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Slammiversary Card: Austin Aries vs Moose for the Impact World Title Su Yung vs Madison Rayne for the Impact Knockouts Title Rich Swann vs Johnny Impact vs Ishimori vs Fenix Pentagon Jr vs Sami Calahan Mask vs Hair Matt Sydal vs Brian Cage for the Impact X Division Title Eddie Edwards vs Tommy Dreamer in a House of Hardcore match and just added... OG LAX vs New LAX in a 5150 Street Fight for the Impact World Tag Team Titles Tessa Blanchard vs Allie What's amazing is what is probably the worst match on paper (Edwards/Dreamer hardcore match) has a pretty solid angle behind it. Eddie's feud with Sami causing him to lose his mind and go crazy, and Tommy having to go old school hardcore to try to stop him. I only hope Tommy doesn't wear his silly Dusty tribute polka dot gear in this one.

I mean, right or wrong the idea was to have Okada become the guy with the most defenses. So while I wouldn't have had Naito come up short in his big chance, at least I can see why it was booked that way. If he beats Kenny before January and Okada wins the G1, at least there's a story of him never beating "THE GUY" for the title. I would hope that's the plan they are working on, since keeping Naito out of the title scene would just be baffling beyond words.

It was a match, kind of like a proto-hardcore match.

Dave spent a large part of today's WOR show on the Hogan stuff, and the takeaway is a lot of the people he talked to seemed to indicate a lot of the roster felt that having the takeaway be "be careful, you might be getting recorded" rather than "don't be a racist" came off as tone deaf. Also he mentioned that despite worrying about sponsor or fan backlash, there was very much a feeling that "the boys" would all have his back because that's what wrestlers do.

While the messages of support are the vast majority, it's still depressing to see the "you guys are the REAL RACISTS for not welcoming back my childhood hero" style comments. Like it would be different if Hogan has at any point shown one bit of remorse for anything other than being caught, but he hasn't. And yes, it is also fucked up he was being filmed without his consent, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have to bear any responsibility for what was heard. Another thing that kind of gets lost in all this too is the black guy he was talking about was the son of the person helping Brooke with her music career, and someone who thought he was friends with Hogan. Instead to him he's just a wealthy n-word who's only purpose is to bankroll his talentless daughter, and his son better stay away.

I feel like sometimes people overanalyze what's wrong with current WWE and that the answer is just that simple. Could you imagine them ever booking a Hogan or Austin type as bad as today's babyfaces are?

Just wanted to add that I purchased a Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 shirt from the link Loss posted on Twitter to support the site. In related news, my wallet is also cursing Loss for the upcoming abuse it's about to get from me finding this site.

Based on Sasha's declaring her love for Bayley, I got so scared WWE's going to try to hamfist this into the gay angle Steph claimed they want to do some day.

Well I can only go on the shows I see on TV on a weekly basis, but the local indy I went to a few months back didn't have any incongruious chanting, but if they do it's still kind of on the company to put on a product that engages the audience so as to give them reason not to go into business for themselves and give a shit about what is being presented in the ring.

Arena Mexico has been a rudo crowd forever, a lot of the casual audience that Mistico brought in were more of the typical "cheer faces, boo heels" type. When he left so did they. In fact a lot of the reason the houses have gone up (prior to LA Park's run) is the tourist buses that make going to a CMLL show part of the package when you visit. The last time there was an earthquake in Mexico City it took them a while to bounce back despite only being shut down a week or so because the tourists were scared to come back for a while. *editied to add* Even we were to use that as examples of a crowd rejecting what was being offered, what did CMLL do? They created a heel faction that got over with those rudo fans. When the company that has long been labeled the most stubborn promotion on the world was more effective combating fan backlash, you're officially doing things wrong.

I just watched the match where he won the AWA title from Larry (in the Tokyo Dome no less), and I remember how surprised I was since most of my memories were him being lumbering WWF tag team guy. I really hope Florida is next on the list of footage to make it to the WWE Network, I really need to see a Saito/Ivan tag team run.

