Statto

9 hours ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Apparently there is a clip doing the rounds from a recent XPW show where a wrestler shoves a syringe or needle or something through a guys penis... like, whips out the old chap in front of everyone and jabs whatever it was through the dudes wanger.

What the actual fuck?!?

It's the UK's own Big f'n Joe doing the insertion.

Joe works security in my local Sainsbury's. I often wonder what the conversations are like when the old dears in the break room ask what he got up to at the weekend.

"Oh, flew to California Friday night, worked a couple of deathmatches and hopped back on the plane home. Just the usual, really. Although this week..."

It was pretty random TBH - was supposed to be Garza & Andrade, who were in a loose stable with Zelina Vega at the time.

Andrade got hurt (or covid?) and it was that point in the early weeks of the PC pandemic shows where they were chucking developmental folks onto Raw to fill time/plug gaps (Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink managed by MVP, anyone?) and Theory got shoehorned in.

1 hour ago, FelatioLips said:

Otìs with a slice of cucumber balanced on his fat gut is everything I want from Raw.

I popped for him eating it that midst of the Maxxine/Gable argument too, which I guess was improvised as I don't think it was planned to land perfectly on his belly.

That's Twitter thing innit, although I've more commonly seen it as Andre Rousimoff Memorial Battle Royal to fully form ARMBAR.

RE: Sheamus at Mania 32, League of Nations went over New Day in that match (Sheamo scoring the pin IIRC). Then of course they got run off by Austin, Michaels and Foley to make clear that even the winners of the match were far inferior to the retired blokes.

IIRC, his first promo back was basically "My name is Bray Wyatt, and I'm just a normal bloke* who lost his job and struggled with stuff but now I'm back". And then he/they immediately ruined it by trying to do the whole split personality thing.

Because honestly, I'd be up for a "just a normal bloke who fights/wrestles" run from him. 

*A normal bloke who still came out of a spooky cabin for some reason and somehow teased his return by magically playing a haunting version of White Rabbit during house shows, but still.

I think Bianca is a pretty good case study of how you can make someone a pretty big deal, in context, in fairly short order, and how you can recover from a poor start.

She got the call up to the main roster at Mania 36 but then spent the next 6 months almost exclusively on Main Event. It was only when she got drafted to Smackdown in the October when they started to do anything at all with her on proper TV, 3 months later she's winning the Rumble, couple of months after that she's main eventing one of the nights of Mania and never felt out of place.

TBH I think I'd prefer anyone to Taya Valkyrie. My only exposure to her was the Franky Monet run but she was Shotzi level bad, IMO.

Book a Dynamite in Oklahoma, call it Night of Appreciation for Jim Ross, book some matches he might not despise, get Bob Stoops or Brian Bosworth or someone else Sooner related to come out and present him a plaque/belt, insert some talking heads about how great he was, don't make him kiss anybody's arse, then buh-bye JR.

Soon, please.

The name Piers Wigan came across my desk this morning, which I think (hope) shows a tremendous sense of humour on behalf of the parents.

FWIW, there was a story/rumour last week that Triple H was in favour of not shoehorning everyone onto the card just for the sake of it.

The battle royal got bumped to "Wrestlemania Smackdown" on the Friday night last year (possibly the year before too?) I assume they just coughed up a bonus for everyone anyway.

7 hours ago, Version1.0 said:

Also, big money on the Iron Man opening the show and Mox/Hangman closing.

They could have engineered this by making Mox/Hangman Lights Out instead of Texas Death (they're pretty much the same thing in AEW, right?) which by definition would go on "after the show".

I enjoyed Schiavone making a big thing of how you almost NEVER see two partners eliminated at the same time when Dark Order got chucked out, and them following that up by having virtually every other team* eliminated at the same time.

*The only team I remember that was eliminated more than a couple of seconds apart was JAS.

Obviously the jist of this thread is "who will Cody feud/have ppv matches with?" (I assume!) but in general terms I think if/when Cody takes the title they'll pivot completely from doing what Roman has been (shows up occasionally, wrestles rarely, defends the title even less) to Cody being a "fighting champion", wresting/defending the belt all the time.

So I reckon we could see matches against/title shots for just about anybody on the roster. That seems like the sort of thing Cody would legit buzz off doing too.

#Thread

I think I said it in the Rumble thread, but I'm of the opinion that anything involving Rey/Dom at Mania needs to be a Jailhouse Match, and they need to rip off the Mountie skits, with Ex-Con Dom freaking out over being booked into a not that intimidating local jail for the night.

