Coffey

Are they really going to let Jim Ross call the entire PPV sounding like that? EDIT: He sounds better now but still rough. Is he sick?

This match is sloppy & the ref, for whatever reason, is fucking counting in slow motion. The Maki surprise was cool but her kickouts have been the drizzling shits. Maki Itoh has a ton of charisma. Her roll through single leg crab was sweet, too.

Honestly, I think they really missed the boat when Zack Ryder caught on fire thanks to his YouTube stuff. I'm old & out of touch with what is current but it seems to me, WWE hasn't really done much of anything to try to hit the non-TV crowd. I mean, yeah, they have social media accounts & WWE Network & whatnot but they don't do like a BTE style show or anything like that. People like Paige or Xavier Woods have more of a finger on the pulse with things like Twitch & I think that's a big area where WWE shows their age. They're making megamoney with TV contracts but like as has been mentioned, TV is a dying medium. So is advertising in its current form: people aren't going to sit through commercial breaks during 20 minute sit-coms anymore. Technology is unforgiving. The speed at which it moves is insane. I bought an $800 video card & literally six days later a newer, better one came out. Keeping up with tech takes being in touch with it, being familiar with it & growing with it, which becomes harder to do the older you get & the more comfortable & set in your ways you become. Hardware, software & knowledge/familiarity. WWE might be ran by people with power & money to throw around but the Vince McMahons, Kevin Dunns & Bruce Prichards of the world will still get passed by, regardless of if they can throw money at younger people or do a podcast. And it's showing. You can literally go on YouTube & watch, in example, a nobody film himself barbecuing in his backyard, with a 4K high def setting, no commercials, streaming live. So like, shit you see on TV isn't special anymore. People are making movies with cellphones.

Probably should have just went to YouTube in the first place to be honest.

I went from not liking Jay White at all, & thinking he was mediocre to average at best, to thinking he's the best wrestler in New Japan & that they should build the company around him. I don't know what changed that made him click & connect like that but it's a night & day difference from a couple of years ago.

I loved the first season of NWA Powerrr. The Dokken theme song & the feel of the show, especially the mystique around Kamille & how good Tim Storm was as a babyface. After their PPV & the start of season two, I felt like they lost their direction a bit. Even before the pandemic hit. Changing the theme song to Pantera & focusing too much on humor, like The Question Mark & Aron Stevens, instead of trying to keep that old NWA studio feel. It felt like a different show. Also, a lot of the pro wrestler allegations came out & Marty Scurll was named which was a bad look for both ROH & NWA. Sadly, I feel like that's the last I'll probably see of Tim Storm but I imagine a lot of the other talent will land on their feet elsewhere, like Thunder Rosa did, regardless of what the announcement turns out to be.

I think WWE just can't book babyfaces. Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Apollo Crews. Also, shout out to the black people in WWE because they're killing it lately. WWE might have to use footage of people other than JYD & Ernie Ladd when trying to shamelessly blow themselves during black history month promos in the future. Bianca, Big E., all of The Hurt Business especially MVP & Bobby Lashley, Montez Ford, that Apollo promo, R-Truth is always hilarious, of course Sasha Banks but now Reginald too. So much good stuff from so many talented individuals in the usually pretty cold WWE & I love to see it. MVP has seemingly rejuvenated multiple careers at this point. What a re-hire that turned out to be!

I bet this adds to the all-powerful mystique of Vince McMahon as well. These people hear all of these stories & then even when they're within the WWE walls he feels like the all-seeing but ever-elusive entity where as the road agents & what not can just invoke his name to steer the underlings. "Vince wants us to go in a different direction" said the suit to the talent without ever actually heard anything from Vince. There's no way that doesn't happen.

The tag match into the video into the return of Sting & Darby Allin, with the zipline entrance up to the Scorpion Death Drop was all really, really sweet. That whole segment was awesome & I miss shit like that. I was glued to my TV the whole time. Really dig the Varsity Blonds! Glad to see Pillman has found something. He's gotten better.

Can't wait for Jim Ross to refer to Paul Wight as a youngster.

It's not Dolph!

I'll be watching tonight. When I heard this match was on the show, I got excited. Honestly, I feel like there's some buzz over The Big Show signing too, if I'm being honest. He's not exactly been lighting pro-wrestling on fire for the last... fuckin, long time... but it was so surprising & shocking, people are shook.

They'll put him in amateur wrestling headgear, have him bark & the commentators will make references to Kurt Angle & Junkyard Dog. He'll be tagging with Chad Gable & Jason Jordan in no time!

