Vamp

Claudia Winkelman has done an amazing job with Strictly. She's actually made some of the talking bits interesting, is constantly taking the piss out of one of the biggest shows on TV, and helped Tess Daley become a better presenter. Also, the way she was there for Tess Daley during the Bruce Forsyth tribute was genuinely touching. 

I'm never very convinced by the arguments that Lesnar is too dangerous for someone. I get that he works a tough, physical style, but he's also been around long enough to know the score. Tell him he's in for the biggest pay day of his life and against someone who helped him on his way up and I reckon it'd be a while different match. 

Plus, I'd be far more sceptical about The Rock being in a long match than a Brock match. Half the match with Brock should be a stare down. You do some punches, Rock does a Rock Bottom, Brock kicks out, Brock does the F5, Rock kicks out, Rock goes for the People's Elbow, Brock kips up and F5's Rock for the win. Your actual match goes about 5 minutes. 

I honestly think a match with Roman might be harder because there's the temptation to go long. 

Although, having said that, imagine if they bring in Rock and have Roman obliterate him. No idea where you'd go after that though. 

Presumably Hamas aren't going to be too keen on the idea of Gaza being run by the UN though. 

I wonder if some governments are also worried about how they'll look if they demand (in as much as they can) a ceasefire and then Hamas attacks Israel again. That sounds horribly cynical when things are so bad out there but what governments aren't cynical.

TK is just a rich Wrestling Observer subscriber and 'smark' fan who never grew up. He told Moxley he used to sign him when playing EWR, he bought ROH, he signs people who wouldn't look out of place on the old sleaze list that used to do the rounds, of course he's going on Twitter to slag off the WWE for booking Jinder in a title match. 

I'm not sure what Cornette would offer a major company. It's not like you can ever trust him to do commentary again. And while I certainly think AEW could do with a negative nelly every now and then, he's not it. 

I think it's probably a bit old fashioned to expect them to be looking for their next big babyface really. They've spent the last couple of years building up an unstoppable heel at the top of the card, and Hunter has previous with his long heel run as the face of a brand, and is a big NWA fan. Not only am I not convinced that they ever really saw Cody as the next big blue eyes, I'm not convinced they're looking for one. 

7 hours ago, Shy Dad said:

It was really just sad to watch towards the end. Going 30 plus minutes on a broken ankle, probably injuring the other one, having no common sense to try and not bugger your body up any further. You kinda hope if he is as good friends with Kenny as is made out, he'll be the one to tell him to take an extended break, considering how battered his body was in this position not so long ago.

Isn't Kenny pretty physically fucked too? Not as bad, obviously. I'm not sure he's the one to talk sense into Ibushi. I'm not sure anyone is. Ibushi has always struck me as a mad bastard who does whatever he wants. He's another one who seems to have an unhealthy love affair with wrestling and would probably be better off as far away from it as possible. 

It's a shame the World Heavyweight championship is so new. If it had any credibility you could possibly have Cody win it on Night 1, Roman beat Rock on Night 2, have Cody come out and confront Roman at the end of Night 2, run a special event in May with Cody/Reigns 2. Fuck it, do it on TV and see if you can pop a monster rating ahead of TV negotiations since its not like you're losing out on PPV buys. 

They get their Mania dream match, Cody can get the title, they can see if they can keep the Mania audience around for the prospect of Cody winning, and they need to get away from the idea that important things only happen at Mania. 

But you need Cody to win something credible on night 1 for it to mean anything. A number one contendership match wouldn't do it. I don't think beating Orton does it. Maybe beating a heel Punk would at a push. Not convinced really. 

I'm not convinced the plan ever was to make Cody the man though. I think they look at him as the same age as Roman, with probably as many miles on the clock physically, and just don't see him as the one to beat Reigns. 

33 minutes ago, Daddymagic said:

If Khan did know he's fucked too. Darby Allin, the way women have spoke out, hiring Flair, and now this. 

Fiver says he isn't. 

