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They've done a terrible job with building Naito. Dude should have been the top star for the past 2 years, but Gedo won't do anything that makes his boy Okada look inferior. Naito got himself over with NO help whatsoever from NJPW.

Very interesting in its brutality. Most WWE ladder matches are too clean and neat with their spots and set ups and bumps. This one was brutal. London and Spanky were dying on every spot they tried, Jeff was still in that phase after getting clean where he was relearning how to do everything, and of course Mercury's face getting destroyed. 2006 was such a weird time. Bluebloods getting a WWE run, Finlay main eventing PPVs, Tatanka, all the super cartoony gimmicks.

Yeah, WWE's way of expanding when they're already the largest company in the industry by magnitudes is basically convincing smaller companies to give them a cut. Indies that say yes get more exposure, and more talent becomes viable for WWE to pick up without having to really do any of the work, essentially turning the indies into an official developmental territory for them. Then NXT gets to stay as the super indy without having to worry as much about developing talent. All in all, I think it is a pretty beneficial thing for everyone. Of course WWE is going to poach the top talents, but they were going to do that regardless, and at least now those promotions will get something back from WWE and allow them to keep getting new talents to build up. I don't think WWE will go after CMLL or NJPW in their countries. A WWE show is a completely different show than a CMLL or NJPW show, and it seems the WWE fans in Mexico or Japan aren't the same people going to CMLL/NJPW shows anyway.

He literally has the market, though, since he created the market in Hong Kong.

Ho Ho Lun has the China market cornered

The ROH/NJ relationship has been terrible and the NJ guys stopping bothering almost immediately. Another promotion of shitty West Coast indie guys like Joey Ryan with the occasional appearance by Yujiro or Yano is a waste of everything for everyone. NJ's president seems like he has great business sense, so to put money into this project seems so utterly backwards and stupid, especially since it won't impact WWE in the least and at worst will have WWE headhunting more talent out of spite. Get mad WWE takes your talent, so you decide to start a US branch to expose your talent more to US audiences and make them more popular for WWE, all while actually competing with PWG and their own business partner ROH.

WWE is basically trying to use mob tactics on the indies to make money from the work of others to fuck over some other other. NJ is absolutely stupid to even bother with an American subsidiary that actually competes with WWE. They'd be better served finding ways to keep WWE out of Japan or run big shows against them during their tours. Running small shows in LA and selling content to random high numbered cable networks will not make them a competitor for WWE, it will just cost them a lot of money for no reason.

The thing that got me the most about whatever tributes and tweets is that the pic Rock said Tamina personally asked him to retweet of a "recent" picture of Snuka watching footage of himself is that there is a giant 24/7 logo on the TV, which would date the photo to about...2009 at the latest, as the service dropped the 24/7 labeling in April of that year in favor of just Classics On Demand. Workers always gonna work, I guess.

I would guess there is some kind of angle with at least a bit of validity that Beth tried to jump start the Divas revolution stuff by being a serious athlete and wrestler or something. I'm sure that's what they'll go with in her induction video/speech, at least.

God that post-Raw promo where they gave her a softball set up to cut the most basic of babyface promos and it was so bad that LITA of all people had to tell her how bad it was and Booker ended up literally doing it for her was probably the most hilariously awkward few minutes of WWE TV in 2016. Why would you ever put her in a position to have to do any type of improv again after that in the first place?

Charlotte has done 10+ minute promos before and handled them better than anyone on the Raw roster besides Jericho/Steph/HHH. I didn't see the segment, but maybe it was just a bad night/bad set up. There is no active talent on Raw outside of Jericho that I trust to fill 10-15 minutes of promo time more than Charlotte.

Well, I guess crushed up pills are kind of ashes, in a way.

