Donald J Trump

Thanks for that. What a great find. You wouldn't be too upset if you got that as a main event. Bearing in mind the fayre WWF were regularly serving at the time, as a youngster I found Owen Hart genuinely exciting to watch and I looked forward to his matches more than any other. It's easy to take it for granted now, but he was the first name I looked for on a card. I've got a feeling I'll watch this more than once.

Stan Lane?

I love the fact that he's such a scroat that people are suggesting he isn't a believable foil for McIntyre, despite the fact that he's a "different type of choke artist". Personally, that side of things has never really bothered me as long as people play to their strengths. I'd buy Dom Mysterio beating Lesnar, as long as he was a cheating shit while doing so. I'm not wild about the prospect of them meeting at Clash of the Castle, as I worry they'd short change us to drag it out to Summerslam. My hope is that the mentions of Glasgow are just them working towards a way of avoiding it. That's provided the alternative is McIntyre being crowned king of Wrestling and it being the greatest night in history. If they're not doing that, then any version of Drew/Punk is what you'd want instead. Christ, imagine if it's Jey Uso. What if that's why McIntyre got involved in his business on Monday. What if I've spent £500 to be surrounded by bastards "yeeting" during the main event. Fucking hell. Does anybody want to buy a ticket for Clash at the Castle?

I always recall when Cena said to Reigns something along the lines of "You've always been protected, and I'm the one person there's no protection from". He then made mincemeat of Reigns, just like he made mincemeat of The Rock, as you mention. Punk usually held his own against Cena, and not everyone does. Now he's coming out second best in promos to a guy who either isn't in the building or is in the rafters with no microphone. It can't just be that he's yesterday's man, can it? It's not like the art of the promo has significantly evolved over the past decade and a bit. I think lack of application and effort explains it, partially. It could also be that his range just isn't there. He's fine for the "this whole damn rotten business" promos, and he's satisfactory enough in your average, monthly disagreement. The work McIntyres doing, both on TV and on social media is singlehandedly taking this fued to a level Punk can't keep up with. Maybe he's saving the good stuff till later, but if youre telling people you're going to land a knockout blow, the last thing you need to be doing is punching yourself in the face. The whole sucking up to Pat because he's independently wealthy and does real sports thing makes him look like he's scrambling for relevance as well. "Hey Pat, time me", "Hey Pat, I really gave that 170lbs rookie what for, didn't I Pat?". For McIntyres part in it, he's got an opportunity to go up against a guy that hung with two of the best, and he's giving a hell of an account of himself. At this stage though, it wouldn't be entirely out of place if McIntyre mouthed "I'm sorry" before Claymoring Punk out his misery. I might be terribly biased in all this and I'm almost certainly getting carried away.

I appreciate your apology. You're perfectly entitled to your view, and I respect that. I was concerned about the insinuation I felt I detected in your post but you've explained your position, I've explained mine and if we both understand each other, I'm happy to leave it there.

That's fine, I'm relaxed about you thinking my comment was a bit off, he who'll miss acts of extreme violence. Just as long as we both know my comment has absolutely nothing to do with predatory sexual behaviour, and we do. Absolutely, give me a sleep on the bus any day. Can I just confirm though that my post is specifically in relation to the carny language Flair used in his tirade, as noted by the post proceeding mine. As you've described, and as I attempted to touch on in a very indirect and roundabout fashion in my post, there is a changing culture within the industry which has brought about many changes, and most of them for the better. Sure, I didn't focus on any of the positive changes, but I wasn't choosing my words carefully, it was just a light-hearted aside. I've always welcomed any developments that have positively improved the lives of performers in an industry of which I'm an avid consumer, whether it be more flexible working, more time off or a general shift towards better physical and emotional wellbeing. Horseshit carny talk is also on the wane, but I'll cope. Im just keen not to misrepresent myself here. If I was inclined to seek out old farts telling stories, it would be the type of childish but altogether less problematic stories I referenced at the end of my post. "This person didn't draw, this person didn't want to do business, this person wasn't a good worker" etc. I have no interest in hearing about debauchery, substance abuse or anti social behaviour. Maybe I'll enjoy a bit of the psychologically repressed man babies, but I think we're some way off seeing the last of those.

What a strange thing to post. If you want to pretend that enjoying folksy language and condoning sexual impropriety are the same thing then be my guest, but don't try and pull me into your mucky bathwater.

We're really going to miss shit like that when it gone. We're already getting stories about people going for a workout then having a sleep on their bus. Give me a load of horseshit about somebody not being able to "draw money up north" anyday.

Ric put the restaurant over, brother. Whilst there's no proof here that he Woo'd in a blind grandmothers face, it sounds like they were being fair to Flair.

