BomberPat

10 minutes ago, Loki said:

Hand on heart though, without looking it up could you say on which brand each of those wrestlers was performing when they had their dream matches?

in fairness, for most of them I probably could - Shawn and Triple H were always RAW guys, while Rey and Angle always felt like Smackdown guys. Everything else is a bit up in the air, though.

I don't think AEW need a brand split, but a bit more concerted effort towards each show having a separate identity - Collision has always felt a bit more old-school, while Rampage is a bit more of a "throw-shit-at-the-wall" show, and Dynamite is the flagship show for story progression and bigger matches. I think that could be more pronounced - with FTR being on Collision mostly, and having a number of high profile tag matches there, I wouldn't object to Collision becoming more focused on tag wrestling, while Rampage is the show that's a bit more open-door; the indie guys and guest stars, the lucha showcases, that sort of thing. 

At the height of WWE's brand split, it was the sense of each brand having different identities that made it work far more than the separating of individual stars - in the "Smackdown Six" era, Smackdown was generally seen as the workrate brand and RAW the "sports entertainment" brand, even though Smackdown also had the Hogan/McMahon feud going on. RAW had the Hardcore Title and Smackdown had the Cruiserweight Title, and if WWE had been better at booking specialist divisions, that could have stood as a mark of separation between the two shows for a lot longer than it did. If AEW could cut down on the number of title belts, and do more to differentiate the titles they do have, that would go a long way to fixing some of their problems.

28 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Oh I'd much rather he wasn't. but the whole reinvention and stuff like that over the years was to try and keep his spot at the top. 

I think there's an element of that, in that the longer he stuck around the WWE the more likely he was to end up in midcard feuds, so by taking those leaves of absence and coming back "reinvented" there was more chance of him getting at least a cup of coffee in the main event picture again.

But I think his capacity for reinvention was somewhat overstated, and actually what kept him fresh was that - before the days of part-timers being the biggest stars in WWE - he was the only person who took extended periods of time off, so there was always a sense of absence making the heart grow fonder, and of not burning through every available match. Now, he seems to have given up on his ambitions to be an actor or broader pop culture figure, and AEW having a much less intensive touring schedule and generally allowing their wrestlers more freedom around outside bookings means that touring with Fozzy, doing the Jericho Cruise, popping up in DDT or PWG, none of that stuff is preventing him from also being a TV regular, so he's not needed to take the time off. 

What's odd is that, regardless of the reasons, he always seemed like he recognised the value of those periods of time off, yet he's not really taken any in AEW, and is absolutely stinking up the show. He can't be completely oblivious to that, surely?

I wasn't responsible for this one, but there was a tremendous bit of workplace pranking and shithousing at the same call centre - I think I've told this story before on here, but here goes.

There were two managers - Kelvin and Andrea - and one supervisor - Bob - involved. Andrea had some problem with her back that meant there was a few months were she only worked a couple of hours a day, and she started getting annoyed that stationery went missing from her desk during the time she wasn't in, and printed out labels with her name on it and putting it on her stapler and so on. Kelvin pointed out that she was being a bit petty and ridiculous, and I've never been sure whether her response was out of more pettiness or turning it into a joke, but she just ended up labelling practically everything on her desk.

Andrea then went home for the day, leaving Kelvin and Bob in charge. They removed all of the labels on her stuff, and replaced it with labels reading "ADNREA", to make it look like she had spelled her own name wrong on all of them. When she came in the next day, she was genuinely fuming about it. Their foolproof strategy for denying responsibility was that if Andrea asked them if they did it, Bob would answer "I never printed those labels", and Kelvin would say "I never stuck any labels on anything" - both technically true, because Kelvin did the printing and Bob did the labelling. But Kelvin played a blinder, because right before the end of Andrea's shift, while Bob was on lunch, he pulled out a stapler from his desk drawer, on which he had stuck a label saying "MELVIN", and loudly protested, "oh no, look, he got me as well!".

With Bob thoroughly thrown under the bus, on a Friday afternoon, Bob was made to painstakingly remove every label before Andrea's next shift on Monday.

Fast-forward to Saturday morning, when those of us unlucky enough to work weekends turn up, Bob shows up with his keys and lets us in to start the day. On entering the office, we find that someone has let themselves in either late Friday evening after the office had closed, or very early Saturday morning, because everything in the office is now labelled - not with anyone's name, just with the name of the object. Every stapler, hole puncher, keyboard, monitor, mouse, mug, plantpot, everything is labelled. Two years and an office move later, with Kelvin having been out of the company for a year, I was still finding things with those labels on them, and they cracked me up every time.

