sek69

What announcement was Shinma making? That's a lot of brass in the ring for the usual crowd announcements.

It's better to buy a promotion that's in a hole and has TV clearance than start from scratch and try to get a TV deal for that.

I I agree as well, but the latter often tries to insist they're the former. Also, and this kind of fits in with the discussion, Dave brought up that TJP is apparently getting heat from indy geeks because of how WWE used him being homeless as part of his backstory. The quote he mentioned was "what makes him special when a lot of guys were homeless?" which might be the most petty thing I've heard in an industry partly built on petty bullshit.

Sinclair doesn't seem to see much point in signing guys to bigger money deals. You have guys leaving to go to TNA, which can't even afford to run their TV tapings/PPVs unless Billy writes another check, which tells me ROH isn't making much effort to keep guys. They seem to bank on guys who get over signing a deal with NJ to split the costs. It's not like it's the biggest issue with booking but it can't be easy to try to do the long term stories they like to do not knowing if the guys involved will still be around by the end.

Also lol @ JBL crowing "few have been born into the business like Randy Orton" as he walks down the aisle for the opening promo. Indeed few, like the guy he's currently in a feud with.

I don't like the career stip since there's no reason to take the belt off Miz, and no one believes a retirement stip in 2016.

Say what you will about Billy, but he really seems to love wrestling and TNA has actually got better the more control he's got. He plans to finally ditch the TNA name if he ends up with ownership, and that seems reason enough to root for him right there.

I'd wager everyone who wasn't in the Kliq wanted to beat up Shawn at some point during that time. I watched the beginning of the Ride Along episode and it was clear Ric didn't want to be there and was taking one for the team for his daughter.

Ziggler has been really good the last few weeks, but I can't be bothered to give any fucks about his matches after him being sub JTTS status for years.

Well it could be that WWE has a crippling inability to book babyfaces properly, and Zayn's strength is that he's a really great babyface.

They're just continuing to do the same thing where the branding is bigger than the wrestlers. For weeks all we heard was "the cruiserweights" were coming with no mention of anyone in particular until literally the day they debuted.

Yeah, I figured there'd be no way the Smartest Man In Wrestling would appear on a Raw that's sure to get clobbered by an NFL game *and* a hotly anticipated debate.

I hate to bring this up since it's such an overused crutch on the internet but I really think Dave shows a lot of signs of someone on the autism spectrum. The way he gets fixated on things and often seems to miss social cues only seem to be exacerbated on a medium like Twitter.

Dave's pretty much made it clear it amuses him to engage in the trolls so it appears that the idea if him using Twitter for anything useful has sailed.

All he said is that guys in the wrestling business casually toss around racial slurs (which should not be breaking news after all the Alberto stuff last year), and somehow people are turning that into DAVE IS RACIST! Now I do think that he's giving old timey guys too much of a pass (who really believes anyone doesn't know the weight the n word carries?) but that's a different argument than saying Dave agrees with them.

But people are making it seem Dave himself was okay with using that word when he was clearly not. He was just trying to point out that people in the business used it casually.

I know it's a different culture and all, but man is it kind of creepy how they tote out Pena's urn for every major AAA show.

His point was guys used the term "mark" with the same vigor they used with the n-word in a misguided attempt to show the negative connotations that the word had in the business. His problem is that he's not used to dealing with people on the twitter machine who overreact to everything to a ridiculous degree.

Is Rey on bad terms with WWE, or is just a matter of him getting annoyed they kept him on ice for so long?

To me, the biggest stumbling block ROH has as a company is how Sinclair half ass commits to the wrestling business. They seemingly had to be dragged kicking and screaming into spending the cash to upgrade their production to not look so low rent on TV, and it can't help the booking that they can't count on someone not leaving them in mid angle if WWE (or even TNA) come calling. Not saying they have to go all WCW and make it rain for everyone on the roster, but they're never going to be anything but a stepping stone for guys on the way up or a crash pad for guys on the way down.

I thought for sure he was going to turn heel when they did the Handshake of Respect spot at the end. There's really no reason not to do so unless he's in the doghouse for Alberto spilling the beans on him (which was a kind of shit thing to do).

Considering Scott grew up in or around Edmonton, would there have been anything else available other than Stampede airing on TV at the time? I know the AWA did reach into Canada but I'm pretty sure it was only in Winnipeg.

In other news, the latest content drop is 2008 Raws, so this might be filling in the remaining gaps.

Just got a survey from WWE, and one of the questions asked was what services do you subscribe to. One of the answers was "Crunch Roll" (actually CrunchyRoll the streaming anime service) which I found amusing since their heavily pushed tag team champs are huge anime nerds that dressed like Dragon Ball Z characters at Wrestlemania.

Mero's run was actually getting pretty good when his knee blew out, and when he came back Marvelous Marc ended up overshadowed by Sable.