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Finally, it's Dolph Ziggler's time!

My hope is the winner of the Rumble is a surprise who hasn't wrestled in years and everyone is like wtf

These suplexes look like video game brutal animations

I don't think he has any charm at all. Dude is a blatant bullshitter and company stooge.

Is David Arquette finally going to get a run or what

Danhousen seems like the kind of thing 5 year olds would really get a kick out of as a host for toy unboxing or shredder machine videos on Youtube

I think Jeff Hardy has some value to offer AEW, but that almost assuredly means more Matt Hardy TV time and that is a net negative

Having now seen a couple of his promos, I have no idea who or what group that character is aimed at.

Friends, I think maybe Bruce Pritchard sucks

If that's what this dude is, hard fucking pass

Hand the bat to Darby. Vanish into the rafters. After a shot back to Darby, there is a vulture.

The difference in Brock's confidence and presence from his debut to immediately after Summerslam 2002 is truly remarkable. It's like the guy became a 12 year vet overnight. To this day I've never seen anyone level up and get it so fast. Maybe Ronda Rousey.

I don't think there's really a big upside to someone beating or retiring beloved legend 62 year old Sting. It's not like he's at the end of his run as a top guy, top star, or even the end of his TNA run. He's an old legend having a fun post-retirement run where everyone just gets to have fun celebrating this legend everyone loves.

I think it's more of a stretch to believe WWE DIDN'T pitch a wildly offensive terrorist, or at least just evil foreigner, gimmick to Ali. They already were edging towards that with Retribution.

Okada has already broken pretty much every NJ record there is to break, maybe he can start a legend killer run. Tenryu, Mutoh, Fujinami, Fujiwara, Kabuki, all those old fucks still shambling around for a couple of matches every year

I disagree with all of this. I think what Ryder is doing is hack and not even well execution, and I don't find Janela to have charisma at all. He's a black hole of "why the fuck is this guy in the ring" and his execution of all the wrestling stuff is straight up bad. Anyway, ladder match had some heinous bumps, lucha trios had some crazy spots, and the rest of the show was pretty bleh. The actual "GCW stars" are pretty universally bad and somehow I ended a show in 2022 being more interested in a Jeff Jarrett resurgence than anything else.

Ryder's new gimmick fucking sucks. I kept reading all this shit about his reinvention and he's doing the cheapest of cheap heatbullshit that literally any ex-WWE star could do and it'd be exactly the same. He's not even doing it well, his deliveries come off like parodies. That match was the worst of bad ECW bullshit with the worst of TNA bullshit with bad modern lol meme indie stuff, plus Jalena and Ryder aren't good in the ring, either. Janela especially is bad and I have absolutely no idea how he gained a following.

That sounds not enjoyable at all.

Aces and Eights is when I tuned out for good with TNA. That shit was absolutely atrocious from start to finish.

MSL is an absolute scumbag and borderline pathological liar

Lio is very talented but seems like he's going to cause headaches for those in charge no matter where he goes. For right or wrong reasons, it seems like there's always some kind of controversy or drama around him.

The Sting/Flair formula match is super fun though, and stayed hot and enjoyable even into the late 90s. I don't think it inhibited Sting at all as a worker, as he was always game to work hard and make his opponents look good with their own styles. Sting vs Flair is very different from Sting vs Vader, or Cactus Jack, or DDP, or Lex, or the Steiners, or Giant, etc. The only guy I ever saw Sting sandbag and not do his best to make them look their best was Vampiro, and honestly fuck Vampiro he sucked.

Nitro also had an actual stage before Raw and most people had the same pre-planned and timed out entrance every week.

WCW had the real stage for PPVs in the late 80s with the logos and pyro and rehearsed entrances. Even prior to the real stages, most wrestlers did pretty much the same thing for every entrance anyway. I wouldn't put that on WWE or Raw having a stage, which it didn't even have until 1997.

I don't think Sammy is likeable at all. Adam Cole and Britt Baker as heels are more likeable than Sammy as a face.