It's definitely Vince.*

*Plans may change.

I'm 99% sure it's Vince McMahon.

How many times has JR referred to Vince as the devil or Satan?

Vince has a history for being a lame reveal to a mask mystery.

AEW has no problem signing old codgers who have sexually assaulted people.  

All of the signs point to Vince. 

Muppets Christmas Carol.

Still needs a haircut. 

Punk got fired for creating an unsafe working environment and walked into a presumably massive contract with the biggest company in the world. He's worked fans so many times over that there's people who are still willing to get him the benefit if the doubt that he's changed between leaving AEW and entering WWE. 

Don't get me wrong, he's probably infuriating to listen to for any length of time, but there's definitely stuff you can learn there about how to work the system. 

You wanna learn from Dolph about how to be so forgettable that you're still hired even though nobody can work out what the point of you is, you want to learn from The Miz for obvious reasons, you want to learn from Cody how to revitalise your career and you want to learn from Punk how to be an insufferable prick and still get hired. That's your 4 pillars right there. 

You've got to give it to Punk, he's a hell of a worker. He's shown up to work a couple of times, cut two not very remarkable promos (that have been remarked on endlessly anyway), and not thrown a hissy fit or made anyone feel unsafe and people are talking about him being a new man. 

He'll be as good as gold until he gets his Mania main event. Hopefully it'll be as satisfying as he thinks it'll be, he'll accept its as good as its going to get and ride off into the sunset with that high in tact, all his fans can pretend he's up there with Cena and he's had the perfect conclusion to his perfect career, and he can live peacefully away from the spotlight for a while. 

I don't think that'll happen. I think he'll main event one night of WrestleMania, find out its not that satisfying, that there's always something someone has that's better than what he has, and it'll unravel into misery again but I hope that doesn't happen. More for his wife's sake than anything else. 

Weirdly, I couldn't give a toss if he went to AEW (though I'm sure him and MJF would work well together) but him going to WWE is way more intriguing. 

15 hours ago, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

My headcanon, for all it's worth, is that since Regeneration is a completely random process, labels like "gay" "bisexual" etc etc just don't matter to Time Lords since they never know what they'll end up with. What was it Jack Harkness said? "You people and your quaint little categories...."

Oh definitely. If gender is as fluid as ot is in Time Lord society than sexuality must be as well.

I remember having arguments with a friend who was adamant the Doctor shouldn't be played by a woman because he'd been in love with Rose. She was okay with the idea of an interspecies relationship with hundreds of years as an age gap but not with the idea that the Doctor's gender and sexuality might be fluid. Bizarre.

On 12/3/2023 at 11:00 AM, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

- The fake-out on Donna being left on the ship. They were never going to kill her off, so the suspense was lost a little bit
 

I'm working somewhat on the assumption that none of this is real, and that's its all a fiction created by the Toymaker so I thought they might do it as a fake out. 

I'm loving how confident RTD's writing feels. Yeah, pronouns, the Doctor is bisexual (well, as far as humanity understands it), the Doctor wasn't born on Gallifrey no matter how much we all hate that storyline, shove it up your pipe and smoke it. It's bizarre that it's happening with Disney's dime. 

I appreciate how the show still looks a bit shit at times. Like, they've obviously got more of a budget, and certain things look a lot better, but they're still stretching that budget to breaking point. To me that's part of the charm of the show. 

I did wonder if they might try and tie the copying monsters in with Midnight. Glad they didn't, I like that this makes the universe (or the lack of it) even bigger. 

15 minutes ago, theringmaster said:

Jericho will be back, absolutely no doubt about it.

 

TBF I think AEW have the ball now in this regard, they are the only company who can have 'shock' appearances from past legends. If somebody like Hogan turned up AEW it would certainly raise a few eyebrows.

Flair's appearance certainly raised a few eyebrows.

