NotJayTabb

Cameron isn't even on Total Divas anymore, she's been dropped for the new series.

It really hit home to me how odd the US title angle was when Rusev pinned Cesaro. You had the heel, having just taken on two top guys in a match, picking up a clean win and now lying flat on his back exhausted. Meanwhile, the face champion has just finished some commentary and does a few stretches before entering to pick the bones of what is left. Despite this, the heel puts up a valiant fight and manages to lock in his submission hold, only to get screwed due to interference. Between that and keeping Ziggler off my TV by breaking a crutch into his trachea, Rusev is the biggest face in the company.

It's kind of startling how much more importantly they've treated the role of champion with the US and NXT titles than the World. The US has Cena as proud champion facing all comers, wanting to prove that he's the elite, whilst Owens clearly stated he wanted the NXT title because being champion meant he had more money for his family. Meanwhile, Rollins is just "there" as champion, the crown jewel of an authority that helped make him champion, but also have decided to put him up against an unstoppable Brock Lesnar for vaguely defined reasons.

I've only see 5 or 6 Orig matches, but I think it's fair to say he was a great showman rather than a great wrestler. He's quite enjoyable to watch, just because the crowd eat up everything he does, but he's probably not a great lost worker. That said, these were all from his Reslo days, so like you said, I don't know what he was like when he was younger. I will say his autobiography is a tremendous read though, one of the most purely entertaining wrestling autobio's I've read. He's a great storyteller.

Looking at these recaps, I'd forgotten how much tat came before the good stuff. Thankfully, after the hilarious December To Dismember, Heyman leaves and you start hitting the good stuff. By 2008, ECW had lost the terrible originals and great stuff like Ripper Burchill, the Dudebusters and Ricky Ortiz's rally towel were taking centre stage.

Yeah, the angle itself is pretty dreadful. As you said, there's nothing likable about the behaviour of the faces - Ziggler deciding to make out with the ex-girlfriend of a man on crutches RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM screams of heel - and I agree this angle is only going to hurt Ziggler and Lana. I think the thing that might save it will be the resulting match. They've done a pretty good job of making me want to see an irate Rusev beating the heck out of Ziggler, and as long as they keep the ladies out of the ring (which I admit is up for debate), then the resulting match could be a lot of fun. If Rusev wins the feud, then he leaves it still as a tough monster, but no longer stuck with a one-note foreign heel gimmick. Of course, that is a big "if". Wouldn't help Ziggler, but seeing as he's supposedly leaving and my least favourite performer in the WWE, that's no big loss.

I actually think Rusev has been holding up his end of the deal really well. I mean, Ziggler and Lana have been bloody awful at every turn of this storyline, but Rusev as a brooding, broken man who had everything, only to lose it in a few months, has been killing it. He's proven he can play a role besides mute, dominant foreign heel, and he's proven he doesn't need anyone to cut promos from him. Promising to "rip out Ziggler's intestines and hang them out in my back yard" was an amazing line. I think Summer Rae has held up her end of the deal as well, and it's only how wretched the Lana/Ziggler side have been that is bringing this feud down.

Los Fabulosos seem to fit here. El Dandy and Silver King were cruiserweight jobbers for the vast majority of their WCW tenure, but they got a couple of week-long minipush as Miss Hancock's new clients in a feud with Lenny & Lodi, even getting some lovely looking bodysuits. As I recall, it got dropped the minute Bischoff and Russo rebooted WCW, but it had the makings of a fun lower-card gimmick. Linked to that, Lenny Lane in 2000 WCW was a mixed bag of forgotten personnas. He formed a terrible "standards and practises" stable with Hancock and Lodi. That was dropped and was he renamed Lane, tag-team partner of Rave (Lodi) in "XS", before making an appearance in the crowd following the reboot, won a match to win his job back and was never seen again.

On my blog, I do an annual top 10 of the best matches I've reviewed that year, and last year I decided to do two separate lists for matches watched live and those watched at home, as it was looking like 3 years in a row of a live match coming at #1. I think they are totally different experiences - I very rarely leap out of my seat at home at the end of the match, no matter how great it was - and thus I treat them as such.

My parents refused to enable my wrestling fanhood by taking me to a show as a child, so my first ever show was an NWA:UK Hammerlock show in Leamington with my friends when I was 17. I remember very little of the card, except a one night tournament was won by a guy called (I think) the Kung Fu Kid, and Jon Ritchie, Paul Vault and Jon Ryan were on the card. My friends and I became big fans of the heel Ryan after he asked a large woman on the front row if they'd charged her double to come in "because you're so bloody fat". Oh, and local wrestler Majik got a lot of heel heat by announcing himself as hailing from Coventry, which is only 10 miles down the road and, as far as I know, has no rivalry with Leamington.

