MoS

Literally the first thing Vince did after establishing WWF as a national promotion in the 80s was to end that partnership

I think there is no chance that we will see a full-blown working arrangement between NJPW and WWE. Vince has never operated like that, and New Japan would have to be really dumb to not realise it. I agree with people who are saying this is a way to keep Daniel Bryan happy, allow him to work some NJ dates. I also think this news was purposefully leaked to Meltzer, maybe because someone is trying to play both sides and increase the money they are being offered in the process. Apparently, these talks started in March/April, but we have seen New Japan wrestlers in AEW as recently as last week, so the "exclusive" part certainly has not happened yet

Bischoff is back to...host the Inner Circle? I am so over Jericho's dumb comedy, but hopefully Sammy and Santana get some time to shine. This feud has made MJF feel so much cooler than Jericho in my eyes

*Alexa Bliss gets black goo to come out of Randy Orton's mouth* Riche Benaud: Oh dear. That does not look very pleasant at all.

Anecdotally on Twitter, I have seen a lot of "younger"/modern fans who frequently list him as among their favourites. You also have wrestlers like Dax and so many others frequently pay tribute to him. His interviews and general cool gives-no-fucks old dude personality certainly help.

I do think 2026 will be kinder to Bret than 2016 was. His stock seems to have improved in general - the terrible Shawn-agented NXT main events have played a role there, fairly or not - and anecdotally, I see more and more prominent wrestling voices rank Bret ahead of someone like Flair (sorry..I don't want that thread to re-start either), something I barely noticed 5 years ago

Yeah, Flair in 1995 was not at his best in the ring, but he was doing his best character work since probably his face run against Funk. That Savage feud is super underrated. It has some excellent matches and IIRC, it was the feud that actually turned WCW's business around, before the nWo formed and took it to the next level

I'll just do the snarky British chants, at least they are funny and Agogo is cool. If I get trapped in the moment and am caught chanting "This is awesome" at any point on camera, I request @Loss to ban me for a couple weeks, force me to think about my choices

I can sing ""Where is my mind" Right now trying to figure out exactly how to show my contempt when Cody tries to get a USA chant going

Sup, guys! I didn't start this thread the way I always do, cuz right now, me and a bunch of my law school classmates are celebrating our graduation and full-time vaccination status with a trip to the West Coast! We explored Route 66 on our way to trekking in the Grand Canyon, then Vegas, San Francisco, and now Los Angeles. And I am happy to inform you that I will be attending Double or Nothing live in person! I have in my life so far, only attended one live wrestling event, which was the WWE India House show headlined by Hunter v. Jinder. As you can imagine, I am extremely excited about this! For me, it really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and while I am disappointed that I won't have the opportunity to boo MJF AND Jericho live in-person (Stadium Stampede almost certainly will be played on the big screen after all), I am so so SOO excited at the chance to sing "WILD THING YOU MAKE MY HEART SING" with all my heart as Mox makes his entrance! I will of course be posting here as well during DoN. So excited to share this moment with all of you good people!!

What's the average viewership and demo figures for TBS as compared to TNT? Everyone is rightly talking about the pay bump and da mothership, but if TNT is the more hip network (if you weeel), then I am not sure this is a good move for them

Didn't catch the date, the main tweet doesn't show it. Regardless, better Twitter game than Cody "Some have said this was the greatest promo in modern wrestling, it is soo difficult to be proud of American heritage these days, but I am" Rhodes

He absolutely owed an apology to Alvarez. By all accounts Bryan did not know this interview was happening. I am not an Alvarez fan, but he is Dave's business partner and the co-owner of the site. Catching him by surprise like that was unprofessional and inconsiderate.

