Coffey

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.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Vince McMahon is always going to be Vince McMahon.

Rolling my fucking eyes harder than they've ever rolled in my life.

PPV is woof so far but TakeOver last night was really good. Big Cass and then a Bobby Lashley squash and now a Nia Jax match. Oof.

Jay White is terrible. Hangman Page is terrible. Evil isn't any good. Yano isn't any good. They can't all be great.

At this point, we're all familiar with the majority of any participating members for matches that the major promotions could come up with. We already know what The Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, Kazuchika Okada, etc. are capable of and if we're a fan of what they do, or if we like their individual styles. Personally speaking, regardless of what rating Dave Meltzer gives a match featuring someone like, say, Zack Sabre, Jr., I know I'm not going to like it the same way that he might. Just different tastes and different wants from professional wrestling. That is not to say that it is not interesting to see Dave's hype train rolling down the tracks full speed ahead but I do think it raises expectations to the point where some fans go into a match or show with a mental bar that can not be met. When a match gets a rating that high, your expectation goes from "this should be pretty good!" to "so, this is the best match of all-time, huh?" At least for me, it makes me watch shit differently, too. Like I go in more jaded & looking for flaws instead of just getting sucked into the story of the match & going for the ride. That's why I hate spoilers so much. I don't want to do that, I'm not looking to do that.. but that's what happens. I can't alter the inner monologue that formulates from the expectations created via praise & hype. I certainly have my own preferences & am more than capable of formulating my own opinions on wrestling. Shit, I've been watching for thirty years, I know what I like & dislike at this point. At the same time, I'm not naive enough to believe that it doesn't affect me in some way when I go into a match already hearing all the hype before I ever watch it. Dave Meltzer's star ratings do still make people pay attention & I think that's part of the reason why the scale is getting so wonky now. If he just gave Okada/Omega 5-stars, I don't know if it would have made anyone bat an eye. He had to do it in a way that made people think "well, he thinks it's better than the last one." If Dave gave a Big Show match 5-stars, people would pay attention. It's all about expectations & previous work in combination with a wrestling journalist trying to get people to pay attention. To me, this is Dave saying with numbers that this isn't just a good or great match, this is a match that you need to go out of your way to watch. It's important to see it to see the direction that pro-wrestling is going & what the cream of the crop from that direction are capable of doing.

My top six in the GWE ballot (submitted in 2016, so it's just a little over two years ago now) was as follows: 1. Hansen 2. Misawa 3. Kobashi 4. Kawada 5. Flair 6. Terry Funk If I were to do it again today, it would be: 1. Terry Funk 2. Stan Hansen 3. Ric Flair 4. Kenta Kobashi 5. Toshiaki Kawada 6. Mitsuharu Misawa Has anyone else had the TOP of their list change that much in two years? Or replaced any of the names? I certainly miss the Terry Funk & Harley Race style men in the climate of today's social media pro-wrestling.