Coffey

Great show. Felt different & fresh. A lot like how NXT feels for their TakeOver shows. Felt more "extreme" than Extreme Rules did. Didn't feel like a WWE ripoff product anymore. Some good gimmicks, good matches & good stipulations. That's all you can really ask from a show, right? There wasn't any Match of the Year candidates on the show but it was entertaining from beginning to end & I never felt like I wanted to skip/fast forward anything.

Will finish the rest of the PPV later but have been genuinely impressed so far. Up to the Hair Vs. Mask match. The 5150 Street Fight was death. Su Yung's gimmick was great. The 4-way opener was pretty good. Liked the Brian Cage match too.

Which is probably my favorite reason for being a member of Pro Wrestling Only as that echo chamber doesn't exist here. It's damn near impossible for me to read r/SquaredCircle or Twitter wrestling stuff anymore.

This reminds me of one of the Kevin Nash shoot interviews he did about leaving WWF for WCW, which ultimately was about money. There was a ceiling for pay in wrestling & they couldn't get through the ceiling. Nash was talking about how Bret Hart took less money because he just wanted to be the champion. So because Bret took less money, it meant all the other wrestlers got less money because Vince McMahon could just point to Bret and be like "he's the top guy & he's not getting that money." Bret didn't really know his worth - and this is why some wrestlers called him a mark - because he wanted to be booked strong instead of make more money. Forgetting that it's a job/career at the end of the day. And when you're the top dog, a lot of other wrestlers will look at you as the person with the responsibility of being the voice for the other wrestlers. At least according to the shoot. Scott Hall goes to WCW for more money. Has a clause in his contract (favored nations) where if someone else signed for more money, his pay goes up. So Nash comes in for more money, so Hall gets paid more. Bret comes in for more money, Hall & Nash both get paid more. It's a business and that's a smart business move. It's hard to look at the behind-the-scenes aspect of wrestling without taking into account the money & that it's a work, ya know? There's not a WCW that guys can walk to anymore. So I agree with you, it lowers the bar for everyone & it can make the fans apathetic to the company/card/workers... but also, I can't help but feel like why would the wrestlers work harder when they're not going to get more money or a better push if they do? Or to continue comparing it to other, non-wrestling jobs, they're working at their pay grade. Everyone is just coasting & doing just enough to not get fired.. but why should they do more? There's no incentive. Zack Ryder goes out & gets himself over, tries to grab the brass ring & gets buried. The Women's Revolution with all the 4-horsewomen busting their asses leads to Alexa Bliss & Carmella being on top. No one is hungry and they have really no reason to be if they're under the WWE umbrella. I imagine a lot of the roster has had the wind taken out of their sails on multiple occasions. Look at the majority of NXT call-ups: Ascension, Neville, The Revival, Tyler Breeze, Adam Rose, No Way Jose, Authors of Pain, Emma, Apollo Crews, Dana Brooke, The Vaudevillains, etc. Kevin Owens took a Mick Foley style spot - Chokeslammed off a cage through the announce table. What does he have to show for it a week later? Even at the end of the PPV on the same night no one was talking about it. Everyone was talking about the fans doing countdown chants instead. Risked breaking his body for what? Honestly, I wish we had more guys like Cody Rhodes, Austin Aries, Juice Robinson or Neville that were willing to walk away from WWE instead of just signing new contracts & coasting. I think it would improve the shows. But as a man (or woman), with a family to support... it would be really, really hard to turn down that money because of pride or wanting to prove your craft or because you're not featured on TV in the way you want.

The biggest issue is that with Dave Meltzer becoming so biased, it brings his journalistic integrity into question. At least for me. Maybe that's a bit much but that's how I feel. Like, Okada, Omega & The Young Bucks are straight-up treated more favorably than anyone else. He has always had strong opinions that leaned a certain way. Like you can tell he's a fan of car-crash ladder matches but lately it almost feels like Meltzer himself is a damn member of the Bullet Club. Having personal preferences & being a fan is cool but not when he spent so long trying to pretend he was above all of that & just a reporter. Now he just looks like a mark. He's never been a great (or elegant) speaker, he desperately needs an editor for his writing & now his Twitter is pretty much just trying to work trolls up. We can't pretend that he doesn't have an influence on a generation of wrestling fans. You even have the English commentators on live New Japan Pay-Per-Views referencing star ratings of matches for their wrestlers. Personally, I find it all really detrimental to pro-wrestling.

Woof.

Hulk Hogan was a hero of mine when I was a child & is almost solely the reason why I became a professional wrestling fan. That being said, Hulk Hogan is a character that was on a TV show. The person playing Hulk Hogan, by all indications, seems to be a pretty shitty person. I would not even attempt to try to defend any of the shit that has went down. Honestly, the fact WWE brought him back at all - seemingly out of the blue - was shocking to me. I definitely don't think he's going to be welcomed with opened arms by the entirety of the roster. Even before any statements were released on Twitter. The shit Hogan said - regardless of his awareness of being recorded or not - was vile & should not be uttered by anyone in our society, on or off camera. That is inexcusable & indefensible. Drunk, sober, angry, confused, off-camera, in private, whatever. Those words should have never been spoken. Hulk Hogan deserves to be in the WWE Hall of Fame because he's one of the biggest stars that they've ever had, if not the biggest, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend he's a good dude. Put him in to acknowledge his career & how he helped build WWF during the cable era & then ignore everything else about him. He doesn't need to be on TV anymore or within the WWE family. And for the love of god, don't release any footage of some half-assed, insincere backstage "apology."

