tiger_rick

Meant to say, I thought that was Jungle Boy's best promo ever and by a long, long way!

1 hour ago, Pinc said:

Darby Allin is one of the cringiest characters on telly at the moment. Needs to be kept away from the mic. And was he standing on a Yellow Pages talking to Tone?

Didn't mind it. The delivery of the "screw it" at the end was good. Better than his usual stuff also.

15 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Open Challenges. As with most things, it’s a time filler while they actually figure out what the hell they’re going to do with someone.

I like it as a gimmick. It's been over-used the last few years like pretty much everything, but it can be a fun gimmick. The old Kurt Angle ones were always good, the Cena run was obviously fun too. I quite like that the TNT title has an open challenge policy too, I think that works well as a way to have people come in and lose and then, hopefully, fuck off.

It needs to be something that's done sparingly and there needs to be a purpose to it. A pay-off that will see something significant affect the guy challenging. Too often they're just filler, as you say, and go nowhere. Also the pay-off shouldn't be Alberto Del Rio. Though that goes for everything, ever.

14 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I'd like to suggest randomly putting two singles wrestlers into a tag team because there's nothing else for them to do

I love a good super team. Obviously the Mega Powers stand out to most of us as the standard bearer but Austin & HBK, Rock & Foley, HBK & Cena and Moxley & Eddie are some great ones. It's a good use of guys you need to keep ticking over if you can develop some chemistry.

Just don't give them one of those shit amalgamated names like Rated RKO, JeriShow or whatever Orton & Riddle are currently using. Now that's an idea I want banning. Fans are bastards for that too.

Enjoy how quickly most people move on to something new coming out of the PPV. Absolutely as it should be.

Bryan heeling it up was beautiful. That mention of "WrestleMania" to draw boos was just perfect. 

Eddie asking why there can't be one backstage interview without an interruption was funny stuff.

Fuck off with New Japan shit. Seriously, it's tedious. 

Punk and MJF? Yes, please!

34 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

I don't know if this still happens in WWE as I've not watched properly in a few years

Don't need to read the rest, I can answer - it does.

7 minutes ago, King Coconut said:

Your pissing problems sound like a real nasty medical issue. Your woe is me attitude when sick is not unusual at all though. I'm fucking absolutely, literally dying right now, as it happens.

Good news for Prince Coconut.

20 minutes ago, mim731 said:

Ladder matches.  Done to death in recent years, and if not banning them, I would at least give them a rest for a bit.

Absolutely. I realised during some SummerSlam recaps that Rock/HHH was only the third ladder match on TV at that point, after the two HBK/Razor ones, or fourth if you count Bret/HBK on the Smack 'em, Whack 'em tape. That's 3 in 4 years. They seem to do that in a month now.

1 minute ago, BomberPat said:

I'm sure I have hundreds of these, but the most obvious is Money In The Bank, and any variation on that magic briefcase gimmick. A load of other companies started doing it because WWE did it, and it's just lazy booking to have a panic "surprise" button or a way to make someone champion without investing in actually building them up. 

Yep. this came up recently, I think, probably after the PPV of the same name. It absolutely kills any creativity. It's the laziest of their lazy go tos IMO.

The Rock

Geddit?

What are ideas from fans or even promotions that you would like to see hoofed into a big black hole?

I'd go with the suggestion that anyone ever forms a Four Horsemen style stable. It was done to death before WCW died and the corpse has been fucked since. No, stop it. No suits. No Ole Anderson role. No fingers.

The whole "wrestler A should get serious" thing. I thought this might be a thing of the past but I've read the NXT results the last two weeks and both times, the guy has said it about Cameron Grimes. This idea that a suit will transform a guy into a main eventer is worse than the trunks/tights thing. We all know about wrestlers in suits. If they're not Wardlow, they wear it worse than @John Matrix!

9 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Although, I will say, I'm not sure the FIFA rankings are all that trustworthy - a couple of the Pacific island and Caribbean sides are arguably worse than San Marino.

Clear flaws in it, though there are in any system. I think we definitely need to send San Marino over to compete in some of their tournaments though to prove it. Maybe loan the out to OFC for 4 years and then CONCACAF for the next 4.

9 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Indeed. They’ve got England at fifth. 

Alright O'Houchen. Tried to find you lot but I got bored after looking through 50.

Was gonna put this in the other footy thread but might as well use this double post! What a strike. Pity the Reggae Boyz are still floundering. Canada went top of CONCACAF qualifying though with a big win over Mexico.

African qualifiers finished yesterday. Biggest exit was Ivory Coast who lost out to Cameroon - one of the two was always going to go out. It's now on to five straight two-legged play-offs for qualification. Just look at these teams. Going to be some belters here:

Algeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia

South Africa went out too, losing to Ghana to a horrendous penalty decision. They're appealling to FIFA.

If we can be serious for a minute...

The only way to improve is to do what Iceland did, improve facilities, identify kids coming through, keep them together, coach them, play lots of games at youth level and see how many of them you can get through to the first team. Andorra are doing something similar, their U21s are improving, they lose a lot but rarely get hammered now and they've had some notable results, drawing with England last year and beating Turkey a couple of years ago. Even then, it's not going to help San Marino win but they might stop shipping 8+ goals three times a campaign.

