sek69

The first two years of WWE ECW have dropped this morning.

Well it's no secret that pro wrestling is a different beast than practically every other field of employment other than the porn industry.

Watching night 2 on NJPW World and while JR was fine on commentary, he kept mentioning the people who were mad at him from the previous night to the point of it starting to get a little obnoxious. It was coming off as if he felt he was being picked on for no reason and not because he was making rookie mistakes at his job. Also yes, it's obvious why AXS wanted to use their guys on commentary, but flying in Kelly and Callis to do nothing but remind the boys they won't be calling their matches is a puzzling move.

I guess in a way American fans in Bullet Club shirts are like when Russians would get blue jeans in the 80s.

This. It's so frustrating to see how they had it on a silver platter to make him a superstar after Montreal, and actually were going to do it, but it got thwarted because HBK wouldn't play ball.

The version of night two that went up on NJPW World was the same version that aired on AXS the next week. If I'm making guesses here I'd say AXS wanted to use JR as much as possible since they know WWE won't let him renew his deal when runs out.

There seems to be pretty solid proof that Scott Williams' name was not going to be on the book and JR claiming ignorance comes off a little weaksauce since the book was his baby for a long time. The announcing thing seems like a no-win for him since of course he wouldn't be as aware of things as the regular team, and having them there came off as a passive-aggressive dick move by New Japan. Again, there seems to be proof that JR did in fact have material to study up on despite claims to the contrary. tl;dr no one is coming off especially great here

To be fair, it started from Dave defending JR's flub ups on night one of the Long Beach shows by saying New Japan doesn't do production meetings, but Bix pointed out that JR was tweeting out pics of the material he was given to study up on the days leading up to the show. So even if they don't normally do pre show prep, JR clearly was given the opportunity to brush up. Also for some reason they flew in Kevin Kelly and Don Callis to the shows despite knowing AXS wanted to use their team, which only served to annoy the talent since they were lobbying for them to do the show since they were more familiar with the product.

Looks like it might be a good time to bump this since JR and Bix are scrapping on Twitter.

At the time I hated it too because I wanted to see Hogan get the title back after Tunney screwed him over in the last match when Flair got involved. This was probably the first time on a WWE PPV a heel went over, but it didnt stop me watching because I wanted to see Hogan kick Flair's ass and take the title back, alough we had to wait 2 years later to get that and seeing Savage beat Flair was just as good. But what I did find odd is when WCW closed down because they had alot of fans watching even when the numbers were down and they chose Nitro over Raw, I expected these fans to tune into WWE TV when WCW ended but seemed like they just stopped watching and wouldnt conform to a WWE fan. It really is one of the most under reported phenomenon in wrestling. A lot of WCW's base had ties going back to either Georgia or Mid Atlantic and the WWF was always the enemy or at best it was a style of wrestling they really didn't care for. When WCW went away it was the end of an era for a lot of folks when the wrestling they grew up with and loved ceased to exist.

I must be missing something on why everyone seems to hate Cody so much. He's not like top 5 in the world, but people's reactions to him come off as "eww you got WWE in my New Japan". His heel work seemed to be finding its legs in ROH (until he got babyfaced by being put in the Bullet Club but that's a whole nother discussion).

The Observer twitter account confirmed he asked for his release.

You look at a guy like Aries, who along with being slotted as a cruiserweight is also very short, already has two strikes against him heading to the main roster. He probably would have been better off staying in NXT where none of that would have been viewed as a negative and he would be near the top of the card. Of course the downside is most people don't make a lot of money in NXT, and I doubt they would want to pay main roster level money and keep him down there. Most likely sequence of events is he probably asked if he's ever going to do anything besides 205 Live in the foreseeable future, and when they said no he peaced out.

He apparently asked for his release, which honestly doesn't surprise me. His personality didn't seem to be a good fit for the main roster.

They should have went full petty and said she worked with him at the now-defunct TNA since that would be technically correct. OR they should have her just randomly show up on Raw and Smackdown to scare the shit out of Joe and AJ.

lol'ing so hard at this: They should have went full petty and said she worked with him at the now-defunct TNA since that would be technically correct.

Watts handled JYD jumping to the WWF with all the delicacy of a jilted teenager (I get he was a big draw but still), and a lot of it was similar to Dave's ragging on him in the Observer.

Funny that someone suggested an injury angle for next season when one of the memories I have of GLOW was one of the cheerleader girls dislocating her elbow on a rollup and them showing it multiple times, Joe Theismann style.

Also I've noticed that several of the Old School shows that have gone up have the "presented in the best condition possible" disclaimer. I wonder if that means they are going through the archives seeing what shape the oldest stuff is since I've always heard the WWWF collection doesn't go much past 1975 or so in any kind of usable shape.

A few have bonus footage that was for the live crowd after TV ended, might have been that.

I always suspected maybe Bill Watts was burying JYD to Dave. Plus (and he's said as much several times) he was resentful that the WWF style he wasn't particularly fond of was usurping the NWA/territory style he preferred. Now he's much more "I still don't like it, but I can respect that they made way more money than what I did like so I can't fault them for winning the war". 80s Dave was a lot less "professional journalist" than the Dave we're used to today, and it really jumps out when you go back and read old Observers,

Watching the MSG shows it hit me, is there anyone in wrestling who deteriated as fast as Billy Graham? In 1978 he's still Superstar looking like the guy Hulk would crib 90% of his gimmick from, but five years later in 1983 he's Kung Fu Billy looking like he's in the end stage of a terminal disease.

The Yeti was a mummy because rumors/legends/myths circulate of several mummified Yeti remains being kept. Had El Gigante actually gotten the role as planned, he would eventually have removed the bandages to reveal a white version of his Giant Gonzalez outfit. Never heard of this(although it sounds cool). Where did you hear this information? I heard the mummified Yeti stuff on some wrestling board so read up on some of it, and suddenly the Yeti as a mummy made much more sense. I'm guessing with Sullivan being such a history buff probably did it intentionally, but never heard him actually say it or be asked. They even did DNA test a couple years ago on one in Bhutan to determine if it was related to the polar bear. So it's kind of fascinating stuff. The El Gigante part came from Ron Reis IIRC, who was supposed to be a Giant Ninja (which he was in the WW3 battle royal and a couple TV matches, although was still called the Yeti despite the ninja moves). El Gigante was in poor health and unable to get to the US. He actually only had one match left a month later in a giants tag team tournament in WAR, where he was basically helped to the ring, held on to the top rope, and was clipped on the apron so he never had to stand on his own or tag in. So it was easy to see why he would never have been able to perform in WCW. Makes you wonder why they just didn't do the angle anyway with Reis, it's not like having a legit 7'2 guy doing it would have killed the gimmick,

They're beating her quick which usually means a phase out, but obviously they're going somewhere with it. Other times quick matches are a sign of them not liking someone's in ring ability, but Lana didn't seem to be that bad for someone of her experience level. It's not like she was sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the women.

Xavier was the only one on the New Day who brought it, the Usos completely owned them. Also it seems the "R rated like your boy" line got cut from the version up on WWE's YouTube page. Do they really think the Paige deal is that well known?