The Gaffer

Contemporary is subjective. Pretty sure our own @Chico Torres considers the WWF's blue and yellow tile logo to be contemporary.

I'm not going to do one of those things where I overcook the praise and try and retcon it as being great TV either, but WCW really does get steadily better from October 2000 through to its close. The toughest hurdle with these shows is usually the atmosphere. Or lack thereof. When I think of low energy, my mind pictures blue rope Nitro, because they started taping Thunder straight after and either didn't care or budget enough to change the ropes. Then there is the crowds. Most of them are just standing about swaying their arms like GTA III pedestrians. There's a few absolute die-hards who still bring signs about how Raw sucks. There's also a few people clearly three sheets to the wind, wanted a night out, and are the precise kind of fans who are so casual that they know they don't mind being seen at wrestling, but evidently don't know that this is the shit one. Another difficult thing with the WWE uploads is Ernest Miller and Misfits in Action's themes being overdubbed. Because you hear both - along with the Natural Born Thrillers theme - about four hundred times each episode and the dubs are absolutely brutal. If you can get over that - though - WCW does slowly, slowly build a sort of really sad final bit of steam that amounts to it at least developing a bit of logical consistency and swerving to avoid angles that would make you embarrassed if somebody else walked into the room. Late WCW Steiner rules and building a promotion around him is absolutely not a problem at all. Booker as the people's champ is still better than anything he did in WWE, to me. The cruiserweights start getting featured much better in 2001. Whilst Natural Born Thrillers sort of prophecy the generic hoss wave in the next few years in WWE, they are at the end of the day young studs etc so spotlighting them so prominently is hard to dislike. Overall, it just feels like they at least start feeling a bit like sports presentation WCW again. It's infinitely better than the Russo stuff, which seemed to go through a false renaissance as the dumb stoner action movie version of wrestling when it's actually just horrifically shit. Edit: Oh yeah, and when Mark Madden gets sacked in December? Nitro improves so much as background viewing. He's the worst.

On Topic: Jesus Fucking Christ.

I feel like it depends how far you go. Were titles ever to be redistributed - and I don't think they will be - there's definitely something very funny and gratifying about celebrating via social, seeing the records altered, throwing a party etc. Actually getting ex-players and managers in to do a trophy lift though (and in amongst the online discourse, there is people who genuinely think that should happen) does strike me as a bit woebegone.

Your award for being above all this wrestle warz nonsense is in the mail.

Is there posts here where it's claimed this is going to successfully fuck with AEW? People seem to just be calling out the repugnancy of the move based on the intention, which you readily admit is there. The post on the previous page which brought this up again quite literally states "...and likely won’t make a single difference to AEW’s ratings."

They almost seem to be climbing over themselves to do bigot bingo with those quotes, so I had a quick Google. Their latest album - released this month - is titled 'You May Offend'. Cunts, but also cunts on the grift.

Ella Lily Hyland from decent new RTE series Tall Tales & Murder:

Political - sure - and that would matter far more, but I genuinely don't know if a bigger cultural schadenfreude is possible in my lifetime. It's just so good. Like get fucked.

Even if I knew with absolute, cast-iron, 100% certainty that there was no untoward/libidinal drive behind any of it, Micker's "I'm just such a FAN of the women, I'm really rooting for women's wrestling! Can I be in these shots, to show that?" is incredibly grating.

I don't care what the actual repercussions are, my petulant headcanon is that Jon Flanagan, Glen Johnson and Martin Skrtel have Premier League medals.

I think that last part might be the key. Rey probably clocked that no matter how many dodgy angles WWE threw his way, he was always likely to be rolling in it with merch sales and would always have kids to boop heads with on the way down to the ring, which seems to be his happy place in terms of how he wants to show up in the business. I think there's very little you could have done to kill him off once he became a WWE regular. He's a bit like Orton in that sense, who by his own admission never causes a fuss about scripts because it's not his wheelhouse and no matter what tripe you write for him, he's always going to be Randy Orton.

Oh shit, this is me! Halloween Havoc might be the classic match that just doesn't do anything for me. It's like watching a comedy where you know on an intellectual level the jokes are brilliantly written, but you're not laughing. I'm numb to the thing. Just trying to think of an 'average' match from the same time period that's subjectively better to me, I'd rather watch the Michaels/Taker no DQ finish at Ground Zero because there's a sort of weighty atmosphere and drama to the whole presentation of it.