Loki

Along with flashbulbs, random signage is something I really miss from that era of wrestling. For a long time WWE has policed the signs people bring to shows, although they may have eased on that in the Renaissance Era. MySpace looks like it's finally dropped its other bollock - it's still there but doesn't seem to have been updated since 2022. No sign of Nature Brad!

I completely agree, but i think in that case they should be made a big deal - put on a PPV, with plenty of advance notice, packages, promos, standoffs etc. Make sure your more casual audience know who this person is, why it's a big deal, give them a little taste and give the match a pride of place. IIRC they did that with Ospreay when he came over for a match, and it really helped the audience connect with them. When they throw out the "old Japanese wrestler of the week" for a 20 minute loss to Moxley randomly on the next Dynamite, it's only ever going to appeal to a specific (and probably relatively small) tranche of wrestling fans.

Poor Roman. Just another goon.

He’d get Houchen’d on this forum for sure!

And it’s why he’s at the top of the card. Ultimately wrestling is about good guys overcoming bad guys, not two shooters having an evenly matched back and forth contest and then shaking hands. Or it should be, for me!

Cena’s first match in WWE was a cracking and shockingly balanced tv match with Angle, when he looked every bit the future of the company, certainly to me. They then didn’t capitalise at all and nearly fired him before the infamous Thuganomics Halloween costume. I am certainly hugely in the minority I know, but I still like the face-in-peril match style. MJF has a few matches like that last (?) year which were great, and it’s one of the reasons I like LA Knight as mentioned above, he likes to pace his matches like that. @Supremo’s cruisers may have taken over the business, but a whole card of that is diminishing returns, and there’s far too many shows/PLEs like that nowadays.

Hogan’s moveset was a clothesline, a back rake and a legdrop. And he was huge. The point was that they looked like greek gods but then got punished to the point that the kids in the audience start crying and then they come back and the power of the audience fills them and they get the win. The point being I guess that the style isn’t designed to appeal to smart wrestling fans, it’s designed to appeal to the kid in the nosebleeds whose Dad has just shelled out 100 dollars in merch. And to be honest I always thought the AA looked amazing particularly against big opponents, Cena would power them up there and then a big gulp of air and wallop. That’s a power move, especially when he went into it from a mid air catch.

For just listening to music (as opposed to mixing/scratching) the most important factors are the stylus and the weighted tone arm as @wordsfromlee said. If you have a multimedia amp for your tv that might have a phono in (and therefore a preamp). Otherwise a trip to a second hand electrical store might find you a cheap hifi amp and speakers, and possibly a cheap record deck that you can just buy a new stylus for!

It’s owned by an oligarch friend of Putin and brings considerable revenue into the Russian state. It’s been banned by Ukraine as part of the ongoing sanctions against Russia. Whether or not you use it depends how much you care about the possibility of your ad revenue ending up propping up the war in Ukraine. Edit: in a similar vein I used to use StreamEast for dodgy sport streams but I figure I’d rather not potentially help the Russian economy circumvent sanctions through copyright theft.

I think you’re very much over estimating the appeal of those who choose to leave detailed reviews of every single thing they watch 🙃 I for one would certainly read a brief precis of NXT from you every week if you’re passing. I’ll definitely watch if there’s a particularly good episode, and you point it out!

Quite surprised to see so may people down on Cena’s work, especially after his glorious “workrate” US title run. As a heavyweight champ though he relied on having good heels to work with, and that’s where WWE really let him down. Cena’s job (like Hogan before him) was to take a king beating with occasional mini shines before the big comeback and finisher. It’s a style that has made more money and put more bums in seats than any other. He had some right old shit to work with though. Forget André, Bundy, Macho, DiBiase, Piper - he had JBL, Khali, Big Show, Ryback, Henry (bless him) - all sorts of guys who really didn’t help with the matches. When he was in with really good heels, like Edge or Orto, Punk or even HHH things clicked better. Also… he was on top for DECADES and wrestled everyone. There’s going to be as many bad matches as good. I reckon Cena has another run in him in a few years, ala Rock, and I’m sure we’ll all be loving it when he does.

Jacked-up Brown?

Yeah agreed. Some Insta twat filming himself doing reps and catching my balding spot in his video and my annoyed glare in the mirror. I always enjoy that occasional treat when one of them drops a weight on their £1000 phone. Jog on Tarantino, you’ll have to finish your workout without completing your movie.

Jericho is on Dynamite tonight. Stolen from Reddit, but that will bring his total to 215 out of 236 Dynamites - 91% of them. That’s the most appearances of any wrestler. No wonder we’re sick of him!

