Robert S

Wrestling was already booked that way in the 1920ies. From Ballyhoo! quoting Strangler Lewis' unpublished autobiography: There was a lot of funny stuff in the first couple of minutes of night 2: the bagpipe group playing Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie, Roddy Piper's theme CM Punk sitting next to Nise CM Punk Stephanie ending her promo with HHH catch phrase minus the "let's get ready to suck it" after spending a couple of minutes verbally fellating her husband in front of the audience

Am I the only one here who thought the main event was way, way, WAY too long? The first 25 minutes or so were a complete slog. I am shocked however, that the Rock made it through without ripping apart every muscle in his body. My favorite moment of the match was Rock dropping an f-bomb and the TV director muting something 10 seconds later. I thought the show was fine in total, some people are shitting on the Usos collision, I thought that match was okay enough. Though I wonder who thought that putting Naomi on Wrestlemania was a good idea. She has got to be the worst worker on the main roster. I guess she blew less stuff than at the Rumble, still, she should not be on national television let alone on a Wrestlemania main show.

Cagematch has two matches between the teams, two house shows in the summer of 85 (one in Syracuse, NY and the other in Orlando, FL). They were also in two battle royals, one them aired on TV.

Maybe he needs to slap someone's thigh while shacking their hand?

A Rock-Austin face-off now would be like a Hogan-Savage face-off at Mania 21 when Cena got his first title (or at least it would be if Cody would be ten years younger).

That name sounds like they are joining the drug game (or just "the game" ((c) The Wire), hmm... maybe it's an uncle Paul thing?). Though I am not sure if "WWE Speed" would work any better than IcoPro allegedly did (or rather didn't).

Let's see, the first that come to mind are Shibata, Mochizuki Jr. and Fujinami's kid. Ayako Hamada is still active, though only in Mexico.

A big issue (besides the stipulation and Piper being annoying as hell with it) is that Backlund is just not a good, entertaining heel in-ring. The character itself is fine, the work way below what he still could at this point. Just a week earlier, Backlund had a great five minute match with Jeff Jarrett where Backlund ended up playing the face.

There were only two reasons to have this match: to have Taker on the card and two shift the feud to Taker vs. Kama. Weird to have an MLB umpire as ref here, I can't find much about the backstory. Apparently the storyline was some fallout of the MLB strike ("Major League Baseball umpires were on strike at the time, but Larry Young was able to find work (...)" - wwe.com). Meltzer wrote the following about Young in the Observer: "a long-time pro wrestling fan dating back to the days when baseball Winter League umps shared the same apartment complex as the wrestlers did in Puerto Rico more than a decade ago".

Clever to have a team called Allied Powers debut against two guys with SS tattoos. There is nothing to this match, Bulldog and Luger don't harmonize at all, are off a lot in double-team spots. I suppose the main reason behind that team is "we have too many uppercard faces (with HBK turning the day after) in the singles division so let's form a team to face Owen & Yoko for the next five months on the road", though considering they used that match second from top, I don't see why the Gunns could not have been used in that spot (I assumed that the Gunns spent a couple of months being married to Men on a Mission but nope, they had only a couple of matches in south-east Asia and afterwards were stuck with the Blu Twins until October.

I definitely hated a lot of Angle's higher profile work in the post Smackdown Six era. I remember thinking that Angle-HBK Mania match being not just overrated but being plain bad. It would be interesting to go back two decades later to see if I was too harsh back then or if my opinion holds up.

Didn't the injury happen on a turnbuckle bomb? I might be completely off, but I think there were more people getting neck injuries from 'bucklebombs. I am pretty sure Balor got injured by that move as well.

Would it be CMLL's responsibility or the offices' (resp. indies' - only half of the people listed have worked for AEW) duty to ensure that work visas are in order?

I guess I basically begged for this joke.

Could they work on tribal land?

Isnt't the general story that UWF's success at the very least forced NJ and AJ to get rid of screwy finishes (i.e. count-outs and DQs) almost completely?

I watched the women's match (at 11 AM here), thought Naomi looked like shit (as in completely washed up), the rest looked fine (though Tiffany Stratton almost killed herself on that swandive senton, her head was probably cms above the ground). I got bored during the long break after the match and switched off.

I wonder less about why someone would want to pay 2k+ for 3-4 hours of entertainment, more how some people have the time to do this at least once a month, travel included. Are green-shirt-guy-with-Ellsworth-face and TNT-flag-guy trust fund kids who never had to work a day in their lives? Did they, while still in college, found start-ups that would probably have gone belly-up but someone managed to get bought out for 8 figures and got out of the company before the buyer found out there was nothing there and liquidated everything? Did they get rich running some crypo scam?

In my WCW rewatch (only doing PPVs an Clashed), two Roma things stuck out: Pretty Wonderful vs. Cactus Jack & Kevin Sullivan at Bash at the Beach 94 that went way, way, WAY too long (wikipedia says 20:10, but it felt like close to a broadway draw) as well as the infamous Roma vs. Alex Wright match where Roma not only kicked out at the supposed finish but also called a match where he had a lot of highspots and Wright got almost nothing.

The only persionality the Harris twins ever showed inside the ring was via their tattoos. At least they had those tattoos not for long until they covered it, but still.

Thing is, most of those sharks at the top of the business worlds are the biggest carnies of them all.

I guess it depends on what you understand by "one of the biggest stars". Top 5? Top 10? Top 20? Also what is meant by "modern era". Even assuming Meltzer meant the last 10 years and not the last 15 years, Mox is definitely not Top 5 and very likely also not Top 10. I suppose he would make a Top 20, but without coming up with a list my gut feeling would be that we would be somewhat at the bottom of such a list. Though I guess it depends on how many part timers you would include.

"one of the biggest company stars of the modern era" is not really a good description for Mox

I suppose if Laurinaitis hopes to get a pass on the criminal charges front by going "I was a victim as well" the DA will probably want more details than just corroboration on the (potential) charges against Vince. So I suppose he would have to spill the beans on a lot of other dirt.

I thought he would make it to Mania, though when I saw how bad he moved with his jumping knees to the corner, I almost assumed this might happen. I only watched the two Rumbles - the Tribal Chief has jumped to shark for me worse than Backlund allegedly did in his later years (which by all evidence was exaggerated anyway, and Logan Paul vs. KO did not interest me yesterday evening when I was watching the show either. The men's Rumble felt pretty forgettable, though I had to laugh that they did not manage to keep Andrade hot for a single night. Let's see when he wants out again. Also I agree that McAfee screwed up the timing completely which lead to them rushing through Omos' and Breakker's eliminations so that Breakker could get in his spear on McDonagh. I don't know why they did not call an audible and scratched that spot. Speaking of spots: was this the first Rumble appearance of Kofi without trying some silly "I am not eliminated" spot? The first two thirds of the women's Rumble was bad, bad, bad. Naomi was off on everything she tried and Ivy Nile and Maxxine were green beyond believe. Jade also had a funny interaction with Naomi that looked a-couple-of-weeks-into-wrestling-school bad. Actually shocking looking at who entered pretty early, that they could not hold the match together. At least that match picked up towards the end.