El-P

Even better, spraying disinfectant *on the other guys*.

Havok is everything Jaxx is not : a good pro-wrestler. (amazing elevation on that legdrop too, wow, the athleticism, that girl sure has everything going for her... And by that I mean she's part of a famous family) EDIT : I had totally missed the clip of Charlotte dragging a KOed Shayna to the outside and letting her fall off the ring as a total dead body. What the hell ? This is concussion city.

Since they signed the deal with Fox and MLB, they were already idiot proof. This is just the next step.

Stop spreading fake news. Stephy said it, their first priority is the safety of their emplo... independent contractors (I know, but that joke is never ever gonna get old, sadly) Is it really a surprise, especially the very last point ? The people running the company are part of the Trump supporting machine, NXT is apparently a hive for Q-anon and conspiracists What else is new ? People signing with them in the last year of so, signing with the *one* company that fired people during the pandemic while making record profits, should know where the hell they get into. And that's without even considering their total creative bankruptcy.

I had to google the name. Actually would be a great fucking gimmick, but could never be done in WWE for obvious reasons (way too dumb and old for that). That Brazilian Girl doing the Influencer gimmick in NWA was actually quite good at it.

Make Pro-wrestling Great Again. Manly men booze themselves, do heavy drugs and fuck underage bitches. That is the way we rollin' rollin' rollin'...

I was thinking the same thing. The 1-2 punch of kicking Jericho straight in the face and the grin followed by the punch on MJF was both terrific as spots and great babyface work. I can totally see him and Sammy as a babyface tag-team now. I was quite afraid for Jericho on that Lionsault. Damn Chris, more Tenryuesque heavy chops and less flying around, don't Hayabusa yourself at 50 ! BTW, how do you like the Inter Circle, JR ? Callis is just the best. I just waited 23 years to see him finally be the great one he was always supposed to be. Omega looks like the biggest douchebag star in these outfits, I'm glad the Cleaner came back. So, no one is talking about how good Nick Comoroto looked against Mox ? This guy has tons of potential and a total throwback look, I thought here would be the place where people would go gaga on him. Speaking about potential, Leila Hirsch is just that. She is also *just* that for now, like many other women in AEW, but it's a build to the futur. Pretty intrigued about this world tournament too and I hope we get nice surprise entrants in this. Ok, Private Party turning heel thanks to Matt Hardy (who walks like the Iron Sheik now, which is both sad and oddly appealing for an old fan) is just what they needed because they'll learn so much and this is gonna do them a whole lot of good. Plus they really were gonna get outshadowed by those pesky Top Flight brothers as babyfaces anyway, so all of this is all good ! Hangman Page is the most fascinating character as a tragic and sad figure and he's such a great worker, only getting better. Great opening segment from A to Z. The Brodie kids sure will have some nice memories of this tragic period in the futur. Taz is cutting his weekly great promo, Sting is collecting easy paychecks (I mean, his first appearance was totally awesome, but it's clearly been a case of diminishing returns with each passing week as he's been doing the same almost nothing.... him being a weekly character doesn't really work thus far and it's not like he can work anymore and he's 60 so why would anyone want to watch him work now ?). Yeah, Cody & Shak is the mainstream feud I couldn't care less about. At least they had Cargill do what she does best this week, stand there, look awesome and don't say nothing. The Miro/Taylor bit was quite underwhelming too honestly, but the wedding should be fun, because nothing is more fun than a ruined wedding ceremony. IMPACT has done a masterful job with weddings in the last two years, but in the serious (Cage/Santos/Callihan) and absurd (Bravo/Rosemary) vein, so lets see how AEW does it.

I would pop so hard if Taya Valkyrie (who's a free agent and done with IMPACT) showed up to challenge Shida. She teased it on her social media, but you know how those things work...

Isn't it sad that in the end, I'd rather watch an I.R.S. match ?