By Monday, Andrea told both of them that they had been ridiculously immature, and while it had been funny, it set a bad example and they should stop messing around with this stuff. I popped into their office for something that afternoon after Andrea had gone home, and found them supergluing her mug to her desk and her jar of Bovril to a shelf, and working out how feasible it would be to glue all of her paperclips together end-to-end and then put them back in their jar.

when I worked in a call centre, for a while my desk was next to the boss' son's. He was an alright lad, and sometimes a good laugh, but he knew he could get away with things that us lowly temps couldn't, which sometimes was fun when it was stuff like him introducing himself with different made-up names to customers, or playing the game of trying to crowbar different words into each call, but was frustrating when it was more him slacking off during busy times. 

My usual way of getting my own back on him was that every time he left his desk, he never locked his computer, so I would take a screenshot of whatever was on his screen, minimise every window, and then set that screenshot as his desktop wallpaper. 

18 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:

Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart podcast is fantastic. I started listening to the second series today which is a branching web of stories connected through the Covid times but told in a brilliantly impartial way. Nice and short too at about 35 minutes a pop. He’s unmatched in his ability to present facts but also give the content an entertaining narrative.

18 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Oh yeah I’m forgot about this, despite finding out about it the other week!  The first series was fantastic so thanks for the reminder. Have you listened to “The Coming Storm” by Gabriel Gatehouse? It’s very similar but about the January 6th insurrection. Actually it may have been your good self who recommended it!

I blitzed through series one of Things Fell Apart when I got the second series recommended to me, absolutely loved it, insofar as something that deals with often frustrating topics can be loved. Looking forward to starting on the new series soon.

The Coming Storm was superb in laying out the background of a lot of pervasive American conspiracy theories - the stuff about William Rees-Mogg's Sovereign Individual in particular was fascinating. 

On a completely different note, my favourite new listen is Bigfeets. It's by Robert Brockway, Seanbaby and Jason Pargin, who all used to write for Cracked.com when it was still good, and it's an episode-by-episode recap of Mountain Monsters, an absolutely insane "reality" show about a bunch of aging hillbillies hunting cryptids in West Virginia. I've never seen a single episode of the show, but the podcast is hilarious.

20 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

You are not wrong, but it's the same with every news story. The news was that the case had been filed and then it was Vince had resigned. Realistically there isn't any more news on the story. The next big news hit will be if/when it goes to trial. I wouldn't expect a lot of coverage until then as other news will happen, and let's face it for the general public there is plenty of news and then some happening. The wider public only has so many fucks to give and right now outside a small section of a small section of wrestling fans this was never going to be on the radar for long. 

Exactly this - if it's slipped from the news agenda, it's only because there's no more news to report; the story was less than a week ago, we got the headlines of the allegations, they circulated through the press, and then the story of his resignation, then the story of Triple H doing a bad job of addressing it at the press conference. There's no developments beyond that, so other than the odd think-piece, or it getting brought up on something like (I know I referenced this already) Richard Osman & Marina Hyde's podcast, there's not really anything else to report until the next development, or until some journalists do some really digging and fact-finding - and it's on that latter point that "but it's just wrestling" could hold things back, as major newspapers probably aren't inclined to put much money behind that. Though you never know - a friend, ally and major fundraiser of Donald Trump being caught up in a sex trafficking and sexual assault lawsuit isn't something to sniff at.

But to put things in perspective, I just did a quick search on McMahon's name on Google news - in the last 4 days this story has been reported on by: Sky News, BBC, ITV, the Guardian, the Independent, Al Jazeera, The Daily Mail, Forbes, the Telegraph, the New York Times, LBC, the Mirror, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, NBC, The Sun, Rolling Stones and CNN. Some of those are aggregated reports from Reuters, but a who's who of the mainstream media still thought it worth publishing. Some, like CNN, have gone beyond just relaying the report and published think-pieces on how Vince was allowed to get away with it considering everything that was already known about him. 

The Daily Mail/Mail Online - which, yes, fucking awful, but once upon a time was (and maybe still is) the second-most read UK online news source after the BBC - didn't just report on the story, but ran multiple follow-ups; they reported on Vince's resignation, on Ronda Rousey's Tweet, on Triple H at the press conference, on Vince's rebuttal, on Vince's merch being pulled from the WWE shop, on the Bella Twins making a statement, on Brock Lesnar being pulled from the Rumble, and even a story about Punk's injury made sure to refer to him as "a vocal critic of Vince McMahon" in the headline. They know it's going to get clicks and that's their business, but the point is that the story isn't going anywhere just yet, if only because it's scandalous and salacious enough to keep shocking people with more horrible revelations. 

ironically, his current injury is one really common in steroid users.

