unfitfinlay

9 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

If he just worked a match that was of a hardcore style and the other guy was taking the bumps, fine. It could work.

But the problem is it's Foley. He made his name taking incredibly dangerous bumps. He should be dead by now. So he's going to explore every way he can do that without dying here. He's a fucking idiot and only a total ghoul would watch this.

Spot on. On his podcast, he talked about how he really really wanted to do a Hell In a Cell match with Undertaker, for an anniversary or something. The finish he came up with was him getting on Undertaker’s back on the top of the Cell and then ‘Taker would drop back, sending them both through the roof and then right through the ring. 

Then he said something along the lines of “I just couldn’t think of a way to do it safely and I couldn’t do that to Mark. He’s got kids”. As if he doesn’t have four of them himself.

Imagine being in the kind of pain Foley must be on a daily basis and still fantasising about stupid shit like that. 

As daft as it sounds my ideal scenario would be Britt Baker. She watched Cole come back from a devastating injury (caused by Switchblade, who was targeted first) and come very close to achieving his dream, only to have it snatched away by MJF. 

The main thing is that it’s a logical way to split up Adam Cole and MJF without undoing the excellent character work they’ve done. Cole turning reluctantly to protect his girlfriend from MJF is far better than if he was pretending all along. 

Davey Boy going to WCW after the screwjob was the first one to come to mind.

He actually bought out his WWF contract and went from being in a solid position just under the top guys, to part of a opening card tag team with Neidhart that no one cared about and then got fired after breaking his back on the Warrior's trap door. Granted, he was out of his face for much of it, so probably had a good time.

Also Stevie Richards pretending he was going to retire to get out of his ECW deal and jump to WCW, only to hate WCW so much that he quit after a few months. Heyman was supposedly planning to make him a focal point of ECW but, because of the way he left, he wouldn't let him come back for more than a handful of appearances. He was good too. It's a shame he never actually got the kind of push that Heyman had planned for him.

On 11/28/2023 at 2:34 PM, jazzygeofferz said:

I do wonder how much of it was her going even further off the rails after Candido passed away. Candido was probably the closest thing to a constant in her life, in spite of how she treated him. I wonder how she'll get on in prison. Will she even make it back out? She did bring this on herself, and it's a shame as when she went into the Hall Of Fame it looked like she had at the very least started to try and get things back on track.

I'm going entirely off of stuff Johnny Candido has said about their relationship but I think it's more that Chris protected her in ways that no one else would and hid how crazy she was. She used to try and stab him on a regular basis and he'd just let it go, whereas one of her most recent boyfriends went straight to the Police when she did it to him. 

Candido was also apparently one of the nicest guys on the planet so people would "forgive" her or look out for her, just because he was the one asking.  She lost that kind of thing when he died.

20 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Wasn't she repeatedly turned down for WWE-sponsored rehab, even during the "we'll pay for it all for the PR" era?

I think they paid a few times but then washed their hands of her. I seem to remember her complaining that Scott Hall had been through rehab more than her but still got it paid for.

It seems to have flown under the radar but Meltzer said that Cabana’s fall out with Punk - which caused all of this - happened after Cabana had pizza with Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens and Punk had expected him to cut ties with anyone WWE-related.

Punk really is a proper weirdo eh? I can’t imagine being THAT controlling.

17 minutes ago, Michael_3165 said:

Weren't in 122 were you? We had some gobshite that just wouldn't stop talking. On and on and on and nothing! My wife was getting a kicking from his foam finger (ooh er!), he spat beer all over our backs and crotch chopping at the back of my head. It wasn't helping he was coked off his nut (so he said re a toilet break!)

Nah. 522. I was right in the front row of the stand. At one point the dopey fucker fell over into my row and I shat myself thinking he was just going to go straight off the edge, which would have been a slightly less satisfying end to the show.

And, aye, I probably wouldn’t have minded the loudness so much if he was saying anything of value. It was mostly just calling wrestlers he disliked paedos and bastards, trying to start crap football chants and, at times, he was just making horrible screeching noises, when he clearly had nothing to say but still desperately craved everyone’s attention. 

I honestly thought folk were exaggerating about dickhead attention seeking fans who try and get themselves “over” but I had one right behind me.

