sek69

I will die on the hill that Michael Cole is a tremendous announcer when left on his own devices. His face has reached nearly "career renaissance Tony Schiavone" levels of happiness once Vince wasn't the main creative voice anymore. His bromance with Pat McAfee is pure joy, two dudes enjoying the fuck out of their job just made the product so much better by itself. Even the stuff people didn't like of his was just him playing his role exactly the way Vince wanted him to.

I love how Don Callis is bringing back irredeemable shitheel managers back to mainstream pro wrestling. Been missing that for a while.

Doing the Rey/Dom "I won't fight you" deal with Christian, I see you Adam.

Ol' Billy has been teasing a new era for the NWA, and along with announcing they are bringing back the territory system starting with EC3's promotion they also signed a deal wth the CW to carry NWA Power. The CW has new ownership that has been making several deals for sports programming and this seems like a good fit with their plan. NWA gets on network TV and the CW gets more programming to fill their non primetime hours.

Vince did have the balls to go all-in on the first Wrestlemania, but he was able to get to that point by being the son of the guy who's territory covered some of the biggest markets on the East Coast. Having NYC/Boston/Philly/DC/Baltimore/Pittsburgh in your area is going to make it a little easier to succeed than if your main market is some podunk southern or midwestern town .

I always felt Taker got a bad rap, he was stuck working with a lot of lugs for years. Once he was paired up with someone able to hold up their end of the deal his matches were usually good to great. Unfortunately by the time he was able to get a chance to show what he was capable of, his body was already breaking down. Dave famously said he heard people back in 1998 or so being like "I don't think Taker can make it another year, he's in bad shape". Also it really seems like Endeavor sees Vince as a bigger liability by the day. Ari Emmanuel is making sure Vince doesn't have any creative control in WWE, and seems to be making sure he's more or less just kept at arm's length. Should be interesting to see how long Vince puts up with that.

I like to think it was @C.S. carrying the flag for Christian that inspired him to reach this level.

The Trick and Melo stuff is great, I love Trick getting the rocket

He's always kind of been a different looking dude tho. I don't know if I'd call him ugly because that seems mean, but he's not exactly ever been heartthrob material (other than that brief time after he debuted as hot vampire guy).

Possibly, but Hogan/Warrior were the top two babyfaces at the time and that worked out pretty well. I think Roman and Gunther could pull it off just from the sheer force of their awesomeness.

So apparently Edge (I'll call him by his real name eventually but it still feels weird not to call him Edge) dropping the "vanilla midget" line was unplanned so Ricky's line was too. If I had to guess, I'd wager that Ricky wasn't even thinking about it that way and just wanted to get in a "lol I said edge" shot and accidently triggering Ed.. *ahem* Adam.

Jesus Christ that table bump, Cody is nuts

Tozawa reaching R Truth levels of mastering WWE comedy is good shit pal

Good lord, GUNTA is on another level. Am I crazy for thinking there could be big money in doing a Hogan/Warrior deal with him and Roman? The two unstoppable forces colliding would be incredible.

Rhea/Shayna/Nia/Raquel/Zoey beating the shit out of each other sounds like a pretty fun time Also yes Nia sucks but the build to her and Rhea having a big kaiju fight has been pretty good

Its so weird that they keep pushing Nattie as the mom of the women's locker room (I know she pretty much is that IRL) yet on TV she's never been anything more than a low/mid carder.

Edge got heated at Ricky's "Over the Edge" comment which (unintentially I'm sure) was the name of the PPV where Owen died.

As a devoted Steelers fan it pains me to say the Browns are pretty good, even if they did mortgage their future to a QB who's trying to beat Vince's sex charges record.

The Houston shows were Paul Boesch shows that used most of the same talent. They weren't technically Mid South shows but sometimes they were used for angle advancement, sometimes they were just used to show Mid South guys in a bigger environment.

Seeing a whole ass package about CMLL on US TV is blowing my mind. It can't be understated how against the norm it is for CMLL to be such an active partner with a foreign company. Yes they work with NJPW, they send guys to work Fantastica Mania shows because the Japanese fans love seeing lucha style and it makes them money, but they never really make a big deal about it. They announced their partnership with AEW on their Twitter account and let them use footage on their TV. For a company that was very much in the Vince mindset of "we'll work with other promotions but we won't ever do much to promote them" this is groundbreaking.

You're not wrong, but if there ever was a wrestling rookie who *would* do that it'd be Ole.

I would suppose being treated like shit for daring to believe you're a star despite being the biggest draw in Mexico would make you not put in your best effort.

Remember when everyone in WWE shit on Mistico because he had the temerity to act like a star? Pepperidge Farms remembers....

If it leads to her getting beat down by Jade, I'll allow it.

Looked like something from Vince's wardrobe circa 1985.