I was looking at their numbers in internationals last night. I think it was P 185 W 1 D 7 L 177 F 26 A 777. And that was before the game.

That didn't make it all the way on to the TV show, right?

12 minutes ago, air_raid said:

If you can’t be bothered going to another provider see if your bank will let you set up a second account, my provider allows for multiple current accounts. If I ever lose a debit card it takes me seconds to move money to the other account on the app.

We have a similar thing except I move it to the wife's account and then I never see it again.

WWE do some good things. I mentioned the rehab thing recently. It's not black and white. I think the difference for me so far is that if I think about it all, WWE is about 99% bad and 1% good and AEW about 90% good and 10% bad. Some of that might be longevity, most is because WWE are awful people.

1 hour ago, Factotum said:

Yeah, stop with the flip offs. If you look at Hangman's version of that (the getting in Omega's face after the kicks) it worked much more effectively.

 

It's very attitude era. You've got the top guys and the big stories where a middle finger or swearing really adds something but then it's very quickly all up and down the card to the point where everyone is doing it. I don't think it's harming the bigger deals, certainly not for me, but that's possibly just from being invested.

They're generally sensible with the use of blood. It's for emphasis and used sparingly. Just treat the other things like that.

1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said:

It’s about personal responsibility. What would it take for you to stop giving an organisation your money? For some, there isn’t anything, for others, it’s different things. I can totally understand still watching something you really enjoy, it’s the giving them money I can’t. 

5 minutes ago, Nick James said:

If we are going with that logic, when was the last time you heard a Lost Prophets song on the radio? Gary Glitter? etc. Everyone has a personal limit, some can look past things in the name of entertainment, other struggle to separate the art from the artist. Look at the whole Johnny Depp / Pirates of the Caribbean saga, people can speak up when they feel a company are making decisions that are not ethical. If only people spoke up more, then maybe the world would actually be a better place, but again, its all down to personal ethical choices and where you draw the line. 

There's an element of that and making a personal choice does make you feel better. I feel better about not giving Vince my tenner a month. I'm sure he misses it, like. But this is a much wider issue that no element of personal choice is going to resolve. These brave people have spoken out. We've all been aghast. Yet, fuck all has happened. No-one has been charged with anything. There's been no change in legislation. The All Party debate went nowhere. Most people are back working. It's shit.

It's the same everywhere. I feel better knowing I'm not a Tory, that I didn't vote Leave, that I followed every rule that was set out over the last 18 months but none of that is stopping the country going to shit. You do wonder what the point of it all is.

On 11/14/2021 at 7:05 PM, BomberPat said:

this stems from a major annoyance - nearly £800 in unauthorised payments taken from my account last week - but businesses that have a substantial online presence, or even are entirely online, yet have no meaningful way to contact them or actually get anything done online.

HSBC give out no customer service email addresses any more, their secure messaging online and their live chat invariably just end up telling you to phone a specific number. Aside from the frustration of it - I was on hold for more than half an hour before getting to speak to someone, that person then had to transfer me to someone else even though I'd phoned the specific number I was told to call, and then that person told me that I would have to call back on Monday to get an update from their fraud team - and aside from the fact that it leaves customers at a massive disadvantage compared to email in that there's no audit trail for me to be able to refer back to what specific people have said to me on specific dates, it's a huge failure of accessibility to assume that everyone is able to speak on the phone at all, never mind having an hour or more spare to actually hope to speak to someone.

I woke up last week to a text from Halifax to ask if I'd made a payment, mine was only £21, which I hadn't. I replied no and got a text back saying someone would phone me, which they did about 10am. Unfortunately, had to have my card cancelled. The new one still hasn't arrived but the new card appeared on the banking app the following morning and I added it to Google Pay. Can't fault the bank and new technology!

Don't know if this is helpful but it happened to a mate a couple of years ago and his last purchase online was gig tickets. Mine, 2 days before, was a Ticketmaster purchase. Be careful when ticking that "save my card details for future transactions" box.

40 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

You don't generally become a billionaire by making ethical decisions.

Sometimes you just inherit it.

I think (and hope) AEW are a better version of a big wrestling company than WWE. That isn't all on a wing and a prayer. They're not perfect, I say that all the time, but they've done plenty good. They've run numerous shows for charitable causes, promoted those causes on TV, handled Brodie Lee's illness and death incredibly well, took care of his family, employed Trans and Gay wrestlers without making any sort of deal about it, gave tons of wrestlers work during the pandemic, sacked Jimmy Havoc, changed the donations to Susan G Komen quickly because of feedback, acted quickly to suspend Max Caster over his unacceptable comments, gave Page paternity leave despite him becoming their top babyface, supported Jon Moxley entering rehab.

To the best of my knowledge, there's been no suggestion that they've covered up a murder, discredited a rape victim, encouraged talent to take steroids, dropped a wrestler to his death, exploited deaths, booked racist characters and angles, promoted a confirmed racist as a legend, booked homophobic and misogynistic angles, had accusations of rape made against their chairman, allegations of abuse against their ring crew, left their talent stranded on a runway in Saudi Arabia and a million other things I've forgotten so any suggestion that they're just another WWF/E is ludicrous. 

