sek69

I'm all for salacious rumors, but I'm pretty sure Lelani won so that Wendi could win it back at the MTV War to Settle the Score show.

I just wanted to add my two cents about the Race vs Brody stuff. While it's clear Brody was the source for most if not all of it, it seems like there was someone in the AWA who was looking to bury him too by constantly implying he was too chickenshit to show up at their shows. Everything I've ever heard/read about Harley seems to indicate that he would never shy away from a fight, even if it's one he might not have much success in. Plus I've never heard anyone say Brody was any kind of feared shooter either. The only way I could see it going down anywhere close to how it was written would be if Harley just didn't want to deal with the bullshit and stayed away.

Listening to the podcast now, every time I hear your voice it sounds like Sam Elliot and/or Jake Roberts telling me about their trip to Mexico. Also, was it hard to see the action live at Hell in the Cell with the red cage? It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be on TV, but it looked like it would suck live.

Seems odd you would count the AKI wrestlers who were obviously based on IRL ones, but not the WCW Master who was clearly Andre.

Well that's just about peak creepy wrestling fan right there.

Dave told a story about this a few weeks back. When the Bulldogs left WWF briefly he was telling Watts he needs to bring them in. Bill wasn't interested until Joel Watts got tapes of them in Japan and basically badgered his dad into agreeing to bring them in. By the time he called Dave to tell him the news, Dave had to break it to him they already agreed to go back to the WWF.

I think that's more of a WWE problem not being able to write compelling characters than anything else. Most of the workrate guys had better worked matches and shown more personality in other companies before they went to WWE.

You know, of all the interesting what-ifs of 80s wrestling (what if Magnum never got hurt, what if Nikita went to the WWF), my #1 what-if I never see mentioned is what if the non Crockett NWA members would have got together to vote someone else as champion besides Flair? If the NWA continues to have a traveling champion, Fritz doesn't quit the NWA, other territories have the chance to have a title match on the card to combat the WWF expansion (which intially bombed in a lot of cities until they just outlasted the competition), and maybe a more unified NWA would have posed a bigger challenge to the WWF juggernaut. Of course it probably would have only prolonged the inevitable as the changing landscape of cable TV would have made Vince the winner anyway, and getting the various promoters to play nice long enough to mount a challenge would have been like herding cats, but it would have been something interesting to watch them try.

Also HBK/HHH vs Undertaker/Kane is supposed to take place here too. Wonder how the Australians feel that their SUPER SHOW is being used to build an even super-er show? Also now Evolution should be called WWE Please Don't Mention We Won't Be At That Other Show Next Week.

The match he had with Tully when he was still a no name jobber was tremendous. He went up for the slingshot suplex like he was Zack Sabre sized. No wonder Dusty saw potential in him.

It's always amazes me that the same Bill Watts who would separate heels and faces, expect his talent to always win bar fights to prove wrestlers were the toughest, and "handle" fans who got to rowdy was also a long time Observer reader. That sounds like a silly thing in 2018 to be surprised at, but so many old school guys like that were always big time mad that Dave and other sheet writers were openly discussing the business.

We dd it guys, we hit Peak Stupid. Just saw the Twitter account for the Wrestling reality podcast try to concern troll people in to going after Dave's "sponsors" for saying the people who continually go after him with wrong information have learning disabilities. I've never felt more embarrassment for humankind as a species.

WWE keeps saying in PR that they got where they were by listening to the fans, then put acts they want on top regardless of if the fans accept it or not. At this point, you have to think at least part of the resentment is more people seeing through the con. Hell, Steph even uses it as a way to get heat by doing the phony pandering to the crowd bit.

The scariest thing I've seen Brock do is run. A dude that big, that strong, and that fast is nightmare fuel. Like, if you pissed him off you didn't even have the option of running away from him unless you were a track star. Also Cesaro does things that don't seem like they should be possible, but does so with ease.

This is the best (probably only) article about Hussein.

This thread has the unexpected result of showing where Randy Orton gets so much of his stellar personality from.

Hogan wouldn't need to pull any politics anyway since Snuka's behavior was going to get him shitcanned no matter what. (also can we take a moment to think about how many drugs one must do for 1980s Vince to say you're out of control?)

The match itself was laid out modern style, yes, I was referring to the build and the atmosphere leading up to it. Nick Aldis was the well dressed World Champ coming in to the territory to show that while the local star is great, he's not better than the champ. The crowd was there to see their guy beat the champ and that's what they got. The lesson everyone should take away is that despit 20+ years of Russo bullshit and lazy WWE writing, booking good wrestling isn't *that* hard. Companies just spent a long time making it that way. If you view your fans as the paying customers you want to make happy instead of an obstacle that needs to be overcome/swerved/talked down to, you're going to have better results. Granted, that's a bit easier when you're building to an one off show rather than a promotion that runs year round, but it's still a point that needs to be learned.

Nah, that felt like a big NWA World Title match from the 70s and 80s in every way. It's clearly what Cody was aiming for and he nailed it.

In the defense of all the folks mentioned prior, the crowd turns on babyfaces these days because WWE is very bad at booking babyfaces and has been for a while. Crowds never turned on Bruno, only turned on Hogan when he was still doing his super 1980s babyface schtick in the 90s, never turned on Austin or Rock. It's only been in the last decade plus that suddenly babyfaces are wearing out their welcomes at a record pace. When you don't book your heroes to be dipshits who always lose in the end, they tend to stay heroes. Funny how that works out.

Tama Tonga thinks so, he was trying to troll him on Twitter a while back before the company told their guys to knock that shit off.

I would love to see Roman in literally any other promotion in the world where he would be able to take advantage of the charisma and promo abiliity that seems to be there but gets run over by WWE scripting. I would love to see him be able to work a match free of WWE tropes like spamming Superman punches and spears like a little kid playing a video game who only knows two buttons. It probably won't happen since he seems pretty Ride or Die with WWE, but I get the feeling he would be a much bigger star outside the company.

I think they split him away from the Shield too quickly the first time and he wasn't ready for the level he was pushed at that time. Remember that the nausea-inducing multi cut zoom cam that plagues WWE TV to this day was first introduced to cover for Roman's green-ness during the Shield beatdowns. That was the main fuel to the resentment fire: fans saw a guy not ready for prime time get pushed ahead of the guy they wanted to see in that role. Of course now Roman's vastly improved as a worker, he's more or less perfected WWE Main Event House Style. If that's not your cup of tea you probably won't like his matches much, but he usually can be called upon to have a good match with practically anyone. He's shown flashes of being a good promo when not given garbage to work with from the script writers, and can generally give off the air of being a badass that you would want in a top guy. He could probably use a refresh in the wardrobe department, but they seem content to keep his gimmick as "the guy who used to be and sometimes still is in the Shield. wasn't that cool?".

So were the three guys in the "commission" who called a sit down with Konnan and King anyone of note or just actors? Maybe it was just because they were playing mob boss stereotypes we've all seen in countless movies but they seemed familiar.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Jeff Hardy is the modern day Jake Roberts in the sense that he seems to be really smart when he's not completely fucked up. Nakamura seems to be a guy who's more checked out mentally than broken down physically, so Jeff coming up with something to keep him interested makes sense.