I hate to bring this up but… Does anyone else think Roman doesn’t look that well at the moment? I’m just wondering if some of the scrambling changes of plan over the last few months might be related to him not feeling that great and needing another extended period off. I presume he’s on some fairly hefty drugs all the time for his leukaemia.

They really dropped the ball with Kennedy, he was very over, was a solid worker and had bags of charisma. He was fun in TNA but I guess if Orton and Cena don’t like you, you’re never getting back into WWE.

Do you mean this isn’t a good look for AEW? And if so, why? Any professional wrestler who signs a contract with either WWE or AEW must surely understand that it’s not a permanent job. If you are a success they will extend and improve your contract. If not then they will probably let you go at some point. If young wrestlers were signing up with Uncle Tony thinking it was a job for life that’s naive in the extreme. There have never been more opportunities for wrestlers than right now. The worst thing you can do is be vocally upset about it in public where potential future employers can see it. It feels like it’s not only fans that drank the AEW KoolAid but wrestlers too. Edit: caveat to this is releasing someone when they’re injured. I guess it’s possible Henry is off the injury list but if not, that does suck.

It was the whole Signature Pharmacy scandal wasn’t it, they were all getting steroids and HGH over the internet. Benoit was on huge doses of testosterone too from Dr Astin. Loads of them were implicated, including Edge, Rey Mysterio and other Smackdown guys plus Helms, Holly and many others.

Here’s the thing though, he almost certainly shouldn’t have and he got through it by popping insane amounts of painkillers. I remember about a year before he left WWE reading an “article” about how modern Kurt’s fitness regime was, how he’d learnt all this stuff in the Olympics about ice baths and warm downs and was teaching it to the WWE locker room. Except it was all bullshit, someone had a good hookup and they were all mainlining HGH and percocets. That whole Guerrero/Benoit/Angle Smackdown locker room might have been the most fucked up of all time drugs-wise and that’s saying something. Everyone was dropping dead either on the road or just after leaving it (Hennig for e.g). The Plane Ride from Hell was in the middle of all that too. Angle is lucky to be alive. There’s a reason WWE never really wanted him back in a ring, because for a while there he was on death watch.

He strikes me as something of a classic narcissist. His entire world view is predicated on the assumption that he is the good guy, always does the right thing, and is always the aggrieved party in whatever happens. As long as you feed that narcissism he’ll be your best mate, he’ll buy you a house or talk about what a great boss you are. Look at the Orton interview where they’re suddenly best mates. Orton is feeding Punk’s ego and he loves it. You go up to him backstage as a young wrestler and ask his advice, he’ll be generous and sing your praises. The minute you go against that narrative, he’s done with you. You’re banned from Collision. Wait until Orton wants to go over in their feud, see if Punk hugs it out then. Listening to Punk is like listening to Trump sometimes. “People say I could have killed him, and I could of course. I’m a very good fighter, very dangerous, everyone says that.” He’s as big a bullshitter as Hogan but without the decades of Wrestlemania main events. They both believe their own bullshit absolutely. Punk is fascinating, mercurial, occasionally brilliant and absolutely not a guy to ever build your business around. Better to have someone like Samoa Joe, who probably is genuinely dangerous but has never claimed to know karate, and just works incredibly hard and professionally at all times.

I haven’t seen it but apparently there’s a suggestion that the Uncle Howdy character (and therefore Bo Dallas) is coming back. I always thought Dallas was the better wrestler, and has just never had a gimmick that would allow him into the main event level. Although I’m not really interested in any more spoopy bollocks I really hope they give him something good to work with. He deserves it.

Andrade in the André. Better than Rampage I guess. Andrade might be low key the shittest wrestler of the 2020s. Three runs in the big 2 companies, absolutely no memorable moments at all. He’ll be best remembered as Mr Charlotte.

It turns out that a decade plus of sitting on (and acting on) movie sets, watching directors, cinematographers, lighting specialists, acting a wide variety of scripts, working with top notch actors, might have rubbed off on Rocky. Whether he can still do anything in the ring remains to be seen, but he’s absolutely firing on all cylinders now.

@RedRooster How are we planning to deal with games like Mario Kart? I suspect a lot of people will cast a vote for various different iterations of what is, fundamentally, one long-running game? Very hard to pick a "best" Mario Kart. I'm trying to think of other examples - FIFA or Championship Manager or SmackdownvRaw? I thought the first one of these was brilliant but the sequel was a massive let-down wasn't it? I remember the single player being a shell of its former self.

Err...