sek69

Never really been a big fan of international hockey outside of the Olympics. Mostly I'd guess because they were near impossible to find on TV anywhere in the US until really the last few years with the proliferation of niche sports channels.

Bruce is by far his biggest though, just for the fact it got them a spot on the WWE Network. Sure, he could probably find tons of people he can do shows with but I doubt they'd have the connections Bruce has.

Yeah, there's no way Smackdown goes to 3 hours either way. 7-8 pm is for syndicated programming and 10-11 is for local news, both of those are big revenue streams for the local affiliates. If Fox messes with that, they'd have a shit storm on their hands. What will be interesting is that a lot of Fox stations (like mine) are owned by Sinclair. So you could be seeing ROH ads in during Smackdown in the local buys.

It kind of sucks that Pete Dunne is going to be stuck in the WWE UK half-ass territory, he really should be killing people on either Raw or Smackdown every week.

I've been watching since it launched a few weeks back, and it's been quite an interesting show. You have young unknown guys in one match, Col. Robert Parker managing a team of bleach blond fat guys who look like they fell out of a time machine from 80s Memphis, Pentagon vs Fenix, all announced by Tony Schiavone. The first thing that you realize immediately that Tony sounds 30 years younger not being burdened down by WCW bullshit. He even threw in an "folks, we're outta time" at the end of the first episode. It's amazing to see someone who had the passion beat out of him seemingly able to find it again.

Flair gets a lot of (deserved) credit for being able to make the local territory star look good, but the more I see of Harley it seems he was just as good doing it as well. Hopefully the more WWE digs in the archives the more stuff of his we'll find.

It all was kind of worth it just for the Twitter meltdown Russo had when he tried to big time Cody and Cody basically called him out on all his bullshit.

Sounds like this might be a case of "X invented a thing, but Y popularized it".

I have quite a case of swiss-cheese brain when it comes to WCW mid to late 90s, but I don't ever recall seeing tapouts happen prior to Shamrock and Tazz making it popular elsewhere. To me it always was an interesting parallel that tapping out was seen as the smart, injury saving option in MMA while in pro wrestling it makes you a weakling. I recall there being a debate when tapping out became standard where it was thought that it was bad to have babyfaces tap out since it was showing potentially character damaging weakness.

The mortgage industry might be the one business more carny than wrestling, wouldn't be suprised if Conrad is all gimmick.

I just assumed it was used in MMA *because* it was the international sign for submission and there were people from all over the world competing. Makes sense to have a uniform gesture than risk someone getting hurt by verbally submitting in a language that might not be understood.

Until Vince decides again that "everyone needs to cut their hair, damn it!" What a strange ruling that was. Of course, the Triple Hs of the world at the time were exempt. Even Edge had to cut his hair a little. Any time anyone ever thinks reports of Vince's quirks are overblown, never forget the great hair holocaust.

In WWE, being tall = tremendous upside.

It's going to be hilarious when historians look back at this era and have to remind people that the main event matches at WM had to be the second match on the card because people would get burned out and tired when the show went past 2 AM.

Dave made the point on the Raw recap show that Seth's managed to become one of the most over guys on Raw and having great matches all while doing the opposite of what guys are being told to do in developmental.

I'm not sure why KO decided to start doing the Mr. Perfect/Shawn-on-Coke bumps, but I've been enjoying it. Also I fell asleep after the tag match and woke up again during Alexa-Nia. Probably the most perfectly timed nap I've ever had in my life.

Been a Penguins fan since the year Mario was drafted, so I managed to live through two bandwagon eras with a "the team is going to move" scare sandwiched in between.

Can't wait for next year's Wrestlemania Weekend where the show will literally last all weekend.

Watching 1983 Mid South, and DiBiase on commentary was talking about King Kong Bundy not wanting to join up with either the Rat Pack or with Skandor Akbar. I chuckled at him saying he respected Bundy, but also noting that most people have a price that can be met.

Something to consider: Comcast/NBCUniversal is contemplating making an offer to buy Fox out from under Disney, depending on how the courts rule on the potential AT&T/Time Warner deal. So it could all end up being back under the same umbrella at some point.

So if the Fox deal works out to average $200 million for SD, and USA is paying the alleged "three times more" for Raw that would put it at around $240. $440 total for just the domestic TV rights is bonkers considering all the analyst types were pegging the renewal for the whole package at around $250-$300 max. Whoever negotiated that deal needs to be the headliner in next year's HOF class for real.

I think so, she seems to have quietly gained power behind the scenes. She even went to the Fantasticamania shows (and was visible on camera the the whole time IIRC) and seems to be the first person in a long time to actually give a shit about the goings-on of the company instead of using it as a money generator for the family.

If they are getting the money the story is saying they are getting, Fox probably would want it live and WWE would be more than happy to accomodate them.

After reports of USA renewing just Raw for big money, ESPN just reported Fox is getting Smackdown apparently to be on the main Fox network. Vince pretty much just hit the lottery here.

My family was pretty much on the lower end of middle class, we didn't have many luxuries but we didn't go without things either. My dad was like most men of his era around here and worked in the steel industry, and a combination of that field dying off and my mother's health issues finally forcing her to leave her nursing job to go on full disability led to some belt tightening. Never anything horrible, you always knew of someone who had it worse off than you so you'd feel like an asshole for complaining, but sometimes it sucked to miss out on something because your folks couldn't afford it.