Statto

They way they've done it the past few has been exceptionally clunky, with the rule being "teams/factions are drafted as one unless the picker doesn't want all of you". The absolute worst example of it was with New Day - they were splitting Big E off to start a singles push that would ultimately result in him winning the big belt, but the way it began was with Smackdown specifically choosing to take Kofi & Woods but NOT him, ending up with fewer assets than they could have got with the same pick. He was then immediately drafted to Raw and presented as something of a late round steal, but it didn't change the fact the poor fella had just been explicitly shunned by Smackdown, who indeed were willing to break up a hugely popular trio just to not end up lumbered with Big E. This was when they were purporting that it was the TV execs making the picks too, so you couldn't even play it off as an internal WWE "E, you're ready, go be great" decision. They didn't even try to explain it away with roster size caps or anything. Sorry for the rant. I love Big E and I still feel sorry for him. A fun way you COULD use a similar structure could be to have a member of a team/group secretly declare that they want to be drafted on their own, then flick their shocked partners the V-sign as they swan off into their new solo stardom. Would work with an existing heel or as part of a heel turn. Kinda similar to how the JBL character got started, with him secretly choosing to re-sign rather than walk out on principle with the fired Ron Simmons.

I hope Odyssey Jones gets drafted again, without having debuted after his last drafting.

I'm of the received wisdom (I work for a US company & I know several people who have been subject to them) that even in the "real world" non-complete clauses haven't ever really been worth the paper they are written on if you go to the bother of challenging them. I'm pretty sure WWE's ones don't actually stop you from working somewhere else the next day if you want, it's just that if you do so they'll stop paying you. So despite the fact so many lower card releases love to put "breaking out of prison" themed videos on their social media as their 90 days approaches, I think for the most part it's as you've suggested - a nice 3 month paid break to rest/train/actually see your family.

The one & only time I've ordered an AEW shirt (mid-2021) it was £4.30 shipping & handling (which was entirely offset by a discount code offer they had at the time). That was via https://global.shopaew.com/ - still PWT I believe, but don't know if it's cheaper that way. And I've considered going back for that exact Mark Briscoe shirt!

I think that's inevitable, at some point. I do wonder if they might end up going the Chyna route with Rhea in general and have her mixing it up with the men full time. I believe some of the TV networks have a blanket ban on showing any kind of male on female violence (when TNA booked Awesome Kong vs Kute Kip years ago, it was a total squash with zero offence from Kip to get round that) but I don't know if that's the case for WWE now, or if the move to Netflix will permit.

He looks even better old:

A Britwres fella. He was never a WWE guy (not even NXT:UK IIRC), the appearance noted here was a 60 second "local competitor" job (in the early days of the mysterious cage gimmick for Rowan). As for ACH - it was a pretty racist t-shirt, TBF.

Regardless of quality of album art, I bloody love that Anvil are now 20 albums deep and every one of them has the same alliterative title format: Legal at Last's title track is a banger too.

I reckon we will. He's said before he pitched bringing it back but it was Vince who vetoed it (having had to be reminded of the existence of the song).

I forget who it was but at the time of the Hit Row return to WWE, someone described Top Dolla's in ring style as "like the dad character in a 90s sitcom stepping in the ring in the wrestling boom cash-in episode", and it was wonderfully apt. I guess Joe Hendry agrees.

The team of Gold & Stardust beg to differ:

I did all 4 shows of Summerslam weekend in Toronto - nominally my honeymoon. Yes, we're still married (and I celebrated our anniversary on Saturday by staying up all night to watch WrestleMania...) Raw had no dark match after IIRC, rather a dark segment in which the Good Brothers took a beating off the top babyfaces whilst AJ did some genuinely very funny work on the mic encouraging them to "walk if off" etc. Couple that with Bryan doing comedy mic work before the dark match on Smackdown (desperately trying to get Otis to stop jiggling), it felt very odd to me that the same two uber-indy darlings I'd seen at FWA etc 15 years previously were the ones closing WWE shows with comedy heel work (and excelling at it!) The other notable thing from those shows you've not mentioned is the week before his cracker with DB, Buddy Murphy has what several called (in the immediate aftermath) a genuine MOTY contender with Roman Reigns at Smackdown. It was bloody good, but then I've always loved Buddy.

It feels like it's actually been quite a few years since "Raw after Mania" had been the wild ride of debuts, returns & happenings it once was. Not since before covid, maybe longer. Suspect it'll be different tonight.

This is a long running debate between a mate & I. I'm Team Cathy, he's Team Jackie. It's our own pro wrestling tribalism. I'm right.

