NintendoLogic

Just about everyone seems to agree that Ken Shamrock took a dive against Minoru Suzuki before fighting Dan Severn in UFC because Pancrase didn't want to risk their champion losing to the NWA champion. By the way, the question of where to draw the line between a fixed fight and a worked one has the potential to be a very interesting discussion.

Am I missing something? Are they pronounced differently in English?

I haven't seen the match in question, but I'm genuinely surprised to see a complaint that Jay White does nothing heelish. If nothing else, I've always been impressed by his absolute commitment to being a completely unlikable scumbag. Maybe he wrestles differently when he isn't seconded by Gedo.

In fairness, Jericho has been doing the camera middle finger since at least WK12.

WWE ran a 205 Live tour headlined by Enzo as champion and it bombed at the gate. That was the end of any real attempt to make the division mean anything more than a piss break.

Good sign for AEW. Some folks were worried that with the Warner/Discovery merger the new parent company wouldn't be too keen on wrestling. Guess those fears turned out to be baseless.

And Austin had dropped the Ringmaster gimmick and started going by Stone Cold while Rock was still Flex Kavana in Memphis.

Looks like they got Trevor Murdoch to play the Ringmaster.

I agree that the well of topics with mass appeal had largely run dry (the biggest one left is probably Hogan/Gawker, and good look getting anyone involved to appear). The weird thing is that they're replacing it with a show where wrestlers reminisce about the territory days, which is the very definition of a show with a niche audience.

"Bonjour, je suis le grand Roman."

I actually think the exact opposite is true. It works precisely because everyone sells the hell out of it. The curses don't actually do anything, but people think they do so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, he'll curse someone and it freaks out or distracts them enough that they get blindsided by a tope or something. And since HOOK inherited his father's no-selling powers, it stands to reason that he'd be the only one who can no-sell the curse. It's well within the realm of fun pro wrestling bullshit (as opposed to embarrassing pro wrestling bullshit like Papa Shango making Ultimate Warrior throw up).

The way the tournament works is that the losers advance and the loser of the finals is the one who loses his mask. Given that, Psycho Clown vs. Villano IV seems like the obvious final. Psycho is the company's biggest star and a match where his mask is on the line is the biggest thing they could headline the third Triplemania show with. Plus, all the other guys on his side of the bracket are old men who don't like doing jobs or putting over younger talent. I expect plenty of smoke and mirrors both to protect the losers and to make the matches watchable.

jesus

I recall a few people saying McKay was actually a good worker in SHIMMER. Does anybody know what caused her to fall off a cliff?

You mean like ratings? By that measure, no one in NXT is over. Regardless, LA Knight is way too physically imposing to be a manager. That's just common sense.

Was that before or after he raised the briefcase? You know, we should hold sek responsible for every single unsolved mystery in wrestling. Like that time on The Simpsons when Steve Sax got charged with every unsolved murder in New York.

Doc/Vader vs. Burning on 2/20/00 is also well worth checking out. It's probably better than every single MVC match, at least in All Japan.

Best wishes to good brother @sek69. Nah, he still has value as Jade's hype man as well as the guy who gets squashed by her rivals in comedy matches. A female wrestler beating up a wimpy male manager is the only intergender wrestling I approve of. That was Batista's main complaint about how he was booked in OVW. He thought they taught him how to be Goldberg and get over by squashing people but didn't actually teach him how to work matches. Jade's never going to improve significantly if she only goes 6-8 minutes every time out. You just have to put her out there and let her sink or swim on her own. It only becomes an issue if audiences start turning on her, and there's no signs of that happening. By the way, I feel like they really missed the boat by not calling her finisher That Bitch Clamp.

Eddie Kingston vs. Taichi in a Kawada-off. In all seriousness, I really want to see FTR vs. Dangerous Tekkers. That's probably the closest we'll ever get to the Midnight Express vs. the Holy Demon Army.

That's why Cody's booking in the coming months will be crucial. If he continues to enjoy previously undreamed-of creative freedom while making serious coin, I suspect a lot of folks who never would have imagined going back to WWE will start having second thoughts.

I remember reading somewhere that WWE edited shows for the Indian market to make guys like Khali and Jinder look like top babyfaces. Also, I believe India is WWE's #3 market for revenue behind the US and the UK.

Like soccer, basketball's global popularity owes a lot to the relative lack of equipment required. All you really need is a ball and a hoop.

One of my major pet peeves is misuse of the term "transitional champion." If a wrestler beats someone for the title and then drops it back to the same person, that's not a transitional reign because no transition has taken place. Anyway, no tears need be shed for Scorpio because he's a dweeb who is completely unremarkable in every way. Coming out to complete silence week after week while being paired with a heat magnet like Dan Lambert is quite the feat.

I mean, it's a country with over a billion people. You'd expect it to produce a good number of freakishly large individuals simply due to the law of averages.

Apparently that storyline where Shane mocked Braun for being stupid was a shoot.