sek69

cubsfan is quick to point out on his blog that this is in fact not a raid on CMLL, but when you go out and sign two of their top guys and are actively looking to sign others I don't know what else you'd call it.

Searching for "lucha" on the cable guide lead me to find two new shows: WWC, which is kind of sad to watch now, and what appears to be the weekly card from Arena Coliseo in Monterrey. The Monterrey show has a ring with a dirty white canvas which makes it look like Memphis and lucha had a weird baby.

from WO.com: I wonder if CMLL will end up like early 80s AWA when Vince decided he wanted 3/4ths of their talent pool. AAA survived all their guys going to WCW in the 90s, so who knows.

Four weeks into the build-up, at Great American Bash, Bischoff asked the question directly "Do you work for the WWF ?" Hall and Nash answer "No." Pretty sure they did that because the lawsuit was already filed, and they thought doing that would end it.

The funny thing is that they had to have done business with Savage at some point since they wanted to do a movie about Gorgeous George and he owns all the rights.

Seemed pretty solid if they were maintaining they were presenting Hall and Nash as invading WWF guys. I mean, WCW was at least smart enough to never mention WWF by name but it was pretty clear the intent was to portray them as agents from the competition. Even the very first time Hall came out with the "you want a war, you got one" line and how they avoided giving either of them a name (which served to not get them in trouble legally by using WWF gimmick names, but also allowed fans to just assume these guys were still Razor and Diesel). I mean, yes someone in WCW should have had enough brains to at least make a semblance of an argument in their favor, but it's not the first time we've seen WWF Legal use their voodoo powers to make opposing council forget how to do their jobs.

It wasn't about Hall and Nash playing characters similar to their WWF gimmicks, it was that they were very clearly portrayed as being sent from "up North" to take over WCW. That's what got them sued, the impression that they were WWF employees appearing on WCW TV.

It's funny that for all the shit he takes for his booking, Dusty Rhodes was pretty much the only one to book tag teams (actual teams as opposed to two top singles together) as main eventers in the last 30 or so years. Hell, even the US tag team titles were treated seriously for a few years, which is more than WWE can say about their titles.

Wasn't the rumor at one time that Luke Williams and Cary were an item? If anything, it seems every promotion Gabe's involved in seems to end up with a lot of young prettyboy type wrestlers who seem to be at the core of rumors like this *cough* *cough* Dragon Gate USA *cough* *cough*.

I assume Dave was joking. John Considering his follow up was "is the weather bad?" I would say he wasn't. That would tend to indicate that he was joking. No way that he's been a friend of Alverez for more than a a decade and fails to know the weather sucks. John If he was joking, it was the most deadpan joke ever. Even Bryan kind of stopped for a beat as if to say "wait, is he being serious?" before explaining that yes, there are a lot of coffee shops in Seattle and the weather is normally cool and rainy.

I assume Dave was joking. John Considering his follow up was "is the weather bad?" I would say he wasn't.

This is probably more likely to happen in WWE than in most companies since the inner circle all travel in the same plane. According to the tales of past WWE writers on Lagana's podcasts it seems that the top guys from each brand (which now I believe are Hayes and Gewirtz) travel with Vince, Steph, and Hunter. An accident involving that plane would take out pretty much all the decision makers on the creative side of the company leaving only any McMahon family not on board and the bulk of the writing staff. I would probably guess if that happened Shane would come back and handle things at least until his and/or Steph's kids reach the age where they decide if they want to be in the business or not. Either that or WWE folds/gets sold to an outside entity.

I just think it's funny that the company based on WRESTLING IS SERIOUS BUSINESS has as an announcer the guy who spent most of his WWF tenure being called a hermaphrodite by the Rock. I guess Todd Pettingill's price was too high. Also as far as the people who are claiming ROH is the #2 company in the world, it struck a familiar chord with me. I'm a baseball fan, and as you can tell by the words under my username, I'm in Pittsburgh. If you're at all familiar with sports, you know what that means. If you're not, here's the condensed version: The Pirates are the local baseball team, they have been around for 125 years and had a rich history of winning up until the mid 90s. They have had 18 losing years in a row, some of them have been quite horrendous. This season they have a new coaching staff and are off to a better start, they still probably won't finish with a winning season but there's reason to be excited for the first time in decades. What does this have to do with anything wrestling related? In my opinion there's a lot of lapsed wrestling fans who were turned off by the end of WCW and are looking for anything to get excited over that could possibly give real competition to WWE. Even though this deal has obvious flaws to anyone looking at it objectively for more than 2 seconds, as stated people want to believe. You take someone who's still a fan but had all the passion beaten out of them by numerous years of what they consider a substandard presentation, and they will see reason for excitement in nearly anything that could possibly change the status quo.

