El-P

Never saw such a large arabic crowd chant a jewish name in a non-hostile fashion. WWE bringing people together after all... (DISCLAIMER : that's a JOKE, people (it's sad I have to point it out, but...))

He had Ali in his name though, so the WWE office probably thought he was arabic or something back then... Anyway, I was more thinking of "That guy will never win anything anywhere else in the actual roster.".

It's akin to Tiger Ali Singh winning the Koweit Cup in 97...

Hey, remember when people said the prospect of AEW would force Vince to step up his game. Yeah, I laughed then too.

I just switch to AB1 for a second. Here's the exchange between Chereau & Agius, the french announcers, during the shots of the city : Chereau : "Look, that region is beautiful, there are lights everywhere." Agius : "Great. Thanks Philippe." Chereau : "What ?" Agius : "So there are lights so it's beautiful ?" Chereau : "Lights kinda make things beautiful." Agius : "I'm sorry but the most beautiful places in the world are actually where there are no lights." They don't give a fuck.

Did Taker tombstone what was left of his dignity already ? Or has he one zombi sit-up left to cash-in yet more blood money next Fall ?

I wish you courage. For the show I mean, after this (from what you report and Dave live tweeting), heart surgery will be a piece of cake.

More beheading on the way...

#WWEArabEvolution Damn, Stephy won't show up on RAW, *again*. Hype for nothing.

Well done. I guess the biggest suspens (because no one gives a fuck about Taker & Goldie losing whatever self-dignity they had left) is will Bliss & Natalya work a match dressed as Raisha Saeed ? And in that case, will Stephy say these are the very first female athletes/entertainers competing in Saudi Arabia (which of course is false) ?

NXT UK was designed to kill the UK indy scene. Job well done. Remember when HHH announced they were gonna have NXT's all over the world ? I think that ship has sailed, thankfully, but the plan was basically kill all wrestling that isn't WWE...

Won't be very original. The opener was super fun. Then the show settled into the usual NJ undercard tag match groove (I have to say, I didn't miss the Tongans one bit). Okada/Romero vs Scurll/King was super fun too, King should be brought back over and over again, if there's one guy from ROH NJ wants, that's him. Jay vs Tanahashi was a great match. Smart, solid, always interesting. Mox vs Juice was a war. I agree some of the stuff at the beginning wasn't the best (that early dive by Juice was a big miss), but it really built into an epic brawl. I too have noticed the very old-school gaijin'esque demeanor of Moxley, reminded me of Hansen. Ospreay vs Takagi was the epic of all epic. Easy MOTYC, and at the very top of that list to boot. Just state-of-the-art modern pro-wrestling. Ospreay moving to Japan is very promising too, the guy has everything to be their biggest star eventually.

Dixie knew Vince Russo was responsible for the last boom of pro-wrestling, so there's that...

The only reason he's having this "great experience" is because of the government and their initiative to white-wash all the atrocities. He's a positive-thinking idiot of a propaganda tool. It's like people going to the Berlin Olympics in 36 and raving about the organisation and having fun meeting people. The fucking pyro ? Really ?

Understood, you can thrown the company line as stupid as it it ("WWE don't do politics, we're going to entertain the WWE fans from Saudi Arabia" and all that good nonsense), but talking about it like it's the greatest thing ever, "embracing the culture" etc... For fuck's sake. Maybe has no idea what actually happens in the country, the unwarranted arrests, the torture, the bogus trials, the decapitations, the treatment of women, the slavery, the genocide in Yemen... I'm not expecting anything, but this kind of brain-dead enthousiasm strikes me as really, really tone-deaf.

