sek69

From reading various interviews it seems like she's trying to do as much as possible as fast as she can to make up for getting a late start in wrestling. Like how Ric started getting insecure when bookers tried to push him down the card when he (rightly) felt he had more to give, she seems to have some insecurities about coming in to the business.

I also love the pairing with MVP, I hope they go all in with it but I fear they won't because.....WWE gonna WWE.

I'm more of a fan of the "Black Lesnar" meme since they are pretty comparable in terms of background/ability and the coolest part of their matches is when they toss people around like ragdolls.

Cody's biggest roadblock was it took him a while to find his character, no one cared about Cody: Ex-WWE Guy Now On His Own, but once he got the American Nightmare gimmick to click all bets were off. I would imagine for someone brought up in the WWE system like he was, it was probably difficult to get a handle on coming up with an effective character since he was only taught to work with what the company gives him. Another reason I feel like current WWE is like 80s AWA is not only the similarities of the out of touch old men running both, but how the style is not one that allows for good matches unless you're a superworker, which is why pretty much all that is watchable from that era of the AWA normally involves some combination of Curt Hennig, Nick Bockwinkel, or the Rockers vs Rose/Summers feud.

He seems very much a guy with a 70s-80s wrestler mindset, which is not surprising considering who raised him. From his point of view, why *would* he want to try something new and different when what he does has worked for him so far. I also get the impression that ever since his shoulder popped out doing his pre RKO mat pound deal , he's been very reluctant to go outside his comfort zone to try anything else. That of course is smart from a self-preservation standpoint but probably something no one else on the roster could get away with.

Most super religious folks are more of the "Earth is no more than 5-6,000 years old" type than flat earthers, at least in my experience. I'm sure there's some overlap but IMO most flat earthers I've come across were frankly not very intelligent rather than religious. As much as I personally think Randy Orton is boring AF to watch and probably a garbage person IRL, he's pretty much the standard WWE wants all their guys to be. When JBL would say "if you build a sports-entertainer from the ground up, you'd get Randy Orton", he wasn't lying since that's what WWE did.

Let's be honest as well, if you give the Flat Earth movement even a little bit of credibility (as AJ has done in the past), you kind of deserve getting teased about it at the bare minimum.

Maybe, but if he couldn't handle the Raw roster busting his balls (allegedly), I would think the SD roster would be even less receptive of his beliefs since it's generally a younger and more diverse group. I mean, I'm a gamer and I would like to think video games are one thing that can bring people together so hopefully it works out better for him.

If true, it probably would be worse for him on Smackdown. I bet he enjoyed the New Day taking a knee last night. Also he was also reportedly upset over Gallows and Anderson getting released as well.

Looks like the pee-tossing segment got cut from the west coast feed. Guess daddy Fox wasn't happy with that.

Possibly, but it was the audience they were in front of that night and they didn't care for it. People get annoyed because it's one of his go-to lines when responding to the disingenuous trolls, but Dave is 100% right when he says if something gets over with the crowd it was presented to, it works. That night it didn't get over, so it didn't work. You may not like it, *I* may not like it, but it's what happened.

Yeah it was Cornette's rule that something was fair game to copy after 7 years, but to be far that was in an era where there was just one company for 20+ years.

If nothing else, it's clear that Bryan is probably the greatest "make chicken salad out of chicken shit" worker of the last 20 years and maybe of all time. The amount of times he's been given a lump to work with and ended up having a decent-to-great match with them is mind boggling. Just like everyone in New Japan has their best match with Okada, everyone in WWE's best match is usually vs Bryan.

Yeah for some reason my brain recalled it being more that once, but "it was a bad crowd he was hanging with and something long forgotten about" is too close to sounding like a boys-will-be-boys attempt do dismiss what happened. Like, yeah maybe other parties involved did worse things, but that doesn't mean the guy you''re doing an obit on played no part in it. By all accounts, Johnny Walker was a super nice guy to all who ever met him in and out of wrestling and went out of his way to help anyone he could (further in the obit he mentions Walker coming out of retirement at 71 to do a match for the students at Don Muraco's wrestling school). It just reminds me of the "well he was nice to *me*, so the horrible thing that he did and was documented doing must not have been that bad" that we see too much of now. Letting people skate for shit behavior is kind of a sore spot for me at the moment, considering...... *gestures at everything in the world right now*.....so it jumped off the page to see it being addressed in a "we have to mention it so lets gloss over it as quick as possible" manner. (Also Dave kind of has a history of taking the "bitches be crazy" stance in cases where wrestlers have been accused of sexual assault and I couldn't help but wonder if that played a role in how he dealt with this)

At this point I'm wondering what Kevin Dunn has on Vince to be the only person to get in the inner circle of WWE to not get fired by Vince at some point. Also whatever you think of Bruce, being in charge of 5+ hours of TV a week is not going to be ideal for anyone, and I agree with @The Thread Killer that this is not going to be healthy for someone Bruce's age/medical history. The issue is that Vince expects everyone around him to be a raging workaholic devoting their lives to WWE 24 hours a day. No one is going to be able to keep up that pace for any length of time without either burning out or quickly giving up on trying to come up with any creative ideas.

Dave's mention of his legal issues in the WON obit was kind of odd, lots of using the word "alleged" and handwavy attempts to make it sound like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which doesn't seem to jive with what is documented. Pretty sure you can safely leave out the "alleged" part for someone on the registry. The fact that he agreed to a plea deal (again in the 50s when it would have been much easier for someone to skate on a rape charge) tells me it wasn't just some kind of misunderstanding.

Raw is still three hours, and even when they have good matches, it's often a grind to watch the entire show. It was even worse with no crowds. Bringing in the NXT/PC folks for a crowd helped, but nothing can really overcome it being way too much time for any wrestling show to fill without dragging.

Raw hitting record lows on a weekly basis and staying below 2 million certainly did Heyman in. He was trying to build long term under the thumb of a guy who only thinks week to week.

At least there's no pretense anymore I suppose. No more pretending anyone else actually has any ability to do anything, or that anyone else's ideas matter. Installing a yes man as the head of creative removes any possible argument.

I would say this is a good choice. Dude's been at or near the top for 20+ years and still brings it every time. He has every reason to coast (legend status, on the booking team) but still delivers on a regular basis.

I wouldn't be shocked if Cena was the type to vote Republican because he wants to pay less taxes, but I would be shocked if the guy who made his career being the Doctor of Thuganomics was any way pro-Trump.

Laughed so hard at him celebrating with unconscious Candice like she was a puppet.

I saw some people getting mad about the Fantasma thing, but he dropped the mask fair and square in Mexico and it wasn't like they were undoing some WCW stupidness like Rey. I thought it was odd he would go back to using the mask but having it be a setup like this was great. I did kind of laugh at them doing a Horsemen Beatdown before AEW though.

Joey Janela/Sonny Kiss team? Gotta admit I didn't see that one coming.

That was a decent little women's tag match, and I'll pop for anyone using the fisherman as a finish.