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1 minute ago, BomberPat said:

Which is a criticism a good decade out of date. 

With the exception of this week's RAW, which sounds like it was particularly light on matches, the main criticism of WWE has been that it's all wrestling with no reason to care about the stories or characters. 

I guess that's true, but I don't follow current WWE so I have no idea what it's like as a show these days, forgive my ignorance. I just catch the clips and such of anything that looks interesting and keep up with the headlines.

As long as we can get good and meaningful characters and storylines, along with great matches, that's all we can ask for at the end of the day. Something to focus on and enjoy instead of WWE. I don't mind which way they go with it as long as they tick those boxes, and I think a lot of people just want a 'big budget' alternative to the 'E at this point in time.

I assume the 'more sports oriented' comment that was made by Tony Khan is in reference to them being more focused on wrestling and matches than the 'sports enterainment' variety show that WWE is trying to be. AEW will be a 'wrestling' company, whereas WWE are an 'entertainment' company.

Superb podcast and a breath of fresh air to hear Moxley speaking so candidly about his issues and problems with that whole WWE machine. I honestly can't wait to keep up with what he does going forward, now the restrictions are gone.

Now it's been confirmed, I just see the WWE as the human centipede of wrestling, shitting out terrible ideas and regurgitating them ad nauseam until Vince pops his clogs. That's why it doesn't matter about what WWE do at this point, they're so far into their own bubble that they're killing themselves from the inside out.

Those jeans are quality, you'd find any excuse to bust out those badboys. His duster/trench coats were always awesome too:

Superb, that coat alone has more going for it than most of the roster these days.

Custom made Ultimate Warrior dungarees is true dedication to the gimmick, as you say Yakashi, nobody puts in that level of dedication and effort these days and is why everyone is so naff.

Yeah, listening to him on Jericho's podcast and how he was talking about basically any potentially good idea that was going to happen for him in the WWF keep getting canned sucks, apparently with The Jackyl thing he wanted to go out to the Waco compound and film some vignettes, that would have been weird to see.

He's got his own podcast now with Lance Storm called Killing the Town which is a good listen, he has a very dry/sarcastic sense of humour which is pretty amusing.

http://www.podcastone.com/killing-the-town-with-storm-and-cyrus

Supremo's post above re. Ambrose/The Shield just made me think that once you have all the big names retire eventually, Cena, HHH, Undertaker and so on, you're gonna be left with a roster of Dolph Zigglers. They've basically followed the 'Ziggler Handbook to Creating Midcard Forgettable Wrestlers' for the last I don't know how many years now, their specialty nowadays seems to be able to take the biggest names and make them look rubbish. There's never gonna be another big name when you look at it, when there could so easily have been plenty, any guy in The Shield for a start, as mentioned.

If they were bringing him in for the 'Broken' character it just wouldn't work as well would it? As Ambulance said above, WWE tend to ruin anything with potential pretty quickly these days, so I'm of the same opinion, give it a month or so in the WWE and it'll be a standard Hardy Boyz reunion if Jeff ends up going with him. I'm surprised Matt/TNA have managed to keep the story line going and relevant for this long, but it's kept me interested and hooked all the way (and lead to me watching Impact week to week again for the first time in years), which the same can't be said for WWE story lines nowadays.

Yeah, I've actually been watching Impact weekly for the last three or four weeks now (for the first time in years) and have been really enjoying it. As mentioned earlier, you can't say they aren't putting the effort in trying to do different/new things and I find it a lot more entertaining than WWE programming right now. Delete or Decay was superb as well, not Final Deletion level but I don't think anyone was expecting that. Though the Hardy stuff is awesome and the most compelling and fun thing going in wrestling at the moment in my opinion.

Problem with Ambrose is he can't cut the promos or do the stuff he did on the Indies back in the Moxley days (or even FCW, the stuff he did with Regal was incredible). I think that's why a lot of it comes off as half-arsed now, it just doesn't work that well watered down, at least that's the case in my opinion. This comparison is a bit tired nowadays, but it's like they finally realized what Brian Pillman was doing twenty years later and have found a way to make it 'marketable'.

You just know if they were on the same roster we would end up with the obligatory 'Demon' tag team somewhere down the line.

By the sounds of it, Austin just wanted Jon Moxley or the FCW Ambrose in WWE and not the toned down version we have now.

The actual shields referenced by Ambrose in the podcast:

I'm watching it at the moment and I don't think it's that Ambrose doesn't care, I just think he seems very socially awkward outside of the TV character and that can be perceived as being 'aloof' or 'disinterested' to a certain degree.

This has got to lead to McGregor turning up at WrestleMania or something next year right?

Is Matt in character during it?

Yeah, all the way through, it's awesome. Jericho even sells it as 'it's not a character, this is how he really is now'.

Broken Matt on Talk Is Jericho is up, it's amazing, get on it.

New set, spoiler tagged just in case, if it needs to be removed then fair enough.

