Coffey

Speaking of, I just watched a match yesterday from 1995 Nitro: The Shark Vs. Scott Norton. Ended in a double countout but was better than it had any right to be!

It was. They got the crowd back. Some of it was sloppy but they were mostly good & had a couple great near falls.

It's hard to say. They have the crowd back now, thankfully, due to their work. But at the beginning something happened - I don't know if the power went out for a second or if they were trying to blackout the feed because Charlotte was flipping off the live crowd, but the screen was black for a few seconds & the crowd lost their minds. Thinking it was a surprise, I reckon? But then when it came back on nothing happened and the fans were chanting for Becky for awhile.

Rhea Ripley has only been on the main roster for a year, right? And the crowds are ALREADY turning on her... as soon as WWE gets fans back. Pathetic. Says a lot about WWE booking because she should have been a can't-miss talent.

Jobbers gonna job. Poor Kofi. So are they building Lashley up for Cena or Brock? Because it's WWE so they're not going to build him up for a full-time wrestler or a new face...

Whomever laid this match out should be fired. Straight up. Don't care who it was.

WWE should be embarrassed & feel ashamed for half of these gimmicks in this women's match, seriously. Match is already bad. Started with a tease of Alexa superpowers & went immediately into a spotfest with people watching. Awful.

Pat McAfee's outfit is GOAT status lmfao.

Something I find interesting is that in AEW, two of the biggest stars - at least two of the people that seem to be moving the ratings anyway - are Britt Baker & Darby Allin. I don't think it's a coincidence that they're both fresh & not overexposed. In WWE, even when an NXT talent gets called-up to RAW or Smackdown, more often than not we've already seen them on TV for years. WWE has so much programming & so many hours to fill, that no one ever has any sort of mystique or aura about them anymore. I think it's part of the appeal of Omos, people didn't really know what to expect. I think NXT on TV kind of hurts WWE more than it helps them. There's no real way for any contracted talent to get in reps & get better without already feeling like they're old hat when they get put on a RAW or Smackdown. That's even before you get to the booking. Like, yeah, sometimes they show up with some fan supports due to being known from NXT, like an Asuka or even a Sami Zayn or Kevin Owens (not to speak of their pre-NXT work of course). There's also of course the whole "brand" being the draw talking point & Vince McMahon not wanting to get "burned" again like he did when The Rock left but I feel that topic has kind of been beaten to death. Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy when you don't make new stars, constantly rely on old stars & then the old stars aren't able to keep showing up & feeling special. Edge Royal Rumble surprise return? Awesome. A year later still being a main event guy? Not so much. Goldberg's comeback & beating Brock Lesnar in like two minutes? Awesome. Still bringing back Goldberg every few months to do it over & over? Not so much. Even Bobby Lashley & Drew McIntyre don't feel fresh. They feel super overexposed & it's hard to shake off the preconceived notions toward them both for me. Although I will say that MVP & the Hurt Locker have been pretty damn good. So had the Head of the Table Tribal Chief Roman Reigns. So not everything WWE is doing is bad but when you like 10 minutes out of a two or three hour program, that's an issue.

I don't love all the people that Ring of Honor are using but I commend them for what they're doing. A lot of that is just personal preference too, of course. Right now though, at least as far as U.S. based companies are concerned, I'm probably digging ROH the most. Which is kind of funny as they felt like a non-entity there for me for awhile, the same way Impact does. I think it might be time that I gave Impact a fresh set of eyes again too - see if maybe I enjoy it more.

On Twitter the go-to right now seems to be "but they had to do the CoVid protocols to get into the WWE show!"

Kross has been painfully mediocre for the entirety of his career. You take away Scarlett & he's just another Michael Elgin or Mike Bennett.

I watched this match, which you can see in full now on youtube, it's good! I watched the PPV tonight & it was really good too! They made Brody King look like a monster. I liked both enough that I splurged and bought an ROH hat.

NBA Finals Game 3 is tonight, with Scott Foster as one of the refs. Notorious for having an anti-Chris Paul agenda. Phoenix leads the series 2-0. After game 5, if the series goes that long, the Maria Taylor contract drama comes into play with ESPN & all the drama over her & Rachol Nichols. WWE writers can't even compete with the NBA in terms of storyline anymore, let alone action. I realize that RAW isn't until tomorrow but it needed to be said.