I don't really have much to add about a fantastic night two that hasn't already been said, except that AJ Styles is so massive right now it's like Zac Efron is playing TNA AJ Styles in a movie. Edit: genuine edit to reply to Bacon without double posting - there is a 2hour kick-off show for Mania, but they no longer put any matches on it (last time they did was the empty arena covid one). I usually sit through them out of a sense of duty and they used to be right chores of JBL, Lawler & Pete Rosenberg prattling endlessly, but this year's were actually rather good. Lots of nice pre-tape sit down interviews etc, and a fun panel in Cole, Mcafee, Punk & Big E.

I've been a big proponent of them sticking with 2 nights after covid as the first two years presented a pair of easily digestible 3hr shows on consecutive days (excusing the lightning delay). But now here we are with a 4.5hr night one. It was a decent but not spectacular opening night, IMO. Zayn vs Gunther (including entrances, more on that in a moment) was best thing of the night by a country mile. Uso vs Uso was a massive letdown as I've loved those boys for years. The main event was pretty good for what it was but 60 minutes from Cody's entrance to the fade out was not what I needed in my 22nd hour of being awake. That's on me I guess. Everything else I felt was 'fine'. Nothing offensive but nothing I'll remember too much. Entrances - when someone made that lovely best entrances thread a month or so ago I said I was pretty sure I liked wrestling entrances more than I like wrestling matches, and there were some decent ones last night. Sami's was the best though for the relative normality of it all. Given that entrances tend to be designed to make people look like superheroes, Sami's stood out through showing the humanity of the father & husband with his family, the nervous athlete getting the pep talk from his (recent) coach, & the final pump up from his best mate. All lovely "sports" stuff. On that front, I'm really starting to see the influence of Lee Fitting (the bloke who took over from Kevin Dunne, formerly of ESPN) on some of this stuff. In particular the pre-show was even more heavily influenced by College Gameday than ever before with the pre-tape sitdowns, reporters in different locales across the stadium etc. There's always been elements of it but the way they're doing it now is basically carbon copy (and it's much better for it). Even got actual Tom Rinaldi in! Finally, me & a mate have a WrestleMania tradition (going back minimum 15 years) of texting each other our match predictions for the night. For the first time ever I was 100% correct on all 8 outcomes last night (counting the ladder match as 2 results). Edit: Oh yeah, Samantha Irvin is fucking awful, despite what Michael Cole wants to tell you.

I do enjoy things like that where the people very likely have no idea. I follow the Twitter accounts of several bars in Tuscaloosa, Alabama & about a decade ago one of them would routinely post the results of their regular student darts tournament - which was often won by a young man named Kevin Keegan. I regularly replied to the tweet to try to get them to find out if he knew he had a rather famous namesake in the UK, but they never replied.

It's unlikely to be a gimmick that'll take you to the world title, and it'd be very 1993 WWF/1998 WCW jobber, but JD Drake should definitely have a pro bowler gimmick. They've hinted at him being such before (I don't know if he's actually a pro, but he's definitely a very accomplished bowler) and it just seems the perfect gimmick for a bloke with his look.

I'd always been under the impression that the people who were on the roster page on the website were actually signed to some form of contract, anybody else was being used on a per appearance basis (even though some people not listed on the roster are sometimes far more regularly/prominently featured than those who are) If that is in fact the case, only about half of the people who've been released were actually "signed" - Dasha, Jose, Stu & Boudreaux. Regardless, a bit of a trim was long overdue. I quite often pass the time while taking a dump by scrolling through the roster and figuring out who you could cull without anyone really noticing. It's a lot.

I still remember the rumour that did the rounds back in the teletext pages days that the Royal Rumble was going up be at Celtic Park, but at the usual time to placate the US PPV audience. Wrestling. Outside. In Glasgow. Starting at 1am. In January. "And here comes number 3, D-Lo Brown, charging to the ring... Oh no, he's slipped on the ice!"

Yeah, and it would have given a more logical reason to introduce Dom to the mix too. Seems to me they've ended up with the tag they are doing rather than Rey vs Santos (mask vs hair?) as they wanted to get Dom a Mania match, so had him reinsert himself into his dad's business. If they'd had set up a faction vs faction lucha tag thing (maybe do it captain's fall as WWE seem less afraid to stretch their audience's mental capacity these days) Dom could have been brought in to make up LdF's shortfall in numbers.

RE: match/night splits, IIRC last year it was announced a few weeks out for most matches (I think I remember match graphics saying "Wrestlemania Saturday" or "Wrestlemania Sunday", and those phrases being spoken on TV a lot), but previously it's been announced on Twitter on the Saturday morning. Seems like it'll be closer to the latter this year.

If it's American stuff you're after, this is the king:

They're still dumping on him on the app right now...