Lee

Is the Observer not enough?

Nobody's saying it isn't, it's just irritating that they're still taking stuff down and taking away the convenience factor, whilst also uploading the same matches multiple times and leaving a bunch of bullshit Jerry Springer shows and the like up.

I don't know if anybody has noticed, but a bunch of playlists have been removed, including the Daniel Bryan one that had some Velocity and NXT stuff that otherwise isn't on the Network, and a fun dark match from 2001 with Danielson & Shooter Schulz vs. Brian Kendrick & Lance Cade. Sucks that they would do that, but it might be a word of warning, early as it is, that the Last Battle of Atlanta may not be up there forever.

There's a Rich/Sawyer playlist on WWE.com if you want some additional context building the match up: http://www.wwe.com/videos/playlists/last-battle-of-atlanta-playlist

Today's the day!

I like Sean Oliver well enough but that Raven interview looks like it should really be titled "Sean Oliver Shoots on Raven (and Complains About Konnan, Again)", or "Sean Oliver Can't Shut the Fuck Up While Talking About How Raven Can't Shut the Fuck Up".

During SmackDown this week they actually started uploading Eddie Gilbert/pre-Paul Heyman era ECW. Three episodes so far, 13, 17 and 18, from when it was just a glorified bar show early 90s indy group that happened to have TV and could book a few 80s WWF names who lived locally.

I think the sequel is actually called "The Final Liquidation", which might perhaps satiate the sort of people who ask how there can be 15 Final Fantasy's or how The NeverEnding Story can only last for 93 minutes.

I've been working on a book reviewing every Savage match available (save for some bog standard squashes and some stuff we thought existed but couldn't find), and although it wasn't me reviewing those two matches specifically, the ratings jumped from ***1/4 to ****1/2 for those two matches. Of all of their singles matches together, if you take WrestleMania out of the equation, Toronto is by far the best one. Most of the others would be considered "good" to "really good", but Toronto is great.

I'll take Pumpkins over Saturday night karaoke contests forever, "irrelevant" or otherwise.

That just sounds like Hunter and his "50/50 booking is fine, we put WrestleMania in a stadium, who else can touch us?" rhetoric.

I watched one this morning with Abdullah the Butcher vs. Gangrel, of all things. Pre-Blackhearts/Vampire Warrior David Heath of course, but still. There was a Jim Cornette promo along the lines of "Hitler blew his brains out and they just fried Ted Bundy... Paul E, you're next!" Then I saw Michael Hayes in a tag team with Junkyard Dog and my world didn't make sense any more, and then Hayes closed the show by warning Tenryu that "I love to slap a Jap". I also watched Joyce Grable beat Velvet McIntyre with a powerbomb of all things... in 1983. Throw in the Cruiserweight Classic this week and the Booker T interview with JBL and I feel like I already got my money's worth for the month, and that's before we've even gotten to Brooklyn.

I got one when they shut the lights off on Heath Slater when he was the last guy left in catering after nobody bothered to draft him, and that was barely a week ago.

The Desperados and their sole purpose of looking for Stan Hansen, who apparently wanted nothing to do with them anyway.

I thought it was fine for what it was but it's almost 4am where I am so I could have lived without it, especially at that point in the show. In fact, I actually had a little moment where I had to remind myself I was still actually watching the PPV and that it wasn't last night and I was watching Raw. And now we've got all four authority figures coming out. I'll happily give them WrestleMania and SummerSlam, but they really don't need to eat up this much time on their b-shows. Especially in July! It's far too hot for this!

Would it have been so hard for them to say "per request from William Regal, none of the current NXT champions or their number 1 contenders can be drafted" to explain the lack of picks for Joe, Nakamura, Asuka and Bayley? Yeah, it still doesn't explain Roode and Aries, but the fact they all got passed over for Nia Jax, Eva Marie and fucking Mojo Rawley is mental. I know it makes more sense to debut those guys/gals later and not have them be lost in the shuffle, but in kayfabe terms I can't get past Daniel Bryan looking past those guys but giving a yes to Erick Rowan.

Saying you only want one guy out of a team is a pretty weird thing to do, even in a kayfabe sense. I suppose it's fine if they're doing it to give us Bully Ray, but imagine the burial it'll feel like if Steph decides she wants Aiden English but Shane can have Simon Gotch. Why not just take both? Having said that, it'd probably raise a chuckle if both sides were inexplicably desperate to get Jey Uso with neither wanting custody of Jimmy.

Wouldn't Brock be exempt from WWE testing as a part-timer? I mean, there's no point testing him if he isn't there and suspending him is largely pointless since he's gone so much anyway. I figure he must also have an unspoken exemption since I can't see them testing him before a PPV he's advertised, and yeah, you can test him after a WrestleMania or a SummerSlam main event or whatever, but why bother if he'll be gone anyway? Suspending him now might be something they feel they have to do because it's such a huge news story, but even if they wait another week to announce it, he'd still be cleared by SummerSlam. I guess it's more of a commission issue if New York state suspend him for two years with SummerSlam being in Brooklyn, but would pro wrestling even fall under the same remit as legitimate fighting? Obviously this won't happen to Brock but it's probably worth remembering as well that Billy Gunn got fired for testing positive for a body building competition.

Not to mention that weird deal where they released Danny Burch, brought him back a few months later to do TV jobs and called him Martin Stone, then brought him back again to do more TV jobs but went back to calling him Danny Burch.

Except that they seem to be focusing a decent amount of attention on the Shira brothers and haven't really done anything with Dar. Wouldn't be surprised to see Gurv Shira beat Dar and be ZSJ's QF opponenet. That's something that's thrown me off in the predicting, because I would have gone with Dar if not for the amount of time they spent pushing the Bollywood Boyz and ignoring him. I can see why you'd make a fuss out of a Bollywood tag team, but part of me hopes their largely ignoring guys like Dar or Nese is more a red herring than a time issue, so they can tell a story of someone quietly being the "breakout star" after not paying much attention to them.

I'm actually really worried about Bayley on that front, as her whole character arc from naive little girl to strong champion happened on a show most of the fanbase don't watch, and I think a lot of that will be lost on an audience who might not get the hugging thing, the tube men, or why she connected with people in the first place. It might be a little strange given that the Horsewomen are already up, but I kind of hope they revert back to her old character just a little bit so they can educate the larger audience on it. There's no reason why she still couldn't be an excited little fangirl when she meets John Cena or whoever, and it wouldn't be hard to have Charlotte claim she "didn't deserve" to be called up because she was "good... for someone in NXT" but not main roster level. A condensed version of that story I think could do wonders for her, otherwise she might end up like a lot of NXT names where their whole persona doesn't translate because the wider audience hasn't lived through it.

I don't know if giant images are the done thing on this board, but this graphic helps lay things out a bit more clearly. It's interesting to me that most of the matches are split into "guy I know vs. guy I don't", and if you watched the special, they really gave you an idea of whose baskets they're putting their eggs in. Having gone over the bracket I was thinking Sabre vs. Metalik or Tajiri on the left side (or possibly Tozawa), and Ibushi vs. Swann or Gargano on the right, with a Sabre vs. Ibushi final. Honestly though, I just hope nobody Portugals their way to the final.

People found it impossible to take Buddy Rogers seriously?

Has anyone actually said that?

It's apparently it's own thing with a "sports presentation" (hence the legit weigh-ins) with Full Sail set up differently and Mauro Ranallo and Daniel Bryan on commentary.