air_raid

Which was an accidental fuck up of a planned clean pin, out of her own mouth. Not refusing.

"TLC" only really exists as a name which WWE use. It's a ladder match. The rules are exactly the same. Do whatever the fuck you want, use any weapon you want, win by climbing a ladder and retrieving what's hanging.

My dream of Rhea vs Dom is still alive.

It wasn't that she wouldn't lose clean, she just wasn't keen on tapping out. Which I (and their agent, and Becky) understood. She loved Liv, mind. That "extreme rules" match where she beat her, she wanted them to be rolling round in thumb tacks when Liv passed out rather than tap, so Morgan looked hard as nails for not submitting to the pain even in dropping the belt back to Ronda.

Presumably "3 time champion" includes that reign and her two runs with the tag titles.

DECEMBER 2019 There’s occasionally a sense of what brand you’re supposed to be watching but with no rhyme or reason to much of it (Fiend tops a Raw show, Rollins supports a Reigns main) I can’t be bothered to divide them for so few shows. Well, there will soon be far fewer, but you know. MAIN EVENTS 7th in Jacksonville there’s another of The Fiend vs Drew McIntyre for the U belt in a cage atop a mixed up but mostly Raw card, next night in Augusta GA has Seth Rollins vs Erick Rowan in a streetfight while Fiend vs Shinsuke Nakamura (huh?) in the cage goes on before intermission in Daytona Beach (Reigns on last), 12th in Ashwaubenon (suburban Green Bay) and 14th in Cedar Rapids The Miz goes in the cage with the champ. After Christmas things are slightly more settled - Boxing Day at MSG (12,000 only) it's Rollins vs Kevin Owens, and the Rollins heel turn really is rolling, 27th in Pittsburgh he's teaming with Authors Of Pain to beat Kev and Street Profits, before 28th/29th Rollins vs Owens "No Holds Barred" tops Baltimore and Hershey. Meanwhile, it's Fiend vs Daniel Bryan vs The Miz inside a cage 26th in Cincinnati, 28th in Toronto (7000 but its the Coca-Cola Coliseum, an ice hockey ground, not one of the big ones), 29th in Laval (Quebec) and 30th at the Staples Center - although everywhere except Cincinnati "The Big Dog" is still closing the show. THE CARDS Roman Reigns vs King Corbin continues 8th/12th. Seth Rollins vs Erick Rowan repeats Jacksonville and Cedar Rapids undercards as well as Augusta and both pre PPV Raw-heavy shows repeat Becky Lynch vs Charlotte going to a non finish then the pair of them beating Asuka & Kairi Sane non title. There’s New Day vs The Revival for the SmackDown tag belts on both Jacksonville and in Cedar Rapids sandwiching two rounds of a three way with Heavy Machinery, and both Green Bay and Cedar Rapids get Shinsuke Nakamura vs Mustafa Ali for the ICT and Bayley vs Lacey Evans (recurs in Cincinnati) - umm, aren’t both heels? Aleister Black vs Buddy Murphy also shows up on Augusta and Cedar Rapids and mid month Shorty G vs Cesaro (also repeating in Cincinnati) are not losses I’d expect for the “Swiss superman” and similarly Elias vs Dolph Ziggler straddles Christmas in Ashwaubenon and Cincinnati, both won by "The Drifter." Month end, Randy Orton vs AJ Styles is a belting match to go to intermission on the Raw shows, we're back to Becky vs Charlotte vs Asuka for the Raw Womens title, there are three rounds each of Viking Raiders