Along the same lines as Heroes of Wrestling, though without the redeeming trainwreck qualities, was the i-Generation PPV from Australia. They used to show it on TWC over here, and it was beyond terrible. The main event was Dennis Rodman vs Curt Hennig, which didn't have a clean ending, the opening match between the Public Enemy and the Road Warriors had probably the worst match of either of their careers and even someone like Little Jeanne, who I enjoyed in WCW just a year earlier, was blowing stuff all over the shop. The nicest thing I can say is that I didn't hate the Barbarian vs Brute Force (another Brutus Beefcake moniker) match.

@NotJayTabb It's mainly wrestling or references to my terrible football team

Roman Reigns? I mean, he'll win the big one eventually, but he's had quite a few title matches that he's not won. To continue the "nations as wrestlers" theme, Samoa strike me as being like most Samoan wrestlers: Tough, always capable, but never going to be world champions. They're like the gatekeepers between the contenders and everybody else.

I'm very tempted by the CZW streaming service, just want them to add a few more older events before I do. Something about 2001-2004 era CZW that I love, and the idea of an archive full of Cory Kastle or GQ matches makes me happier than it really should

Ha, always thought O'Driscoll was a knob, so I was more than happy with that outcome

There's a certain smugness that comes with English rugby. You can see it in the way Chris Ashton dives for tries, how unbearable Matt Dawson is on Question of Sport or how a London rugby club can decide to move to Coventry and buy our stadium. I loved how much stick Gatland got in the press for primarily picking Wales players for the 2013 Lions tour, as if building around the core of the 6 Nations winning team was a bad idea.

Perfect description. As someone brought up supporting Wales (Welsh mother), the Alain Rolland heel turn in the last WC still rankles to this day. We've got a bastard of a group this time, but I'm still hopeful.

This is a fun old school bout. http://youtu.be/b_bKc2x8JSU

Magnus is reportedly joinng GFW, which makes sense. My understanding is that he's always been a guy Jarrett is high on, and I can't see him in RoH or LU. I think he's a guy with enough positives that he'd be a good fit for the WWE, and one who could improve at a good rate in NXT, but I don't see it happening.

Man, Sheamus/Reigns would've been so much better than Wyatt/Reigns. The matches would've been better, there's an easy storyline to insert (MITB holder vs man who got screwed by last MITB holder) and Sheamus is less likely to get cheered than Wyatt.

Can you link to these? I can't find them. Edit: I found them, I think. What is KB though, and who is Thomas Hall? http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Hall/e/B00E6282W6/ Sounds interesting. I just added it. James Dixon has about twenty other books, so I assumed he was a hack pushing out quick cash grabs. I may be wrong on that (or I may be right). I know nothing about the author, to be honest. Thomas Hall writes reviews for Scott Keith's blog. He's terrible. James Dixon also co-wrote the 1PW book All Or Nothing, which is on Kindle Unlimited. That's a really good book, pretty much the definitive "how not to run an indy company". It's worth reading for the Samoa Joe/Jay Phoenix stuff alone.

Pretty sure he's one they've trained from scratch. I think it's mainly his football background that makes me curious to see what he's like in the ring. I know Kevin Owens tweeted about how much he enjoyed watching him, so hopefully he's somewhat decent.

Of the top of my head, the Cage of Death at COD V was a really fun spectacle. A two-ring, scaffold cage match, it was essentially a big stuntfest, but all the big spots looked great. Also, Nate Hatred vs Nick Gage from Aftermath 2003 was a really fun brawl

The other real issue is that it's raising expectations too much. If you look at when Big Cass, he's one of the more popular guys on the show. However, when he debuted, he was the second-best guy in a singles match with Mason Ryan. If his debut was today, he'd get booed out of the building within a week or two for being a poor wrestler, instead of being able to find his feet and develop his act with Enzo, which has clearly paid off. A guy like Corbin probably needs to be in NXT for a year or two to tighten his act, but he's already getting the crowd turning on him despite him being perfectly passable in the ring.

It does feel like there's a number of guys in the Performance Centre who have had to take a backseat due to the recent influx of name indy talent. I've been hearing about people like Gable, Sawyer Fulton, Hugo Knox and Angelo Dawkins for a while, but they've either not made TV yet, or been job fodder. In a way, they're the ones I'm most excited about. I mean, I know what Hideo Itami can do, but I've barely any idea what Dash Wilder or that guy with the enormous hands are like, and that makes me curious.