I went to see Operation Mincemeat a week or so ago, it's absolutely brilliant. I'm not normally into musicals, but the songs are catchy and great, serve the plot really well, everyone in it is brilliant, and it's hilarious, with some really touching moments too. A very odd story to decide to make into a musical, and they've really made it work. 

Choosing between RJ, Taz and Nana is tough! All three are phenomenal, and all three have cracked me up plenty of times, but I'll give the nod to RJ, because Hey EW is appointment viewing. 

had to go with Swerve/Hangman. The Omega/Ospreay matches and Gunther/Sheamus/Drew felt like extensions of matches we'd seen before, so there was less that stuck in the memory, while Hangman/Swerve felt like something utterly unlike anything else I saw on a mainstream wrestling show this year. Possibly the best deathmatch ever by a major US promotion.

I went for Swerve Strickland, but this is probably the toughest this question's been in a while - Danielson missed a good chunk of the year, so even while so much that he did was fantastic, I couldn't bring myself to vote for him.

I don't watch enough WWE to speak for Cody or Gunther, though both seem to have had great years. Mox, Cassidy and to a lesser extent Joe suffer from a bit of almost over-exposure; they've been consistently great, but consistently great in the same way that they have been for the last couple of years, so it's hard to think of them as 2023 stand-outs, they've just been doing what they've been doing. 

In the end I went with Swerve. He's the only one on the list who I feel really tapped into another level last year, and elevated not just himself but most of the people he worked with, and was always compelling to watch.

It wasn't just that he said he hadn't read it, it's that he said that in the same interview where he claimed that they were doing "everything possible". Reading the thing seems like it might fall under "everything possible"!

To be honest, I'd even have some sympathy on Triple H not reading it - it's full of horrific details about his father-in-law's sex crimes, I can't imagine getting into the right headspace to read something like that. But you don't just say that you haven't read it, say your legal team is reading it

1 hour ago, Factotum said:

A lot of people knew things about Harvey Weinstein. There were NDAs, reports that were started and then fell apart etc. There were also people who heard things. The issue with journalism is it takes a lot of time, money and bravery to nail one of these people.

If you read the two main the books on the Weinstein reporting, you can see just how difficult it is. The women they interviewed that wouldn't go on record for a variety of reasons. The NDA legal problems they faced. Hell the Times story on him was only first concentrating on the NDAs and they had to be meticulously fact checked. Throw in financial pressure and legal threatening and it isn't as easy as saying 'why didn't they report it?'

We all know Vince had NDAs, we all knew about Rita Chatterton or the sex abuse scandal in the 90s. We knew this. So did journalists who reported on it. I imagine their are a lot of journalists in mainstream media now looking at this. It's a big story. Perhaps now more women or employees feel they can come forward. We can only hope.

There's a bunch of things going on in wrestling journalism specifically - but all of this is much bigger. We have to remember that this isn't a Wrestling story, it's the story of a powerful multi-millionaire head of a major corporation abusing his position, and wrestling is only the backdrop. Everything about how this story has broken shows how difficult it would be to shed any light on it before now - tens of millions paid out in NDAs, previous legal cases paid off, WWE's crack legal defence, these are all things that make breaking a story like this as close to impossible as reporting gets. The story didn't break because one journalist pushed harder or asked the right questions or stayed on the beat longer, it broke because there was grounds for a lawsuit when Vince stopped fulfilling the terms of his own NDA agreement, which meant a lawsuit, which meant something the press could report on - because they're still not saying "Vince McMahon has done these things", they're saying "this is what the lawsuit alleges Vince McMahon has done" because, at this stage, that is the only option available to them.

Wrestling journalism has a thousand and one flaws, not least of all that people who are better described as opinion columnists, critics, podcasters, Youtubers, and so on, all get lumped into the same category, so are expected to be able to do hard-hitting journalism when really all they wanted to do was crack jokes about WCW in 1997 with their mates or put together a video called "Top 10 Wrestlers You Never Knew Were In A Royal Rumble". Meltzer's a perfect example, because he straddles so many of those different roles - the star ratings he gives as a critic are used as "evidence" that his reporting must be biased, and he's treated as somebody who gets reporting wrong more often than he does because he things he speculates on in conversation on a podcast are repeated on aggregated news and gossip sites as something he's reported is definitely going to happen. There are far fewer distinctions between all these roles than there are in mainstream media and journalism, and it leads to people who really have no business trying to play journalist being called upon to comment on serious issues like this when they'd be better served just staying quiet and listening to what better informed people have to say, and in worst case scenarios it leads to people who made their name off spurious gossip and interviews thinking that they are investigative journalists but knowing nothing of the practice or ethics of journalism and making things worse.

