FUM

In case anyone hasn’t seen it, Alvarez has said there is zero sympathy for Sasha Banks backstage on this. From reading what he said it would appear the talent have had enough of her tantrums. All heat seems on her rather than Naomi.

Obviously we don’t really have all sides of the story but if this is another case of Sasha feeling she’s not getting treated well then that woman really does have some ego. She had a WrestleMania main event last year for crying out loud, even Austin and Trips had to take their turn in the tag division.

If anyone watches SmackDown then the current Lacey Evans stuff is enough to show why every character doesn’t need “explained”. She’s out there just giving off her life story to try and get people to love her and say “I’m a face now by the way”.

Danhausen is just meant to be a laugh. I never seen a thing before AEW, haven’t seen a thing outside AEW but he’s just a laugh. I don’t need his entire character explained to enjoy him.

7 minutes ago, kieranjennings said:

 

Hook has a segment on a weights bench, only for the interviewer to walk away and the two guys who stopped the interview also walking away pretty quick smart. All ending then with Danhausen being there which made no sense to me at all nor did it get any reaction from Hook or the announcers as to what it was about. 

 

Been an ongoing storyline for weeks on Rampage. The story is that Hook is unable to be “cursed” and Danhausen keeps trying. The no reaction from him is purposeful. 
 

The interviewer has tried to interview Hook to no response from him to explain that part.

Granted I’ve maybe not been paying attention before but Cody’s lisp seemed so much more obvious on WWE TV. I really don’t know if it’s because he was choking up or what but I’ve not seen it like that since he was last in WWE basically.

I know he gets a lot of shit on here but Seth Rollins is fantastic from theme music to suits to acting like The Riddler. He is brilliant at being a horrible human being.

9 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Purely going off your description of it, my guess is that they've started cutting away at the point of possible screw-ups - like someone not getting their shoulder up at the right time. So, rather than cutting the match short and messing up their booking on their biggest show, they have some wriggle room in terms of what makes TV.

It was more cutting to the crowd at the 1 count then quickly back for the kick out. Just dire production work that made you think they didn’t have a clue what was going on.

One negative I did forget to mention in my post - camera cuts to the crowd during pinfalls. What the fuck is that about? 
 

These have got to be some of the highest skilled producers in the world as far as wrestling goes - surely they cannot think that is a good idea.

I get people like different things but I’m quite surprised at the negativity on here towards the show, night two especially.

I’ve been rapidly losing interest in WWE to the point I wasn’t even sure I’d watch WrestleMania but I gave it a shot and thought it was an excellent two nights. One of the best Manias in years to be honest.

I get no show has the fun of when we were younger but they done enough to keep me entertained and that’s all I really wanted from it.

Enough excitement to feel like a WrestleMania which Mania hasn’t done for years. Night 1 was better but I think Night 2 had enough to keep me going. 

5 hours ago, Ironic Indie Lad said:

In my opinion he was a relentlessly over pushed guy and I cant imagine anyone except the most loyal diehard WWE weirdo genuinely considering him to be one of the best all time.

The person a lot regard as the greatest of all time in Stone Cold Steve Austin regards him as one of the best of all time so I’m not sure this is accurate at all.

Triple H was always my favourite wrestler. He’ll always rub people up the wrong way because of who he married and I do wonder how much more credit people would actually give him had that not happened. To me, that was the biggest risk he ever took in his career and he was lucky to keep his position as opposed to being buried for it.

His feud with Cena was always a stand out for me. It was the pinnacle of Cena not being accepted and Triple H zones into that. For me, the victory over Trips at Mania is what finally cemented Cena to the top.

I am biased as I love the guy but nobody has made more careers than Triple H for me. Foley, Cena, Batista, Bryan and even to some extent The Rock aren’t what they became without him. He is probably the greatest heel foil in the history of the business in my opinion.

They’ve released Joe again.

18 minutes ago, Nick James said:

Has it actually be confirmed other than the Fightful article that WWE have stopped testing? I haven't seen it anywhere else and you would imagine this would be a big story to run, sloppy shop, if you will. 

Would certainly have thought Tony Khan and / or the AEW lot would have made comment about AEW testing etc.

I would say Fightful is probably the most reliable wrestling news source in 2021/2 tbh.

I don’t see why AEW would comment on a WWE happening.

22 minutes ago, MVP RULZ said:

So have they scrapped testing and Roman went out of his way to test himself or has this thread been a waste of time?

