sek69

Watching now after football, and Mox and Shane Taylor kicking things off with a banger, holy poop.

His whole deal as NWA champ was "poor man's Ric Flair" and he at least got the wardrobe part right.

I think after Yokozuna's weight got out of control to the point he wasn't being allowed to work, that kind of put the kibosh on 500+ pounders in wrestling. There's some big boys on the indy scene, but no one near the size of superheavyweights from years past. Also considering how wrestlers in general are smaller and less jacked than back then, someone in the 300 pound range looks proportionally as large compared to them as someone like King Kong Bundy looked back in the day.

No, but the story of him getting fired from his after wrestling job when people found a white powder is certainly part of the legacy of 80s WWF tho.

PETE DUNNE!

Oh hey, Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn still exist in WWE.

I guess now's the time to finally pull the trigger on Priest cashing in the MITB briefcase. Solves what to do with the title and furthers the slow burn of him breaking away from Judgement Day.

IIRC his English is pretty good but he's not always comfortable speaking it. That would probably change if he was full time in the US I would guess.

Another thing to consider, WWE likes to lock down people to 5 year deals nowadays and don't let anyone work outside the company (unless it's a special occasion like Muta's retirement show). AEW allows their talent to work other places, and would let him go to Japan whenever he wanted. He could try to negotiate a shorter deal, but WWE's biggest fear is setting a precedent where the talent has any bargaining power. It would seem unless he wants to go all-in (no pun intended) on living in the US, AEW would be the more logical place to go. Just saying WWE is making a big deal about their presentation of Nak now as a way to show Okada that it wouldn't be another TNA type experience if he signed, yet all they're really doing is putting their usual treatment of Japanese wrestlers in front of a cool anime looking background. There's also the whole issue of no matter how well he's being presented, at the end of the day he's there to be cannon fodder for the American babyface hero who's annoyed he has to deal with this on the way to what he really wants to be doing ("finishing his story").

Okada has literally nothing else he can do in NJPW, since they've done such a piss poor job building up anyone new there's no major matches he can do there that hasn't been done a million times Also as much as him in WWE would be intriguing, I'm not totally sold that their presentation of Japanese wrestlers is really that much different. Kairi came back and was immediately put back with Asuka as the Kabuki Warriors, Tozawa is still the childlike Asian stereotype, and Nak suddenly started the Asian Mist gimmick out of nowhere. If anything they just sanded down the edges and made it slightly less overt, but they are treating Japanese talent essentially the same as they always has. I'm not sure they're doing the amazing sell job to Okada they think they are. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'd like to see them dropping Rainmaker bucks from the big screens at Jerryworld in a big Mania match.

Joe has a presence that draws people in. I'm sure Vince was puzzled by it because Joe isn't jacked, but you see him marching toward the ring you feel like you're about to see a murder happen. Just listen to DJ Whoo Kid (who was backstage at Wembley as part of Swerve's entrance) describe the famous Punk-Jungle Boy fight: Whoo Kid: Punches? Like it was wrestling back there. Like DDT, everything... alright, I’m exaggerating, but the shit that’s crazy is there was a yelling moment where he was like “Yo, fuck this shit! This is our moment, everybody get the fuck out there and do your shit. And I was like, I don’t know how to wrestle, but I was about to go out there... It was very intense, man. I always respect wrestling after I saw that... He went on to clarify the person doing the yelling was the "big...Hawaiian looking guy", Joe had that man fuckin' believing so you know he can make the ratings go up.

I think that was a pretty solid episode of Dynamite, everything was building something and I'm here for a Private Party-Top Flight feud.

Popped for Toni Storm bring back the "man in the mask" bit with Excalibur.

The Bucks leaning into all the Punk stuff by doing a whole anti old timer gimmick is hilarious.

Honestly, I wouldn't say HOOK isn't good just super green. He probably should be doing more in ROH since that's basically their NXT nowadays.

Depending on who you believe, that was done either due to Buddy's heart ailment or Bruno giving him the "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" speech. Also never realized how much Vince Sr liked the Scott Special finish. Thinking about a potential injury for Seth, obviously it sucks for him if it's serious but it sucks booking wise since his whole deal was being the workhorse champ who keeps on going even while his body falls apart around him. Having it end due to an injury quite the wet fart of an ending to his story.

Dying at R-Truth making bank selling bootleg Judgement Day merch

Goddamn, Woods and Kaiser having a banger

I never noticed that Dom rocks the Perro Aguayo furry boots.

Thing is, Rock was always supposed to be the endgame for the Head of the Table stuff. A big part of why Roman ended up with a Hoganesque run with the belt is because the timing kept getting messed up to finally have the match.

I'm interested in how their deal with AAA works out. They've been trying to get a foothold in the US forever, and even TNA's limited reach is miles better than anything AAA has been able to muster on their own.

You know what, on reflection that wasn't the best term to use. I don't know if there's a blanket term for folks who don't know TNA hasn't been the mess Russo and Dixie left it in for a long time, but then it's been so difficult to follow them on the series of Z tier channels they've been on it's hardly the fault of the viewer. TNA has been a constantly entertaining product for a while now, and it's nice a place like it exists for people to be able to refresh their character/get a change of scenery. I feel like it was taken for granted that you could do that in the territory days to keep people from getting stale, and it's nice to have the modern day equivalent to David Von Erich getting to heel it up in Florida.

WWE brain is a helluva thing my dude. I watched most of the show last night, and it was easily the best looking Impact/TNA show I've seen in years (to be fair I haven't exactly been watching every week). The production seemed a lot better, and all the talk of Anthem investing more money to make them not look so indyriffic seems to be legit. A lot of the show seemed like a reset booking wise though. Some of it was inevitable (Trinity leaving), but putting the title back on Moose seemed like them doing a DC Comics level retcon.

The AOP are cool, I always have time for a tag team of big dudes tossing people around. Precious Paul obviously is awesome, hell I'll even take Scarlett as well since she clearly brings something to the act. Karrion Kross just sucks in every possible aspect of pro wrestling and any attempt to prove otherwise just screams sunk cost fallacy.

Couldn't we just have the Street Profits and AOP doing cool shit without having to involve Karrion Kross?