Robert S

There are quite a lot of such guys on the roster, e.g. Corbin, Ziggler, Lesnar, Jordan, Mojo, both guys of AOP, Titus, ... (I know that most were before the performance center days, but they did not start scouting college athletes and similar only when they opened the performance center)

WWE often amazes me how little they do with what they have but Almas in a pre-show match against Sin Caras might be a new high (low). Not watching any WWE TV leaves also a lot of other questions looking at that card: - Why are the worse Rotundo son (and for that matter the better yet still shitty one) & Michael McGillicutty on the main show? - Where are all the great tag teams they have? (the Usos, the Bar, the Revival ... hell, I would prefer the AOP above most of the tag teams on the main card) etc. Oh yes, and if the Kane appearence is not a one-off (i.e. it leads either to a DB vs. Kane feud or a title reign) then I am done with WWE until the next Mania season starts.

Doesn't Lesnar have to be in the USADA program for at least 6 months to be eligible to fight? If that's the case I would assume he will fight on the Superbowl weekend show (if he makes it that far, that is).

The way 205 works I just find it unwatchable. I mean taping a B show after the A show just cannot work. Do it the other way around, that way at least the fans that are already there will be hot instead of everyone who stays being burnt out. Though what they should do is producing it similar to NXT. I mean no one cares about the "live" part of the show anyway. (I hope that the part of it being taped after Smackdown is actually still true.)

And PPV is not even a thing anymore. Everything is one the network and if you don't have already subscribed you can watch the big shows for free (as they don't get tired of telling you).

The first half of this match was fine and about what it should have been (minus bad Sting performance), but beginning with the Scorpion Deathlock this fell completely apart. You had Charles Robinson kicking Hogan's arm away when he was going for a rope break, an unnecessary ref bump, Nick Patrick put into the spotlight (sorry, this was not the time and place for the resolution of this storyline), a second way too long heat segment including Hogan doing face spots (e.g. Sting starting the knuckle-lock-test-of-strength, Hogan overpowering him and while Stings hands are on the mat stepping on them) and a horrible finish.

Probably worse. For as bad as wrestling is for you, most wrestlers don't end up with pugilistic dementia. I remember when I was a kid, me and my cousin wanted to take up boxing, so we asked my uncle to take us to train and he looked at us and said, "no, everyone who boxes ends up with slurred speech." Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair were just on the Dan LeBatard show and even though both of their bodies are broken they are still cutting promos like its 1985. How many former employees (sorry, independent contractors) of Vince McMahon did not reach the age of 60 or even 45? As much as he disgusts me, I highly doubt that number will ever be anything resembling like that for Dana White. Are we pretending that those were problems with the act of wrestling vs. the act of fighting in a cage? Drugs, steroids, suicide, etc. are problems with pro wrestling, but have much more to do with the culture around the sport than the sport itself. Let's just say I could not sleep well or look at myself into the mirror if I made a billion dollars while my employees were dying left and right and only starting to do something against it when my company got into the headlines when an employee killed his wife and son with his bare hands. He might not have been responsible for drugs or steroids in the business but he definitely fostered an environment where taking them was advantageous.

Probably worse. For as bad as wrestling is for you, most wrestlers don't end up with pugilistic dementia. I remember when I was a kid, me and my cousin wanted to take up boxing, so we asked my uncle to take us to train and he looked at us and said, "no, everyone who boxes ends up with slurred speech." Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair were just on the Dan LeBatard show and even though both of their bodies are broken they are still cutting promos like its 1985. How many former employees (sorry, independent contractors) of Vince McMahon did not reach the age of 60 or even 45? As much as he disgusts me, I highly doubt that number will ever be anything resembling like that for Dana White.

He want 5.5 for the BOSJ finals, which is about on the same level as a 6.75 score.

So does that translate to 7* or 8*?

The guy he is fighting likely wouldn't even be in the UFC if he wasn't being brought in to fight Punk. He is 33 years old, and has an 0-1 MMA record. However, his loss is to the same guy that demolished Punk, and he is apparently a pretty good Muay Thai guy. So, unless Punk has improved significantly, he is probably getting knocked out to end this experiment. Punk is 39 years old and his athletic ability never was a strength in his pro wrestling career. He was a guy who made it on willpower, brains and charisma / talking skill. There is no reason to believe that he improved much since the last fight.

Of all collection themes they could think of they went with the best of Ho Train.