Cunt just wouldn’t shut up. Fucking roaring his shite patter all night. It genuinely took away from the show. Its really hard to focus when you’ve got some dickhead screaming “Fook Tha Young Buuucks!” in your ear in a stupidly fake voice (sounded like the Bat Dad from South Park), especially when they weren’t even wrestling. Kept spilling beer on my row as well. The boy next to me has the patience of a saint, he got covered.

I was genuinely considering swearing off live wrestling - this is only the second live show I’ve been to (Stardom in April being the first) - but that Main Event managed to turn it around. Fucking incredible. I can’t believe I rolled my eyes when these two got programmed together. It’s made both feel like proper, legit superstars to me. Really glad we got the feel good ending as well. Genuinely saved my night.

I’ll be back down next year, hopefully with a few others since there’s far more time to plan. 

Anybody else at the Box Park for the Welcome Party? Queues are mental and really quite confusing.

1 hour ago, Louch said:

What’s this part about hangman? 

I meant Punk’s real life frustrations in AEW and with Hangman in particular, because he doesn’t “respect the veterans”. 

It’d be a pretty solid storyline but obviously Hangman and Punk aren’t going to work together any time soon, so I think they’re putting Starks in the spot instead, and giving Punk a kayfabe opponent to express his actual feelings against. 

Am I the only one who saw that finish as leading to a Punk heel turn rather than Starks then? Nobody else really treated Stark's cheating as a heelish thing and the bit with Liger felt like they are just slotting Starks into the role that Hangman obviously doesn't want.

Feels like they are building to Punk doing a Bret in 1997 turn, which wouldn't be a bad use of him at all really.

1 hour ago, Jonny Vegas said:

CM Punk's act is so stale and repetitive I genuinely find it hard to believe anyone wants to watch him anymore.

He is almost a total parody of himself where for someone who down to his own moniker is supposedly "punk" is nothing but a grumpy old moany bastard who throws out the threats of law suits or tries to cost the jobs of anyone who he doesn't like.

His line about people being softer than the wrestlers they like was baffling as in my opinion he has to be one of the most insecure and pathetic wrestlers I've ever witnessed.

I can’t argue with any of this. I’ve been a fan but, fucking hell, that was such an awkward hypocritical promo. Didn’t make me want to see Punk vs The Elite or Punk vs MJF. Just made me not want to see Punk at all. He can toss himself off at home.

1 hour ago, gmoney said:

It's difficult to be able to declare it without knowing the full facts, but TK doesn't half come across like a spineless incompetent if all of that's true. 

Yeah. It's hard not to think of that picture of him lovingly hugging a clearly uncomfortable Okada when I'm reading these reports.

I'm not saying he should go full-Vince but it does read like he needs to stop trying to be everybody's friend. You can't be a boss and have everybody like you. If you have to decide between Punk and Ace and the Elite then fucking do it. Imagine negotiating about a guy who bit someone? Going "Oh okay what if he works from home?" seems pathetic.

Anyway, I'm hoping the increased TV time means more of a spotlight on Jay White. I get that Khan likes to slowly build people but it seems very weird that White has gone from being portrayed as a major star the last time he was in AEW, to basically being part of a midcard tag team now that he's signed. Also Miro and Eddie Kingston.

4 hours ago, Carbomb said:

That's not how it happened, though.

The WWF(N) had managed to come to an agreement with the WWF that worked for some years - fairly sure this was mediated through the courts, so it was documented. What caused them to kick off was that Vince insisted on being Vince, and breaching the terms of that agreement pretty blatantly, so the WWFN would have been confident at the time that they had Vince bang to rights; hence why the wrestling promotion came out on the wrong end of things.

Yeah. That's the key thing. The McMahons might have had a decent case for fair usage but, because the initial legal action happened at the same time as the steroid trial, they chose not to fight for it. The Wildlife Fund case in the 2000s wasn't about who owned the trademark, because the McMahons had already agreed that they didn't. It was about whether they'd broken the agreement, which they clearly had.

If I remember right, the McMahons side's defense was basically that the earlier agreement "didn't count", which is incredibly fucking stupid for a company that's usually on the ball legally. They had absolutely no chance of winning.

Alex Jones is Bill Hicks for me.

