strobogo

You know what makes this extra stupid is on the pre show when covering the HOF, they had Kane talking about the character of Kane and when it was presented to him he knew it was going to change his life, etc. I'm not one of those YOU GOTTA PROTECT KAYFABE shits, but maybe don't have the closest analogue to a character on this show on the pre-show out of character talking about being presented the character and gimmick.

Really? I think it's the complete opposite. NJ and AEW runs have been embarrassing legacy ruining type shit where he's just an old fat drunk gassing out in 5 minutes and literally audibly wheezing in most matches. The first Kenny match was okay only because there was still the WWE association with Jericho and it was on the weakest WK in years. The unbelievably corny shit of just stealing whatever his opponent's look or name was and pretending like he was doing some great reinvention of himself. The hilarious rationalization of his boozed up weight gain as being he was being a powerlifter to be a brawler lmao. Then his AEW run is just the same. He's had bad matches with everyone, his entire shtick is WE'RE NOT WWE BABY AND I CAN SAY SHIT ON TV, he's constantly embarrassing himself being defensive against any criticism like he's an insecure 25 year old instead of 50 year old with 30 years of experience. He's regularly on TV bragging about demos of a show that rarely tops 800,00 viewers, he'll go on promos about how he did 15 week programs to make Orange Cassidy a star (and OC hasn't done shit since that feud, those wins did nothing for him) or how much he's evaluated everyone in the Inner Circle despite the entire group also having been doing nothing for a year and are in the same positions or lower than what they were at the start of Dynamite and the Inner Circle forming. Dude has been Ziggler tier of sighing when his music hits since at least 2005, and going back earlier I now find his 2000-2001 run to be unbelievably grating and uncool even if I liked it at the time as a kid. But you know, kids often have terrible taste. Love his 1998 WCW run, though.

I don't even know how one substantiates who is a draw or not in WWE unless their segments consistently hemorrhage viewers. New Day has been in the top 3 merch movers and at times top merch movers for 5-6 years straight, but their segments don't do any better ratings than any one else, and I can't imagine people were buying tickets to PPVs specifically for New Day matches. Becky was so hot but ratings were still on the consistent slide they'd been on since 2001 and she did nothing to stop that. Everything is built around the brand first and foremost by design so even when someone takes off, it's pretty hard to tell if they're really a draw in the sense of bringing eyeballs to the shows or just popular among the audience already watching. In Sasha's case, she clearly does get outside eyeballs based on how much stuff she does outside of wrestling, but she's rarely been really given the ball in prominent positions for a significant amount of time to see. She's headlined PPVs and weekly shows, but those decisions have generally been made the week of or days before and so have never really been built around her specifically headlining. The HIAC with Charlotte wasn't the main event until I think the Friday before the show. The Raw main event with Charlotte was day of. Unless there's another huge boom, I don't know how one can really define any individual as the draw, which again is intentional. As a performer, she's pretty much untouchable. The only female talent states side that I can say is maybe better than Sasha is Io, but Io hasn't had any matches in NXT as good as Sasha's work in NXT or main roster in similar positions. I would say in a big match situation, no one has delivered more than Sasha in WWE since 2015.

Good, because that run fucking sucks outside of the Diesel and Mankind matches.

I don't know what you're talking about because they already only use a small few on TV every week and they already repeat the same angles and segments for weeks and months at a time even with the huge roster of talent. That's actually the main issue, they don't utilize their roster well at all and are highly repetitive with storyline angles.

Honestly I think Vince keeps using Hogan out of his contrarian fuck the audience mind set as well as he's actually trolling Hulk. He's been more than happy to quit and shit on and try to humble Hulk multiple, multiple times in the past. Every time Hulk comes back to do stuff, he's paired up with black talent or otherwise made to look like a parody of himself. So every time he looks like a goof or there's obvious tension. Like for instance at the HOF where he still is completely out of place with Hall/Nash/Kid and he's cutting a promo about being the hottest thing in the biz and one more run...and they're just trying not to laugh at him the whole time. I'm really convinced it's some petty bullshit Vince is playing with both Hulk and the audience.

