NXT Halloween Havoc 2021: The 2.0 TakeOver Has Begun

[C.S.]

Hitler's Army wins.

Thanks for nothing, Izzy.

[KawadaSmile]

Shit Ciampa's gladiator outfit is somehow better than Kross'

[C.S.]

LAME

[SirEdger]

Bron almost nailed every move in the Steiner repertoire, except face planting on the attempted Steiner Bulldog.

[sek69]

9 minutes ago, SirEdger said:

Bron almost nailed every move in the Steiner repertoire, except face planting on the attempted Steiner Bulldog.

I love that they clearly lean into his family history, have him basically be a modern day version of his dad, and yet any actual mention of that family is forbidden on WWE TV. 

[KawadaSmile]

Just saw the main event. Shit sucks. The one title they absolutely should have changed hands, they didn't.

[sek69]

I mean come on, Vince is running this show. Of course the over babyface everyone wants to win the title does the job! 

[KawadaSmile]

18 minutes ago, sek69 said:

I mean come on, Vince is running this show. Of course the over babyface everyone wants to win the title does the job! 

With Strong beating Jones AND Ciampa beating Bron? yeah he's not running shit

[SirEdger]

Shawn Michaels is running things during Triple H's recovery

[sek69]

3 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Shit Ciampa's gladiator outfit is somehow better than Kross'

Bubba, that wasn't just any gladiator, that was KRATOS

[sek69]

They keep dropping the "genetic freak" for Bron to the point where if this was any other company that didn't have weird hang ups, I'd think Scotty was gonna show up.

[sek69]

11 minutes ago, SirEdger said:

Shawn Michaels is running things during Triple H's recovery

Shawn's doing the administrative work and carrying out the creative, but I thought the actual planning/direction was being handled by Vince and/or his minions in the 2.0 era.

[NotJayTabb]

5 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Strong has been doing great. He seems a better fit in Diamond Mine.

Also, McKenzie *hat emoji*

Didn't know Aichner spoke Italian. That's nice. Hope he speaks more so I can practice my listening skills.

As far as I'm aware, Aichner was born and raised in Italy, so it's probably his first language.

[NintendoLogic]

11 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Didn't know Aichner spoke Italian. That's nice. Hope he speaks more so I can practice my listening skills.

5 hours ago, NotJayTabb said:

As far as I'm aware, Aichner was born and raised in Italy, so it's probably his first language.

He's from the Italian province of South Tyrol, which is primarily German-speaking. But multilingualism is a way of life for Europeans.

[MoS]

 

[KawadaSmile]

9 hours ago, sek69 said:

Bubba, that wasn't just any gladiator, that was KRATOS

Thin blue line Kratos hehe

2 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

He's from the Italian province of South Tyrol, which is primarily German-speaking. But multilingualism is a way of life for Europeans.

Now it all makes sense. I forgot he was born in Italy, specially given his name. Nice little tidbits.

It reminded me of the early Cesaro days in which he was cutting promos in 5 languages.

[Robert S]

Sorry in advance for taking this further off-topic, but this is to some degree the story of my family. My grandfather was born in the late 1920s in South Tyrol and moved to Austria with his family, including my grandaunt (who is still alive, my grandfather passed away two years ago).

South Tyrol was part Austria(-Hungary) until WW1 (and German-speaking going back to the early Middle Ages). After WW1, South Tyrol (in addition to the Italian-speaking region Trentino and part Friuli) fell to Italy. After the facists took power in the early 1920s, they began taking steps to Italianize South Tyrol, for example by forbidding German in schools (as a reaction, German was taught in secret home schools). Another example is that newborns got Italian names (my grandaunt still carries the Italian name in her passport; my grandfather either was born before that or he changed his name). In 1939, Mussolini and Hitler reached an agreement about the future of South Tyrol: the German speaking majority had the option to either become full Italians (giving up their language forever) or move to Germany (or rather what was Germany at that point). 85% of the population opted to move, though due to war, only a  quarter or so of the people actually left South Tyrol. A third of those people moved back to South Tyrol after WW2.