vs Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs Street Profits for Raw's tag belts, Braun Strowman, Kofi & Big E vs Nakamura, Cesaro & Sami Zayn, Ziggler vs Gable (more upsets), Bayley & Sasha Banks vs Evans & Dana Brooke vs Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross, Revival vs Gran Metalik & Kalisto, Carmella vs one or the other of Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville, four nights of Drew McIntyre vs No Way Jose, and a few instances of R-Truth vs The Singh Brothers (one or both) in 24/7 shenanigans. Ricochet vs Bobby Lashley at MSG and in Pittsburgh feels like a big scalp for Trev, on the same nights as Andrade vs Rey Mysterio for the US title (the Garden sees a clean switch) - in Baltimore and Hershey it's Andrade vs Ric vs Bob. Finally, still Reigns vs Corbin in streetfights and Black vs Murphy. VARIATIONS In Jacksonville Andrade loses back to back to Humberto Carrillo then Kev. Augusta get a rerun of Ricochet & Raiders vs AJ & chums, Humberto & Owens beating Andrade & Drew and Street Profits vs Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins. In Daytona upsets ahoy in Cross vs Banks and (to my mind) Ali vs Cesaro, plus there’s Bayley vs Carmella and Gable vs Drew Gulak. Ashwaubenon has a sole singles match of Cross vs Brooke. Cedar Rapids, Reigns vs Ziggler goes on last and Corbin and Elias are off. Pittsburgh its a straight Raiders vs Club 2 on 2. Unique to Cincinnati it's Strowman beating Nakamura by DQ in an ICT match, New Day vs Metalik & Kalisto vs Dawson & Curtis Axel for the tag belts (Dash must have missed his flight) and the womens 3way sees Bliss & Cross beat Mella & Dana and Fire & Desire. MAIN EVENTS - NXT 5th in Jacksonville its Shayna Baszler vs Reina Gonzalez for the Womens belt on last atop an all-female card(!), next night in Dade City it's Keith Lee, Matt Riddle & Dominik Dijakovic vs Cameron Grimes, Dorian Mak & Killian Dain, then 7th in Tampa Keith wins a four-way over Marcel Barthel, Danny Burch and Ridge Holland. Big guns are indeed back on the road and they're out in Cali - 12th in Riverside and 14th Santa Cruz Riddle and Keith face Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly, 13th in Visalia and 15th in San Jose Keith vs Finn Balor is on last. B shows - 12th in Largo it's Kushida vs Austin Theory, next night in Fort Pierce Kush is with Shane Thorne, 14th in Orlando Tony Nese vs Joaquin Wilde vs Raul Mendoza goes on last. THE REPEATS Early month Taynara Conti & Briana Brandy vs Catalina Garcia & Rita Reis repeats in Jacksonville and Dade City - the names you don't recognize are better known as B-Fab and Valentina Feroz. In California there are several repeats - two rounds of Matt Riddle & Pete Dunne vs Steve Cutler & Wesley Blake and Bronson Reed vs Killian Dain, or Dunne vs Dain and Reed vs Kona Reeves, Womens title with Shayna Baszler vs Candice LeRae and Rhea Ripley vs Io Shirai or Mia Yim vs Dakota Kai with Ripley & LeRae vs Baszler & Shirai, Isiah Scott vs Cameron Grimes goes 1-1 and there are three nights of Angel Garza vs Lio Rush for the NXT CWT. SOME OTHERS In Jacksonville the incredibly progressive all-girl show has LeRae, Ripley & Yim vs Kai, Marina Shafir & Jessamyn Duke, Io vs Santana Garrett, Bianca Belair vs Monique Jenkins, Deonna Purrazzo vs Kayden Carter, Chelsea Green