Reigns is really fucking good and has been since the start of his singles run with the Orton match at Summerslam 2014.. Been a lot of bitch eating crackers syndrome with him over the years as much of a reaction to the decade of Cena than Roman himself. Roman was the most over guy in Shield and was the guy the crowds wanted that run from the most so Vince gave it to them and then they got mad about it and it stayed that way for years. I think it's telling that literally every time Roman would be a bad ass or do something cool, they crowds would be 100% on his side (which usually happened with Cena as well). Dude has had some great matches with a pretty varied group of guys and styles from Orton to AJ/Bryan to Braun to Cena to Big Show to Brock to Rollins to Ambrose to Rusev and so on. I think he's unquestionably better than Cena in the ring (and Cena himself is a bit underrated) and was really hampered with some of the worst written promos for any top guy in any era for a lot of his run. That match with Braun where he had a bum arm and so he worked the entire match from entrance to exit doing everything differently and having to find new ways to weave in his big spots and moves is one of the best performances of the decade imo.

Does he do actual booking and promoting for GCW besides the Spring Break shows? Because those are pure ass meme fantasy booking that are EWR cards come to life. Shit those might be closer to TNM7 come to life.

I was watching the BSS with him and was pretty amazed at how lucky he's been in his career. Got booked originally because he happened to have a radio show and could promote shows, just straight up stole everything he liked from other guys STILL IN THE TERRITORY at the time and didn't get his shit stomped in, the king moniker happened once from a fan and just kind of stuck, the actual cape and crown thing was borrowed and the guy died on the plane right back so Lawler kept wearing it, Kaufman went to Memphis because Vince Sr. didn't want him doing an angle in his company, gets brought into to the WWF because of Vince bringing in Jerry Jarrett to maybe kind of sort of possibly run things, and then gets the Raw commentary spot because Savage left for WCW (although his timing is off in the story he tells of it), and so on. Personally I hated his entire WWE run on commentary, in the ring, in talking segments and it wasn't until the Memphis sets got out that I was able to see oh actually King was pretty awesome. Now I'm wrapping back around to thinking "fuck this guy" and at this stage I'm unsure if it is because of his personal views, his WWE career still tainting my view of him, that he's still a creep and corny as fuck when he's on WWE programming, or what. I can't imagine there are going to be a bunch of hidden gems that weren't on the Memphis sets that are going to pop up in the next few years.

Lol yeah we used to go to Sarasota for a week every summer and there'd be a torrential downpour every 20-30 minutes for a few minutes and then be bright and sunny and dry minutes later. In the Mid West, what I saw most of the day on Twitter and at the show would be "better hurry up and finish mowing" weather.

I would compare the pre-post LIJ Naito to pre-post CMLL run for Nakamura, but not quite as extreme. Pre LIJ Naito probably had a better resume of more exciting matches than pre coke Nak, but he was a similar quite dry good wrestler guy but with more focus on speedy spots/flying stuff as opposed to old strong style stuff. If you're really into 2015-2016 Naito, idk what to suggest for his prior stuff as that was the biggest year of change in his style and then he slowly blended his old style with the new style as he got more popular with audiences again.

I think he suffers from the WWE style and booking/traveling style where he's working a whole lot more than he was in TNA/NJ and so he just can't go put on 5 star matches constantly. The pre-COVID WWE schedule was basically like going through the G1 every month, year round. And even during the G1, guys have a bunch of tags and breather matches built into their blocks. I think he's been about as consistently very good against everyone in all situations as anyone in WWE in the past 10+ years, basically being in the same consistency tier as only Bryan, Sasha, and New Day as a unit in the same time frame. I would agree that he doesn't have a big list of classics in WWE that he should, but neither do a lot of other top tier great workers like Joe/Nakamura/KENTA/Owens/Zayn etc so you have to take the WWE handicap into consideration in something like that, as well as realizing AJ didn't come to WWE until he was nearly 40 and Vince didn't even think people would know who he was. He's a dude who immediately fit into the WWE puzzle and it seemed like he'd been there for 10 years within a few months, a complete utility player who can be trusted to do ANYTHING with ANYONE and get it over, make the other guys involved look good, sell it on his promos (which was long the biggest knock against him, but he's probably a top 5 promo guy in WWE his whole run). I can't think of another guy they have besides Bryan that they can put in the headlining main events of huge shows, mid card title matches with young guys, working with legends, being a stoogy borderline comedy heel, being a sadistic heel, being a 100% white meat baby face both in an underdog role and best in the world role often at the same time. There's always the comparisons with HBK and you know, HBK also some feuds and matches that should have been much better than they were (like almost the entirety of his face run in 1996 for instance) that people don't seem to hold against him.

