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I love that Askua is a better promo in Japanese than any other woman on the roster is in English.

It's still kind of mind boggling that WWE went ahead and did a whole documentary series on the era where their popularity and audience plummeted.

That lady that Becky was talking to looked like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world than in that conversation. Becky's still a face, right?

This is the perfect match to make Garza a star, these two have probably wrestled a million times in Monterrey and could put on an excellent match in their sleep. Also Vince has a long history of mocking religion like Brother Love, Austin being not-crucified on a not-cross, Seth calling himself the Messiah.

You can make the argument that the Bret/Shawn real life feud turning into the mess that caused Vince to do Montreal is the biggest historical butterfly effect in wrestling history. Sure, Rock will be more well known and famous wrestler ever when it's all said and done, but Bret (mostly unintentionally) ended up changing the course of both WWF/E and the business in general. It kick started the heel Mr. McMahon that turned around the WWF, and him going to WCW afterwards ended up being the poster child of "this company is doomed and doesn't know what the hell they are doing". I voted for Liger, since on top of what he did personally, he built up an entire division that inspired wrestlers all over the world. You can see it in the goodbyes he got in diverse promotions like New Japan and CMLL. He literally influenced the entire world, and while people will be talking about the Streak forever and there's going to be a million WWE produced documentaries about it, but it's not likely there will be as many people who base their entire style around Taker like there are for Liger. To me Jericho's the clear choice, since Goldberg's only claim to fame is "the one thing WCW didn't fuck up", except when you watch the last year or so of TV you see they totally did. The WWE Magic Wand of Historical Revisionism will do its best to make it seem differently, but after the initial megapush and title win, he was just as another guy treading water in the ridiculousness of WCW's death flails. Jericho's a smart guy in the sense he knew to hitch his wagon to a hot thing when he went to NJPW, but it can't be discounted that if AEW proves to be a long term success it's in large part due to his run on top. I'll admit I wasn't completely sold on him being the first ever champion, but his run has done wonders not only for him but everyone around him. You can't have effective heroes without having great villains to play off of, and his current incarnation has been the perfect foil for all the folks AEW are trying to establish as stars. Nash is an easy target for jokes, but him and Hall getting guaranteed deals with WCW was a monumental game changer in the business. Looking back he also had some bad luck for a guy who's seen as bulletproof. His big WWF champion run was derailed by Vince insisting he be a smilin' babyface instead of the cool heel he was leading up to the win. It didn't fit the character and it came off as forced until it was used as fodder for his heel run as he was on the way out. In WCW, a lot of the bullshit that went on backstage was due to Hulk constantly undermining his ideas (no way to know if they would have been any good, but if Hulk was that dead against it, it's a good sign it involved people not Hulk Hogan on top) to the point there were large stretches where no one in WCW knew what they would be doing one day to the next. As far as Junkyard Dog, looking back it seems like it was part "big fish in a small pond" and part just catching lightning in a bottle for a few years. Not to discount what he did, he was absolutely a huge draw, but you could see the cracks starting to show. They were repeating angles with him towards the end of his Mid South run, and it seemed like he was quickly getting to the point of needing to leave the territory to freshen up. Unfortunately by that time, that meant going to the WWF and that was pretty much the end of him being any kind of draw. Finally I went with Bryan, but I could see an argument either way. For me it comes down to Bryan being in a bigger promotion as the difference maker. AJ was a key player in turning around New Japan into the #2 company in the world, but Bryan (and Punk also to be fair) played a big part in changing the mindset in WWE towards smaller wrestlers. Pretty much everyone in NXT not Keith Lee owe a debt to Bryan, since WWE would never have paid any attention to them before. I think that's going to go down as the bigger influence in the long term.

Today I learned the band that does the Raw theme is a Christian rock group. Considering Vince's views on religion I found that very hilarious.

Who will Randy murder tonight?

The games have generally been pretty decent so far. There's been some stinkers, but you get that in any football league, even the NFL. Considering the TV landscape and ratings expectations are very different now compared to the original XFL launch, this actually might end up having some staying power.

Different writing teams on different shows, would be my guess.

Surfer Sting was a complete 1980s babyface that looks goofy as hell now but was perfect for the time. Heel Ric Flair is more or less timeless, so it doesn't look dated. Surfer Sting is essentially the wrestling version of those 70s fashion catalogs that look completely ridiculous now but probably got people laid back in the day.

I'm hoping this will be more along the lines of stuff like Brett DiBiase scamming the goverment rather than the "Jimmy Valiant and a glass table" sort of stuff.

Try not to let this turn into a DVDVR Sleaze Thread memorial if at all possible (for the youngin's out there, back in the day there was a mega thread about sleazy things wrestlers of the past were involved in that eventually turned into people making shit up to the point some of the things mentioned are still considered to have actually happened).

I'll start one.

Someone needs to beat the shit out of the person in the front row with the Enzo shirt just on general principle.

One major difference so far is AEW is way better at making folks look like stars so far. Mox, Cody, Darby, Riho and others all stand out and seem special while most weeks WWE TV is filled with Random Interchangeable Guys.

DARBY

Also nice touch having Taz call this match as a subliminal nod to who Jeff Cobb is supposed to remind you of.

Sammy rocking out to Jericho's theme was amazing.

Britt vs Tony sneakily climbing the ranks for the best feud of the year.

Hopefully Jericho doesn't kick things off by doing an interview with someone who thinks the coronavirus is a government conspiracy.

At least Mauro's been doing this long enough that his yelling as a flow to it, as ear splitting as it can be at times. Beth comes off as someone doing their impression of Will Ferrell as Harry Carey just yelling random things. Indeed, it was cool to see Mark giving him the rub as the next scarily awesome big guy.

Cody's so good he can get people jobs in other companies now. He mentioned in a media call yesterday he was looking at Chris Bey when asked about AEW signing more wrestlers of color, and later in the day Impact announced they signed him.

I get the feeling they are putting Liger in because nearly every other promotion in the world honored him on his retirement tour and WWE wanted in on that action.

My understanding is that the company Brett was working for was embezzling state funds, and Ted's organization suddenly started getting state money around the same time. Brett was named in the indictment but Ted was not, so for now it looks like either Ted wasn't aware of any wrongdoing, or more likely they couldn't find any smoking gun that proved he knew about it. It looks like the best case scenario is Ted's group loses a big chunk of their income, but honestly it seems pretty hard to buy that he didn't have any suspicion where the money is coming from. The issue unfortunately is that it's Mississippi, so it might be an uphill battle getting them to look too hard at the books of any religious based groups.

It's supposed to be AJ vs Taker at Mania.