What ? You don't like "The Midweek Wars" ? Well, that's for sure, I have loved the announcing of IMPACT since it became a weekly watch for me two years and a half ago, first with Callis/Matthews then Rayne/Matthews, and although Matthews wasn't that good on his own, he formed a great and *fun* duo with both if them. And that intricate part of the product is no more. Striker... damn, as a LU fan I should enjoy him more than I do, but the LU stuff was kinda unique and it was also my comeback to actually caring about current pro-wrestling, so maybe I got him a pass too easily... I'll say this, to me at worst Striker is a much much less annoying Mauro Ranallo (and that includes the fact I can easily ignore him). At best he could be pretty good (as he was in LU at times, I believe). I'm sure he's not gonna say something really stupid about the talents like Ross does on AEW at least. And maybe, just maybe, him and D-Lo will end up having some sort of chemistry eventually.... but I don't count on it tbh. Striker is too much of a guy who gets the attention on himself, like you know who (Vamp has such a big personality that it balanced this, not sure D-Lo will be able to do it). So yeah, that part of IMPACT that I loved, a really FUN announcing team, is pretty much gone, sadly. Which is too bad because the company really is in a good spot now to do some super fresh stuff as this week showed. Better make peace with that fact right away... And since we're at it as far as sad stuff goes, Taya has had a terrific stint in IMPACT, I will sure miss her (Dreamer's promo was quite funny though). Rumors of "Taya as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble" in 5... 4... 3...

And this week's show went full fledge interpromotional with Private Party & Matt Hardy showing up, Jerry Lynn & Tony Khan at ringside and whatnot. They're absolutely going all the way with it and it's the WWF vs ECW stuff we never got back in 97. Loving it. Also, Black Taurus in IMPACT ? Nice catch, he was one of the best AAA guys the last few years.

I don't remember what year that was when they debuted, I know I wasn't watching the product back then and only following from afar, but there was so much hype about the vignettes and the debut of Bray Wyatt that I had to watch what that was, and yeah, the intro, the music, the fireflies, it was indeed super engaging. The issue very quickly is that there was nothing behind it and that Bray's promos were basically gibberish for the sake of it. He was basically the worst Raven ever, because Raven always had a point behind everything he said and did, his character had depth and was also stepped into the slacker pop-culture of the 90's, his Nest/Flock always was a whole bigger than the sum of its parts. Bray Wyatt was talking about Sister Abigail and acted spooky and.... that's about it. There was never any point to any of his feuds apart from speaking gibberish and acting spooky. The character was all presentation and no depth whatsoever, it's not a wonder all of his feuds ended up huge letdowns if not complete disasters. Not to mention his big matches always under-delivered. Evil Doink was actually more spooky because although he did much less, the mere character work of Matt Borne made it more creepy while having really not much to work with (I mean, he did the Crush angle and the SummerSlam match with Bret and that's about it). Ditto Waylon Mercy, which was basically the Cape Fear version of Razor Ramon, but the fact Dan Spivey was creepy as fuck as himself (really, that face) and the simple character work he did (the shaking of the hand, the demented face when he was beating on someone) was enough. Windham Rotundo looks like a lovable big bear of a guy and despite the awesome production values, just speaking about Sister Abigail and never having *any point* whatsoever just runs short very quickly. The fact he turned into a fourth rate horror movie character and that it's considered "super creative" in the realm of WWE really underlined the vacuity of the whole thing.

Nice outside shot of the Performance Center.

Anyone has any idea who first did the "gets thrown off the tope rope" spot that Flair did all the time ? Was it a Ray Stevens thing ?

I do not romanticize anything. I loved her character work and I enjoyed the matches, which were nothing special but quite good enough for me to enjoy.

Well, thanks to Youtube I have actually watched that segment, I mean, you people made it sound like it was so wacky I could actually enjoy it. Holy fuck. This is wretched. Everything about it. I loved Alexa Bliss years ago when she was rolling over everyone. What have they turned her into ? Seriously, Bray Wyatt's ideas are like the worst shit ever. He's Russo with ambition in term of having "ideas". EDIT : and I had not seen the match where Alexa is basically inhabited by Wyatt ! This is all-time WCW level "This is not hot" garbage.

