Robert S

I guess there were two reasons for Zack's win at Mania: (1) to open the show with a huge surprise and (2) so that the non-wrestlers could get their WM bonuses betting on Ryder. Yea I said this right after Mania and not at all in a joking way. He was like dead last in the odds until the day before when he suddenly became the favorite which to me says everyone who was in the know put money on him. Which is why betting on wrestling should be illegal IMO. You probably have a locker room full of Pete Roses. On the one hand in spirit it is comparable to insider trading, on the other hand no one forces anyone else being part of this rigged game. Honestly I don't feel sorry for anyone who is losing money betting on pro wrestling in 2016 while some insiders make some cash. I mean it's not like it is 1916 where nobody knew that they were marks if they would bet on pro wrestling.

I guess there were two reasons for Zack's win at Mania: (1) to open the show with a huge surprise and (2) so that the non-wrestlers could get their WM bonuses betting on Ryder.

Jerry Lawler was in quite some stinkers in mid-90ies WWF, most of all against Bret Hart at King of the Ring 95.

Hashimoto not making top ten, not even making top twenty is the first result that truly shocks me.

I really hated this segment. On the one hand this is full of pseudo shoot stuff and on the other hand the Undertaker is wearing sweatpants. Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea of the Undertaker, the dead man, the zombie, the phenom come out in fucking sweatpants?

Not even close. Here are the averages of the top 10 guys: 7.95 11.36 11.06 10.23 17.63 18.03 20.92 16.62 13.19 18.76 Although the next person with a lower average is ranked 27th. I guess that means that maybe number 2-4 and definitely number 9 are lucha or puro guys as their relative high average position compared to their "neighbours" in ranking indicates that they were on significantly less ballots.

I think that's part of it, but Muto also had the American run that is remembered pretty well. I wouldn't be surprised if we got some ballots with him as the only Japanese guy. I would believe that being true in 2002 or maybe 2006 but in 2016? I mean on the one hand his big American run is more than 25 years ago and on the other hand Japanese stuff is so much easier to get (i.e. less "elite") than it used to be.

I could not agree more. The first time I saw him (back in 2000 watching 92 footage) I thought he looked (charisma-wise) like a Japanese version of the Rock (not just because Hase uses the Uranage).

The Japanese (Kanji) character for "manji" (as in "manji-gatame", the finisher of Inoki etc.) is also a reverse Swastika.

The funny thing regarding all the Angle and Taker "bashing" is that they both had one of their best matches against each other (or at least that was what I remember from ten years ago).

Ah come on, they are just two guys believing in honor, at least in an honor called loyalty.

It's no doubt that Dixie is a horrible businesswoman who has no clue about how to be successful in wrestling and has lost her family tons of money, but it's not that TNA 2003 (or whenever Panda took over) - 2016 had any effect on the business as whole, neither negative nor positive. When she took over TNA was basically bankrupt, as they are now. To quote Life of Brian: "You have come from nothing and you'll go back to nothing. What do you have lost? Nothing!" I also have no doubt that Dixie in Steph's position would much much worse than her.

Whichever thought that the best way to book a wrestling show was to use twenty-five failed TV writers with no wrestling background.

The Flair for the Gold segments keep getting worse, if that's possible. The only good thing here was Rude putting over Flair a bit.

Edge does not like his ranking. Me neither. He should have dropped about 200 guys ago. At least he did not reach the top 150.

Dean loves him some WAR hosses, correct? So he still has a chance with Takashi Ishikawa.

Judging by the trailer the next Edge & Christian show will have both Virgil and Sean Mooney as guest stars. This week's show had Pete Gas (plus Brutus Beefcake) on.

So are we back to thinking he was carried by Rick Rude etc? http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/21083-certifiable-carry-jobs/?p=5565510 One of jdw's more famous beatdowns of jvk. When did Goldberg have any performances along the lines of Warrior vs. Rude or vs. Savage? Didn't he just work squashes to hide his limiations? Like, do you think the average Goldberg squash is better than something like Warrior vs. HTM IC title win? Warrior having his best matches in high profile PPV matches makes me think he was more carried by Pat Patterson than by his opponents.

Apparently (according to Dave Meltzer) TNA will be evicted from their offices at the end of the month and the offices will move to the merchandising warehouse.

I recently watched Back to the Territories - AWA with Greg Gagne. It was a pretty good interview, at least for 75 minutes. For the last half hour the bullshit meter was going through the roof with Gagne claiming responsibility for every big thing in North American wrestling between 1984 and 1997.

I caught up on the Edge & Christian show. After the first show was pretty average I must say that there are surprisingly many funny segments. My favorites were WWE guys reading Twitter hate posts about themselves (Cena and the Big Show are great in that), Edge, Christian (and Stardust) showing Wrestlecrap gimmick pictures to pre-schoolers and "Will WWE talk about it" (a fake game show with AJ Style as "candidate" making fun about his wrestling past and TNA).

The finish of the first match was not confusing by design, it was just that somehow they had problems with the ring bell (there was no opening bell either) and the wrestlers did not realize that and thought that the referee did not end the match. Judging by all the people looking under the ring between matches 1 and 2 I would guess that they just "misplaced" the ring bell, as stupid as that sounds.

A couple of random thoughts: - Bossman's daughter and Buddy Robert's son did really good for two people who (I suppose) are not used to speak in front of such big crowds. - The introductions by APA and the Dudleys were pretty funny. While the APA one fell really scripted the Dudleys are either much better actors ore ad-libbed much of their introduction. - I wonder how Hayes would have dressed if there was no Godfather introduction. - Godfather said nothing in the couple of minutes he spoke, except that the Godfather character is really him. No talk about this career, I mean he wrestled longer than the two years that he was the Godfather. - Sting omitted quite some names I would have expected him to drop. In addition to the already mentioned Luger other people that come to mind are Rick Bassman (he was the one to come up with Power Team USA and trained Sting, correct?) and Eddie Gilbert (wasn't he the guy who took Sting under his wings in the UWF and basically taught him the business?).

Roberts, not Hayes

According to this reddit page they are (up to December 2015) at 731 of 1179 episodes (or about 62%) online: https://www.reddit.com/r/wwe_network/comments/4cixm7/wwe_network_content_upload_progress/