garynysmon

47 minutes ago, Nick James said:

Thats not to say people wont be up for AEW either, but without disrespecting AEW, their tour would be more like when NXT toured a few years ago. The buzz was there, but it was mainly internet fans. 

I’m far from being an AEW megafan, but they have a show that airs late night on ITV1 and otherwise on free TV while WWE is tucked away on BT Sport. The Raw and Smackdown highlight shows were so poorly rated that they were dropped by Channel 5.

While WWE undoubtedly has the biggest name recognition, built over decades, week to week viewership and awareness of current storylines/roster can never have been lower on this side of the pond.

You can’t compare NXT and AEW in terms of visibility.

Its funny, a few years ago this would have felt way bigger. Yet now it feels there’ll be  more buzz for AEW’s first tour outside of North America.

Sick of Conte’s bullshit over recent weeks, his heart’s not in it, the football is shit and he’s the type that will always want more money to spend on ready made players with no-sell on value. I.e the polar opposite of how things work at Spurs.

Was all set for a Poch return by the end of the month, only for the twat to go on and do that….

There is a generation of wrestlers that are so engrained with the WWE system that they’ll either sink or absolutely flourish outside of those confines.

I’d always assumed she was 100% a product of that system so was genuinely surprised to read that she’d wrestled for four years on the indies before being snapped up.

She’s only 30 now, I think eventually she’ll be fine. The debut was always going to be way more underwhelming than popping up on AEW. Japanese crowds aren’t the most animated at the best of times, and a large chunk of those in the Tokyo Dome wouldn’t be watching much WWE I’d have thought?

I was looking for apps on my Amazon Firestick over Christmas and found an emulator called Happy Chick, which given that the last console I bought was an Xbox 360, seems to be a game changer.

The firestick seems to be able to handle N64/Dreamcast games just fine and its compatible with any bluetooth gamepad, so I’ve been playing old Snes games to my heart’s content.

Still shite at Super Mario World mind…

11 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Has Ace Austin joined Bullet Club or have they sacked it off? I'm waaaaaay out of the loop. 

Yeah, both in Bullet Club. They’ve been on a few New Japan loops.

Libby from Neighbours!

Slammiversary has certainly felt like a bigger show than BFG over recent years.

Starting off the year with a bang, the Hard to Kill PPV on Jan 13 has already sold out at Center Stage, Atlanta.

I haven’t watched much Impact, or wrestling in general over the past few weeks due to the World Cup and Christmas, but this card looks a banger.

Full Metal Mayhem for the Impact World Title
Bully Ray vs. Josh Alexander (c)

Career vs. Title Match
Mickie James vs. Knockouts World Champion Jordynne Grace

Impact X-Division Title Match
Black Taurus vs. Trey Miguel (c)

Impact Digital Media Title Match
Moose vs. Joe Hendry (c)

Fatal 4 Way Elimination Match for the Impact World Tag Team Titles
Heath and Rhino vs. Matt Cardona and Brian Myers vs. Chris Bey and Ace Austin vs. NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Champions The Motor City Machine Guns (c)

#1 Contender’s Triple Threat
Masha Slamovich vs. Taylor Wilde vs. Deonna Purrazzo
Winner earns a future shot at the Impact Knockouts World Title.

Eddie Edwards vs. Jonathan Gresham

Very off topic, but is there a reason why they’re called Proud and Powerful in AEW?  It sounds like a terrible team name and a massive downgrade from LAX (I doubt that Impact would have stopped them carrying over the gimmick).

32 minutes ago, Loki said:

I guess I assumed that if he was clean, that WWE would probably bring Enzo and Cas back at some point.  But he seems to be staying solo in TNA.

He’s not in TNA.

Gutted. Don West was panned for the first few weeks but his sheer enthusiasm shone through and, as he learned about the product and business, became genuinely the best colour guy of his time.

In his day job he raked in big merch money for the company and is also one of those guys that no one has a bad word reserved for.

Loved this tribute vid Impact did for Mike Tenay and Don West earlier this year.

Just fulfilled my annual Xmas Eve tradition of watching the Father Ted Christmas special.

Nadolig Llawen / Merry Christmas to you all, whatever you’re all upto.

Angling for a spot on the new board of directors!

3 hours ago, RalphyV2 said:

Please take this to a DM with SB and do not ruin a great thread

5 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

While this speaks volumes to us, here, I have a cousin who did and he’s 20 next year. 

I generally ignore any advancements in fields other than Football and technology since I removed Radio 1 from my car radio’s presets in 2010.

But genuinely, Elf on a Shelf is one of those things I’ve heard discussed without having a clue what it was meant to be.

A million times this.

I seemed to skip the early 2000’s internet groupthink and have never been too fussed about ‘good wrestling’, which led to me to never giving ROH or ‘workrate feds’ the time of day.

But I must say that what I saw from Jonathan Gresham during his Impact appearances earlier this year was excellent and even made me take notice.

So very good signing imo.

Terry Funk immediately sprung to mind.

Someone else that’s spent years booking or holding a relatively high position in TNA/Impact is Scott D’amore, yet you hardly ever hear anyone have a bad word to say about him.

Given the nature of his roles over the years you’d have expected him to have shitloads of heat.

Unpopular opinion but seemingly half the population plastering themselves with tattoos.

Its hard to believe there will be 80 year olds walking around with chest tattoos and squiggles on their faces.

“They’ll regret that when they’re older” is me turning into my dad at an alarming rate.

I would agree that club and international management is a very different beast, with the gap probably widening.

The likes of Bora Milutinovic made a career of leading international teams into World Cups.

Chris Coleman has  a poor track record at club level but yet took Wales to the semi finals of a Euros based on nothing more than a rigid formation, having two superstar players at their peak and excellent motivational/man management skills.

Rob Page’s stock has dropped significantly after a woeful World Cup (the inquest is still ongoing in Wales), but he still got us past the groups at Euro 2020 and qualified for the WC via the notoriously difficult European route.

He’d been sacked by Port Vale and Northampton at League One/Two level.

Michael O’Neill was extremely successful with Northern Ireland (relatively speaking), yet failed to do anything with a well funded Stoke City despite being given a lot of time.

With international management you’re basically stuck with what you have, unless you manage to persuade a dual nationality player to throw his lot in with you then you have to work with what’s available.

It works for some and not for others. Somehow I can’t see the likes of Mourinho and Pep succeeding given such constraints.

For the record I think that Southgate has done a decent job for England. The setup is significantly less loathsome and you never hear of bored or dysfunctional England camps like days of yore.

Tiny margins are the difference between getting to the 2018 World Cup final and winning Euro 2020, I’d trust the process if I were you.

Worth an hour of anyone’s time.

Not hosting his own permanent podcast maybe, but I’d love to hear a short series with someone like Keith Mitchell who produced/directed WCW TV then TNA and briefly AEW before retiring recently.

Its a side of the business we never really hear too much about.

In one way I was a bit sad to see Bully Ray on Impact last week as it was just a reminder how much smaller the company is now compared to when he left.

But fair play to him he looks in great shape and can still cut a “total cunt” promo. I’m sure its a short run but nice to have him back.