Are they supposed to be getting new stage sets for both shows as well? I'm sick of the sight of the generic HD set now, get something interesting back up there like the original SmackDown fist or something, change it up a bit. I don't think they've changed since 2008 now have they? Fair enough it's more cost effective but I'm sure they could do something to change it up a bit, make it look a bit more interesting and try to get more themes going for the PPV ones again.

What does it say on his shirt, can't see the last word? But yeah, the spits of Charles Bronson there actually, haha

Any idea what the top talent in TNA is getting paid? Hardy shouldn't be doing those bumps but he's probably getting illy money for the dates he works

CZW are probably paying more these days. Probably...

I guess you could say wrestling has hit a brick wall in terms of presentation, well, probably all aspects of it really, for the most part. At least WWE has. And it's not even trying to 'climb over' the wall or get a lift over at this point, it's just slumped at the bottom twiddling it's thumbs having given up. It is weird how we've just been in a standstill pretty much since 2007/2008, basically since the Benoit incident really where everything had to change. The periods between 1992, 1998 and 2002 did feel like ages back then as mentioned, like it was a whole different product each time.

Count me in on the X-Pac aficionados fan club too, always enjoyed his stuff as I was a kid watching in the 90's, seeing him as the 123-Kid and then in the NWO and DX, one of the coolest guys on the roster for me. Enjoy listening to him talk in interviews and such as well these days as he always seems like a cool guy.

 

 

 

Think that's just MC Run and DMC left who sang on a Triple H theme still alive now after Lemmy and Dave Williams

Depends on who sang on Ode to Joy!

 

Haha, true that. On another note, what are people's opinions on that transitional period of Triple H's career? Still being called Hunter Hearst Helmsley and coming out to Ode to Joy but doing the bow into the suck it sign, Chyna as the bodyguard and forming DX etc. I always thought it was a cool hybrid of the blue blood (I always liked this gimmick though to be fair) and what he would later become, and he had that sweet shirt with the gold H3 logo (which I actually managed to fine an as-new condition one on ebay, paid over the odds for it but it's awesome, though I think it's obscure enough at this point that I've never had anyone comment on it out and about). Trying to find that wax seal shirt he had as well, pretty difficult to find these old shirts now.

 

I don't think time's been too kind to pre game Triple H, has it? I want to say he was one of the stronger characters on Raw by default in 1997 but how many decent angles and matches can you really attribute to him? He was such a good mechanic back then before he got thrown into huge matches. Sure he'd always put on a well worked match but it always came off as such an exhibition. The kind of student-of-the-game match you'd do in front of a group of students to show them how to work tight. Completely unspectacular.

 

I can't even remember him on the mic much in 97 when he clearly could have been doing some interesting things. Because I did like when he had Ode To Joy but just strode out in his normal walk looking a bit miffed at everything. He came off like an absolute plank in DX playing Kernie to Michael's Jimbo Jones. He done good stuff with Mankind but my two main memories of him from that period are having the camera cut away as he's about to add something to Michael's Bad Blood pre match promo and sounding like a prick and picking up the award for Shittest Liar being confronted outside the locker rooms by Bret Hart's wife in Wrestling With Shadows.

 

The H3 logo was class, though. I've always wanted that shirt, too!

 

Yeah, admittedly there wasn't anything majorly notable he was involved in match-wise, but I guess the blueblood gimmick kind of gave way to the 'cocky prick' gimmick it merged into, though I guess you could say that was just Trips as himself back then, I like how he still showed up in Ralph Lauren polos and such, keeping a bit of that upper class thing going along with it. I've not seen Wrestling With Shadows in years so can't remember the bits that have been mentioned but I'll give it a re-watch soon and look out for them, haha

I'm just a huge fan of 1996/1997 WWF in general though (as that's some of the first stuff I started watching as a kid) and the roster around that time (as you can probably tell, Pillman and The Jackyl being two of my favourites), as I feel like at that point there were a lot of 'shades of grey' I guess you could say, where kayfaybe still half-existed but then you had Pillman around and the ECW invasion, you can see the transition toward the Attitude era taking place, it was a really interesting and compelling time in my opinion.

 

Think that's just MC Run and DMC left who sang on a Triple H theme still alive now after Lemmy and Dave Williams

Depends on who sang on Ode to Joy!

 

Haha, true that. On another note, what are people's opinions on that transitional period of Triple H's career? Still being called Hunter Hearst Helmsley and coming out to Ode to Joy but doing the bow into the suck it sign, Chyna as the bodyguard and forming DX etc. I always thought it was a cool hybrid of the blue blood (I always liked this gimmick though to be fair) and what he would later become, and he had that sweet shirt with the gold H3 logo (which I actually managed to fine an as-new condition one on ebay, paid over the odds for it but it's awesome, though I think it's obscure enough at this point that I've never had anyone comment on it out and about). Trying to find that wax seal shirt he had as well, pretty difficult to find these old shirts now.