Coffey

Jeff Jarrett's TNA MMA Challenge was gold. Making those little kids tap out. He was definitely over pushed in WCW (so was Booker T.) but that's not his fault. He had a pretty good career but I always thought of him as someone other wrestlers would look back on & say "he was a solid hand." I'm kind of glad he's going in because maybe it will help people forget the Mike Graham quote.

There's actually a lot of really talented pro-wrestlers outside of WWE in pro-wrestling right now. Especially if you look at the rosters in Japan & Mexico, or even U.S. Indies. A lot of the more recent WWE signings kind of confuse me. Of course, I don't know the status of various contracts or interest from outside parties to come to WWE. Maybe some of it is a case of not wanting to come to WWE for less money than they can make outside of it. But how many wrestlers are making money like Cody Rhodes or the Young Bucks? Maybe some of it is a language barrier too. An example, I can't believe WWE haven't snatched up Jeff Cobb or Matt Riddle.

I really wish they would put Fire Pro Wrestling World on sale on Steam. I don't want to pay $30 for that.

To hell with the brand split, I don't want them to have two shows. Get rid of Smackdown entirely. It's WWE's Thunder.

The current landscape of pro-wrestling is pretty cool & fun, admittedly, but I find myself just working through 1989 WCW anyway. Everything I really need, I get from WWE Network nowadays. Even Lucha Underground is on Netflix & I've seen TNA & AAA on Twitch. It's a crazy time to be a wrestling fan but I can't help but have that nostalgia for stuff from yesteryear. When I was growing up & watching wrestling, mostly WWF at the time, I could name the card from each of the major PPVs for each year. Ever since 1998 or so, every year has blended together. I can't tell you what the main event of the last three Wrestlemanias were. There's just so much stuff nowadays & it doesn't ever feel fresh anymore. It all feels recycled or like we've already seen it a dozen times. I guess that's just due to over-saturation, mostly because of all the TV time. Someone earlier in the thread asked where they thought wrestling would be in five years... I think it'll be over-saturated. Everyone now wants their version of WWE Network. Just like everyone wants their version of Netflix. You got YouTube Red, Hulu, Amazon Prime or whatever it's called, I heard Disney wants to do one of their own... just so much streaming stuff, and they all cost money. These new streaming sites are the new television channels. Instead of paying your cable provider to package ESPN, TBS and TNT together, you're signing up for a website to stream the wrestling/movies you prefer. Before too long, they'll probably start packaging them together too. My biggest issue with pro-wrestling nowadays I feel like Jetlag sort of touched upon. Or maybe I took it that way. But wrestling today isn't about getting sucked into the show or the story anymore. The wrestlers don't have gimmicks or characters. It's just a bunch of guys trading moves until the crowd chants for them. It doesn't feel organic. It feels overly-choreographed. And I think Jetlag hit the nail on the head when he said it's a bunch of wrestlers vying for approval from Meltzer. What's really missing is charisma. It's a bunch of average looking guys that can't promo wrestling like a video game. And there's a lot of it.

At Royal Rumble, it sounded to me like Booker T. was legit getting mad at Corey but now it feels way too overblown. Pretty sure it was at Rumble. It has to have been either Rumble or RAW 25 as those were the only two shows I watched other than NXT Takeover.

Felt like they blew a lot of the surprises by just having the women come out on the stage the RAW before. Molly Holly was great & a surprise but after seeing Jackie, Kelly Kelly, Michelle, etc. you knew Trish was 30. I did mark for Vickie Guerrero though. Also, a part of me was hoping that Layla would come out in the Piggy James outfit again when Mickie was in there. But then I guess Steph wouldn't have been able to talk about how it made history.

This is the best news I've read in awhile. Especially if it's pre-Nitro Saturday Night, back when that was pretty much their flagship show.

World Tour 1992 (WF106) 10/03/91 The Mountie vs. Kerry Von Erich 04/19/92 The British Bulldog vs. Irwin R. Schsyter 10/05/91 The British Bulldog vs. Earthquake 10/05/91 Roddy Piper vs. The Barbarian 04/14/92 Battle Royal 04/19/92 Bret Hart vs. Rick Martel 04/14/92 Randy Savage vs. Shawn Michaels So you are right about that. I can find no evidence of a Beverly Brothers vs High Energy match on a CHV. Upon researching they had a match in June taped for Prime Time Wrestling, but that's not listed as being on any CHV. When I was a kid, this was one of the only VHS wrestling tapes that I actually owned. The Savage/Michaels match is pretty good, with Savage still selling the leg from when Flair worked it over. The Mountie/Tornado match is the drizzling shits though.

https://twitter.com/Sephyffxi/status/957816255309864960

Certainly a bad take, anyway. Y'all are fucking nuts if you thought tonight was better than Saturday. Every match on Saturday was good and the main event was great. Tonight both Rumbles were fun & every non-Rumble match was trash. And the women's Rumble was sloppy. But whatever...

My favorite part was Bayley coming out at #29 and the crowd not giving a fuck.

