PeteF3

He and Tiger Mask were licensed, as far as I know.

If he'd gone into full-bore wrasslin' I'm 100% convinced he would have been a much better worker and star than Tony Halme, with a similar dynamic. His showmanship and cockiness made him stand out as a star in RINGS and his matches were usually worth watching for that reason alone. No chance at a top 100 because the total output just isn't there and as fun as he was it just wasn't a Volk Han-like peak. But if we did a top 200 or 250 I might use a personal pick on him for last place.

Hogan literally changed the first WW3 finish as the guys were lining up to go out for the match, so no, it doesn't seem like bullshit to me at all.

I don't get the in-ring reasons for the Lethal hate either. Maybe because I so rarely watched ROH that I didn't get a chance to get sick of him. That was the worst MJF promo since his horrid shoot promo (and boy has THAT aged horribly in hindsight now that it's been rendered completely irrelevant). Just LOUD NOISES in lieu of content for a character who's retrogressed. And I'm officially over Stokely Hathaway--he sucks, his promo sucked, his booking sucks, and the Firm sucks. The women's booking was just absolutely laughable, like a self-parody of bad TK booking. Danielson and Jericho basically saved this show. Tony has to look at every women's segment he books involving the Women's Champion and ask himself, before he inks it into the format sheet: "Would I do this to my men's World Champion?" If the answer is "no," then he needs to come up with something else.

Okay, then let's call out Regal for being arrogant, too. Can we at least be consistent with this?

He was/is probably less of an asshole about it, but Regal has tweeted publicly that some guys in AEW are too busy on their phones when they should be studying and seeking advice when in the locker room. Punk may be an asshole but he may not be wrong about this per se.

Okay, gotcha. "Other wrestlers" would include Rosa, so until we get some hard substantiation I'm writing that off.

"Been mentioned" where? Because it's been reported by Dave and Sapp that there was "no heat" on Storm for her comments, and AEW was still quite explicit that she was still an "Interim" champion last night.

Ringside News is less than worthless as a news source. Like, it wouldn't shock me if it was true, but I'm going to need a better source than that and so far none has been forthcoming. Edit:

"Uninvited"? Was Punk's rant about saying it to his face not an invitation? Edit: Not taking sides here, neither side really looks good.

So man the fuck up and say, "No comment." This is full-on Streisand Effect and incredibly selfish on his part. Like, I'm sensing there's going to be some major "either he goes or I go" directives coming out of this.

Also way late to this topic, but another in terms of fan perception: Erik Watts effortlessly flipping Rick Rude over from an amateur stance, after Rude loudly bragged about how no one in the locker room could do so. That one doesn't get told a lot in the same breath as Rude clocking Ultimate Warrior or PN News, does it?

What exactly is a "top draw" as far as AEW goes? What does that tangibly mean for Punk, specifically? Are there gate and PPV bonuses in their contracts or just a flat fee?

Speculating is fine. The last few posts seemed pretty sure it was a work. And...I dunno, the pipe bomb was a great promo but it sure came off as a work to me at the time.

And I'm sure I'm going to be told that the Cody thing "was different" even though the extent that it was different should have made it more likely to be a work, not less.

So...no one here learned their lesson from the Cody saga? I guess he's going to show back up as a heel any day now, right? Honestly, I'm stunned that a community as intelligent as PWO is immediately thinking "LOL work."

At first I thought the 6-man was a way to get FTR a PPV payday while also covering for Dax's injury, but then Dax went and challenged Lethal to a singles match for next week.

Please stop trying to make the Trustbusters happen. This is the Million-Dollar Corporation reincarnate and nobody is notalgic for that shit. And 100+ guys on the roster and this Zack Clayton goof is getting a title shot, even an unsanctioned one? Come the fuck on. Lee Moriarty or one of the Wingmen would be an improvement for this spot.

I know has Bix has speculated that the infamous Philly fan behavior may have been a reason. This wasn't a "Bischoff takes it up the ass / Doo-dah, doo-dah" full-on ECW crowd but it was always in the Philly DNA. Why they made an exception in 1987, I don't know. (Note that crass, drunken, boo-your-own-team-and-throw-batteries-at-the-other behavior from Philadelphia fans is a reputation the city has had going all the way back to the 1910's, for all of its major sports teams.)

For a placeholder show with an "eh" lineup on paper...as a live event, this overdelivered. Maybe I was starstruck by my first live Dynamite, but I'd go and watch it all again.

I didn't know this until Between the Sheets covered it, but apparently Ventura didn't really have his falling out with Hogan until his royalties lawsuit--that's when he discovered that Hogan was the one who ratted him out when he started talking unionization. Supposedly they were friends or at least friendly during Ventura's time in the WWF. That said...I'm not sure there wasn't a "How come him and not me?" twinge of jealousy on Jesse's part, either. Even if we can break down what Hogan did after the bell rang better than Jesse, I'm sure Jesse wasn't really going to see it that way. Or maybe Vince, Pat, and/or George Scott just thought they were too similar. Jim Cornette talked about how the Road Warriors drew better against the Midnights and Arn/Tully than they did against the POP or Skyscrapers, because "it was rock vs. rock--you need paper or scissors in there." Honestly, I don't know what you do with Hogan after Mania 3 short of bringing in Flair or someone else at least fresh. If Andre can't beat him, who is going to buy that Harley Race in 1987 is going to? They brilliantly managed to freshen up Hogan by making him a chaser in 1988 and then giving him the most intensely personal feud of his career in '89, but for the rest of '87...I agree. He still drew some surprisingly big houses with Khan but the Monster-of-the-Week formula had burnt itself out by the time DiBiase arrived.

As they mentioned on Between the Sheets either this week or last: traditional Japanese booking involves guys returning from injury losing their first match. I kinda shoulda seen that coming, which is the best kind of shock booking tactic--the one that makes you slap your forehead afterward.

I'm watching and waiting for what happens to Kevin Dunn. If he goes, or "retires" himself, then I'll believe that Vince is really gone. How much of the change in Smackdown verbiage is due to Vince's declining involvement and how much of it is just McAfee being McAfee? He's a fanboy, but he's never been a guy to give much of a fuck about WWE Newspeak.

Oh, the dude is going to be yelling instructions at his pallbearers, no question.

WWE literally removed Brock from the Smackdown preview on their website, dude. You don't think that would have had people going "WTF?" And if SRS and Alvarez had either ignored it or said, "Something's happening but I can't say what" until after the fact, they would have been pilloried for that, too. What Alvarez reported is what happened: Brock walked out and they attempted to get him to return. And "kermit" on reddit, who's a confirmed insider who doesn't have a newsletter to hawk, corroborated the story as well.