strobogo

Pretty Wonderful was a great team, Roma was very miscast as a Horseman but really thrived as a dickhead pretty boy heel mid card tag guy.

1. Sting has always been cool because he's always seemed authentic to himself, be it as a super amped up super hero face, or mopey Crow dude, or Joker Sting, or even main event mafia Steve Borden. He also just seems like a legit cool ass dude that everyone has always enjoyed working with besides maybe Vampiro but fuck Vampiro he sucked anyway and I have to think he had to be a real shithead for Sting to go out of his way to make him look bad. 2. I can imagine WWE doesn't think Adam Cole is a big loss, actually, but Bryan lol. Of course he's a big loss. They've done everything to keep him on TV and in top roles since his return even throwing him into the WM main event this year knowing his contract was ending and were actually going to let him do some outside work to keep him. But it's SOP for WWE to be as petty as possible beyond a "best of luck in their future endevours" tweet, which I don't think any of the contract expiring guys ever get anyway. They're definitely not going to go out and say losing DB is a big loss under any circumstances other than permanent retirement or sudden death.

Just get Jimmy Hart in to do knock off versions for a ham and cheese sandwich, Tony.

Literally everyone else that's ever been in the top position in the past 20 years has been blamed for killing the ratings so of course it doesn't hold up. The ratings have been on a pretty much straight decline since the night after WM 17 and no one has made any significant impact for any sustained period since. But Seth Rollins really killed ratings.

I don't believe it is. He said this is something he didn't just decide over night, it's something he's been mulling and working towards for a long time. He came in not even in as good of shape as he did for his UFC fights, and he's come back around the same time that other guys older than him have come back with the same time off or longer and looked to be in way way better shape and performing as good or better than they did the last time they were in the ring. Christian is as good as ever, in phenomenal shape, he's older, had more mileage on him to begin with. Edge came back in literally the best shape of his career, and while I don't like those Orton matches, his work this year with Roman and Bryan has been some of the best work he's ever done in the ring, imo. Sting is 62 and while I will grant you he's been protected and in tags, dude was moving better than he was the past few years of his TNA run. It's not JUST how he looked in the ring. Everything about him felt like an entire generation behind and it was weird.

I think there's a ton of revisionist history for both his in ring work and character/promo work. Love his 1998 WCW run, but god damn his first WWE is just unbearably annoying promos as a heel or face. His in ring work is never, ever at the level of the Radicalz or Rey or even RVD or Christian from the same period and beyond. As soon as Jericho turns heel in 2001, dude is instantly so stale and dull and stays that way all the way up to his suit days and feud with HBK and then that also got super stale again the rest of that run, and then god every time he's come back since has been basically just old Dolph Ziggler.

Bryan only did the vegan thing for a couple of months like a decade ago now and people still think he is because Vince had Michael Cole make fun of him for it on TV all summer

So after months of a blood feud, Jericho putting his whole career (in AEW) on the line so he could get his hands on MJF, who had been ducking him and refusing a match with him without a bunch of bullshit, is no longer a blood feud? I don't really understand the logic here. The feud didn't deescalate. Jericho put his career on the line. That only happens in blood feuds in American wrestling. I guess because it wasn't some bloody gimmick match or something maybe?

It's literally a blood feud, bro. It was just like 2 months ago that both of them were covered in blood atop a War Games cage and MJF tried to murder Jericho. Jericho has repeatedly try to smash MJF's head in with a baseball bat. The Inner Circle vs Pinnacle has been on sight blood feud all year, with MJF/Jericho being the core and most heated part of it. I don't really have a problem with them doing chain wrestling and cute spots and shit because both suck for different reasons, but it's most definitely been a blood feud.

HHH seeing Darby hug his father, Sting, while HHH never got to hug his son, Adam Cole, before Adam left home for good

No. He looked and moved like an old guy and feels like he's from a completely different era all together, even though there are even older guys also there who feel more relevant to the current game. It was weird. Certainly some Bret in WCW vibes where yeah it was Bret and there were a lot of entertaining promos and some good matches, but it wasn't BRET HART.

He just didn't have the edge and grit to him, or the chip on his shoulder, which were the intangibles that made him a success in the first place. His thing was always fighting against the system that said he couldn't make it, but now he's rich and old and content and now in a system that treats him like a god, so he just seemed like old wrassler guy doing old wrassler guy things. Almost a Backlund in his WWF return before the turn, but Punk has done about every possible iteration of his character as can be done.

WWE hasn't felt like such an uncool place to be probably since the early days of Nitro where there were amped crowds, established guys like Sting/Flair/Hogan/Savage, but also younger guys like Pillman, fresh international stars like Benoit/Eddie/Malenko/Regal/Finlay, NJ guys like Liger and Norton, all the lucha guys that started popping up in early 1996, WWF guys jumping ship, older stars like LOD or Steiners returning, then of course Razor, Diesel, 123 Kid jumping in the span of a few months. Which of course is not to say there's not a lot of real trash going on during that period of Nitro as well, but WCW certainly felt like a way cooler place to be for a while there, and AEW absolutely seems like it has 70% of the WWE roster looking sad out the window wishing they could play with their friends.