There's going to be an element of goodwill towards the new Wyatt family that might help it find it's legs, but as others have said even when Bray was doing it there were as many misses as there were hits, and that's being charitable. I'm convinced that 99 times out of 100 stuff like this is doomed to failure, and it's only those rare "lightning in a bottle" gimmicks that make it. There's obviously lots of room for shortsightedness and ineptitude, but most of the time they're pushing marmalade up a hill to start with. They've also got some potentially difficult territory to negotiate with trying to strike the right tone given the wider circumstances. I'm approaching this with far more trepidation than enthusiasm, but I hope I'm wrong. They shouldn't try and be too clever, and they shouldn't make the foundation of the whole thing a jumble of meaningless lore. Keep it simple, and preferably explainable to children. And me. That's the second week in a row that Punk has went out there without the Hunkster to bounce off and it hasn't went as well as Punk appears to think it has. He likes to do this "I don't even need to get out of second gear" routine but he really does. McIntyre is approaching this like it's the role of a lifetime and he's leaving nothing back. It's working too, everything from his furious intensity to his malicious pettyness is going down extremely well. Punks falling a bit flat, but that's not the only thing that fell, right Pat? Brutal. I don't think even this lot can do any wrong with Gunther. Whatever they decide to do with Ilya and him, it'll be a cracker.

What's the deal with the gate, is it limited by design with a focus on getting eyes on the product through other means or is it just sparsely attended?

Interesting. Obviously it's nothing without the Dunfermline Wig Smugglers and Englandshire Red Clowns, but I wonder what the chances are of British teams being included in a future expansion. It was very much a niche interest back when I attended but the games become a lot more popular over the past two decades. I think a couple of teams over here would be pretty well supported.

I can see this pair becoming too cool for school before long. Pro wrestling and fashion should be a more natural fit, in that you get to make a spectacle out of wearing ridiculous outfits. At times it feels this pair are indulging themselves though, and for Becky in particular I'm not convinced it sits well with what propelled her ahead of the pack initially. It's a shame Seth couldn't hold onto his title a few weeks longer, their little heads would have exploded if they had matching belts.

If he has woo'd directly into a blind grandmothers face, and I hope to god he hasnt, then that's unforgivable. There's nothing even remotely amusing about any of this, not even a little bit. I hope Mr Von Schnertzenpfeffer, the blind grandmother and the poor soul in the toilet who triggered this whole debacle are doing ok. It's a terrible state of affairs.

I think we can all relate to not getting peace to go for a shit, talk about punching down on the little guy. It's bad enough when my toddlers outside demanding to be let in. This is grim.

Some people just have that amazing gift where even after hearing only their side of the story you immediately become sympathetic towards the other party.

There are parts of Bayleys entrance music that sound a lot like "Where are you dear General?", which is the song that's played from loudspeakers in Pyongyang every morning to "motivate" the residents. That for me is the most interesting thing about her act at the minute. As with a lot of the women's division we're relying on aspects of their personality to make them distinct, whilst none of those traits are given any room to make an impression. Who is she? What is it that she does, other than being the woman that had the tube men? I'm not suggesting they give them hokey early 90s gimmicks like The Greenkeeper etc, but they can afford to be a bit more over the top. Toni Storms a good example. Slightly absurd, a bit of the nose, but it works. The opener and that crowd were a match made in heaven. Very entertaining stuff from all concerned, and the story was progressed nicely. My hopes weren't high for Tonga, but he isn't looking at all out of place so far. Maybe I'm imagining things but I swear the only thing the commentators didn't call him was Tony Tango. Adding another Polynesian to the fray isn't going to help matters either. A bad night for the women's division, as I felt the first woman's match was pretty poor too. I'd like to think that somebody somewhere isn't content with congratulating themselves on how far they've come, and instead recognises that there has to be much more consistency with standards. Even for a B event, neither were anywhere near good enough. I liked the drama within Judgement Day, and the match was enjoyable enough but for a World Title match on PPV it just felt symptomatic of WWEs inability to elevate individuals to a real level of stardom. There's a lot to like about Priest. He's a commanding talker, looks convincing enough in most respects and is a likeable, charismatic guy but this type of stuff isn't going to do anything for him, or Jey either for that matter. I think he'd have been better served overcoming an established, seasoned main eventer in his first title defence, even if they were slightly washed up and coming down the other side of the mountain. If at least one of the participants was a main eventer heading into the match, the title looks less like a glorified IC belt, and Priest could have done with stepping over a bigger dog too. Jey Uso is a dancing fool without the comedy, or the dancing for that matter. As over as it is now (and it is over) there'll come a time when that moronic one word catchphrase and the bouncing lowrider gesture will run their course. There's a world of difference between being a top level performer with natural talent and being someone with a knack for appropriating one dimensional elements of hip hop culture and incorporating them into a routine. There was a brief moment during this match where there were echoes of that disastrous outing with his brother at Wrestlemania. Roman will be back to rescue both of them from their own shortcomings as singles stars soon hopefully. I liked the main event, and what little build up there was. It was an honest, no nonsense affair from start to finish and was a satisfying end to a show that I didn't expect to get anything out of. As straightforward matches go, I think that's as good as anything we're likely to see this year in WWE and both participants are the better for it. After being completely lost in the shuffle at Wrestlemania, it certainly didn't do AJ any harm and for me it was some of his best work recently. I would have preferred the crowd didn't do the full chant after every two count but other than that they were world class. Even when the opening match spilled into the crowd there wasn't any obnoxious attention seeking. Everyone was having a great time and focusing on the action. Thankfully there's a Saudi crowd between this and Clash at the Castle, as anything after that is going to look positively dead by comparison.

