NintendoLogic

On a lighter note, I was surprised to hear Austin put over the Pillman gun angle. He usually has a good head for the business and is willing to own up to when something he was involved in didn't work. I also got a kick out of all the "dude"s and "far out, man"s in his speech. He sounds more like a California surfer than a Texas redneck.

Signing Wajima resulted in All Japan being banned from Sumo Hall, so if anything, the opposite is true. It was really the same deal as Anton Geesink a decade earlier. They were both major-league sports stars brought in as publicity stunts. In both cases, it worked in the short-term (Wajima's debut match was actually the highest-rated All Japan TV show of the decade) but had a limited shelf life due to their limitations as workers.

12-34 female viewers were down 26% over the median of the past four weeks, so there is a significant chunk of women who are driven away by blood and violence. Overall, though, the rating can't be considered anything but a smashing success. The question is whether the ending will hurt them in the coming weeks. Revolution was a huge success on PPV, but the dud of an explosion likely played a role in ratings going into a tailspin for a few weeks.

Maybe he means Bryan is freezing him out the way Pillman did when he started the Loose Cannon gimmick.

Even more than money, Total Bellas is probably the strongest incentive he has to play ball with WWE.

Houston was like St. Louis in that it booked talent from all over the country rather than having its own crew of workers. It was part of the NWA until 1981. After Harley Race no-showed a title defense, Boesch withdrew from the organization and recognized Nick Bockwinkel as his champion. He also entered into a business relationship with Watts. After the sale of Mid-South to Crockett, he joined up with the WWF, which is how Bruce Prichard got his start with the company.

Yeah, I don't think Keith Lee's Speaking Out story has anything to do with how he's been booked. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and Lee seems like an obvious case of Vince not getting someone and needing to remake him. As for Bryan, the ending of last week's Smackdown makes a lot more sense now. That was the kind of sendoff you give someone who's leaving the territory rather than just switching brands.

The key is that Eva Marie brings absolutely nothing to the table as a performer regardless of her political views. If she had any real talent or charisma, she wouldn't have come crawling back to WWE in the first place.

The WWF may have had a no-blood policy at the time of WM13, but I doubt Bret and Austin took it upon themselves to get color without permission given all the close-ups of Austin bleeding. When Bret bladed against Davey Boy at IYH, the camera crew went out of their way to avoid showing it. Also, the finish doesn't really work without blood.

For those of you wondering how the writers would pop the audience of one this week, Angel Garza shoved a rose up Drew Gulak's butt on Raw.

https://www.njpw1972.com/96676 It looks like Okada, Suzuki, Desperado, Kanemaru, SHO, and YOH were all pulled from the show due to COVID protocols. Hopefully it's nothing too serious and they're acting with an overabundance of caution.

For what it's worth, JBL isn't really that conservative in real life. He's said several times that his favorite politician is Michael Bloomberg.

The sequence works a lot better when you view it in the context of the match. Presenting it as an isolated clip really does it a disservice.

I've never heard of Bikers Against Trafficking, but the fact that they're working with Low Qi and Matt Morgan (a man with financial ties to an actual child sex trafficker) tells me everything I need to know. On a related note, Proud Boy ref is promoting this event on his Facebook page.

If Nick Khan did tell the NXT crew to tone down the chuddery, some folks obviously didn't get the memo.

Bret indeed says in his book that he insisted on cutting Austin because Austin told he him he had never bladed before and too much was at stake for him to try it for the first time at Mania. Of course, that's nonsense since Austin had bladed plenty of times in WCW.

I can't believe Fuchi is only 25 there. He has that Arn Anderson deal where he's looked middle-aged his entire life.

For those who missed it, here's the full list of this season's episodes. Part one of the Pillman episode is out. Man, the years have not been kind to Melanie at all. I guess that's karma for you.

The reaction Roman got at Mania should have disabused people of the idea that he'll ever be a superstar babyface. For a lot of fans, it's not just his booking or his character they're hostile to. They genuinely hate him as a wrestler. Others are going to automatically reject anyone they perceive to be the company's hand-picked choice as the top guy. The only way I see fans coming around on him is if, like Cena, he reinvents himself as a PWG wrestler while a new guy comes along to serve as an avatar of fan resentment.

Homicide's Wikipedia page says he was offered a scholarship by the University of Miami and turned it down. According to this interview, it was a baseball scholarship. https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2020/08/07/catalyst-wrestling-new-home-for-veteran-homicide/ By the way, the Observer noted at the time that when Low Ki was on NXT, most of the other competitors thought he was a total joke.

I was going to say that it could simply be a case of injuries catching up to him. I remember him being a pretty reckless bumper.

The term shitenno literally translates as Four Heavenly Kings and refers to the Buddhist deities who watch over each of the world's cardinal directions. In a colloquial sense, it refers to the "big four" of any given field. The All Japan crew aren't the only wrestling quartet to be given that name. In the 1960s, Giant Baba, Antonio Inoki, Kintaro Oki, and Michiaki Yoshimura were the shitenno of the JWA. And in 2004, Genichiro Tenryu, Yoshihiro Takayama, Minoru Suzuki, and Kensuke Sasaki were known as the gaiteki (outside invader) shitenno because they were all freelancers working in New Japan.

He decided he'd rather work with Alberto Del Rio. The hottest free agent in years, free to work anywhere in the world, and this is how he decides to use his newfound freedom. What an idiot.

I already mentioned this in the empire crumbling thread, homeboy. Anyway, SRS is reporting that he was suspended and banned from the PC after his last maskless stunt. Hopefully he'll be out after this next strike.