FUM

Individual tickets on sale now. Not that I’ll be buying them, cheapest I could see 2 seats together was £470 each.

They hyped Ricochet as inaugural Speed champion and showed the pic of him with his belt then rendered it so meaningless as he’s not arsed about carrying it about with him. Why should I care if he doesn’t?

I much prefer the current system of not everyone has to wrestle or appear every show. It makes the matches and appearances that little bit more special and stops characters getting oversaturated. Gunther v Sheamus, while granted is a good idea at any time, only sounds better in France now with hindsight of the crowd.

I think The Rock lingering is really going to affect Cody’s reign. What reason is there to have an interest in him or his feuds the next few months knowing that it’s all just filler until The Rock or Roman returns? I mean it’s fair enough at Backlash because this event is always the same for knowing the outcome and you can’t do much to change that but where does he go after AJ as far as a credible threat goes as you say? I reckon it will have to be an Orton turn which is a real shame as I’m loving this version of him. Long term storytelling is great and something we should definitely have for the big names but sometimes things just need to pop off unexpectedly too and you need to find another way to get there. Wouldn’t be against Cody losing the title to someone around SummerSlam and chasing until the Rumble to keep things interesting. I’m not really in for a year long Cody reign - he had his moment but ultimately suits better as a chaser.

A hot crowd can make a show where nothing is really happening so much better. They were excellent. And I want to know that phenomenal song asap.

Apologies for the double post but there’s been a small twist here. Johnny has decided he wasn’t actually a victim and is on Vince’s side again.

My main takeaway was that Logan Paul had a titantron video and I hope that’s the start of their comeback.

Believe most of them are about merchandise rights etc. that save WWE money rather than about paying a wrestler regularly for being a legend. They have dead people on legends contracts through their family so it’s definitely something that’s a money saver for them rather than “job for the boys” stuff.

According to Sportico, Nick Khan has filed to sell all of his TKO shares. I wonder if he’s jumping before he’s pushed here. Not sure why he would get rid of his interests in the company.

We’ll boo any politician here, we even hate the ones we vote for.

Due to the Euros game, I wouldn’t have went to the SmackDown show so far too obscenely prices for me to justify the combo ticket cost just for the big event. In fact to be honest, even with no Euros game I’d probably have refused to pay the prices on offer. Cost me less for a flight, hotel and ticket in Cardiff than the prices that were coming up for me for the back row when I live 20 minutes away from this one.

Not sure how it applies to sub-contractors but the FTC today voted to ban non-compete clauses and make existing ones null and void except for senior executives which may be of interest when discussing releases. I know a lot of wrestlers have actually said they like the non-compete as they can regroup a bit while getting paid.

Never mind, turns out this was old news.

In fairness, I said it before Mania and he got some reaction in Philly too so fair play to him.

Echo the thoughts of that Sami entrance, looks like I need to hold my hands up and admit I was wrong about him losing his spark a bit with the crowd. Jey pushing the fan just before it was hilarious too. As far as brand naming titles, it’s been shown how terrible that is when it comes to draft time and people are swapping belts. World and WWE is fine with me. They aren’t quite presenting world on the same level anyway or trying to fool us into thinking it is as they are keeping “Undisputed” before WWE and have been very clear on Cody leading this new era.

Do we include house shows in everyone’s win/loss record now? Granted he’s not won much on TV since Cena but the way people exaggerate the impact by including house shows is a bit silly. He’s had 5 TV matches this year of which 1 has ended in a no contest, 2 have ended in DQ’s and 1 was a handicap match where his team were outnumbered. On TV, his only loss he’s actually ate a pin in 2024 was to Randy Orton.

It was up 29% to be fair. The big test is next week as to how many of those fans decide to stick around or were just there for the Punk scrap. The main aim was surely to get fans to tune in, see what else is on offer and stick around.

Double post wanker.

This is the thing with the Punk stuff though - was it unprovoked? There’s no audio. Just for the record, I’m absolutely not defending the actions. I just think the exaggerations and hyperbole used over a lesser scuffle than I’ve had with genuine mates is mental. It’s a wider item on Punk on this forum though, anything he does is met with a ridiculous amount of hyperbole. Again, not defending this particular action - he was the one in the wrong by the looks of it but it’s handbags really.

Probably Jericho and Lesnar that was reported but many go unreported. I was more talking about historically though, as I say, using autobiographies as a reference point. And historically, a lot of those mentioned in books have not been reported at the time. WWE has a more united locker room no doubt but that doesn’t mean the odd scuffle doesn’t happen. Sin Cara, as an example, said after he left he had been in a few backstage scraps during his time. I’m not saying it’s acceptable but “assaulted a co-worker” doesn’t really have the same strength in wrestling as it does in the office.

You’d never like anyone in the industry if you rated your respect for them on backstage assaults either. Every wrestlers book you read is littered with backstage fights.

Granted it may have been different purely due to the pandemic times but states pay WWE about $20m to bring WrestleMania to them so they aren’t really paying for stadium hire.

Nick Khan said they aren’t touchy over moving the day of TV shows and were happy to negotiate different days when discussing the rights. Of course now the deal they struck kept it on Fridays but they could have easily moved it to Thursdays as part of the new deal if they fancied moving Mania. SmackDown has had 3 different days since it began.

Yeah, TV wise they very much see Haku as part of the family. He teamed with Rikishi for a spell too so it’s not like it’s something that has been randomly whipped up. It’s not like The Bloodline is totally protected from outsiders joining anyway - Heyman and Zayn aren’t exactly bigging up their Samoan heritage. And it’s not like they totally stick to reality, The Usos have said before they don’t refer to Roman as their cousin, they call him Uncle. Rock and Roman aren’t even blood related either.

Didn’t Vince return in person and take over the show last year?