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Kenny in Young Bucks mode is actually even worse than the Young Bucks. When you see him go from Okada/Ishii matches to tagging with Bullet Club members, it's almost embarrassing how little effort he puts in.

I wasn't talking about reaction to him, I was talking about why a guy at his talent level keeps dominating the top of the card and it makes no sense. Although I do have the same reaction to Edge's main event run as I do to Double J's WCW run.

He kind of sucked, right? Outshadowed in every partnership he's been (E&C, Edge/Rey, Edge/Lita, Rated RKO, Edge/Vickie, Edge/Jericho), inability to be good outside of gimmick matches, frequently injured, consistently overpushed his entire career, basically killed Smackdown for a decade after his terrible terrible La Familia run, promos ranged from horrible comedy (watch the 2000/2001 era stuff, it's absolutely brutal, pun intended) to overwrought crazy/serious which meant he'd pull his hair and shake. He's been pushed SO hard as a top level WWE legend since he retired since anyone who retires or dies prematurely gets martyred. In the end, he's about the most groan worthy guy if I even end up watching 2003-2011 stuff. He has maybe 4-5 matches in his main event run worth talking about, and only one of them isn't a gimmick match (Taker vs Edge at WM, which in retrospect was the turning point in the streak becoming finisher fests and making it impossible to buy one tombstone as a finish). He's almost Jeff Jarrett-esque, in that he's a competent enough guy who kept inexplicably being pushed to the top of the card even when it was a detriment to the show. WWE willingingly killed SD to keep pushing him, giving him the blue version of HHH's death reign, except even worse.

No, I'm implying that Nash's laziness rubbed off onto Sting in 1998.

You could add Bret vs anyone in WCW as too late, really. Sadly, the problem in the Sting/Bret matches wasn't even Bret. Sting had been around Nash too long, was....cloudy....in the head, lazy as fuck for basically all of 1998 outside of one or two matches.

At the time it was OH SHIT because it wasn't WCW or WWF and getting PPV seemed like some unthinkable thing even though there had been other non-WWF/WCW PPVs all throughout the 90s. Now it's fucking terrible like everything ECW related.

Lmao women's MMA has ONLY pushed attractive fighters, even if they don't have the talent. UFC won't promote their current champs because they aren't conventionally attractive women. UFC also does this with male fighters as well, although to a lesser degree. One of those fighters is 7-3 and not the champion. One is 13-0 and champion. I'll let you guess which one UFC pushes hard in the media and which one they ignore despite the 7-3 fighter not being champion. vs Guess who got ignored in the promotion of those fights? Before Ronda, Gina Carano was the biggest star in women's MMA entirely because she was super hot.

Bryan vs Lawler sounds like a match that would never be good at any point of their careers. Bizarre styles clash. Vader and Hashimoto had both too early and too late as their match in Hustle was so fucking bad

Being overrated on the basis of getting a push being nobodies to make you like strong for when the face beats you doesn't seem to make much sense to me, either. It's not like Braun's push was at the expense of the rest of the Raw roster. People were saying he was getting pushed too hard as a 3rd heavy of a stable that always lost just because he was big.

That rocket strap push of doing nothing but beating up actual jobbers from August to January.

There are kids much younger than 12 decked out in AJ gear at every show. All of his shirts come in youth and he has multiple items for babies.

Tennessee isn't the deep south

Juice Robinson's rise up the ranks in NJPW this year is probably a better storyline than anything in WWE this year, and I think Gedo is the safest, blandest booker possible.

It's because Joe/Seth featured two well credentialed indie guys (well, I never liked Tyler Black so well credentialed is in the eye of the beholder I suppose) working a match that essentially had the same story as Roman/Braun, yet Roman/Braun did it magnitudes better that it's a little hard to believe someone could watch those on the same show and think the Joe/Seth match was better performed or executed. Especially someone who has been watching wrestling for 700 years like Meltzer. Seth/Joe was a random match you'd see around 9:45 on Raw.

