NintendoLogic

It could just be that HHH's heart attack gave her a new perspective and she decided that eating, sleeping, and breathing WWE the way her father does isn't the way to go.

May 19th...it's happening again...

I have to say I'm quite surprised. I figured the pent-up demand from being the first big UK show in 30 years would push it over the top.

Maybe now we'll get a proper payoff to Lana getting put through tables week after week. At the very least, I expect a callback to the "my hole" spot.

This discussion has led me to imagine a Father Ted-like scenario where someone walks in on Carter doing a Hitler impression while shaving and all of a sudden everyone is like "I hear you're a racist now, Carter." That'd certainly be way funnier than what actually happened. But hey, at least the guy is being backed up by the premier Jewish wrestler.

I remember liking the matches from the 2016 Dolph/Miz feud, particularly the first one, at least as much as any MJF match I've seen, so I might give Miz a slight edge on peak vs. peak. On the other hand, I can confidently predict that if MJF were to feud with Bryan Danielson, the end result would not be having to turn Bryan heel because the feud had killed his heat as a babyface.

Remember when a bunch of you insisted that SRS had to be talking out of his ass when he reported Sasha pitched a fit backstage over having to drop the tag belts at Mania?

He suffered from brain bleeding due to a burst capillary when the Nexus beat him up. And Jake Roberts implied a while back that he suffered lingering issues from the DDT on the concrete. If anything, that makes putting him in a match an even worse idea.

The current Observer notes that the industry isn't nearly as mobbed-up as it was in the past since the biggest promotions are backed by publicly traded companies that can't afford to run the risk of yakuza involvement. As for Ibushi, I think it might be at least partially be a situation similar to Eddie Guerrero in 2004 where his title reign was largely a flop due to factors beyond his control and he cracked under the pressure.

Graphic design is my passion:

Roman was the only wrestler at WM37 who had serious heel heat. By the way, it's worth remembering that Edge was legitimately the most over babyface at that Mania, even getting cheered over Bryan. A year later, he's a heel who gets "we don't care" chants during his promos. Yet another bang-up job by WWE creative.

According to VOW (which apparently somehow has legit Japanese sources), Ibushi has had heat with Kikuchi dating back to 2018 when he thought he was being stiffed on merch money. It also said that Kikuchi has a rep for being a hardass about maintaining kayfabe and things like wrestlers from opposing factions not being seen in public together. In addition, he wants the young and good-looking wrestlers to keep their romantic relationships under wraps to avoid alienating female fans. It'd be one thing if those were the rules across the board, but he apparently enforces them selectively and unfairly.

Ibushi called New Japan a black company, which is a Japanese term for companies that heavily exploit their employees. Keep in mind that it's currently 2 in the morning in Japan. I have a feeling things are going to get really interesting in a few hours.

Dave tweeting that the Usos studied the Young Bucks no doubt caused some heads to explode. Well, Seth uses/used the pedigree as well, so in that case it's an example of the classic WWE trope of insulting someone by using their finisher against them.

So there's a PPV premium live event tonight. I took a glance at the card, and none of the announced matches appeal to me in the slightest. In addition to three (!) Mania rematches, we've got Happy Corbin vs. Madcap Moss, Bobby Lashley vs. Omos, and Drew/RK-Bro vs. Roman/Usos. I'll check out any matches that get significant buzz after the fact, but I won't be watching live. For those of you who are, here you go. By the way, it should be noted that Brock was all over the initial advertising for this show despite never being planned to appear. It shows how far WWE is out of the mainstream consciousness when they can engage in blatant false advertising with no repercussions.

Hangman vs. Switchblade should be the main event of Forbidden Door II. Book it, Tony.

Marty Asami? Yeah, that dude's the shits. He single-handedly ruined the Ishii/ZSJ match I watched a while back by going out of his way to telegraph every single near fall.

Just about everyone seems to agree that Ken Shamrock took a dive against Minoru Suzuki before fighting Dan Severn in UFC because Pancrase didn't want to risk their champion losing to the NWA champion. By the way, the question of where to draw the line between a fixed fight and a worked one has the potential to be a very interesting discussion.

Am I missing something? Are they pronounced differently in English?

I haven't seen the match in question, but I'm genuinely surprised to see a complaint that Jay White does nothing heelish. If nothing else, I've always been impressed by his absolute commitment to being a completely unlikable scumbag. Maybe he wrestles differently when he isn't seconded by Gedo.

In fairness, Jericho has been doing the camera middle finger since at least WK12.

WWE ran a 205 Live tour headlined by Enzo as champion and it bombed at the gate. That was the end of any real attempt to make the division mean anything more than a piss break.

Good sign for AEW. Some folks were worried that with the Warner/Discovery merger the new parent company wouldn't be too keen on wrestling. Guess those fears turned out to be baseless.

And Austin had dropped the Ringmaster gimmick and started going by Stone Cold while Rock was still Flex Kavana in Memphis.