The Dart

1 hour ago, TheScarlettChad said:

Do we reckon they'll be a new belt tonight then? Cody teased it. 

Definitely a re-name I think.   Get rid of the Universal.

At the Q&A on Thursday Cody said if he wins he's just calling it the WWE Championship, no matter what WWE call it.   I'm sure he was just announced as being new WWE Undisputed Champion when he won too.

Charlie Dempsey also was on the show.

Absolutely pissed it down in Philadelphia today all day long.  Apparently it’ll be fine by the weekend, but would be amusing if it rained like it did today.

4 hours ago, Nick James said:

Absolute tumbleweed of an announcement, especially when the crowd were chanting for Carlito who was right there. 

I’m sure that is part of the story.

I'm going to next week's Raw.  Hope it'll be as good as this week's was, we'll see.

30 minutes ago, air_raid said:

He lost to fucking everyone! In the years since his first ascent to champ he put over Balor, Joe, Owens, Jericho, Strowman half a dozen times… the guy lost more on TV during his “top guy” era more than Hogan, Steve Austin and John Cena combined! And people wonder why nobody got into him as the hero!

Yet if you looked at the average wrestling forum (not this one) people's main complaint about Roman Reigns back then was that he always wins, despite it not close to being true.

I know financially they wouldn't do it unless left with no other choice, but it wouldn't hurt them to just give Raw a break for 3 months.   Big re-launch into the new Netflix era.

There's probably international deals anyway where even if they don't get a 3 month deal in the US, they'd still have to make it.

I thought about this thread yesterday when I was reading that The Big Bossman was only 41 when he died.   Which was 16 years after his WWE debut and he looked about 41 then.   Natalya debuted in WWE 16 years ago and is 41.   Think about everything he did in that 16 year period and the pretty much fuck all she's done in that 16 year period.

I pretty much only watch WWE PPVs and Raw/Smackdown/NXT highlights on YouTube.   I watch Main Event on the Network and occasionally watch NXT Lvl Up and on the rare occasion I watch a full episode of NXT, but never live.   Once Raw and Smackdown are on Netflix here I might be more likely to watch them the next day and occasionally I might watch live.

Maybe once a month I will watch an episode of AEW, but I don't watch any other new stuff on TV/Online regularly.

I don't think it can be truly appreciated how big of a deal this was at the time.

• First WrestleMania watched?

My first Wrestlemania was also my first wrestling of any kind.   It was Wrestlemania 7, but it was probably at least 6 months after it had happened.   My 2 older brothers, who I did not live with, were visiting and they were in the lounge watching Wrestlemania 7.  I walked in.   Wondered what the flip they were watching and I've been a fan ever since.  They both dropped out of fandom within the next 2 years probably, if not sooner - donating to me all their magazines, tapes, toys, cards etc.

• Favourite WrestleMania?

Tough question, because I have favourites for different reasons.   7 is a favourite for the reasons above.  Wrestlemania 4, despite being crap has a special place in my nostalgic brain as it was the first wrestling video I ever purchased.  Wrestlemania 17 is a clear favourite for obvious reasons though.

• Have you ever been to WrestleMania?

Yes I have been to Wrestlemania 9 times and might be going this year, although if I do go it will only be to Night 1 this time.

Which brings me on to this quote from Matthew : "35 left a bad taste due to the bloody train ride disaster home, that anyone that went will know of"

I did go and I did get the train home, but the disaster did not affect me and I was very lucky it didn't.   I was on what I believe was the 2nd train to leave after the show finished.  It may have been the 2nd and last, or maybe there was 1 more, but I made it onto a train and was tucked up in my hotel room in Times Square while thousands of people were still stranded in the rain in New Jersey.   I remember when we got off the subway and began walking back to our hotels it just started raining and we realised how lucky we were that it hadn't been raining an hour earlier, not finding out until the next morning that half the stadium were still there at 2am, outside, in the rain with no way of getting back to NY.  I had no idea until the next morning and reading about it all how close we might have been to being stranded there too.

• Best/Worst WrestleMania matches.

Triple H vs. Undertaker Hell in a Cell is the best Mania match I have seen live in person I would say.   But I love Austin vs. Rock from Mania 17, so much.   HBK vs. Flair has to be up there too.

• Best/Worst WrestleMania moments.

Again from being there live, but the Hogan, Austin, Rock Mania 30 intro was amazing and I said during it that the show was already better than Mania 29.    Savage & Elizabeth reuniting at Mania 7 though.....lovely stuff.

