Robert S

That's actually a great comeback.

If they ever do a Raw vs. Smackdown vs. NXT Survivor Series show again, I hope to god that they won't do these aweful 5 vs. 5 vs. 5 matches ever again. Sure, somehow they managed to get some NXT people over, but they could easily have done this in "normal" elimination tag team matches and have non-messy matches at the same time. The booking was all over the places as well. Why the hell are Candice LeRae and Rhea Ripley teaming up with Io Shirai and Bianca Belair one night after they were facing off against each other in (at least in theory) the ultimate grudge match? (without having any problems with each other) I suppose the argument would be that the "brand is bigger than personal issues". In that case, fuck them. And why is Rhea Ripley suddenly a chickenshit heel? If they want to do the brand duel thing again next year, please do it in a round-robin way. E.g. each brand providing two 4 wrestler teams (per sex), one with a heel captain and one with a face captain. Then do something like Raw faces vs. NXT heels, NXT faces vs. Smackdown heels and Smackdown faces vs. Raw heels and get rid of the other three way dances as well (because those did not get anyone over). Also, if they want to continue to have NXT part of the main roster PPVs, they should either scratch the TakeOver shows or move those shows to non-PPV weekends. Because building up to two shows in parallel with some wrestlers being part of both shows in completely different roles just does not work. Especially, if the guys who should be heavily beaten up barely sell that (apart from wearing some bandages). And I would have never guessed that Rey Misterio Jr. was supposed to be the Joker. I was honestly thinking that he was promoting some clown care NGO.

I agree in principle, though in the let's call it shoot-version of pro wrestling (MMA), it's sometimes better for your bottom line to lose an exciting fight than to win a boring one.

I would go for Triple Threat Mania as there are six Triple Threat matches on the show. Considering that Triple Threat may be my least favorite gimmick match in wrestling, I don't know if I ever get through the whole show. I hope they are clever enough to not have three people in the ring at the same time in the 5 vs. 5 vs. 5 elimination matches, because it could get very bad that way.

Ah, all the good, famous people Austria gave the world.

They took bumps on LEGOs? That's insane. I remember how much just stepping on a single small stone can hurt. EDIT: Looking at youtube, Joey Ryan seems to use LEGOs semi-regularly as props. And some of those bumps really look quite painful.

Can someone please tell Earl Hebner to retire? Or at least AEW should stop booking him for their PPVs. I suppose Hebner would still be fine in a match with two veterans who do a "bullshit" match with 2 or 3 bumps, but please don't put him in with Joey Janella, who had to tell Hebner to get out of the way at least three times. There is only one thing, that Hebner should do for AEW: teach Aubrey Edwards how to dramatically throw a heel manager out of the arena.

All this "brand supremacy" talk has me almost tapping out from watching NXT. In the first 20 minutes of the show that term was used at least 5 times. And I assume this is even worse on Raw and Smackdown, where they only have Survivor Series to build to, not a Takeover show as well.

A bit like the Montreal Screw Job: lots of people talking about quitting and in the end almost everyone was at the Raw the next night. (though I realize that it's a huge difference if what happened effected you personally)

Someone changed the stipulation on Wikipedia for Natalya vs. Lacey Evans to "Burqa Singles Match".

Cain has to pay his dues.

Okay, Arnie is a guy how sounds exactly the same when speaking English and German. His Styrian accent is very thick in both languages. Funny thing is that I did not realize that for a long time because he is dubbed by someone else in the German translations of his movies, and dubbing is usually done in accent-free standard German. I doubt that most Germans from the northern half of the country really understand him when he is speaking German.

I was thinking about a Goldfinger-like accent. I mean I have heard Germans speaking English like Gert Fröbe, but not many and mostly older people.

That doesn't mean anything, I also could not do a Hollywood-style German-English accent, and I am a German native speaker. And thinking about it, I know quite some Russian-native speakers, and none of them sound like a Koloff when speaking English.

Liger is someone I could see being part of the next WWE HOF class anyway. Mauro name-dropped him at the last NXT TV show (which, of course, might not mean anything).

There is an obvious Dynamic Dudes joke to make. Besides that, I only remember Foley skeletoning on a stretcher down the ramp.

"She's got herpes." was a regular chant in the 90ies.

On the one hand it's a Heyman thing, yes, on the other hand maybe they are trying to copy Secret Gate rules.

I just saw that tomorrow is Hell in a Cell and right now there are only four matches announced so far. Did the "season premieres" take that much attention by the creative team that they forgot that they have a "PPV" (Network special or whatever you want to call it) coming up?

Slater looks weird as part of the "historical candidates" section. He debuted the same year as Slaughter and was even three years younger than him. I suppose he is their because his breakthrough happened earlier, but still. I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere, but Slater and to a lesser degree Chavo Sr. fit the "modern candidates" section better. Besides that, add here the usual "why are wrestlers under 40 on the ballot" and "the Europe/Australia/... section is ridiculous, you are either well versed in Austrialian wrestling, in English wrestling ... but are you cannot be an expert in all regions at the same time" rants.

Nyla looks dangerous to work with to me. The way she was just dropping a girl (forgot how) to the floor when the wrestlers supposed to catch her were not in position, looked beyond Nia Jax-levels of careless. But the whole Battle Royal was a huge mess anyway, full of badly blown spots and timing issues (the third group of wrestlers should have entered when Nyla was the only girl standing, problem was that they mistimed the segment and the ring was still half-full, so the third group had to heavily stall the entrance). But I suppose that is what you get if you combine a whole lot of inexperienced workers with a time-critical match type. I suppose they under-agented the match, thinking that it did not matter that much for a pre-show match. I don't want to know how match planning and agenting is going into the women's Royal Rumble each year, in comparison, to make it come off fluent (considering that they still are using lots of inexperienced or simply bad workers).

The show that aired on the WWE Network? I don't know, it felt very much like a proto-Mid South, even using the same bumper music and having Watts (and Boyd Pierce) on commentary. I suppose Watts was mostly running the ship at that point.

I tried to watch the show live (having the rare chance the watch live wrestling at European prime time), but the f'n network is again buffering all the time.

Fun fact: the WWWF name lasted about 16 years, the WWF name 23 years and the WWE name is already up to more than 17 years. So in the not-so-distant future "WWE" will surpass "WWF". And as it fits to the comment above: I was watching some 2002 WWE lately and it shocking how little has changed presentation wise and such in those 17 years. Now comparing 2002 with 1985...

The premise for that film according to IMDB: "After discovering a magical mask, an 11-year-old aspiring wrestler enters a competition to become the next WWE superstar." At the very best this movie is going to be harmless fun, but this could reach Ready to Rumble level as well.