I don't really believe it anymore, and I'd actually be a bit disappointed if it was true, but I do think it's plausible. They look very similar, Jones background is extremely sketchy and he just seemed to appear a few years after Hicks died, but with the same mates. Plus as influential as Hicks was, his on-stage persona severely hampered his ability to make money. He couldn't really do product endorsements while ranting about the evils of capitalism after all. He was supposedly working on a Jones-like character before he died and I could believe that grew into him faking his death and reinventing himself. As Jones he could still rant about what he liked, without the grind of touring and while selling out as much as possible. As much as a cunt as Jones is, the man knows how to milk his audience.

Ultimately though, I think it only made sense for me when Jones was a fringe figure that nobody really cared about. Considering all the attention, and lawsuits, that he's had recently, I don't think he'd be able to keep it a secret. I no longer think he's even close to being smart enough either.

I don’t buy the story about him being unhappy. The only source is EC3 saying that that’s what he heard. It just sounds like bollocks.

Plus Regal isn’t exactly shy. I feel like he’d have given some indication if he was truly miserable. Instead he always sounded like he was having the time of his life. I can’t imagine him moaning about people being immature in between segments where he’s talking about covering Excalibur in custard and licking it off.

For me, it seems far more likely that he’s been offered his WWE job back and decided to take it for many obvious reasons.

Whenever a dastardly heel gets confronted by a baby face and immediately begs off, starts apologising, etc. Even in a segment as horrible as Warrior’s WCW debut, I’ll still chuckle at Hogan going “I thought you were dead” and hurriedly taking his shirt off to try and get Warrior to join the NWO.

Also the Dark Order. Just daft fun. Most of their best stuff was on Being The Elite, though the angle where Silver proposed to Hangman on Dynamite was great.

I liked the show but I did find it weird how many matches were built around some variation on "They were friends but fell out" or "They are friends but might fall out". I was actually relieved when Britt went full on Jamie Hayter fan-girl, without even the slightest tease that she might turn.

It's probably nit-picking, like, because the work telling those stories was generally really good, but it did make me think about how creative AEW used to be not so long ago.

On the plus side, the only match I thought was bad was Britt vs Saraya and, really, that was to be expected since Saraya has been out of the ring for so long. I enjoyed everything else. It's made me look forward to seeing how things turn out with Fenix, Swerve vs Lee and, especially, MJF, Regal and the BCC. Done properly, I think Mox might actually benefit from that split more than anybody. He's at his best when he's pissed off and fighting against the odds. If Bryan and Claudio stick with Regal, which would make storyline sense, then we could see some absolute bangers. Especially if we get a Mox and Kingston reunion out of it.

14 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I'm quite clearly not "pushing for this to be a gang hit". Nick Hausman said he reached out to the Punk camp, and got a response. Why would he make that up? You've recently accused Ariel Helwani of being a client journalist for saying he didn't enjoy interviewing Tony Khan, and now you're speculating on the credibility of a source; presumably because you don't like the story. The suggestion that this was deliberately timed to coincide with the Elite video seems slightly conspiratorial. Unless my maths are wrong, the story was published before Dynamite aired. While they might be aware that Omega and The Bucks are likely to return, how could they possibly know a video was going to air that very night? 

Ultimately, what's to be gained by lying? Even in the article, it says that it was accidental. If you're going to be dishonest, why wouldn't you make up a story that implied that there was intent? 

Punk can still be the instigator. He can still be a toxic arsehole. The Elite can still be the victims here, but I think you're leaning a bit too far on the side of "AEW = good", "detractors = dishonest saboteurs" in this instance. 

The idea that Punk was reacting to seeing his dog being hurt makes his actions seem more reasonable, certainly more so than what has been reported from "his side" previously. I can totally see why they'd put that out there now that it's obvious the investigation has gone against him, he won't be back in AEW and might well be looking for a job soon. The difference between people believing "Punk went nuts because his dog got hurt" and "Punk went nuts because people said mean things about him on the Internet" could be pretty crucial if he wants to go back to WWE, in terms of money, push and the reaction he's likely to get.

Saying it was accidental makes sense too. It's far more believable than the Elite doing it on purpose. Personally I just don't believe that it would've taken this long to come out. I read  "The Bucks kicked in the door" and "Ace was just trying to protect his wife" the day after it happened. That stuff wasn't coming from the Elite's side so, if Larry getting hurt was the key thing that led to it all kicking off, I feel like it would've been reported sooner.

Well that was a scary end to Dynamite. AEW are saying that it was a concussion, which is obviously serious, but still amongst the best case scenarios.

