Robert S

The date seems to be the airdate, the show was taped on February 2nd, 1986.

Just a random note: Charlotte vs. Trish has to be the match with the biggest average boob-job in a WWE match in the last 10 years. Hell, sans Chyna, were there any regular wrestlers in the WWF / WWE that had, let's say more obvious enhanced breasts, than those two?

Chris Jericho did not need social media to shut down his website in 2002 when internet fans did not give a PPV match of his against RVD *****.

From that point-of-view this thread should be 30 pages long as Corey Graves made me switch to German commentary for 20 seconds (until I remembered that Carsten Schaefer makes Coach sound like prime JR).

On TV it sounded like they got killed once they realized that the bag did not contain thumbtacks but tools. The worst looking barbed wire in pro wrestling history did not get them back in.

Is there a story behind Ford going for the Rock's two signature moves? The "new" network also is really unstable here. In the beginning, the video was glitching, and now I had about 6 bufferings withing a minute. I never had this with the "old" one. By the way: I just don't like this formula they are using in the NXT tag team matches for the last two years or so. The matches have as much psychology as a 2003 ROH scramble match.

I remember that match being a complete disaster, full of shitty, ridiculous gimmicks.

I don't know about the cage being used as stipulation for the third fall. Regal's stipulation seems to be treated as a surprise, and you cannot really hide a cage during the show (at least not from the fans in the arena). EDIT: And at the moment I am posting this, Regal is presenting the cage.

I could image this going both ways: covering and organizing travel might put them into a worse position in case of a court case reg. the independent contractor status.

I am really slow, I only realized today that Kamala's (the wrestler's) family name is Harris.

As a pre-teen kid (the 80ies) I suppose there was no regular wrestling show on German language TV at all (I think there was wrestling on TV starting in 1988 or 89; I remember CWA clips on Austrian TV to fill up sports programming earlier than that). - When I started watching in 93, there were two 1-hour WWF shows (Superstars and Challenge) and I think two (or maybe three) 1-hour WCW shows (definitely Saturday Night, plus Worldwide or Pro). - WWF stayed with two hours per week (replacing first Challenge with Action Zone and later (early 96) with Raw) basically until they lost TV (or cancelled their deal, however you want to phrase it) in early 98. When they returned in late 98 / early 99, we got a 1-hour version of Raw. - WCW TV stayed on German TV (on the same station) until the end of WCW. For some time (early 96 till early 98) WWF was on the same station. The programming schedule was something like Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9 or 10 PM WCW, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 or 10 PM WWF. PPV shows were on Saturday night (all WCW shows and the big five WWF shows). - The big five WWF PPVs were on free TV until Survivor Series 97 and from Survivor Series 98 to, I want to say, Survivor Series 2000. - WCW PPVs (all of them) were on free TV until 98ish (I don't remember that precisely). - You could also get Turner Classic Movies, which was airing Nitro and Thunder in a double block on Friday night (at least until some time in 99, I don't think it was on anymore during the Russo era). As these shows were from the same week as they aired in the US, I usually watched these versions (though I did not watch Thunder regularly, Nitro and Thunder in one sitting was more often than not too much). - Eurosport was airing some older New Japan tapes for some time, though I barely ever watched that. I remember, that every time I watched a New Japan show, the show ended with a Jushin Liger singles match that he won, so I assumed that he was the Japanese Hogan.

I think "somewhat real" is not a completely wrong way to classify pro wrestling. The results are predeterminated etc. but the blood, sweat and tears are (more often than not) as real as it gets.

Because there were no Hep-C positive wrestlers doing some heavy blading in the 80ies? EDIT: Okay, there were apparently no Hep-C tests until the late 80ies, so replace the "80ies" above by "90ies".

There is also the story about him reacting on Meltzer calling him a "B+ player".

I tapped out after the first half of the show. That 205 Live match was the worst (2019) match I have seen all year, and I have seen a 12 minute Manabu Nakanishi match. "Tony Nese" has to be the answer to the question "Who on the WWE roster is worse than Seth Rollins?" And why are they adding YET ANOTHER title? Weren't 10 main show titles (including the 205 Live belt, which is defended on main show PPVs) not enough? What title is there left to add? A second women's tag team title? A six man title? A 305+ lbs title? A 45 years+ title (aka the Jeddah championship)?

What's with all those fake Mongolians in 70ies and 80ies pro wrestling anyway? It's not as if there was any current or former political conflict to draw heat from nor are Mongolians these mythical characters that create instant interest.

AKA "the unstoppable force" and "the immovable object"?

That was exactly my thought as well. I mean I suppose it depends on the circumstances, but just looking at the bare notes from Dave, you could consider that as an attempt to show off or big time the other writers. This is something you put in your CV, maybe put it on a shelf in your office, but that's it.

Making the obvious joke: Q: What is a Seth Rollins? A: First of all, it's Seth FREAKING Rollins. Q: What does he stand for? A: Construction, because he is an architect. Q: What does he oppose? A: Kings, he even slays them. Q: What's he about? A: Burning it down.

The idea behind the brand split is fine (it should reduce overexposure of guys being on TV 2+ times per week and give guys room to grow), it's mostly the execution that's shitty. When they did the initial brand split on 02 they managed to create different identities for the brands (whether by accident or on purpose), Raw was Hunter's Sports-Entertainment brand, Smackdown was the workrate brand (due to the Smackdown Six). They also managed to do single-brand PPVs that did not feel like third rate shows. Now it's just an abitrary split where some guys mostly appear on Raw while the other mostly appear on Smackdown. Due to the huge amount of titles the (multi-brand) PPVs are just one title match after another.

I don't know about planning, more like considering it. I don't think that they are actively persuing this for that long (don't ask me numbers, I am not a regular dirt sheet reader). Honestly, I would love to see the same patience WWE has shown in the Network in their "regular" product. When the Network was initially launched there were several delays of the launch date. And when they finally launched it, the product was (at least as far as I understand, I got the network only two years later when it became available here) in a decent state (you could argue that more stuff should have been available for the launch, but you could also argue that the big drops they had for quite some time show that the Network is alive, something that would have been harder to do with all Raw, Smackdown and Nitro being available at the launch).

Classy as always

True, but Muslim countries (the states, not the people) in the Levant generally do, especially Wahhabistic countries.

Heyman was on the last show and they got the Daivaris in for the first show. It would be much worse if Goldberg had an Israeli passport (or the Daivari's Iranian ones) instead of an American one. A Qatari passport would probably also be a huge problem.