Fog Dude

Well, that'd explain it then! Relieved to know neither @hallicks' memory nor mine was playing tricks on us there. 

Quote

I have the vaguest memory of seeing him as enhancement talent “Jack Foley” against someone (Hercules?) on one of those WWE rewind/classic shows they used to show on Sky

Same here, except I faintly recall that his opponent on that occasion was Kamala. 

Unrelated to regular in-ring performers, but it strikes me that Jim Ross must've only been in his 40s at best – and thus arguably in the prime of his career for a commentator – when first referred to as "Good Ol' JR". 

11 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

The Crow and Spawn had good music though

For a split second I thought you were talking about a pub. 

11 hours ago, Joe Blog said:

Ahhh right,

1985 - 2004 = 19 years

2024 - 2004 = 20 years

thanks for that. 

Yup, that's what I was getting at. Will hold my hands up and admit that I worded it about as abominably as possible last night. 

11 minutes ago, Mr Kennedy said:

Entirely feasible that they can put their differences aside when somebody is insulting their family?

Indeed it is. But Cody himself (not only his "crybaby" fans) throwing those insults out when he'd voluntarily given up his main event spot six days earlier still basically came out of nowhere.

Considering the previous explanation was just that Rock and Roman arrived in Vegas for the Mania hype show separately because they hated each other's guts and ended it by ever twirling, twirling towards freedom, at least the latest social media output tries to make sense of it all – which is better than continued silence on the subject, I suppose. 

Girl All the Bad Guys Want made a reference to watching wrestling on Monday nights, didn't it? 

In case you really want to feel like a fossil, their song 1985 is older now than the actual year 1985 was when they recorded it. 

22 hours ago, I Bent My Wookie said:

Sorry. 

Changed phone last week and only was able to get hold of my old email Sunday to reset password. By that point it was late so couldn't get any results in. 

Full service will be resumed. 

Fair enough, glad you're staying with us. Just to be clear: everyone's allowed to make their picks on desktop too, which is what I'm gonna do right now... 

Premier League

Brentford 1-3 Chelsea

Everton 1-1 West Ham United
Nottingham Forest 1-2 Liverpool
Manchester City 3-0 Manchester United 

Scottish Women's Premier League
Hibernian 0-2 Rangers 

La Liga
Valencia 0-1 Real Madrid 

Athletic Bilbao 2-3 Barcelona

Eredivisie
PSV Eindhoven 2-2 Feyenoord 

Primeira Liga
Porto 1-0 Benfica 

Indonesian Liga 1
Persebaya Surabaya w/Rory 0-3 PSS Sleman

10 minutes ago, seph said:

I'm busy for a variety of IRL reasons, so I need to drop out of this one. Sorry I couldn't keep up and my football-fu is way off.

Cheers for your hard work as ever Foggy.

Thanks for clearing that up. Don't know if you caught it, but I addressed this in the previous write-up since you'd ducked three weeks in a row anyway. 

The final scores went into the opening post on Sunday night, and the table was updated right after that. In another low-scoring week, there wasn't much of a spread of different scores. Only Vegeta stood out from the pack by getting into double figures, so he moves above Tilde in the sole change to the standings this time out. Special mention to Rory who got an exact score from the draw at the AmEx.  

Meanwhile, ultimo extends his lead over Stinky by one point to eight. The randomly selected 'wildcard' fixture was match #8, Monaco's win at Lens, from which nobody took three points but three participants took a single bonus each. One of those was crucial to the quarter-final replay as it edged Chutney Spoon ahead of me. That leaves the semi-final draw as follows: 

Vegeta vs. I Bent My Wookie
        
Tim Healy's Chutney Spoon vs. MVP RULZ

Bent Wookie skipped this one, but unlike seph he's got a busy March coming up with a Cup semi and a D2D so hopefully he's not given up completely. Anyway, elsewhere victories for Villa, Palace, Man City, Arsenal and Wolves all generally proved good for one-pointers, but the League Cup final and American results turned out to be more of a mixed bag of guesses.

A new set of 10 should be up at the top of the thread shortly. 

