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I never thought of it like that since Orton is on cruise control so much these days, but damn is it spot on. Makes me wonder how great he would be in an environment where he'd feel the need to give a shit more than once or twice a year.

Brother, that take is cooling off faster than a bag of McDonald's fries. It's amazing to see another guy that checks all the typical Vince boxes get used as cannon fodder.

If you actually call/email support (rather than @ the twitter support account) they say the Hidden Gems content is supposed to be added back on eventually.

Wasn't Ryan Ward the one running the SD team now? Guess Vince has to bury all the NXT callups he gets.

Reports are out that Vince has demanded another day-of-the-show rewrite of Smackdown, two weeks in a row now. Doesn't look like their end of the new creative reorganization is working out too well.

Maryse is pregnant too, maybe she can win it on an episode of Miz and Mrs.

The very first Raw after Vince tried to bury AEW with advertisers by calling it "blood and guts" stuff, they do an angle with one of their top guys bleeding from his guts, lol. There was an obvious effort to build folks up, so that was a welcome change.

So apparently Anthem had a big plan to buy the AXS channel and putting Impact on the Pursuit channel was just a stop gap until the deal went through, since there was no point signing a TV deal with another network for such a short period of time. Well, the AXS deal fell through and now it looks like Impact is stuck relying to Twitch and a channel no one gets for the foreseeable future.

Also last we saw Renee Michelle she was being driven off in a limo with R-Truth, and Drake was imagining what horrors awaited the 24/7 title (and also his wife). Now she's just back in a mixed tag.

I wonder if the Usos will end up with another title win after an arrest.

Briscoes vs Rush/Dragon Lee was a fun blood filled brawl on this week's show. Considering the Briscoes did the job here but ended up winning the tag titles back from G.O.D., this could be a real money program for ROH that they desperately need.

Karen Q broke her leg on a house show the other night.

Apparently Finn got leveled by stomach flu and Ali was a last minute sub, probably explains why that match wasn't super crisp.

That gimmick is so unremarkable it took me several minutes to realize I got the name of the team wrong.

I think it's two separate issues: the Librarians are supposed to be a spoof on bad gimmicks and they don't really do enough during the actual shows to emphasize that to people who don't follow the YouTube stuff. It comes off tryhard and people who "know" the joke end up mad at the people who don't. The New Order on the other hand was supposed to be a serious heel group and it just didn't land, but because of things like the Librarian it creates a somewhat inaccurate impression of AEW being the land of bad gimmicks.

Jericho seems to be smart enough to keep his drunken adventures to Twitter at least. Plus between his wrestling and music gigs I would assume he probably has a bus or some other method of transportation where he doesn't drive himself. But if he got busted for DUI and they did a joke about it on TV it would be just as much bullshit. No such thing as alcohol rehab? You can probably make an argument if it's effective (I personally don't think anyone can get clean unless they deal with the underlying issues that cause them to use in the first place), but it definitely exists. Also since most states are "at-will" when it comes to employment, you can get fired for anything that isn't codified in the law (race/gender/religion/etc). WWE was known to fire people the second they sniff any possible bad PR, the only reason they don't do it now is because they are deathly afraid of handing AEW their next big star.

That surprised me how that kind of flew under the radar. Everyone was expecting the Usos to get buried under the arena floor after news of that arrest broke, but they ended up more or less being rewarded by winning the titles (as much as winning tag titles can be seen as a reward in 2019 WWE). Everyone's reaction was more or less "huh, didn't expect that" and the world moved on.

So I got the update on my phone and tablet so far, and it's different for sure. Searching seems improved, not sure if the new categories are a mess or my brain is still looking for the older ones, so I suppose I'll give it some time to adjust.

While I can't speak of the douchebag element (despite the implied level of doucheness contained from repeated offenses), wrestlers always are looking for something to manage the pain of having to bump on a near daily basis. Drinking has always been seen as the "safest" and most socially acceptable method, especially after cocaine fucked up so many people in the 80s and Somas did in a lot of folks from the 90s. It's one of the reasons RVD was so outspoken about his pot use as he felt it helped him with pain management without having potential life altering side effects and how it was bullshit WWE singled it out to fine people for. In addition to the pain management aspect, there's been the mindset that if you didn't go drinking with the boys after the show you were some kind of pussy. Obviously that mindset is changing, but how many times to you here guys (not always old timers either) making jokes about wrestlers these days just wanting to go play video games instead of partying after the show. Plus you figure with the environment the Usos grew up in, you know the "you have to party with the boys" was the mindset they were taught.

The thing that makes it upsetting is WWE criminalizes practically every other avenue of pain management and with things like Monday's skit basically condone drinking and driving. It's not like the Usos are alone, we just had Jeff Hardy get another alcohol related arrest and Ric fucking Flair was in the ring with a beer in his hand in the closing segment of Raw after nearly dying months ago from years of alcohol abuse. It's clear this company does not see the seriousness of these situations and will only do as much as needed to avoid bad PR. This is after all the same company that wanted to cut ties with Kurt Angle at the height of his problems because Vince didn't want a Olympic medalist dying on his watch.

Also fuck WWE for fining weed use to the point guys just accept it as a "pot tax", but someone putting lives at risk is "responsible for their own personal actions".

FS2 HD is being added to most Comcast lineups tomorrow, just in time for it to be turned into the WWE Side Programming Channel come October.

I wonder if they are going to try some association with AEW, considering they're kind of the heir to the JCP/WCW lineage.

So the NWA just kicked ROH to the curb. Looks like Billy's going to put effort into producing his own weekly show for them. PCO and Brody King still hold the NWA tag titles that they won at the Crockett Cup show, so that will be interesting.

Ziggler's a guy who *should* be a star, he checks all of Vince's boxes, has real life cred, and can bring it on promos when motivated. Yet he's not. Like you know how people bag on Miz by saying he's a dude playing pro wrestler? That's how I feel about Ziggler. I never get invested in anything he does since it comes off like a guy who's memorized a How To Be a Sports Entertainer textbook.