Statto

The annual set piece interview with all the MitB competitors standing near the top of ladders is one of the silliest things in wresting.

And "OMG we forgot about this bloke who has spent 5 minutes laying on the floor who has just got back in the ring and won the battle royal" is one of the most played out things in wrestling. WWE only knows two battle royal finishes - that one and "the last 2 people both go over and fight on the apron until one falls off."

I assume "Good Old-Fashioned Battle Royal" was a sly dig at the Royal Rampage.

I found it kind of odd that having presented this show as a collaborative dream card (on which AEW wrestlers are challenging for NJPW titles, nonetheless) they suddenly started talking about Moxley having to defend AEW against Tanahashi winning the interim title like it was some kind of invasion.

Otherwise, top work on zooming right in on the 9 year old kid chanting "shut the fuck up" at Christian.

I totally get why they have gone with Legion of Pain as Ellering is back with them, but Authors of Agony was RIGHT THERE.

If we assume the Ezekiel thing is now very much Elias fucking with KO's head because he finds it funny, they really should introduce Elmore, the fake 3rd brother Owens made up on the spot, next week.

Get him a bald cap, fake goatee and a singlet and off you go.

Regal was far better with the "AMA" style I thought. Allows him to go off on tangents and tell half a dozen little stories per answer. They should stick to that format, would be ages before they run out of questions.

9 hours ago, Tommy! said:

Was it Tim White who was essentially Andres personal assistant back in the day?

It was, yeah. First thing I thought of when I saw this thread was him tearing up over his big buddy passing away alone in a hotel room on the HBO documentary.

I'd therefore like to think that he passed surrounded by loved ones, and that if there is any kind of afterlife he and Andre are gonna enjoy a beer or 45 tonight.

3 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Highlight of this episode was PAC calling Malakai a "strange gangly creep". Shouldn't have worked, but say it in that Gateshead accent... tremendous.

Just came here to post this! I laughed out loud for about a minute. Brilliant stuff.

Seriously, what the fuck is Khan's obsession with fucking Kyle O'Reilly??

I can never recall who it was on here that suggested it, but the only way I really want to see him back is as a "21st century Dusty" fiery southern babyface. I think he'd be genuinely good at that.

"The US Express" Windham Rotunda is a ready-made ring name.

19 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if his “wrestling” in the match consisted of a couple of punches and locking in the figure four for the win. FTR will be doing 99% of the work in that match. 

Yeah, he'll throw a load of chops but not too much more, you'd think/hope.

It popped into my head this morning that during the early pandemic days WWE (quite cleverly, TBF) used the 'Retribution are making the lights flicker' gimmick to prevent him having to take any sort of bump off Orton's punt kick. That was probably more them being unwilling to let him do it than him not wanting to do it, though...

So here's the poster (cc: @Keith Houchen...) which I share only really to convey that my favourite response to it so far is from a Cardiff resident who thinks the event name/poster is confusing/misleading as the event is at the Millennium Stadium which is HALF A MILE from the castle.

Wait until he finds out about that Wrestlemania that had the big Statue of Liberty on the poster/set...

Suspect it'll be quite a lot of names who were in NXT with them - the aforementioned Rawley & Jax, Sanity, probably Enzo.

Like a kinda sad developmental version of WWA.

Not entirely unrelated to the chat here, my wife got me the Road to Wrestlemania board game last week cos it got cheap on Amazon, and it's a surprisingly good representation of being a WWE superstar.

You go round & round & round in circles trying to string a couple of wins together, but for every win you inevitably pick up a loss straight after. If it does look like you are about to achieve something, an unfortunate event occurs and find yourself back in NXT with all your accomplishments taken away through no real fault of your own.

When you do finally battle your way to the main event of Wrestlemania, the guy who was there first has such a massive advantage over you there's very little chance of you getting the win.

It's also just about fun enough to make you want to keep doing it.

Way back when, Mr Anderson declared just after winning it that he was cashing in in the main event of the next year's Wrestlemania. Then he got hurt and they had him lose the briefcase to Edge.

On that score - wonder if they might treat the briefcase as something to be challenged for/defended if they are going to go for the long haul to Mania? That's what New Japan do with their equivalent, isn't it? Perhaps it becomes the de facto top 'title' on Raw?

Edit: of course, at the time he was Mr Kennedy...

7 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

I think they’ve just found a way of scripting it to sound grand as they’ve got a stadium to fill.

