Loki

16 minutes ago, air_raid said:

It's far more fun to try and convince them that boxing is rigged too.

Boxing IS rigged, far more than people would like to admit, as is MMA.  If betting syndicates are fixing cricket matches you can be sure they're also fixing boxing and MMA matches which is far easier.

Sport in general is HUGELY corrupt to the extent that we all just kind of ignore it.  Look at the selection of Olympic venues, FIFA World Cup venues etc.  It's absolutely not a meritorious system and there's vast sums of money illegally changing hands but nobody really wants to deal with it.

But yeah, that bastard Carpentier deffo took a dive against Kowalski, the faker.

Forget chatting about Big Daddy, you'll learn all about Toots Mondt and like it!   

13 hours ago, air_raid said:

Junkyard Dog beating Mr Hughes by DQ

That sounds AMAZING.  NWC sounds a lot like LAW from post WCW in terms of random and cross-promotional matchups.

That clip of Funk v Virgil is 100% Funk though, selling like HBK going against Hogan.  

He supports election integrity so at least he admits Trump tried to overturn the results of the last election, right?

The US right now is like the prequel bits of Handmaid's Tale.  We're about 10 months from them voting in a fundamentalist Christian cult into office and everyone's buying coffees and going to work like it's normal.

The 2025 Project, which represents the GOP plan for post-election, is genuinely terrifying.

https://www.project2025.org

Plans include dismantling the FBI, eliminating the Department for Education, deploying the military for domestic law enforcement and so on.  

Edit: what's their motto you ask? "freedom is defined by God, not man".  Under his eye...

I'm always amused by the slight embarrassment that happens when you meet another wrestling fan in real life.

I went round to someone's house for a Halloween party a few years ago and he was wearing a Pentagon Jr mask.  I went over and said "that's cool, is that a Penta mask" and he seemed genuinely slightly embarrassed that someone had called him on it.  He admitted that he watched AEW but then the wrestling conversation dried up, and I totally got it as you take your life into your own hands with that conversation.  If someone asks me who my favourite wrestler is and I say Kevin Nash, and they like ROH it's going to be two ships passing in the night.

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

Also, I'd completely forgotten about the Continental Crown. 

Is that the first time Kingston has been on Dynamite since he won it?  I can't remember seeing him wrestle since the tournament.

I saw a video on Reddit the other day of Kingston training with some MMA guy, and saying "if you've seen a transformation this is why" so when they announced that match at the start I thought "ooh, this'll be like when Bully Ray returned looking buff" but no, there's my Eddie with his big old beer belly and weird cup suction marks on his back.

I do love him but yeesh... no interest in his feud with Danielson, or the BCC who are collectively the equivalent of the Boring Men's thread from off-topic.

2 hours ago, Supremo said:

Who the fuck is the Walter White guy?

Didn't they spend about 3 seasons detailing his origin story and descent into criminality? 

The issue I often have with AEW is that they announce "Heisenberg to wrestle Danielson at next PPV" and the announcers go OMG Heisenberg, and expect you to have watched all of Breaking Bad.

A little vignette showing him selling crank and dissolving people in bathtubs isn't going to hurt the integrity of the product that much.

@FLips do you have a Game Gear?  There were a few exclusives on there that I loved - their version of Sonic & Knuckles I think was great, a good Mortal Kombat, and some crazy JRPGs.

I deeply regret trading my Game Gear in, as I do with every console I ever sold, even though it would now be on the shelf behind me gathering dust alongside the GBA/DS etc.

Edit: It was Sonic The Hedgehog 2 I'm thinking of.  

37 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

my moral code 15 years ago was obviously in question.

Another possible motto for the UKFF!

3 hours ago, jm29195 said:

with some banging main event matches with Joe and Lashley,

I'd forgotten about that Lashley match.  That had absolutely no right to be any good - Steiner was knackered and Lashley was still in his phase of being impressive looking but fairly boring.  And yet they had a great brawl.

Favourite moment from Steiner's run there - him being goaded by the crowd into delivering a Steiner Screwdriver to Petey Williams (a move he'd probably not attempted in a decade). and flipping the crowd off in the middle of it.

I'm openly not a fan of Punk but I can't see that he has anything to contribute about a scandal that happened whilst he wasn't even part of the company.  Yes, he's worked there before but so had almost every wrestler who ever lived.  It's not like he's Vince's best mate like Cena, or related to him like HHH.  Might as well be pestering Danielson, or Sabu, or Hillbilly Jim for a reaction.

Punk's on his final chance in wrestling having burnt so many bridges, and just fucked up his push getting injured, and is sitting collecting cheques.  If I was him I’d be keeping schtum and doing whatever daft marketing the company wanted from him.

One of my favourite matches of all time, often talked about by Mrs Loki as well from back when she watched wrestling, was HHH v Scott Steiner at the Royal Rumble 2003.

It was absolutely shat on at the time, but it's an amazing watch for all sorts of reasons.

