El-P

Since Rossy is the talk of the day, I did watch that ARSION reunion special. Ahhh, those insanly cringe bad dance music theme from the 90's/early 00's, did I miss you ! It's insane how Yumi Fukawa and Michiko Ohmukai, who are basically my age, look EXACTLY like you'd expect them to look at when they were 24 years old. And that is, basically the same persons, only 24 years older (ditto Etsuko Mita BTW ! So cool to see her again). Amazing. I had no idea Fukawa's daughter was a pro-wrestler. That was kinda cool to see. AKINO is still AKINO, and by that I mean awesome. Yoshida looks like the most in shape person at 53 ever. I have no idea what the deal was with Ayako, it seems like some people weren't aware she was gonna be there, Ohmukai literally jumped when she heard her name and they hugged for ever in tears. This was nice. Overall, that was quite the quarter of a century later closure. Cool stuff, although obviously I did not get even close to what the night was all about, since a lot of it was talking.

Damn. Plot thickens. If THAT'S the case, then, is Bushiroad run by idiots ?

Well, that one too. But I was thinking about how Sullivan doing favors sending talent to ECW for a while, even working shots here and there while he was the booker in WCW served him right when it came to recruiting talent. That and Woman working for ECW as well. Anway. Can't wait to hear more about that story. Good ol' Rossy Ogawa.

It's lonely at the top. Nothing new.

It doesn't fucking matter if it's a Japanese proverb. If people don't think about the Vince thingy reading this while watching WWE shit, it's on them. It's obviously Rossy Ogawa anyway now. The true Japanese EVIL !

So, "poaching" is basically "contract tampering" or something ? Is Rossy basically doing with STARDOM/WWE what Kevin Sullivan was doing with ECW/WCW (in reverse) ?

Rossy Ogawa in WWE ? What the hell ? And what do they mean by "poaching a number of staff members and STARDOM athletes" ? Poaching ?

Unsure about the google-trad. ..... Not a good feeling about this though. Whatever the case, wow. Another one bite the dust.

No, I'm not.

Really fucking tasteful. So, no one thought about how this was INSANELY tone deaf ? It does not evoke the Vince thingy at all... Jeeez. This fucking company, really. Never disappoints.

Vince personally got him into WWE. That has to count for something... And speaking of which, really, if I was Cody right now, I would be less upset about the fact I got Dwayned than by the idea that I flew to meet with a sex-trafficking rapist, and that *this* guy convinced me to leave the company I founded with my then-friends and comrades to make a positive change in the landscape. Who know what text messages he was sending before and after the meeting. That alone would keep me awaken at night right now. As far as the Rock goes, newsflash : he's a much, MUCH bigger star than anyone in the WWE today. And he's on the TKO board. The WWE Universe (tm) being upset about them not getting their hashtag match in the current context is both way embarrassing and and a bit funny.

Wow. Brutal. But accurate. Also accurate. Looking from the outside in, I have no idea how you can't be sick and tired of Roman Reigns reign at this point. It only got really hot when Sami put fire under the Bloodline storyline, and by then it was already, how many years old ? People were ready for it to end at Montreal last year. Then at Mania last year. The apathy with which the SummerSlam match this year was received is a testament that people are just tired of Roman and will only get excited if they really believe he's gonna lose.

It's a straight out diversion at this point. "Yeah, people, be very angry at this, don't think about.... the other thing going on." Not that the WWE Univers (tm), would care anyway, but the wrestling medias now talk about it like it's a legitimate story worth being talked about.

Imagine that though, more dislikes than the "Thank you Vince !" video... Priorities and all.

Maybe people will actually walk out during the Mania main event. Not that it would be a first for Roman Reigns.

Heyman knew nothing at all. Sure. The guy closest to Lesnar for years. A pathological liar if there was ever one too. The timing of Foley ending his podcast surely is interesting too. Maybe he thought it was time to wrap-up the days of telling good ol' stories about the Attitude Era. Of course, Bruce Prichard chooses now to go into surgery. I wonder if his podcast is gonna go dark too. Then you get stuff like Torrie Wilson saying how mortifying all those bikini contest were, how she saw one performer almost in tears at a house show. And how Vince wanted her to do the Sable "paint job" spots and a special PPV after the Playboy shoot. I sure hope the floodgates are gonna be washed away. Janel Grant's attorney talking about being flooded with people coming forward attesting the "culture of corruption" that is Vince's McMahon's WWE. We're way past the point of "cognitive dissonance requested".

