NintendoLogic

Sami is a lot closer to Ronnie Garvin than Sting. People will get behind him as a challenger, but giving him the rub of ending a multi-year world title reign would be a huge mistake.

Power Slap got beaten out by 1000-lb Best Friends in the ratings. I'm honestly flabbergasted that TV executives would think there's an audience for something that's barely a step above Ow, My Balls. I suppose it's a relief that Idiocracy isn't actually a documentary...yet.

You all need to stop acting like "gaijin" is an acceptable word to use. Anyway, I'll give LA Knight credit. He's doing his damndest to get this ridiculous Mountain Dew match gimmick over.

Santino never made me laugh out loud, but stuff like "Have you tried the Pepsi machine?" and referring to Cena as "John Chena" (the Italian pronunciation of Cena) was genuinely clever. Santina winning the Divas battle royal at WM25 probably single-handedly negates all that, though. Speaking of comedy, I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that My Breakfast with Blassie was actually a thing that got made. A full-length parody of an arthouse film is just about the last thing you'd expect a territory-era wrestling star to be part of.

Raw is XXX sounds like a wrestling porn parody. By the way, the lead story in the March 17, 2003 Observer is about WWE moving toward a toned-down style due to injuries getting out of control with Kurt Angle's neck injury cited as the specific catalyst. It's true that any contact sport carries an inherent risk of injury and there's only so much that can be done about wear and tear to joints. But every effort should be made to minimize risk of head and neck injury. You can replace a hip. You can't replace a brain.

Rare BPJ W.

Something similar happened with Brutus Beefcake. The original idea is that he was a gay stripper, which is why he was billed from San Francisco. After he became The Barber, that aspect was downplayed and he actually became a hometown hero to SF crowds.

It was pretty hilarious hearing Khan kiss Vince's ass on the Simmons podcast when he was part of the board that voted unanimously against bringing him back. By the way, his comments about how he always knew Vince would be back along with the Chatterton news make me wonder if his sabbatical wasn't in part so he could make hush money payments without having to put them on the company books.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that being the least cheap heat-getting heel of the 80s is kind of like being the least roided-up face-painted tag team. Cornette may not have gone out and waved the Russian flag, but he wasn't exactly a stickler for good taste. I don't expect Cage/Danielson to be as good as Cage's match with Darby from a couple of years ago, but that's because Bryan has too much sense to go to the lengths Darby did to get the match over. At least, I hope he does.

This is far from a new talking point. Dave was writing in the Observer that the business was getting out of hand as far back as 1996. If you're looking for the trifecta of having exciting matches while working a safe style and being a relatively decent human being, there's one man who fits the bill Truly the HitGOAT.

Cornette's verbiage was certainly creative, but he was far from averse to cheap heat. He was responsible for the only retake in the history of TBS studio wrestling when he said that Ronnie Garvin's face went up like the Challenger. And the fried chicken/Ethiopia joke that got him in hot water a few years ago was originally a line he used to describe Big Bubba Rogers. Not to mention his whole gimmick was a thinly veiled gay stereotype.

At least she finally received some measure of justice.

Bringing someone with Saraya's backstory in as a heel right off the bat makes about as much sense as having Buff Bagwell join the nWo. The real problem is that the dynamic of the feud with Britt was completely screwed up. Either the beloved figure making a miraculous comeback would get put in her place by the cocky heel or the homegrown star would get put in her place by the WWE outsider. It seems likely that a portion of the audience would have turned on Saraya even if she hadn't inadvertently heeled herself over the course of the feud.

A natural pairing since L. Ron Hubbard might be the only bigger carny in history than Hogan.

Reports are it was an auto accident. Awful news.

So little of note happened on Raw that discussion in the weekly thread once again shifted to soccer. That's as sure a sign as any that Hunter is still in charge of creative.

Yeah, let's be honest. Now that winning the Rumble doesn't necessarily mean anything special in terms of card placement at Mania, the only reason to watch is for surprise returns. That is, unless you really enjoy watching people hang from the apron while holding onto the ring ropes for an hour.

I could see Vince pulling a Hogan and taking over after the end of football season so he can take credit for the natural uptick in ratings.

Not really sure what the point of such a thinly veiled stand-in was. The story of HBK trying to kill Rock's push is well-known enough that seemingly everybody who watched the episode was able to put two and two together.

Is the genesis of McGillicutty part of the lore?

Bray and Bo Dallas actually started out in FCW as a pretty boy tag team where Bo would take the punishment and Bray would come in off the hot tag. As is so often the case in wrestling, though, your mileage may vary on the pretty boy part.

Bray isn't technically or athletically deficient, which is what people usually mean when they call someone a bad wrestler. I can't think of any instances where he blew spots or got blown up to a degree that it detracted from a match. It's just that his vision of wrestling is nearly impossible to translate to compelling matches. I don't know how you can get invested in a contest where one of the participants is basically a walking deus ex machina.

After watching the match, the Death Valley driver on the apron might have been even more brutal than the powerbomb.

It's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt in one of these ridiculous plunderfests. I guess the hope is that these women will get over that way the way Britt did with the lights out match, but the novelty of women in bloodbath matches is long gone. It's one thing for the company's best workers to do something like Anarchy in the Arena. But having far greener and sloppier workers roll around in thumbtacks makes the company look like a low-rent geek show in addition to the aforementioned injury risk.

I just found out that the Drew/Sheamus tag team is called Banger Bros. Which, ummm... At least they're in on the joke.