13 hours ago, Daaaaaad! said:

I discovered last week that there is a jukebox musical called '& Juliet' which has a play-within-a-play of a follow-up to the ending of Romeo & Juliet. The music is 'songs by Max Martin' so they range from Since U Bn Gone by Kelly Clarkson to Perfect by Pink, as well as SIX Backstreet Boys songs.

The whole concept sounds so irredeemably terrible I genuinely wonder if it's popular because it's bad.

& Juliet pretty much achieves what it sets out to achieve. I'm not the target audience by any means, but having seen it I can't deny that it's perfectly aimed at the audience it's going for and it's enthusiasm is surprisingly infectious. It's female empowerment message is pretty blunt and basic, but it probably should be. And it does pretty well with its depiction of a non-binary character. It dives so far into its campness and deliberately on the nose song choice that I think it gets away with it. 

Although yeah, if you hate musicals, it's really not the one to convince you.

When you compare it to Bad Cinderella (or Very Bad Cinderella or whatever they're marketing it as at the moment) which was desperate for the same audience, & Juliet is a fucking masterpiece. 

I'd love to know how long Punk has been thinking about going to WWE. I was always a bit surprised that he went to AEW, as it seemed his hang up was that he never got to main event WrestleMania. 

Much like the end of his WWE career, it didn't really look like he wanted to be there at the end of his AEW run. And it's notable that his best performance of that last run was when he was against Joe and must have had some inkling that even Tony Khan would dump him after that. 

I still largely feel sorry for him at this stage. He left wrestling for years because he was miserable. He went to AEW and ended up miserable. He watched somebody else have the match with Austin that he dreamed about. Now he's gone back to the last place that made him miserable. And even if he gets his WrestleMania main event, you have to wonder if it'll be enough for him now that it's been devalued. You've got to assume/hope that WWE aren't going to have him beat Roman for the title at Mania, because he absolutely shouldn't be the person to do that. If the best he's gonna get is losing to Roman or the other main event on the other day, is that enough for him?

To be honest, everyone who took advantage of her and contributed towards her issues should shoulder some of the guilt for what's happened. That includes HBK, Raven, Sabu and all the rest. 

1 hour ago, 69MeDon said:

My question would be, as it always is when this subject comes up, who? Where is this untouched mine of pro-wrestling booking talent? Because as far as I can see, prior to AEW, the same 4-5 dudes have been booking everything since like 1995.

To be fair, Khan's experience prior to booking AEW was playing EWR. Half this board is probably just as qualified. 

It's important to note that the UK, I don't know enough about the US context, has been rife with antisemitism for a very long time and at least some of the reason for why Israel was created was because the UK felt they deserved something, as long as it wasn't something too close. 

It doesn't help that WW2 has been retroactively made about saving Jewish people. That's not why Britain went to war. Yet its become part of the national identity. Neither side of the debate gives a toss about Jewish people. 

Ultimately, I realise I've probably said this before, this conflict will end one of 4 ways. One side eliminates the other,  both sides eliminate each other, things just carry on but we get bored of it and stop paying attention, a bunch of people who haven't been shot at get together and agree to peace. 

In case you're wondering which of the 4 it will be, it's the third. 

To be fair to Seth, he has at least tried to reinvent himself. I mean, he's mainly done it through random nicknames and he doesn't really get how to wrestle as a character, but at least he's tried. 

I think a lot of the problem is he's a victim of the modern wrestling scene that created him. He's clearly inspired by the global wrestling scene, nicking moves and styles and chucking it altogether, but he's taken it out of context and blended it into a style that's pretty common anywhere. If you didn't know where he got the slingblade from it'd maybe be more impressive, but Japanese wrestling is more accessible than ever and everyone seems to have pinched that move. That and he's been able to wrestle that same style for ages and ages. Once upon a time his body would fallen apart by now and he'd have to evolve.  

This is going to sound like I'm wishing injury to him, I'm not because I'd rather just not bother to watch him than he gets hurt, but he's one of those wrestlers who I'd probably enjoy more after a couple more injuries and 10-20 more years of ring time.