Well, Vince McMahon, before Bryan had to retire, was going to feud him with Kane. Now that Bryan is back, he'll be damned if that feud isn't still going to happen, pal! Being Mayor can wait!

Rusev/Styles could be good. Sin Cara/Almas might be fun. Don't really care about the rest. Certainly not sitting through Dolph/Seth. Gonna skip this one & read after to see if there's positive word of mouth for anything, then might go back & check it out later if there's some good praise being lobbed around.

I love NXT & a lot of the roster (including Tyler Bate) but that match was a miss for me. There were a couple good cut off spots though.

Season two, episode two at around the 3:45 minute mark.

Does anyone have a link to the old Live Audio Wrestling commercial of the Bill Alphonso impression singing the Christmas songs? I can't find it!

It's been like this for years. It's why the TV shows suck. What did people think was going to happen when the roster became a bunch of Indy/ROH "workrate" guys? None of them can promo or carry a story & the matches are nothing but everyone getting their shit in until the crowd chants "this is awesome." Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, AJ Styles, etc. It's the same reason why Chris Benoit sucked when he was on top. Yeah, you can have a good wrestling match on the PPV for twenty minutes... but what do you do for the other multiple weeks of screen time that you have to do? Sufferin' Succotash or fuckin' sheep promos? It's why I wasn't interested when people were talking about how much they wanted Cesaro to be a main eventer. Wins and losses don't matter, titles don't matter, FEUDS don't matter. It's just running shit into the ground, nonstop rematches & matches with no heat or fans even caring who wins. In all honesty, in WWE, the matches are what matter the least. The actual in-ring bell-to-bell part isn't what sells tickets or shows. Elias playing a guitar or Strowman telling someone backstage that they're gonna "get these hands" is more compelling than a Dolph Ziggler or Nakamura working a TV match. It fleshes out the characters & gimmicks to start giving fans a reason to invest emotionally into a character. Everyone remembers The Million Dollar Man or Mr. Perfect & it's not because of the matches they were having. Same reason they remember The Ultimate Warrior. The memorable characters are gone in WWE. It's just a bunch of dudes.

If anyone has animated .gif making capabilities I would love one of Kong sipping the tea!

I think Adam Cole will be the biggest star. Mostly because he reminds me of a young Triple H or Seth Rollins & WWE pushed the shit out of both of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Triple H saw a lot of himself in Adam Cole. Meanwhile, I could see Vince being biased against Velveteen because of his use of previous gimmicks like Randy Savage or Rick Rude. It's hard to guess things in WWE because it feels like you just never know what side of the bed someone in a position of power will get up on. Like, I thought Tyler Breeze would excel on the main roster & he's a jobber. Meanwhile, I thought Nia Jax & Carmella were jokes & they are focal points of the divisions.

Not a single Buckhouse Buck in the entire Steam Marketplace. This is some BULLLLLLLLLLshit. I've now downloaded over 200 wrestlers though, which is crazy. The simming of matches is pretty legit. I had two 100% evaluated matches last night during a cage match tournament: Sting Vs. Regal & Dusty Rhodes Vs. Greg Valentine. I've also gotten custom themes to work finally.

From an entertainment perspective, he was pretty good. Shame about the Twitter stuff though. Also, I'm not touching the Taeler Hendrix story.

My biggest issue with the game is that for a $30 price tag, I thought it would 1. be an improvement over the previous Fire Pro games (it's pretty much identical) and 2. would feature online play. At least on Steam, no one is EVER playing online. So unless you like beating on the computer, the game isn't worth it price wise because it gets boring super quickly. I'm hoping with the New Japan tie-in & console release the numbers will go up a lot & people will start playing online. Right now, it feels like a $15 game with a $30 price tag. A lot of wrestling fans nowadays, certainly WWE game fans, are accustomed to having a lot more game modes & what not. This game has generic entrances, not really any music, generic game modes... it is going to feel incomplete. Like the Landmine match is just... bad. The Steam Workshop community is fantastic though. You can find anyone & everyone. Make all the rings you can think of, get all the wrestlers you want. That part is really cool.

If this is the direction the forums are going to take with the new look PWO, it's going to be a long road. It's a bad look.

Thanks, Rich. That... Tequila Cloverleaf? Was SICK! Never seen that before. Surprised we don't see the Tequila Sunrise itself more often. I think the Usos were using it for awhile.

I'm trying my damnedest to avoid spoilers for the WWE UK Tournament but I can't find the first freakin' round on the network. I can only find where there's eight people left. Which is annoying as the match I was most interested in from the brackets was the first round Drew Gulak Vs. Jack Gallagher match. What am I missing here? Was the first round not shown, or is it not on the Network?

For me, it mostly comes down to defining what big man means. If we're going by weight, height, or both & how much of both. Vader is one of the best to do it but if he's the best "big" or not, to me, depends on if he's in the same category as Stan Hansen or not. If Hansen is too small & gets excluded, then Vader is the best big man to me. I had Big Van Vader at #11 on my GWE ballot. Vader: 6'4", 375lbs Hansen: 6'4", 321lbs.

Tremendous pro-wrestler. Robust & appreciated career full of great matches. Wish WWF had done more with him, but his Japan and WCW runs are good enough. I'll never forget when he splashed Flair off the top rope. I thought Flair was straight-up dust. Clash of the Champions XXXI.

Good riddance. Cass is fuckin' garb. He brought nothing to the table. At least Rowan is a good fit in some tag team stuff...

And she's also simply not a very good wrestler.