NintendoLogic

That idiot clearly has no idea how many times Cornette was arrested or sued for using his racket on rail jumpers. Also, somebody better have read MJF the riot act for this. Fans charging the ring isn't something you can even hint at encouraging.

The current Observer has more details on Funk's condition. Physically, he's been in more or less constant pain ever since he defied doctor's orders to appear on a Tommy Dreamer show fresh off hernia surgery. Mentally, the good news is that he's in nowhere near as bad shape as Red Bastien and Nick Bockwinkel were at the end of their lives. However, he was interviewed for the Mick Foley A&E biography, and the fact that none of the footage was used is not a good sign.

Setting aside the question of whether ECW should be considered a model worthy of emulation, RVD and Lawler were actual wrestlers and their promos led to actual wrestling matches. The Lambert segment isn't going to lead to anything unless they're planning on using him as a heel manager, which seems highly unlikely. It was just an attempt to take potshots at critics. They might as well brought in a Cornette impersonator to cut that promo.

Also, it's quite fitting that a fan tried to jump the ring on the 25th anniversary of BATB 1996.

I'm a bit surprised to see people so high on Lambert. His delivery was great, but the content was terrible. I don't think there's ever a good reason to bring a guy on your show to talk about how much your product sucks, especially when he's an obvious stand-in for your most vocal critic. It only makes you look thin-skinned and insecure.

That doesn't sound right to me. Implied consent means the act of operating a motor vehicle gives consent to a submit to a BAC test after a DUI arrest. There is no requirement to submit to a field sobriety test, but they should have given him a breathalyzer test at the police station. If he refused that (even a conditional refusal like asking for a lawyer to be present), his license should have been automatically suspended. All I can think of is that maybe they thought the dashcam footage was damning enough. Or maybe his lawyer was able to convince the jury that his arrest wasn't lawful because the officer didn't have probable cause to pull him over. That's how Alex Riley beat a DUI charge in 2011.

So Zelina Vega is following the time-honored tradition of currying favor with management by picking a fight with THE SHEETZ. She also deleted her tweet about unionization. It'd be one thing if she pulled a Jesse Ventura and decided it wasn't a hill worth dying on if no one else was going to stand up for their rights (and Ventura at least got his SAG card first). But seeing her go full corporate simp is pretty disappointing.

Don Muraco said on his podcast that Funk is suffering from dementia and has been moved to an assisted living facility. Terrible news if true.

Rewatching HBK/Mankind reminded me of how much I hate it when wrestlers apply the figure four to the wrong leg. The idea behind the hold is that you're putting pressure on the straight leg with the bent one, but people treat it like the bent leg is the one being impacted. That battle was lost ages ago, though.

I'm probably abnormally high on the Cena match at Summerslam 2007. Beyond that, though...yeesh. There's a famous quote from Moneyball: "If he's a good hitter, why doesn't he hit good?" That's Orton in a nutshell. His swing is mechanically perfect, but his WAR is barely above replacement level. If you made a list of the top 100 WWE matches of the 21st century, how many Orton matches would be on it? Three? It almost certainly wouldn't be double digits. You'd expect way more from a guy who's been a pushed main eventer for two decades at a time when WWE has never been more loaded with talent and in-ring performance has never been more important. It'd be one thing if he rarely delivered a classic but could always be counted on to produce at a certain level, but he's also responsible for a fair number of outright stink bombs. Having bad matches with Bray Wyatt isn't something I'd hold against someone. What I will hold against him is having matches that are bad even by Bray Wyatt standards. As for Ultimo, he at least got over in multiple promotions and deserves some credit as an innovator.

The problem with that scenario is that the WWF was actually serious about steroid testing in 1993 (or at least more serious than they had ever been before or since) and Patriot wouldn't have looked nearly as impressive off the gas. Also, I can't see Vince at that time giving a significant push to a masked wrestler. I mean, he wanted El Hijo del Santo to unmask, for chrissakes.