My friend is convinced that Braun is going to lose the 3-way title match & be a surprise entrant in the Rumble & win that. I'm not saying he's wrong, necessarily, I'm just saying seeing a 385lb man pull double-duty on a PPV would surprise me. Even if the 3-way goes on early and he's #30, I can't imagine him not being gassed. I'm hoping The Miz wins the Rumble at this point. And I hope Braun wins the title. Strike while he's hot, right?

Nothing in the world will ever be universal, including pro-wrestling. If everyone hates something, someone will speak up with their love & vice-versa. Especially in the internet era. "Bret/Austin at Mania 13 sucked!" "Flair/Steamboat? Pfft. Doesn't hold up." Look at Okada/Omega from last year. Almas/Gargano was great pro-wrestling, regardless of the circumstances people had while watching the show. And just like Okada/Omega, the naysayers (which I was apart) will fall on deaf ears to everyone else enjoying it.

Great, great pro-wrestling show. Every single match was good. Main event was off the charts. Gargano is a next-level babyface. Good luck following that, Royal Rumble. So much drama. It felt so old school. Just fun pro-wrestling. Johnny Wrestling has that Ricky Steamboat sympathy. You can't teach that. His facial expression are incredible. He dies so well.

Maybe the gimmick will try to be to get high school graduates that "go pro" instead of going college, since NFL doesn't do that? I have no idea. It seems really bad. It was really bad the first time around & everyone said it was a terrible idea. Then it failed. Now he's doing it again & everyone still thinks it's a terrible idea that's going to fail... but Vince McMahon doesn't give a fuck because he's a stubborn prick, so he's going to do it anyway, and fail again.

Great charisma & star presence is what is missing in professional wrestling. I would take an entire roster of wrestlers like Elias or Velveteen Dream over guys like The Young Bucks that Meltzer is always putting over. There's so much more to wrestling than match quality, which is subjective anyway. Not every match on every show needs to be attempting to be some technical match-of-the-night masterpiece. It gets boring. Just like I don't want every wrestler to be some dude with kickpads & a beard that does flips, Cutters and Superkicks. I actually actively dislike the meta wrestling social media era we're in. Watching a New Japan Pro-Wrestling PPV and hearing English commentators talk about match ratings was surreal. How many wrestlers in prowrestling right now feel like kids that grew up watching both HBK & RVD and they're role-playing as them? At least Elias stands out. Velveteen Dream isn't doing anything we've not seen in pro-wrestling before, but he's making it work & it's entertaining.

Here's a bet I would make: Tomorrow is the first ever women's Royal Rumble match. This time next year, I don't think there will be a second women's Royal Rumble match.

A better success rate at what? Getting strangers to tell you you're strong? What about actual arrests?

People need to get off fucking Twitter & go to the goddamn cops. File a criminal report, don't post that shit on social media for likes & retweets. What on earth is wrong with this generation?

I didn't know fans like this still existed! Incredible.

I don't care about the women's Rumble but I'm guessing Rusev for the other. I honestly have no clue, but Rusev is a favorite, he's pretty over right now, and why not? They let Del Rio win a 40-man Rumble and then lose in the 'Mania curtain jerk. Vince McMahon has won a Rumble before. It's not exactly a prestigious thing. At least Rusev would be different & he's over right now. They can use the Feb. PPV to set-up the 'Mania matches they want anyway. Outside of WWE some how miraculously getting AJ Lee & CM Punk to comeback, I don't think I'm much going to care about Wrestlemania season anyway. Just going to be more McMahon wankfest.

He reminded me of WCW-era Vampiro, without the face paint. Which felt dated back in 2000. Eighteen years later? Still pretty damn hokey. And it's not like Vampiro was exactly lighting things on fire with his ring work. Remember when Vampiro was doing the shit with The Misfits? That's what Jay White reminds me of. One of the Misfits trying to do a run-in on Nitro. He's fucking corny. Like Christopher Daniels at 40-years-old calling himself The Fallen Angel corny. But at least Daniels matches were sometimes good.

That feels backward though. Reigns would have gotten a lot more from being the first person to beat The Undertaker at Wrestlemania than doing it after Brock did it first. The end game should have been The Undertaker's Wrestlemania streak, not beating Brock after Brock beat the Streak. Brock has lost, up until the Streak ended, The Undertaker at Wrestlemania had not. It just feels weird. Instead of having UT retire with the Streak in-tact, or using that big win on someone that'll be around for a long-time, they gave it to Brock which just seems weird to, even still a few years later. Not that the fans would have accepted Roman winning it though. WWE was kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't... which maybe that's why they gave it to Brock, just to "get it over with." But at that point, it should have just remained unbroken.

A lot of bad booking. A lot of the wrong guy going over. A couple decent matches. Worse show than last year. Omega/Jericho was fun. Main event felt lackluster. Never reached that next level & I felt ended abruptly. Suzuki/Goto was pretty good. Maybe MOTN. Exceptionally disappointed in Naito/Okada. I expected so much more. And a different outcome.