Which also brings up the point as well that even if WWE have done away with testing, the talent can just test themselves anyway if they wish 

 

 

If they wish being the key words. If they don’t wish then a man currently in remission from leukaemia has to take more risks than he should have to in his job.

That man has now tested positive which could be a severe risk to his health and,  while we’ll never know if it could have been stopped through WWE continuing testing, there is a chance it could have been picked up on someone before it spread to him.

Roman Reigns has tested positive for COVID.

Felt this was worth a thread of it’s own.

Fightful Select has learned that WWE informed their talent that COVID testing is no longer required.

Think they had a bit of an outbreak this week that meant they had to put an NXT title match on their MSG show and fly Edge in as they had neither Big E or Roman there.

Roman is surely vulnerable and would be silly not to consider his options here.

On 11/25/2021 at 1:06 PM, DCW said:

I dunno, I thought the Punk/MJF promo went on a good bit too long. MJF basically repeating himself and Punk slagging him off by comparing him to lad from another company that he's still jealous of. Apart from his return night, Punk's done nothing for me. Stale as feck. There was a hellish hint of something initially with Kingston, but it's not re-emerged. 

Polar opposite of Bryan who just gets better and was great again last night. Just the little touches, like doing the flex pose before locking in the la belle lock on Cabana, are so good. 

I feel like I've seen people say both angles of this - "Punks not doing much for me but Bryan has been great!", and, "Bryans not doing much for me but Punk has been great!"

It's probably the thing I see about AEW that sums it up most because it shows there is something for everyone. If you don't like one part of the show or someones act, there is always another part that keeps you interested. They have almost every base covered when it comes to giving a viewer something to care about. If you don't care about Punk, you are probably enjoying Bryan. If you don't care about Bryan, you are probably enjoying Punk. If you care about neither, here's Kingston being a nutter for you. Just like the old school heel? The Revival and MJF have it covered. Enjoy the fast paced high flying style? Here's Dante or the Lucha Brothers. Stuck in the attitude era and like nostalgia? Here's Sting and Billy Gunn. Every single angle of wrestling is covered.

That is ridiculous. The whole company just has a stink coming off it just now in everything it does.

Matt Hardy is just someone I have no interest in seeing in a wrestling company in 2021, it’s not just the feud with OC.

He hasn’t been interesting since the Broken character in TNA. He’s had one moment in AEW that is worth watching and that was going through his characters in the pool which was all of a minute.

I wish he would just fuck off.

27 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

I was thinking to myself earlier just how skewed wrestler's contracts really are.

If most of us were let go by our workplaces for anything other than gross misconduct, we'd be liable for a redundancy payout under most circumstances.

Yet other than the 30 or 90 day non-compete, wrestlers could have four lears left on their 'contract' only to be let go at the whim of the promoter.

On the flipside, the promoters also seem to be able to tie in a "independent contractor" to a period long beyond their expiry date if they happened to sustain a long term injury during that time.

Its fucking madness isn't it?

They're all technically self-employed though and if you were self-employed here then an outsourcer can just terminate without notice unless there's a clause in the contract to stop them doing so. The non-compete is actually a really great thing to put in as it means they still pick up their WWE money while they seek alternative employment.

Only just watched today and I’ve never seen a tag team as uncoordinated as Kalisto and Aero Star. They were awful together in terms of their tagging etc.

I hate to focus on that but it was bugging the life out of me.

Outside of that, a decent show. Hangman is just tremendous. Miro v Bryan outside WWE constraints sounds incredible.

Nia Jax, Keith Lee and Mia Yim released.

I really hope the We Want Windham sign and the fan just along from that dressed as Bray Wyatt is fan led and not the hints AEW likes to drop into their shows.

BIG E looks quite small lately since they’ve been putting him in with the likes of Roman and Drew.

I hope they go full Kurt Angle gold medal gimmick with Gable Steveson but with this companies history we’ll be looking at a match soon with Chad Gable where the loser has to go by Shorty G.

I’d honestly give the guy a mega push ASAP. Can you imagine the reaction if Roman has run out of opponents and is out giving it big licks with an open challenge then this guy comes down and beats him? Overnight superstar.

I believe the reason they didn’t go for the Steiner name was the difficulty in the trademark - not sure if Scott or Rick own it. They also didn’t go with Rechsteiner as it’s very difficult to meaningfully trademark someone’s real name.

MJF would be pretty poor in WWE. His whole act is cheap heat through swearing and being an absolute prick. He’d be limited on that in WWE and just be another ordinary heel.