King Pitcos

This was great. CM Punk is such a narcissistic, hypocritical dickhead and I love it. He’s proper had to swallow his pride about WWE. Criticising some AEW wrestler for pandering to Dem Wans in a promo, while simultaneously admitting his “I left professional wrestling in 2005” rubbish was him doing the same thing, then trying to split hairs about how when he does it it’s magic. And his Phil Hardman act is always hilarious.

The highlight though was him casually discussing how Tony Khan is a clown and AEW isn’t a real business - both obvious points that anyone who follows wrestling has known for years, but it was something of an open secret before. Nobody from there has ever come out and said it outright. It must be absolutely devastating for Tiny to hear one of his heroes saying that in public. I bet he wasn’t pumping his fists and chanting “CM Punk” while watching this. 

Punk made millions being the favourite of Dem Wans, that was his core base, and he’s not only split that audience in two over the last year and a half, he’s been actively alienating the wans who chose the Young Bucks over him. There are people who used to see him as their hero who now despise him, and there are people with semen-covered ROH DVD collections who can’t stand Colt Cabana and the Jacksons anymore. Punk’s probably responsible for Meltzer’s subscriber base finally falling too low to sustain print editions of the fanzine.

I suspect he’s too fragile and broken to ever do much in the ring again, but ice cream Phil’s return to the major league is already worth it just for this grand display of shithousery. I suppose his next Helwani interview won’t be until he’s fallen out with everyone in WWE again.

Happy WrestleMania week!

Fucking brilliant show! Two cracking chamber matches and a tremendous main event. I don’t want this Roman Reigns title run to end at WrestleMania, I want him breaking more hearts for years to come. But Cody is probably the right man for the job, the mad lispy bastard.

Cracking show. It's wild seeing Cardiff City centre covered in WWE banners. I've never seen that even for WrestleManias.

I've never been to a closed roof stadium show before, it felt like a big arena to me, but that kept the sound in. My expectations were stupidly high for Sheamus vs Gunther, but they delivered! I don't really care for Riddle apart from the RK-Bro stuff, but he's always good value when the bell rings and last night was no different. Proper nasty bastard Rollins with that flying stomp as well. Judgment Day laughing at the Dominik turn is still amusing me a day later.

The main event was fantastic. I'm not that fussed about McIntyre but I was fully invested in him during the match. Best atmosphere for any match I've been to besides Kofi Kingston vs Daniel Bryan. Fury sparking Theory was hilarious. And the two men in the match were at the top of their game. They absolutely got me on that last pin before blonde Uso broke it up. I enjoyed the singsong as well, but was surprised the broadcast was still going for that.

Thought I'd dip into the UKFF to see what people thought. Fuck me though, what would drive someone to spend hours every week hatewatching something, more hours looking up gossip that winds them up about it even more, then even more hours moaning about it and Monday morning quarterspacking about the results with a condescending tone because it doesnt match their EWR save... for two decades? Even if the rants are mostly paraphrased from Bryan Alvarez, it still takes time to type them. That's so many hours that could've been spent doing stuff you actually enjoy. It's such a waste of a life.

See you in another three months or so, uces. Be well and remember to always acknowledge your tribal chief!

With Reigns vs Lesnar, the idea isn’t to appeal to people who have moaned about everything the company has done for the last two decades. They’re the two biggest stars, and this is only the second match on US soil between Cowboy Brock and the Tribal Chief. It’s still by far the biggest and most exciting match they’ve got as far as normals are concerned, no matter how much we moan that nobody wants to see it. 

Personally, I’m not particularly excited for it at the moment, (although I fucking love it just for the reaction online. SmackDown was bookended with bits that fully triggered the anti-WWE mob) but they’ve got a month and a half to change my mind on that and they’re both brilliant at what they do. I’m open to them getting me excited for it by show time, I wouldn’t be watching or following it otherwise. You’re not valuing your own time when you’re wasting it on stuff you’ve already decided to hate.

As someone who has been moaning online about wrestling for two decades, I bought WrestleMania tickets this year on about two weeks notice once it became clear Austin was doing a return match. And the Reigns-Lesnar main event was a letdown. I think a big Last Man Standing brawl plays to their strengths and gives them a chance to make up for the disappointment in Dallas.

Hello everyone. It’s been a mad few weeks in wrestling! The MJF stuff, Tony Khan’s meltdown about Bischoff, CM Punk being shit then injured, the purple tits Cody Rhodes madness, the Banks/Naomi walkout, Jeff Hardy being shit and injured and pissed behind the wheel, and both Vince and the wrestling gossip columnists getting caught with their pants down when actual real journalists uncovered him being a right dirty old bastard. There’s probably more big stories I’m forgetting, but it’s been such an interesting time.

Anyway, I loved the Riddle vs Reigns match, and Sheamus’ gang are my favourite act in wrestling at the moment. Butch vs Gunther in Cardiff, please! I think SmackDown urgently needs a Bayley return. I don’t know if she’s still injured or what, but what an upgrade she’d be from Natalya.

16 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Really nice flicking through the #WWENewcastle hashtag and seeing people loving being at a show. This is the best though. Dominic Mysterio hitting the worst frog splash you'll ever see. It's hilarious. 

