sek69

Yeah when it looked like Rusev was finally going to get the upper hand people were into it and chanting "Rusev Day", but once again the fans were rewarded by having him get chumped out in the end. Again. I mean, at some point WWE has to be all "we've been eating so much shit for you guys can you at least do this for us?" I assume. That just makes it all the more hilarious when the Prince says no since he's Lashley and Vince is Rusev in this scenario.

As much as it pains me to say it as a Steelers fan, my team's having a subpar year and the Dolphins are doing the most obvious tank job in sports history so this should have been an easy week for Raw. Instead we got a show long build for the babyface getting humiliated again, and I'm sure there's people at WWE just dumbfounded that this shit didn't draw. (also did anyone see Jerry Lawler facepalming when Lana was doing the "Rusev's a sex addict" stuff? Dude looked legit embarrassed to be there)

I'm comparing it to Dreamer/Raven/Beulah because the same guy that did that is (probably) responsible for this. But yes, the main issue with anything WWE does is they've done such a good job making sure no one cares about their characters, it's weird when they do something that requires anyone to do so.

IIRC Khali is still living off the fame he got in India for being champ, so he's doing better than Seth.

Yeah I doubt that the match is going to go the full 60, this is definitely going to lead to an angle of some sort.

Isn't Jimmy doing an interview for Starrcast? I seem to recall seeing something being promoted as his first wrestling appearance in years.

Most Americans think all Germans sound like Arnold these days, and I only know the difference because I took 4 years of German in high school and they pointed out the difference between how German sounds in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

To a lot of folks in the US, South America = Spanish, so anything set anywhere there is going to sound Spanish-like in a Hollywood movie. I doubt most Americans (me included to be honest) would recognize a Portuguese accent if a gun was pointed to our heads. It's still real to me, dammit!

Which was always funny to me since she grew up in Latvia when it was still part of the USSR. You'd think she'd be better at the accent than that. It's a shame Uncle Ivan isn't around to teach folks how to properly be fake Russian.

So Bobby Lashey is Raven, Rusev is Tommy Dreamer, and Lana is Beulah I suppose.

So.....Rusev: Sex Addict is where this is going?

I'm not sure if there's a funnier trope in WWE than "metal pipes backstage that seem to only exist to make noise when someone gets thrown into them".

Seth looking like he either had six cups of coffee or a fat rail of coke out there.

I think at this point Zelina's ponytail is bigger than she is.

It seems sometimes that Becky is another Daniel Bryan situation where she's over in spite of how she's been booked instead of because of it.

There's scales here. A company run by white men that has repeatedly shown to be unaware of racial issues at best and straight up racist at worst producing a shirt invoking classic racist imagery is not the same as one black person calling another an Uncle Tom. It wasn't the best choice of words for sure but saying the two are equal is a false equivalency that downplays what the company did. It's like the reverse of "very good people on both sides" kind of bullshit.

It was on FS1, so that should be kept in mind. It's not a great number but people are in a real rush to dogpile on them for what everyone knew was going to be a crap number.

So the guy posts an email exchange that pretty much confirms Hunter (a guy with tons of racially questionable actions in the past) was the key guy pushing for an obviously racist shirt.....and everyone's turning on him for calling Jay Lethal an Uncle Tom as if those two things are on the same level. Good work everyone.

In a bit of randomness seldom seen outside of FMW or WAR six man tag team, Sean Lennon was at the Sunday Arena Mexico show last night.

Looking at how the demos are breaking down, it seems they already have.

It is bullshit, he said they told him the idea they were going for (a twist on the Rolling Stones's logo*) but he never saw the finished product until it was made. To say that a black wrestler saw and approved something with such obvious racist imagery is just as tone deaf as creating it in the first place. But, WWE's gonna WWE. Never admit you were wrong or that you fucked up even when it's patently obvious. *which still would have been stupid but not "holy shit, what were they thinking" stupid.

The April 13th 1985 Mid South episode kicks off with an epic Bill Watts rant on the then-recent Wrestlemania and how Vince McMahon is taking credit for popularizing wrestling and having celebrities, rattling off all the celebrities that go to shows all around the country because they're fans and "not because they were paid to be there". Plus how having an actor pretending to be a wrestler and Mean Gene main eventing a show in Minneapolis (which he did) is 'baloney" and you'll never see that on his show.

It's one of those deals where it's not like Vince or Hunter were sitting around all "let's give the black guy a shirt that looks like a Little Black Sambo face", it's that something looking like that made it through all phases of design and production without one person saying "uhhh....maybe we shouldn't do that". Racism isn't just cross burnings and using the n-word, it's letting shit like this happen without even noticing how bad it is.

He hasn't had a match in about a month which apparently lines up with when he first brought it up to someone in the company. If their response was to ice him out, no wonder he's going out guns blazing because that's some bullshit.

On its face, booking wrestling isn't that hard. The trick was always finding the right personalities that click with the audience. The stories themselves used to be the easier part of the equation.