sek69

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.

Watching his Mid South work on the Network really opened my eyes to what an agile big man he was in an era where that really wasn't a thing. Plus everyone will always think of him when they hear the Soviet national anthem.

So the NXT UK tapings took place, I assume it's a Network only deal but do any of our resident UK-ians know if it's going to be on TV over there? I figured it would be since the whole thing is a reaction to ITV trying to get into the wrestling game.

He's also taking advantage of being in an industry that is able to skate under the radar of press scrutiny for everything short of murder-suicide.

WWE is pretty much the only company in wrestling that is in the position to turn them down though. It's one think if it was Impact doing these shows where that kind of money is legit life changing for people in and around that company. WWE doesn't need Saudi money, they just got a billion dollars for their TV deal so they have never been in a better position to say "you know, we're really not cool with being used as a PR agency for a brutal regieme just so Vince has more money to blow on his silly football league". If I was running WWE, I would absolutely say the money recieved would not be worth the negative connotations of being associated with them. It's also fair to say I might not feel the same way if I was running literally any other wrestling company.

Funny you should say that as I find myself far more engrossed watching 1984 Mid South on the Network than almost anything currently taking place.

Watching this weeks show, and I literally lol'ed at Scarlett Bordeaux doing a Steph-like "activist for women's rights" gimmick with the twist of her goal being to end hot-shaming.

I would say stars in someone who was given a chance to get over and not get cut off at the knees. Enzo and Cass definately count, and Enzo was probably going to be the biggest star of all until he had to go all CONSENTUAL PENIS on everyone.

It seems a little disingenious to include Strowman since it seems all he did in the PC was work out in the gym and be a Rosebud. Big E would probably be the biggest star so far of the NXT/PC era.

I think it's been kind of underrated how quickly Tom Lawlor has grasped pro wrestling. He really has only been doing this full time since his UFC suspension and he's already someone carrying themselves like a star.

I don't get why Toni got dumped on, it wasn't her fault the company decided to make her the champ in what was essentially a shoot situation knowing she had limited dates with them.

JCP would release VHS tapes, but they were famous for being edited like it was being done by Edward Scissorhands after 10 cups of coffee.

They tried to hide it as best they can without running afoul of financial rules, and there's likely other things stuffed in that category as well, but it appears they got over $40 million for the show. Now that could be the lump sum for the year or just the amount they got for the Greatest Rumble, but either way it's pretty clear why WWE was so eager to sell the women down the river. From the Observer site's synopsis of the Q2 report that dropped today:

Part of the reason why Dave gets asked all the time if different people have final say on Raw and SD is how it seems to be two separate promotions. SD is able to have focus on multiple storylines and generally try to elevate people, while Raw is usually the same way-to-long slog with the same people as the focus constantly. So while SD has seemed to go back to the better show it was for a while, it doesn't make it any less true that the rest of the main roster programming has been lacking.