Of course. Not judging. But I admit when I saw that picture on her Twitter than was linked to the annoncement of Snuka's death, I was like "I did not need to see this. I have no business in this hospital room with the family." But to me it goes beyond grief, it's about people's life in general. I don't get people posting unprotected pics of their children all the time on FB or Instagram either. It's a broad issue which, like I said, has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Because it's been just a few weeks ago that Nancy Argentino's family was denied justice and that it's a known fact that Snuka, at the very least, is responsible for letting that girl die. Yeah, tons of pro-wrestlers are (were ?) sleazebags. But very few are pretty sure responsible for the death of other human beings. Benoit is one. Snuka is another. So, a graphic would have been more than enough, really. The reaction live was indeed super awkward, which pretty much tells the story too. I don't really have an opinion on it one way or the other. I guess I'm so jaded towards the scumbaggery of wrestling that no mention or a glowing tribute elicit the shame shrug of a reaction.

Eh, seems like the normal tribute they give to all the scum bags that die. Hard to pick this one to be more upset at than others.

Did the tribute video say anything about Snuka as a person and outside of the ring or was it all on screen performer related?

I have to wonder where the people who were really upset about the tribute video stand on watching anything produced by the McMahons considering everyone seems to think Vince was involved in the cover up. Or watching Benoit matches. Or watching Moolah matches. Or all of the other terrible, terrible wrestlers that have done terrible, terrible things. Where does one draw the line in a profession built on terrible people and terrible things?

Roman is a perfectly fine promo guy as long as he isn't given those weird fairy tale promos to recite. Cesaro is bad at promos of any kind, and has never been able to convey character beyond "kind of goofy aloof guy who wrestles and smiles" for his entire career. In fact, the most character he's ever shown is saying HEY after every few moves.

What's the update on ICW/Progress being on the Network now? If that's an accurate report, I think that's a much better idea for the UK title than trying a weekly show from the UK with the talent they had in the tournament.

Agreed. I miss the early 2000s way of some guys having themes from somewhat mainstream bands. Had some killer PPV themes then too. Surely people aren't nostalgic for the days of Downing Pool and Saliva?

I don't even understand Jim Cornette. Dude is always bitching about people exposing the business while he constantly is doing interviews or shows where he goes into detail on exposing the business. The business has been exposed for 40 years, man.

I'd imagine HHH would induct Regal since HHH has been giving credit to Regal for his career for like a decade now.

I didn't think Cole was any better or worse than he normally is, but he's had this thing going back to the Tazz and Cole days of his version of "big match" calls being something like: Spot happens, "if you notice, X is holding his Y" type of John Madden obviousness that you'd literally have to be not watching not to notice. It's very distracting to me. I don't recall anything about Nigel besides him saying Trent Seven got the Rainmaker from him.

DDP won that match

Agreed, Devlin legitimately looks like a 5 year old with a beard. Legit hope I never see him again. I have no idea how they make a weekly show out of this group. That's going to be some slim pickings. Not to mention that he is everything bad about Balor but less interesting and with less polish.

Night 2 was certainly much better, but definitely not a great show by any means. I was very distracted by every match on the show having a momentum swinging spot on the floor in the first 2-3 minutes. Every match. Pacing and timing wise, they were almost all identical in lay out, just with the specific moves being different based on who was in the ring. Seemed like a really big oversight for EVERY match to be structured that way. While initially modestly impressed with Dunne on night 1, I've now completely had my fill and don't need to see him again. Felt like I saw everything he could do and it was old hat by the second time I saw him. Impossible to take him seriously as this bad ass when he's petrified of old, retired, post-neck surgery Regal and has such a baby face full of acne. At the same time, I feel like he does the villain thing 1000% better than Marty Scurll, at least. You can't hype Mark Andrews up as this incredible high flyer and this his biggest high spot is a standing moonsault off the apron, which is then followed by a match where a 250 pound guy is doing moonsaults and swantons and his flips are more impressive. End/Neville was a nice surprise, but then it was weird that Neville basically ate Tommy alive and had better looking strikes when Tommy is known specifically for his strikes. I'm not sure it did Tommy a lot of good to debut in a match where he got some offense, but mostly got easily handled. Tyler Bate is dope. At 19, as good as he is, he's got a great future ahead of him. But he's TINY. Balor towered over him, and Balor is tiny himself. Coming out of this, Tyler Bate is the only guy I want to see more of. I never want to see Jordan Devlin or Trent Seven again in my life. The group they had is definitely not good enough for a weekly program right now. Easily the worst part of the weekend was WWE encouraging and endorsing WE DESERVE IT chants.