In other news, Kofi Kingston is a stupid WWE drone, or just a dumb fuck : "The crowd and the energy is incredible. I love going to Saudi Arabia because the energy is just awesome. It's almost like a second WrestleMania over there with the pyro and all the events that go on, it's an incredible experience and has a special place in my heart. I was part of the promotional tour before the event and was able to go there and meet the people, embrace the culture and it was one of the greatest experiences of my WWE career." https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2838385-kofi-kingston-talks-saudi-arabia-shows-terry-funk-on-aew-more-in-wwe-roundup

The regime has executed at least 110 people since the beginning of the year. Recently there was a wave of women right militant arrest. No stupid pro-wrestling match will distract from anything, really. I wonder what the fake outrage twitter crowd will do during that show. I mean, if you can blast Corny for using the word transvestite, I think it's ok to blast Goldy & Taker for taking huge checks to play a puppets in a criminal regime propaganda show...

Oh, you were talking about 205 Live ! I thought you meant ROH and I didn't blink !

Well, yeah, basically all comes down to this. Like I said, I want the four guys I mentioned earlier gone in any other promotion but WWE so I can enjoy their work again. This incident is beyond ridiculous. Makes Velvet look like a bitch (no, a real one I mean), Mandy like a dumb fuck and Bully, well, like himself...

Sorry but... Are you joking ? Knowledge about character development ? Drawing money ? Enzo & Cass were an sing-along introduction, that's about as far as "character development" went. They never drew a dime (don't tell me about those great 205 Live ratings while Enzo was put on top of the purgatory no one cares about). They both got fired from WWE and were legit locker room cancer. Both are garbage. There isn't one positive about signing those two useless goofs. Yeah, sure it made people talk. Mostly say how much that sucked and how it was another reason not to care about ROH. Hum... that would have been running MSG with NJ. Of course, that was when Omega & the Bucks were still working ROH.

AEW, pretty much. Kylie Ray is gonna be your next favourite worker ever.

Remember when some people argued getting Enzo & Cass was the right move ? At this point they incubate jack shit though. Marty Scurll and Flip Gordon I would guess are AEW bound once their contracts are up. They got PCO, Brody King, Bandido & Rush, which would have been great catch for either NXT, iMPACT or MLW (and now AEW), but they are still pushing Matt Taven as the N°1 challenger to... gasp.... Jay White. ROH seems like a thing of a past at this point in term of relevance. Truly hope NJPW drops them and work with AEW eventually.

I have bashed the animatronic entrance for years, but it's funny, Tessa's never struck me that way. Probably because she's got so much charisma and intensity that it simply looks cool as hell when she does her thing. But yeah, animatronic entrances are the worst in general.

The Owen Hart episode with Meltz is indeed excellent. Listened to the Tessa Blanchard interview too, and she comes off like such a cool girl. Interesting take on how her dreams have changed from wanting nothing but WWE to not even being sure she's gonna end up there one day.

Still a week behind, so I have not seen the tag match yet. The Swann match was indeed excellent (Swann has truly blossomed in iMPACT/MLW), but Elgin is always capable of having really good matches because he's a good mechanic who can do a lot of stuff. The issue I have is his deliberate style and total lack of personality. He works the exact same way he did in Japan, with that "look at me I'm doing shit" kinda attitude. And he's not been better as a character on promo, with his whiny little voice and boring promos about putting people in the hospital. He's as compelling as a vacuum cleaner, so the main event scene is hurt (not like Brian Cage was that much better, but he had this goofy freaky kind of intensity, and he's more fun in the ring too). Taya has been killing it as a heel, really solid match with Madison last week. Curious to see her against Rosemary, who's someone I'm not really big on as far as in-ring work goes, her matches have always left me kinda flat. Yeah, Eddie is excellent, can't wait to see the Kross match, now that's one guy who should be pushed into the main event scene soon. The clear MVP for me though is Callihan, and damn, his match was Fallah Bah (who's in much better shape than before) was yet another proof of that. Enjoying the Bah/Bordeaux duo too. Gilberti doing a Lawler/Kaufman gimmick works for me, he's really good at it too. Tessa mentioned in the Jericho podcast (really cool interview BTW) that she really likes doing intergender matches too. It's a nice way to keep her occupied doing something different, as their women roster in not that deep. The ECW nostalgia stuff is both cool and a bit sad, because 20 years is a long time. RVD still is a freak though.