NintendoLogic

When The Death of WWE is written, there will be a shot of the Firefly Inferno Match on the cover. Also, everyone should have seen this coming, but:

HHH in a 2009 inteview: All the stars are at a certain level. You can't make someone a star by simply bringing other stars down. That's not how the business works; it's not how it's ever worked. The new stars have to rise on their own. What big star ever laid down for me? It's like being squashed by the Ultimate Warrior and made the curtain call scapegoat gave him PTSD and he spent the rest of his career trying to compensate.

I don't think too many people these days view Brody's conduct in that match as anything but unprofessional. The footage becoming more widespread certainly helped in that regard because it debunked a lot of the urban legends surrounding the match (like Brody was punishing Luger for not selling or Brody had razor blades taped to his fingers and Luger fled the ring in terror because he was afraid Brody was going to cut him up).

Not quite. Luger had signed with Crockett by that point and was on his way out of the territory. As for what went down, I've seen several different explanations. Meltzer has always said that the office wanted Brody to go over since Luger was leaving. But Luger, either on his own or on orders from Crockett, decided that he wasn't going to honor the Time-Honored Tradition and that pissed Brody off. I don't know if I buy that since Luger had already done several jobs to Kevin Sullivan and Bad News Allen by that point in his final days in the territory. Luger has said that Brody told him afterward he couldn't put him over because he was working as a babyface in Texas, which I don't even know how that makes sense. Others have said that Brody was simply trying to teach Luger a lesson about the young guy taking direction from the veteran in the ring. Whatever the reason, just about everyone has said that Brody made it clear he had no personal beef with Luger and it was strictly business.

In case you were wondering how WWE would take losing the rights to the name Cody Rhodes, here you go.

He was a main event-level star pretty much from day one. He challenged Dory Jr. for the NWA heavyweight championship less than two months after his in-ring debut. Less than five months later, in his third match after returning to Japan, he and Baba held the Funks to a time-limit draw in a tag title match.

The greatest thing you'll hear this or possibly any week: the cover version of Hard Times with a Japanese vocalist that Big Bossman used in All Japan.

Two years ago today: Of all the things WWE has done to drive away all but the most committed dead-enders, this is right near the top. When you openly admit the show sucks and then do nothing to make it not suck, of course people are going to stop watching. Then again, we're the authority now, so it must be our fault.

There's usually a noticeable ratings uptick in early January due to the end of Monday Night Football and the build to the Rumble. Also, it's quite possible that Vince hit the panic button and "persuaded" her to come back earlier than planned. What's she going to do, say no? She didn't even say no to using her dead brother in an angle. Hell, nobody in this company says no to anything. Even Randy Orton, the poster child for being rewarded for doing the bare minimum, couldn't bring himself to turn down letting Brock Lesnar elbow him in the head full-force.

Don't worry, help is on the way. Lana being taken out of the TLC tag and replaced by a mystery partner seems like an obvious setup for Charlotte to return. I wouldn't put it past her to try for a Hogan-style power play where she sits out the worst time of the year for ratings and comes back in time to take credit for the turnaround.

I say this without hyperbole: whoever wrote this segment belongs in prison. The only redeeming factor is that Riddle is the one being ruined by this garbage and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

jesus fucking christ

Not liking PAC is the worst @C.S. hot take in my book.

I believe Chavo Guerrero was the first to do what would now be called a moonsault, although it was called a backflip flying body press when he did it. It won the 1986 Observer award for Best Wrestling Maneuver.

When Madison Rayne started on commentary back in like May, I thought she was awful. Like a bad parody of a heel color commentator. I checked out the Grace/Purrazzo iron man match recently, and she's improved greatly. However, the dynamic where Matthews says something idiotic and Madison puts him down doesn't work for me at all. We were talking in the Dynamite thread about how the announcer's role is to put over everything on the show. I don't see how a play-by-play guy who's presented as a clueless putz can be effective in that role.

Big guys doing cool acrobatic shit will always get over more than smaller guys doing the same shit. Sucks to be you if you're a smaller guy, but life's not fair. The flip side, though, is that smaller guys performing impressive feats of strength gets over more than big guys doing the same thing. That's why someone suplexing a much larger opponent always gets a huge pop. In fact, that's what made Vader so great. He may have taken some of the shine off the smaller wrestlers by doing moonsaults, but he made those smaller wrestlers look like world-beaters when he let them throw him around and bounced around like a pinball for their offense.

Veda Scott does a good job on Dark, I think.

So did WWE.

When Bret came back in 2010, he was cutting some of the best promos in the company to promote his match with Vince. I don't know if it was more a case of him dramatically improving on the mic or a guy who was considered average at best when pro wrestling promos were actually good standing out simply because standards had fallen so dramatically. Also, as brother TTK noted, he had become a trained actor, so the move to a scripted format was probably to his benefit. Roddy Piper is another guy in the latter category. By the end of his career, he was usually embarrassingly bad when given a live mic and no script. But because he was an experienced actor by that point, he could knock it out of the park when called upon to deliver scripted material like in the Piper's Pit right before Survivor Series 2010.

I have no desire to see Mauro in AEW, but how many of you have seen enough of his non-WWE work to have an opinion on it? I remember him being fine doing New Japan on AXS. His boxing and MMA commentary also seems to be well-regarded. Given everything we know about WWE, I don't think there's any reason to think he would be more insufferable without their direction.

Wrestling can be choreographed and still look good. I have never seen a wrestlers huddled up waiting for someone to dive onto them spot that didn't look like absolute dogshit.

I don't know where this idea that JR bent over backwards to put over everything in WWE came from. He subtly buried matches and segments he thought sucked all the time. He even had phrases like "bowling shoe" to signify that things were especially bad. It was that willingness to respect the intelligence of the viewer that gave him the credibility to put over the stuff that really mattered.

From the latest Observer: Additional info from PWInsider: I'm not exactly a Keith Lee fan, but even I wouldn't call him one of the five guys on the roster most in need of remedial training.

Wrestlers having supernatural powers is one thing, but that doesn't mean other wrestlers have to be terrified of them. Fear in top babyfaces should take the form of cautiousness or bewilderment. Only heels and jobbers should engage in shrieking hysterics.

Kobashi did not start out at 235. Rookie Kobashi looks like a technically sound young boy, but there are scores of technically sound young boys who never amounted to anything. From what I've seen of rookie Taue, he may have been more advanced right out of the gate.