C.S.

That's a relief, at least. Glad I didn't miss it.

It does make a difference though. I missed Thwagger-Corbin because it was on the pre-show. Kinda disappointed, because I was kinda looking forward to that and couldn't care less about the pointless tag match I did see.

Apparently, Alberto was stabbed. Explanation: https://www.instagram.com/p/BLH2szPhUOE/ Image (warning: slightly graphic): https://www.instagram.com/p/BLH3IV3hMtT/

I watched the new episodes of Ride Along and Table For 3 the other night. Ride Along: This is even more obviously fake than it was before. Charlotte acted like a spoiled brat and gave Ric the silent treatment for 25 minutes (I believe this was filmed right before she turned on him) while JBL and Cole were completely cruel cunts to Byron, who is always smiling, happy, positive, and ready to his job. While I realize there's no way some of what happened could be real, their animosity toward him didn't seem entirely faked to me. JBL and Cole came across as bullies. #BeAStar! Table For 3: Nothing special, but some fun road stories. Poor Mark Henry comes across as really dimwitted.

No matter how shitty Raw is, all is right with the world on Smackdown because of posters like this.

I think I'm the only one who liked the cluster KO/Rollins/Jericho booking. At least it injected some much-needed excitement in an otherwise dull card and actually provided some follow-up on Jericho's victory over Zayn. Zayn-Jericho and Perkins-Kendrick never shifted out of first gear. Rusev-Reigns wasn't much better. As much as I love Zayn, it pains me to agree with goc - he's brought none of the magic from NXT with him. Part of that is WWE booking him as "just another guy" randomly all over the card. There's no progress with him. One minute he's in I-C matches or grudge feuds with Owen, the next minute he's in a JTTS team with Neville. Cesaro-Sheamus was a beast of a match, but Mick Foley can kiss MY arse if he thinks that was a good finish.

You really expected him to lose his first title defense?! Match was kind of meh, disappointing by CWC standards, but I'm glad the feud is continuing.

New Day is stale, but Gallows and Anderson aren't over. May as well give New Day the record at this point. Heel turn with that Francesa finish? I doubt it, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

Can I please refer you to... Vince's Golden Rules of Sports Entertainment #24: Black people love to dance, sing and have fun. Unless they're an ANGRY Black person. But Swann gets angry too. He froths at the mouth and becomes WILD.

Forgot that UT-Mankind was on the same show. Was this their first match and the one where Foley shockingly went over after Bearer turned on Taker? Yeah, that was good. Anyway, the problem with all of these "Mero had a great WWE run" posts is that they're coming from a forum full of people who likely weren't watching the product week after week at the time and notoriously only pick and choose the "good" matches to watch, sometimes years after the fact. Almost anyone is going to look like they had an impressive run under those circumstances. Week to week, Mero's run was shit, his bland character was a disappointment, and he never got over in any context. His wife's boobs were more over than he was, and it's to his credit that he had a good head about that and did everything he could to help her. After all, like he said, the money was going to the same household anyway. Still, not many people in wrestling would be that secure and mature. Most wouldn't be.

Come on. Atrocious. Yeah, the gimmick was bad and nondescript (he said it himself he had no idea what they wanted him to be), but Mero had plenty of good matches there. He stole the show working with Austin at KOTR 96. And then he was a lot of fun as a Marvelous Marc bullying Sable around. I don't remember ANY "great" Mero matches in the WWE. KOTR with Austin was just "okay." Did they steal the show? Probably, but not hard when every match was weak as hell. That show is remembered for THE promo and nothing else. There were glimpses of fun stuff in Mero's WWE run, sure, but he never had a sustained quality run in the WWE like he did in WCW with Johnny B. Badd in his last year or two there. Mero's WWE run was a colossal disappointment.

I watched the Raw Cruiserweight segment on Hulu last night. Atrocious! (Not the match, which was fun, but everything else.) - Mick Foley looked like he was half-asleep when he was introducing the Cruisers. Didn't help that he had to read from notes. WTH? Just awful! - The commentary sucked (of course). - No TJP was a bad idea, despite fakeplastictrees's point: "You want to see THE CHAMP? Tune in on Sunday." That works for Hulk Hogan or Brock Lesnar. It does not work for TJP, who most of the Raw audience is unfamiliar with. We needed to see TJP on Raw. We needed to be shown what makes him such a big deal. If you didn't see the CWC, you're not going to be hyped for a match between Brian Kendrick and some random guy you know nothing about yet. - I agree with InYourCase: Rich Swann is already just another "dancing black guy." Sigh! The bloom is already off the rose. I wish Smackdown had gotten the division. My only hope is that Kendrick will put over TJP and then end up on SD in a non-Cruiser role.

The fact that the past their primes weren't drawing a dime Road Warriors were the top paid guys in WCW when Hall came in can't be right, can it?

TJP not appearing on Raw is baffling and a bad, bad sign for the division. Raw should have opened with him and his monumental victory. The Bully Choke thing is also bizarre. I guess this proves Vince really had nothing to do with the CWC, as if we didn't already know that. I too understand it from a PR and PG perspective, but Captain's Hook is an atrocious substitute unless they're going full-blown stoner/tweaker with Kendrick's gimmick.

Was Mero wrong about anything he said in 2007? I'm sure a lot of rasslin' fans drank the grapefruit-flavored Kool-Aid, but that doesn't mean Mero didn't have a point. His time in the WWF was atrocious though. This was the rare instance of a WCW gimmick and run being better than what the WWF came up with.