I think it was a matter of just getting confirmation on the date. It's been known Brock has one date left on his current deal. They took a guy they already were paying millions a year to work only a handful of dates, and gave him go away heat. It hasn't helped Roman one bit, and the NYC fans are going to eat another Brock/Roman match alive at Summerslam.

Funny how only WWE seems to be plagued by fans who don't act the way they are supposed to act. In a normal week I watch WWE/ROH/Impact/MLW/CMLL and sometimes AAA when they put one of their live events up on Twitch. WWE seems to be the only one who has to deal with fan revolt on a regular basis. The other companies are at least trying to give the fans what they want instead of it being a constant battle of "Oh you like this guy instead of who we want you to like? Then it's time to job him out". It's like the era in TNA where their fans would chant "Fire Russo" at the dumb shit they would do on their shows (that he was of course responsible for). WWE fans can't do that because you can't fire Vince, nor do they know which one of the rougly 76 million writers wrote whatever segment they are mad at, so what else can they do?

It worked for Razor since everything was garish colors in the 90s so his green/yello combo didn't look too bad. Ric Flair was supposed to be the master of style so him wearing clashing colors stood out like hearing someone in an orchestra hit a flat note.

So the owner of Fire Pro Arena, which was the premier Fire Pro site forever, apparently was arrested on child pornography related charges. I remember going there back in the day to get translated roms back when Fire Pro was a Japanese only thing. I hope the site was archived, and fuck that guy for being a piece of shit.

Another interesting point is what do you do to put over blood feuds in a no blood era? Clearly the JCP mentality of juice in every match is never coming back, but we've seen time and again establishing a feud or match as violent and barbaric comes off as lame with no blood. There is the aspect that because it's so rare to see that accidential blood gets a more visceral reaction from fans not used to seeing it. I do think it's an interesting side effect of WWE's Brand Uber Alles campaign that heels can't be heels without it potentially having negative reprocussions to the company. Heels used to be seen as dastardly guys going against what the company would want wrestlers to do, and now they're seen as characters doing what the company scripts them to do. There's also the idea that it used to be the company was always the babyface and authority figures would only be used to punish heels when they did something especially egregious that required a punishment. We've had 20+ years of the company being seen as the bad guy out to screw the heroes. I always thought that had a subconcious effect of making fans get more mad at "real world" missteps since they've already been trained to see the company as the villian.

I love how Nakamura pops up in the weirdest places in wrestling history. Also she's giving him a lot of credit for assuming he wouldn't know the connotations of calling a black person "Kong" just because he's from Japan when that's the country that made Bob Sapp famous pretty much just for being a large black guy.

I feel like it should be mentioned that the "Big Cass got heat for being a Trump supporter" stuff that was floating around turned out to be him getting heat for spouting anti Syria immigrant stuff to Sami Zayn, which is something that should be recognized as a dick move regardless of politics.

The angle was leading toward Ki winning the title at some point, it is kind of a surprise they did it this soon though. Can't help but think MLW is playing with fire since it seems there's only a finite amount of time before Low Ki pulls another one of his unprofessional shithead moves.

I have no doubt we're getting the top guys on this show.

Guess this means Sinclair's lawyers flexed nuts and got WWE to back down. I fully expect ROH's entire roster to get offered NXT contracts in the next 6 months in what will be a completely unrelated move.

What sucks is they tell the guys to come to them with ideas to prove they are working hard on their careers or some other horseshit, when they really want the talent to be unpaid writing interns for the rest of the company.

Yeah, for as much as "creative has nothing for you" has become a meme nearly every former member of the creative team has done interviews saying they had tons of ideas for X, Y, or Z but they all got turfed for one reason or another. There's also numerous tales of guys going to management with an idea for their character and get shot down, only to see that idea get used verbaitm for someone else.

Black Saturday is the new hidden gem. There were rumors that more WCWSN was coming in a future content dump, so maybe that means we'll get the rest of 1985? I guess the question is would you consider that the end of the Georgia TV or the beginning of Crockett TV in Atlanta?

I always felt it was an overcorrection from the 90s era of ECW and deathmatches that bordered on gore porn. Some of that stuff was so over the top it killed the impact of seeing blood in wrestling. It's something best when barely used, as seen when Jericho busted up Naito.