The original Festus!

I actually think those early 90's parings of Ventura & Ross in WCW is my favorite commentary team ever. I didn't think Jesse dropped off in WCW at all either.

Also, and this is really fucking important: it was goddamn different from EVERYTHING ELSE EVERYONE WAS DOING! That's what made it cool. That's why I was able to get into it & buy into what they were selling, like the over-the-top "he's really a Dragon" vignettes & what not. MLW re-doing Lucha Underground just means the originality, one of the strongest if not the strongest things about LU, is gone. Makes me think of Vince McMahon bringing the nWo into WWF.

We don't have an unpopular opinion thread or else I would put this there. However, the last few years I have been watching a lot of old footage both in WWF & WCW. It's what I'm into. A lot of late 80's & early 90's stuff up through the Monday Night War. I just want to say, Bobby the Brain Heenan fucking sucks on commentary. I can not stand him. My rose-colored nostalgia glasses for him are off. For a long time, it was the common sentiment that he was either the greatest color guy or at least in the convo for top three. He does not hold up for me at all. For awhile, I thought "eh, he just sucks in WCW because he's half-assing it or drunk." It's not just WCW, he sucks in WWF too, even when working with Gorilla. The majority of the time he's trying to be funny, trying to get himself over & burying the in-ring talent... and his jokes... miss. I know a lot of people will specifically point to his Royal Rumble call when Ric Flair came in at #3 and even that was grating my nerves. Shit like him in WCW just screaming "OHHH!" when someone does a move, in pretty much every fucking match, just makes me roll my eyes. He was an all-timer of a manager, a pretty good mouthpiece in that regard as well & a decent worker. I can not stand him as a color commentator & Jesse Ventura is better than him in every way in that regard. It's just the color commentator role, really. Like when he's doing WWF talk shows, he's fine. I just hate him calling matches. I just wanted to put it in writing.

I don't hate the idea of Bray Wyatt constantly coming up with new masks & shit because that could be kind of cool. I loved Great Muta entrances and matches for exactly that reason: getting to see what he was wearing. Could be pretty lucrative if each mask were to get a new toy figure, y'know? The biggest difference is that I actually enjoyed watching The Great Muta perform too. Wyatt as The Fiend is too over-the-top & hokey. I say that as someone that really liked the Bayou cult leader gimmick. But all this shit with Alexa and setting people on fire & Seth Rollins literally crying in the ring & shit... it's too much. I'm kind of a sucker for gimmicks like that though. I loved Papa Shago. I liked Waylon Mercy. I didn't even hate the clown mask & his re-debut with the new theme and shit. But it just went WAY too far into the goofy direction with the Pee-Wee's Playhouse & stuffed animals & hand puppets & giant mallets & shit.

They also made it a point on the website to acknowledge that if the wrestler doing the autograph signings shows up, there are no refunds. So if you signed-up for the preorder or whatever the fuck & then found out about the no mask bullshit, you're just fucked.

I genuinely liked him as ROH World Champion.. but like with a lot of other wrestlers, the more you find out about them, the less interested you become in ever watching them. Also, Austin Aries is one of the first guys that made me realize how different reality is from what you see on TV. I'm a pretty big man, over 300lbs, over 6' tall & I went to an ROH show & I was legit the biggest dude there. Bigger than even Abyss. Austin Aries legit looked like a fucking child. So I imagine a lot of his bullshit stems from a Napoleon complex as well. On the other end of the spectrum, I went to a WWF house show in Evansville, Indiana & saw The Undertaker in person & that man is huge. He even felt bigger to me than The Big Show did.

I'm OK w/ Miz actually because I feel like he's been busting his ass for awhile now & it's like a reward for the effort to me. I don't think he's the best act going or anything but I've found Drew boring as shit, so I'm OK with trying something else. (not that Drew hasn't busted his ass) To be honest though, just like the six other fucking times they've done it or how ever many times, the brand split is stupid shit. There should be ONE fucking champion. Having multiple is stupid as shit. And that shouldn't be The Miz... or Drew. It's Roman.

I wonder if this is going to lead to Miz doing something as WWE Champion with Bad Bunny at Wrestlemania?

How long until they start a love story angle with Nia Jax & Reginald?

Yeah, this made sense.

I legitimately have zero idea why WWE even brought Morrison back but I guess if it helped them land Taya, it's a net positive. No reason he should be in this match though. Why did he win that 4-way? Crazy.