sek69

Something to consider: Comcast/NBCUniversal is contemplating making an offer to buy Fox out from under Disney, depending on how the courts rule on the potential AT&T/Time Warner deal. So it could all end up being back under the same umbrella at some point.

So if the Fox deal works out to average $200 million for SD, and USA is paying the alleged "three times more" for Raw that would put it at around $240. $440 total for just the domestic TV rights is bonkers considering all the analyst types were pegging the renewal for the whole package at around $250-$300 max. Whoever negotiated that deal needs to be the headliner in next year's HOF class for real.

I think so, she seems to have quietly gained power behind the scenes. She even went to the Fantasticamania shows (and was visible on camera the the whole time IIRC) and seems to be the first person in a long time to actually give a shit about the goings-on of the company instead of using it as a money generator for the family.

If they are getting the money the story is saying they are getting, Fox probably would want it live and WWE would be more than happy to accomodate them.

After reports of USA renewing just Raw for big money, ESPN just reported Fox is getting Smackdown apparently to be on the main Fox network. Vince pretty much just hit the lottery here.

My family was pretty much on the lower end of middle class, we didn't have many luxuries but we didn't go without things either. My dad was like most men of his era around here and worked in the steel industry, and a combination of that field dying off and my mother's health issues finally forcing her to leave her nursing job to go on full disability led to some belt tightening. Never anything horrible, you always knew of someone who had it worse off than you so you'd feel like an asshole for complaining, but sometimes it sucked to miss out on something because your folks couldn't afford it.

So L.A. Park (and his son) shot an angle at Friday's Arena Mexico show where they saved Volador Jr. and Flyer from a Los Ingobernales beatdown and he challenged Rush to a mask vs hair match. That would be the Anniversary show main event, and all usual asterisks about Park not getting himself fired before then aside, would be the highest grossing match in CMLL history. Dave mentioned that the wrestlers in CMLL went to management and stated they all wrestle each other all the time and things are getting stale, and asked them to bring in guys from outside even if they were on Paco Alonso's famous shit list. The fact that they brought in Park, who is probably #2 on that list after Santo, is a pretty big shift in how they normally do business. Dave went on to indicate this probably won't be the only name to come back that you would think you'd never see in CMLL again. I also wonder if a lot of the older guys in Mexico saw the payoff Dr. Wagner Jr got for losing his mask and deciding now might be the time to finally cash in. As good as the Friday Arena Mexico shows can be in terms of individual matches, CMLL has been pretty poor at creating new stars really since the first Mistico. Rush should be way bigger than he is, and Dragon Lee has to go to New Japan to do anything interesting. With AAA in another cycle of "things weren't working, fuck it let's bring Konnan back and give him the book", this would be a prime opportunity for CMLL to make some inroads to increase business.

As a video game fan, and especially a Nintendo fan, yes. Scalpers are the absolute fucking worst. Especially the ones who go into local Facebook groups and brag about how they have tons of the item you want and are willing to sell it to you for 10x the MSRP.

Coke Zero is mine. Used to drink regular Coke since my mom was a self-described "Cokeaholic", but in my 30s I was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic and had to cut out the excess sugars. Switching to Coke Zero was my primary diet change and it was a big part of me losing 60 pounds. My wife likes to jokingly give me shit about all the Coke Zero I drink, and I tell her since I don't smoke and rarely drink it's the best vice I could have.

I'm thinking that might just be a quirk in how he talks, because after 20+ years he still thows to commercial like "next on MONDAY *dramatic pause* NIGHTRAW!" I wonder sometimes if non fans who come upon the show hear that and think it's called WWE Nightraw.

Maybe I'm dense but I have no idea what "chaw" has to do with anything here. Are Kurt and AJ noted for their tobacco chewing? It's part of the uneducated Southern republican "God, guts, and guns" stereotype.