Living in Indiana, I also have the constantly terrified Jesus freaks. When The Passion of the Christ movie came out, we literally had a dude walking around town, wearing a crown of thorns & literally strapped to & dragging a full-size 9'-10' cross like he was heading to his crucifixion. We had crazy moms with protest signs boycotting the opening of a Hot Topic in the mall. It was going to corrupt our children, you see. Same thing when an adult store was opening because of course sex toys & protection leads to the depths of Hell. Magic: The Gathering the card game was banned from schools due to the "Satanic imagery." People literally thought & talked about, openly, that Barack Obama, during his presidential campaign, was the anti-Christ. Until recently, like literally within the last two or three years, you still couldn't buy alcohol on Sundays. You know because alcohol leads to sin & Sunday is the Lord's day or something. Don't even get me started on Planned Parenthood. Everything suddenly becomes "the devil" when they're trying to get it removed, banned, appealed, ran off, whatever. There's a different level of batshit fucking crazy when you bring Religion into the fold as well. Fear + Religion is a bad mix. Take Drake Wuertz in example... he's not just crazy, he's religiously crazy, which is fucking dangerous. Honestly, if you've ever seen the movie The Mist, the crazy religious lady getting a following & power that quickly? That shit is scary. I really don't think it's that far-fetched to think we would only be a couple of bad days away from another Salem witch trial or turning our country into Handmaid's Tale. When the internet was first coming out & first getting into homes, even with dial-up, I remember thinking how great it was that people could look up things whenever they wanted in real time. I thought it would make everyone more educated. I didn't think about the spreading of misinformation & that spawning a growing population. I was naïve. It gave conspiracy theorists & misinformation moguls a platform to spread their ignorance with anonymity.

I'm confident that today assisted-living 77-year-old Terry Funk & brought back from literal death 71-year-old Jerry Lawler could work a match that would show up 85-90% of both the WWE & AEW rosters combined. Those two men have been so good for so long... even when their bodies quit on them, it would be second nature.

I found it interesting on the Drive-Thru this week that it was seemingly the first time either Jim or Brian had heard the Jericho rant after his match with Rob Van Dam in 2002 that he posted online. I remember that being a pretty big topic when it first happened. Good ol' fragile ego Jericho blaming the fans. Somethings never change, I guess.

After her unionization backpeddling & Tommy's post firing "Vince really loves me" podcast bullshit, I don't give a fuck about either of them anymore tbh.

I've heard good things about the Briscoe Brothers Chicken Coop fight. Anyone here seen it & can confirm?

Wrestlemania VI with Warrior is April 1990 & he's still pretty huge there but I do think he was bigger before that. So I feel like 88'-'89 might be right on the nose. It's crazy to me that that was over thirty years ago now. I remember how hype I was to get that Pay-Per-View. Back in the days when you had to go to the cable company & get the box to hook up to your TV to get the show.

When was Hulk Hogan at his biggest, physically? I know he was billed as 6'8", 303 lbs for a long time but I assume that was worked. Obviously it had to have been before the WWF steroid trial or when he went to WCW. He looked enormous in Rocky III but I think a lot of that was because of how small Stallone is. Was he bigger in AWA than he was in WWF? Even at the start of Hulkamania? I know he was gassed to the gills & huge during most of his run but he was always working guys like André, Bundy, Gang, 'Quake, etc. so he didn't look as huge on TV a lot of the time when compared to someone like Warlord that was working guys like Tito.

I didn't really know where to put this. A buddy & I were talking pro-wrestling today & it got a bit heated over the discussion of me saying that I think Roman Reigns is already better & has surpassed John Cena as a top guy. I didn't really think that it was that outlandish of a statement but apparently it touched a nerve. I don't even dislike John Cena, nor want to discredit what he did for WWE, especially when he was pretty much the flag bearer for a decade plus. I just think that Roman's run in The Shield, his babyface run & now especially his Head of the Table heel run have as a whole surpassed, in my mind, what Cena did. And The Shield debuted on November 2012, so it's not like Roman hasn't been there long enough at this point. Granted, I might like Roman Reigns more so than most but I don't think it's that far fetched that I favor him over Cena.

If you listen to the newest Jim Ross podcast, the second part of the Lex Luger story, he frequently goes off on sidetrack diatribes & starts shitting on flips & thigh slaps seemingly out of nowhere. I have no doubt in my mind that he hates AEW and wishes he was back in WWE. Zero.

The WWE "developmental" as a whole has always seemed like it was more about getting you ready for WWE TV than it was about getting you ready to be a professional wrestler. Like if you go to a normal wrestling school, I don't think you're learning about how to talk to the hard-cam & stand on your markers & shit. I don't like that NXT is a televised program in so much that it is its own "brand" but I understand that the young talent has to get experience on TV & ideally in front of real people. I think the biggest detriment to the NXT program was when Dusty Rhodes passed away. I think that is right around the time that the development of the young new faces drastically changed.

My goodness, Florida in the 70's. Holy crap. WWF from 85-90 is on another level too. Imagine being caught up in that on the roster at the time.