Yeah Bernard Hill usually had a knack for bringing a character to life, even in smaller roles. Most will remember him as the Captain from Titanic. Again a fairly sympathetic figure and Hill done a memorable job in capturing his dignified angst as he appeared to recognise his fate before everyone else.

Of course they think they're going bravely over the top, one last heroic charge towards a noble reckoning. Perhaps a cowardly Sunak will try and "wibble" his way out of the next election. Perhaps that's exactly what he's been trying to do for the past few months. It wouldn't have been any less absurd had he appeared at the lectern with pants on his head.

Christ knows how I'd have survived school without these little bits and pieces of financial help and support we got. Me and the rest of the urchins had to queue up daily for a dinner token, which we could redeem in the canteen for the school dinner equivalent of prison loaf. I ended up falling in with a middle class crowd, who always came to school with enough cash to hit the shops and spend big at lunchtime. Rather than get left behind, I had a regular buyer who took the token off my hands for a reduced percentage of it's trade in value. In some respects it was a bum deal but it felt like a win-win. He was able to get more prison loaf for his buck from the canteen and I got actual money I could spend in a shop. There were always more prospective buyers than there were dinner tokens on the market and an entire stairwell was dedicated to this illicit trade in school dinners. My buyer paid well, and between us we ensured that that we didn't get pulled into the undignified spectacle of a token auction. The authorities largely turned a blind eye to it, perhaps knowing that a crackdown would fuel a shoplifting epidemic when scroats like me found ourselves without a bean.

Seconded. That's exactly the sort of nonsensical shite I want to see.

Beautiful suggestion, and a lot of people are saying that. Lots of people and many others. On a serious note, I do like the idea of extending devolution in England down to the regions. It would certainly be one way to level the playing field and resolve one of the biggest problems with a Federal UK, which is that one constituent part has over 80% of the population. Whilst the Senate style system I suggested could potentially work, there are negatives, and taking devolution down to the regional level may be a fairer and more democratic way of doing it. I've just seen that we're allowed more than five, so I'll add an increase in defence spending. At the moment we appear to be struggling to maintain a nuclear deterrent and a force capable of being effectively deployed in any meaningful way. Whilst I don't believe there's likely to be a land war in Europe in which were directly involved any time soon, I also think theres no reason why Europe as a continent shouldn't have confidence in it's ability to defend itself without American support. I don't believe we're there yet, but if a few countries in Europe followed Polands example in terms of investment, and coordinated to eliminate unnecessary duplication in some areas, we wouldn't need to worry as much about who's in the White House. I'd also bring back the NFL Europe. I used to watch the Claymores pretty regularly but outside of them winning the World Bowl that one time nobody really cared. I think things have changed in the 20 years since Claymores bit the dust and there's much more of an appetite for it now. While we're at it, I'd start MLB Europe too, and build big, expensive ballparks around the UK. Real wasteful white elephants. We've already got the EIHL which is alright, and a Basketball thing nobody gives a shit about, so I'm not bothered about those. I'm not having lame, dignified names that are meant to evoke national pride either like The Edinburgh Bravehearts, Cymru Valley Dragons or the Thames Royal Crowns. I want stupid Minor League Style names, like the Yorkshire Shrimp Kickers and the North East Fun Bastards.

In hindsight, I perhaps should have went with a WWE Hall of Famer who's moral outlook isn't entirely at odds with my own (and it seems the overwhelming majority of the forum). I might enquire to see if VKM is available. Burnham has always had that likeability factor, even going back to the last days of the Reich under Gordon Brown. Getting out of Westminster, keeping a high profile and ensuring he was doing something constructive while Jezza was at the helm turned out to be fortuitous, if not shrewdly calculated. If he does decide to come back to Westminster further down the road, he'll have left himself well positioned for a shot at the leadership if the timing works out.

Dan's effectively finished. He's still somewhere in the U-Bend but it's one of those ones where the waters just taking a little bit longer to drain away than usual. You can't see him and you'd struggle to know he was there, and any minute now that last, final flush will dislodge him and carry him into the rancid depths of the sewer. Thank you for your service Dan. We'll call you.

Trumps the guy at the party that'll talk to you but he's always looking around the room for somebody more important/interesting. He also suffers from chronic recency bias in that he's more likely to lean heavily towards the last thing that's happened, whether it's advice he's received or people he's met. If he sat down with Sunak and his people tomorrow they'd be flavour of the month until he met Starmer again. It's just how he operates. For Starmers part in it whilst finding common ground with Trump might give centrist dad's like myself the creeps it's just pragmatic politics again. Given where he's positioned himself there's no political capital to be gained in refusing to play the game. I really wish the political, media and electoral landscape weren't entirely at odds with my own moral/political compass but I can't kid myself, it is what it is.