This. SO this. And yeah, Cody and his idiotic #FinishTheStory stuff not happening again is legit funny as fuck.

Cheh ! As we say in France.

They had relationship dating back to the NJPW days. So yeah, blame the Young Bucks. Which you would do anyway. Numbers went back to normal after Omega was not around anymore, basically. So yeah, it was a short term boost, it did not sustain. There was quite a bit more interest again last year for Bound for Glory too, whether that was Trinity or the entire promotion getting a bit of traction. Actually I do totally agree with this. I loved Lucha Underground for this very reason, it was very different in term of presentation, although obviously it was not a documentary style show. Lot of people did not like the supernatural, comic-book aspect of it, but to me that was what made it so different. It was not a pro-wrestling promotion, it was a TV show based on pro-wrestling, basically. You could picture some other pro-wrestling show with different kind of approach and presentation (documentary, comics, whatever). At one point IMPACT did kinda went into that direction during the pandemic, with the Wrestlers House (or something, don't remember the exact name). Actually, I really liked the pandemic days of pro-wrestling because it allowed it to experiment with different kind of format and new ideas. Not everything would work, but plenty gave it a different feel. I think the moment I kinda got detached from AEW as a promotion, is when I realized that, oh well, as great as it is/was/(is?) it's just another pro-wrestling promotion.

And to rebound on what's been said, RVD reacted on his podcast, pretty bewildered. And really, I doubt RVD was ever close to Vince McMahon, so there goes your kind of people I would totally believe had no idea. However, one thing pretty interesting that he said apparently : "That's about Vince. I can't say anyone else mentioned would surprise me quite as much.". Says a whole lot about Laurinaitis, Lesnar, and those "unnamed office people" that are being pretty obvious to some people.

I'm not saying everybody knew, and especially everybody knew all the details of course. But for instance, when the Dominique Strauss-Khan scandal happened, it was already established publicly that he was, at the very least, a sex-addict who would go after women. Basically, a sex-predator. But it was way before #MeToo, and this kind of things was the butt of jokes in the medias (many of them making women kinda responsible of such behaviour, like "Hey, don't wear a skirt tomorrow, DSK is coming for an interview, lol", which is another layer of rape culture). So there was always *something* in the air about him. But the culture was what it was, just like "boys will be boys, ya know." Plus, there's no worse blind than the one who doesn't want to see. I'm sure not everybody knew and Vince, like every predator, was probably doing exactly what you describe in term of manipulation and isolating circles from one another. But still. I'm sure many, many, MANY people were at least aware of noises about this kind of stuff. Especially at the offices.

Yeah, it's infuriating. Sadly it's really not a pro-wrestling thing. it's the same discourse everywhere. And people wonders why victims don't talk.

They are not even Satanists, really. Not too sure what they are supposed to be either, really. Malakai Black listens to post-metal, that I know from his music theme. But that's about it. They look as much as Satanists as people who flood the Hellfest every year. Julia Hart looks like every witchy influencer on TikTok.

The French movie industry knew about Gerard Depardieu. Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein. There's no reason to think that the knowledge about Vince's crimes, to some extent (not every awful details), weren't pretty much known on some sort of broad level. And there's also this thing called rape culture, which is everywhere in society. People just don't talk because it's not seen as such big deals. And you see comments like this everywhere. "Oh but she got paid". "Oh but she had to enjoy it to some extent" (yeah, go fuck yourself Jim Cornette, you piece of shit). "Oh but why didn't she talked about it sooner". And the usual shit of the same ilk. So yes, it's a giant stain on not only on the WWE, but the pro-wrestling landscape (which always sucked, let's be real) as a whole. Which is why people need to speak the fuck up. if this just goes on the way of "Well, Vince isn't there anyway, lawsuit gets settled, everything fine now", then the entire thing is just rotting from the inside.