AVM

I'm not too keen on JR or Excalibur. I'd like to see a trio of Tom Philips, Samoa Joe and Tony Schiavone, possibly rotating Joe with Taz. 

He probably won't even be on the list even if they wanted to release him and their release list includes Bray Wyatt-level baffling releases. Yes, WWE are THAT vindictive.

Santino Marella.

Irritating bastard.

Absolutely remarkable story and incredible that Herbie pulled that off from a blank piece of paper.

I'll never forget Friendly TV putting on Cage Of Death at 10am on a weekday. 

Was also a bit of a mainstay on the old TWCF forums as an impressionable teenager. Good memories on there.

The existence of 'carnie' organisations doesn't justify sexual assaults and noncing on an industrial scale, and I'm very surprised that anyone with a brain cell would try to argue that. 

Yeah, I think they really fucked it with Punk in hindsight. They could have had him appearing on the indies, on panels, all across the media baiting them. It would have also been perfect as WWE was getting to grasps with social media at the time, so it really could have been treated as an angle that's continuously going on in the background. It's also something they had never done before.

On 6/23/2021 at 12:36 PM, BomberPat said:

I think the distinction is that Nikki isn't a superhero. She's Nikki Cross dressing up in a homemade superhero outfit. 

Pretty much my view. Give me a daft cosplaying gimmick over a three month long program about a possessed doll any day of the week.

I can only speak personally here.

I made allegations nearly a year ago based on a historic occurence whereby a well known female talent had passionately kissed me when I was approximately ten years old - this was witnessed by my best friend and matches several occurences where the talent in question did the same thing with other men (caught on camera at least three times) and in one case what would appear to be a boy according to an article written about a show. I raised my story essentially out of solidarity with female talents who had made their allegations. My intention was to validate their story by sharing my own experience. Statute of limitations expires today.

It was never my intention to 'cancel' any talent. I want to see an acknowledgement by those involved that they have behaved in an unacceptable manner and I want to see changes made - in my case, the talent in question is part of a family of great influence in British wrestling. They have great power to change things.

The immediate response was for members of the family to issue threats (both legally, physically and through incitement) and to slander their accusers (against the women). Then came the 'these people are good people, therefore the accusers are definitely lying' argument and then pretty much whitewashing (i.e. 'we've trained disabled talents, we have a trans talent' etc. - all great stuff, but it doesn't erase the problem).

How do we proceed? Its tricky. The APPG was always limited in what it could do, prosecutions are pretty much impossible with these things unless there's an absolute smoking gun and the intimidation alone was enough to silence some accusers. The positive is libel action is expensive for the accused and the difference in burden of proof favours defendents with evidence. In my case, I was advised I'd have been easily able to prove on the balance of probability what I had alleged had happened. That would have then given the green light for media to report as alleged - something the accused would have desperately wanted to avoid, and frankly so would I. 

The only solution, I think, is education - to ensure these things don't happen again and to understand who the most unrepentant abusers are. 

It’s the Evolve/Progress/ICW thing again. ‘You give up your talent, restrict your creative and production, work around our schedule. We’ll send you Trent Seven for a surprise appearance’.

Not really sure what to make of the report, which is apt because virtually every APPG ends up with reports like this which are persuasive but don’t really have any substantive outcome.

There are references to my submission in there, but I think the parts they took note of weren’t the parts I thought would be most useful.

I’ll be interested to see what happens with the debate.

Jim Johnston or CFO$

Failing that, sack Cody Rhodes and spend his salary and dividends on licensing music for the entire roster.

This version of Christian is rubbish. Get Tyson Tomko back, Waterproof Blonde and a PVC hoody.

3 hours ago, Suplex Sinner said:

Horrible booking thoughts going through my head:

1. Bryan gets buried and in a WM9 moment, gives his blessing to Edge to face Reigns at 'Mania to win the title back for the good guys.

2. Lesnar interrupts the Drew/Sheamus match, kills both making it Bobby vs Brock. 

3. The above but we get a fatal four way at 'Mania. 

4. We get two triple threats, one for either title with the respective winners stating each other down to set up a belt Vs belt feud over the summer. 

There's no way they get it right. 

 

Yeah, number one I think. 

On late booking, I am a huge fan of what they did for Mania 28. A full year of build to Rock V Cena. That was one of those rare situations where you had a match that needed a stadium as opposed to a stadium that needed a match. Would love for them to do the same thing for Rock V Reigns.

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Production is the biggest problem - I talk about this all the time, but an episode of RAW from 2020 looks indistinguishable to an episode of RAW from 2010. An episode of RAW from 2010, structurally, is still more or less identical to a RAW from 2002, just with a new lick of paint. There hasn't been the sort of sea change in production or presentation that you saw in the past - this point is hammered home all the time, but the WWF of 1985 doesn't look like the WWF of 1995, which sure as hell doesn't look like the WWE of 2005. The WWF of 97 looks totally different to the WWF of 1995, and the WWF of 2000 looks totally different to the WWF of 1997. Enough changed to make the product feel fresh.

 

I agree with this, however, you just know that Vince would read comments like that as 'goddamn pal, let's add even more screens' and you'd end up with screens on the canvas, turnbuckles, mats and announce cables. I think the issue is that it is overproduced and actually a good way to create that difference will be actually to go back and simplify things a bit. 

My only caution with Tony Khan talking about huge, huge stars is that the guy has been hyperbolic with Fulham. He called Ruben Loftus-Cheek a world-class signing (and I’m a Chelsea fan and think that’s ridiculous).

Okada?

Sergeant Punk?

It isn't Christian. It'll be RVD.

Given their operations costs apparently exceed £10,000 per month, you'd think they'd want to reduce personal liability as much as reasonably possible and operate as a limited company? 

I'd imagine they'll have access to SEISS in the mean time, but that fund just isn't designed for businesses with those kind of overheads at all.

Either way, I'm sure they'll survive. The estimate seems to be that Paige can expect to earn about $45,000-$50,000 per month from Twitch (is she still doing it?) so I'm sure if it came to it, they'll be alright.

So, I don’t know their situation, but I would be very surprised if they did not have access to funds to bail them out if they wanted.

They seem to have a bubble of fans in the East of England plus stans for Paige - believe me, some of the responses to speaking out were a bit like the response you would get to slagging off BTS on Twitter (possibly because Roy Knight directed his fan base to ‘let their feelings be known to that wanker scum’). Anyway, I think that group could probably be rinsed dry in a crowd funder. A good little earner for them I would think.

I hope the insolvency letter ends with ‘faaaaaacts’ TBH.

@JNLister that’s an incredible set of results you have there. Is that sourced from online world of wrestling or do you have your own records?

WM28 was the last one to me that really felt like a mega event. They spent a year building Rock vs. Cena and in Miami it felt like a massive deal. Billboards everywhere for it. I would love them to do the same for Rock vs. Reigns at WM38. 

I was really impressed with Samoa Joe when he had his run on commentary. In terms of play-by-play I like Mauro Ranallo and I used to like Joey Styles.

I seem to remember at a signing event in a nightclub in Coventry before the first TWC Showdown, CM Punk claimed that Heidenreich was meant to be repackaged as a defrosted Nazi, having been preserved via Cryogenics. 

That would have been all kinds of fun.