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or......and I'm just spitballin' here.... MAYBE he actually talked to the guy and is reporting what he said in a way that conveys the gist of the story without going to deep in the guy's personal matters. You know, that reporting stuff.

His time with Mauro was much improved though. He was more of an full heel and nothing like the guy who had been mailing it in for a decade. Plus it seemed they had the best chemistry of any of the teams.

Mauro and Lawler were a good pairing, Lawler was clearly the heel and there was never a sense of personal animosity between them. Sadly Jerry was deemed an Old by Vince and is no longer fit for public viewing.

The WON stuff seemed like the straw that broke the camel's back. JBL's been belittling him for weeks, and him winning a best announcer award seemed to send JBL to another level.

So in the latest Observer, Dave talks about Mauro's absence from TV and states it's due to his bipolar issues as most people figured it was. He also seemed to make it pretty clear the trigger for this episode was constant belittling from JBL that more or less wore him down. I was thinking about this when reading it, do you think WWE has any culpability here putting someone who has been open and honest about previous mental health issues with a known bully week in and week out? It seemed like it was just a bad situation waiting to happen, and eventually it did. Especially in the current environment where they want to have a million announcers per show, it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to not pair those two together. They cynical, jaded, asshole smart fan side of me wonders if it was intentional since that's the kind of thing Vince seems to get a kick out of, but the reasonable side of me hopes that he would realize how bad that would look PR wise (I know PR shouldn't be the primary concern but we all realize it is with big companies).

If you plan to binge the episodes already added, don't skip the 12-30-81 show despite it being a year end retrospective clip show. They go over the Dusty-Kabuki feud and the promo with War Paint Dusty looking like Rambo is beyond words.

It was great, but it makes me laugh how he suddenly starts getting all gangsta when he goes into "Serious John" mode. Also wow has Nikki been absolutely useless in this feud. She's the third best Bella on SD after Maryse and Tyler Breeze.

The main show is supposed to run 7-11 Eastern time, so that means the preshow will start at 5 Eastern. It will probably run long like last year's did.

Roman's promo was so great and made me even more convinced that turning him heel is a money printing machine waiting to happen even if the dum-dums (tm Johnny Sorrow) cheer him ironically.

Speaking of, I wonder what the rights would be for rips of those DVDs Bill's ex was selling before she sold them to WWE. I see rips of other wrestling DVDs out that seem to survive the banhammer, but that might be more luck than any legal standing.

Would be much more optimistic to see them uploaded to a platform they're more likely to remain on than one that could be C&D'd to death at any moment.

This is basically me right now checking the WWE Network Bot twitter feed:

Nine so far, seven of which are completely new to the network.

A couple were previously available for Black History Month, but yes it appears this isn't tied in to anyone going in to the HOF this year.

It seems like people think it's not possible for something to be on YouTube and the network.

Legacy Class: Rikidozan Judy Grable Toots Mondt Farmer Burns Luther Lindsay Dr. Jerry Graham June Byers Haystacks Calhoun

The Drifter might be he most pointless callup ever. At least Tyler Breeze can make someone look like a million bucks putting them over.

Something like that would be a pretty glaring oversight on pretty much everyone's part (insert joke about Jarrett being to cheap to pay to register the shows). Even AWA shows have copyright notices and Verne was behind the times on practically everything.

Seems that it should either belong to him and/or Jarrett or WMC since it was their studio/staff filming it, right?

Jerry Lawler stated he completed getting control of the Memphis library from 77-88, and plans to sell it to WWE for them to put on the Network.

That's why the big names didn't come in for the Invasion angle, they were still getting paid by the fat WCW contracts. In fact, the ghost of WCW still lives in the Turner corporate spider web as the Universal Wrestling Corporation or something similar.

If WWE bought them they certainly wouldn't be keeping it as is. I would have a hard time believing it would go down any different than any other time one company bought another in the history of wrestling. If it's not shut down immediately, it would just be turned into NXT 2.0

So I fell down a 80s WWF TV rabbithole on YouTube, and it made me wonder why they changed the style of the WWF belt so many times in such a short period. In 83 they went from the 70s WWWF style belt to the big green belt, which was understandable since the older one was looking pretty dated at that point. By 85 they already replaced that with the one that had the same design as the NWA regional belts (TV, National), only to replace that with the one used in the buildup to WM 3 complete with a giant sized custom version made in the event Andre won. It was barely a year after that they finally ended up with the Winged Eagle that lasted all the way to the Attitude Era. It's not like they were big on selling replicas back then (although I did have a snazzy 85 style belt buckle back in the day), so it always puzzled me why they would change it so frequently.

Funny thing, if this happens it will be the third "coronation" of Reigns as the top guy yet some folks will still think he's being rejected because of Daniel Bryan. I mean, yes that was the start, but the continual force feeding of him as the one the company wants on top is the reason the backlash continues.

Maryse was unbelievably great in those skits. Her selling the fake marriage proposals got funnier and funnier every time.