d-d-d-dAz

Just catching up on Raw properly, and I think Sheamus might be on my list of favourite wrestlers - were I ever to sit and make a list.

So glad to have him back.

Raw desperately needs a draft, especially with Cody seemingly moving to Smackdown. Raw has a load of talent I love watching, but misses a bit of stardust with Cody and Rollins gone.

I wonder if they shift LA Knight over and try and heat him up.

Booked Monday off work.

Absolutely guaranteed that Danielson/Ospreay and Pac/Okada are shit now.

Just now, Supremo said:

This shot in particular is absolutely magical. Up there with The Rock walking out of the darkness. Whoever is directing their shows these days is infinitely better than the previous shit show. 

Super fitting the way the camera zooms out from Sami to reveal the packed house. Metaphor for the last three years. I still attribute this new boom period to Sami’s performance in the Bloodline. Turned the whole company around. Great to see him getting his flowers.

I'm sure it was just a throwaway comment, just something Jey Uso says, but I thought 'Go get it Uso' before Sami's entrance was weirdly moving.

He wasn't the needy little gimp seeking validation but getting mocked anymore. He wasn't even Jey's mate he picked up after leaving for Raw. He was finally, after years of trying, an equal. An Uso. One of the guys.

It just felt like a lovely little touch.

Go get it Uso, indeed.

1 minute ago, air_raid said:

Re : belt names. I've never seen one before, no-one has, but I'm guessing it's a White Hole.

The problem with that is, with two shows and two rosters where two blokes are going to be "the champion" its massively counter-productive to present one as overtly more important the other. In terms of getting people to watch the shows or buy tickets to events, you can't have anyone feeling short-changed if they have the "lesser" champion, even though that's exactly what they fell into with Roman's rarely contested Neverending Story of a run with the Undefeated, Undisputed, WWE Heavyweight Champion of Life, The Universe And Everything, gobbling up all challengers into the Nothing, and Seth's Silver Medal - defended most months but nobody really wanted to win it anyway.

The nearest they got to parity was in the first brand split - SmackDown, the junior and fairly obviously less important TV show, still had the WWE title, the oldest title in company history, still regarded as THE title. While Raw, though in possession of the brand new/revived title with the Big Gold Belt as its symbol, could still argue the toss that it had an argument to have THE top guy, because they were champion on the flagship brand and expected to be drawing the ratings on THE show. But they fucked that by swapping Cena and Batista over and taking the respective titles with them, even then.

I was momentarily cheered by Cody saying he wanted to work both shows as Champion, which felt like a step in the right direction, but they seem to have shut him down on that.

34 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I'm sorry but someone being Champion of the universe while also having someone who's "only" Champion of the world is just so insane and stupid I can't get my head around it at all.

Whilst I don't disagree with this necessarily, it's a language issue more than anything.

The 'Universe' thing is something they themselves have set up, it's the construct they hold above all else; the 'WWE Universe'.

I don't really care what they call it, but their should 100% be a clear dividing line between the major title and everything else. That's the main point. Having two equally weighted titles is stupid.

2 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

And as someone pointed out on Twitter earlier, the people who think that AEW having a wrestler from another country wrestle on television is impossibly complicated and alienating, and couldn't possibly stop and listen to the commentators explain who they are, or hop on Google and find out for themselves, are content to freeze-frame an episode of RAW to decode messages and follow QR codes to get one line of meaningless text.

Can you Tweet-reply to this person that the endless whataboutery is utterly fucking tedious, and not every discussion about wrestling needs to descend into factional 'us vs them' shite.

IF Matt Hardy does turn up, that should be wrestling's version of the game of football on the battlefield, where we all down our weapons and agree that Matt Hardy is completely shit and something we're all collectively guilty in enabling.

12 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I hate both, to be honest. I never liked "RAW Champion" and "Smackdown Champion"; so what, you're only the champion of two hours on Friday night, while someone else gets to be the champion of the World? It's branding over prestige, and has always sounded naff to me.

The other problem is with having a "WWE Champion" (or Universal Champion) and a "World Champion". The Must See Matches podcast recently highlighted the commentary on Cena vs. Punk at Money In The Bank 2011 saying, "CM Punk is an X time World Champion, but has never held the WWE Title", and surely when you start saying stuff like that you realise that your championship situation is daft. 

On the latter point, I actually think that the way they make sense of it is to lean into it more than they have done previously.

Make the Universal Championship exactly that. The top belt. The Champion of everything. The Champion of the Universe. Then the World Title is a slight rung below it. and then the US/IC title below that.

But yeah, two world titles of 'equal' value is a no from me.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5y7jgcsblp/?igsh=ZDBrcmszajFuOXpz

Apologies for the double post, but not sure about this new belt they've made for Undisputed title winners. Horrendous.

Duran looks like a plum, too.

That Nick Ball fight is the decider, for me.

I've got Zhang and Hamzah as wins for Frank, and Hrgovic and Richards as wins for Queensberry.

That said, if anyone's going to get the sweep I'd say Matchroom would be favourites.

3 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

The Matchroom vs. Queensbury press conference is on today at half 5, all five fights will be announced.

Really fun series of fights.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C5yv8yGtixj/?igsh=MTQ4bzY0bGRyczM1ZA==

Ball v Ford is a wild fight.

15 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

They're gonna use this to turn Liv Morgan heel, aren't they. Great.

