King Pitcos

4 hours ago, kickin it wit the kliq said:

Did Corbin launch Mysterio and Black off the roof, or did I completely dream that?

You didn’t dream that he threw them off the arena set, but you were dreaming that it was off the roof. He just turfed them over the ringside barriers - but it was another weird, not-exactly-clear plot point.

14 minutes ago, Shy Dad said:

What was the deal behind that again? Vince trying to make it look like more entertainment based by breaking it up into sections rather than "missing bits in the ads"? 

Real sports feel. Sports don’t have action during the ad breaks, so neither will wrestling.

25 minutes ago, Perry said:

Have they gone back to actually filling up the whole 3 hours on Raw? Last time I watched it they padded it out with a repeat of the entire Rumble match.

Yeah they’re not doing the full replays of old matches anymore. They’re padding it out by doing gauntlet matches, or “this match is being restarted as a tag match” and so on. It’s a bit like the spell last year when they kept doing match restarts to avoid wrestling during the breaks. 

7 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

Also crazy to see Jericho like that just 3 years ago.

Yes! What the fuck, did WWE used to keep him on a strict diet or assign someone to look after him or something? It’s mad how much he’s let himself go since leaving.

21 minutes ago, Shy Dad said:

Yeah was there supposed to be some meaning behind Corbin having a bit of a frazzle when he smashed the mirror? 

Only ideas I could get were smashing through the glass ceiling (not likely) or character wise "oh god the McMahons are gonna kill me". 

Just seemed all a bit strange with no real explanation. 

Some of the cameos of the higher ups still working were all a bit bizarre too. But I still quite enjoyed it. 

When it first smashed and he looked at it like “oh shit” I thought he was just scared he was in trouble. But when it held on his reaction for a bit then cut away, I got my hopes up that he’d opened a portal and he’d be getting up to some madness shortly. But it was just nothing.

There were a few bits like that in the match, where it was unclear as to what was actually meant to be happening. It could’ve done with commentary to help the storytelling on that front.

Decent show, though. I’ve quite enjoyed the PPVs and a lot of SmackDowns in the empty venue run. Raw is dire, mind. Being three hours long with a very limited roster and an already dull output is amplified a lot by the silence. 

6 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

he's very different due to Vince's years of cleansing fat whacks from the roster,

It’s more than being fat. Bray Wyatt and Kevin Owens have been prominent on TV for years before Otis came around. But they at least look human, whereas Otis looks and sounds like a Jim Henson creation.

They must have forgot to edit Roman Reigns out of it.

Having watched the full first episode, this format is brilliant for Undertaker. I started watching his interview on The Bump earlier and I had to tap out after a few minutes because of the y’knows, but in a documentary where it’s not just him talking, it’s not as bad.

Seeing his insides was a bit grim, but fair play to him, the mad old fucker. What a contradictory existence. He wants people to tell him when it’s time to pack it in, but he’s too respected for anyone to do that. So he’s saying he’ll retire when he can’t go anymore, but any performance that tells him that, just motivates him to have another go to make up for it. Then if he has an alright one, he thinks he’s got more in the tank still.

I’m still so shocked and fascinated by seeing so far behind the curtain with him.

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

or else we'll be having this same conversation about Drew McIntyre this time next year

I think you’re being very optimistic that it’ll take a year.

But to some extent, it doesn’t matter. Roman Reigns was in four WrestleMania main events in a row. For the last three of those, people who hate him bought tickets knowing he’d probably be main eventing. Reigns, like Cena before him, is a great heel for the hivemind - dey’re way more invested in him getting beat than anyone else on the card. He got a free pass last year for cancer which muddied the waters, but this year would’ve been shaky at best. By next year, he’ll be back on the throne.

It’d be great if the powers that be could figure out how to break out of the WWE vs Hivemind dynamic, purely because they wouldn’t then have to try to keep redoing the Austin vs McMahon storyline. But I’ve not got the answer for how to do break it, and seemingly neither have they. Have you got any ideas?

2 hours ago, The Cutting Edge said:

Watched Roman Reigns 24 Doc and two things can to mind.

1: would fans have acted the same or turned on him had he ditched the shield music and look

Of course. If after the Shield disbanded, Roman Reigns started wearing trunks and had new music, then got sick for months, came back and instantly won Superstar of the Year, and then won the Royal Rumble ahead of the returning Daniel Bryan, the trunks and music weren’t going to soothe dem.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve not slept in ages, but the phrase “the risk is worth the reward” doesn’t make sense, does it? Risk and reward should be swapped around.

1 hour ago, Kfogg1991 said:

steph has just sold over $1 million dollars of wwe stock. 

There is defiantly something going on here

Well it’s about time she stood up to the old man.

https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/08/roman-reigns-kids-undertaker-wrestling-wwe-wrestlemania-covid-19-health/

Roman Reigns interview on TMZ yesterday, said he’s sound healthwise to work but he’s staying off to look after his newborns.

The stories of him bumraping her have been out there since the book first came out, possibly way before that from interviews. Nobody on here can say with any certainty, but considering he spent the 70s and 80s with Dynamite Kid and the 90s smoking crack with Jim Neidhart, Davey Boy was probably not a model citizen behind closed doors.

