strobogo

Really gonna be interested in seeing how Punk fares in AEW as even their big "storytelling" matches are very athletic and full of high spots, and Punk wasn't even a good athlete in his 20s and 30s

I think HHH and Steph have both cashed out multiple millions in stock in the past 2 years. I don't see any circumstance where HHH leaves WWE without Stephanie also leaving, and I don't see any circumstance where Stephanie leaves the company ever.

Charlotte has had many examples of shit not going well and her getting mad and suddenly very stiff and aggressive or reckless with her opponent for the next couple of spots before calming down. Nia's default is reckless. This isn't even the first time these two specifically together have had an incident like this.

You know, I have no idea why AEW doesn't use Marko Stunt to get demolished by big names coming in. I'd like to see La Parka just punching Marko in the mouth and then dancing.

Lol at winning the name and then refusing to use it.

Seriously why the fuck does that guy get on TV at all? He offers absolutely ZERO on screen or in the ring. If he's a good trainer or agent then whatever, let that be his job, not also an on screen performer being a complete black hole of charisma anytime he's on screen. Big Show vs QT should at most be just Show hitting him with the KO punch and that's it. It can be an angle during an interview.

I dunno but there's a ton more Spectrum shows from this period than MSG and I wonder if its because they were basically the same shows but the Philly shows were superior so they just uploaded those.

Remember when Scorpio went solo, won the not MITB and became the "Face Of The Revolution" only to lose the match at the next show, immediately get put into a tag team and turned heel, didn't have a match on TV for 2 months, suddenly got a match with Sting/Darby, then went back to not having a match on TV for another 2 months?

Another couple thoughts on a 1983 Spectrum show 1. Gorilla being really perplexed at the concept of these fancy new compression sleeves young boi Curt Hennig was wearing. 2. The Big Green Belt is the most underrated WWE championship belt. 3. Big Jon Studd's bacne is fucking atrocious. Fuzzy ass early 80s footage and it's still just horrific looking and visible from all angles. 4. Spectrum production vs MSG is real interesting as the Spectrum show is much closer to the Hulkamania era with the gray mat and much more handheld work from the floor. 5. Lol at the early Dunnism of zooming in and out on a hold as Backlund was wrenching a hammerlock back and forth. 6. What a set of teams: Ray Stevens, Don Muraco, Buddy Rose, Billy Graham, Mr. Fuji vs Rocky Johnson, Jimmy Snuka, Andre, Pedro Morales, Sal Bellomo. Now a couple of outliers there but you know. This is a very fun match, especially considering some of the guys involved at this stage in their careers. This might be the first Survivor Series match in WWE history and it very much plays out like how the matches were booked in the first 2-3 years of the event. There's constant action and lots of great spots, crowd and commentary are popping huge constantly the whole match. 7. Honestly this show, which is a month earlier than the MSG show I just watched, feels like it is 4 years away from the MSG show. Even the crowd seems younger and hipper.

Impact had a real good run before AEW ended up taking half their roster. In better times Wyatt would definitely fit in TNA better than AEW. I still think he does right now, but agreed it's a huge step down for him in a way that it isn't for some of the other guys that have been released and popped up in TNA in the past 2 years. I do not see him being a fit in AEW under any version of his various gimmicks and characters. His in ring style and character/story/gimmick style just do not mesh with AEW at all.

I remember when Lemmy died and the pics of him with all his Nazi memorabilia were all over the place, HHH was asked about it and he said actually Paul's favorite band is Metallica, HHH's favorite band is Motorhead.

Walking corpse is really a great way to describe what he looked like. His skin was absolutely disgusting looking in that period.

Sometimes I put on Old School WWE shows before bed just because they're usually fairly boring and also easy to have something on with calming noise that I don't have to concentrate on or devote any energy to. So I put on 3/20/83 WWF at MSG. I had a few thoughts and comments. 1. Ray Stevens attempted an apron piledriver and almost got hit with an apron back body drop. 2. God is there a worse gimmick change and more precipitous fall off than Superstar Billy Graham's transformation into the karate dude? He looks and moves like he aged 25 years in 3-5, just completely lost all of his charisma, ring work absolutely trash. It's really wild and I can't think of another star of that level who fell off so dramatically and completely so fast. 3. Gotta lol at Backlund/Muraco being a Texas Death Match and about 75% of the match is Backlund working a headlock, but it works and when they finally start actually doing some stuff near the end, the fans really come unglued. Real neat finishing stretch where Backlund EASILY muscles Muraco up for the shoulder breaker, Muraco kicks off the buckles to flip back and back drop Backlund, Backlund bridges up and turns that into the chicken wing, Muraco breaks it by running into the opposite turnbuckle, which Backlund then uses to hit a German suplex for the win. Seemed unusually detailed and intricate for the time and promotion. Also interesting that Backlund had 3 viable finishers and all 3 come into play in one 40 second sequence. 4. Man the WWF really looks completely different just a year later. Everything still looks and feels like mid to late 70s WWWF on this show. The ring canvas is still the bluish purple, the cameras are still almost entirely hard cam, the lighting is still fairly bright on the audience. Just from an aesthetic and production level, it really feels like 1983 to 1984 might be the most drastic single year change in company history. At least with the Attitude Era there was a progression over a 2-3 year period and the actual production in the way they filmed things didn't really change at all.