After WW2, there was some hope of Tyrolean reunification, but in the end, South Tyrol stayed part of Italy, though as an autonomous region. There was an underground movement pushing for reunification (using terrorism) until the 1970s or so.

From my experience, for people of my generation (born after the 1970s) the troubles of the past are gone, the South Tyroleans feel themselves as full Italians, even if that may not be their first language. For older people it was way more difficult. My grandfather (who, as mentioned, was born in the late 1920s and left South Tyrol at the age of 14 or so) had so much aversion to anything Italian, that he would not even go to a Italian restaurant. My grandaunt never had such issues, which may be because she was only 3 years old when her family moved up, i.e. she had no memories of any oppression. On the other side, my sister is (de facto) married with a guy from Trentino (a region with a big Italian majority, that was part of Austria-Hungary until WW1 - his great-grandfather had three brothers; of the four siblings, two fought for Austria-Hungary and two for Italy, only the great-grandfather survived the war), and his family is the other way around: not trusting anything Austrian, pretending to have no clue about German (even though they learned it in school). (though that has improved over the last 20 years, thanks to my sister)

And to come back to the initial topic: nowadays, the only region with a significant Italian-speaking population is the state captial (Bozen / Bolzano) and the towns around it. Aichner is from a valley that to my knowledge is almost exclusively German. But Italian is taught in school, maybe already starting in kindergarten.

[KawadaSmile]

Awesome post, bubba. It's amazing how pro wrestling can teach us history sometimes. 

[MoS]

I pretty much learned American geography due to pro wrestling. Some of you have no idea how convenient and helpful that old picture of the US divided into all the territories with names on the map, as well as discussions about the "North-East" and the "Deep South" in a wrestling context, are to understanding American geography. 

[KawadaSmile]

750k people tuned in to see Bronn Breakker lose to fucking Tommaso Ciampa. Next week is gonna be rough

[C.S.]

Why do anyone take these clowns seriously?!

 

[KawadaSmile]

Man, not giving Bron the title there is one of the all time worst decisions NXT has ever had. They HAVE TO strike while the iron is hot. 

I mean, how often do you just stumble across a dude that talented and well-rounded who started wrestling THIS YEAR?

[C.S.]

10 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

an, not giving Bron the title there is one of the all time worst decisions NXT has ever had. They HAVE TO strike while the iron is hot. 

I mean, how often do you just stumble across a dude that talented and well-rounded who started wrestling THIS YEAR?

You're not wrong, but NXT is a developmental fed, and nothing that happens there matters in the grand scheme of things.

If/when Bron is called up to Raw or Smackdown, that's when the stakes actually become real.

[Dav'oh]

12 hours ago, MoS said:

I pretty much learned American geography due to pro wrestling. Some of you have no idea how convenient and helpful that old picture of the US divided into all the territories with names on the map

It was the Arena Reports or Mat Happenings type of pages in the mags that did it for me, where they'd just  list results from all over the US. All these wrestlers I'd never heard of, wrestling in mystical, mythical places like Wheeler and Tupelo and Smyrna (is this the only time those places have received those adjectives?).

Then there were the wrestler hometowns. I always thought Sarasota was overrun with mad cunts and Stone Mountain Georgia full of serial killers, purely to being "home" to Randy and Jake.

Also my US pop-culture is way ahead of all but the Americanophiles here in Australia.

TL;DR - Pro-wrestling: teacher, mother, secret lover

[Blehschmidt]

2 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

It was the Arena Reports or Mat Happenings type of pages in the mags that did it for me, where they'd just  list results from all over the US. All these wrestlers I'd never heard of, wrestling in mystical, mythical places like Wheeler and Tupelo and Smyrna (is this the only time those places have received those adjectives?).

Then there were the wrestler hometowns. I always thought Sarasota was overrun with mad cunts and Stone Mountain Georgia full of serial killers, purely to being "home" to Randy and Jake.

Also my US pop-culture is way ahead of all but the Americanophiles here in Australia.

TL;DR - Pro-wrestling: teacher, mother, secret lover

I live in the states and I don't have a clue where Wheeler or Smyrna are, so I would say that's the only time they've been called mystical or mythical!

But, even living here, wrestling taught me a ton of towns I would have likely otherwise never heard of.