sek69

There's scales here. A company run by white men that has repeatedly shown to be unaware of racial issues at best and straight up racist at worst producing a shirt invoking classic racist imagery is not the same as one black person calling another an Uncle Tom. It wasn't the best choice of words for sure but saying the two are equal is a false equivalency that downplays what the company did. It's like the reverse of "very good people on both sides" kind of bullshit.

It was on FS1, so that should be kept in mind. It's not a great number but people are in a real rush to dogpile on them for what everyone knew was going to be a crap number.

So the guy posts an email exchange that pretty much confirms Hunter (a guy with tons of racially questionable actions in the past) was the key guy pushing for an obviously racist shirt.....and everyone's turning on him for calling Jay Lethal an Uncle Tom as if those two things are on the same level. Good work everyone.

In a bit of randomness seldom seen outside of FMW or WAR six man tag team, Sean Lennon was at the Sunday Arena Mexico show last night.

Looking at how the demos are breaking down, it seems they already have.

It is bullshit, he said they told him the idea they were going for (a twist on the Rolling Stones's logo*) but he never saw the finished product until it was made. To say that a black wrestler saw and approved something with such obvious racist imagery is just as tone deaf as creating it in the first place. But, WWE's gonna WWE. Never admit you were wrong or that you fucked up even when it's patently obvious. *which still would have been stupid but not "holy shit, what were they thinking" stupid.

The April 13th 1985 Mid South episode kicks off with an epic Bill Watts rant on the then-recent Wrestlemania and how Vince McMahon is taking credit for popularizing wrestling and having celebrities, rattling off all the celebrities that go to shows all around the country because they're fans and "not because they were paid to be there". Plus how having an actor pretending to be a wrestler and Mean Gene main eventing a show in Minneapolis (which he did) is 'baloney" and you'll never see that on his show.

It's one of those deals where it's not like Vince or Hunter were sitting around all "let's give the black guy a shirt that looks like a Little Black Sambo face", it's that something looking like that made it through all phases of design and production without one person saying "uhhh....maybe we shouldn't do that". Racism isn't just cross burnings and using the n-word, it's letting shit like this happen without even noticing how bad it is.

He hasn't had a match in about a month which apparently lines up with when he first brought it up to someone in the company. If their response was to ice him out, no wonder he's going out guns blazing because that's some bullshit.

On its face, booking wrestling isn't that hard. The trick was always finding the right personalities that click with the audience. The stories themselves used to be the easier part of the equation.

She was in one of the Mae Young Classics but you probably remember her as part of the Dollhouse in TNA with Taryn Terrell and Jade (Mia Yim).

So apparently there was some talent exchange with WCCW and Mid South in 1985, as Kerry Von Erich shows up (and puts over Mid South as the best wrestling) then Chris Adams shows up the next week with the American Heavyweight title (WCCW's top title at the time).

She announced on social media she wouldn't be accompanying Cody to the ring anymore and she wanted to focus on other things, and apparently that meant she's going to focus on her in ring career instead.

Another great show from Dave and Garrett talking about the Championship Wrestling from Florida DVD that Highspots put out. Interesting insight from Dave about how Eddie Graham was not a nice guy, how he seemed to get off on his shooters hurting people wanting to break into the business, and how he was involved in dealings with shady people that were about to come out when he shot himself (and also how he had to shoot himself twice to get the job done, holy fuck). Really good segment, its always great when Dave gets into these deep historical dives.

AEW just announced they signed Anthony Ogogo, who is a bronze medal winning Olympic boxer.

I'll say one thing, the Dark Order gimmick still sucks (are they supposed to be BDSM sex dungeon masters?) but they got themselves over with the match. No one was expecting Stu Grayson to do that dive over the ringpost, and it got a huge reaction. Evil Uno doing a fat guy senton will always score points with me, and they even managed to get the crowd back after the Inner Circle did their walk-in.

I mean, how dare a company want you to watch their product that is the main income source of their business by legit means, right? The very fact King Corbin exists is a seminal WWE problem. The whole King of the Ring tournament was build with Chad Gable positioned as the underdog set to take out the bully who keeps making lame short jokes. Instead the bully had to win in the end because HEAT is good shit, dammit, and we ended up with Shorty G dressed like a 90s Sesame Street puppet. Corbin with the King gimmick is the same as he was before, only now he's dressed like a lazy ren faire attendee. He can get boos, but the point of having heels is to give the babyfaces something strong to play off of. WWE gives us heels that trample the babyfaces and make them all look like geeks. The funny thing is AEW isn't inventing anything new with their booking, they are just doing things that make sense and follow a logical pattern. It just seems groundbreaking because an entire generation thinks pro wrestling is toilet humor and self loathing promoters.

That dang invisible wall Cody mentioned keeping Rey from going to help his son!

Nice to see Cena's fully in the "Jingle All the Way" phase of his movie career.

Alright, fair's fair. WWE remembering what Daniel said when he turned heel was a surprising consistency moment. Also lol @ Sami and Nak caring about the world being heel characteristics.

He was basically a Dean Malenko type shooter/badass. I get no one really watched 205 Live but it was some fun stuff and just reconning it all away is wack.

Gotta love them throwing away all the character development Drew Gulak did on 205 live so he can go back to being POWERPOINT GUY on Smackdown.

"There was a muscleman in a suit who kept firing me" Rambling Rabbit owns.

Big Dog out here dropping truth bombs on Corbin.

Dave told a story yesterday about going to wrestling shows as a kid and how Roy Shire's territory was a high workrate territory and had some of the best workers of the day. He mentions talking to the Mexican kids he'd meet there and how they thought US wrestling looked so fake compared to lucha while Dave thought the opposite. He said it was a teaching moment for him where he learned the wrestling you grew up with is "real wrestling" and anything different looks fake by comparison. The story was in context of the other day being Dave's 60th birthday and him explaining why he's more open to modern wrestling than a lot of other folks his age (*cough* Cornette *cough*).