Firstly, the build-up was insane.  Two ridiculously over-steroided freaks having arm wrestling competitions and pose-offs, and the crowds at this point in the Reign Of Terror were well up for Poppa Pump.  His first words back in WWE being "Gimme the fucking mic".  Great stuff.

The match itself is like something out of the 80s.  All the blame was put on poor Scotty at the time, but look at HHH!  Neither guy could move they were carrying so much muscle.  I'm willing to bet neither could touch their own nose at the time.

Still, best break out the suplexes eh Scott?  They just went for all the power moves.  And to be fair they hit some - 

But Steiner's definitely lacking ring fitness and starts sucking oxygen in so hard the front row begin to pass out.  HHH is either gassed as well or sandbagging so there's a lot of almost deadweight lifts that would probably be really in nowadays.  It descends into an awkward final run and a shitty HHH reign non-finish.

You can't look away through the whole thing, it's just... wow.  I imagine these two huge egos refusing to admit limitations and just going for it.

Had they booked a 5 minute power match and gone straight to a DQ then Steiner would have looked great and they could have sold a few more PPV - the guy was a big star.  But WCW lol, so never mind.  Steiner went on to have some hugely entertaining matches in TNA, so their loss.

I could watch Scotty throw people about all day.  So much anger!

On 2/20/2024 at 1:05 PM, FLips said:

The Revenge of Shinobi has the unique achievement of having multiple versions across multiple decades, with at least four versions on the Mega Drive alone and then compilations and releases right up to the current generation.
This is because Sega for some reason just could not stop using copyrighted characters as bosses. Sometimes they were allowed to and sometimes they weren't and had to change it. Here's a nice breakdown of the major releases if you don't have time to read the included articles.

I'm just impressed that any company keeps good enough digital archives for 20 years that they can still modify the original game in 2009.  It's the same with Nintendo, being able to put original Gameboy games onto the Switch.  

The last time I worked for EA, there was a project ongoing to dig through all the huge archive of released games and get them working on a single browser-based emulator.  People literally digging through boxes stored under a mountain somewhere looking for hard drives and tapes and suchlike.  And there were a lot of gaps where games had simply been lost in all but their final cartridge or cassette tape format.  Or completely lost!

Edit: double post

26 minutes ago, mim731 said:

Based on that picture alone, I'd suggest he's about to release a swing covers album in time for Mothers Day.  

Speaking of...

Every year like clockwork he rises from the dead, this time with bloody Holland in tow.

On 2/25/2024 at 11:28 AM, Dr. Alan Grant said:

Tyler‘s tighty-whities and mustard booties looked ridiculous.

He looks like he's doing a private appartment wrestling job.  Those y-fronts had better stay on, big strong boy.

Seth Rollins.  I think I like him more than a lot of people on here.  He's hard-working, athletic, talented, and is one of the people who I think has helped define the modern WWE main event style (for better or worse) as a faster-paced, dynamic style than it was 15 years ago.

I also think he makes a good heel on occasion - his post-Shield corporate stooge was great.

But this gimmick he's been doing for the past few years, it's utterly dreadful.  His wife has been doing a similar gimmick until recently (big time Becks) and it was also terrible, so it's clearly their creation.  I know that having every character created by Vince McMahon was turgid but it did at least mean that people's awful gimmick ideas got reined in.

He does seem popular though, so maybe it's a generation thing.  Maybe "the stupidly dressed mega-wanker who's a bit too old to be in the club" is exactly what the TikTok generation want.  Maybe it's us, we're wrong.

55 minutes ago, Slapnut said:

Not that it affected Garbisi making the kick, but France attempted to charge down that penalty twice. The clock should have been reset and he should have been given another go. I’d have been throwing hands if I were him in that moment.

I thought exactly that, but no pundit mentioned it afterwards so I assumed the rules had changed again on that.

Italy missing the penalty kick in the last seconds of the game due to the ball falling over was just tragic.  They deserved to beat France - and it would have made the whole tournament really interesting!

Well, this has been lovely to read!

In the last week on here I've been called a coward, a facilitator of sexual assault, a troll and now I find posters that I genuinely admire and enjoy contributions from think my posts are "those ridiculous high grounds and bullshit opinions".

It's starting to make me wonder if the UKFF is as friendly and inclusive as we pretend.  Imagine what you Paidos are saying about me in private

In all seriousness, this is a public discussion forum, you are going to encounter opinions you disagree with, it doesn't make people bad or trolls or your enemy.  I appreciate deeply what @Chest Rockwell said above - you can't expect to agree with or even like everyone else on here but you can still treat people with respect. That's classy.

I'd also gently remind people when they're calling people out here that there's a person behind the screen name.  People might have stuff going on in their lives, health issues, personal issues, divorces, whatever.  If I'm being completely honest, it's one reason I'm not a fan of the UKFF forum awards as we're still voting people the "worst" this or that.  It's meant to be in good humour, but it probably stings quite a bit.