Surely they’ll have to go to Ryder’s house in most of the episodes anyway.

When introducing the Cody vs Janela match, why did JR say Cody is the #1 contender to the AEW title? Was he just confused about the tournament final?

On 5/6/2020 at 1:32 PM, Chris B said:

One Cut of the Dead is 99p on Amazon at the moment. Well worth checking out - it's a Japanese horror comedy, all based around a zero-budget zombie movie that's all filmed in a single shot. The first 30 minutes are fun, but you might think 'is this it'? Stick with it. It very quickly gets funnier and funnier.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B07N1WL4W5/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

This is also on Shudder, in case anyone already has a subscription there.

On Shudder, I watched Dead Snow 2 yesterday, purely because I was baffled by Martin Starr being in the cast. There were a fair few decent gore gags, but nothing else notable. Could have been really good if it had better characters. I don't recommend. It's like a Troma film, but much better made and a bit blander.

I've not seen Hot Rod since 2008 but the discussion of it here makes me want to rewatch it over the long weekend.

4 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

It feels like fans have been clamouring to see Brodie Lee as a violent nutcase big man for years, definitely disappointed with his character here.

That's the danger of letting everyone do what they want - Kenny Omega said last year, they're gonna try lots of things and they won't all work. There are always ways they can reset to that kind of character if Harper concedes the current one isn't working out, although by then the next bus will have pulled in and Rowan or Gallows could already be playing that role.

I'm hoping that Harper getting the title shot at the PPV is about resetting him/knocking him down the card before crowds come back. Is there any chance of a non-WWE guy getting a PPV match for the AEW world title this year? 

It’s definitely different, but I can see why there have been try-hard comments. It would be alright on a Takeover or WrestleMania maybe, but it’s a bit much for Full Sail, let alone the PC. I’d bet money on the meetings about it involving people saying “The crowd can sing along to it!”

The clip of the match itself, I don’t see anything interesting about Kross. That’s the second time I’ve seen that jobber, and the first time I saw him I thought his name was a play on Lio Rush.

39 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

this is another thing - WWE match psychology has taught us that none of that matters. No one's buying into a match before they get to the false finishes, because they know Roman Reigns isn't winning until he hits the Spear, so why care about him going for a pin after a Powerbomb? Matches have got longer and longer, but with no adjustment to the single finisher psychology that WWE have used forever, so there's still no point watching until the closing stretch for the most part anyway. 

You’re partly right, but the thing now is how many of that finisher will it take, and is anything less than a top rope version of it enough?

To follow CavemanLynn’s example above, even in those days, I was a bit disappointed when Undertaker fought a big lad and finished them with the choke slam rather than the tombstone. Then when Stone Cold was the man, you’d be gutted if you bought a ticket and he didn’t do the stunner. Same with the People’s Elbow and Rock Bottom. Big-time wrestlers are a bit like a classic band - some new stuff is alright but you want to see them play the hits. So the story now for an epic match isn’t will they get to do their special move, but will that special move once be enough?

In WWE, I think it stems from the Michaels vs Undertaker match being awarded godlike status. It happened a fair bit before that, Rock and Austin did it in all their big matches, and all the other big matches at WrestleMania 19 (except the racist one) had multiple finisher kick outs. But when that Mania 25 match became the “watch this to learn how to work” example, the culture changed. Then Cena’s US title reign had loads of people below his level kicking out of his finisher on TV, and it’s been getting more ridiculous since.

That said, I still got into finisher spam matches most of the time up until the two title matches at this year’s WrestleMania.

52 minutes ago, Supremo said:

I forgot about Finn Balor’s shoot~! promo as well! “You want a push but I’m gonna give you a squash!” Fuck me. He’s gonna win by hitting his attacker with a copy of Powerslam magazine. “Consider yourself buried, ya jobber!”

Has he not been doing that the whole time since he went back to NXT? He was definitely doing it when he first moved back there - his first promo was something like “I’m sick of being used to put over the new rising star.” 

Balor has always been representative of the shitty side of NXT, really. Little workrate bloke with no ability to convey a character, no confidence when speaking, and a camp goth entrance. 

I’ve not seen this Kross character’s entrance yet, though. I’m hoping it’s good.

I wonder if the Money in the Bank goes start to finish or if they’ll keep cutting back to HQ hijinks in between the normal matches, and then go to it properly once it reaches the ring.

9 hours ago, Onyx2 said:

Imagine your mate texts you. "You've got to watch this amazing new show, it's on every week, 6 hours a week." You're just never going to sell that in the modern world. Not when you can watch any highlights of interest in 10 minutes a week* on YouTube. 

*I'm feeling generous, ok? 

That’s the thing about the TV contracts. They’re supposedly must-watch-live content like sports, but the format is nothing like the big sports leagues where a broadcast is one long game. It only resembles UFC and boxing cards in format, so it lends itself to being consumed piecemeal... and WWE uploads all of the interviews and angles and finishes to YouTube. Both individually and in a five minute recap video.

Only a madman would watch Raw live. A madman who loves adverts and the first 25 minutes of Humberto Carrillo matches.

I’d have grassed them right up to Gorilla Monsoon, like he asked me to in the WWF magazine.