That's definitely the reason, yeah, and they seem to be trying to make the Wrestlemania afterglow last as long as humanly possible this time (even beyond Wrestlemania Backlash!).

Which is why I wouldn't be at all surprised if, even if the gimmick becomes winner will challenge at Mania, they do the good old "I don't want to wait, I want my match tonight/at Summerslam/in the UK/whatever!" deal and sell that as "we're getting a Wrestlemania quality main event right here!!"

Two (quite specific) work related things getting my goat lately...

1. We're doing more with AI/robotics at the moment, but everyone in the organisation appears to think "bot" is an acronym rather than a contraction of "robot", so any time it's seen in writing it's always "Are we finding success with the BOT?" or "The BOT doesn't appear to be functioning correctly."

2. All my younger colleagues send emails beginning "Please may you". This is quite possibly grammatically correct, but it just winds me up irrationally. Smacks of superiority. What's wrong with "Please can you"?

Can virtually guarantee Meltzer/Conrad/Cornette/Bully Ray/someone will continually refer to "the ppv in England" on their respective platform.

Hoping someone actually does it in a promo on Raw if I'm honest.

Just "Theory" is a ludicrous ring name.

I don't much care for the character or the performer portraying it, but the lack of creativity around it astounds me. I assume they have done it cos (they hope) the other Austin will be around a bit more, and they have sort of implied why the character has changed his name but c'mon - no vignette of Vince growling "Austin... Austin... I never want to hear that goddamn name again!", even if you have to do it as a voice at the end of the phone.

From there, you can have him style it out in the way he did, "Austin just doesn't suit me anymore", but just dropping the first name?

Have him say he now wants to go by his middle name (which loads of Americans do) and call him Johnny Theory or David Theory or Hunter Theory - Hunter's available now.

Or have him say he wants to go by his initials (which loads of Americans do) and call him something like A.C. Theory, that's eminently chantable if you ever turn him babyface.

Or have him give himself a douchey nickname like Ace Theory or something.

Anything but just "Theory".

11 hours ago, Ro_y Disco said:

XPW's deathmatch return went SEVEN HOURS and finished at 5am local time.

And here I thought the bloke who does security in the Sainsbury's over the road from me being in the tournament would be the most surreal thing about it.

I'd been expecting a name change since I'd read Imperium were likely to come up as a tag team, but I was expecting Marcel to lose his surname to match Gunther.

Marcel & Gunther would then be repackaged as "Fringe F.R.I.E.N.D.S" in in about 6 months when Vince's pop culture awareness reaches the late 90s.

That book helped to identify who the one posh girl at my primary school was when she pronounced it "Ber-NARD" (in the way Americans also do).

I voted for Logan Paul on the basis he was ace in basically every way and I could genuinely see him doing this shit full time if he wanted.

Bunny has been great too though, and it's stuck with me how when given the opportunity to talk about his upcoming match in the last few moments of The Bump (before the night 2 pre-show started last year), Randy Orton instead chose to spend 5 minutes putting Bunny over, along the lines of "thanks for showing respect, working hard and doing it the right way, you're welcome in my locker room any day". If you're alright by Randy, you're alright by me.

(That may have said as much about where Randy was with the Fiend feud and what was going to transpire a couple of hours later, though...)

10 hours ago, TildeGuy~! said:

“I am Elias’ younger brother, Ezekiel”

Jesus Christ.

There's some (comedy, if nothing else) legs in a repackaged wrestler flat out denying they are the person they used to be even though it's obvious, in my opinion. But adding the younger brother aspect was totally unnecessary, on the first night at least.

Raw peaked early with Cody's head poking out of his funny little box before the lift started working.

4 hours ago, air_raid said:

WWE being so keen to make sure everyone knows not to “try this at home” and yet have the wrestlers do stuff that shouldn’t be tried anywhere.

They also put a kid on the Saturday pre-show panel for a segment solely because he has got TikTok famous for recreating finishers with his mates, asked two of the NFL guys who appeared on Sunday's pre-show if they used to try moves out when they were kids (one stating he tried the Tombstone "about 1000 times before I figured out how to do it right" which got a laugh from the panel) & showed McAfee doing wrestling moves on a trampoline when he was a kid to show how much he loves this shit.

Sounds to me like trying it at home is really good fun that might result in the company asking you to get involved at Mania weekend.

1 hour ago, Winston said:

Also where the heck was The Steiners Michigan State theme music.

Tip from a college sports fanatic - if you ever get the chance to meet Rick or Scott, maybe don't say they went to Michigan State...