It doesn't help that, when it comes to issues of women's safety and of the dynamics of power and abuse, Dave Meltzer has repeatedly shown himself to be, at best, profoundly incurious. 

39 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

A WWE without Triple H at the helm is a fascinating prospect. I'd be very intrigued to see that.

I've often wondered what WWE would look like once it fully completes its transformation into corporate content churn with fewer and fewer of the old guard involved. Part of me thinks that everybody there has been so well-trained in how WWE operates that there'd be no perceptible change, but the alternative is that corporate heads look at a lot of things taken as read or taken for granted in wrestling and just sack them off entirely. 

I think the strength of his AEW run - and, fair play, he pulled out a superb match with Samoa Joe at All In under circumstances where you'd at best have expected him to phone it in - is that their matches are far less produced, and he was the elder statesman and biggest star there, so always in a position to take the lead and wrestle at his pace, so it was easier for him to stay in his comfort zone, work around any nagging aches and pains, and cover for any shortcomings with things like cute references to Bret Hart matches, or old reliable tactics of older wrestlers since time immemorial like bleeding profusely to add drama when your ring-work can't quite get there on its own.

Admittedly in-ring we only have the Rumble and clips of the Dominik match to go off, but in WWE he doesn't have any of those options available to him - someone else is producing and laying out his matches, he's working to the company's style and pace, and a lot of his bag of tricks has been taken from him.

you know it's serious now, it's being discussed on Richard Osman's podcast.

in fairness, haven't seen it, and just going on the Observer write-up and stuff I saw on Twitter. 

I will take that it's over-analytical, and that most of the criticisms don't really matter, but I do think that having Seth Rollins talk about people politicking their way to big matches and title shots without anyone calling him out on it is a misstep, and indicative of something WWE have done forever now, of just forgetting (or expecting you to forget) about a wrestler's kayfabe history the moment it becomes convenient to. They're all arguably valid points (though I always find it odd for WWE to draw attention to the flaws in their own booking and the things their audience are tired of, as if they're powerless to do anything about it), just maybe shouldn't have come from the mouth of Seth Rollins; if you had somebody like Sami Zayn or Jey Uso firing up Cody by making some of the same points to suggest why he should be going after the "workhorse" title, it would have had a bit more weight behind it, perhaps.

I'm guessing the Cody/Rollins stuff was just to buy time and create some intrigue between now and Wrestlemania, particularly as Reigns isn't going to be wrestling or appearing on TV much between now and then, but maybe don't have Michael Cole shout about how Cody's definitely going after Reigns if that's what you're doing?

I saw someone on Twitter bring up as well that it's the worst kind of worked shoot WWE shit - not just because it's belittling Reigns and his belt by drawing attention to the fact that he never shows up, but because saying guys like Hogan only had the belt because they "politicked" suggests that none of their clean babyface title defences count, and unless it's supposed to be painting Seth Rollins as a hypocrite (in which case, somebody should be pointing it out), it's a bit rich having him criticise wrestling politicians considering that within kayfabe he's been one of the most successful politicians since back in the Authority days. And if they're going "shoot" about it, pointing to Dusty Rhodes as a guy who won titles through hard work rather than politics is a stretch!

the main thing with DDP is that a lot of his success stories are because he managed to sell an exercise regimen to people who would normally never have considered something like Yoga; that's why so many of his big before and after stories are people who lost insane amounts of weight, because they went from zero exercise or diet plan to actually following a regular workout schedule. You can be annoyed at the hustle, but he's not a conman or a quack - and God knows there's plenty of them in the Yoga and workout world - or selling quick fixes, he just cornered a market, and fair play to him.

2 minutes ago, Michael_3165 said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Vince shitting on the woman and making her have sex with another person whilst covered in it. 

He named sex toys after WWE wrestlers and used them so aggressively she sustained injuries.

They restrained her and said "no means yes" and "take it bitch".

