sek69

So there is a show on the Observer site that reviews 98 Raws, but nothing that reviews lucha or EVOLVE or other indies? On Tuesdays they review retro Raw and Nitro. They did review Lucha Underground when it was airing, and Dr. Lucha has a semi-regular slot on the Friday WOL shows. Dave does tend to go over the big indy shows when they happen.

I was actually starting to get into the storylines the last couple of weeks, but I have zero interest in watching this reboot.

Alvarez of all people made an excellent point on the last Bryan and Vinny show reviewing 98 Raw that one of the biggest reasons Austin vs McMahon was so huge is because he was doing to his boss what people watching wish they could do to theirs. Fans could live vicariously through Stone Cold giving his boss the finger, and Vince was great at being the perfect foil always willing to show ass for him. Now we have three hours of Steph browbeating the talent and constantly reminding them they can be fired at a moment's notice which will leave them homeless and destitute. Everyone cowers in fear of the boss, and no one in the audience that they are trying to cater to wants to see 3+ hours of bosses browbeating the talent. There's nothing for the fans to get behind, who wants to cheer for these milquetoast-ass mofos who get their balls handed to them on a regular basis?

Jerry also retweeted someone who posted a photo of an old PWI Weekly with the headline of "Jerry Lawler charged with rape and sodomy" (he seems to just retweet anyone who tags him) so it doesn't seem he's paying a lot of attention these days.

Lucha kind of does that with cibernetico matches, and they tend to usually be pretty good. Even if there's some guys involved who aren't any good, it's easy to limit them to just a couple of spots where they don't bring things down too much.

I don't think she was ever on their level wrestling wise, but her connection with the fans in NXT was something else. Sadly, the 11 million writers on Raw don't know how to write a babyface so she was DOA as soon as she moved up.

Two new collections, Mr. Wrestlemania with all of Shawn Michaels' WM matches and a Day After Wrestlemania collection including a lot of stuff that happened before it was officially A Thing to have big stuff happen then.

When did "make the smarks melt down" replace "drawing money" as the main point of the wrestling business?

I guarantee that writeup of Taker-Roman, while quite good, was putting way more thought into things than was actually done by Vince. He wants to give his boo another Mana Coronation Moment, and I don't think there's much more to it than that.

One thing I think that is kind of lost here is while yes, fat shaming is a shitty thing to do, pro wrestling is largely a cosmetic business so commenting on someone's size (or lack of in the case of someone like Cheeseburger) is kind of different than some men's rights activist troll type calling all women fat on Twitter. Like it or not, the largest and most powerful company in the industry has two guys at the top who have a fetish for bodybuilder types and anyone not meeting that standard seems to have to work 5x as hard to get to the starting level a big jacked up guy would be. Things are changing slightly, of course. We're past the days where you wouldn't even get a glance from the WWF if you didn't have a physique that looked like you could explode at any minute, but there's a reason Triple H still scouts for talent at fitness contests. IMO, the bigger issue to me was always height rather than weight. It just looks silly matching up guys with like a foot difference in height and 75+ pounds difference in weight when the idea is to pretend it's a real athletic contest. When they have someone like Sasha beat Nia Jax with a rollup they might as well have a neon sign up broadcasting how fake this is.

It seems like the majority of their training is doing drills nonstop, which is all well and good until something goes wrong. It's not like they don't have trainers who would seem to be able to teach to those moments, but I suppose a lot of that is just instinct too.

To be fair, it looked like Charlotte was legit stuck in the tree of woe and Bayley appeared to not want to have her blow out a knee by doing a move on her. She definitely has her sloppy moments but that one in particular I think is just a "shit happens" moment.

That was a different time and place though. Wrestling was way more popular and Baba basically had the Hand of God to make things go away. I'm not sure New Japan in 2017 would have the same stroke.

Very possible. He did help with business and booking in ECW. He did run some kind of training business, didn't he? I think I heard he helped with TNA creative as well, but not sure about that. Him and D-Von ran (are still running?) a wrestling school, and I'm pretty sure he was doing a lot of the creative during his TNA run everyone loved. If ROH's office is as much of a mess as it seems, he could be a good asset to fix things as long as he can avoid having a Twitter meltdown.

Could it be that Bubba was brought in to help with some of the backstage stuff Kevin Kelly used to do? Like others said, I don't really see him being used as a top level guy, but as an office guy/part timer/maybe mouthpiece for some of the youngsters might not be the worst use of him.

Comparing Vince/Dana isn't the same thing as comparing wrestlers and fighters. Now that I look at it, I think I misread what you meant by stopping the comparisons at Vince/Dana. Dana is the ultimate scumbag promoter, though. Vince wishes he was as much as a real life heel as Dana. I'm almost 100% positive I read that Dana has said Vince was pretty much the road map he followed for UFC. Not to mention even without going down the "internet geek psychoanalyzes Vince" rabbit hole, the stuff on the record puts Vince far ahead in the real life heel category.

Jerry Brisco is pretty much the only wrestler that retired at the perfect time.

I have no idea how Roman turning can be called an "nWo level changing the business type angle" especially since people WANT Roman to turn heel almost solely so they can start cheering him. WCW diehards hated Hogan and wanted him to get beat and go away. People just want Roman to turn because for some reason they're too insecure to cheer a babyface that Vince is behind and that women & kids like. It wouldn't be, which is why I feel it's wasting what might be the last big Taker WM match on Roman. At least with Cena it would be a real dream match type build, no one but Vince would buy the same build with Reigns.

Nope, only PS4 and Steam so far.

Roman will get booed out of the building at WM no matter who he's matched with though. I don't see people getting hyped for Taker-Roman the same way as previous Taker matches because no one is going to want to see Roman go over in the end unless they are clearly going to go full heel with him. ETA: My basic point here is unless they have some nWo level changing the business type angle in store, it seems like a waste of a Taker match to put him in with a guy who would get the same reaction no matter what.

There's also the weirdness of him being matched up with Roman in the sense that the company's been ramming him down people's throats as THE GUY for over 3 years. So either this is going to be the jumping off point for the long rumored (and much needed) heel turn for him, or they are going to build for another torch-passing "coronation" Wrestlemania moment that will get booed out of the building. So even if Taker was coming in ripped and jacked to the gills, unless they decide to go an avenue they've resisted for years this will not get the reaction previous Taker matches have received.

Why do you say that "everyone else hearing him say this" see The Undertaker as just some broken down old guy when that's pretty much just what the smarkiest of smarks would think? He's the fucking Undertaker & he's been the most coveted WrestleMania opponent for years. I don't think anyone that saw him at the Rumble would think he's still a coveted opponent at this stage of the game.

I don't have a problem with that on paper, but history (of both sides) tells it's just a matter of time before that blows up in their faces. Also would anyone here get upset about TNA spoilers?

I was afraid to get excited for this and have it come out to be a trash mobile game, but this is beyond what I could have hoped for. The mods for the Steam version are going to be bananas.

Well it's also part of the bigger problem of why they have such a problem creating new stars. It's hard do to that when your current top star makes it clear no one else is at his level then wins every feud to confirm it. Like, his throwaway line about the Undertaker was a wink to the inside fans who knew about the early WM plans, but to everyone else they're hearing him say this broken down old guy is more of a worthy opponent than you are. It's devaluing talent for no reason.