For those of us who've been on this forum for 20+ years I imagine we're all quite different, more grown up people now.  20 years ago the TWCF forum was certainly a place for forum wars, pCc v Paidos, all that nonsense.  I remember UKFF versus the original Wrestling Channel Forums.  A lot of nonsense, most of it almost certainly light-hearted but still, pretty stupid.  I absolutely said some stupid shit on here I'm sure. Some of the posters I would have gone 10 rounds with in those days, like, @Supremo, I now regard as one of the best contributors here.  Even when I don't agree with them.

But we're still on this forum because we all still watch wrestling.  Let's talk about, and disagree about that.  And talk and disagree about off-topic stuff if we can without getting personal.  At the very least, keep the personal bitching to PMs!

@neil somewhat prosaically, the thread was called UKFF Member Watch.  I'm afraid a reach-around isn't on the cards, mainly because I'm not sure my wrists are up to it these days.

I wish everyone a great rest of the weekend.  And this last bit was my edit @SuperBacon

Oh dear.

 There once was a forum called TWCF which had a crossover with this place, as the legacy of The Wrestling Channel Forum.  It’s been almost dead for the past two decades apart from a very occasional chat about this place and some personal chat between long-standing friends.  We’re talking dozens of posts a year.

There were also forum like Real In Memphis or I believe there is a paid forum here where some members discuss other posters on here in private?  Is that still active?

There’s no giant conspiracy.  There are plenty of members of this forum who  still have accounts there and, I presume, still have access.  Including some current or possibly former mods.  If they wish to “expose” it on another private forum that’s their decision and probably says more about them to be honest.

I can only speak for myself as ever, but everything I post here is my personal opinion, and indeed I refrain myself from engaging with the more argumentative and aggressive posters here regularly because I dislike the pile ons and antagonism.

I will assume that those of you talking about posters like myself in Paid aren’t engaged in some coordinated trolling.  Or on WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and whatever other ways people interact.

 Edit: this would have been a cracking wheeze 20 years ago when @neil was resetting the forum to be pro pCc or whatever.  But in 2024?  This is someone’s attempt to sow division here for their own amusement.

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Sting vs. Triple H is a big one for me - everyone I watched it with live hated it at the time, we were laughing our heads off at most of it, and a friend told me how he watched it with his mate who, after Triple H's Terminator entrance, stood up and applauded saying, "fair play, that's the shittest thing I've ever seen". 

I loved that match at the time, and in retrospect too!  Everyone seemed offended on Sting's behalf but he's never had a bad word to say about it, and was made to look like an enormous deal with all the huge stars turning up to help/interfere.  It's just the sort of insane nonsense that I watch wrestling for, DX v NWO even though that makes no sense.  I think at the time it was seen as a possible one-and-done for Sting so they threw the kitchen sink at it.

I'm quietly hoping HHH uses it as a template for the Rhodes/Reigns rematch.

4 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

It's definitely feeling a lot more focused and positive with the women these days in AEW. It doesn't feel too much of an afterthought which it often has over the years by TK. Hopefully they can keep up that momentum and some of the potential new talent should only add to that.

The actual quality of the women's wrestling matches remains stubbornly poor though.  If you look at their roster they seem to have a much more rounded crew nowadays but a lot of the in-ring action is miles behind say TNA and WWE.

I wonder why?  I'm assuming it has something to do with how the division is produced?  Or the lack of a house show circuit? 

1 hour ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

So he was just wearing that cross around his neck for 40 years as a piss take?

Taking vitamins and... wait, what was the other bit?

Fun Dynamite this week, better paced than last week.  Good opener and good main event.  

I'm surprised at the prominence AEW continues to give (as a face no less) to a man facing a prison sentence for assault with a weapon, but perhaps Tony Sn--err, Khan is convinced the police and prosecutors have it wrong. Moxley seemed to be having a bit of an off-night, a little awkward looking, but the two teams work so well together, it sets up a good match at the PPV, court dates permitting.

Speaking off off-nights, it was lovely to see Madison Rayne (I had no idea she was IN AEW) but she looked like she was moving through treacle, was absolutely exhausted 5 minutes into the match and then nearly killed herself taking a simple bump.  Perhaps throwing her out on Dynamite was a mistake if she's not in ring shape.

Sting's promo was ace, awful that he's lost his Dad and it gives his retirement an extra wrinkle clearly.  Now I know Allin has to paint his face to cover that awful tattoo I can't take him seriously though.  I was also mesmerised by the sheer size of Ric Flair's EARS now, wtf.  Impressed that he's not even waiting for the match to turn on Sting, perhaps its a double reverse turn or something, who knows with Flair.

All seems right with the world when the biggest pop and the most credibility lie with the guy holding the big belt.  He is the sun around which the rest of the AEW roster can move, they'd be fools to take the belt of him any time soon because for those claiming to want to be champion, that championship is meaning more every week that Joe holds it.

I love 6 man tags as main events, especially ones packed with singles stars, so the main event was for me.  Everybody gets their shit in, everyone looks good, storylines are progressed.  RVD and Joe, lovely.  Send the crowd home happy.

3 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

I switch to the entity and say, 'How can I help?

It's like a script from a shitty episode of Star Trek or something.  Captain Cena and his crew encounter the entity known as Vince McMahon.