sek69

I wonder if the Usos will end up with another title win after an arrest.

Briscoes vs Rush/Dragon Lee was a fun blood filled brawl on this week's show. Considering the Briscoes did the job here but ended up winning the tag titles back from G.O.D., this could be a real money program for ROH that they desperately need.

Karen Q broke her leg on a house show the other night.

Apparently Finn got leveled by stomach flu and Ali was a last minute sub, probably explains why that match wasn't super crisp.

That gimmick is so unremarkable it took me several minutes to realize I got the name of the team wrong.

I think it's two separate issues: the Librarians are supposed to be a spoof on bad gimmicks and they don't really do enough during the actual shows to emphasize that to people who don't follow the YouTube stuff. It comes off tryhard and people who "know" the joke end up mad at the people who don't. The New Order on the other hand was supposed to be a serious heel group and it just didn't land, but because of things like the Librarian it creates a somewhat inaccurate impression of AEW being the land of bad gimmicks.

Jericho seems to be smart enough to keep his drunken adventures to Twitter at least. Plus between his wrestling and music gigs I would assume he probably has a bus or some other method of transportation where he doesn't drive himself. But if he got busted for DUI and they did a joke about it on TV it would be just as much bullshit. No such thing as alcohol rehab? You can probably make an argument if it's effective (I personally don't think anyone can get clean unless they deal with the underlying issues that cause them to use in the first place), but it definitely exists. Also since most states are "at-will" when it comes to employment, you can get fired for anything that isn't codified in the law (race/gender/religion/etc). WWE was known to fire people the second they sniff any possible bad PR, the only reason they don't do it now is because they are deathly afraid of handing AEW their next big star.

That surprised me how that kind of flew under the radar. Everyone was expecting the Usos to get buried under the arena floor after news of that arrest broke, but they ended up more or less being rewarded by winning the titles (as much as winning tag titles can be seen as a reward in 2019 WWE). Everyone's reaction was more or less "huh, didn't expect that" and the world moved on.

So I got the update on my phone and tablet so far, and it's different for sure. Searching seems improved, not sure if the new categories are a mess or my brain is still looking for the older ones, so I suppose I'll give it some time to adjust.

While I can't speak of the douchebag element (despite the implied level of doucheness contained from repeated offenses), wrestlers always are looking for something to manage the pain of having to bump on a near daily basis. Drinking has always been seen as the "safest" and most socially acceptable method, especially after cocaine fucked up so many people in the 80s and Somas did in a lot of folks from the 90s. It's one of the reasons RVD was so outspoken about his pot use as he felt it helped him with pain management without having potential life altering side effects and how it was bullshit WWE singled it out to fine people for. In addition to the pain management aspect, there's been the mindset that if you didn't go drinking with the boys after the show you were some kind of pussy. Obviously that mindset is changing, but how many times to you here guys (not always old timers either) making jokes about wrestlers these days just wanting to go play video games instead of partying after the show. Plus you figure with the environment the Usos grew up in, you know the "you have to party with the boys" was the mindset they were taught.

The thing that makes it upsetting is WWE criminalizes practically every other avenue of pain management and with things like Monday's skit basically condone drinking and driving. It's not like the Usos are alone, we just had Jeff Hardy get another alcohol related arrest and Ric fucking Flair was in the ring with a beer in his hand in the closing segment of Raw after nearly dying months ago from years of alcohol abuse. It's clear this company does not see the seriousness of these situations and will only do as much as needed to avoid bad PR. This is after all the same company that wanted to cut ties with Kurt Angle at the height of his problems because Vince didn't want a Olympic medalist dying on his watch.

Also fuck WWE for fining weed use to the point guys just accept it as a "pot tax", but someone putting lives at risk is "responsible for their own personal actions".

FS2 HD is being added to most Comcast lineups tomorrow, just in time for it to be turned into the WWE Side Programming Channel come October.

I wonder if they are going to try some association with AEW, considering they're kind of the heir to the JCP/WCW lineage.

So the NWA just kicked ROH to the curb. Looks like Billy's going to put effort into producing his own weekly show for them. PCO and Brody King still hold the NWA tag titles that they won at the Crockett Cup show, so that will be interesting.

Ziggler's a guy who *should* be a star, he checks all of Vince's boxes, has real life cred, and can bring it on promos when motivated. Yet he's not. Like you know how people bag on Miz by saying he's a dude playing pro wrestler? That's how I feel about Ziggler. I never get invested in anything he does since it comes off like a guy who's memorized a How To Be a Sports Entertainer textbook.

I think there's some debate on who owns those 88-89 eps since it gets tied in to the whole "who owns the USWA footage" mess. Also the official relaunch is going to happen this week, they sent out an email saying everyone's going to have to relog in once it switches (since they are changing the entire platform everything runs on).

It will be a 2 hour show.

That reminded me we got ECW pretty much from the start on those independent stations too, found out later it was because Shane Douglas wanted the show available in his hometown. It was also the reason so many ECW shows would take place in the Golden Dome (which was located in nearby Beaver County) as it was the largest arena around ECW could book.

They aren't bringing her in. I made a joke and it turned into an unintended psychological experiment.

Xavier Woods completely marking out for HBK's entrance during the Miz TV segment was great. Not to mention the New Day was better on commentary than any of the usual folks who do it.

Inspired by a Dave post on Twitter where he mentioned he had 30 channels in the 70s and 5 carried wrestling, I thought it would be interesting to see what options there were for folks here growing up. For me as a kid in Pittsburgh in the 80s we had: WWE syndicated TV on local NBC station on Saturdays USA had Prime Time Wrestling as well as (I think) All-American Wrestling on Sunday afternoons TBS had World Championship Wrestling at 6:05 Saturday and Main event on Sunday nights. Local independent channel had World Wide on Saturday nights at 11pm, then GLOW on after at midnight Different local independent channel had World Class on Saturdays at 10pm If I wiggled the antenna enough I could get UWF TV on a UHF station (still don't know which one it was I was picking up) Later of course we had AWA and World Class popping up on ESPN as well. Looking back, it's no wonder I ended up as locked into wrestling as I ended up becoming.

USA has been showing replays most weeks, just not in that particular timeslot. I suppose it's so they can add up all the numbers so they can tell advertisers WWE gets 2x the ratings they actually do.

I saw several people last night saying Raw came off as a series finale last night, and I kind of agree.

He absolutely has to tow the company line for sure, but he absolutely was being a dickhead about it. Roman and Cena can go out and promote WWE as the superior brand without coming off as douchey at all. Hell the only time it happened to Cena is when he was sock puppetting Vince's eternal butthurt at Rock daring to leave the nest and become a megastar without him. So I guess the key takeway is if you're in a position to be the face of WWE and have to do some turd-polishing PR work for them, maybe figure out a way to do it that doesn't involve having to channel your boss's deep seeded insecurity.