Even if that's true, Bret knocked him on his ass with a punch in front of most of the locker room after Montreal and Vince got over that. Also another thing about the Savage/Steele feud that surprisingly gets forgot about a lot is that George played a role in the finish of the WMIII match.

I don't doubt he saved his money. However, the idea that he didn't come back all these years because he saved well rings hollow since there were stories not that long ago that Lanny was trying to play the middleman in an attempt to have WWE do something with Savage.

There seems to be two somewhat differing stories on why Savage never came back to wrestling, and neither seem to mention any blackballing by Vince/WWE. Dave and Bryan have mentioned several times already that Savage (like his father before him) was notoriously good with his money and never came back because he didn't need to. Also mentioned was that he was taking care of his parents in their final years and that took up the majority of his time post-wrestling. Dusty (I think it was him) said when Savage made his one off appearance in the early days of TNA and no showed a scheduled PPV appearance it was because he didn't "want people to see me like this" as in old looking. He stated it was like a Howard Hughes situation where he didn't want to be seen in public. Somehow I think there was more to it than what Dave and Bryan think but not as severe as him being an insane recluse.

Hulk's 57, so he was actually older than him.

Whatever happened with that anyway? He was one of the fake Scorpions, but it seemed like the buildup was going to lead to him being the guy. The promos that were supposed to make you think it was going to be the Warrior would have fit for Angel as well (the WE TRAINED IN CALIFORNIAAAAAA......IN EIGHTY-SIIXXXXXX always sticks in my head as all time great Wrestlecrap material).

Having watched CMLL's weekly show I have more random lucha observations: * I read at one point AAA was trying to upgrade their production values to be more like WWE. Right now they come across like 90s WCW when they were taping at Disney. I wasn't expecting them to be matching WWE's production values but right now AAA looks like what an indy with a wealthy money mark would put on TV here. * CMLL on the other hand comes across like early 80s pre Hulkamania WWF with the darkened arena and older-than-old school booking. I know it's tradition but man to 2 out of 3 falls matches plod along after you've watched one fall matches in AAA. * CMLL's women's roster all seem to be graduates of the Mick Foley School of Posterior Development. Sir Mix-a-lot could revitalize his career in Mexico it seems. Goya Kong wrestles exactly like her father in both the good and bad ways. I could almost see WWE signing her just to have someone equal or bigger than Kharma, but there's no way someone like her could work for Vince before it got uncomfortable with the weight jokes. As much as the women's match sucked on this show, it was kind of amazing how any one of them would probably work circles around any of the "divas". * There seems to be a tournament going on with the young guys where they get a legend to be their mentor. Too bad no one in the crowd seemed to give two shits until the mentors (Blue Panther and Negro Casas) got involved. I get what they're trying to do with getting young guys over and possibly find a new Mistico, but it was like watching their equivalent of two green FCW guys go at it.

Comcast finally added a hispanic tier in my area so I can watch all the lucha I can stand. It was interesting when I watched AAA for the first time in a couple of years and having two things stand out: 1. The ring babes hold banners with the AAA logo and Pena's face on them. I can only imagine WWE will do the same when Vince dies. 2. Dr. Wagner Jr's promos sound like what Road Warrior Hawk would sound like if he spoke Spanish.

Marty seems to believe he got thrown under the bus by Shawn based on what he's said in interviews but then that usually depends on if he's on good terms with WWE at the point he's speaking.

That reminds me of Kevin Cook's famous post about HBK and HHH's history as the longest lasting gay couple in wrestling history.

Wasn't it because she expected them to cut ties with Bubba over his comments (or at least do something about it) but of course nothing happened because he's a Friend of Hogan and untouchable?

The Bubba incident is kind of being underplayed here, she didn't snap on him for no reason. As I recall he said some really insensitive shit about assisting Haiti after their disaster and she confronted him about it and either yelled at him or beat the shit out of him depending on who tells the story.

WWE needs to do some serious training with guys to show them the difference between "I'm pissed" and "I have to poop" when it comes to facial expressions. This. It seems everyone they call up from developmental is in serious need of a higher fiber diet. You'd think a company that employs William Regal wouldn't have that problem, but you'd be wrong. Also someone mentioned big Zeke in reference to guys not using steroids anymore, it seems like he's been getting smaller a little bit each week. Wasn't it mentioned a while back that guys in developmental use steroids/HGH to get the bodies that get them noticed by WWE officials, but then when they get called up and have to follow stricter Wellness rules they suddenly lose their WWE builds. Mason Ryan seems particularly ridiculous, not only does he seem to be bypassing Wellness rules, he's absolutely terrible. He can't seem to do even basic moves in the ring without looking worse than the most clueless Tough Enough trainee.