Vamp

Khan's future is more Herb Abrams than Vince McMahon. 

I can't see anything wrong with WCW starting another 2 hour A-show. I trust in Easy E.

I miss "social justice warrior." Great insult that was. 

Pig Fucker Cameron is a great name for a pub. 

This won't interest anyone here because it's about a musical but fuck it. 

There's a production of Oklahoma that's on in London at the moment that's quite divisive for audiences. It's a bit revisionist, changing the perspective of what most people probably think of as a fairly harmless, nostalgic cowboy musical. I wonder if the audience response is partly because we're a little bit better on race, violence and community than the United States and so what its saying about those things don't quite have the same context. Someone behind me was unhappy about a very specific change that directly tackles some of themes. 

26 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

To this day I'm still not sure what makes him the "American Nightmare". It sounds cool though so maybe that's just it? Cool nickname and logo is genius for merchandise, but I just wish I knew what the fuck he meant by it.

Really they should have skipped the match with Rollins at Mania and had Cody and Rollins debate who had a justifiable nickname.

9 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

No game is ever “finished”.

Not nowadays they're not. 

Punk and wrestling just seem to be a toxic relationship really. It's kinda sad that he'll probably never accept how good of a career he's actually had. 

He does look like a walking talking personification of misery though. 

I've also never been that convinced by him in the ring. I know I'm in the minority on this but he's always felt like a cover band to me. It never felt like he owned what he did. He had a few of those shit "technically good" matches that happened. Obviously had good matches with Cena but that's not exactly hard. 

He's a territory character stuck in the modern wrestling landscape. He'd be alright if he could come in, do a spooky promo, have a match and then fuck off to the next territory and swing back round in 2 years time. But he can't. Like everybody else he's overexposed. He's not the Undertaker he's Dolph Ziggler on a Halloween Special of Strictly Come Dancing. 

Starmer calling Sharp's position untenable and then saying that it's a mess of the BBC's own making is just a great mini example of his thought process. 

It's not, is it? You can't point to an example of institutional corruption at the upper levels of this country and then pin the blame on the BBC because you're trying to appeal to voters. 

If football presenters shouldn't tweet about anything other than football because they're being paid by the British tax payer, surely politicians shouldn't tweet about anything other than politics. I don't pay my MP's wages so that he can force his football opinions on me. 

Did Linekar say it as a former footballer, a crisp salesman, a BBC pundit or some bloke on twitter?

Either way, he's played into their hands and I'm not sure he cares. Now the news is about whether a public funded broadcaster should be allowed to express an opinion rather than the government being horrible fucking pricks. 

Wrestlers have basically chin locked the strike exchange into nothingness. Knackered? Can't remember what's next? Strike exchange. Which is fine  but if you're doing it all the time and not using it to actually mean anything then people just become more and more aware of how stupid it is. 

Still, it's not as bad as when wrestlers take it in turns to German suplex each other over and over again. 

They try and get everyone on the card so that they all get the WrestleMania payday I believe. Been that way since WrestleMania 19 or 20 I think? Wrestlers complained about not getting on the card 

They'll just chuck a battle royal on there and some multi tags or something. 

I don't mind it to be honest. Feels right to have a battle royal on your biggest card of the year. 

It's pretty pointless discussing how AEW could book its women better. They've had opportunities before and never bothered. 

I'd argue that the point of the AA isn't the slam anyway. It's the bit where Cena's holding someone up on his shoulders. I've no idea how strong Orton is, but I don't see him being able to lift some of the people Cena has or being able to hold them for as long as Cena can. I don't think it's really intended as an impact move. It's like when Goldberg gave Hogan the jackhammer, the important moment wasn't the landing but the bit where he was holding Hogan up. 

I've always wondered what an Orton vs. Okada match would be like. Either it would be great, because they are great at timing and simplicity, or it'd be so boring that no one would ever remember it happened. 

Orton is basically a better version of Kane at this stage. He's been a solid hand forever, sometimes as dull as dishwater, rare moments of greatness, and ultimately would have been great in the days of territories where he could fuck off for a bit. 

Ultimately though, he's done better than 99% of other wrestlers. Doesn't seem to be too banged up, largely seems content, maybe still an arsehole but no addictions. Probably has a good laugh at the likes of Punk who've only ever been miserable. 

Wasn't he teaching yoga at one stage? Possibly as part of DDP yoga?

I wonder if there's a danger that if you book Zayn on night one fans will end up fantasy booking him into the main on night 2. 

Anyway, fuck Big Brother, I want to see someone try Space Cadets again, or at least something similar. 

I don't think you can put that genie back in its bottle. Everybody who would want to go in is aware of what it is now and how to play it. And the audience now expects something entirely different. 

Isn't Cody planning on wearing a belt with logos on from the various different indy promotions he's worked? I think he's smart enough to work the fans who are most likely to boo him. 

