Pinc

Looks like Big Daddy is holding Jimmy Savile in one of the posters.

My mug at work has got that poster printed on it (like this one). Hadn't noticed that was Savile before. Hopefully I'm not the only one.

For about 90% of its run there's scarcely been 60 seconds of Raw go by without Jerry Lawler's voice being heard.

I'm just saying.

If an American equivalent of Operation Yewtree ever kicks off I reckon there could be one or two Benoit-style culls needed on WWE's video archive. It could fuck the network up quite badly.

I don't like The Usos' entrance. Similar to Wade Barrett's, it's got too many parts.

I think the same thing each time they come out. There's the Samoan bit, the call and response bit, and then their song comes on. It's not just that there's too many parts, but that none of the parts really go with eachother as they currently are.

If they came out to a Samoan-themed hip hop song which incorporated 'When I say Us...' into the chorus they'd get the same points across and we could all go home about 45 minutes earlier.

CM Punk circa June-July 2011 is my favorite wrestler of the last ten years and I still like him plenty now but he's looked like a skinny pot head two days removed from dressing up as Wolverine for a party for about a year now. He looked especially out of place doing the run in with the New Age Outlaws the other week. If you look like a skinny tramp next to Road Dogg you need to have a word with yourself.

Ryback should've won decisively at Hell in a Cell only for Punk to win the belt back the next night on Raw via nefarious means. That way Ryback shows he can win big matches (and that it's worth buying the PPV next time he's given a shot) and Punk can still say he was champion on 434 consecutive days since less than 24 hours had passed between the two matches.

Have Ryback chase Punk in the following months and maybe even have a stare down or something with The Rock when he shows up for his title shot. Tease tension between the guy who should rightfully be champion and the guy who's walked in to a title shot after being away all year.

If the crowd are still giving him the big reactions, and especially if he comes across as a star in his interactions with The Rock, you can then have him run in to cost Punk the title at the Rumble. In retaliation Heyman has Lesnar interfere to cost the hitherto unstoppable Ryback the Rumble itself, sewing the seeds for Lesnar v Ryback at 'Mania 29 instead of the Triple H re-match that nobody was especially arsed about. Either he wins and gives Lesnar his heat back in the cage the following month, or vice-versa. From there you're all set for your Cena/Ryback double face title match.

Sorry to go all fantasy booker, but a little imagination and foresight could've made Ryback easily.

"Local villain Montgomery Burns, seen here terrorizing children in a 19th century woodcut."

There's a buzzer/horn sound that goes off sporadically in my office throughout the work day, I presume it's something to do with transferring things between our building and the museum next door. It is near identical to the one which precedes entrances to the Royal Rumble.

Consequently, I have Booker T's theme in my head all day every day. It could be worse.

The Bastard Rock spoiled the shenanigans at the end of SummerSlam for me with his fucking '#viper'.

There is no Dana, only Sewell.

We are all Brian Sewell now.

I love Triple H. He's in my Top 5 of all time. Yet I still hate pretty much everything he's done since Summerslam too. Not just the Triple H haters that aren't fans of the current storyline.

Yeah I'm a huge Triple H fan too. He's been a big part of some of my favourite wrestling moments. That doesn't mean I'm not capable of seeing his faults though. I was fully behind them re-doing the Corporation angle with Triple H as Vince, I just don't think they've done a very good job.

No! People who don't like the current angle all obsessively hate Triple H and live in 2003 and, what's more, Pitcos is the only one clever and irreverent enough to both recognize and lampoon their hysterical bleatings. Haven't you guys seen his sig and avatar!?

Have you seen them going around New York on one in mid 98. HHH does an awful Indian accent and asks a chap wearing a turban "if I pull the end of it will it start your motor", or something similarly dreadful.

The quicker they sack the useless money black hole that is Rey Mysterio the better, but they never will because he's a merch machine and the only over hispanic act they have.

Do they give his merch out for free, aye?

winning the IC Title basically means you're mid card for life nowadays

 

There's nothing wrong with being a midcard name. I'd rather see midcard acts work well in the midcard than floundering at the main and spoiling it for when they get moved back down.

Aye, but equally you don't want performers whose act might eventually work at the top of the card to acquire a midcard stigma before they have the chance. I think Barrett is the shits but the company seemed to believe in him for that first year or so, ergo it was easy to see him as a threat. Venkman's right in that nothing made Barrett's complete loss of momentum more apparent than the IC strap.

Ambrose is doing fine but the US title is a bit of an Albatross for him at this point. Both he and the Shield would feel more potent if they'd been alternately defending the tag titles like the Freebirds all this time, or if he'd just graduated straight to the WHC.

