sek69

Give Ronda some time, she just did the "two bad losses" part of the Tyson plan, ear biting should be just around the corner.

...and the angle around it was utterly pointless.

If they brought in Ronda and basically redid the Austin/Tyson angle with her and Charlotte I could see it being huge. Unfortunately I'd see them most likely wasting her appearance on another Steph S&M cosplay Mania moment so she could flex her alpha female nuts.

Rush vs La Parka's super libre match was my lucha MOTY.

The Botter thing is puzzling, Guy's been with them seemingly forever and was doing all the PR work for them only to get ousted seemingly out of nowhere and replaced by someone doing some kind of weird Twitter gimmick. Unless he shit on someone's desk it makes zero sense.

That would be awesome, but doesn't the Japanese TV network that aired All Japan (NTV?) own the rights to most/all of the library? Yes, I think that's why some cross promotional matches are missing from NJPW World too.

Poor KO, the Abobo of WWE.

KO isn't setting the world on fire,but the booking isn't helping things when he's portrayed as someone Seth is just wasting his time on until the real end boss shows up.

If someone wanted to argue that Flair not hanging it up in the nWo era hurt his legacy, I'd be open to that. Between times and tastes changing and Bischoff's seemingly unending hardon against him, had he seen the writing on the wall and called it a career in 1996 I doubt there'd be a discussion like this today,

Well WWE didn't want him when he was a TNA guy, it was only after he was a top star in NJPW that they had interest. He's just lucky they didn't feel he needed to spend two years in NXT learning where the hard camera is like other guys from that "indy" (Balor, Nak).

It sounds like "get off my lawn" old man complaining, but it's hard to look at the varied opponents he had as NWA champ in the early-mid 80s and think he's overrated. He made complete lumps look like a million bucks more than anyone I can think of. Now he did have his flaws, of course, but the whole idea that he's overrated is just lunacy. It just comes off as the pro wrestling version of a HAWT SPORTZ TAEK you'd hear on talk radio or an ESPN shouty head show.

It's hardly boogeyman shit when you see people get called up to the main roster and everything that made them over in NXT was forgotten about.

I assume that he actually does understand the difference, and if he doesn't he probably isn't fit to run the company from a fiscal perspective after Vince is gone. You can read this in two ways IMO: either he knows Vince would have no clue what to do with Nakamura and have him doing some "choppy choppy your pee pee" 2.0 gimmick on the main roster, or he's trying to keep some of the top name talent for his brand. I half jokingly suggested that when Vince is gone you might see H/Steph and Shane/Dunn running separate companies, and the conspiracy theorist part of my brain keeps thinking that the constant branding of NXT as not developmental is setting up the foundation for that.

Went back and watched the Big Event show from 1986, which was the largest show pre WM 3 they've done. The main event vs Orndorff might be the best WWF Hogan match I've ever seen. It deviates from the usual "Hulk vs monster" format and has a fired up Hulkster looking to get revenge for being wronged. Having Johnny V on commentary was a bit distracting at times, but it was a pretty good show if you're looking for something to check out.

Well yes, she's not going to be as awesome as Aja but she's the blueprint for how to book a female monster.

All I could think if watching that is how that's how Nia Jax should be booked. None of this "try to make the monster look pretty" stuff, just straight up destruction. Also, I'm amazed broken noses didn't happen more often, considering the person doing a spinning backfist is kind of just hoping the person is close enough to make it look legit without smashing their face.

IMO Byron tries too hard too much of the time. That might be due to overproduction, but he comes off to me too much as an announcer version of a wrestler who has to get his shit in no matter what.

Bryan is way more subdued when on with Dave unless they're reviewing an especially bad Raw or something like that. Say what you will about him, but at least he knows to keep his gimmick in check there since he has to know Dave is the reason 99% of people sub to them.

I noticed during the backstage promo on last week's NXT that Billie Kay reminds me of Flo the Progressive Lady and now I can't unsee it.

Hell, that get-up she was wearing might have been from Bob's collection too.

Right. Which is why I said WWE isn't a monopoly in a previous post.

Even if TNA had a clue, WWE would have raided their talent of anyone worth a damn the moment they posed any semblance of a threat to them.

If someone tries a different style and decides for whatever reason it's not their cup of tea, I have no issue with that. It does kind of bother me to see someone dismiss something using criteria that makes it clear they either never gave it a chance or used the worst possible example to do so.

Lucha tends to be built on long feuds leading to mask/hair matches, maybe watching individual matches years later without most of the context hurts it more than other styles? I know that's treading close to Dave's "matches are worked for their time and nothing else" edict, but maybe that's not entirely wrong?

I always found it odd that hardcore fans by and large tend to gravitate more towards Japanese wrestling than lucha. I would have thought that lucha would have been easier to get into from an English speaking standpoint since you can at least usually get the gist of what's being said even if you aren't fluent in Spanish as opposed to Japanese. Also it would be easier for someone North America based to actually travel to Mexico to see it live as opposed to making the trip to the Tokyo Dome. Then again, maybe that was part of the mystique. Watching wrestling from the other side of the world in a completely inaccessable (to most) language.