BrodyGraham

I watch Steven Universe with my little girl and it's genuinely brilliant. There'll be people who hate on it because it does get into things like feelings and issues, and you know we can't talk about those things, because Gods forbid we teach empathy to our kids. Ahem, sorry. Yeah in terms of character and world building it's awesome.

Mines brutal so I'll take a double on another!

My favourite Burt Reynolds story is from the filming of Deliverance. They were filming the scene where Burt's character goes over the waterfall. They try a bunch of takes with a dummy going over the falls and it looks like shit. Burt steps up to the plate and volunteers to go over himself. He does it and apparently screws himself up quite badly. He then goes to the director (Jon Boorman?), and asks how the take looked only to be told, ’Like a Dummy going over a waterfall!’ When we think of Burt we generally think of him in terms of being one of the quintessential movie stars of the 70’s but that's a wonderful example of commitment to his craft.

I'll give this a go.

WWE have announced the commissioning of a warts and all Oral History of WWE. The authors will apparently have 'unprecedented' access to Vince and whoever else they want. I've no confidence that they'll uncover anything we don't already know, for all they'll tout the tell all nature of the book, there's no way the McMahon's are going to be anywhere near transparent. The authors apparently wrote an excellent book on the creation and growth of MTV which sounds interesting, so they've got previous on these kinds of monolithic cultural entities. Could be good, Could be wanky propaganda.

It's midway through its second season at the moment. It manages to be way less interesting whilst shooting for a much more sensational story.

I've seen bits and bobs of Janela before but there was a point in his entrance, where I looked at him, with his daft shades his shiny jacket, his paunch and his hot, trashy looking girlfriend and I was absolutely mesmerised. He just looked absolutely mental and dangerous, but most of all cool. Of the two guys outside of Bullet Club that you felt like they wanted to showcase going in, the other being MJF, to me Janela looked like a star. I'd also be very surprised if WWE didn't make overtures toward Penelope Ford.

The question of how to debut guys on NXT is a weird one though, chiefly because there's always one of us to complain about it. When they were debuting guys on Takeover it wound up being counter productive because either they'd wind up burying someone they wanted to invest in, like Almas, or the crowd would get behind the other guy just because, like Tye Dillinger. The strange thing to me is the tendency to just throw someone out there with no build and the expectation that the audience will care just because and then two months later run a two part mini documentary. If we'd known the War Raiders story ahead of time, we might not have people dismissing them as Wyatt family knock-offs (because everyone with a beard is) or complaining that Hanson and Rowe sounds too much like Harper and Rowan, so naturally, they’re shit.

See, I'm not sure they have. There's not a lot you can do with what Undisputed Era were given in their first couple of months. Go out, lose, run away. Cole, especially got next to no mic time, pretty much until after War Games. That's a guy that was hired partially for how good he was on the stick, not getting to do what he was hired for. My one criticism with UE was that if anything O'Reilly was going too big with the facials and goofy body language. He's dialled it back to somewhere in the middle and been allowed to speak and now he's ’the Performance Centre's biggest success story’. Forget the decade before that, 6 months with Albert and he's golden. 2 months ago, it was 'the War Raiders are shit' after 2 squash matches and a 5 minute match with Heavy Machinery. Now it's ’I don't get the hype with Keith Lee', after 2 50/50 matches with guys who've had no TV time at all! I'm not coming at this as a huge Keith Lee' fan, I think they've robbed him of about a quarter of his hype by ditching his old (tremendous), indie theme and not letting him rap his own entrance, but I'm saying, give people a little time.

It seems to be the general rule on here that anyone from the Indies gets dismissed as a no mark workrate wanker, either sight unseen or off the basis of their first couple of matches on NXT TV. Give talent more than 2 five minute TV matches before writing them off or at least have a look at some of their earlier work. In the case of Undisputed Era for example, it simply took a little time for NXT to present them in the manner they had been elsewhere. Fish and O'Reilly had already been playing the smug prick heels in ROH, long before they were thrown out on TV, with no build as sacrificial lambs for Alistair Black. There's a couple of cracking Fish Tank segments from ROH on YouTube. It took them best part of 2 years to present Roddy Strong the way he was on the Indies. I'll admit to a certain degree of bias but it does feel like some people on here, who typically complain about 'Dem Wanz' are just the opposite side of the same coin.

Conversely the 'cos the internet’ sentiment harboured by some people, has them deciding the show is going to be shit irrespective of what matches are on the card or whether or not they even know the talent wrestling. Don't get me wrong, I'm not getting caught up in the idea that this is going to be Woodstock for Wrestling and Starrcast sounded ropey from the off, but there's a definite vein of spite and a feeling of 'how dare they?', knocking about when it comes to All In. As it stands if it's as good as a PWG show except in front of 10k I'll be content. That said I have NJPWORLD so I've lost nothing if it's shit!

Chances are that as a kid in the US or Canada, Harry Smith could have been in a wrestling programme from a very early age. Rough thing is you don't have to look very hard to find video of primary age kids suplexing each other on their heads. That said, the whole thing with Izzy has been uncomfortable for months. As mentioned above, you can see the wrestler does his best to drop her low and supports her back to a point but her head bounces off the mat in a pretty rough way. I'd like to hear how her parents justify how they've basically used her as a cash cow.

Dunno if anyone else noticed, when Ciampa kisses the belt at the beginning of the main event he doesn't kiss the main face plate, he kisses his own name plate on the side. Lovely bit of prickish heeling. Liked the Venom motif on Gargano's gear, bit heavy handed, but apt.