 

I was at the show, it was a great time! That frog splash looked as bad in person as well.

Trimming the fat off the roster has definitely made live events better. No eight-wasteman tag with all the jobbers. Every match had someone in it to care about, and every match was decent enough apart from a slow-motion Nakamura vs Crews. I didn’t get bored at all, but that might just be because it’s the first time I’ve left the house in two years.

Possibly the best house show I’ve been to, almost thirty years to the day since my first one. Still would’ve preferred it if Big E and Roman were on the card, but back when they got pulled to be on Raw tonight, I was hoping it’d be for a New Day vs Bloodline match. So I’m chuffed for that tonight. 

Ohhhhhhhhhhh, UKFF!

Just checking in to express my enjoyment of Big E winning the big belt. He got removed from next week’s UK shows a few weeks back and, as he was one of the main acts I was looking forward to seeing, I was a bit miffed/confused at the time as to why he was taken off the tour. Watching Raw this week answered why!

Great to see him on top of the mountain. I love New Day so much. 

Well yeah, wrestlers are massive liars. Everyone from the 90s and earlier has a “the house show matches were even better, we went two hours and the people were going crazy for it” story. The Kliq love it, they’ll tell you Shawn and Razor were wrestling each other on house shows every night for three years before their ladder match (which happened less than a year after Razor turned babyface).

21 hours ago, patiirc said:

There are at least two trans people on this board. So rather than being a fucking Glinner about it. How about asking them what they feel.

My initial post was referencing a couple of recent cultural incidents of threatened men telling women what they’re allowed to think/say/feel, at no point was it relevant in that post to shoehorn in a request for anyone’s feelings.

As I touched on in a response to Chris B earlier, I am of the stance that anyone responding to a woman with something along the lines of “choke on my cock bitch” is likely a rapey bloke showing his true colours. Threatening JK Rowling with sexual violence is hardly going to convince her that transwomen aren’t predators - ergo, the Twitter users I was referencing are rapey men either sockpuppeting as rapey transwomen to reinforce what Rowling is saying and attack trans rights, or they’re rapey men pretending to be transwomen to get access to women (cis or trans). Either way, the people I was referencing are (I hope) not legitimately part of the trans movement. They’re just rapey men. So in this instance, I assumed there was no need to ask for a UKFF transgender consensus on whether rape threats/wishes are okay. I consider that one not to be an open question. 

There is more on why I wouldn’t want to do an open question to all trans members that is specifically related to you, Pat, but SuperBacon might be right so I’ve deleted it. PM if you actually want to have that discussion though.

Nobody has come out of his big PPV matches stronger than they went in, really. Spears, Archer, Dustin, they just sink back beneath Cody in the pecking order when they’re done. Even MJF, who “won” the feud, has dropped down the card since. And that’s somewhat inevitable, after a feud with the top babyface you can’t go up, so you have to go down. 

It’s just a bit awkward. It’s still early on, so they still need to establish what their top level is, especially after the first few months of 50/50 booking. So Ambrose, Jericho, and the Elite have to be featured prominently and cement themselves as the top before they can bring anyone up. But it creates a glass ceiling where nobody can beat them, or even if they do beat them, it doesn’t change anyone’s standing.

All this to say that creatively, there’s not much upward mobility for the rest of the roster. Midcard guy comes up against Cody and then bounces back down. So the feuds, stripped of meaningful outcomes, are dependent on having better PPV matches than Cody has been having. Which may happen, but if it doesn’t, letting the lower card guys look competitive on TV is the closest he’s getting to elevating anyone.

5 hours ago, RedRooster said:

The other reason I don’t get much from this is that while Cody is indisputably one of AEW’s best characters, no one can ever accuse him of being their best in ring performer.

He Tweeted something about that's why he's doing it, because he's not highly thought of enough as a wrestler and he wants to change that perception. This is his version of Triple H giving himself long WrestleMania main events to prove he can do the big, show-closing epic.

14 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

And of course it’s what anti trans activists will pick out as proof that trans = predator. 

Yes! That screenshot of the quotes was from glinner or some similar nut. My favourite is when he reports tweets calling someone a TERF because he thinks it’s a code marking the recipient for violence, like when gypsies mark a house with chalk before robbing it.

13 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Mrs Brown's Boys and Kenny Everett both involve drag. When it's contextualised by you referring to trans women (albeit those behaving unpleasantly) as 'men', it's not exactly a leap to read it as you likening trans women to characters like that.

I would consider threatening outspoken women with sexual violence (or wishing it on them) to be a toxic male trait. You may disagree.

Man-in-a-dress mainstream comedy characters have been used as a reference point to denigrate trans women for decades, your assumption that they've always been completely separate is very naive. Transphobia isn't my issue with Mrs Brown's Boys, and isn't one I necessarily even agree with in the context of that show. But given the way the wind is blowing at the moment with offensive comedy, I would hope is enough of a link to get it taken off (because it's shite).

1 minute ago, Monkee said:

I don’t follow JK Rowling and have no interest in what she has to say. In the context of this thread though, you think it’s ok to just repeat something deplorable as this? You said it therefore it is your comment. If you were quoting it then put it in quote marks.