vs Shotzi Blackheart, Xia Li vs Jessi Kamea and Vanessa Borne vs Indi Hartwell. Dade follows with Kayden & Xia vs Deonna & Chelsea, plus Mansoor vs Austin Theory, Scott vs Ridge Holland and Kushida vs Dexter Lumis. Tampa has Rita lose to MJ, mixed tag action of Ripley & Riddle vs Shafir & Roderick Strong, Dunne vs Reeves, Dominik Dijakovic vs Jaxson Ryker and Scott & Mansoor vs Blake & Cutler. Largo see Belair vs Carter and Blackheart vs Purrazzo plus Raul Mendoza vs Joaquin Wilde and Mansoor vs Brendan Vink while in Riverside there's Tyler Breeze vs Blake. In Fort Pierce there's Jenkins vs Hartwell and a six woman of Vanessa/Jessi/Deonna vs Brandy/Garrett/Blackheart plus Travis Banks vs Lumis, same night in Visalia it's Breeze vs Grimes. In Orlando it's Conti vs Carter, Green vs Jenkins, Indi vs Reina Gonzalez and Danny Burch vs Shane Thorne, in Santa Cruz there's Breeze vs Ryker. Finally in San Jose - Garza vs Scott for the belt, Breeze vs Reeves, Rush vs Grimes. TVs 1st in Duluth is Starrcade and there's a whopping 6 extra matches on top of the hour streamed live on the Network - Nakamura vs Miz, Black vs Andrade then Ricochet also beating Andrade, Orton vs Styles, Reigns vs Corbin and Fiend vs Strowman(!) inside a cage(!) - everything except the WWE Champion was thrown at that one. Next nights Raw, Lynch vs Kairi is the dark main. 4th at Full Sail Wilde vs Chase Parker and Carter vs Kamea are the dark openers. Nothing dark happens at Tribute To The Troops, the same night in Fayetteville Carmella vs Tamina and Fiend vs Miz bookend the taping. Monday 9th Raw Matt Hardy shows his face to lose to Drew. Wednesday at Full Sail Roddy vs Theory for the NAT is a remarkably strong dark opener, there's also Thorne vs Sean Maluta and for TV Garza beats Rush for the CWT. Friday 13th SmackDown in Milwaukee has Kalisto vs Gulak just for those in attendance and fuck all of note. 15th in Minneapolis TLC is a baffling card on which <iz (miscast as a babyface again) faces Bray in his "Firefly Funhouse host" persona non title, there's no ICT or UST match (yes, they did a PPV without ANY of the four major mens singles titles at stake), Corbin beats Roman in a ladder match (ick) and on last the Kabuki Warriors beat Lynch & Charlotte in another... no wonder only 8500 turned up. Next night in Des Moines they tape two episodes of Raw so everyone gets a break, Titus O'Neil vs Erik Young curtain jerks, Matt wrestles in a gauntlet match and Purrazzo and Green actually get on Raw (losing to Asuka and Charlotte respectively). Wednesday at Full Sail Rhea beats Baszler to win the belt. 20th they do SmackDown and tape an NXT at the Barclays, Lince Dorado vs Gulak opens. Friday 27th in Detroit there's a SmackDown, Revival vs Kalisto & Metalik dark, and they tape Reigns vs Ziggler for a New Years Eve special on Fox. Finally 30th Raw in Hartford is one of the most beige sounding shows of all time - if you held a gun to my head, I'd say Profits vs Gallows & Anderson or McIntyre vs Hawkins & Ryder in a handicap are the most interesting sounding matches. Imagine. NON TITLE WHINING None. Fairly typical of an awfully boring sounding month of TV. DEPARTURE The Ascension last worked Main Event on 8th April, and have not been used since, and finally get their papers this month. Don't worry, plenty more coming.

