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Sonya's been pitching a low key LGBTQ storyline with her and Mandy (and they were clearly going that way at some point a few months ago), and now she had to watch them do what they did last night. By her responses on Twitter she didn't seem too happy about it. I guess the best spin you can put on it is at least WWE treated it with the same respect it treats any other hetero relationship (there always has to be a crazy female), but for one it was so shoehorned it came off as patronizing, and it played on stereotypes of bisexuals clearly learned by someone who's view of such things was learned in the 90s via porn sites. Plus there's the matter of Lana's response of attacking her basically being domestic violence if we're supposed to believe these two have been in a downlow relationship all this time. I guess you can be generous and say it plays in in Lana's overall character she's been doing in this angle, but it's still a big yikes when you step back and look at it.

I would say the last non RKO finisher that was a big deal was when the Shield were triple powerbombing everyone. They even did it to the Undertaker which was huge in getting them over in the beginning.

It was really telling that the crowd died during the Lana/Liv fight. They wanted to see them be a happy couple but instead we got a 90s lesbian catfight.

To me it was both, the ex spouses part went on for too long but then it went to another level and became amazing.

This whole thing is so Paul Heyman, it's amazing.

Don't forget the required bashing of the dirtsheets for reporting stuff that ends up being more or less 100% correct.

Yeah between this and Andrade winning the US title at MSG, it looks like WWE is on another one of those kicks they get on where they try to make you think stuff that matters will happen at house shows.

I dunno, even when Cornette makes a good point all I can think of is the "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole" scene from Big Lebowski.

If there ever would be any partnership between NJPW and AEW it would probably come from Jericho, since he's the one person who's been a top guy on both sides and doesn't have any ill will towards New Japan. It seems that since Jericho mentioned in his announcement post that he talked to Tony about it, you wouldn't name check your boss if you were just working your own angle. My hope is that Tony tells the Elite guys to get the fuck over themselves and make some money.

So apparently it came (heh) out today that Lars Sullivan appeared in a gay porn movie back in the day, which considering the views he's espoused in the past is effin' hilarious.

CMLL has a curfew of sorts since the crowd takes public transportation (if you look up Arena Mexico on Google Maps you'll see there's not exactly a lot of parking nearby), so they have to end the show before the last train leaves.

I would think part of that would be due to them restarting the match made the fans not buy anything as the finish. Another part would be WWE has trained fans to believe babyfaces never tap (unless they're geeks) and Bryan/Miz was a face vs face matchup.

So Jericho just posted on Instagram that if Tanahashi beats him at WK (which he assuredly will), he'll get a shot at the AEW title.

It's basically submission or KO, like MMA rules.

Even then, you have companies as big and successful as Nintendo making baffling decisions despite North America being their largest market by far. Also the more successful companies (Nintendo, Sega, Capcom) have US divisions that while still answering to the Japanese HQ, have some autonomy to decide things that will work best in the US. New Japan has the same folks running the Japanese side calling shots for America and that's usually not going to work. They need a separate office staffed with Americans familiar with the NJPW product that can market it properly, with the Japanese side only having veto power if things are too expensive.

As a long time follower of the video game industry, Japanese companies not understanding the market in America is pretty much a feature rather than a bug.

I remember people being jealous that the UK releases didn't get subject to the blur-mania we got in the States when they had to change logos.

Don't sell Impact short like that, they'd certainly have fucked that up too! At least they handled it in a situation where everyone wins rather than just bigfooting over the indy group like WWE would have. They just bumped the match to next week and get an extra Riho match out of the deal.

Also their TV partner in the US got bought out by Impact (they would set themselves on fire before working with Impact again) and they clearly don't feel it's worth the cost to run on PPV here either.

Also it seems kind of odd that Hunter would rule in Gabe's favor, but he has seemed to the one guy who's played the game (pun only somewhat unintended) perfectly so far. Speaking of, Hunter let loose some howlers about how only the UK indies that were low quality with unsafe rings were being put out of business by NXT UK despite someone getting a career ending injury from a broken ring at a Gabe show.

No doubt the modern style takes its toll, but it's just rich to me that the coaches at the PC would take offense at someone going that route when they spend so much time putting folks through pointless drills.

Yeah, they'd rather him blow out his knees and shoulders doing strongman lifts and calisthenics drills.

I was thinking of all the different promotions that were on TV when I was a kid and wondered why I didn't get burned out then. I realized that every show I watched back then was an hour except for SMNE and that was only a few times a year. I was able to watch NWA. WWF, AWA, WCCW, and UWF every week since it would have been no more than 5 hours of investment max per week. WWE asks more of that by itself now. It's hard to get invested in a new promotion now since it's asking so much of a time investment as a buy in from the jump.

Japan didn't have the rash of drug deaths that US wrestling did, so there was never a big push for testing there.

It really is the most "WWE in 2019" thing that could happen, one of the better well executed slow burn angles paying off on a show almost no one watched.