They should use it to turn her unemployed.

6 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Apparently so, I'd also missed that news until someone pointed it out. I've no idea if he's any good, though. 

The one area in which Solo is lacking for me, is his mic skills. I'm not sold on him as a long term top level wrestler for that reason. I guess you can work around it; perhaps a fearful Paul Heyman could act as his manager even after Reigns returns. 

I fucking LOVE the idea of a Game of Thrones style run for Paul, where he is the terrified aide of a King he can't abide but equally can't escape.

Fucking hell.

Incredible idea.

Iran don't really have the military or political capability to bring the world kicking and screaming into World War 3, for those scared by such things.

I'm a very skittish reader of international relations, but even I struggle to get there with Iran. It could easily descend into a regional cluster fuck, but neither Russia or China are desperate to jump in and Russia are actually using the crisis to try and look like the international grown ups.

In the game of 'are we fucked?' Top Trump's, the winning card is still very much 'Russia in Eastern Europe'.

Typically I'd be wary of any match booked because the promoter has already decided is going to be match of the year. They're usually matches that flatter to deceive, or as its colloquially called; 'The AJ Styles Paradox'

That said, it's Bryan Danielson and I'm not sure he's capable of disappointing me.

The Iranian's just wanted to show strength, and then twist it to sell their people a massive victory. In reality they couldn't have given Israel more notice, allowing them to get their defences together and avoid massive casualties.

Iran really don't want this to escalate, so providing Israel aren't ham fisted in their response this is likely just an irresponsible flash point, rather than a precursor towards a major war.

So, we just have to rely on Israeli calm headedness and instinct for proportional responses. That's good, then.

@garynysmon I don't watch TNA, but based on your video above I went down a rabbit hole and now I think I believe in Joe Hendry. Who is this man? Is he any good?

1 minute ago, air_raid said:

whoever had those stupid birds

Riddle.

Birds and flip flops.

Horrendous. I'd rather have no entrances than watch that again.

The most interesting thing about Solo is how he can seemingly turn aura on or off.

Sometimes he can be either completely anonymous or wallpaper or window dressing. Other times he can completely chew scenery and dominate attention.

If its an ability he has, he's got a bright future. If it's accidental, he's going to have to work really hard to maintain his level throughout his career.

When he switches it on though, there's really something there.

1 minute ago, air_raid said:

The casting out of Jimmy also surely points towards an eventual Usos reconciliation and long game, Roman & Usos vs Bloodline black n white.

Jacob Fatu is nicknamed the Samoan Werewolf, I think. If he does come in on the side of Solo and Tama, they'd be mad not to be the Samoan Wolfpac.

1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

That Kevin Owen’s backstage bit was phenomenal, even knocking off CM Punks shirt. This was not 

If you don’t know the reference 

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Cody has a tendency to drop in references that whistle past people's head.

Again, I preface this by saying that I loved his return and am delighted he finished his story, but he is a bizarre alien of a man, who's nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. I think the root of so much of his act is the alien impulse to imitate the humans he admires, and copy the sort of thing he thinks big stars do; wear the suit (but get it slightly wrong by being OTT), get tattoos (but get it slightly wrong by being OTT) and talk with intelligence (but get it slightly wrong by being OTT). I think the insider references fit in the same bracket, as it's a well worn trope in wrestling, but he goes a bit too deep, a bit too niche and no one really gets it.

I still haven't unclenched from his oblique Bullet Club reference the other week that no one got. Something to do with cufflinks.

Still... WOAAAA-OOAAAAHHHH!!

Yeah, I'm not hugely arsed by Tama Tonga or Jacob Fatu or whatever other last minute ingredients they chuck in the stew to bulk it out.

I'd have been perfectly happy if the word 'Bloodline' had been retired until Roman and Rock were ready to come back.

Alas.

Maybe Manu can make a comeback?

AJ Styles vs Cody should be a fun nothing title match. As much as I love him, Cody's promos can be unlistenably annoying if you're not in the mood. A 'wartime overture' was it? You absolute sausage. Never change.

I think there is something in the idea that Vince and his approach to business and search for a monopoly, combined with the emergence of Hulk Hogan (with his incredible connection with audiences) being a unique, once in a generation mix that allowed wrestling to grow into what we know now.

I think without that, wrestling either develops into something completely different to what we see now or has to wait much longer to catch on.

I don't think there's a chance it doesn't exist though.

This forum is full of people batting eyelids. We do nothing but. That, and talking about chippy tea's.

57 minutes ago, sukhy said:

For the people in here who were loving them some Triple H and taking a shit on Ospreay, maybe wait until you get a bit more information first before you start.

From the Observer - Will's partner wanted to stay in the UK with her family because she lost her first husband due to suicide, and this was something both WWE and AEW were aware of. Hence why Will felt it was a real dick move and he needed to address it.

Not sure I've seen a single person loving Triple H in here.

I don't think everything is so reductive as to come down to 'which side are you on?'

Ospreay's joke was dated and shit, and should never have made the air. Triple H probably shouldn't be talking about people who don't work for him in the media, as its fuck all to do with him why someone chooses not to work for that company.

If wrestling has taught us anything, it should be that it's absolutely possible for everyone involved to be wrong at the same time.

🎶 Look in my eyes, what do you see? ...A prick cursed with mediocrity 🎶