I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't see the story being Asuka's heel turn. She's been an absolute dick to everyone since day 1, the only thing that has changed is that the competition is getting harder. But if you think she's on the slow burn to being a heel, after she beat the shit out of Bayley, after she cheated to beat Ember, after she beat up her competitors just for fun in the battle royal...what does she have to do to actually turn heel? The story I see is the women's division has stepped up so much that Asuka has to step up her dickheadedness to match if she wants to stay on top, but she was always a dickhead so there really isn't a change in her besides being more of one. It's less about her and more about the rest of the division catching up to her, for me at least.

Even weirder than the cross section of fans is Dave himself having Roman/Strowman rated lower than Joe/Seth and Bayley/Alexa, and only rating it 3.25 to begin with.

Except his follow up was that AJ is the best guy on the planet and he'd rather see him in the ring with another full time wrestler instead of a GM not known for his actual wrestling ability. It didn't come across as Raw vs SD in the least. But the real on this is...why would anyone expect a show like that not to reinforce WWE talking points? Like...that's kind of the point, with a bit of blowback on some things to appease the part of the crowd that loves to think people are shooting.

Well, at least you'll have Graves there to say how terrible it was

He didn't put Randy under a refrigerator. It clearly slid off and was flat on the floor before Bray even walked out of the frame. Regardless, the idea that a 6'5", 250lb pro athlete wouldn't be able to get out from under an empty refrigerator is lolz.

This shit where Dave was speculating that Aiden's overly dramatic breakdown that he had done multiple times on NXT and was as over the top theater actory bullshit as you can get was making fun of Mauro is absurd and Dave should be ashamed of himself being that reckless with speculation over such a topic that is pending litigation.

I would say probably not that much, as the women of color in WWE in particular change their hair all the time and you never hear stories about management getting mad at any of the women changing or coloring their hair something new like you hear guys getting put in the doghouse for cutting their hair without telling management first.

Idk why but AJ being so fired up on Talking Smack like he's been on SD for a decade was hilarious

Yeah, I can't believe they let those uggos The Ascension go out in front of people looking like that.

Then why did you ask the question? Ruby is a punk rocker chick and is essentially the second top female babyface in NXT, feuding with Nikki Cross, who has an actually "goofy/weird/crazy" chick gimmick. She's certainly not portrayed in anything even approaching a negative light for her looks, tats, or hair. The idea that black women should have black women hair/styles is just as weird as implying that they shouldn't have "white" hair styles. Not directed at you directly, El P, but that seems to be to what a lot of it breaks down to in these discussions. And no one ever takes the time to consider that these women might actually choose their hair styles and enjoy how they looks and aren't doing it because they're being forced by the company or the patriarchy.

On the other hand, I totally agree that the image of the woman-with-the-long-flying-hair forced by the WWE totally comes from a stereotypical, patriarchal representation. When was the last time you saw a black girl with some kind of afro or dreads or whatever style a man worker can wear, without it being a gimmick too ? Or a very short hair girl that wasn't some kind of "freak" ? Alicia Fox has done afros, braids, undercuts, pompadours, amount 30 other hair styles. Naomi has her hair in braids or rows every other week. Kharma had braids. Jazz had braids and rows. Tamina, while not black, wore her hair natural for the first few years of her career and, when she's been on TV, is regularly seen with braids or rows. Jackie had braids. Layla didn't straighten her hair for years. Jojo doesn't straighten her hair. So...you see it all the time. As for short hair, Ruby Riot is getting a big push in NXT, has a short undercut, and isn't a "freak". Just because one CAN have their hair one way doesn't mean they have to or want to. Plenty of women outside of the world of wrestling color or add extensions to their hair, women of all colors, because they like the way it looks. My mom had extensions that she wore regularly because she liked how she looked with longer hair and the different styles she could do with them, but didn't want to mess with actually having hair that long because she had two kids and a busy job where having very long hair is kind of impractical.