All Out looks both over stuffed and undercooked as it's already looking like a 4 hour show yet like 60% of the big name under card guys don't or won't have a match at all. Feels like the Dynamite and Rampage before All Out are probably going to be more like extensions of the pre-show.

Arn blocking the kick and then getting kicked in the balls was hilarious tbh

Hey Phil looks older than Tony Schiavone what in the

Lmao. No one in America has ever given a fuck about Alberto Del Rio no matter how many main event pushes they kept giving him.

Of course a moment like Punk's return is going to get more and more sparse, because the amount of big name stars made since Punk's run is basically just Daniel Bryan, who has left and come back twice and been full time active including multiple main event runs in the past 3 years. There's just no one left. All the Attitude Era guys are too old. Even Edge is nearly 50. The real top guys from the era are pushing 60 and completely broken down messes. Sting is a unique case but also hasn't been used as a guy to headline shows and title matches with AEW (but was for WWE). But guys like Austin, Taker, Foley, Hall and Nash, Hogan, DDP, Bret Hart, HBK, Goldberg, Angle are too old and/or broken down or otherwise truly retired. Rock is also getting close to 50 and so busy and probably is not going to do anything to put his body in jeopardy at this stage but has himself also made a return in the past decade. When you move into the generation after them, well Orton is still active full time, Brock has been used as a special attraction for a decade now, Cena is a full time actor and any return he makes is going to be short lived like this summer which was probably his last sustained run of any kind, Batista is retired and definitely not coming back, and then who is left from that era? Eddie is dead and even if he were alive, he'd be in his mid 50s. Jeff Hardy? Completely broken down. JBL? Not a draw even at his peak and also old and broken down. WWE has already been trying to mine the Ruthless Aggression and early PG eras for nostalgia with Miz and Morrison, Lashley, Shelton, MVP, Carlito at the Rumble, the various Divas era women at the Rumbles, and so on. None of those people are going to do shit for ratings. They definitely aren't people that are going to create huge buzz and excitement in lapsed fans or current fans. And Punk himself probably wouldn't be much of a big deal if he hadn't left WWE and stayed out of wrestling for so long. If he had stuck around and been miserable with miserable booking for 7 years, most people wouldn't give a shit about him like they don't really give a shit about all but a handful of people in WWE.

When the hell was ROH even remotely a threat? ROH the same month they had their biggest crowd ever up to that point (Kenny vs Cody show was like 6200 people or something WM weekend) they drew something like 250 for their next taping. By the time ROH/NJPW ran MSG, the super indy phase of NXT had been going on for 4+ years already and that was a once in a life time event. There's zero chance ROH would have sold out MSG without NJPW, and if tickets hadn't gone on sale when they had all of the Elite guys who were expected to be there when the event was announced. It was very, very, immediately clear that the only draws for ROH were NJPW and The Elite for years and even when those relationships were still active, ROH was regularly drawing a couple hundred people to shows without them on the cards. ROH was never a threat because Sinclair has never given a shit about them to put any money into them to be any kind of threat to begin with. But also because ROH has been even worse than WWE for ages.

The "failure" of NXT really should be seen as Vince ruining everything and less placed on HHH's head. It was all fine and dandy until Vince started calling people up not understanding what made them popular to begin with and consistently fucked so many of them up that eventually the people on the roster were publicly saying shit like they'd rather retire than get called up to Raw or Smackdown. Then forced them to go to 2 hours and compete with AEW when they were already in a cold and stale streak due to issues already stated. Not to mention all the times when Vince would go out of his way to fuck NXT over by pulling people in the middle of storylines just to do nothing with them, often right after winning championships, and then making people who were portrayed and accepted as big stars in NXT look like complete fucking goofs and losers consistently once they hit Raw or Smackdown. Vince went out of his way to make sure people knew NXT was minor leagues and treated almost every talent as such for years on the main roster before "rebuilding them" to the point where the rest of the audience agreed and the NXT talent didn't want to work on Raw or Smackdown. And then put all the blame on HHH. Lol.

Oh weird I thought they did because they're easy to find on Archive/DailyMotion in what appears to be higher quality than what you'd get dubbing a tape and posting it online. Then I guess everything made it except the stuff in the Hidden Gems section, which sucks because there was a lot of dope stuff in there but it's probably a nightmare with Peacock's organizational system.

Ilja/Walter was amazing, again. KOR/Cole was not amazing, again. I don't know how the agent system works in WWE, but you compare those two matches and one feels like the wrestlers completely doing their own thing from start to finish, with every detail coming from their awareness of their characters and the story and their abilities. The other feels like HHH and HBK playing with toys or a video game of a match they wish they could still do with minimal input from the wrestlers where everything is laid out beat for beat, facial expression for facial expression, from start to finish. Whether that's the case or not, I don't know. But that's certainly what it feels like when you see those two matches back to back.

Cole will be fine as alternate brand Seth Rollins because he can talk and set up all the video packages with his facial expressions. KOR seems destined for 6 months of Main Event and then getting cut.

Eli Drake fucking sucks. He sucked in TNA, sucked in NWA, sucked in NXT. Dude is a poor man's Mr. Kennedy, who also wasn't good.

Lol Charlotte. People are demonstrably not interested in her as proven by the groans and people tuning out in segments she's involved in on TV.