for 20+ years.

If nothing else, it's clear that Bryan is probably the greatest "make chicken salad out of chicken shit" worker of the last 20 years and maybe of all time. The amount of times he's been given a lump to work with and ended up having a decent-to-great match with them is mind boggling. Just like everyone in New Japan has their best match with Okada, everyone in WWE's best match is usually vs Bryan.

Yeah for some reason my brain recalled it being more that once, but "it was a bad crowd he was hanging with and something long forgotten about" is too close to sounding like a boys-will-be-boys attempt do dismiss what happened. Like, yeah maybe other parties involved did worse things, but that doesn't mean the guy you''re doing an obit on played no part in it. By all accounts, Johnny Walker was a super nice guy to all who ever met him in and out of wrestling and went out of his way to help anyone he could (further in the obit he mentions Walker coming out of retirement at 71 to do a match for the students at Don Muraco's wrestling school). It just reminds me of the "well he was nice to *me*, so the horrible thing that he did and was documented doing must not have been that bad" that we see too much of now. Letting people skate for shit behavior is kind of a sore spot for me at the moment, considering...... *gestures at everything in the world right now*.....so it jumped off the page to see it being addressed in a "we have to mention it so lets gloss over it as quick as possible" manner. (Also Dave kind of has a history of taking the "bitches be crazy" stance in cases where wrestlers have been accused of sexual assault and I couldn't help but wonder if that played a role in how he dealt with this)

At this point I'm wondering what Kevin Dunn has on Vince to be the only person to get in the inner circle of WWE to not get fired by Vince at some point. Also whatever you think of Bruce, being in charge of 5+ hours of TV a week is not going to be ideal for anyone, and I agree with @The Thread Killer that this is not going to be healthy for someone Bruce's age/medical history. The issue is that Vince expects everyone around him to be a raging workaholic devoting their lives to WWE 24 hours a day. No one is going to be able to keep up that pace for any length of time without either burning out or quickly giving up on trying to come up with any creative ideas.

Dave's mention of his legal issues in the WON obit was kind of odd, lots of using the word "alleged" and handwavy attempts to make it sound like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which doesn't seem to jive with what is documented. Pretty sure you can safely leave out the "alleged" part for someone on the registry. The fact that he agreed to a plea deal (again in the 50s when it would have been much easier for someone to skate on a rape charge) tells me it wasn't just some kind of misunderstanding.

Raw is still three hours, and even when they have good matches, it's often a grind to watch the entire show. It was even worse with no crowds. Bringing in the NXT/PC folks for a crowd helped, but nothing can really overcome it being way too much time for any wrestling show to fill without dragging.

Raw hitting record lows on a weekly basis and staying below 2 million certainly did Heyman in. He was trying to build long term under the thumb of a guy who only thinks week to week.

At least there's no pretense anymore I suppose. No more pretending anyone else actually has any ability to do anything, or that anyone else's ideas matter. Installing a yes man as the head of creative removes any possible argument.

I would say this is a good choice. Dude's been at or near the top for 20+ years and still brings it every time. He has every reason to coast (legend status, on the booking team) but still delivers on a regular basis.

I wouldn't be shocked if Cena was the type to vote Republican because he wants to pay less taxes, but I would be shocked if the guy who made his career being the Doctor of Thuganomics was any way pro-Trump.

Laughed so hard at him celebrating with unconscious Candice like she was a puppet.

I saw some people getting mad about the Fantasma thing, but he dropped the mask fair and square in Mexico and it wasn't like they were undoing some WCW stupidness like Rey. I thought it was odd he would go back to using the mask but having it be a setup like this was great. I did kind of laugh at them doing a Horsemen Beatdown before AEW though.

Joey Janela/Sonny Kiss team? Gotta admit I didn't see that one coming.

That was a decent little women's tag match, and I'll pop for anyone using the fisherman as a finish.

Never thought I'd expect to see Tony Hawk on a pro wrestling show.

Same reason JCP jobbers got a shot against Flair, basically.

Not a huge fan with AEW doing the WWE style "babyface is obviously being an idiot" deal, but if it's limited to QT Marshall I'll live with it.

Oh hey, Justin Roberts is back.

SAY YEAH (but in a way that won't get you sued by WWE)

It really is amazing how it was hidden in plain sight so long. All the info was there on the Hawaii registered offenders list for as long as those types of sites have existed. I wonder how much promoters knew, and if it was like one of those "you jobbed in Japan but no one here will ever know" things times a million.

Not to mention (one of) the reasons all of this is happening is that people are not being called out and held responsible for their bullshit.

I don't think Hayes works NXT shows, at least not that I've heard of. Plus I was always under the impression HHH wasn't a fan of his after his drunken escapades at Hunter and Steph's wedding.

Sounds like the other WWE producer needs to be named.

He took something that probably was going to happen (nearly everyone not feuding for the WWF title had a run with IC belt at that time) and turned it into Definitely A Thing That Was Going To Happen, just because it was in that period of time where wrestling fans were discovering the internet but hadn't really found out about newsletters yet.

It's been mentioned somewhat, but Gedo grew up a huge fan of US territorial wrestling so it would make sense he would want to focus on making new stars/find headliners since that was the Achilles' Heel of those groups.