sek69

Jesus Christ, Keith Lee catching Damien Priest mid-dive might be the most impressive thing he's done so far.

So Roddy vs Austin Theory was good, and I know Theory was in Evolve, but he's not done much of anything in NXT and Roddy the NA champ going 50-50 with him reminded me of how Flair would have competitive matches with jobbers on Saturday Night.

Askua geeking out over getting a Famicom (Japanese NES) mini is the quality content I needed on Christmas morning.

Yeah, it's set to be a dark match but the fact it's happening at all is nothing short of a miracle.

That's interesting for not only the obvious reasons, but how Bushiroad was pretty clear they wanted to keep Stardom and New Japan separate.

One thing about WWE is that I very seldom believe people when they are scripted to act tough, since it's obvious the people scripting have never been in real fights with people. I 100% believe when Joe says he knows about bad men and how to deal with them.

Longtime CMLL star Mr. Niebla passed away at the age of 46 earlier on 12/23, reportedly due to a blood infection. His was a sad, cautionary tale in lucha: someone with undeniable charisma that unfortunately saw his career derail due to a long battle with alcoholism. He was very popular with his peers, as seen by him always being brought back when he'd get suspended, but the increasing visibility of his escapades with CMLL streaming more of their shows (plus an incident where he went on a Fantasica Mania tour and ended up hospitalized due to a relapse) led to CMLL using him less and less as of late. He's been ill for a while, but I get the impression that folks were under the impression that was either just code for another relapse (CMLL would often claim injury to explain his absences), or if he was sick he'd be back because that's just what he's always done. Honestly, there wasn't any reason to think otherwise, since he did it so man times before, but it seems this time the abuse he put his body through all those years was finally too much.

It would be a shocker if a taped show two days before Christmas going up against a division-deciding football game doesn't get slaughtered. I'm sure WWE knew this (not that the game would be deciding a division title, but that the NFL has been flexing more important games into prime time slots at the end of the season) and just figured "fuck it".

Joe cutting a promo on AOP about how he comes from a line of bad men and the AOP aren't bad men but thugs was GREAT. That was some old school shit and it was awesome.

So the new WON mentions the plan for The Revival now is to turn them into comedy characters while also mentioning they haven't signed new contracts yet, implying the two are probably related. That's probably the most WWE thing I've heard in a while. Take two extremely talented guys and try to humiliate them for not wanting to resign after being completely botched on the main roster. The funny thing is this will probably end up backfiring on them since their fanbase has been whittled down to primarily just the hardcores who will know the company is fucking with them.

I mean, it must send mixed messages when the show's being run by an Iron Cross enthusiast. All joking aside, not sure why stuff like that is tolerated. It shouldn't get to the point where the talent has to break character to tell a racist to STFU. They could easily do what they do at baseball games (and other sports I'm sure) where they set up a number to text to let security know someone's being a shithead. Especially at those Florida loop shows, where most of them are in venues so small it should be apparent what's going on.

Kross will probably be okay in NXT since he's probably bigger than everyone there other than Keith Lee and Damian Priest. I'm fairly certain he'd be just another dude on the main roster though.

Say what you will, when Uncle Paul wants to get someone over, he fuckin' gets them over. Rhea was like everything they were trying to do to with Brock on the main roster except they actually pulled the trigger on beating the unstoppable monster without any kneecapping bullshit booking.

It's kind of amazing how three different promotions are doing homages to Dusty right now. Obviously AEW, then NXT brought back the Dusty Classic, and the NWA named their next PPV "Hard Times".

It's probably not a coincidence those places let him do what he wanted to (well I'm sure no one in WCW cared either way) rather than script the life out of him. I also appreciate he finally realized he can't hang move for move with the young guys and went all in on character development.

Also Cody posted a photo of him and Dusty sitting on the stairs in this arena from 2007 next to a photo of him sitting on the same stairs by himself today and it was "right in the feels" moment.

I kind of lol at Michael Nakazawa's role as plot device in Kenny Omega angles.

It's time to put the rocket on Rhea, and it's time for Shayna to go to the main roster, there's literally no reason to not pull the trigger now unless they find a dead hooker in Rhea's trunk.

So Okada was named to be one of the people running with the Olympic Torch in 2020, so that was cool.

Any pushback on ratings would have to be coming from Fox. They've been BFFs with the USA Network forever and they know what to expect at this point. Fox are the ones who just backed the money truck up Vince's driveway and promoted the hell out of it on NFL games and got the same or lesser ratings they were getting with what was on Fridays before.

You may never be able to pinpoint the exact place hit happened, but once someone is clearly out of it there should be a way to make a call. If they can do it in the NFL which is the last bastion of alpha maledom, surely WWE can figure it out.

Rewatching it really shows how scared the refs must be to make judgement calls. Becky seems to know Kairi is hurt immediately, probably because she got landed on with that elbow to the table, Asuka definitely knew after talking to her if not prior, so you have half the people in the match aware something went wrong. Plus you have Becky doing Hogan-light chair shots to Kairi's ass while Charlotte is swinging for the fences. Now it may have happened off camera, but not once did I see any part where the refs were trying to communicate to her. What really looks bad for Charlotte is the powerbomb spot. You could excuse the spear as her thinking it was a botch and getting mad, but when someone who is probably 100 pounds soaking wet and is regarded as one of the best workers in the company suddenly is dead weight on you, that should have set off alarm bells.

WWE has been doing a thing where if someone gets concussed, they get all weirdly defensive and secretive so while they are trying to keep it under wraps they way they do it is pretty much a big neon light advertising someone has a concussion. Bryan also mentioned on Twitter folks in the company are more or less being taught to not self-report concussions since it will lead to you getting a rep for being fragile in the company and lessen your odds of getting a push.

AAA has a premiere set on their YouTube channel for Sin Cara's run in during the show. They certainly seem to be under the impression they can use that name. Normally I'd think this is a slam dunk for WWE, but Mexico tends to be the Land Copyright Forgot. Also yes, Rush in AAA feels like when Sting finally showed up in WWE. Like, it's cool but he's so ingrained in your brain as a guy from the other company it feels weird to see.