The babyface in this feud continues to be really cool and do really cool things

Nice seeing you, Jerome! Global mental burnout is real. Of course for my country, the burnout is literally physical too; dead bodies are being dumped in rivers because there are too many of them. It's exhausting, depressing, just the worst time to live. I mostly agree with most of what you said except the part about how we should not complain about the Elite because it is *their* promotion. It is not. It is Tony Khan's promotion, and yes, when the promotion started, it was basically about the Elite and a cast of supporting characters. However, we have long moved past that. AEW is so much more than the Elite now. Darby, Britt, MJF, Sammy, Hangman, Dark Order, even Miro now, AEW belongs to all of them, it is their promotion too. Given Darby is well on his way to surpass Jericho as the biggest ratings mover in AEW, I am confident in saying that the trend of the promotion moving away from the Elite will only get stronger. P.S - I agree the Shaq match itself was a lot of fun. But the build was genuinely terrible, took way too much TV time, and did not result in anything apart from maybe giving Jade a good career launch

Garrett Gonzales is a dumbass. His biggest asset was being so generic and having such a pointless existence, he would just completely fade into the background while Meltzer talked to his guest. Clearly I see why. As soon as he opened his mouth, he spouted off some spectacularly dumb takes. Someone should tell Dave that his boy is using false equivalence points about how it is "ironic" to not show intolerance to assholes, that are straight out of the racism and nazism apologist playbook. The point about Meltzer being too online is accurate, as is thinking that everyone is out to cancel them, but given that Meltzer undoubtedly spoke to Amanda Huber and numerous close friends of Brodie, it is really disappointing to see him give a platform to his old friend cuz the wokes are running rampant with cancel culture. Trevor, who posts as @Hobbes here, said everything I could have wanted to, except he used a much much nicer tone than I would have. I am going to repost it here

Ngl, I am hoping this happens even more now

If anything, he was not mocked and derided enough. Fuck Bruce Mitchell

Imagine, just imagine having Bruce Mitchell over to talk about "how to cover the wrestling business", a mere few months removed from him giving a crash course on exactly how NOT to cover it. I am guessing he did not show any remorse either, beyond some perfunctory apologies. Utterly baffling and tone-deaf, and a case where Dave's famous obstinacy and stubborn nature leads to a terrible decision-making on his part. I bet that he doubles and triples down on it, like Bruce did

The last thing the man ever tweeted. Consistent until the end. What a guy. Rest in peace. One of the first people who did the edgy content that would become the hallmark of the late 90s wrestling boom, and while in hindsight it was a mistake on Corny's part to book him to cut those race-baiting promos in SMW, I cannot lie: him royally pissing off a bunch of racist redneck wrestling fans is deeply satisfying to me on a personal level.

I did find it interesting though that so many wrestling reporters and fans who have no issues (rightly) criticising promotions and wrestlers with being unprofessional seemingly had no issues with Gage taking liberties with Arquette in the ring and doing shit that Arquette specifically asked him to not do. Arquette seems like a really cool dude who has never deserved the hatred thrown his way - as always, the real villain there was Russo - and he didn't seem like he had a grudge against Gage, but he specifically said that when Gage cut him with the pizza cutter, he felt he no longer could trust Gage in the ring. I cannot think of something more damning a wrestler could say about a fellow worker.

Yeah, having watched the episode, I think the issue more or less is with how the makers filmed the episode. I haven't followed Gage's career, but from everything I have seen from his peers and fans who know him, he genuinely felt guilty for what he did, took ownership, made amends and has now been rehabilitated. The documentary did not focus on that at all. It showed him hit rock bottom, but to go from there to redemption, you need to show remorse and atonement. By all accounts, Gage has done that, but you wouldn't know that from watching the doc. The closest the doc came to showing that was the bit about Gage getting emotional at the support he received in jail, and starting to work out twice a day. Immediately after that, they show he is arrested again, and leave vague the exact details. We then cut to him basically coming out and wrestling David Arquette. There's nothing about how he started making up for his mistakes, and if you want to show someone's fall from grace and subsequent rise again, it is imperative that you show the part where he actually atones. As it is, the episode just came across like a guy who was lying to his friends and doing drugs, went to jail and as soon as he came back, immediately went right back to climbing the deathmatch ladder and becoming the most famous deathmatch wrestler on the planet. Of course he went to jail, so you cannot say they did not show him facing the consequence of his actions, but for a feel-good story, they really needed to show more details than simply doing prison time and going back to what he was doing, as if prison was a blip.

He has been absolutely terrible since that awful Shaq feud started. That killed him. All for one good (not even great) rating that had zero transference to the viewership in general