The Gaffer

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.

I feel like despite posting here for nigh on twenty years, I post just enough to be a presence, not enough to be a consistent one, generally withdrawn with disclosing too much of my personal life and usually too fecking lazy to acknowledge the literally hundreds and hundreds of glimpses into other's personal lives that have moved me - or merely my bowels - through my twenty years of sitting with the UKFF. I have an odd social battery/reticent with sticking out too much - even on a forum - to the point where even now I'm not going to directly tag people who I just find so deeply, deeply satisfying to simply read. So I guess I'm clumsily joining in with some of the preceding shares to say 'I feel you, UKFF. And I hear you, UKFF!' That twenty years of sitting with the UKFF used to be sitting home all day stoned on the hop from school, when I didn't think about next week let alone next year. I remember how being an insecure teenager felt on a forum, where one man's troll or shitposter is often somebody just trying to think of a creative topic and hoping the Bigger Boys would engage with it. Then it was sitting on the loo hiding from calls in any number of customer service jobs. Maybe thinking about next week, at this point. Today I managed to sit for five minutes before a client came in for therapy with me. I caught their eye through the window as they were parking their car, and thought of how much of a weird presence this yoke is in my life that I was wondering if I'd have time before our session if I was to click play on a video titled "BRANDI RHODES CALLED OUT JAKE THE SNAKE AND GOT BIT". I think about next year quite a bit, now. So despite generally breezing through, it's worth pointing out that I had a partner who referred to you lot as 'the wrestle boys'. There's obviously consistencies in life in terms of hobbies. I've always and will always read books. But books are broad. I'm struggling to think of something this peculiar that's at turns equally been such a consistent presence for me. I've sat with this shit through breakups, recovery and boredom. Whipped it out at weddings and funerals. If we go the full on Fallout AI doomsday scenario, if I'm risking rad poisoning to pull up a signal bar, its going to be to check a fucking Raw thread on a British wrestling forum. It's low key the oddest part of my life, and consistently brings a wonderful normality to it all the same. Man, instaglib. Cheers!

I've assumed for awhile now that tournament refs have a bottle of champagne on ice for the day Ronnie actually follows through on his tedious annual threats to retire for good. They'll never have to say 'QUIET PLEASE' again.

Cole's passing the Vince McMahon "Your head looks different now" entropy point. He looks like he should be fucking bottles of poisons at Crash Bandicoot.

I'm hoping to hold on until the TKO buyout. No way I'm posting once my avatar's been changed to a logo for Patriot compression socks.

Okay, but you know it was a Blur tune that was in those British Gas adverts right?

Not sure which part of identifying culturally as Irish that Ed Sheeran is meant to be doing here, but it's definitely cheered me up. Looking forward to Nick Cave's blog response to a made up seven year old fan about how we're all too sensitive about artists now or whatever.

This discerning thirteen year old Powerslam reader was obsessed with them. Whilst I was a devout Velocity watcher - owing to it being where the Small Boys Played - I'd practically be praying each week in a completely parasocial, unreasonable way that they'd suddenly get highlighted on Smackdown. Kendrick - for his part - did look to be on the cusp of breaking out as a sort of lovable underdog act in 2003. Teaming with Benoit and Rhyno against Cena & the FBI at Judgement Day was surely a nod from the locker room if not the office that something was there. He also had that "It's the mid noughties and everything's whacky!" theme tune which must have been licensed elsewhere because it sounds completely ubiquitous: By the time London had an on screen feud with Billy Kidman a year later - once their tag team split up - I'd kinda grown out of thinking one or both of them should have been in the WrestleMania XX main event. 14 is a very different age from 13. 13 year old Gaffer used the correspondence section of Bret Hart's website a week before WrestleMania XX to implore him to go. It didn't help that Billy Kidman really wasn't made for an NWA prestige style heel turn. One of those archetypal "That wrestler, but duller" Ruthless Aggression gimmicks, when strapping a rocket meant cutting your hair, wearing trunks, and having Michael Cole go "We've seen an aggressive streak from this man lately!" By the time Kendrick and London teamed together, it came with the deflating knowledge that they only held the belts for about twelve years because everybody backstage took a piss break when the monthly Basham Brothers/La Resistance 2.0 combination they were fighting was up next. Though they were at least a part of that Sorry For December to Dismember ladder match where Joey Mercury's nose got smashed to pieces. Maybe things would be different if they were hitting their prime in - say - AEW now, with a wrestling culture whose net is definitely wider for odd, vague gimmicks etc but from their stoned shoot interviews to London's completely stupid gurning during Vince's walk to the exploding limo, my overriding feeling is they they were too unserious for any major promotion to invest the necessary amount of seriousness required for pushing even a silly act. London being a cult hero, early prophet of ROH and Kendrick's TNA run as a sort of weird bloke with inside knowledge was probably their level.

