NintendoLogic

More like Drew Brees is the guy since Smackdown had the benefit of the NFL lead-in. At least WWE had the good sense to not try to win over normies and lapsed fans with middle-aged dad bod Jericho. Then again, Kevin Owens isn't much better.

And he still put out the Observer on time this week. The guy's a machine.

Our good friend Parv appears to have been sucked into the intellectual dark web. In his last big run in the PWO territory, he was arguing that WWE wrestlers shouldn't be classified as employees because it might lead to guys like Ted DiBiase Jr. sticking around longer than they would otherwise. Happy holidays, everyone. Here's a Christmas safety tip: if you have a title match that day, keep your head as far away from the steel cage door as possible.

Shouldn't The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever have won this award?

The Experience is currently on hiatus for the holidays. But the Firefly Inferno Match required Cornette's immediate attention, so he offered his thoughts in a YouTube exclusive. For 41 minutes. Buckle up, because it's a doozy.

Remember when people here were claiming that the female audience was down because Roman was out with leukemia? Fun times.

How's our friend Ricochet doing? He's crying on Raw Talk. You know, WWE should probably fire Charly for encouraging him to join an organization dedicated to bringing the company down from within.

Tenryu has to be the ultimate example of a late bloomer. He was pretty actively bad for like the first decade of his career. Then he started working with Choshu and the light bulb seemingly just came on.

I have a feeling they're going to start periodically killing off the Fiend and resurrecting him in a new form as a merchandising ploy. Like destroying Megatron and turning him into Galvatron so there'd be new toys to sell.

In fairness, the champion working tag matches to set up their partner turning on them is a longstanding McMahon family booking tradition.

When The Death of WWE is written, there will be a shot of the Firefly Inferno Match on the cover. Also, everyone should have seen this coming, but:

HHH in a 2009 inteview: All the stars are at a certain level. You can't make someone a star by simply bringing other stars down. That's not how the business works; it's not how it's ever worked. The new stars have to rise on their own. What big star ever laid down for me? It's like being squashed by the Ultimate Warrior and made the curtain call scapegoat gave him PTSD and he spent the rest of his career trying to compensate.

I don't think too many people these days view Brody's conduct in that match as anything but unprofessional. The footage becoming more widespread certainly helped in that regard because it debunked a lot of the urban legends surrounding the match (like Brody was punishing Luger for not selling or Brody had razor blades taped to his fingers and Luger fled the ring in terror because he was afraid Brody was going to cut him up).

Not quite. Luger had signed with Crockett by that point and was on his way out of the territory. As for what went down, I've seen several different explanations. Meltzer has always said that the office wanted Brody to go over since Luger was leaving. But Luger, either on his own or on orders from Crockett, decided that he wasn't going to honor the Time-Honored Tradition and that pissed Brody off. I don't know if I buy that since Luger had already done several jobs to Kevin Sullivan and Bad News Allen by that point in his final days in the territory. Luger has said that Brody told him afterward he couldn't put him over because he was working as a babyface in Texas, which I don't even know how that makes sense. Others have said that Brody was simply trying to teach Luger a lesson about the young guy taking direction from the veteran in the ring. Whatever the reason, just about everyone has said that Brody made it clear he had no personal beef with Luger and it was strictly business.

In case you were wondering how WWE would take losing the rights to the name Cody Rhodes, here you go.

He was a main event-level star pretty much from day one. He challenged Dory Jr. for the NWA heavyweight championship less than two months after his in-ring debut. Less than five months later, in his third match after returning to Japan, he and Baba held the Funks to a time-limit draw in a tag title match.

The greatest thing you'll hear this or possibly any week: the cover version of Hard Times with a Japanese vocalist that Big Bossman used in All Japan.

Two years ago today: Of all the things WWE has done to drive away all but the most committed dead-enders, this is right near the top. When you openly admit the show sucks and then do nothing to make it not suck, of course people are going to stop watching. Then again, we're the authority now, so it must be our fault.

There's usually a noticeable ratings uptick in early January due to the end of Monday Night Football and the build to the Rumble. Also, it's quite possible that Vince hit the panic button and "persuaded" her to come back earlier than planned. What's she going to do, say no? She didn't even say no to using her dead brother in an angle. Hell, nobody in this company says no to anything. Even Randy Orton, the poster child for being rewarded for doing the bare minimum, couldn't bring himself to turn down letting Brock Lesnar elbow him in the head full-force.

Don't worry, help is on the way. Lana being taken out of the TLC tag and replaced by a mystery partner seems like an obvious setup for Charlotte to return. I wouldn't put it past her to try for a Hogan-style power play where she sits out the worst time of the year for ratings and comes back in time to take credit for the turnaround.

I say this without hyperbole: whoever wrote this segment belongs in prison. The only redeeming factor is that Riddle is the one being ruined by this garbage and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

jesus fucking christ

Not liking PAC is the worst @C.S. hot take in my book.

I believe Chavo Guerrero was the first to do what would now be called a moonsault, although it was called a backflip flying body press when he did it. It won the 1986 Observer award for Best Wrestling Maneuver.

When Madison Rayne started on commentary back in like May, I thought she was awful. Like a bad parody of a heel color commentator. I checked out the Grace/Purrazzo iron man match recently, and she's improved greatly. However, the dynamic where Matthews says something idiotic and Madison puts him down doesn't work for me at all. We were talking in the Dynamite thread about how the announcer's role is to put over everything on the show. I don't see how a play-by-play guy who's presented as a clueless putz can be effective in that role.