There were numerous reports of Enzo basically living the gimmick and rubbing everyone the wrong way before the allegations came about, I don't see WWE being in any rush to sign him back now. Impact's new management seems to not share the same need to sign anyone who ever spent more than a minute in WWE that Dixie had, so I don't think they'd want him either. Besides, Enzo was allegedly telling everyone who would listen than he was just using wrestling as a stepping stone to be a big star elsewhere (where? who knows) so he might not even want to come back.

I wonder how overblown the Vince love rumors are. I don't remember Test ever getting a major push. Cass is basically Test 2.0, but at least Test had some positives going for him. He did a wedding angle with Steph and had a major match with Shane, can't get bigger pushes in Vince's mind than that.

i would think it takes a lot for Vince to completely sour on someone who checks off as many boxes that Cass does.

I just binged on the new Mid South, and I know it's not breaking news to say Bill Watts was great at booking episodic TV but even when the wrestling wasn't always the greatest you still felt compelled to watch the next episode.

I just read it as Cass's punishment for the "little Daniel" thing.

So Dustin Rhodes keeps popping up in pics from the Euro tour and it looks like he's been helping Ronda. Is he an official agent at this point or is he still a player-coach? I always thought he'd be a natural (no pun intended) for a role where he could mentor folks.

They dropped the first 15 of what is supposed to be a 70+ episode Mid South batch today, which was a nice surprise. Looks like 1983 is getting filled out first.

A lot of companies seem to be tucking in wording in their employment terms barring people from complaining about their jobs online. I mean, I get it, but it's funny when you consider most of the US are "right to work" states where you can get fired for pretty much anything your boss feels like that doesn't violate existing law.

I think it's more that people had talked themselves into believing they'd get all the dream matches if/when Bryan came back, and instead WWE is booking him exactly how you'd expect them to.

Been married 12 years, my son's six and in his last month of kindergarten. I work tech support for a cable company everyone loves to hate, but it's a decent paying job with pretty great benefits. You just need to have patience with the 80 year old grammas.

When Bix tweeted it out a while back, he found an old newspaper article from when it happened that stated he was one of several people convicted in an incident where they all had sex with with a girl under 16.

Of all the horrible things wrestlers have done, for some reason finding out Mr. Wrestling II is a registered sex offender for taking part gang raping a 15 or 16 year old has me shook the most.

*waives hand* Big gamer my whole life. First system was an Atari XE computer/game system, followed shortly by the NES. I was huge on the Nintendo side in the Nintendo/Sega console wars, I even still own my original OG Game Boy system in all its brick-like glory. I kind of fell out of console gaming in the 90s, and got big into PC games. I ended up missing out on the PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast era when it was new and only had an Nintendo 64 for the wrestling games. Most of my time in that era was spent on Doom/Doom II/Quake type games on PC, along with EA sports games that were pretty easily moddable. Got back in to consoles for the GameCube, then full blast with the 360/PS3 era. I've made up for lost time by going back and collecting all the systems and games I missed in the 90s, and with the purchase of my Switch last month I have pretty much every video game system from the Atari 2600 up to current era. Gaming also led to importing, since a lot of games back in the 80s and 90s would never get released outside of Japan or wer stupidly rare/expensive in the US. Collecting wrestling games on N64 led me to discover Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, which in turn opened the door to Japanese wrestling since they had an AJPW license and had tons of other "it's easy to see who this guy is supposed to be, just tweaked enough to not get sued" wrestlers from other promotions. I had tons of classic Misawa-Kawada matches on VPW2 before I knew they had tons of classic matches in real life. I still am big into wrestling games, I recently completed my Fire Pro collection, but I'm also big into fighting games. The pool hall my buddies and I used to hang out at in high school had a Street Fighter II arcade machine along with a Mortal Kombat I unit. Street Fighter was alright, but it's hard to underestimate how mind blowing the first MK game was at the time. The full motion video intros were astounding, and not at all low quality like you'd see on CD based consoles of the time.

My only takeaway from the Cass-Bryan match was lol'ing at Bryan trying to literally guide Cass into attempting to block the Yes Lock and then when that wasn't working, just club him in the head to make it look like he was really fighting to get the hold on.