Big NXT special energy.

Not into it being resolved by lazy tropes but the actual principle of not having a main event for your show booked is kayfabed easily enough. A main event announced in advance can move the needle, but more often than not wrestling fans also like the chaos of a live show and not knowing what's going to happen. So we rock up to an arena some weeks and just let the talent have it out with each other and see what kind of main event organically arises, because we also know from running these shows that one always does.

Yes this is in the right thread. It's just such a mad hand-me-down of 90s shit that already seemed dated by then, delivered by the least convincing, least up for it band ever, but for 4:45 it works as a dingy, paranoid pop song.

Whilst goals matter to a team more than who is scoring them, I can't help but feel Cody Gakpo has that faint air of not being the player that you want rescuing you - especially with the marquee signings Liverpool have made in the last few windows - but he's often the one that winds up on the score sheet where an Isak is arsing about in anonymity. That and a sort of quiet likeableness to him make me quite fond of Gakpo.

I look forward to you somehow using it as a way to post Ghost Protocol reviews.

Yeah, perfectly comfortable with the recency bias in thinking that build-up video and walk out was simply one of the best bits of pro wrestling television ever. I had a bit of a cry when Alex came into the shot, and there was something bizarrely cathartic about Moxley - a man whose whole deal seems to be that he's never at peace - with this dopey grin of perfect peace after he passes Osprey the flag and - in turn - company. On the other side of the show, it seems like a very, very long time ago that there was a few quiet whispers about the value proposition of bringing in Kofi and Creed. Absolutely molten star quality coming off them, tonight. I think they look and feel better than ever with this sort of hybrid New Day, But Also Serious presentation. Top, top show. I'm really rooting for this company to break a years old habit and actually have a streak of momentum filled TVs over the next few months to capitalise on tonight. Hope everyone here that went had a great time and it wasn't too smelly!

Been watching back a lot of timeline style videos of Austin feuds between WrestleManias 14 and 15 and...he's distinctly bad on the mic. His catchphrases are so over, and the audience wants every ounce of him so badly, and he is so protected as a top act that of course it didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now, but it stood out to me. It's particularly noticeable when interactions get a bit looser in terms of script and cueing (say...Commish Michaels is in the ring as well, there's a heel on stage, everyone's got the mic etc) and especially whenever he has a commentary headset on. As soon as those safe lanes of what he's meant to be saying, the catchphrases etc come off, Austin quite noticeably trips over himself, repeats himself etc more than you'd like to remember. It's all "Well hell I'll give him all the credit in - uh - the world but - ah - you know he's got to know that - ah - Stone Cold's out for his...what I got to say...I'm out for his ass and that's that!" It makes sense of Austin always being happy to concede he was far more comfortable playing a heel. Both in 1996 and 2001 he never really came off as flustered, even if the improv skillset was the same. There was a dead-stare silence (1996) or psychotic repeating of himself (2001) that he could fall back on, but if you watch back closely in 98/99 there's points where he's floundering around trying to keep up with the stream of Austin-ness that the shows and the crowd are demanding of him.

The first time riding north out of Los Santos and just not stopping - until the city noise and lights gave way to woodland - was absolutely incredible on a PS2 in 2004. I think time has been very kind to IV. It got a bit of "This is too serious" backlash after a few months in 2008 which games like the terrific Saints Row 2 capitalised on, but in retrospect it's such a singular, totally distinct mood piece within the series. III is still my favourite. The washed out, drum and bass, industrial dread of the whole thing is unmatched.