FMKK

I hope she's starting to get her life and career on track and it'll be a real positive for the company for sticking by her if her comeback goes well, even if their primary concern was the movie. I'm not sure what roster she'd be better off on. Both need an influx of new women to freshen up tbh.

I'm afraid I've got some bad news...

It would be interesting to know if anyone other than Dave genuinely believes that John Cena wouldnt add 1700 tickets to ROH events over three dates. It just seems so outlandish.

Part of Dave's twitter bit is QT-ing and snarkily responding to the dumbest of his replies so there's more than a little confirmation bias in there. This is a weird hill for Dave to try to die on but again, that's part of his twitter persona. If he's quote tweeting and snarking to the most stupid of people in his mentions and isn't coming across as being particularly smarter, what does that say?

There's every chance that this is worked or exaggerated but there's a difference between vetoing something before it happens and not complying with the script in air. If I were WWE, I wouldn't have them appear again until the PPV

I'm kind of sick of everything good being saved for Mania, especially if Mania is going to be a bloated show that's not fun to sit through like the last two years. I like them doing fun stuff during football season. Well I wasen't all that impressed with Wyatt/Orton! It was the piss break match for me. Never really see why people like Bray, Alberto, Miz have been WWE Champion when guys like Piper, Jake, Rude, Perfect never got that chance to run with the belt. Letting people who aren't big enough stars hold the belt does terrible damage to its credibility and those guys shouldn't have had it with the pushes they had either.

I don't want to be one of those 'everything is a work' people but if anything made sense to be a work in terms of current storylines, it's this. If it isn't, Owens and Zayn are the stupidest people ever.

I thought he was still going to be busy with filming for a while so this is a surprise. Maybe itll just be a one-off appearance to give the weak looking Smackdown team a bit of credibility. If they need to write him off again, I can see them shooting an angle with Braun to set up Mania

Doing a couple of rematchs and blow-offs at Wrestlemania is not necessarily a bad thing.

A strange decision considering what most assumed was the reason/end goal behind the current direction

I thought he looked like a 12 year old doing Undertaker for Halloween or something. So many of these new indy guys look like the least intimidating people on earth.

Really? I would imagine that Vince couldn't care less. I can't imagine that he sees New Japan as any kind of competition. In his mind I am betting he thinks they're a professional wrestling promotion which caters to a very selective niche audience, whereas he's in the Sports Entertainment business and "makes movies." He's never cared about what happens in Japan before, has he? I know NJPW is trying to make inroads into the U.S. market, but realistically speaking even if Jericho makes a huge impact there, I doubt it will move the needle much in North America for NJPW. One thing that has really come across from listening to all those Prichard shows is that (if Bruce is to believed, which is a big "if") Vince usually had no clue what was going on in other promotions, nor did he care when he found out. I doubt he's changed his opinion as he's aged. If anything, all signs appear to point to him being even more out of the loop with what goes on outside his bubble. In fairness, if this was the case he would be correct

I can't imagine Jericho vs Omega will be any good - if AJ couldn't get great matches out of Chris, him trying to keep up with Omega's go-go-go might get quite ugly. It'll be interesting to see critical response to it.

Did those UK PPVs precede tours altogether? I remember the first WWE house show I went to was a tour connected to one of those UK PPVs (Rebellion I think). I got the impression that it just made more sense on a number of levels for them to do Raw and Smackdown from London or wherever rather than trying to get over and back so quickly.

I remember years ago they did a gimmick where members of the winning team each got to book the show for a week, which I thought was an interesting idea. Maybe that could be revisited some time.

I've just and Finn's head doesn't connect at all. Kane's safe. Alucard - I think you're underestimating the significance of Alexa winning in the end. It's backwards booking for a heel to yes suffer setbacks but always gets the last laugh. There aren't many movies where the hero wins some battles in the beginning/middle but then loses to the villain at the end. It's not particularly backwards booking to have a sustained heel title run. It's clearly a set up to job her to either Nia or Asuka in the end so I see no issue with building her up strong to lead into that.

Matt Hardy is so immobile its like Miz is trying to carry a log around the ring. He should just retire.

Joe back as well. Theyre going big tonight

Ok so Kurt was super over in his TLC return match so we definitely need Stephanie to come out and bury him

It was a dumb joke but it has been pretty much blown out of proportion. I don't know much about the guy but if he already has a reputation for being annoying then I think that's doing as much damage as the joke itself.

I know a lot will be said about Emma but I thought Summer could have made a cool valet and she was entertaining in that Rusev angle last year, as rough as it was at times. I guess she's probably too similar to Lana and Marcuse already doing similar gimmicks in their mind but there's always room for more seconds to help get acts over.

Someone playing a mister gimmick should in no circumstance be doing meaningless jobs on PPV pre-shows and if it turns out that that's the actual reason she's off TV, then fair play to her for recognising her value and asserting it. It would be different if she was refusing to drop a belt or something that has major storyline consequences. In that case she should obviously do business. But she's definitely right to resist doing things that will devalue her for such small gains. El-P, would your opinion be different if she had, in your mind, 'paid her dues' or was a really good worker? Your previous post suggests that part of your issue is that you just don't like her.

Didn't think you'd be in the 'people should suck it up, respect the business and do what Vince says' camp but here we are.

The gimmick is the blinkered superfandom that acts like anyone who has a different opinion only does so cause they're stupid and ignorant

It just seems so strange that a journalist and historian with decades of experience would ruin his credibility working the gimmick of pretending that the Young Bucks are good