sek69

I don't think he grew up on it considering he was raised in Illinois (and born in 1982), but I'd wager he traded for more than a few tapes of it in his day. It really gets undersold how big a fan he was growing up, he was deep in it back in the early days of the interwebs like a lot of us were back then. His dad's mentioned it more than once how it even impressed him how much Tony followed the business and how when he approached him to start AEW he knew he could make it work.

Man that was such a Mid-South ending, everyone brawling everywhere while JR is losing his mind, it could have been the Irish McNeil Boy's Club in 1984.

Time for PWO combined into one wrestler, SHANNA!

Orange is great. The old farts can complain all they want, if the crowd chants "he will try" then it works.

This Iron Man match has been pretty solid so far. Another great start to a show.

I don't recall that particular reference, but you can pull up any episode of NXT at random and find at least 2 or 3 shoe-horned references per show.

Wait, CS isn't playing a gimmick and honestly doesn't get why people dislike Mauro? I feel like a character at the end of a M. Night Shyamalan movie with a twist this shocking.

I would hope deep down that there's a line even he wouldn't cross, but I fear that the lure of the reference will be too strong for him to resist.

There were a lot of people in OVW who showed tons of charisma and ended up getting cut. It seems inconceivable in hindsight that John Goddamn Cena almost got cut, but it definitely was reported as such at the time.

IIRC the feeling was Cena was on the fast track in OVW as the Prototype, and it probably ruffled some feathers. He absolutely was going to be on the "cut because creative has nothing for you" train until Steph famously heard him rapping and decided they could do a gimmick about it. It's funny how they always frame his debut confrontation with Angle as a birth-of-a-new-star moment when it was a one and done type deal and they very clearly didn't have anything further planned beyond that.

If I were to guess, if it wasn't for something recreational he might have been taking something to speed up the healing when he broke his thumb and got flagged for that.

Well it could be that both things occurred. It is funny that we're getting so many failures after like 4 years of not having any. Also keep in mind WWE often waits to suspend folks who fail if it happens at an inconvenient time, it's possible once he got 2 concussions back to back they just decided to announce the failure now so he can use the 30 days to get his head right.

There's a large segment of the population that wouldn't make that distinction, and I always got the impression that's who Vince was aiming for. Of all the things you can armchair psychoanalyze Vince for, him projecting his shitty childhood in North Carolina into a pathological dislike of all things Southern is right near the top of the list. It shapes so much of his mindset to this day, from his obvious dislike of religion to his banning of terms he feels is to reminiscent of "rasslin".

I like that they flipped the expectation of having Shayna being the one to trash the contract signing to have her be the only one to not get involved in the melee.

I love that Askua is a better promo in Japanese than any other woman on the roster is in English.

It's still kind of mind boggling that WWE went ahead and did a whole documentary series on the era where their popularity and audience plummeted.

That lady that Becky was talking to looked like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world than in that conversation. Becky's still a face, right?

This is the perfect match to make Garza a star, these two have probably wrestled a million times in Monterrey and could put on an excellent match in their sleep. Also Vince has a long history of mocking religion like Brother Love, Austin being not-crucified on a not-cross, Seth calling himself the Messiah.

You can make the argument that the Bret/Shawn real life feud turning into the mess that caused Vince to do Montreal is the biggest historical butterfly effect in wrestling history. Sure, Rock will be more well known and famous wrestler ever when it's all said and done, but Bret (mostly unintentionally) ended up changing the course of both WWF/E and the business in general. It kick started the heel Mr. McMahon that turned around the WWF, and him going to WCW afterwards ended up being the poster child of "this company is doomed and doesn't know what the hell they are doing". I voted for Liger, since on top of what he did personally, he built up an entire division that inspired wrestlers all over the world. You can see it in the goodbyes he got in diverse promotions like New Japan and CMLL. He literally influenced the entire world, and while people will be talking about the Streak forever and there's going to be a million WWE produced documentaries about it, but it's not likely there will be as many people who base their entire style around Taker like there are for Liger. To me Jericho's the clear choice, since Goldberg's only claim to fame is "the one thing WCW didn't fuck up", except when you watch the last year or so of TV you see they totally did. The WWE Magic Wand of Historical Revisionism will do its best to make it seem differently, but after the initial megapush and title win, he was just as another guy treading water in the ridiculousness of WCW's death flails. Jericho's a smart guy in the sense he knew to hitch his wagon to a hot thing when he went to NJPW, but it can't be discounted that if AEW proves to be a long term success it's in large part due to his run on top. I'll admit I wasn't completely sold on him being the first ever champion, but his run has done wonders not only for him but everyone around him. You can't have effective heroes without having great villains to play off of, and his current incarnation has been the perfect foil for all the folks AEW are trying to establish as stars. Nash is an easy target for jokes, but him and Hall getting guaranteed deals with WCW was a monumental game changer in the business. Looking back he also had some bad luck for a guy who's seen as bulletproof. His big WWF champion run was derailed by Vince insisting he be a smilin' babyface instead of the cool heel he was leading up to the win. It didn't fit the character and it came off as forced until it was used as fodder for his heel run as he was on the way out. In WCW, a lot of the bullshit that went on backstage was due to Hulk constantly undermining his ideas (no way to know if they would have been any good, but if Hulk was that dead against it, it's a good sign it involved people not Hulk Hogan on top) to the point there were large stretches where no one in WCW knew what they would be doing one day to the next. As far as Junkyard Dog, looking back it seems like it was part "big fish in a small pond" and part just catching lightning in a bottle for a few years. Not to discount what he did, he was absolutely a huge draw, but you could see the cracks starting to show. They were repeating angles with him towards the end of his Mid South run, and it seemed like he was quickly getting to the point of needing to leave the territory to freshen up. Unfortunately by that time, that meant going to the WWF and that was pretty much the end of him being any kind of draw. Finally I went with Bryan, but I could see an argument either way. For me it comes down to Bryan being in a bigger promotion as the difference maker. AJ was a key player in turning around New Japan into the #2 company in the world, but Bryan (and Punk also to be fair) played a big part in changing the mindset in WWE towards smaller wrestlers. Pretty much everyone in NXT not Keith Lee owe a debt to Bryan, since WWE would never have paid any attention to them before. I think that's going to go down as the bigger influence in the long term.

Today I learned the band that does the Raw theme is a Christian rock group. Considering Vince's views on religion I found that very hilarious.

Who will Randy murder tonight?

The games have generally been pretty decent so far. There's been some stinkers, but you get that in any football league, even the NFL. Considering the TV landscape and ratings expectations are very different now compared to the original XFL launch, this actually might end up having some staying power.

Different writing teams on different shows, would be my guess.

Surfer Sting was a complete 1980s babyface that looks goofy as hell now but was perfect for the time. Heel Ric Flair is more or less timeless, so it doesn't look dated. Surfer Sting is essentially the wrestling version of those 70s fashion catalogs that look completely ridiculous now but probably got people laid back in the day.

I'm hoping this will be more along the lines of stuff like Brett DiBiase scamming the goverment rather than the "Jimmy Valiant and a glass table" sort of stuff.