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Apparently one of the AOP was having visa issues which explains why they fell off the face of the earth after their debut.

Bo Wyatt made me chuckle, I'll admit.

FFS, local ad for Extreme Rules hyping another Bryan/Cass match. Never have I hoped more for "card subject to change".

Stone Cold Ronda Rousey to start the show.

So the long awaited UK project is going to be under the NXT umbrella with their own mens/womens/tag titles. Johnny Saint will be the on screen GM.

It might be due to the low expectations I had going in, but I thought the show last night was pretty solid. Yeah, it was too long but that's how WWE rolls so what can you do? The matches all delivered, I mean we probably had the greatest match Cass is ever going to have in his life due to Bryan's sheer force of will. The Nia/Ronda match was just amazing to see how much Ronda "gets it" already. Just the whole sequence where she was standing on the apron looking at the top rope, and you can see her face going through the whole gamut of "I don't really want to go to the top rope....I need to pull out the stops to beat the giant....fuck it, let's go" was something you don't see people who have been in wrestling for years pull off.

So after watching Mid South from the beginning on the network to near the end of 83, and I'm 95% sure Bill Watts is trolling with the way he mispronounces people's names at this point. Besides the famous Hacksaw "Doogan", there's Crusher Dar-SOW (emphasis on the second part making it sound weird) and the just debuted Jim Need-hart. Everyone else says them correctly for the most part, so either everyone was afraid of correcting Watts or he had an oddly specific speech impediment.

So I'm guessing one can probably read into this that WWE is getting a little nervous at the in roads New Japan was making in Australia and New Zealand? "Australia has always been a special place" but I don't recall it ever being more than stop on the post WM world tour.

Clearly the most intelligence insulting move WWE has ever tried pulling was to act like anyone was fooled by Steph's Undercover Boss disguise.

Not absolving Vince/WWE, but the rash of guys dying was a perfect storm of the drugs wrestlers did at the time (steroids) mixing poorly with the drugs everyone else in the 80s was doing at the time (cocaine). A lot of the guys from that era who died in their 40s from heart attacks did so because they were doing blow with enlarged hearts.

As far as I know, I don't think the women get treated badly, it's just the usual CMLL way of doing things where unless you're related to someone important you get forgotten about until you leave.

FWIW, you probably don't want to use CMLL as an example of how to do a women's divison.

In news from the "Oh God, I'm So Old" Department, Dave had a tidbit in the new WON that Rey's son Dominic is 21 (!!!) and will be going to train at Lance Storm's school in September.

Current New Japan is very much like 1996 WCW in the sense of every show having something for everyone, the main difference of course being New Japan main events usually are outstanding and WCW's were normally garbage. It's such a breath of fresh air from the WWE format of each bloated PPV having 8-10 matches that are all laid out the same.

Funny thing is WWE is only adding Kenny Omega matches because the New Day and the Elite were having a Street Fighter battle at E3.

More Mid-Atlantic stuff is being added, going into 1985.

In the 90s Dave ratings were most people's only sources of knowing if something was good or not. In 2018, there's more options. Dave's ratings aren't good or bad, they just are. If Dave gives something eleventy stars and it's not a style I like, I'm not going to magically like it because he did. Conversely, if he dislikes something I liked (which happens a lot), it doesn't mean I have to stop liking it.

The episode of Quantum Leap where Sam jumped into a wrestler from the 50s where it was either implied or stated that title matches were shoots. Also had Terry Funk guest starring too.

Big E and the Wendy's account having a friendly exchange about indy wrestling was a nice reminder that not all social media exchanges have to be toxic and/or cringefests.

CMLL is open to bringing in anyone not under contract to AAA at this point. Best to just enjoy the ride as long as we can.

All I know about Sabu is that Melissa Coates is his valet now doing a genie gimmick and seems to be somewhat of a legit manager for him as she hustles for bookings on Facebook for the two of them.

IMO the most alarming part of the Punk fight is he had all this time to train, and by all accounts was putting in the time, and that was the best he could do. I'm not anywhere close to resembling an athlete but you would think after all that training there would be *some* improvement. I know by literally all accounts (even his own) Punk is a stubborn asshole, but at some point someone in his camp should have said that this whole MMA thing isn't working out.

To be fair, Conor is both a world class fighter and someone probably getting drunk and fighting in a bar. Plus he's also (allegedly) not unfamilar with the ways of the Columbian powdered arts.

Have you ever grappled? Seriously, if you haven't done any grappling, he'd probably take you down and tap you in the first round. I don't know how anyone watched that first fight and thought Punk had any business in the cage with a professional fighter. He decided to become fighter at a time of life when most fighters are thinking about their exit strategy, and that is before we take into consideration all of his previous injuries. He's never been a good athlete, which is a huge detriment when you are trying to be a professional athlete. The amount of arrogance it takes for a dude who never even wrestled in high school to believe that he'd be able to be a professional fighter in his mid-to-late 30s is legitimately insane. It is like someone who never played football deciding to becoming a NFL quarterback. It is incredibly stupid for anyone to believe he'd be able to do it. I honestly don't know how he got past the licensing board. There is a huge lack of respect for how good these guys are at fighting. I remember someone telling me that they thought Alberto Del Rio could beat Conor McGregor in a fight. These aren't just dudes off the street, getting drunk and fighting in a bar. These are serious athletes who train up to 8 hours a day to become better fighters. The amount of talent, athleticism and skill that it takes to be an elite MMA fighter is so much higher than anyone gives them credit for. People really believe that random assholes who used to do Tae-Bo can compete with professional fighters. Stop it. This is fake news. I never said that Del Rio would beat McGregor in a fight. I only said it was absurd to think that McGregor would beat his ass. On a completely unrelated note, it just occurred to me that having Curt Hawkins break his losing streak by squashing Mike Jackson would be so hilariously petty that I fully expect WWE to do it. WWE should go for the deep cut and bring in 80s jobber Mike Jackson to get the win.

Not sure why people are still hung up on the "Dave broke the scale" aspect of this. When Cornette came up with the star system 4 was the max. The idea was when something that was head and shoulders above the previous benchmark, the level would be raised. There's never been any fuss about it until New Japan matches started becoming the ones raising the bar and now people are losing their shit and honestly acting silly over it. I have a theory that a lot of it stems from most folks' intro to non US wrestling being 90s All Japan, either as it was happening or years after the fact via tapes or internet. Most folks have an inherent bias toward what they grew up with/were introduced to and have a kneejerk reaction to the idea that something better might have come along. There's been good matches since then of course, but this is the first time we've had a core group having consistent high level matches on a regular basis since then and some people seem weirdly threatened by it.