sek69

This is such a pure Mark Madden quote, where he's not necessarily wrong but he's such an asshole in making his point you want to disagree with him out of principle.

Pretty much what Bruce described in the Torch quote, he was being worked by people he was friends with in the business and it damaged the credibility of the work he was doing. I don't think he was doing any of it on purpose, it seems clear in retrospect people he thought he could trust were taking advantage of him. The fact that he barely even mentions wrestling anymore after being a big part of it for so long suggests to me it probably left a bad taste in his mouth and he washed his hands of it.

It's like if Tim and Eric decidd to do a wrestling show.

Fight the powers that be (not the Harris Twins)

Still, from what I can gather as an American it appears that Daddy was as big other there as Hogan was here in the 80s. I get the sense that a lot of people are trying to downplay or ignore that because it wasn't something they were a part of growing up. There's also a sense of "why don't you understand how important this was to us culturally?" coming from the other side as well.

I get his frustration though. It's not an exact parallel, but it would be like if there was a large portion of UK fans saying Hulk Hogan wasn't a Hall of Famer because he sucked in the ring and WCW died because of him (I'd argue he was more of a direct cause of that than anything Daddy can be blamed for). All while ignoring what a massive cultural icon he was.

The company seemed to finally notice around Summerslam, and someone on the SD creative team finally decided to give her the ball and let her run with it.

Such is the power of Becky that she was able to make Seth headline worthy.

Poor Seth tried to come at her on Twitter and she savaged him so hard people were clamoring for the two of them to headline a PPV.

Our long national nightmare is finally over, the overrun is offically done as of next week. 17 years after there ceased to be a reason to have one (longer if you consider Nitro stopped being a threat some time in 2000), we're no longer going to have the atrophied appendix of an extra 10-15 minutes tacked on.

*turns on the khawk beacon* This weeks' gem:

Nice to know that even on a show that could make or break the company, Verne's gotta Verne.

Yes the show was excellent. Give me Nikki/Becky every week please. I wonder though, with both sets of champs in their own match how are they going to fill the tag team elimination match without getting into Conquistadors-at-the-first-SS levels of jobberdom?

Well I guess I'm on an island here not wanting to see a guy go out there and potato guys while turning various shades of red, looking like his heart is going to explode at any moment.

They've already (inadvertently) established Becky can talk circles around her, so even if they try to script Ronda as the better when they meet face to face it will be obvious they put the reins on Becky. That's going to get the crowd to cheer for her even more.

If you haven't read the spoilers for Smackdown yet, you may want to do so not just to not get spoiled but for your own mental wellbeing.

For a company that puts smiles on faces, that was quite the gloomy Raw. Nearly all the heels won, Nia turned, and the main event was watching Kurt Angle get squashed.

I would think this is more for Network 2.0, plus WWC wasn't doing anything with their library so it's a win for everyone.

Yeah I know they seem to like this champ vs champ format for SS, but I don't think Ronda-Becky is going to go the way they think it will. Either their cash cow Ronda gets murked in the buildup, or they try to have her demolish Becky and cement her position as fem-Bryan.

I would be more excited about AOP winning if the Raw tag belts meant a goddamn thing.

Dave was pretty clear he thought the show sucked and was surprised to hear there were people who thought HBK was at the same level he was at before. Also Taker and Kane letting Shawn crash and burn right between them was some stuff you'd expect to see in CMLL in the opening match. At least it seemed to convince him to stay in retirement (at least until the next Saudi payday) as opposed to him working with someone who could have carried their end of the deal more and caused us to have to endure another comeback tour.

Damn, I would have had David Manning in the pool of WCCW officals most likely to get KTFO.

The issues that brought down WCCW would have happened regardless, but a Von Erich heel run might have prevented the absolute cliff they fell off of. Of course there's no way Fritz would have ever gone that direction. His boys were ultimate Christian superheroes, no matter what reality was telling him. In another reality, a heel Kevin and Kerry team would probably have done good enough buisness that they wouldn't have felt the need to push Mike so fast as the replacement Von Erich. I could see Kerry in particular having good heel charisma, and it would have livened up a territory that saw crowds drop by half or more post-Freebirds feud.

Dave gets shit for saying it, but it really is amazing how a four hour NJPW show seems to go by quickly as opposed to the usual WWE slog. Just so much more respectful of the viewer's time: each match has a quick video recap of the storyline building it and off we go. No filler backstage bullshit, no endless video packages shown multiple times.

Watching the show now, and good lord the Suzuki/Ishii match. The absolute bombs those two throw at each other.