The Dudley Boyz v Atsushi Onita & Mystery Partner is on at the ECW Arena soon.  I did wonder for a moment if it could be Foley but I’m assuming it’ll be the Sandman.

If he has another match it’s going to be heavily promoted, not a mystery partner.

That same show has a mystery guest ref for one match, that’ll probably be Foley.

"Could" being the key word.

Double post error.

I suppose it depends on what else is on the show.   A show with a main event with Solo Sikoa in 2024, could have an undercard with Rey Mysterio, Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, Bayley, Charlotte Flair and AJ Styles.   A main event of Strowman vs. Corbin in 2019 might have had an undercard with all those guys too, but I think the one I looked at Strowman vs. Corbin was the biggest match on the show.   To be fair, I think it was in a fairly small arena, but it really looked like a bad lineup.

I was just looking at some house shows from 2019 where the main event was Strowman vs. Corbin.   Good luck for when you get to that era.

Like you said, he probably reported based on Bronson Reed himself saying he would like it to happen, or hoped it would happen - then other sites even less reputable than Fightful Select take that report and re-word it badly saying that Reed himself said it was going to happen and that then gets presented as fact by someone else.   I doubted it when I read it, but I did read it that Reed himself had said it, but as you said - almost certainly cobblers, whoever said it.

22 minutes ago, air_raid said:

According to who?? Sounds like cobblers.

According to him.

1 hour ago, Supremo said:

Bronson Reed not being on the show proves there are still lessons that WWE can learn from AEW. Imagine opting out of big hometown feel good moment. Open goal skied.

People complained that Drew was treated like a "hometown" star for a show in Wales.   He's from Adelaide which is a 28 hour drive from Perth.   Putting a lower midcarder who has no current storyline and have him win, just because he's from the same country would be nutty.

I've seen some videos from that Yokozuna tour and the person he was in the ring with was definitely not Rikishi, but was announced as Fatu.   But that doesn't mean it wasn't Rikishi on some of the shows of the tour, who knows.

Like a few others, I have kept a database of shows I've been to over the last 23 years.   Most are as a simple fan, but for fairness it's worth pointing out that I have done camerawork a bit over the years and used to referee a bit, which does bring the amount of shows higher than if I'd just gone to shows as a fan and those shows are in my database.   Nothing against some of those companies I worked for, but many of them I wouldn't have attended as a paying customer!  However, as a fan I am lucky enough to have been to pretty much every major promotion that was possible.  Missing out on ever going to a WCW show is my biggest regret as it would have been possible.   ECW is less of a regret because of how unlikely that was a possibility.

I've been to 150 WWE shows (I really don't ever want to work out how much money I've spent on that), 11 TNA shows, 10 Ring of Honor shows, 5 Game Changer Wrestling shows, 3 NJPW shows, 2 AAA shows, 2 MLW shows, 2 Evolve shows, 2 Pro Wrestling Noah shows, 2 World Wrestling Allstar shows, 1 AEW show, 1 Dragon Gate show, 1 Florida Championship Wrestling show, many many other US indies and most UK promotions of note from the last 20 years.   131 different promotions in total.   2,803 wrestlers, 5,914 matches.   There's so many other shows I could have gone to, especially with the London wrestling boom 5-10 years ago, but at some point costs had to come into it and I didn't go to lots of shows that I "could have" gone to.   

I went to a couple of holiday camp shows in the late 90s, one in Cleethorpes in 1997, one somewhere in Cornwall in 1999, but I don't know who was on them, I wish I did.

The first show I properly went to was All Star Wrestling in 2001, which had Tatanka, Nigel McGuinness, Joe Legend, and the future Kizarny on.   I'd been a fan for 10 years by that point - I really wish I'd been able to go to shows in the 90s.

The first WWE show I went to was Insurrextion 2002.  Absolutely loved it after being a fan for so long at that point.

Cody & Seth being on together with Grayson Waller at EC, plus Seth being in that video last week with Cody, Roman & Rock certainly makes it look like a tag match on night 1 is on the table, with Seth also defending against someone (Drew?) on Night 2.   I can't see what The Rock would be doing at Mania if not that tag match.

6 hours ago, BomberPat said:

And was Brock originally booked to get eliminated by Dominik Mysterio?

You seem completely unwilling to accept that they might have changed who Brock was going to be eliminated by when they replaced him with Bron (reported a good day before the Rumble by the sheets).   So by your logic you think Brock was going to come in, piss his pants at the sight of Bron & Omos and throw himself out, because it’s entirely impossible they changed anything…just replaced Brock with Pat.

Whoever wins, it’s going to be because they’re bizarre.