2 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

But at the same time, there are tons of wrestling promotions these days. And with so many offering live streaming and easy access to their product, there's no reason to keep supporting a company if you're upset by them signing Lethal and so on. I don't know if it's comparable to departing from your support of a sports team if they sign a player with a questionable background, but I question anyone who remains supporting the company just because they're putting out a 'great product'. The sign there being that if they were churning out shite every week, it would be a better excuse to leave. That seems to be the way many people have gone with WWE and that's an approach that doesn't sit right with me at all.

This is a good post and sums things up nicely for me. It tears at me. It always has. I love wrestling. I have done since I was 3 or 4 years old. Won't go into my life story but things have been very hard at times, as a kid and as an adult, and loving Wrestling and Football always kept me happy and healthy throughout. It's always where my mind has gone when things were hard, watching it, thinking about it, reading, listening or even writing and making up games about it (when I was a kid!) There are times I've really needed it. It's hard to give it up. Numerous times I've stopped watching current wrestling but never stopped watching old stuff, despite the people involved being a fuckload worse than Jay Lethal.

I don't love Indy wrestling, Japanese, death match or any alternative. Never have and never will. I love big-time American wrestling. I loved WWF, WCW, ECW a bit, TNA at times and now AEW. I don't like everything about them but I've put much, much worse than this to one side to continue to support WWE in some form through the years until the straw broke the camel's back and a lot of that was selfish, I appreciate.

I'm not blind to anything. But I'm not going to lie and pretend I won't watch on Wednesday because Jay Lethal may be a complete dirtbag. That I ever spent money on WWE again after Owen Hart tears me up far more.

Didn't know (or remember) about the Lethal allegation either. What a seriously depressing cloud hanging over one of my favourite wrestling PPVs of all the times.

I didn't give a shiny shite when he turned up either. Not suggesting that the answer to all this is to blacklist the crap talent and give a pass to the better ones but when considering hiring someone with a shady past, I'd definitely be asking myself if it's worth the grief you're going to get and this is clearly a no. 

I don't think anyone who has an accusation against them should be automatically shitcanned either because that wouldn't be right if someone is falsely accused but I'd still  think that if there's serious doubt and no benefit then I'll err on the side of caution.

I still think ECW going bang is inevitable so the only freshness I can imagine in the WWF is RVD arriving and getting over. Perhaps Jeff Hardy also climbs up the card without that massive influx of talent, though Trips had already been a cunt to him early in 2001.

It's hard to see beyond another interminable Austin/HHH feud perhaps with them finally doing that Triple Threat with The Rock. Jericho and Benoit would have been the placeholders in the meantime but they weren't committing to them, nor Angle, Hardy, RVD or anyone.

I don't actually see it being that different beyond the Invasion period.

If WCW hung around, I imagine they still need to cut costs massively so I think people like Hogan, Nash and Hall come in around 2002 anyway and we still get that nostalgia era. Lack of WCW trademarks would at least have spared us the WWE nWo.

Another really enjoyable show bar the finish. Don't mind heels getting heat but not these fuckers and not if it continues this OC/Matt thing that's been going on forever. 

Hangman apologising and then immediately threatening to ruin the Young Bucks was amazing. 

Good promo vids right throughout the show. Super work from the announce team in these vids. Taz is just superb in general. 

The live Rampages have such a different feel. Love that ring canvas too.

Good strong wins for JB and Dante underneath. Billionaire Tone really will give anyone a payday though, eh?

The two that immediately came to mind were Bret at Mania 10 and Eddie vs. Brock. I was all aboard the Lex Express in 93 if I'm honest but as soon as it came down to Bret or Lex at the Rumble, it was no contest. Bret was my guy. Mania 10 was the first PPV I ever saw live (or on it's first showing on Sky anyway) and I celebrated like a football match when Bret won. 

Eddie's has always been special to me because I think that was the first moment after I became a jaded smartarse fan that really sucked me in. There was obviously plenty real about that build up and Eddie's brilliant promos, delivered with raw emotion had me rooting for him.

2000 was a big year for being right into everything. In fact, probably going back to late 1999. Survivor Series triple threat between Austin, Rock and Trips had me wetting myself only for it to not happen. Trips and Foley at the Rumble, the Iron Man match with the Taker rumours and the four way at Fully Loaded (?) when I went mad for the Benoit dusty finish!

Not too many outside WWE but thd build for Raven in NWA:TNA was really good when he jumped from WWE. Really felt like something interesting and then he lost to Jarrett, like they all did.

9 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

As great as it is that Khan is as accessible as he is, I wonder if AEW would be better off if he wasn't...he's having far too many moments like this at the moment, where he just doesn't come across well. 

I don't think it matters. The people who want it to fail will criticise no matter what they say and do. People wanted it to fail before they'd put on a single show, that's not going to change.

You grow by consistently putting out accessible, engaging TV and improving the marketing and recognition of the brand. This is a faux pas and there are more but they're in the echo chambers of wrestling podcasts and "radio". It's irrelevant.