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Plus the story is right there too. All Cena has to do is show up and say "Everyone thinks the Corbin match sucks, you were my first opponent in WWE and I want to be your last". Boom, everyone's happy.

It was funny to see that there were people Very Mad Online over the involvment of AEW, saying it's somehow going to "ruin" AAA. This is the promotion that thought they could run a year long angle with LA Park for this year's Triplemania (spoiler alert: he didn't make it that long), and also spent time building up Hijo del Fantasma before he quit due to the lawsuit he filed about LU. AAA have been messing up their own plans long before any of the AEW guys were in the business, they're professionals at stepping on their own dicks.

To keep it as Pro Wrestling Only as possible, it seems that the current admin has made the visa process more complicated than it used to be.

Honestly, I never thought Kane sucked. His angles, absolutely, but he turned into a pretty solid WWE style big man worker. Plus it seems like he's a smart guy who is well liked by pretty much everyone who's met him.

If you have an issue with intergender on a moral level or it's just not your cup of tea, that's completely understandable and fine. There's certainly things I don't enjoy in wrestling (deathmatch stuff comes to mind), but I wouldn't suggest it doesn't have a place or anything because it clearly has an audience. Same thing with the intergender stuff, it won't work for everyone but that's what makes wrestling great. There's something for everyone if you look for it. Another fun thing about pro wrestling is that anything can be made "realistic" if it's framed that way. John Cena uses a move as a finish that was a transition move forever. It worked because WWE pushed it as an insta kill move. The People's Elbow is probably the most ridiculous, unrealistic move in the history of the business but it got over because of the Rock. I'm pretty sure if anyone else in the history of wrestling ever tried that as anything other than a comedy spot it would never have got the same reaction. Basically if ROH can get Cheesburger over as someone who might possibly have a chance against anyone, I don't have a problem believing most women wrestlers could hang with most of the men. Especially since we're more or less past the super jacked muscle guy era.

The thing is it's hard to have a discussion about being grounded in realism when the Irish Whip has existed since the 30s. Can't blame nerd culture for that. Nearly all basic pro wrestling moves are completely unrealistic in an actual athletic contest but we just accept it because they've been part of the genre for nearly a century. Wrestling has always been a live action comic book, from the written stories (that both tend to be great or go off the rails and get retconned) to the colorful wacky characters. Heroes and Villians, complete with bad guys monologging about their evil plans.

Women's wrestling as a whole was not seen on a level anywhere close to the men from practically the beginning of time until about a few years ago, so guys like Austin or Bret would never have been in a position to wrestle no ladies even if they wanted to. I agree it is about presentation though. I agree that it would be difficult for 90s WWF Barbie doll fitness models to come across as competitve against men (hell, a lot of them had a hard time looking competitve against each other), but so many women around now are much better on a athletic/training/coordination standpoint. I don't have a hard time believing Tessa Blanchard (to use an example mentioned before) could kick a lot of the men's asses.

I wonder, does Rey having competitve matches make a mockery of the pretense of realism and destroy the suspension of disbelief? The size difference in like 90% of his matches is greater than most intergender matches, and if we're being honest him having a competitve match with most WWE sized guys is visually ridiculous if you spend more than 2 seconds thinking about it.

Wrestlemanias can be 3 hours, hell even 4 can be okay if done right. Wrestle Kingdom was like 4-5 hours and it breezed by because it was properly paced. WWE rubs salt in the wound by having skits and commercial type breaks like it was a Very Special Episode of Raw and not a major PPV show. There's no reason for any show to be over 6 hours, at that point you're just abusing the audience that paid to see you at that point. It's as if moving to the Network has made them lazy in terms of blocking out segments for PPVs and there's a general feeling of "fuck it, we can go as long as we want now" that they aren't locked in to the traditional 2 hour 45 minute PPV window.

I don't think it's being pessimistic considering the last two Wrestlemanias were way too long, and this year's show looks to be even bigger. If you have to break your show into sessions to keep the crowd from passing out, your show is too goddamned long. No one's "forced" to watch it all of course, It used to be a bucket list goal of mine to attend a Mania at some point, but I couldn't possibly imagine paying even StubHub prices to attend a 7+ hour stadium show.

At some point WWE has to decide if it's worth being able to brag that eleventy million hours were viewed on the Network if it comes at the expense of turning your marquee event into a crowd destroying death slog every year.

The thing about that is Dave will frequently mention how much he was in contact with Eric, so either Eric was exaggerating how much control he had at the time or he's trying to minimize how much of the mess WCW turned into after the fact was his fault.

I wonder if they are building up to a "Kofi Movment" where the rest of the SD locker room demands justice.

They almost got one with WWE, but then Jay had to go 'phobe it all up and ruin it for them,

I was hoping for a wager match with Rey/Andrade but I'm more than okay with Joe and Rey.

Konnan kind of admitted they screwed up, the Bucks were super over in Tiajuana and he thought it would carry over. Lucha fans tend to be very territorial still so someone big in one city might not get a peep in another.

Sting was kind of different since Vince has a complex about WCW (since they were beating his company for so long) that he doesn't have with the indies.

I forgot AJ/Orton, which actually should be pretty good too since Randy appears to give a shit for this feud.

So far the Mania card looks like this: Confirmed matches Brock/Seth Ronda/Becky/Charlottte Roman/Drew HHH/Big Dave Miz/Shane Boss n Hug/Divas of Doom/Nia & Tamina/probably the IIconics based on how the story is going Angle/Corbin Murphy/winner of 205 Live #1 contender tourney Probably happening: Bryan/Kofi Finn/Lashley/Lio in some kind of gimmick match Multiple team match for Raw tag titles Multiple team match for SD tag titles (since that's all they ever seem to do for tag belts on PPV anymore) Cena/TBD Joe/somebody apparently not Cena despite it seeming to be be what the storyline with Truth was going towards So despite the various fucky ways we got there, most of those matches look pretty solid.

This is such a weird match to book, one guy's half the Mania main event and the other guy just challenged the returning hero. Why book a match between two people who should be kept strong and not lose?

Maybe Brock comes out to kil Seth and Roman makes the save?

BIG DAVE dropping truth bombs out here

lol they're making the fans dislike of Baron/Angle part of the story

Dana, who was fast tracked from NXT because fitness model, is the underdog here....cool.

Oh hey, they remembered that Mojo angle everyone thought they gave up on.