Statto

It's probably not true for her whole WWE career, but since she came back from pregnancy she must have had twice as much vignette time as (TV) ring time, which could be some kind of record.

It always used to be the following day, but AFAIK the BT Sport app is defunct now? The streaming aspect of TNT Sports is bundled in with Discovery+.

Latest episode of NXT is on there now, don't know when it turned up.

I've not watched a lot of WWE TV the last month due to lack of time, either 30x'd or read recaps.

One of the things I read made a big deal of the fact that Tribal Combat forbade any family member from interfering (which does make sense if it's supposed to be some kind of honorable, ritualistic thing). Obviously, they did and no fuss was made along the lines of "these guys are dishonoring their heritage & tradition by getting involved".

So... was that actually ever a thing that was announced/implied that just got quietly forgotten, or were the reports misinterpretations?

I'm not averse to a bit of Strange Fruit:

Foreigner did a cover of their big power ballad:

9 minutes ago, Loki said:

I did.

At that particular moment Darby was red-hot, pretty much the most over act in the company - young, hungry, heading for the top.

I personally think that losing to Punk at the START of a story about how rusty Punk was and how he would improve until he became champ, totally took the wind out of Darby's sails and he's not been the star he was since.

Yep, that's exactly the story I would have told. Have Punk put on a good showing but get caught in the Last Supper at the point he gets a bit overconfident. Helps Darby, wouldn't have hurt Punk IMO.

4 hours ago, Infinity Land said:

Instead of teaming up with the Kingdom or old Undisputed Era running mates. COLE should go get someone's that truly anti-MJF, a heeled up Wardlow.

This is what I'd do if Cole's going to be the one that turns. Wardlow needs a reset and I've never cared for the Kingdom or the UE.

I've very much enjoyed Trent Beretta being more heavily featured the last 2 weeks, and was pleasantly surprised to see him pick up the win last night. A guy they could do more with, IMO.

If there is a turn coming there (and I hope it's Cole turning on MJF) I hope they lay it on real thick with the "we're proper mates now" stuff beforehand by having them do their full on entrance together to their mashup theme, in their matching jackets etc.

It probably has been done before somewhere, but I don't recall an instance where two partners/stablemates have competed against each other for whatever reason, but entered together. I recall separate entrances to the same theme played twice, and I think even separate entrances to the same playing of said theme (without it stopping/re-starting) but never actually together.

Day late, sorry.. 

I was at the Birmingham & Memphis TVs plus Extreme Rules in June 2009. At Raw, Sheamus went over Festus (doing that brief Oddities-esque stable with Hornswoggle & Goldust) dark pre-show.

The pre-show dark match at the Smackdown/ECW taping was Drew McIntyre vs someone, I forget who. I remember it being Drew though for some woman a few rows back repeatedly shouting "you damn dirty Brit!" at him.

Post-show dark match was Edge & Jericho vs Rey & Jeff (I think, maybe Punk) in a tag team cage match - a hastily assembled "house show" cage rather than one lowered from the rafters (although that was used at both Raw & the PPV). Edge & Jericho  did the "one heel does a Flair flop and headbutts the other one in the nuts" spot about 4 or 5 times in the course of the match, then after the match took turns riding a commentary chair down the ramp, as they refused to leave in protest at losing.

After the show I met Teddy Long, Alicia Fox, Gail Kim & Mike Chioda in a bar on Beale Street (a bar in which I'd sit in with the resident band for a night 6 years later, but that's another story). Alicia was very amused to learn that her former protege DJ Gabriel had worked as "Steve Sonic" over here, and Teddy kayfabed me when I asked why he hadn't been on the show - "Well, the GM can sometimes get real busy in the back, playa".

8 hours ago, AshC said:

Do they always have those graphics in the bottom left corner promoting upcoming bouts for later/future shows?

They do - a fixture on all AEW shows.

Andrade looked so damn good in his new gear - at least once the funny little straps disappeared. The entrance jacket was gorgeous.

Glad you've got your mask back mate but now let's never see it again, if you can look that good once you stop doing cosplay of a c-list Batman villain.

Just wow.

58 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

I actually checked recently, they've only done a tag Casino Battle Royale this year. The men's one is the only annual tradition. Expecting it for either All In or All Out.

Not necessarily for this show (Double or Nothing seems the best fit) but I'd like them to make the Casino Battle Royal a big annual fuck off full deck of cards 54 man affair with majorstakes. Their Royal Rumble equivalent but bigger, basically.

The 52 "main" entries can be mostly core roster people with the odd surprise and/or return, with the 2 Jokers (entering at random during the match rather than kept to the end) would be proper mad "comedy" entries. Someone from the 90s, or the latest indy social media flavour of the month (think Blue Kane or that pizza guy who turned out to be a wrong un).

54 individual entrances seems kind of messy so they could keep some semblance of the group "suite" entrances they've done before, but instead starting the match with the four guys who drew the four 2 cards, then the four who drew a 3 and so on up until the 4 aces (with the jokers being inserted at random during the sequence as stated before).

Had the absolute pleasure of spending the weekend attending 3 shows (2 pubs, 1 upstairs room of an ex-serviceman's club) by Leroy Virgil, AKA Hellbound Glory, my absolute favourite artist on the planet right now.

Probably an absolute nobody to 99.99% of people, but to me this is like knocking about in the pub with Springsteen/The Levellers.

When he left WWE, someone on here suggested he come in to AEW as their version of Dusty, a fiery southern babyface. And I still think that could work for him (in WWE).