Idk if I was just in a weird mood because I was tired or what, but something somehow felt flat about this show to me. Which is to say it was the best wrestling show I've seen in 2021, but it felt to me like the crowd was a bit tired from all the shows in Chicago in the past 2 weeks. Miro/Eddie was exactly what it should have been and was quite enjoyable. Mox/Kojima was good enough. Most amped up and enthused Mox has seemed probably since the first show back with fans. Certainly more excited for MiSu and also lol at how much of a complete poser Moxley comes off as when MiSu shows up. Baker/Statlander was better than expected, outside of a few real ugly patches. I was really expecting the whole match to be like that, but they held it together and recovered from rough patches well. Statlander is strong as fuck. Cage match was good but I was left kind of disappointed because I've seen both teams do way crazier things in regular matches, let alone other types of gimmick matches. Idk what I was expecting, though. A Canadian destroyer off the cage? Fenix doing some wild ass triple dipple ripple flipple off the cage? The avalanche destroyer was gnarly as is, both the head landing and Matt's knees smashing into the mat on the rebound. Between that and that dropkick to the hip, I'm sure he's in a bad way today. Big shout out to Nick finding a new way to look completely ridiculous every 2 ways with his facial hair. Skipped through the battle royal but Ruby is a great pick up for AEW's women's division. MJF vs Jericho I thought was dogshit. Both dudes suck and the match went on forever with Jericho somehow appearing to get fatter throughout the match. MJF does absolutely nothing for me and I find his whole schtick to be extremely one note and there's been no added dimension to it since the first time I saw him in MLW. I get it, he's real young and real confident on the mic but his shit is so ARRRG I'M A HEEL YOU HATE ME DO YOU HATE ME I BET YOU DO type shit that's in a way similar to the Young Bucks' current gimmick but without the irony. And Jericho....man he's been trash for so long now. Was really hoping this would be the end of Jericho and he'll just go away. But also lol at how he looked like he was going to cry during his entrance getting so fucked up. Punk vs Darby was...okay, I guess. Punk looked old, slow, tired, and flabby. So really not unlike he did when he left wrestling. He also seemed real nervous and seems to have lost that edge to his persona and really just felt like a guy named Phil. Certainly was getting some Bret in WCW vibes from that match. I don't really know what I was expecting out of that match, but I don't think many people were expecting Punk to be working half the match with chinlocks and abdominal stretches. He definitely did not feel or look like a guy that was going to be back on top of the wrestling world again. Trying to imagine this guy working with Omega or something and I'm just not seeing it. Maybe he just had nerves and ring rust, but Christian was off for the same amount of time and is older and has looked fantastic since returning. I suppose he was better to begin with, though. Show/QT lol hard pass. I get the show needed a cool down match but nah I'm not watching that shit. Christian/Kenny 2 was real good. For sure match of the night to me. Adam Cole should be a good addition to The Elite, as you'll probably get matches with him instead of The Good Brothers. Bryan coming out to a hip hop remix of Flight Of the Valkyries killed me. AEW definitely feels like they're entering a new phase of signings and guys getting pushes right now. Feeling Hogan/early Nitro era of WCW where a lot of established talent came in in a wave and the homegrown guys or company vets took a backseat for a while. Which is not really fair as most of those guys were also established before they had WWE runs. To be honest, Punk is actually the one that feels out of place. He somehow feels older and more out of touch than not only his contemporaries like Bryan, not only the indie guys that came after him like The Elite/Black/PAC/Mox, but somehow Sting and Christian, too. It really seems like wrestling has passed him by completely and he left it behind completely. I think overall I actually bought into hype for a wrestling show and it couldn't have possibly lived up to it although it was the best show I can think of that I've seen this year.

Baron Scicluna, Tony Garea, and Nikolai Volkoff are high on my list

Will there ever be a Worst Wrestler Ever project and how many low card WWWF through early Hogan era guys can make the list

Darby should win with a crucifix after Punk hits the GTS but takes a half a second to bask in a successful return and makes too deep of a cover

The NXT X stuff was stupid to begin with because when WWE does European, Japanese, Mexico, Central/South America shows, those audiences want to see WWE shows, not shitty WWE versions of their local style, nor shitty local style of WWE shows.

NJPW sounds miserable right now

I'm 100% certain he'd get bookings as Chris Benoit Jr. in Mexico, Japan, and PR. Japan would probably insist on it, actually.

I've come to the first MSG show of 1984, the one where Hogan takes the title. Besides the absolute dogshit opener with Tony Garea, it's really night and day from 1983's MSG shows. The lighting is completely different, the mat color changed to the standard WWE canvas, camera work is about 50/50 between hard cam and handheld (I don't think hand helds were used at ALL in the past couple of MSG shows I had seen from 1981-83 despite there being camera men on the floor filming, they never cut to those shots". Not to mention the talent influx: Guys like Hogan, Orndorff, Tiger Chung Lee (aka "The Chunger"), Piper, Masked Superstar. Not to say there isn't a lot of hold overs: Tony Garea, Jose Luis Rivera, Sal Bellomo, Strongbow, Fuji, and what seems to be a never ending feud of Andre/Rocky Johnson + rotating partner vs The Samoans that had been going on for over a year at this point.

The period in 1996 between Uncensored and BATB had basically every other week where Giant would just chokeslam 3-6 guys in a row, laying out each time with them, and it was awesome every single time.

Dude seems like he's been sleepwalking since last summer to me. He seemed to start having fun when the team with Kingston first started but he's seemed pretty bored to me all year. Body going to shit, too

Counter counterpoint: Moxley has sucked in AEW just like he sucked the majority of his WWE run and the only time he's really seemed to give a shit since leaving WWE is when mixed up with NJPW stuff. Kingston is Kingston and I don't think he's had any particularly good matches in AEW either.

Were they really planning NXT Levant