- Sorry, you are right, the Sunday afternoon thing was in summer of 95 (because I remember them airing some Goldust vignettes). Was it still Challenge at that point though? I thought they had switched to Action Zone (in addition to Superstars) at that point. - The last show on DSF before the hiatus was, I think, the Raw after Royal Rumble 98 (the Rumble itself was the first big-5 show for a long time not being aired on free TV). The return show was a one hour clipshow of Wrestlemania XIV plus the full version of Survivor Series 98. - What do you mean me about what I still have? Newsletters? Sorry, no, I never got any of them. If you are talking about old tapes, I suppose I have some VHS tapes with German WWF PPV (big 5 only) versions from 94 to 97, though not complete. The WCW stuff I always taped over. I have not the slightest clue in what condition these tapes are either. Regarding DF1 exclusive stuff: XWT seems to have three WCW Germany shows, so at least Alex Wright vs. Tom Gerhardt (fighting over a stolen exhaust pipe) and Axel Schulz counting a pinfall for a Scorpion Deathlock will live forever.

It's interesting because I heard an interview with Cesaro once where he talked about 1993-1994 being the glory period, which is when the bloom came off the rose in the UK, but it coincided with the WWF getting on TV in Switzerland and Austria and those kind of places. WWF actually got on TV in the German market in 1989. I don't know if dish-distribution started earlier in the UK than in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but one important factor why it took longer for US wrestling to get big here was the time slot. I cannot speak for pre-93 (though I assume the time slots were about the same), but when I started watching in 93 WWF was on at 10 pm to 11 on and WCW about the same (maybe sometimes an hour earlier). The TV stations were not allowed to air it earlier. When in the summer of 96 the then host of WWF (RTL 2) tried to put WWF on Saturday afternoon they almost lost their concession (and as a result moved wrestling to 2 am in the morning). I would say the boom period here was from 93 to 96. Besides the short shelvetime a wrestling boom usually has, there were additional factors for the end of the boom: (1) For some time there was wrestling on basically every night, so the market became oversaturated. (2) WWF lost their TV slot in early 98 (well, not lost per se, in 97 they were on the same channel as WCW and production company of the German WCW shows created a recap show where they mixed WCW and WWF programming, needless to say that WWF did not like this) and did not find a replacement until December or so. I think it took them quite some years to find a stable home / timeslot (I stopped watching the German shows by then, both the shows themselves and the commentary became unbearable). (3) I assume that attitiude programming starting in 97 put quite some people off. (4) First reducing and later completely stopping running shows in the German market (due to WWF drawing less and less over here) probably was some vicious cycle.

I remember when they had a match at a PPV - maybe KOTR? - and Jericho flipped after Wade Keller criticized it. I don't recall what I thought of the match, but I'm guessing it probably wasn't anything special in my mind since the Keller anecdote is my only lasting memory of it. Jericho was so angered at the reaction online to that match that he took down his website: http://web.archive.org/web/20021010031640/www.chrisjericho.com/commentary.htm

I was watching King of the Ring 2000 over the last week. For as much praise WWF 2000 gets this was a complete shit-show layed out like during the darkest Attitude days. The tournament itself was a complete afterthought full of 3-5 minute TV matches, most of the pairing were already done on Raw or Smackdown during the previous weeks. Additionally you had a bullshit finish opening the show. Then there was the Stooges special in a match that was booked for an audience of one. The Dudleys vs. DX match was as misogynistic as anything Vince Russo ever booked, including indicated oral rape by both D-Von and Bubba Ray and a powerbomb through a table against Tori. The six man tag main event was McMahon-tastic in the worst kind of way. The best thing on the show was the four teams elimination match.

One of the things I have on my network watch-thread is ECW TV. Currently I am somewhere in the summer of 94. What's really strange is that considering how early they put up all ECW TV (which shows that they consider ECW as higher priority) that they never bothered to put up the ECW homevideo stuff. I mean I am not really keen on watching an undercard of ECW 1994, Chad Austin vs. Don E. Allen or Hack Meyers vs. Rockin Rebel is nothing I have to see in my lifetime, but still it seems odd, especially considering that at least at that point the TV shows mostly were hype-shows for the monthly big shows that ended up on homevideo (nothing wrong with that, mind you).

I did not realize it back then but in the spots he did here Albert looked really good. He really seems like a guy who could have had a much better US career if was not stuck with horrible gimmicks early on in his career that burnt him in the long run.

This was disgusting even in FF mode. This truly was booked for an audience of one.

NXT also has some corny stuff they do all the time. Usually it's a random wrestler being interviewed by 10 smartphones before either a wrestler walks in or something happens in the background.

Will he turn up being the power who is behind the group feuding with Steve Austin's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson? "It was me Austin, it was me all along the time."

According to reports they have tried to spike their subscription numbers quite a lot offering similar deals.

Though Fujiwara is the more experienced worker (if you know what I mean).

Classic case of "if you want one guy to win but don't want the other guy to put the first guy over, don't book the match". You can get away with such things on TV but not on PPV.

This is quite a different match compared with their January outing. In January you had more an exhibition style showcase match between two guys who have trained with each other while this is more like a classic heel vs. face match. Funny considering their natural personalities that you would go with Cabana as heel and Punk as face.