I don't think you're quite doing justice to his argument. He's saying that accuracy is impossible because things like importance and influence are nebulous and unquantifiable. His secondary point is that a poll of critics has the effect of establishing a canon, and a canon dominated by classic rock seems wrong in a world where rock and roll is increasingly on the fringes of popular culture (remember when Billie Eilish revealed she had never heard of Van Halen?). There's a potentially interesting parallel between that idea and the question of how relevant traditionally revered territory guys are to modern wrestling. Someone like Ric Flair will always have strong backing, but I can easily see guys like Harley Race and Ted DiBiase taking a massive hit. But the important thing to remember is that this isn't a high-profile critical undertaking. To the extent that a wrestling canon exists, this project's impact on it will be negligible at best, so strategic voting for the purpose of sending a message is unlikely to accomplish much if at all. Also, as has been noted, the real value is in the discussion of candidates rather than the actual list. Assigning too much importance to the final outcome is probably the biggest mistake someone can make.

Speaking of Aliyah, she's been at the PC since 2015. And there are guys like Kona Reeves who have been there even longer. Needless to say, it should not take six fucking years to learn how to be a pro wrestler. If they still haven't progressed to where they need to be, cut them loose or at least put them in a position where they can sink or swim. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground, though. Either you get called up way before you're ready or you rot in NXT for eternity.

Xia looked like she was trying to knock a fastball into the upper deck. There's no way you can protect your opponent swinging wildly like that. If you don't know how to pull your kicks, don't aim them at someone's head. On that note, there's no excuse for not putting your hands up whenever a live kick comes anywhere near your head. Especially if it's out of some misguided commitment to "realism." One, everybody already knows it's fake so you're not fooling anybody. Two, people do in fact put their hands up in real fights.

Hair nets just make it easier for sex traffickers to target children.

Here's a map of the old territory system. It should be noted that the boundaries were fluid and not universally agreed upon. For example, Sheik considered Ohio part of his territory when GCW started running shows there. He retaliated by appearing for the opposition group in Georgia headed by Jim Wilson and Thunderbolt Patterson and was suspended from the NWA as a result. By the way, Toronto was actually a Crockett town in the late 70s and early 80s. By the mid-70s, Sheik had killed the town to the point where even Sammartino title defenses didn't draw. It was Flair and Steamboat who turned things around. In 1984, Jim Crockett became convinced that Jack Tunney was planning on switching his allegiance to the WWF. He thus stopped sending top talent to Toronto and gave them guys like Jimmy Valiant and Paul Jones instead. Business fell to the point where Tunney had no choice but to join up with Vince, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe he was scouting comedy writers to try to replace the chick who got fired for talking about how she had no idea who Bobby Lashley was on a podcast.

Three-way matches are probably the only thing ECW did better than any other promotion. As far as I'm concerned, multi-man matches are only acceptable if they're done elimination style. We all know Tony Khan is an ECW mark, so he should really consider bringing back three way dances in AEW.

The Stairway to Hell match might be the closest.

The main instance of Kobashi crying that people complain about seems to be from the 1997 Carny match against Akiyama. Maybe I've become inured to that sort of thing due to the past decade of WWE Shocked Face, but it didn't bother me. More importantly, I don't see how it can be interpreted as Kobashi still working as the underdog. On the contrary, he was expressing frustration over being unable to put his lower-ranked opponent away. At that stage of his career, he was on his way to being The Man but not quite there yet, and it was natural for his insecurity to boil over on occasion. It's like, how is he supposed to knock off Misawa and Kawada if he's having this much trouble with Akiyama? Criticizing Kobashi for failing to evolve his character as he moved up the card may have been viable in the late 90s, but his run as GHC champion rendered those criticisms obsolete.

The irony is that Sasha stans are perhaps the most insane fandom on Earth when it comes to brigading and trying to cancel people for offenses both real and imagined. So much so that Bix treated her like Voldemort to avoid drawing their attention when commenting on her.

I don't know where you got this from, but Hokuto started three years before Kobashi.

He put over the superhero gimmick for nothing.

In addition to what @strobogo said, he was washed up as a worker by his mid-30s. That's a time when a lot of all-time greats are really hitting their stride. His 86-93 was indeed awesome, but unless you think it belongs in the conversation for greatest seven-year run of any wrestler in history, it's hard not to view his overall career as a bit of a letdown.

If only WWE had some kind of developmental system where wrestlers could work on their craft and be evaluated on how good they look without the aid of smoke and mirrors.