If anyone can pull it off, it's him. Boy's doing great work right now.

I guess whoever did the 'chapter' captions for Raw on the BT Sport app this week isn't a fan of the product.

Apparently Mustafa Ali faced "Rolph Ziggler" and Bobby Lashley is listed as "Ali Mighty".

18 hours ago, JNLister said:

which they call the pain scan

Presumably a take on Heenan doing it (usually to comedic effect) as the "Brain Scan".

6 hours ago, uklaw said:

It wasn’t intended to be a knock on him, more an observation. He was still arguably the best voice on the air last night, so no foul. 

Whilst I don't doubt there was a large element of truth to McAfee being a bit out of touch with the current product,  I do wonder if it was also intentional to have him play the role of "What's this guy's story?" as they know they have a lot of fans who tune out over the autumn/winter and turn back up again for Mania season (or indeed only watch Mania season to begin with).

That's basically the role he's been doing on Gameday, thinking about it. Bringing new eyes to that product due to his personal popularity, and then asking questions/soliciting opinions from the long standing panelists on behalf of that new audience (whilst them also being semi-genuine questions for himself about a segment of the sport he admitted himself when he got the gig he didn't know a massive amount about any more). Although he's nominally an analyst, much of the time he's been more of a co-host. Like everything McAfee, some have loved it and others hated it.

After the obvious, the highlight of the night for me was the all too brief hoss division segment of the men's Rumble.

Quite why Johnny fucking Gargano was the only non-hoss to survive throughout that section, only to then hang around for another 10 minutes and continue to do absolutely nothing of note, I've no idea.

Edit: oh yeah - whether it's 1v1 against his dad, or another Judgement Day vs Edge/Rey/whoever (Bad Bunny??) deal, whatever Dom does at Mania needs to be a Jailhouse Match, after which they recreate the Mountie skits, with self-proclaimed hardened crim Dom freaking out over being put into a (not that intimidating) county holding cell.

I must admit, I do wonder with Cody - is anyone going to really care? To the point of being the absolute tippy top guy who finally topples Reigns?

Sure he was hot at the time he got hurt, but he was still very much in a honeymoon period with the novelty of this guy who not only was a big deal in the hot new rival promotion, but who CO-FOUNDED it, now being back in the WWE mix.

We'll obviously never know if he'd have cooled off by now if he'd been around consistently, and most people usually get a good pop after a lengthy absence, but once that's gone, I dunno. Will the ex-AEW novelty have worn off, leaving him to have to be a top guy purely on his own merits? Plus, if you do run with him you're effectively (if not deliberately) putting him into direct competition with Sami for the affection of the fans, and I dunno how well that might turn out for Cody.

12 hours ago, Merzbow said:

Jay White mentioned in an official post..?

It's BT Sport's account, rather than an official WWE post.

Same basic idea as the BT Sport football account posting Jude Bellingham photoshopped into a Liverpool kit and captioning "Could we be seeing this soon?"

I'd imagine WWE could ask them to remove stuff if they didn't like it (as I'm sure the Premier League could for stuff on the football account) but I'd not take anything posted there as WWE approved or truly "in the know".

At least having 2 Rumbles now allows WWE to use both of the battle royal finishes they know these days:

1. Final two both end up on the apron and dramatically fight there until one falls off.

2. Someone looks like they've won but then someone who has been laying on the floor for 5 minutes* comes back in again and sneaks up behind them.

*I maintain that being outside the ring for more than 60 seconds in any kind of battle royal should result in elimination. Especially if it's by choice.

10 hours ago, JNLister said:

Not saying it's a booking crutch, but the word "return" now appears 75 times in Lesnar's Wikipedia bio.

I for one am shocked that Brock Lesnar turned up after Lashley (who had a no-DQ main event match) talked extensively about Brock Lesnar and how he had definitely seen off Brock Lesnar for good.

2 hours ago, Thunderplex said:

There’s a couple off the top of my head.  Les Dawson and Mick Miller.

Regal has often touted Mick Miller as his favourite comic on Twitter, as it happens. Think they are old mates too.

It's on Ayozat TV, Sky 186, at 9pm on Fridays if anyone is interested. I happened across it by mistake a few months ago, it appeared to be the latest episode when compared to the latest report on their website.

I only watched until Enzo (or "Real1") turned up, and that was enough for me.