I don't think his matches against PAC were anything to go on either guy's resumes, the Page match was a let down after the what....year of build to some kind of confrontation and it was a one and done good G1 tier match instead of what should have been promotion/character defining for Page but there was no follow up either. Fenix has been handled so poorly in AEW it's insane. Can't say much about the TNA run as I've only seen the first 6 man tag a few months ago and then completely lost interest in the whole TNA/AEW thing that seems like it's almost entirely Don Callis securing the bag for himself after his TNA contract is up and getting Gallows and Anderson back with Kenny, which I resent because Gallows is just the worst. What I've seen with Kenny in AEW is a guy who doesn't seem nearly as motivated (even pre-COVID) in his own company as he did wrestling in Japan, some of which seemed to be character and some of which did not, and a guy who really needs a higher caliber of opponent to kick into that next gear than what AEW has provided for him thus far.

I think AEW is probably going to hurt him as it's a lot easier to look like the best in the world when headlining with on top of their game Okada/Ishii/Naito instead of weekly American TV matches. Other than the Bucks vs Omega/Page tag which wildly exceeded expectations, everything he's done since moving to AEW has been a let down, imo. Even when working against some top talent. Maybe especially against them. I've only seen brief glimpses of Big Match Kenny that was setting NJ and the internet on fire in 2016-2018, which seems now pretty clear to me to be just as much the specific opponents he was working with as it was him during that period. If that goes on for another couple of years, well...

In theory, Okada should probably be in or entering his prime by the time the next GWE comes around and it's probably going to be up to Gedo's booking where he ends up.

Nak is a real snoozer before he discovered coke in Mexico. Almost like a satire of serious boring puro from the era.

Few people in the wrestling world I want to hear less from than Chris Jericho these days. Would be a lot more interested if they had Cody/Kenny/Tony on.

Joe's WWE run has been so frustrating. Besides all the injuries at the worst times, his revival was so huge compared to where he was from probably 2009-2015 where he was just completely out of shape, motivation, and passion, to the years too late jump to WWE and then.....he's doing incredible work but none of the matches really matched the level at which he was working. Be it with Balor, Nakamura, AJ, Roman, Rollins, Zayn. I can't figure out what the deal was, but nothing ever seemed to ramp up no matter how good Joe's work individually was in any given match.

Joey Janela is probably the first guy I'd cut because god he fucking sucks at everything. Shitty in the ring, shitty at promos, shitty look, shitty body, shitty everything. The only thing of value he offers is he'll do crazy bumps, but so will 90% of the roster who are also athletic and better at wrestling and/or promos. I'd then cut Billy Gunn's sons because they're annoying as fuck and it's like a nightmare team of Mr. Ass and Rockabilly eras. After that there's a 50 guys I've never even seen in action because they're only on Dark so I'd have to actually see them before I could make judgements on their value and quality.

Sasha has been the best talent in WWE outside of a few stretches where Bryan/AJ/Ali took over since late 2014. She should have already been on her second or third WM main event. Great to see her get her spot and do it with a star making performance. Everyone's best matches are with Sasha, especially in a big match setting. I hope they do a rematch at Summerslam because they have a unique chemistry and can do some stuff together I don't think they can do with anyone else and I'd like to see more of it.

Had some Brock at 19 flashbacks when she hitched on the ropes before the 450

The crowd is much smaller than it looks on TV. Everything past the lower bowl/floor seats are cardboard cutouts. It's also been raining off and on most of the show, and there's also been piped in noise from time to time.

Already multiple cool as fuck spots in this. Waiting for Banks Statement with Bianca's hair wrapped around her neck/face

The list of people who have done the Canadian Destroyer over the past couple of years: Bad Bunny David Arquette Ricky Morton Buff Bagwell

Lmaoooooooooooooooooooo