Daaaaaad!

4 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

They can’t just be building to Bryan/Reigns at Fastlane and then hope to savage something out of an Edge/Reigns singles match in the 3 weeks leading to Wrestlemania. 

It’s WWE. They did exactly the same thing as this only six years ago.
 

With two of the same people.

46 minutes ago, The King Of Swing said:

Amazing that Ryan is such an egotistical cunt that he thought he could sneak himself onto the poster and nobody would notice or call him out.

Where’s Wanky?

Think you've answered your own question there chief.

It's incredible how stupid they managed to make Lashley look in a show where he won the WWE Title for the first time in his career. When Miz ran off, he just pottered around the ring with an angry derp face. I only watched the YouTube clips so I don't know how it came across on TV, but it sure as hell looked stupid in short form.

5 hours ago, TomJones233 said:

Bryan is probably slowly retiring. But he'd be a good get if they want a trainer for whatever NXT type thing they may want to set up

Don’t imagine he’s up for that. He said in his book that he was a lousy trainer at the ROH school.

A further string to add to Big Dave's bow that I meant to mention is that he went and did MMA - not because it would make him money, but because he thought it looked like something he wanted to do. He won his only fight, then retired from MMA straight away because he didn't think he was good enough (instead of, say, joining UFC and getting beaten up by a journalist).

Another case of the big man knowing his value and doing what he wants to do on his own terms.

29 minutes ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

Remember the 1PW debacle?

This question could cover a lot of different things.

42 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

He's not going to turn

Form suggests otherwise.

21 minutes ago, CXwrestling said:

Hi super bacon 

Sausage on tap 

Adam . 

Was this supposed to be a private message...? 

54 minutes ago, TomJones233 said:

Reigns is losing steam

Thanks for posting this. I wasn't sure whether you were serious or not, but now I know.

I was watching the Network yesterday, browsing around for something to distract me from making the dinner, and I chose to put on the 'Day Of: Royal Rumble 2014' documentary, which followed the returning Batista as he prepares for his return to the ring at the now infamous show where Daniel Bryan did not join the match. As I see Big Dave, by then confirmed to be joining the Marvel universe and embarking on an ever more successful Hollywood career, show severe anxiety about his gear, his ability to still 'go' and how the crowd will react to him, it just continued to affirm my appreciation for 'The Animal'.

During the week, it took me by surprise to discover through this video that OOC of OSW Review really hates Batista, blaming him for not getting the same level of heat that Cena got post-WM21 and saying he 'can't wrestle and can't talk'. Now, I love OSW to the point that they are the only thing I've ever paid to a Patreon for; but man, he couldn't be more wrong.

Starting in 2007, he had a great feud with Undertaker that was far better than anyone could've expected. At the time, people were falling over themselves to laud Cena vs. HBK as a great match, but given the choice I'll take Big Dave vs. Undertaker from the same show any time. Fifteen minutes of, as Big E might put it, big meaty men slapping meat. There was a massive long-term storyline between Shawn and Chris Jericho following WM24, but it's often forgotten how good Batista's involvement within that time period was; with particular props to him yelling 'HEY SHAWN, I DON'T LOVE YOU AND I'M NOT SORRY!' while battering him in a Stretcher Match at One Night Stand.

The pièce de résistance, naturally, is his fantastic heel run from 2009 to 2010. Battering Rey Mysterio, back when that still mattered. The glasses. The flat cap. The leather waistcoat. Beating John Cena after an Elimination Chamber, which led to their feud through WrestleMania and culminated in the excellent heels-on-wheels quitting promo he cut on Raw. Everything about it is fantastic.

Despite the general perception, I still really enjoy his two returns because of just how engaging he is. Sure, 2014 didn't go the way it was planned as mentioned above (seems pertinent after last night) but his charisma carried him through to the inevitable heel turn, allowing him to display his best (plus, Bluetista). Even his 2017 one is good, if only for 'GIVE ME WHAT I WANT!' and the nose ring. Plus, he'd said for many years that all he wanted to do was have one more match with Triple H at WrestleMania, and sure enough, that's just what he did. Yet whenever you see him interviewed about wrestling, he cites how his greatest enjoyment was putting people over and paying back favours. His talking heads on various documentaries show his deep appreciation for the business, and he always come across well.

Anyway; after all of this, with a month or two until he's inducted into the HOF - thoughts on 'The Animal'?

It’s pretty bad that the best I can make of this absolutely fucking terrible situation is to think that somehow they transition into Daniel Bryan vs. Miz - AGAIN - for the WWE championship. Possibly with a ‘Career vs. Title’ stip. 
 