I still think Ambrose will be the biggest deal of the three, eventually. It will take a few years for the crowd to get to know him, and there'll maybe be one or two false dawns along the way, but he'll be huge when the penny finally drops. I see his career arc being similar to Punk's with the potential to peak higher; his Straight Edge Society phase will be amazing. Reigns has undeniable presence and poise but I don't think he has the range to be much more than the new Batista, although I think he can be much better than Batista (and I liked Batista plenty when he wasn't being a bore).

I just don't like Rollins and his whiney voice and shit hair, though. For all his bumping he's never seemed as convincing in the role of missionary mercenary as the other two. Something about a lanky streak of piss like him wearing those army boots turns me right off.

I get the impression he'll be unbearable as a face and all. He can do one after the split.

I remember it being said that ECW was real but the WWF wasn't (admitting that you watched WCW was tantamount to coming out at my school, so nobody dared ponder their legitimacy aloud), but even at the time thinking everybody was indulging in a bit of healthy, voluntary double-think. 'ECW is real' was more a meme that you went along with for the fun of it than a sincerely held belief.

Except when Rhino piledrove that woman through a table. You could see that was real on the video.

Between the video of Elisa Lam having a one-player game of peanuts in a lift and scratchdj's story I had to sleep with the lamp on last night. Nice one lerds.

My only ostensibly paranormal experience is of the 'I woke up in the dark and...' variety forbade by Astro a few pages back, but in my case I'm certain that I was essentially awake* throughout as the apparition (of a little boy stood in the middle of my bedroom, apparently watching me sleep) persisted after I'd walked from my bed to investigate. When I first spotted him I presumed it was a trick of the light which would dissipate if I got up and walked towards him, but the little bastard turned around and ran into the corner of the room as I approached, which was the point at which I really freaked. I promptly bolted out the door and spent the rest of the night on my flatemate's floor. Blessedly, it was one of those rare nights that I wasn't sleeping bollock-o.

Though I don't think it was a dream that's not to say it wasn't some kind of waking hallucination brought on by my quasi-soporific state - I'm certain it was - but that isn't much less scary; as there's no reason it couldn't happen again some night.

*Broadly defined.

There is an excellent documentary called Dark Days which chronicles several weeks in the life of a group of homeless people living in an abandoned section of the New York underground. The Wikipedia page attests that it was released in 2000, though I thought it was more recent.

It can be easily torrented for those who'd like to see it for themselves. I can't imagine Hurricane Sandy was very kind to anybody still living down there in 2012.

Couldn't they at least salvage something with Bray if the two lackeys lost a couple of matches and then he brought Kane out to destroy them?

That's a class idea. I hope they do something like that. The only thing left to decide is whether Kane putting on the sheep mask after the beat down would look suitably creepy or just cause the crowd to piss themselves.

Worked for a famous chef in Mayfair and met Baby Spice, Harvey Keitel, Keanu Reeves, Ainsley Harriot, Ronnie Corbett, Kylie Minogue (looked amazing) and did lunch in the kitchen on his birthday for Tony Blair and Cilla Black came in and said hello to him, not to us, bitch.

In hindsight how easy would it have been to stick a tab of Acid or something in Blair's sarnie? I often wonder why that kind of not-necessarily-malicious spiking of celebs, and especially politicians, doesn't go on more often.

The Top 5 US wrestlers in that weighted Meltzer list are:

1. Davey Richards

2. Seth Rollins

3. Eddie Edwards

4. Daniel Bryan

5. Roderick Strong

That is some white meat right there.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown about garden sheds and he also admired the hanging baskets outside my office. He quite regularly 'lets on' these days whenever he's passing which kind of shits all over that image I had of him in my younger years. These days he's forever hanging about the bedding plants.

I once passed Ian Brown on me way into the KFC in Warrington town center. Would've been around 2006/07. He climbed straight into a massive black Range Rover and drove off. I asked the fella working there if it was a regular occurrence and he said Brown often takes a load of kids from by his to the football and then buys them all a KFC on the way home. Can't knock that, like.

The Tottenham Court Road area of London where I now work has been decent for celebs. In the last year or so I've seen Mark Gatis, two of the original three SugaBabes, the fella who hosts Dragon's Den, Anabelle Croft and Ben Goldacre. In fact I've seen Goldacre three times. He's usually on his bike.

Edit: And Jessica Hynes n

Saw the young lad who worked in Swiss Toni's car dealership on the Fast Show hurrying to catch a tube at Warren Street station two days ago. He's kept his looks quite well.

Christ. My apologies.