sek69

I'd say it's unpopular. Riho's not a techincal marvel but she connects with the crowd and has undeniable underdog babyface charisma. She drew the crowd into her matches two weeks in a row and made them come off better than they would be otherwise. I think what kneecapped their women's division is that they clearly were going to have Kylie Rae in a key role, and then whatever happened went down, and it seemed to blow up whatever they had in mind.

I still have no idea how MLW didn't explode from having Low Ki, Teddy, Park, and Corny all at the same time.

If Bushiroad promotes them the way they did NJPW, this could be the biggest platform for joshi since the All Japan Women days.

Everyone gets full time contracts and the idea is for them to build the brand with TV and advertising which was what helped NJPW climb out of their dark period. They seem to know how to promote wrestling so this seems like a win for everyone involved.

It's always been stated that CMLL owns the arenas, but a lot of other things that CMLL was thought to own were actually in Paco's name so who knows? Mr. Lutteroth built Arena Mexico, so who's to say it wasn't something passed down the family?

Marko's great in that Spike Dudley "little dude who gets thrown around" role.

Seems like a pretty glaring mistake to have the portion of the Network that attracts the history buffs call Central States the "predecessor to Mid South".

Dunno, but it's pretty TNA-tastic for ROH to put such a push behind her when she only had a 6 month deal that expired before she ever had a match.

Well Liger is an NXT alumni after all.....

The ROH appearances are due to Rush more than anything else. NJPW guys have flat out said they don't want to go to ROH anymore since they've gone downhill, and ROH wants to make Rush as happy as possible to save whatever sliver of a chance that exists where he would re-sign with them when his deal is up next year.

Dragon Lee got replaced by Volador Jr in the tag league, but he is announced to be on several ROH shows in the next month or so.

I remember watching Ken Anderson in OVW back in the day and thinking he was going to be the next star to come out of there. I don't get the hate he seems to get from a lot of folks, he's not the greatest ever or anything but he's not as terrible as everyone makes him out to be.

The Fantasica Mania shows are still a good draw for NJPW, their fans seem to enjoy seeing the CMLL guys come in for a tour. The sourness between AEW and NJPW seems pretty much centered on the Bucks. Omega has stated he would like to go back and his AEW contract states he can work there if he gets booked. The Bucks seemed particularly stung by not getting an offer from NJPW that (to them) didn't match the value they felt that they brought to the company. They were pretty vocal about feeling they got lowballed when the offer was made to them to stay. Also I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little bit of partner loyalty in play as well. Intentionally or not, the Elite guys ended up using ROH to get the idea that became AEW off the ground and New Japan is not going to be inclined to work with a group that used one of their business partners.

I think he's being scapegoated for things like being promised Ronda and not delivering. As much as I think Eric's an asshole, he was set up to fail big time here. He was brought in with no clear job description, no direct control on what he was supposedly in charge of, and no way to fix it when things didn't go as promised. Vince just wanted to have big names to tell investors about in a conference that was mostly bad news. Paul had the advantage of being around the product and being able to hit the ground running, Eric hadn't been around for decades and had no chance of ever being able to deliver. Plus now Vince has one of his top yes-men in the spot, which guarantees SmackDown will be written to exact Vince-pleasing expectations for the foreseeable future.

I hope there was a "plans change" moment, because if Booker talking on Raw about "rumors regarding a major trade" on RAW were about Alexa/Nikki being traded for Jobbers to be Named Later, then we've moved from 1998 WCW to 1999 WCW.

If faced with a Japanese option and a foreign option for a product, the public will pick the Japanese option like 95% of the time. It's a weird product of being such a homogeneous culture, there is a feeling anything Japanese is automatically superior to anything non-Japanese.

Rick Starks gave off some serious Dusty vibes in his promo, that was amazing. No one is learning those skills in NXT, that's for sure.

Microsoft can't convince the Japanese to buy video game consoles, I doubt WWE can convince them to support NXT Japan. I suppose the smallest of the small indies might get hurt, but I can't imagine any Japanese promotion of significance.

This will fail hard if they attempt it, culturally it will be very difficult to get acceptance as a foreign company in Japan, especially one that would be run against established Japanese companies.

New company mandate after they got heat a while back for splitting up IRL couples with the draft. It's why Andrade is on RAW (both for him and Charlotte and Zelina/Alistar Black).

So the most low-key entertaining act in WWE, Truth and Carmella, got broken up because the 24/7 title is a USA invention and Carmella is on SD because Corey is over there.

I did. The rap on Satin was that he was angling to get a WWE gig, and I never really saw that until after he did the PR tour of the Performance Center. Ever since he's been 100% shilling everything related to WWE to the point I thought he was doing a bit. Before the Bix thing he was raving about the WWE2K20 game, and was fighting with people who were pointing out it's been a buggy piece of trash that looks like a budget PS2 game for years. Arguing that the thing AEW needs is more TV writers who don't know about wrestling is a pretty galactic brain take though.

Two hours is fine if it's the only show the promotion has for the week. A two hour show a few days after a three hour show (and a few days before a 3-4 hour ppvs once a month) is way too much of a time investment for anyone who hasn't already spent years following the company.

It's just hilarious that they hyped up the draft and at the end of the day barely anyone actually switched shows, and most of the ones who did are midcarders who are interchangeable.

Poor Bray, every time he has a home someone burns it. Also LOL @ the heroic babyface getting the holy shit booed out of him there.