sek69

I mean, you might not like how he words it but Dave isn't wrong. Just because we've come a long way from pudding fights and bra & panty matches doesn't mean the current main roster women's matches are great. Some of if for sure is booking, but there's no doubt if any of the men had a match like 75% of what the women do it would get buried 100 feet below the ground. They do give pushes to Alexa and Carmella for obvious Vince related reasons, Nia gets a push part because of her family and part as a token PR move so they can say "see, we push big girls too!" Women who can actually wrestle are an afterthought far behind who the company feels is attractive, and there's a pretty narrow focus on how they define that. As was mentioned in another thread, Charlotte might as well be renamed Ramona Reigns at this point for how hard she's pushed as the star of the women on Smackdown despite others arguably more deserving of the spot at this point. Women's matches absolutely get graded on a curve, and to an extent that's fair seeing as how embarrassingly bad women's wrestling was in WWE for so long it wouldn't be right to expect it to turn on a dime. There comes a time, and again it can be argued we're at that time, where if you really want equality you have to be honest about what you're seeing. Again, a lot of this falls on the company too. Clearly no one on the main roster spends the time with the women that they do in NXT. Other than the completely green newbies, you seldom see a terrible women's match there. On the main roster, there's often clunkiness apparent in every match. Even more so if it's opponents that never had matches together in NXT. One of the reasons the Women's Rumble stood out is they pulled everyone off the road practiced, so that everyone had a chance to get familiar. Obviously they can't do that for every show, but there must be a midpoint between nonstop practice and just throwing them out on Raw to flail. Other companies don't seem to have an issue with this. I don't watch joshi, but the Impact women have consistently better matches and it's not like you can say their roster is better than WWE's. Even the ROH women seem to have more effort put into their matches than most in WWE. Everyone went over the moon praising Fit Finlay when he helped the women improve back in the day, there's no reason they can't have someone in a similar role now.

Finally watching last week's show, it's kind of eerie how much Brian Pillman Jr. looks like his father. Also I figured since Kevin Sullivan was around for the battle royal, they couldn't resist doing a segment together. Sullivan's awkward promo putting him over was worth it for Jr's reply of "My father respected you, and so do I....bookerman!"

It doesn't even seem clear what their plan is for the brand, other than running personality profiles on YouTube and getting Nick Aldis a match for All In. In a world where seemingly every non WWE promotion is the world is at least attempting to work together, the NWA seems off on its own island.

KO gets Braun to slip on a banana peel, gets the briefcase. Roman wins after a brutally fought match after which KO tries and fails to cash in because all must bow before Reigns. Then they spend all fall feuding and WWE continues to wonder why he keeps getting Mixed Reactions (TM John Cena).

This kind of encapsulates my every issue with WWE: This whole promo was awesome and obviously not ham fistedly scripted like every other promo you see. It foreshadows a few potential awesome plot twists (Will Paul bring in someone to screw Brock? Will he join up with Roman?) I'll stupidly get myself excited for something cool to happen only to be let down when WWE invariably gives us another attempt at Cena-izing Roman. (and if I'm being honest, I'll probably let it negatively color my perception of what will most likley be a solid Roman match)

So much this. I don't get why anyone would crap on her when it's her gimmick to be the unworthy champion who keeps backing in to wins and then talking shit after.

They just announce two more matches: Madison Rayne/Tessa Blanchard/Britt Baker/Chelsea Green in a 4 way Jay Lethal vs the winner of the pre-show battle royal for the ROH title

If anything, I think that adds a little something to it. Like she's saying "I'm about to fuck you up and there's nothing you can do about it".

Also this needs to lead to Alicia Fox doing a Miz-like gimmick where she never stops talking about the time she main evented Raw.

If it was anyone else but Roman involved, that Heyman promo would have foreshadowed him joining up with Brock's opponent. Since Roman can only be portrayed as fighting the evil forces of upper management, I'm sure it will end up meaning nothing.

Basically the longer someone goes without losing their mask/hair, the more valuable it becomes. There's also the factor of star power, someone like Rush has been at or near the top for a while, so that plus him never losing his hair before drives the price up.

This is true, Wagner apparently got the highest payoff ever for a mask match so AAA isn't afraid to break the piggy bank, but that was also in a straight up one on one match as well. The Alonso family has the means to give Park whatever amount he's asking, but the question is will they. Normally the answer to that would be no, but this is a strange new world we're in.

CMLL seems to be really hedging their bets. They gave every impression Rush/Park is still on, but they announced the ticket prices for the Anniversary show and they are way lower than you would expect for a show with that match as the main. Cubsfan seems to think CMLL is afraid either AAA or Park is going to pull the rug out from them at Triplemania, but I don't see Park losing his mask in a random four way, even if it is at a big show.

Yeah she was officially announced.

Also Kane is now officially a mayor of an actual town, and that doesn't even crack the top 100 political "can you believe this actually happened" stories of the year. 2018, man.

TV at work has the Hall of Fame game on, and all I can think is how Brian Urlacher with hair looks like a beefier Randy Orton.

Comcast's contract with beIN ended at midnight July 31rst, so for the forseable future it looks like I won't be watching this anymore.

Twitter sources apparently. Dave said he hasn't signed anything yet but expects him to at some point.

Yeah, building up Becky to finally get her shot only to have it be a set up for Charlotte is going to be quite the sour note if it doesn't lead to someone turning.

To be honest, both of them responded pretty much as expected. If you weren't aware both guys were shit heads in 2018 then (to quote my all time favorite gimmick) I'm afraid I have some bad news.

I've never trained for MMA or anything, but I would imagine it's a pretty big shift in how one's brain works to go from "hit this guy as hard as possible" to "make it look like you hit this guy as hard as possible but don't really hit him".

Yeah, it's pretty much the Roman Problem in a nutshell: keep putting him in title matches despite him losing prior ones, then wonder why the fans feel resentment toward him. It's like they redid the Lex Express and kept it going for nearly 4 years.

He also mentioned that part of the reason Lawler did the "he's not my kid" gimmick was because he was afraid Brian would get into trouble and tarnish the Lawler name, which sounds brutal but unfortunately as it turned out he had reason to worry. The funny thing is that he looked so much like Jerry it was silly to think anyone would have ever bought that they weren't related. Speaking of, Jerry must be completely devestated. Apparently after the arrest he decided it was time to let Brian deal with consequences for once, so I can only imagine the guilt one would feel for losing a child must be a magintude of a million for him.

Who was Trevor Lee's dad as well.

Dave made the comparison to the Von Erichs, trying to live up to having a famous father. I couldn't even imagine the pressure of trying to make it in an already difficult business with such high expectations.