NintendoLogic

Does Okada really have an outsized ego? The fact that he stuck around to fulfill his advertised dates after his contract expired would suggest otherwise. And his big wins this year were against Danielson (outsider), Ospreay (also on the way out), and Tanahashi (can barely walk these days), so it's not like he was putting himself over at the expense of the company's future.

Why are you bummed about Rock/Roman not happening? You can't possibly think the match would be any good from an in-ring standpoint, and an accolade like "biggest match of all time" doesn't really mean anything unless you're there to witness it in person or you own a significant amount of TKO stock.

It's not like Sting is that great a ring name either if we're being honest. Especially when you remember that Gordon Sumner was one of the most popular musicians in the world when Steve Borden first became a star. It'd be like if a current female wrestler called herself Adele.

That's not a spoiler, that's a prediction.

It's been said that of the McMahons, Linda and Shane were more pleasant to work for while Vince and Stephanie motivated by fear and inspired loyalty to little beyond a paycheck. It turns out loyalty is an important quality for your associates to possess when you're operating a criminal enterprise. Otherwise, they'll rat you out as soon as they feel the heat.

Reagan had been politically active for years prior to seeking the governorship. In addition to serving as president of the SAG, he worked for General Electric as a goodwill ambassador and delivered a nationally televised speech on behalf of Goldwater in 1964. It was the latter that made him a nationally prominent political figure.

It's quite ironic. When Cody promised to never again challenge for the world title in AEW, he evidently was counting on an outpouring of fan support that would allow him to renege on the stipulation. That obviously never materialized, which seemed to mark the beginning of his estrangement from AEW as a whole. In WWE, he's become the beneficiary of a groundswell of organic fan support that nobody saw coming. It's also uncanny how a grassroots fan revolt forces WWE to alter its Mania plans at every tenth iteration. Lex Luger was leapfrogged by Bret Hart at 10, as was Batista by Daniel Bryan at 30. Chris Benoit didn't really leapfrog anybody at 20, but like Bret and Bryan, he was a longtime hardcore fan favorite who hardly fit the mold of a typical WWE main eventer. And he was placed in the main event largely for the visual of him and Eddie Guerrero embracing at the end, which became possible after Eddie had gotten so organically over the company had no choice but to make him Smackdown champion. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

HHH told the story himself in his book Making the Game. As he tells it, Dan Marino was backstage one night and he had no idea who he was.

According to the Observer subscriber exclusive, Ogawa was tired of being overruled on booking and business decisions and had given his notice but Bushiroad decided to get ahead of the story and fired him. That seems like a great way to burn bridges with much of the talent right as their contracts are about to expire as Ogawa gave most of them their career breaks. Could he be AEW-bound? The Observer says he isn't going to WWE and the five-year non-compete that was part of the sale to Bushiroad would seem to preclude going to another Japanese promotion.

What the fuck is going on

I doubt Roman would have to do any heavy lifting to make Dwayne look OK. Between the staring contests in the opening minutes, the mid-match Bond villain monologues, and the power naps while half the world runs in, just about any ambulatory human being is physically capable of working a Roman Reigns match. As for the backlash, this is pure speculation on my part, but I think it comes down to a couple of things. One, the stars of the past aren't nearly as appealing when the current product is as hot as it is. Fans are genuinely into the stars of today and don't want to see part-timers steal their thunder. Two, I suspect fatigue is starting to set in for Roman's title reign and people are ready for it to finally be over. A detour with The Rock means the finish line remains out of sight.

The feds searched Vince's phone last summer, so it should be obvious who has plausible deniability and who doesn't. Anyone he exchanged texts with over the past few years has to be sweating bullets.

I saw the segment where Bayley challenged Iyo. Between recognizing that Damage CTRL was going to turn on her and having a weapon ready when things went sideways, Bayley has to be the smartest babyface in WWE history.

Sounds more like Moxley.

Keep in mind that sex trafficking is a serious felony, so everyone named in Grant's lawsuit could potentially be facing criminal liability. And the feds have already raided Vince, so who knows what they currently have on him and his accomplices. In other words, we might be seeing a classic Gambino-style roll-up. A high-ranking executive who used his position to take advantage of women in his employ for decades trying to paint himself as a victim will be a tough sell to say the least, but as much of a scumbag as Laurinaitis is, he's about a thousandth as reprehensible as Vince. If Johnny Ace getting off scot-free is the cost of taking the big man down for good, so be it.

As I recall, Graves was the de facto play-by-play man for Raw when they had Adnan Virk in the official role and he was in way over his head. So he has some experience in the role.

This was somehow even worse than brother @sek69 made it sound.

As is usually the case in wrestling, the key is to stand out. Being the guy in all black can work if everyone else is peacocking, but it can't hurt to add some color to your wardrobe when everyone else is dark and drab. Seth Rollins has shown that dressing like a clown is the easiest way to fool people into thinking you have charisma. Generally speaking, though, I like when wrestlers have a signature color scheme (as in two or three colors, not the whole rainbow) that serves as the basis for all their ring gear.

I do think people make too big a deal out of a Satanist named Buddy as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world. Is it really that much more ridiculous than Kevin Sullivan, the Satanist with a Southie accent? "The gaahdian of the golden spike..."

What are Danielson's thoughts on this? For that matter, what did he know? Not only is Laurinaitis his father-in-law, he has described Vince as someone he loves and was part of the WWE creative team.

The broader truth of Malakai not wanting to do jobs isn't BS at all. That's a reasonable conclusion when the elimination cage match on Collision had escape rules, which no other AEW cage match has had, along with the fact that he wrestled zero singles matches in 2023 and thus always had a partner who could eat the pin. Roman Reigns has been pinned more the last two years than Malakai has, for Pete's sake.

I don't know. When you have someone like Malakai who flat-out refuses to do jobs and regularly goes into business for himself on promos, burying them six feet under seems like an appropriate response. Hit the bricks if you don't want to be a team player.

Brody's known to be tight with Punk. Is there any chance he could jump?

Psychiatrists would have a field day picking apart the psychosexual subtext of so much past WWE TV. Vince's childhood by all accounts was fucked-up beyond belief and the trauma it inflicted frequently manifested itself in the product he put out. That doesn't excuse or mitigate his crimes by any means, but it does provide something of an explanation.

What more could the media have done? The more you press someone on an uncomfortable issue, the likelier they are to stonewall. They gave HHH enough rope to hang himself with and that's exactly what he did. Not having a script ready to go when that question came up is too brain-dead for words. Saying you haven't read a lawsuit that implicates multiple WWE executives in aiding and abetting sex trafficking is even more brain-dead. And if that actually was the script, whoever prepared it for him should have been fired on the spot. Yet another example of how the smartest people in wrestling are morons by just about any other standard.