NintendoLogic

I absolutely do not want to see Vickie in an on-screen role. Her work as a manager in WWE was pretty terrible, and she's nowhere near a good enough promo to serve as a pure mouthpiece. She's most effective as a heel authority figure, which is the last thing AEW needs.

Blindfold matches are always terrible, but even that would be a million times better than a fucking match where the goal is to gouge your opponent's eye out. I mean, seriously. How do the police not shut that down immediately? There's no way that can be legal even in the cartoon world of pro wrestling.

I don't remember any details about the fight, I'm afraid. I just remember Kawada walking around a Zelda-esque top-down overworld map before entering a room that happened to be the laundry room Kerry and I were in.

An eye for an eye match sounds like something FMW would have done. They weren't kidding about Extreme Rules being The Horror Show.

I've had a few wrestling-related dreams myself. The other night, I dreamt that Kerry Von Erich and I put a Labrador retriever in a washing machine to clean it off. Soon after, I realized I'd made a horrible mistake because the dog would probably drown. Then Toshiaki Kawada showed up and they had a fight.

In a lot of territories, they couldn't plan out matches to any real degree even if they wanted to because babyfaces and heels couldn't be seen in public together and had separate dressing rooms. There were times when the first time a wrestler saw his opponent in person was when they were introduced in the ring.

Case in point:

Laying out matches beforehand has apparently been standard practice for a while in Mexico. Konnan's Observer HOF bio mentions that his match with Flair at Bash at the Beach 1996 was the first of his career that was called entirely in the ring.

The median age of WWE's viewers has been over 50 for the past several years, so it might be a good idea to rethink the vest-with-cool-logo strategy for bringing in the little Jimmies. Even if Roman's current vest isn't as tactical as the one he wore in the Shield, it's still more protection than anyone else on the roster wears. It sets him apart in a bad way because it makes it seem like he has an unfair advantage. That was fine when he was a heel enforcer for the Authority, but it's a bad look for a top babyface.

Oh, come on. This is a message board. There's no need to preface everything with "in my opinion." That should be a given.

He could always go for the singlet/pants combo like Sgt. Slaughter and the Bushwhackers.

The story as I understand it is that DDP gave Undertaker a script for their match at Summerslam and Taker threw it away without even looking at it. DDP already had heat for not taking flat back bumps to feed babyface comebacks, and that incident solidified him as a WCW guy who didn't know how to work in the eyes of the office.

If you watch Savage/Steamboat, it may have been meticulously planned out and rehearsed beforehand, but there were no sequences that were too complicated to have been called on the fly. That's the key for me. Plan it out if you must, but don't choreograph it to such a degree that you lose the feeling of spontaneity.

Yeah, I don't get the vitriol toward this @SmoothS fella at all. He may be out of step with the board consensus in some ways, but he hasn't tried to derail any threads or engaged in personal attacks. Let's not go back to the days of people being reluctant to express opinions out of fear of being piled on and shouted down.

Are they trying to set up a feud with Rob Liefeld? Awful.

I won't say this gimmick is completely dead on arrival because New Japan has more than earned the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't look promising.

Samoa Joe is apparently retired. On a somewhat related note, word on the street is that Kairi Sane's status with the company is "complicated" and she could be transitioning to a non-wrestling role. Thanks a lot, Nia and Charlotte.

I recall him being somewhat heelish in his tag match with Iizuka against the Steiners in WCW, but that's all that comes to mind off the top of my head.

Update: 121. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue/Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW, 6/3/93) On the whole, I find the Misawa/Kawada six-mans to be rather underwhelming. Kawada wasn't quite as strong as Jumbo in kayfabe, so Taue had to carry more of the load for his side and move beyond being the designated punching bag. However, that meant a Kawada/Taue/Fuchi team would have no real kayfabe weaknesses. As a result, the third slot was usually filled by Ogawa, which was a significant step down. Ogawa's best work is as a weasel who catches opponents off-guard with roll-ups and eye pokes, which doesn't really lend itself to high-end trios action as well as Fuchi the master torturer. With all that said, this is easily the best post-Jumbo All Japan six-man in my book thanks to a world-class FIP performance from Kikuchi and Ogawa mostly staying out of the way. I really liked how they demonstrated that Ogawa and especially Kikuchi were in way over their heads. Kikuchi treats Taue like he's Andre the Giant, being unable to knock him off his feet or execute even basic suplexes and hiptosses. Again, the obvious highlight of the match is the horrific beatdown on Kikuchi. If someone were to claim that it was on par with the one in the Can-Ams match, I wouldn't argue the point. In addition to his selling, what makes him such a great FIP is the way he combines absorbing Japanese-style offense with American-style hope spots. Misawa has an awesome hot tag, and there are some fantastic exchanges between Kawada and Kobashi down the stretch. Kikuchi and Ogawa exchanging nearfalls isn't the ideal finishing run, but it doesn't go long enough to be truly offensive. It helps that much the attention goes toward Kobashi and Taue brawling on the outside. ****1/2

Shutting it down seems like the most likely scenario. The brand is a money pit and they've accomplished their goal of killing the UK scene, so it had long outlived its usefulness even without all the recent allegations. Also, it matches Vince's modus operandi, as the XFL's employees were notified that the league was suspending operations via conference call. That does leave the question of what to do with WALTER since he's made it clear that he has no desire to relocate to the US.

Who's excited for more CONTRACT SIGNINGS~!?! I know I am!

I have the Hansen book, and he discusses his refusal to drop the AWA title in it. The funny thing is, his telling of the story is actually less flattering to him than the prevailing version. The way it's usually told is that he walked out with the belt because he thought Verne was trying to double-cross Baba, who had paid for the rights to promote Hansen as AWA champion and had booked title defenses in Japan. The way Hansen tells it, he simply told Verne that he wasn't ready to drop the belt because he hadn't had a chance to make money with it. He also took umbrage at the fact that Verne only notified him of the planned title change in the locker room the night of the show, but he didn't make that out to be a deciding factor.

"Karen" has become a catch-all term for any instance of entitled behavior or hostility to rules that inconvenience them. A Corona Karen, then, is someone who resents having to wear a mask in public and practice social distancing. These days, "Chad" is used mainly by incels to refer to the kind of guy (tall, handsome, muscular) they imagine is monopolizing the sexual marketplace. In their warped minds, the vast majority of women only have sex with Chads.

https://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2020-06-29/article/double-contract-signing-preview Christ, how many contract signings is WWE going to do this year? It sucks that their moral bankruptcy makes it harder to laugh at their creative bankruptcy.

So it turns out that Low Ki is quite the dumbass.