 (and I may be wrong) this is the first set of big revelations about women (?) You'd have thought that these would have been uncovered years ago. It leads me to wonder whether the number of hard chair shots to the head have finally caught up with him.

He was credibly accused of rape in the '80s, and of sexual assault in 2006, not to mention the more than $10 million dollars in NDA payments. That's just the stuff that got the law involved.

at least the Glitter Band had a decent Luke Haines song lamenting how the rest of them suffered because of Gary's actions.

Lostprophets were always shit, and WWE are well-practiced enough by now at not mentioning or airing footage of someone if they're on the outs - they'd write you out of history for signing with a different company, once upon a time. The only question is how they approach things in the archive, but that will be Netflix's problem soon enough.

If this isn't him completely knackered, I could see it being a blessing in disguise. Especially with Rollins injured, I wasn't convinced he'd get the Wrestlemania main event anyway - it looked like they were pivoting to Seth vs Gunther and Drew vs Punk, and I assume one of the Women's Title matches would main event night one over either of them, and then I expect he'd have turned heel and be presented as being bitter to have still lost out on his Wrestlemania main event.

It was clear when they signed him that he wasn't really factored into their plans, and that's why he's not really been given a singular focus. The Plan was still for Cody vs Reigns, and if anything was changing that it was The Rock, not Punk. So if he's able to take some time off then come back at a time when he can be the sole focus, that might be the best thing for him - like Cody getting to have a short run after returning, but then his injury meaning he also got a big babyface "absence makes the heart grow fonder" pop in last year's Rumble.

Of course, the problem with that is who knows where we'll be in a few months time, in terms of the main event picture, and in terms of WWE in general? Though in the latter case, it might end up helping Punk's brand- if the Vince story dredges up even more unpleasantness, the best thing for someone who tries to sell himself as principled and honest is to not risk sharing TV time with anyone who might get named and shamed.

Speaking of betting, I did alright out of the Rumble considering most of my bets were off.

The day before the show, I put a couple of quid on Gunther, The Rock and Becky Lynch to win their respective rumbles, just on the outside chance that they won it and I made some decent money, but then put £20 on Cody at 5/2, so that was a return of £70.

Except I had apparently forgotten that I had placed a bet on Cody to win it back in September, when for some reason he was at 4/1 odds, so that came in at £125. So that was basically free money!

19 minutes ago, Loki said:

This is the big question.  What WAS that about?  If it was just a flippant off-the-cuff remark it was really, really stupid as it's started this expectation train that as you say has taken the shine of the CodyStoryTM .

I'd say that maybe The Rock realised the optics wouldn't be great for him to show up on TV as the scandal was unfolding, but then he's a director of the company now, so it's not as if that's enough to distance himself. Meltzer seems to think the match is still happening, just not at Wrestlemania.

I would hazard a guess that they have The Rock involved in the build or the match somehow; maybe even recycle the same thing from Cena/Miz, of The Rock being the Host Of Wrestlemania. He can then prevent Solo Sikoa from interfering against Cody, or overturn the match when Reigns cheats to win, so you get the big babyface moment of Rock endorsing Cody, and a logical set-up for Reigns to actually want the match. 

10 hours ago, The Dart said:

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.

No, the point isn't that they would have replaced Brock's spots like-for-like and he'd have done what Pat did, but that given they had probably less than 24 hours to make the call of whether or not Lesnar was going to be in the match - Fightful reported his travel was cancelled the day of the show - it's unlikely that they would have had everyone who was due to interact with Brock learn a ton of new spots with new people, particularly in a match as tightly booked and produced as the Rumble. Bron may have been given some of Lesnar's eliminations, but I find it really unlikely that he was just given a run of his spots, particularly when somebody entering and doing nothing is always a reliable indicator that they were a late-in-the-day addition to the Rumble match.

It could be a middle ground - Bron was always due to enter the match, and Pat took Lesnar's entry number, and Bron was given some of the eliminations that would have gone to Lesnar while still doing the showcase spots originally planned for him specifically. It's also possible that Pat McAfee didn't get physical with anybody because he hadn't been cleared, or that he was so late an addition that he didn't have the training and prep time he presumably needs before he has a match, as he's not someone they'd trust to run spots on the fly.

Now, obviously, if everything Meltzer is reporting about Bron getting Brock's spots and Brock being planned to face Dominik at Elimination Chamber is true, then I'd hold my hands up and admit I'm mistaken, but I don't really buy it. Fightful haven't been able to confirm it, for one.

I am genuinely dreading the first time Conead Thompson tries to address this on a podcast.