sek69

I've softened my stance on that era, I used to hate it immensely. I've grown to appricate it for what it is over time, but on the Network we now have Mid South, WCCW, Mid Atlantic, and WWF all from around the same time in 1982 and the differences are stark.

For a while it seemed like he had one design that came in every color imaginable. And he's my six year old's favorite wrestler just because of all the colors he wears.

I wonder if Braun will follow the Shield's lead and get his old band back together. After all, Bray and Harper both are without partners now.

This could either go here, the NXT thread, or the New Japan one, but Matt Riddle's wife confirmed that his NXT offer came pretty much the way everyone thought it did. He got an offer from New Japan, and let Gabe know because he was working for WWN. Gabe told Hunter about it, and all of a sudden Matt gets a phone call with an NXT offer.

I mean, it's totally going to end up being Gargano as the attacker right? It just seems to line up with the story they are telling.

I mean, that was kind of always how it was judged. In WWE at least. There was tons of Hulkamania/DX/Austin/nWo merch around back in the day.

WWF All Star Wrestling from 1981 are starting to trickle in, so that looks like the classic content dump for the month.

It's weird that they can't seem to work out a deal with Bret to get the Stampede stuff back on the network. Also, how did he end up with exclusive rights on just his matches even after the archive was sold to WWE? (For those who are new and/or forgot, Stampede stuff had a section in the vault for a couple days before being pulled due to Bret having the rights to any footage he was in somehow)

It would be a shock if he hasn't passed him by now. Cena's barely around and Roman appears to have new merch out every week. He'll truly be the Big Dog when he pulls Hogan moves like having all the Shield merch ring up as Roman merch though.

The weirdest part of that photo to me was seeing Cena with that much hair. He looks like a younger, jacked up JBL.

After all the fighting AAA did over the Parka gimmick, I thought it was odd they would be okay with him dropping the mask at a CMLL show (although there's a school of thought that if he did finally drop the mask he wouldn't be going around rubbing it in their faces that he's the original guy). What's scummy is it appears AAA said this in June and CMLL still went on promoting as if the match was happening until about a week or so ago. People on Twitter pretty much did the "hand on chin thinking emoji" when the ticket prices were announced and they clearly weren't scaled to a Rush vs Park level, but the company continued to run matches to make the fans think it was still happening.

So the next Hidden Gem is Wrestling Star Wars 1981 from WCCW back when it was still NWA Big Time Wrestling. It's not really much of a card but it was something I think was considered lost so it's nice to have it back in whatever form they have.

Rowan tore his bicep.

I stand corrected, the most Vintage CMLL thing ever was all the stuff above, then announce Rush and Park in separate matches on the Anniversary card because.... *shrug emoji*

They are doing a two day taping in Mexico City, and day two is the same day as the CMLL Anniversary show. Pentagon and Fenix are scheduled to be on that show and one would expect them also to be involved in whatever Impact is doing. Normally one would think that "well just tape everything you need from them on day one", but remember they are partnered with AAA so never discount the opportunity for some interpromotional fuckery to take place.

Bryan's a smart guy, when he made those comments where he basically laughed at the idea of WWE being able to build a Miz program to Mania part of me wondered if he did it on purpose to needle Vince into proving him wrong. Because it seems the best way to ensure Vince tries do to something is to tell him he can't.

They wanted Charlotte to be a babyface, but still do her father's mannerisms....who was one of the best heels of all time. So you end up making her come across as cocky and unlikeable while all the announcers fawn over THA KWEEN.

There really wasn't any doubt, really. I don't really think he would want to uproot his family to go back to living the life of an indy darling, and he'd have to work more dates when reportedly part of his negotiations were to get a reduced schedule with WWE.

He hadn't been in good health for a while, and he had a match at Triplemania in 2015 that was Heroes of Wrestling territory bad due to the state of everyone involved. cubsfan made a good point in his bio that guys from his era that did his style on the infamously concrete-esque lucha rings of the 70s/80s ended up in pretty bad shape.

If they aren't going to turn Nikki heel at some point, the build for Evolution is going to be really awkward and weird. The Bellas are being shoehorned into this division, and I don't have faith they are going to give us much reason as to why beyond "because Total Bellas"

So what can only be described as Vintage CMLL, Park vs Rush will not be on the Anniversary show after months of build. They did an angle where Rush is claiming the fans in the building want him to face Volador (spoiler alert: they don't) and it's only the fans on social media that won't buy tickets that want the Park match. The funny thing is all the publicity he got from being on CMLL shows made it financially unwise for Park to do the match since he was surely going to lose. So CMLL revitalized Park's career and won't end up being able to fully capitalize on it. They got some bigger houses for weekly Arena Mexico shows, but they ended up building a quarter of AAA's TripleMania main event free of charge.

From WO's story:

I would agree with your last sentence. Different kinds of charisma for sure, but I would say Misawa and Kobashi kind of underrated in that aspect. The famous story of Baba changing the finish for Misawa to go over (I believe it was) Jumbo based on the buzz he was getting from the crowd speaks to that. It still sends chills down my spine to watch back to his big matches and the crowd chanting MI-SA-WA while his music played.

When Sasha turned around to look at Steph come down the aisle, she had a look on her face like someone took a shit on the rampway,

I'm not saying they wouldn't be good, but Vince doesn't see Finn as main event material and Drew probably will lugging Dolph around for the forseeable future. Lashley's a good option though, I forgot about him (which speaks volumes of how he's been used since the last match he had with Roman).