4 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Hilarious that they sent Australia this show. You'd think it might kill the territory but then you remember they sent us Rebellions and Capital Carnage and Mayhem in Manchester and it just made the Stockholm syndrome more powerful.

As mentioned upthread, they didn't send Perth this show - the state government of Western Australia actively courted it and for those who were watching live the event was heavily punctuated by tourism ads. 

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

No, the singles match. Was that not on SmackDown? Could've sworn I remembered a blue ring apron.

I wasn't going by a visual memory. I recalled watching the singles match on a Friday night and the handicap match on a Saturday... back when I had Sky, before the time of on-demand TV and before weekends all blurred into one amorphous splodge. 

11 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Good telling can make you forget yourself. I always think back to that Triple H/TAKA Michinoku title match on SmackDown, when the outcome was the most obvious thing to anyone, smark or casual, yet for a few brief moments both guys made it completely plausible that an upset was on the cards.

It can play such a trick on you that you forget which show it happened on!

Are you thinking of the Kai En Tai & Brooklyn Brawler vs Triple H handicap match from three months later? Because that one actually was on SmackDown. 

48 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

A resource for wrestling results you say 🤔 

Raidy was probably referring to himself there, as the 'Keff's resident oracle on such matters. 🤭

6 hours ago, kidzero said:

Love that ppv but I also love st valentines massacre 99 al snow vs hardcore holly in a river didn't Billy gun won the ic title at that ppv

Don't think the New Age Outlaws were on that card at all? The only Intercontinental run I remember for Billy Gunn was in late 2000 and he won it from Eddie Guerrero on an episode of Smackers, not at a PPV.

12 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

Killer Instinct came out near the end of SNES life span, SF Alpha which came out a similar time went to PS and Saturn and not SNES. MK3 was made on an inferior Midway machine so SNes looks okay and PS almost identical. I actually think it was a decent attempt given the console.

KI Gold suffered like many N64 games did and that was lack of space on a cartridge. 

True, SFA1 missed the SNES but the sequel was somehow squeezed onto a 16-bit cartridge after the N64 had already come out in Japan and North America so people in those markets hardly noticed. I had a copy (the only such title I ever had to order in since I couldn't find it in any shops) and despite the ridiculousness of loading times on a non-disc-based game it's an absolute bit of alchemy that Capcom produced a damn near coin-op-perfect port. The fact they even bothered is basically a farewell love letter to that console generation. 

I faintly remember completing a Killer Instinct game at my local arcade on my birthday one year... but can't recall which KI or which birthday – though I think it's the only time I ever finished the arcade version of anything. 

3 hours ago, Supremo said:

Wasn’t it reported that Australia paid big money for this show? If so, hopefully they kept their receipt.

What are the Covid restrictions like in Australia these days? Surprised Nia Jax can even enter the country, the anti-vax nutcase.

During the height of Covid, Western Australia actually had border controls with the rest of the country for the first time in 120 years. But as you say they've paid for the show so they'll probably let in whichever people WWE say they want on the card. 

2 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

Also, New Catch Republic? What the hell does that mean?

Am guessing the 'Catch' part is something to do with catch-as-catch-can wrestling, and the rest they thought just sounded cool? 

This mural on a block of flats in the small town of Fene (up the coast from A Coruña) apparently recently won a global award, and two other similar pieces in the same part of the world were also nominated: 

In case that's too out of keeping with the definition of street-level art, there's also this recent homage to Welsh football just round the corner from me: 

This RAW house show including a Dutch Mantell promo worded in such a way that he got a crowd in a city with a 100% Labour council to cheer GOP gains in the US midterms. And also this (at the Princess Hall named after the micro-royal who opened it, not whatever a "Princes Art Centre" is supposed to be). 

Not proud of the latter given who the promoter – formerly of this parish – is, but it was a 5-minute walk from where I was living at the time and affordable. Besides, pandemic restrictions on attending sporting events had only just been lifted, and I at least got to chat to the late ring announcer John Short during the interval. 