A new Legends With JBL was posted last night with Hall and Nash. Nothing new here, but it was a light, breezy hour of conversation. A little too sparse, if you ask me. It might have been better if these guys had been interviewed separately, because it was hard to get any in-depth responses with this format. A few observations: - When JBL was rattling off his epic introduction, his heart didn't seem to be into it the way it usually is. It wasn't quite as over-the-top complimentary as it has been for past guests. I wonder if JBL doesn't think as highly of Hall and Nash? Of course, I could be reading into nothing. - Nash struggling to recall Nick Lambrose's name was amusing, and it proves that wrestling geeks on forums like this one care so much more about the minutiae of the business than actual workers. - JBL thanking Hall and Nash for guaranteed contracts is the type of revisionist history that makes me roll my eyes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Marc Mero the first wrestler to get a guaranteed contract in either fed? History really is written by the winners, I guess, and Mero wasn't a "winner" in WWE's eyes. Such a shame, because I think he was a great representative for wrestling and continues to be a good guy today with his inspirational public speaking tours.

Been a while since I've read the religious sequel (took a chance on it when it was a $2 Kindle Deal of the Day, which was and is unheard of for a wrestling book), but I believe it does go into some of those wrestling topics. I can't recall what exactly he talks about or how in-depth it was, but I do remember thinking the second book was actually more enjoyable than the first.

Meltzer Update: http://www.f4wonline.com/other-wrestling/terry-funk-alive-and-well-texas-after-exhausting-weekend-221171

I read the sample for this last night and really enjoyed it... The Power Slam Interviews Volume 1 by Findlay Martin It's a collection of interviews previously published in Power Slam Magazine. The sample contains three full interviews - Stunning Steve Austin (somewhat kayfabe but still highly entertaining), Mick Foley (after his ear was ripped off), and Shane Douglas (after the Dean Douglas run). The sample cuts off at the beginning of a Bam Bam Bigelow interview. I've never read Power Slam Magazine, so all of this is new to me. But if you have, I imagine it might be fun re-reading some of these. My only nitpick is that he begins every single interview (so far) with the same disclaimer that it was originally published as an article and the tense has been changed from past to present for easier reading. Okay, we got it the first time!!! Still, I really liked all of the interviews in the sample. $6.99 for 410 pages seems very fair to me. https://www.amazon.com/Power-Slam-Interviews-1-ebook/dp/B01ILZX304/ The same author previously published this (but I haven't read it): Pro Wrestling Through The Power Slam Years: 1994-2014 by Findlay Martin https://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-Through-Power-Slam-Years-ebook/dp/B014X2W6QG/ It's a buck more, at $7.99, which also seems like a good price. I hate the recent-ish trend of every new release starting off at $12.99, so prices like these are welcome.

The retirement is not sad, no, but his health issues are. People are freaking out and acting like Terry's on his way out of more than just wrestling. Look at this thread, for example: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=151092

I know "Terry Funk retires" has been a longstanding joke in wrestling, but this sounds serious and sad. http://wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2016/0918/617615/wwe-legend-terry-funk-dealing-with-medical-issues/ Video: Meltzer Update: http://www.f4wonline.com/other-wrestling/terry-funk-alive-and-well-texas-after-exhausting-weekend-221171

Tyson Dux comments on the CWC's restrictions: "We had agents. We had to deal with agents as well and plan it out. I know for me personally, I wanted to do a stalling suplex from the second rope and they completely scrapped that. They said no way can you do that. For whatever reason, Me & Zach were supposed to be 50/50 right up to the end and it was more of a showcase for Zach which is understandable, right? I get it. There weren't major handcuffs put on, but they did want to steer the ship the way they want to steer it. So as we go along and get more progressive into it, they're easing up on it. Tozawa is known for that snap German suplex with a hold for the pin and they were adamant on saying no absolutely no head drops at all and when push came to shove, Tozawa did put (Ken) Johnson directly on his bean for that snap German suplex. It's the same as anything. It's wrestling politics. Either you kind of bite the bullet and ask for forgiveness later or you just do your stuff. I'm sure to God that burning hammer (Brian Kendrick's) was not discussed. WWE doesn't even let the tombstone fly other than The Undertaker." http://wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2016/0915/617562/tyson-dux-talks-wwe-cruiserweight-classic-limits-restrictions/

Has Josh Matthews ever been 1. professional, 2. good at his job? When WWE canned him, I was surprised. Now I completely understand. He's probably seething with jealous rage that it's TJP and not him who got to resurrect the WWE Cruiserweight Division (Josh was a wrestler at one time).

Speaking of weird stands, yours might be weirder than Meltzer's, honestly. If they don't say "ordered 20 boxes of pizza," what do they say?

What happened with Josh Matthews and TJP? Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that TJP wasn't originally the guy they were going to go with, but he was definitely top 5 or 8 in their minds if you look back at Bracketology and see who made "live" studio appearances. He was one of the few wrestlers who did and his story was one of the big parts of that show. But I agree that his story wasn't pushed as well as it could have been after that. It doesn't help that there was some other homeless dude in the tournament too (Swann?). Speaking of which, I am not buying this "Swann was one of the major crowd favorites" claim, because I don't see that at all. Yeah, the crowd liked him, but they liked a lot of other wrestlers too. Edit: Agree with CapitalTTruth though. If TJP's story had been pushed more, his wins might not have been as surprising and he might not have been as much of an underdog as he was. It works both ways.