Statto

5 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

They've all probably paid about a billion euros for a seat each so let them do what they want. 

I LOL'd at them popping big for the announcement of it being the highest grossing arena show in company history. 

"Hooray! We've paid way more on average for our tickets than any WWE crowd ever!" 

They'll not be announcing a London WrestleMania during the build-up to the Kentucky Derby on NBC, I doubt. 

Sorry chaps. 

14 hours ago, TAFKA Jonny Vegas said:

I largely blame them for beginning the trend of old football shirts being sold for extortionate prices.

I think the general trend for "vintage" being in fashion is as much to blame as anything TBH. 

5 or 6 years ago I used to pick up loads of Alabama gear off ebay for a couple of quid, back then it was just someone selling a weird old 90s American football t-shirt with a little mark on the shoulder for next to nothing.

Now the same item is labeled "vintage" and starting bid is £59.99. Anything under £20 is often in such bad condition it's fit for the bin. 

Was a bit of an intriguing one yesterday in my neck of the woods - the 3 Labour councillors for my ward (plus one from another ward) quit the party & went independent about 6 months ago (over Gaza ceasefire issues & the collapse of a local redevelopment project) meaning Labour lost overall control of the city council. (The rest are all Lib Dems & Greens, no Tories here) 

Yesterday they all stood as independents against Labour candidates - over the last week there's been a few hand-written "Vote for the rightful LABOUR candidate" signs popping up in windows. 

Now hearing the police have got involved over a "dirty tricks" leaflet scandal of some kind or another, but I don't have any more detail as I refuse to pay £5 a month to subscribe to the local rag online when they'll still then force me to scroll past 18 embedded adverts every time I read an article. 

Edit: have now seen the article and my big take away is that the remaining Labour members refer to the deflectors as the Town Close Clique, which is wonderfully pro wrestling. 

2 hours ago, Frankie Crisp said:

2. Ban people talking on speakerphone in public

Went on a little holiday to Portugal the week before last, and every single person I saw talking on a mobile phone was doing so properly, rather than having it on speaker & holding it at an angle two inches away from their chin. 

It was wonderful. 

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

But on the other hand, if it leads to another Gangrel cameo, I won't complain.

I'd not considered this, but... now their feud is blown off, the next lot of money in Copeland & Christian is in them reuniting...

Khan would bloody love booking HoB vs The Brood, wouldn't he? Would turn him on almost as much as booking mid-2000s RoH guys to reignite their rivalries on national TV. 

I got the feeling Smackdown was trending back towards being the b-show in the run-up to Mania. 

The key moments of the Cody/Rock/Roman stuff (feat Seth Rollins) seemed to be playing out on Raw (including the bloody beatdown in the rain), whilst the featured feuds on Smackdown were the likes of Bayley vs Io, Styles vs Knight & Lashley et al vs Kross' bunch. 

4 hours ago, RedRooster said:

When AEW was contemplating a roster split, they trademarked the term ‘transfer portal’ (website: Fightful) which suggests to me a transfer window style approach, Khan taking inspiration from football, much as he did for aspects of the Continental Classic. 

The term transfer portal is lifted from college sports - it's literally an online portal into which student athletes who wish to transfer to a new school enter their details, allowing other schools to contact them free of penalty. 

So many asses, so little time. 

I'll thank you to address him formally as Ga'Quincy "Kool-Aid" McKinstry. 

I think you'll also find I promised you all he'd go first round about 3 years ago I this very thread. 

#BuiltByBama 

Not that I've just stalked him on LinkedIn, but looks like he's been back in London for a few years now, teaching functional breathing techniques. 

@Dr. Alan Grant That's Cleatus, the Fox Football Robot! 

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! 

3 hours ago, air_raid said:

My dream of Rhea vs Dom is still alive.

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:

1 hour ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

I don’t recognise the name Soner Durson at all. Who was he? (He?)

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. 

8 hours ago, The Gaffer said:

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. 

3 hours ago, Loki said:

If you paint your face, you don’t paint your ears. 

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.