NotJayTabb

What I'm enjoying about this is that you aren't trying to improve a bad product, you've set yourself the challenge of trying to improve one of the best years of TV for any US promotion, which adding a prime Bret Hart definitely helps with. Really good stuff.

Nia has had good matches this year with Becky and Rhea, and more than held up her ends of the bargain, with the results being her best matches since Bayley in London. I think it helps that she's come back in better shape than when she left, but you can see she's moving better and is bumping more, she's definitely much improved.

Shawn Spears is exactly the kind of guy they should have in NXT all the time - a solid pro/veteran to work with your roster of mainly in-house trained wrestlers so they've got someone to work with to help them improve on the job. Kind of like how Man Utd have 36yr old Tom Huddlestone playing with their academy team as a veteran to lead the youth players in the right direction.

Saw this last night as it's finally hit UK cinemas, and thought it was excellent. The in ring scenes are really well done, and I thought Holt McCallany did an incredible impression of Fritz's in-ring movements. One thing I think the film did really well was get across Mike's story, and how his arc was probably the most tragic of the brothers (bar Jack Jr). The scene at his gig, with the brothers all happy and Mike taking the spotlight on stage, is really tragic when you know what is coming up.

At least Booker sounds excited, something about Kevin Patrick made everything sound artificial and devoid of emotion. Apparently the Smackdown commentary team is going to be Corey Graves and Wade Barrett, which is a pairing of two colour commentators. No idea how that'll work, assume Graves takes the lead.

For a guy who finished #153 last time, I'm surprised there's been no Smothers discussion since GWE26 started. He made my top 60 last time and while likely to fall a bit, I still think he's a strong top 100 contender. Very versatile wrestler, good as a babyface tag worker in WCW, good as a comedic heel in ECW, always enjoyable on the indies in the 2000s. Maybe not a guy with a litany of big match performances, but someone who knew how to perform for the spot he was in and knew how to adapt to his audience.

Shera signed to WWE for a bit, but never made it past the NXT house show loop to the TV shows. I think he's just not a good enough wrestler for anything more.

Makes sense, both of them have a wife/fiance in the WWE, and Black was always well-pushed in NXT, so he's got to feel confident of being well-used second time around. Murphy was just a guy in both promotions, so you may as well be just a guy who gets to see more of his partner.

Going back over guys I voted for last time who've not been discussed so far. The above quote from Loss really resonated last time, I think that was a good part of my reasoning for including Big Dave :-D. Had him at 90 in 2016, don't think he's likely to make the cut this time. As far as long time modern main eventers in WWE go, I think he's comfortably behind Cena and Roman, both in match quality and length of run, but I'd still have him ahead of someone like Rollins, which I think goes back to his authenticity.

Surprised Davey Boy hasn't been discussed in the 2026 chat yet, he's a pretty big name who got a few votes last time. Looking at my 2016 ballot, I had him at #30, which is way too high in hindsight. Think some bias for a childhood favourite did a lot of heavy lifting. There's still a lot of meat to his case though: the Bulldogs team, the surprisingly fun 93 WCW run, the Bret matches, the team with Owen, the good Warlord matches. Haven't watched any of his WOS stuff, so I'm looking forward to checking those out. I'll be surprised if the Bulldog didn't make my 2026 ballot, albeit nowhere near as high.

I think a change of scene will work wonders for Dana Brooke. She's at the stage now where she's developed into a perfectly solid wrestler, not an elite worker but also not going to embarrass herself or look lost. The problem was she was absolutely stale in WWE as just JTTS Dana Brooke. Going to TNA to reinvent herself feels like a step in the right direction, even if on first impression it looks like a knock-off of Toni Storm's gimmick.

Yeah, I think it's when Terry Funk was commissioner, calling himself and Orndorff the "Old Age Outlaws". As part of this, he made Jarrett face three old boys on Nitro in one night, with Santana, George Steele and Jimmy Snuka all turning up. Unfortunately, Jarrett got concussion when either Snuka or Chris Benoit landed on his head from the top rope.

I'm not saying Tony is getting promoting wrong, but why am I now more aware of Jinder's title match on Raw than I am anything on Dynamite tomorrow?

This is my favourite news update, for reasons that will only be known by UK posters (DBP is a long-time kids TV host in the UK, who got involved in a one-off comedy wrestling match pre-pandemic for Riptide. Love the idea in the game universe that he's been looking unsuccessfully for more independent bookings ever since)

The next 2.5 years are going to be very interesting for the candidacy of Jey Uso (and to maybe a lesser extent Jimmy), as it feels like he's getting a significant singles run, which should add extra meat to his resume. I think it's harder to get an overall picture of wrestlers who are almost exclusively tag guys, and I think that's even more true for the Usos, who for the longest time didn't really have individual identities, not helped by them being incredibly hard to tell apart. The work is there, a great and varied tag run as both face and heels, and I'd vote them extremely high on a tag ballot. If Jey can show his worth as a singles guy, I could see him making my list.

The odd part is that Reggie apparently was a gang member in his teenage years, so it's actually got a basis in reality, but I agree - I look at the guy, and he's totally unthreatening.

Between this and GLOW, I like that Chavo Jr has carved himself out a little niche of being the wrestler to turn to for training when you're trying to make a film/series about wrestling.

I can't remember the last time I saw a Battle of the Belts line-up and thought there was a chance of any of the belts actually changing hands.

I guess part of it is the inevitable burn out from trying to run 3 AEW shows (plus 3 big PPVs recently), all the RoH stuff, Fulham and his American football team concurrently. In many ways, I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner, but then this week he's had to put up with losing a head-to-head battle with NXT whilst also being aware that Fulham fans are planning a protest on his running of the club and want him out, all during his birthday week.

Dirty Dom in a match getting "This is awesome" chants, Dragon Lee getting over right away, and a match where Dom semi-cleanly without the Judgement Day, but Lee has an out too. Great segment.

Rick Knox was also the ref for that clip that briefly went viral last year, where Alex Reynolds got knocked out in a tag match, and his lifeless body got dragged to the corner so someone else could tag in.

Not only was the match not stopped, the clearly unconscious man was picked up for another piledriver. Incredible levels of incompetence

On one hand, Nia looked to be in really good shape, which will probably be better for both her matches and her knees, and a hoss battle with Rhea could be fun. On the other hand, she properly "Dan Dubeil'ed" Rhea on that Banzai Drop, so she doesn't seem to have gotten safer in her time off.

The use of Sonny Kiss over the years has been very odd. Kiss has a unique look, seems to be a decent wrestler (definitely no worse than others they've used regularly on TV) and has the potential to appeal to a new audience, but instead got stuck in a jobber tag team with Joey Janela and then randomly turned heel in the main event of Rampage before never being seen again. It's baffling

I attended one of those Spa Centre Darren Walsh/Brookside headlined shows in 2003, in a ladder match no less, and you're spot on about the face/heel dynamic. I remember Walsh actually won the match, but Brookside heelishly ran off with the title after the match. Tony Walsh was a bit of a minor celebrity all round in the Warwickshire/West Midlands area. He was the first wrestler I ever met in person at the ill-fated FWA show at the Coventry Skydome, where he told me that Darren was joining WWE along with Burchill, which obviously wasn't true. He didn't live far from my childhood home, which I found out when my mum (along with other members of the Kenilworth Coventry City supporters group) was invited to the Walsh residence because Tony had the seats from the Highfield Road dugout in his back garden.