In the context of the post, it was absolutely relevant to repeat the sort of things that men are saying to women who say things they don't like. Why didn't you take issue with my use of "watch your tone"?

And I would really enjoy hearing what you've decided my dislike of Mrs Brown's Boys stems from or what you think you've "called out" so please enlighten me. 😆

24 minutes ago, Monkee said:

Also, I found your comment about choking on your “fat trans cock and die” fucking disgusting and shows your lack of knowledge on the subject so maybe you should avoid making stupid comments like that again in the future.

Yeah, I found it disgusting as well - but you thinking it's my comment shows your lack of knowledge on the subject, so maybe you should educate yourself and redirect your idiotic outrage in the future.

.

Regarding Mrs Brown's Boys, yes, I meant the same thing that Houchen said - I'll take any spurious connection to a social issue leading to it being deleted. Because it's awful.

4 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Hager challenging for the title at Fyter Fest makes any TNT title matches before then feel even more pointless. 

That was the case when Cena was doing it on TV every week when he already had a PPV opponent lined up as well. Of course, the novelty there was still megastar John Cena having competitive matches with the Velocity lads. But generally, I don't think there's an issue with the logic behind these matches Cody is having - we have seen occasions where PPV matches get changed, or made non-title, based on title changes that happen on TV in the build-up. But even if the outcomes are predictable, they provide a backdrop for interference/commentary/post-match attacks etc to further his main feud. And if they raise the stock of the lower card guys a bit, they're achieving something.

28 minutes ago, Monkee said:

Mrs Brown’s Boys - while I’m not defending the ‘comedy’ aspect nor am I trans - doesn’t take the piss out of trans women. It’s drag in the same way as RuPaul. They’re not being derogatory of trans women, gay men or anyone in between. So why would MBB be cancelled in this context?

I can’t remember much about Kenny Everett so I can’t comment on that.

What Houchen said. 

3 hours ago, Factotum said:

Agreed on this. I am very uncomfortable with a lot of cis men telling cis women how they should feel on this.

Well the whole facade of men not telling women what to think and feel only applies if the women are already saying stuff you agree with. If they’re saying stuff you don’t like, it’s completely acceptable to demand that they choke on your fat trans cock and die or, in an even more extreme example, that they watch their tone. At least, that’s what politicians and twitter are demonstrating lately.

Hopefully it leads to cancelling Mrs Brown’s Boys and Kenny Everett. I don’t know if Kenny Everett’s stuff is even on anything now anyway, but it used to reet annoy me on the Paramount channel in the nineties.

On 6/1/2020 at 6:31 PM, wordsfromlee said:

I want to buy these, but can’t find them on there. What is the listing called?

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

There were ones where guys would dress up as nurses to grope women

Sounds like something JK Rowling would say.

Is it not because there’s not much else they can brag about? They never really sold out this and that, or broke any records. The Kliq were all in the post-Hogan dark ages of no money, and Ciampa couldn’t even draw the curtains at his mum’s house. And at that point, you have to justify yourself by saying “well, I’m better than the big stars in this way...”

How did that even happen? 

1 minute ago, tiger_rick said:

Reckon anyone complained back when about stuff that happened on WCW Saturday Night, WWF Superstars or on Heat (after they got bored of it) that had no consequence on the main shows? 

I can’t think of any comparable examples. Did anyone ever undergo a gimmick/name change and start knocking about with Stephanie McMahon’s faction on Raw, but the change only got mentioned on Heat? WWF and (pre-Russo) WCW were pretty much aimed at casual viewers, whereas AEW doesn’t want them, so they had different approaches regarding rewarding hardcore watching of all the supplementary material. Although there’s a reasonable chance this will have some consequence on Dynamite, if Allie turns on Phineas and it was a ploy all along. Although knowing Tony, Phineas would probably then do the great babyface move of sexually assaulting her.

I’m sort of glad that this week’s Jericho Recreates WWE bit was for an angle from only six months ago, rather than two decades. But fucking hell, throwing dog food over the Big Dog is an odd one to rip off. Blood Orange Cassidy was a great line, though. 

Also, I thought the thing about Fyter Fest being originally planned for the UK was another lie, but concept art shows it was actually true:

22 minutes ago, NorthSeaTiger said:

I can’t say I noticed her fluff it, but surely with Raw being taped they could have re-done that bit anyway and if that wasn’t their intention then we’d be none the wiser....

Wasn’t that the week it was live?

Either way, the mental tagline has made the show about a million times more interesting.

I’m a bit wary of the Robert Stone character going full-on petty parody. It wouldn’t surprise me if in three weeks, he’s constantly massaging the ego of a bleached-hair Bo Dallas and eyeing up Bo’s dog. It was a solid scene for Rhea Ripley, though.

I have zero interest in Karrion Kross vs Adam Cole, but I can’t think of anything else I’d go with as the top feud either. 

1 hour ago, Lorne Malvo said:

Oh, good. Pitcos in the AEW thread. I'm sure this will be riveting.

Honestly, man, I’d never have interrupted your circlejerk if I knew it would upset you.