Fun fact for title reign nerds - this is the 5th run for Lynch with "the other one" - that being the title introduced as the SmackDown Womens title in 2016, which she was the first holder of. As opposed to the one where the lineage can be traced back to Moolah and which prior to Ripley's dominant reign coinciding with Io's forgettable one, was undoubtedly THE title. Becky technically held that one only twice so far, and one of those was the disappointing "let's just swap belts" where her and Charlotte both got drafted (which at least allowed her to lose THE title to Belair at a Mania). The only time Becky actually won THE title in the ring... was on last at Mania 35. Quality over quantity there, really.

👋 I can. Excluding matches mates had on when I was round their house but not actually watching, the first match I actively watched was Koko B Ware vs The Model from WrestleMania VI. It's not on my list for "shaped" but it was the first.

Amazingly, the Meltz has been Tweeting about this very topic as recently as February ; I can see both sides. The WWF weren't even one year into their 5 year contract for Raw with TNN, I doubt their brass would have been thrilled with a total rebrand of the show they'd paid big bucks to lure away from USA. It also would have been a huge gamble for the WWF, if ratings for "the flagship" had dropped because their viewers didn't want Booker T, they wanted Steve Austin. That said... Prichard has pointed out that more homes having access to UPN than TNN at the time made it appealing to make SmackDown the flagship show. There's a logic there I suppose, but I can't help the feeling that at the crunch they'd have wussed out regardless of Tacoma shitting on Booker vs Buff.

Were you watching at the time? Specifically between SummerSlam and Evolution? This reads as though you weren't. Even the night in question when she strode out alone to stare down Team Raw she looked like the big fucking deal. That her covered in blood up in the stands became an iconic image absolutely does not detract from the fact she was the hottest star in the company already. Big fan of her winning the belt in a battle royal rather than literally any other piece of booking they could have done. Nobody had to do a TV pinfall job, and the next champion who gets elevated will do so by beating The Man, rather than winning a vacant title because they couldn't beat Rhea Ripley and only injury could. Good stuff. Realistically, Becky losing it to Morgan so she's primed for Rhea's revenge is probably the way they'll go, and I have no problem with that.

I’ve got it down to 9. It’s pretty difficult choosing 5 and trying to choose between which were pivotal in terms of shaping my tastes vs telling a chronological story in terms of how my relationship with pro wrestling changed. To be fair, the shifts in what made a pro wrestling match appeal to me or not would probably take 10 matches to cover alone. It’s been more than 30 years man and boy, after all…

Running WCW as a separate show, completely plausible. It was odd that initially they tried to babyface the whole of the incoming roster by them going after Vince, and even stranger they didn’t foresee a hostile reaction to Booker T lamping the boss and scoring one for the Monday Night Wars great losers in Madison Square Garden which was something akin to Napoleon performing a victory parade through Trafalgar Square after the dust had settled at Waterloo. The WCW roster ran house shows on their own for a few weeks, which you can read about at many worthwhile online resources. Give them a show, yes. Give them Raw? Fuck off was that ever happening. To further the analogy, that’s Napoleon losing and being captured but then given Wellington’s army to command. No fucking chance. Speaking of WCW, brand splits and breaking my own rules completely, it always amuses me when Bischoff talks about the idea behind Thunder being to better utilise more talent and bangs on about thinking Bret Hart would have been a great focal point. Like he could have the nWo storylines on Nitro and a bit more wrestling on Thunder, headed up by Bret. Considering he had final say on virtually everything, it baffles me that he floats this as the plan but when it came time to execute, Bret gets introduced on Nitro as the ref for Hollywood Hogan vs Sting, and the first Thunder is built around the Hogan vs Sting fallout from the rematch and subsequent title vacancy. Doesn’t seem like the roster split was a plan Eric considered for very long at all, whatever he says. Unless it was TBS saying “We wanted another Nitro, you can’t make us the B show.” Which is funny, because it didn’t take long for it to become so.

Brilliant example. Fucking awful twaddle. They thought he’d win the ICT before Shawn got concussed and wouldn’t be able to work Winnipeg, but WWF title? Dean Douglas? Fuck right off. He’ll tell you. Around SummerSlam 95 is when is Vince told him he’d transition the belt from Kev to HBK. So the plans were already made before “The Dean” had a single televised match.

@d-d-d-dAz I think you know what I think, because I posted it in a different thread ; Cena was ready. Having a lengthy JBL reign rather than transitioning quickly from Eddy to him hurt both Cena and the quality of TV alike.

Just... five? OK, I'll come back to you on these. I'll restrict them to standard singles or tags, even though that's not really fair to Flair.