No wonder he looks as good as he does in the ring.

At first I remember it was a good two months behind. It might have gotten a bit better after a while. Usually the Royal Rumble was around the Winter vacations (which was great) which basically happen the soonest in mid-February. In the mid 90's maybe it was only a month or so behind, Mania was usually in early May or something.

Canal + was not a free channel though, so although we did not have to pay for the PPV's itself it was still not free of charge either. We did not get the IYH PPV's either, and I think when they switched to WCW they only showed 5 or 6 a year too (might be wrong on that). We did get some Saturday Night's Main Event I remember. Also, I started to watch around the fall of 1990 and the first PPV that was showed was Survivor Series 91 (which I missed because we were on the road to my grandparents place and I only saw the last match !). Maybe some had been showed before, not sure about that. First PPV I saw was Royal Rumble 92 (lucky me !).

Hum... now that you mention it, maybe I'm just mixing things up as I do remember watching some WCW in German on DSF indeed, including I do believe some German house show (I think ? Or was it a WWF show ?). I remember watching ECW on an English speaking channel called Bravo. Not sure if I ever did in German now that I think of it. I think I watched WCW Souled Out 97 in German !

Even back in the DX days, HHH always struck me as the kind of guy who thinks he's funnier than he actually is. Which is always the worst kind and often gets cringe because of it. (there's something pretty similar to be said about his actual wrestling and promo abilities too of course, it's one and the same in term of overrating yourself)

The reptilians ? Fuck, they should do a Reptilians tag team in NXT. As far as running a Stadium show in the spring of this year... yeah, seems like a stretch. WrestleKingdom had about 13.000 people I believe, but it's Tokyo (just before the situation worsened). This sounds like ClusterMania to me...

Well, that ship has sailed. Crowds will come back whenever, Kross is a body guy but he's not that big and the day he steps in the main roster you know what is gonna happen after a while : spitsville because that's what they do whenever an act can get hot, and especially if they are a real life couple. Remember that Aleister Black guy with that great entrance ? Whatever happened to him ? Memorable is maybe a strong word, but it was a fun stint. The Fallah Bah angle was quite cool and she did get to shine in intergender matches (which WWE won't do). She was tons of fun in backstage vignettes. Since I don't follow social media really I wasn't aware of that aspect of Page's game. So... Was fun while it lasted. Meanwhile, Alexander lost in the pre-show...

There used to be some old video of Hauray as a heel being ridiculous during the shows introduction, but apparently this was taken down. Someone uploaded him and Carpentier in 1991 (in front of a green screen, there were not at the Trocadero !) a few months/weeks before the heel turn, so he was straight as an arrow there. Like the guy says in the description, they really were like two lovable older uncles, very "vieille France" by the standards of time, Carpentier often talking about French wrestlers from the 50's and 60's (basically some you can read about in @ohtani's jacket thread). Carpentier was also bullshitting a lot like any old carny would. I probably still use some "Hauray-ism" in my everyday life without thinking about it (fuck, I know I learned the word "intrinsèque", which is fairly high level vocabulary, listening to Hauray during a Haku squash !!!)

Ethan Page is very talented and I have enjoyed him a lot in IMPACT I found the Karate Man vs Ethan Page "match" was a very funny little absurd segment like I said. So, there... It's not the first time IMPACT gets criticized by someone on their way out though. Did not always turn out for the best either creatively, remember that girl Scarlett Bordeaux who in her short time in IMPACT did so many memorable and fun stuff ? She's been in NXT probably longer now and has been doing exactly nothing apart from being an animatronic for her guy's intro. I don't know about Ethan Page's reputation, but the guy was in his way out, the Karate Man on TV was actually cute I found. I guess the "Ethan Page was not hard to kill" bit was a bitter pill to swallow, which I can understand.