It would not be a good situation, but it’d at least be better than whatever is looking likely after that show.

38 minutes ago, Kfogg1991 said:

instead of putting out any full chapter shows which everyone thought they would be doing

Did everyone think this? There’s loads of stuff on Progress shows I don’t imagine they want anywhere near the Network.

@PowerButchi @Guy Bifkin 

I may be completely misreading this, but it seems like Spencer here is being a real dick. I only know vague selections of what’s going on so wasn’t sure how to interpret further. Am I right or am I reading it wrongly? Because so far it reads to me like he’s brought his little YouTube project into the nonleague system and is now bitching at the other clubs as if he’s king shit. I assume the leadership he is referring to is the National League, but it still seems off.

My dad just mentions every time how he wishes Mr Perfect was still in it as 'he was definitely the best one'.

I can think of one good Gauntlet match ever, and it was the Kofi one before Mania two years ago.

This one was not that.

This is incredibly tragic. Can you give any further context into what happened to him at the time? I haven’t heard of this specific story.

14 hours ago, andrew "the ref" coyne said:

Decent segment IMO.

I really enjoyed that at the time too - if only because it seemed obvious that they were heading for Batista/Undertaker and Cena/Michaels, so when 'taker showed up the night after the Rumble to pose and stare at Cena, it at least threw a bit of a curveball in there and added some intrigue to the angles' build up.

Might be a worthless theory, but I was watching the Undertaker documentary earlier today and one of the talking heads was Edge, who (it seems) may have been interviewed pre-pandemic. He was talking about last year's WrestleMania and said 'if there's one person you'd want to have your last match against, it's AJ Styles'.

Could mean nothing, but if Edge has a list of people he wants to work against, AJ is definitely on it.

5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

It all should have been an opportunity to break away from WWE's biggest problem - that their production has been unchanged for the better part of 20 years, and the way they structure TV has been the same for even longer. 

I think that within that probably lies a secret fear; they don't know how. Well, perhaps theoretically they do. But they've homogenised everything and beaten so much personality out of everything and everyone that there's nothing left now except the autopilot, sanitised version of Raw from the start of the millennium.

There's also another part to it that perhaps is what's helping to tie them down - if I remember correctly, under the terms of their big new TV deals, they are required to provide a certain amount of live programming; i.e. it literally has to be 'live' even if it's from Vince's walk-in cupboard in Stamford. I think they're so terrified of losing that money which is sustaining them that they basically hit whatever is the safest option available to sustain it.

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

A few wrestling types - like "Angry Wrestling Vet" on Facebook - were raving after last year's Wrestlemania that cinematic matches could be the future of the business, and how something like the Graveyard Match would be a great hook for casual fans. Two people I know who don't really watch wrestling, but will check out bits of Wrestlemania, both told me they didn't see the point of the Graveyard Match because it just felt like watching a bad action movie fight sequence - and there's plenty of bad action movies they could watch if that's what they wanted.

I think hindsight will treat the Boneyard Match, and its ilk, very differently to the immediate reaction afterward. In context, it came across really well: Undertaker's last few matches had ranged from 'better than I feared' to 'utter Saudi stinker where both men could've died'; every other match that night took place in a vacuous, joyless void; and 'Taker has a propensity for the theatrical anyway. Coupled with some hammy visuals from AJ, it did well because it was at least something different in an otherwise vapid three hours of content.

As mentioned at the time, though, wrestling does what it usually does and took the wrong message. Instead of looking at it as lightning in a bottle, perfect for its time and date but not much more, WWE (and a lot of fans, to be fair) naturally leaned into it, assuming it would just work if you threw it into any circumstances. Naturally, it didn't and wouldn't.

1 hour ago, Mr Kennedy said:

I saw Hulk Hogan was trending on Twitter earlier. Did he really have a segment on the show directly after a Black History Month video?

He sure did. In fact, he had a longer segment that was cut down, so they catered to their fans' desires by uploading it to YouTube.

No idea what Hulk brings to a show in 2021. I guess in terms of 'throwing shit at the walls' ,you may as well throw the biggest, most successful shit of them all.

6 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

He is not as important because there isn't a good typo for his name. 

I can think of one. 

5 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

It's a work. He's just laying low in OVW till the heat dies down.

I heard they're replacing him with Stevie Richards in the games.

If you think Vince is putting the ol' Blue Dot Christian in another title match you're daft.