On 12/7/2022 at 10:40 AM, BomberPat said:

I'm a big Orson Welles fan, and there's a lot I like about Citizen Kane, but I'd struggle to meaningfully make the case for it as the canonical best film ever. I'm glad that it's been knocked off a few top spots now, if only because I think it's very easy for something to just go unchallenged as a "best ever" in whatever category it's in, and that there's a danger in doing so.

I've only seen 33 films on the list, and most of them aren't in the order I'd put them (Barry Lyndon over The Shining?!), but the fuck do I know?

I'm obviously ridiculously behind on this but...

From what I remember of my film history, Citizen Kane benefitted a lot from timing. It was one if the first movies that ended up being shown a lot on television, and that coincided with a generation of movie directors and film critics growing up. Obviously that's not to take much away from the film, because it was still good enough to leave an impression, but it also had an increased opportunity to impact on people's minds. A little earlier or a little later and it might not have done that. 

I was doing a Film MA when Citizen Kane was knocked off the top spot by Vertigo under a couple of lecturers who were asked to submit their lists to Sight and Sound. There was a surprising amount of fuss about it as if it was a seismic cultural shift. Which seemed to be to suggest that they had a pretty narrow view of film. 

Lesnar vs. Sting was a proper dream match for me. Not one of those bollocks ones where people go "ooh, these two are similar" but in a pure "this could be amazing" way. Instead they pissed Sting away on Triple H and Seth "Not Another Nickname" Rollins. Awful. 

Talking of Sting, I wish we had a La Parka/Crow Sting confrontation. La Parka doing his dance, Sting just staring, Parka hitting him with a chair, Sting no selling, etc. 

Muta/Taker could all too easily have slipped into boring bollocks I think. It shouldn't have been but I'm not sure you're not tempting fate by putting those two together. 

This is complete fantasy because it'd be mixing people from different time periods, but I think you could have a really fun feud between Cena and Naito. Something like Naito of a few of years ago winning the WWE championships when it was still the spinner, treating it like he did the IC title, the two of them sharing segments where they're both playing it cool in their own very different ways until the go home show where Cena does one of his serious promos about how much that title means to him, how he helped design it to leave his mark, how he knows other people don't like it just like they don't like him, how Naito only cares about himself, and then the match with Naito getting in Cena's face, doing the eye taunt, and Cena smacking the taste out of his mouth like he did in his first match with Kurt. 

Also, Bischoff era RAW, Norman Smiley randomly debuts and does the big wiggle in the ring. Bischoff comes out and tells him he's had his 3 minutes. The rest of the show is Norman running, hiding and screaming his way through the back trying to avoid 3MW. 

To be fair, in terms of just the night and working the crowd they had (ignoring the longterm for a moment) I think HHH did a better job than HBK a year later. 

Plus, in terms of storytelling, it's the more interesting story. HHH, the ultimate arsehole who everyone hated just a year or so ago, openly mocking a wrestler for being inferior and having the whole crowd side with him against a man they'd previously rallied behind, submitting to that 'inferior' wrestler. Cena's whole run is a lot better if you ignore the logic that the fans should be behind the babyface. He's just a guy who "never gives up." More than any other babyface at that time, he faces not just his opponents but a fanbase that thinks he's shit and doesn't deserve to be where he is. I'm not sure that WWE knew they were telling that story, or that the fans knew their part in it, but pretty sure Cena and a few others did. There's an amazing story in there, it's just not edited well.

Also, on the Eddie wrestling bugger than he was, Eddie was fucking jacked to the gills in that period. Same with Benoit. Reminds me of that time a fan phoned into Meltzer and said about wrestlers on steroids getting pushed over the likes of Eddie and Benoit. No judgement on either of them for it (plenty of judgement on Benoit for other reasons), because I'm sure they felt like they did what they needed to, but they clearly did what they could to make sure they weren't small guys anymore. In hindsight they're terrifying to look at. 

JBL's a weird one. His heel run felt pretty old school and surprisingly humble. For a guy who's reportedly an arsehole (although again, at the time we were criticising him for things that we didn't criticise the likes of Benoit or Japanese wrestling for) he always seemed like he knew his place on the roster even as champion. Sure, his match with Undertaker was pretty awful but plenty of wrestlers have had awful matches with Undertaker, and he more than carried his end in matches with Eddie, Cena and Rey. He's a better heel during that period than people give him credit for. But that's pretty much par the course for that period. Batista was a fucking incredible babyface in that period and that's largely been forgotten about. 

On 2/10/2023 at 2:55 PM, Louch said:

RUSH is a monster. I was listening to the Foley podcast the other day and they talked about how wrestling was missing a guy that seemed to value hurting people over winning. He’s on that line with performances like that. He acts like a guy who will just beat up people for fun for as long as he wants. Seen Kingston compared above but he’s nothing like this, proper bastard behaviour and the blood hitting the camera lenses brought home how sadistic he was being 

1) Wrestlers who value having good matches over winning

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2) Wrestlers who value winning over having good matches

3) Wrestlers who value hurting themselves more than winning