sek69

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.

He survived his limo exploding. He'll be fine. Yeah, if the McMahon's Millions stage falling on him didn't take him out, a fender bender won't do any harm.

It's funny that they consider them separate shows, but the numbering starts at 122 for the "current" NXT. That show is clearly being presented as the start of a new era so you'd think they'd reset the counter for that. Maybe they can start billing it the longest running weekly episodic streaming program in internet history or whatever.

Actually his comments were pretty solid until he got to the Tyson stuff and completely veered off into WTF territory. It's a textbook case of saying one paragraph too much and completely invalidating any point he may have been making.

Having the point of Hunter's promo be that Seth needed the cheers of the crowd because he's insecure was so meta it made my head spin. Plus nothing makes folks want to sit through a three hour show like starting off with another long Steph browbeating segment.

I think in current WWE canon anything pre Full Sail was a different show than today's NXT.

It was, but I thought it was pretty good. Everyone's caught up in Hero's fatness and all but I thought it was one of the better NXT TV matches of late (which I know is kind of damning it with faint praise).

I don't know if it's too late to salvage him, but I'm enjoying Almas' heel character just being an asshole to random geeks backstage.

That's the funny part, WWE seems to live in constant fear that sponsors will find out about something non PG happening, yet that never actually seems to happen.

I would think WWE's big concern would be if the sponsors find out there's a leaked sex tape with 3 of their performers. Especially since Xavier is starting to get a lot of crossover appeal due to his gaming side hustle.

By the way, the latest Observer mentions that Bully is in fact helping out backstage/in the office and is expected to be more of a part time guy.

Even though the encounter was years before they met, I hope neither Brad or Xavier cross paths with Alberto any time soon. Dude beat the shit out of someone at a Mexican indy show just for bumping into Paige in a hallway, he's probably livid about this.

Dave seems confident thar Nakamura is coming up after Mania.

Garrett Kidney made a great point in the podcast/rant he did reviewing the Impact reboot mess. Heel Cody doesn't just play to the people in the back row, he's playing to the people 150 feet away from the entire arena. He's so over the top and cartoonish and without being surrounded by the other wacky parts of the WWE Cinematic Universe it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Kind of surprised it took this long for something like this, seems like a show parodying Southern rasslin' would be right up Vince's alley.

Cena-Taker was the original plan, hence the winky reference by Cena last week.

I'm probably getting my hopes up for nothing, but the "anyone can enter" SD women's match seems like a good way to debut Asuka on the main roster.

That's another issue, I could never buy Orton as subservient to Bray since he's been portrayed as a top level guy almost since day one and Wyatt's been beaten by everyone and lucked into the title thanks to a gimmick match. The other builds have been so much better it just makes the ridiculousness stand out even more. As much as I have zero need to see another Shane WM spotfest, the build up for it has been fantastic. Miz and Maryse dropping truth bombs while Cena/Nikki can only respond with variations of "NO, U" has been fantastic, Bryan's promo on how he wants to punch Miz in the face for constantly trolling him by shittily copying his moveset was fantastic, and then you have Randy out there saying he's taken Bray's magic powers away by burning the remains of his long dead sister. Every time he does a promo all I hear is "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other".

I am actually watching the shows, and them going from "I will never face you for the title" to "sike, it was just part of my evil plan" in like a week came off (to me) as them realizing they had less time to get to the end than they realized. I mean for those of us who knew that was the scheduled WM match it was fine, but I'd imagine it was a hard out of nowhere turn for those who don't follow the insider news.

There was also that weird time where Warrior abducted him and it was implied that.....things....were happening to him.

I'm hoping that something changed at the last minute, since it's really depressing to consider the long term payoff to the months long Orton-as-a-Wyatt angle was always meant to be "it was just my master plan all along to pretend to be subservient and give up my title shot for no reason then burn your house down". Because that was like some shit you see when the writer of a comic book gets fired/quits mid story arc.