NintendoLogic

They seem to be building toward a Charlotte/Lita title match, and having Lita win the Rumble is the most obvious way to get there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they promised her a Rumble win and a title match at Mania in return for not going to AEW. Ronda can just show up and call her shot against Becky, especially given the way the last match involving the two ended. That pretty well leaves Bianca out in the cold, but you know.

"Danhausen, have you seen the movie Presumed Innocent?" "Yes I have, and his wife killed her." "But Danhausen, I haven't seen the movie yet! Evil!"

Meanwhile, Batista has apparently become a legitimately good character actor.

As I recall, Beer Money were incredibly over as babyfaces in 2011. Roode was being built up to win the title from Kurt Angle at Bound for Glory that year, but Hogan had the finish changed at the last minute because he decided Roode wasn't ready, brother. That took a lot of the wind out of his sails. The kicker is that Angle was so badly banged up he ended up having to drop the title the next week...to Storm.

I think Danhausen's aesthetic is supposed to be reminiscent of King Diamond or a black metal band, so it definitely has demonic overtones.

I don't understand what's so hard to get about Danhausen's character. The monster with a heart of gold is a centuries-old cultural trope.

You want to know how desperate WWE is for bodies for the women's Rumble? PWInsider is reporting they've brought back Aksana for the show. Did Candice Michelle turn them down? Although it will be funny when the announcers react like it's the return of some huge legend while the crowd is dead silent.

Orange Cassidy has shown how a comedy/meme wrestler can be used effectively in a serious promotion. His shtick was a lot more pronounced on the indies, where he did shit like slow-motion chop battles. In AEW, nobody sells his weak/lazy offense and he's only effective when he actually tries. I thought he'd wear out his welcome in a hurry appearing on a regular basis, but I ended up being wrong about that. The key is that he can really go in the ring when he has to. If the steak doesn't match the sizzle, you won't last long (see, e.g., Warhorse).

Them's fighting words in that part of the country.

So Nick Wayne was booked for the GCW show but got pulled after someone stooged on them to the state athletic commission. Regardless of how you feel about 16-year-olds in the ring, the rule against it in New York appears to no longer be in effect. There was an old law prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from participating in boxing and wrestling matches, but it was repealed by the bill that legalized MMA in the state. The current law only prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from participating in "combative sports" (i.e., boxing and MMA). NYSAC regulations explicitly state that pro wrestling is not a combative sport. However, the commission has a history of being clueless when it comes to pro wrestling (a commission rep tried to shut down an intergender match a few years ago by citing a rule that only barred intergender boxing matches), and GCW likely figured it wasn't worth the risk.

My understanding of the chronology is as follows: Vince pitches a character change to Ali Ali turns it down Vince pulls Ali from TV Ali asks for his release The request to be let go came after the gimmick pitch, not before. It's true that we can only speculate about what the pitch was, but I'm a firm believer in a principle I call McMahon's Razor: always assume the scummiest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts. Given Ali's beliefs and Vince's track record, it's not hard to put two and two together. I suspect WWE never pitched a xenophobic gimmick to Sami Zayn mainly because he doesn't look like a stereotypical Arab.

The Rumble as a concept has outlived its usefulness. It's mostly been supplanted by MITB as a vehicle for elevating wrestlers on the cusp of main-event status. In addition, a big part of the appeal in the early years was seeing pairings you wouldn't normally see. Like, it blew people's minds in 1989 when Ax and Smash were the first two entrants and had to face off against each other. That aspect is long gone since every remotely compelling matchup has been beaten into the ground. The closest equivalent these days is returning legends as surprise entrants, and that well has run dry as well. Take all those things away and it's just an hour of people grabbing the ropes and trying to avoid falling to the floor. By the way, if you thought the spelling bee was hype, you're in for a real treat next week.

They're just fucking with us at this point.

According to the VOW Patreon, Mutoh pulled a "that doesn't work for me, brother" at Wrestle Kingdom. He forced production changes by refusing to make his entrance before Kiyomiya and insisted the match be worked around getting heat on Kiyomiya to set up a Mutoh hot tag rather than the other way around. He also rejected a spot late in the match where Kiyomiya would break up a Tanahashi pin attempt. He demanded to either kick out himself or have the spot removed entirely. So if you want to know why New Japan isn't working more with other companies during the pandemic, it's because of all the political headaches that come with it.