Fair play to the Referee though. AEW's got a terrible history in situations like that but Turner couldn't have handled that any better. It was a fairly innocent looking bump, but he was there right away and didn't hesitate to stop the match and get the Doctor in. It was a million times better than the incidents with Hardy and Reynolds, where they were more worried about getting the spots in than the performers health. Hopefully that's how they'll do things from now on.

To be fair, all Meltzer said was that he doesn't know anything about Cole's status. He also said he could be cleared again tomorrow.

I wouldn't read too much into it at all.

On 10/12/2022 at 9:18 PM, garynysmon said:

I have no idea if Bully Ray is persona non grata or not in terms of wrestling groupthink these days, but personally I got a kick out of seeing him again.

Loved his solo heel run in TNA back in the day so more than happy see him get another, presumably, short-ish run.

Gutted to see Mia Yim on the outs though, ditto Taven and Mike Bennett who seemed to be doing well. Didn't give a shit about Vincent though.

I think Bully's a bellend but he's a great signing. He's as big a legend as Impact could realistically go for in 2022 and he's one of the rare ex-WWE guys that really re-invented himself in Impact and is a star because of what he did there. He's a good choice to put Josh over.

It's shite to see people leave but I am enjoying how Impact is set up now. It feels like an old territory where they've got a core of regulars that they are building around and just bring others in for short runs. It keeps everything feeling fresh. I think it's good for the talent too.

I'm really enjoying this so far.

My favourite thing about A Song of Ice and Fire is how layered the characters are. There's some utter cunts in it, but only a few (Ramsay and The Mountain really) feel inherently bad. It's the same here. The only one who ever seemed to WANT the Throne was Daemon. The rest of them are just desperate to protect their loved ones, or do what's right for the realm, etc. Aegon was quite happy wanking out the window and actually liked his nephews, until his Mum convinced him that his half-sister wanted to kill him. I can't even blame her either, because her Dad did the same thing to her.

The tragic thing in this episode was it looked like Alicent and Rhaenerya had started to make amends and then Viserys started muttering about the prophecy.

The only thing I hate is that they keep trying to force the importance of the dagger. In a world with many unrealistic things, it still manages to feel incredibly unrealistic and keeps reminding me of how much I hated the ending of Game of Thrones.

Khan needs to decide whether he's the boss or one of the boys. I can't think of any job I've had where I'd be able to threaten one of my colleagues on social media and it not be a major issue until I've actually smacked them. Someone should've been on the phone to them as soon as it kicked off on Twitter.

As much as I like Christopher Daniels, they could maybe do with getting a right bastard heading up talent relations. One thing Vince did well was to insulate himself from the tough decisions and let J.R and Johnny Ace take the blame. Jeff Jarrett still holds a grudge about the WWF slashing his pay when his wife had cancer, and rightly so, but he only really talks about J.R's part in it, not Vince.

2 hours ago, RedRooster said:

The backstage drama is masking the fact that the wrestlers are being let down by the booking. It's an absolute mess. 

Absolutely. I think the two are closely related as well.

I can't imagine that this would've happened if Andrade was being used at even half-decently, and thought he might be risking a big push, title run etc. As it is, he's been given fuck all to work with. He's got the same recruitment gimmick that loads of others have done, or are currently doing. Except he never actually manages to recruit anyone. If that's all they've got for him then they should just sack him and put Ari Daivari or Prince Nana in that spot.

Seth Rollins first run might be my least favourite ever.

He went from being “The brains behind The Shield” to an annoying, spoiled brat who couldn’t do anything on his own. He was so far from a star that HHH and Steph would regularly talk down to him - like he was a child - and he’d just stand there and sulk.

Worst thing is, his reign seemed to go on forever. 

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

And knowing full well that Colt wouldn’t be there, same with knowing that Hangman had already left, to defend themselves in any way, proper sneaky cunt behaviour 

And that comes just a few weeks after he called Hangman out on live TV, knowing that there was no possible way Hangman could respond.

Not to mention talking shit about the EVPs, and acting the hard man when the cameras were on, but then, apparently, refusing to open his door when they actually did try to talk to him.

It’s fucked up but, the more I read about this, the more concerned I am for Punk’s mental health. This level of “everybody is against me” paranoia just isn’t normal.

I mean, did anyone honestly give a shit about any of this until he kicked off on Sunday? I know I didn’t.