League Cup Final

Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool (@ Wembley)

Premier League
Aston Villa 3-2 Nottingham Forest
Brighton & Hove Albion 3-0 Everton
Crystal Palace 1-0 Burnley
Bournemouth 0-3 Manchester City 
Arsenal 2-1 Newcastle United 
Wolves 3-1 Sheffield United 

Ligue 1

Lens 2-2 Monaco 

MLS
Columbus Crew 0-1 Atlanta United 
Portland Timbers 2-0 Colorado Rapids

The results went up in the initial post on Sunday night, both for the main competition and the FPL Cup. More people actually got an exact score than last week, but it still ended up as an even lower-scoring round. Given that, surprisingly there was only one draw among the quarter-final ties, so I've rejigged a couple of D2Ds to let the bottom duo replay next week. 

And yes, I'm counting Pete and myself as the last two in the standings, since seph has bowed out. He leaves with thanks for playing a full part for 5 months, including getting both his D2D turns done and almost making it through the Cup group stage. And of course for inventing D2D in the first place. He'd be more than welcome to join in again next season.

There are three players separated by two points in mid-table... but they all got the same score this week so there was no movement at all. At the top, ultimo extends his lead by one to seven points. I promised 'no gimmicks' this time out but that was a little white lie since I did attempt a 'wildcard' fixture and then it turned out to be match #10, Bayern's surprise reverse in Bochum on Sunday. Nobody went for even so much as a draw there, so no bonus points for anyone from that clash marked by delays due to protests.

Closer to home, wins for Arsenal, Villa, Forest, Brighton and Man Utd generally proved fruitful, but score draws at Newcastle, Man City and Wolfsburg plus a shock loss for Spurs caught most people out. 

The next card should appear in the original post very soon. 

Premier League

Burnley 1-3 Arsenal
Fulham 2-1 Aston Villa
Newcastle United 3-1 Bournemouth
Nottingham Forest 2-3 West Ham United
Spurs 1-0 Wolves
Manchester City 2-0 Chelsea
Sheffield United 3-4 Brighton & Hove Albion 
Luton Town 1-1 Manchester United 

Imitation Bundesliga
Wolfsburg 1-2 Borussia Dortmund 
VfL Bochum 0-3 Bayern Munich

The final scores went into the opening post on Sunday night, and the table has since been updated as usual. I've left in the reminder of how the FPL Cup group stages finished since we'll be getting on with the quarter-finals imminently.

MVP RULZ got his bet right and 5 of the other 8 participants wrongly disagreed to net him a load of bonus points, and move him up to a more familiar position of third. In a low-scoring round, it was a good week for ultimo to pick late, although luckily the D2D match was the last one chronologically so he was at least in time for that. Stinky was only able to close the gap to six points. 

Without any bonuses, Tilde would've been joint top scorer alongside Bent Wookie. The latter makes it into double figures by guessing the exact score from the 'wildcard' fixture at Craven Cottage. Special mention to Chutney Spoon for getting the Asian Cup final spot on too – the sole other three-pointer of the entire round. 

Slim pickings elsewhere, truth be told: four favourites all won knockout ties on the road, with just Livingston suffering a scare at Firhill before going through in extra time. Those were generally good for one-pointers, as were victories for Inter and Qatar. Away triumphs for the Blades and Bees, on the other hand, turned out tougher to foresee. 

The following set of 10 would seem to be the most 'normal'/traditional line-up of matches all season, so I thought it'd be the fairest time to get the last 8 of the FPL Cup out of the way. That'll go live at the top of the thread shortly. 

Asian Cup Final

Qatar 2-0 Jordan 

Premier League
Fulham 1-1 Bournemouth
Luton Town 3-1 Sheffield United
Wolves 2-1 Brentford

Scottish Cup Round 5
Inverness Caledonian Thistle 0-3 Hibernian
Partick Thistle 1-0 Livingston

FA Trophy Fifth Round
Hereford 1-2 Gateshead

FA Women's Cup Fifth Round
Arsenal 1-3 Manchester City 

Serie A
Roma 0-2 Inter
Milan w/MVP RULZ 2-2 Napoli