Looking at Cagematch, the longest matches other than Janela/Cardona were the first two (the ladder match and the lucha trios). I'm guessing one or both went over and threw off the timing for the rest of the show. Someone audibly said "guys, you gotta home" during the trios match and they still kept going for like five more minutes. Had to get their shit in, I guess.

Oh man, Stan Hansen in UWFi would have been amazing. On a somewhat related note, if you don't mind taking a bit of a detour, what do you know about Akira Maeda vs. Dutch Mantell? It was the main event of the first UWF show, and the crowd appeared to shit all over it by chanting for FU-JI-WARA, I-NO-KI, and DO-RA-GON (Fujinami). Maeda being Maeda, he seemed clearly gotten to by the chants judging by his post-match promo/temper tantrum. Do you have any idea what he said or of any lore surrounding the match?

MSL claims to have started the This Is Awesome chant, so fuck him forever for that reason alone.

The only biographical info I could find on him is that he graduated from Vegas' Bonanza High School in 1992 and went on to attend UNLV. Rock said they were pals in Honolulu in the mid-80s, so I'm guessing Khan's family moved sometime in the mid-to-late 80s. People moving from Hawaii to Vegas is so commonplace it's often joked that the city is Hawaii's ninth island.

You have to remember that it's not an up-or-down vote on each candidate but a determination of the ten strongest candidates in any given year, so percentages are as much a reflection of who someone shares the ballot with as their intrinsic merit. Okada benefited from the fact that all the really strong candidates are already in. Even if he had gone in unanimously, Kobashi's percentage would still be more impressive in my book because he was on the ballot with the likes of Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit, and the Midnight Express.

It may be true that Okada is nothing compared to the 90s stars in terms of broader popularity, but it's also true that the 90s stars were nothing compared to the stars of the 70s and 80s in that regard. Ditch once wrote that the difference between Antonio Inoki and Shinya Hashimoto in the popular consciousness was like the difference between Hulk Hogan and Randy Orton even though Hashimoto headlined more sold-out stadium shows than any wrestler in history. Wrestlers can only be fairly evaluated against what they could be realistically expected to accomplish, and the fact that Okada helped take New Japan to heights that would have been unimaginable a decade ago is surely a feather in his cap. Of course, in-ring work is also a major factor in his candidacy, and if you think he's a bum who couldn't work his way out of a paper bag, there's likely no argument that could convince you that he's a worthy Hall of Famer. But it should go without saying that most WON HOF voters don't see it that way. In other news, the current Observer notes that Don Owen was apparently virulently anti-Semitic according to Dean Silverstone's book. You can question the appropriateness of a morals clause for a pro wrestling Hall of Fame, but there's a good chance that would have tipped the scales in the other direction had it been more widely known given how close the vote was. The discovery that Mr. Wrestling II was involved in a gang rape in his youth was clearly a factor in him falling off the ballot.

The thing about Sting and Luger is that neither grew up watching wrestling and both got big pushes early in their careers due to their physiques. Guys with that kind of background almost never develop into elite workers.

It's not just the Rumble. Elimination Chamber, MITB, Summerslam, and Survivor Series are all taking place on Saturdays, as did Day One before that. Looking at WWE's 2022 PPV premium live event schedule, the only ones scheduled for a Sunday are the second night of Wrestlemania the name-to-be-determined shows in May and June (the dates for the September and October shows are still to be determined). The Observer noted a while back that Nick Khan grew up in Vegas, which is a Saturday night town for sports and entertainment. He clearly doesn't give a shit about wrestling's time-honored traditions, and the rationale behind holding wrestling PPVs on a Sunday (to avoid going head-to-head with big boxing events) is no longer a relevant consideration for WWE in the Peacock era.

Another factor in the recent ratings uptick that can't be overlooked is the move to TBS, particularly having Big Bang Theory as a lead-in. In fact, it could be argued that it causes Q1 numbers to be artificially inflated and makes the dropoffs in later quarters seem worse than they really are.

I haven't really been following Impact, but I noticed that Madison Rayne is challenging for the Knockouts tag titles next week. Didn't she retire a while back? At this rate, she'll have more retirements than Terry Funk. On that note, it's well past time to retire the Knockouts name for the women's division. It's too evocative of Divas-era sleaze.