Had a quick squiz through AR Fox's recent record, as he seemed the obvious case study - he gets by on a lot of Evolve shows on WWNLive & CZW shows on FITE that it considers PPVs, it looks like.

For what it's worth, I noted that it considers the current weekly RoH show a TV show despite being exclusively streaming behind a subscription paywall.

10 hours ago, The King Of Swing said:

They didn't even bother using the Britt squash to set anything up. State of the division. 

If anything, you have to admire the absolute bare minimum lip service paid to it  - a nothing squash setting up nothing, with a local jobber doing the honours for a woman who, as it happens, will have travelled there with one of the men in the following match. Box ticking at its finest.

There's been a couple of mentions of commentary explaining stuff in the thread and it's something I thought about a few times watching this show. In general, I'm glad AEW has more of a "show, don't tell" style than WWE but I feel like there are times when it would benefit from being a bit more clued in/closely produced.

For example, in the Jack Perry video it seemed pretty clear it was supposed to be Jack symbolically burying the dead body of "Jungle Boy" (the Hollywood kid is making a movie!) and at the time I thought "Would have been better if they'd got a shot showing the body was wearing the trunks as well as the boots, just to make it totally clear".

When Excalibur eventually acknowledged the video, he explained it as if it was real footage of Jack actually going out and burying "the only boots he's ever worn" in the desert. Similar symbolism, but those boots were clearly attached to a body. So are we to believe Jack Perry really killed a person just so he didn't have to bury his old boots with no feet in them? 

It seemed like Excalibur had never seen the video before seeing it "live" with us, and just reacted to seeing the flash of the boots. If that's the case - clue them in, so they don't contradict what we think we've been shown!

One final announcers explaining stuff point, Excalibur setting up that someone at the desk was going to explain to us the history and meaning of the FTW title then throwing it to Tony had to be a rib.

Ah, cherished memories of one of the old teletext wrestling pages suggesting there was a strong possibility the Royal Rumble was going to be held at Celtic Park, at a time to suit the US audience.

A wrestling show. Outside. At 1am. In Glasgow. In January.

Yep, it is. As sponsor's logos go, one of the nicer ones to incorporate into a design. Simple logo and they appear happy to have it in any colour to match the shirt design, looking at their recent history.

Edit: gonna put this in here rather than double posting - I ain't mad at it, as the kids say:

Teemu Pukki scored his first Minnesota Utd goal (on his first start) last night, in this beauty:

If I wore football shirts for reasons other than going to the game (like how they look, don't care much for how they feel) I'd be after one of those with Pukki 22 on the back. Suspect it won't be long until I see one around Norwich.

6 hours ago, westlondonmist said:

I'm surprised by the amount of bugs people are finding on the PS4 version as my Switch version, while it has some bugs none are major. I had one complete crash last night but that's it. Sometimes it seems to skip a second, which is annoying it doesn't affect the gameplay (much). On multiplatform games I kind of expect Switch to be the buggy mess, not on Spectrum SF 2 level but you know. 

Yep, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the Switch version. Little jumpy at times but nothing that makes it unplayable or even annoying.

Had a crash last night when I hit pause during a replay (trying to decide which of the immensely OP Kenny Omega's finishers to use during the replay of the signature) and one trying to load the training mode but that's it.

It's even been fine playing online, which I've found to be fun other than the fact I'm now 0-5.

21 minutes ago, MVP RULZ said:

Wouldn't an issue with Tottenham and West Ham stadiums being used be that it would take place in season 

I guess both could be ensured to play away that weekend but its still a big turnaround and if one of them had a European home game midweek in between that wouldn't be quite so easy to move around.

Setting up something like Mania would totally fuck up the pitch beyond all repair, I'd think. Be a total re-lay job, which is why stadiums hold concerts shortly after the season finishes, then they put the new one down. I suppose if an event promised to be lucrative enough for a club they might be persuaded to do a re-lay in April, but I'd imagine a new pitch takes at least a fortnight (if not a month) to bed down.

That said - doesn't Spurs stadium have a dealy where you can move the outside, or am I confusing that with other stadia? Even then, I dunno if you can do any kind of set up inside with the pitch outside (i.e. what kind of surface is left inside to work with).

Otherwise, I wonder if the only way to do a stadium Mania in London would be to alter the calendar from the norm - have it first week of June or something, when the weather might also be tad more clement, at least in theory. OR you could just carny BS your way through it by turning Mania into a "3 night global extravaganza too big for one country to hold!" and do night one in the US in April, night two in Saudi Arabia in May & night 3 in London in June. I wouldn't put it past them to try...

There was a lot of great stuff on this show, but honestly I popped biggest (sitting at home) for Cena recreating the "how bout I enjoy some time with my friends?" video with Waller.

Norwich have gone away kit first, solid but unspectacular IMO. Joma's 7th kit for us and the first one that's not blown me away immediately:

2 hours ago, Cheapheat said:

7 quid on switch for hook and danhausen! 

I'm definitely shelling out for Hookhausen, barely get a pint and a half in my local for the cost of them, well worth it.

Equivalent of a pint each for boring old FTR though? Piss off.

11 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

I thought Owen and Paul Wight were in it but I can't see them.

Owen unlocks for purchase (in game cash) after you've completed 100 exhibition matches.

Paul Wight requires certain things to happen in the Road to Elite mode to become unlockable - there's guides out there for the likely quickest ways to get there.