C.S.

The way @SteveJRogers is carrying on, he acts like he gave Arn his shield, and Arn gave it up and allowed some big-eared rando to take up the mantle.

Even his book was kayfabe. As for why now, the answer is obvious: $$$ AEW is still an unproven startup company (albeit a very successful one that is likely to be around for years to come), so Arn probably realizes has to make money in as many different ways as possible to secure a nest egg for himself and his family. If he was anything like Flair, he spent every dime he ever made living in the Horsemen lifestyle in the '80s.

No clue why such a big deal is being made of Arn not popping up as a talking head on future Network specials when he rarely did that while he was in the company.

The Bellas were forced to cut their speech to 3-5 minutes. #GiveBellasAChance No inductors or induction speeches either. Instead of a pointlessly bloated 2020-21 HOF with double the honorees for no reason whatsoever, they should've just kept last year's class and been done with it. Not like it has to be annual anyway - there was no one for years after Andre. This kind of sucks.

Good idea, WWE... Let's spoil who's winning the Smackdown Title Match! Careful, any shitty name used in ROH is automatically sacrosanct to some folks here. Don't mention how awful he looks in basketball shorts either, because that's "fat-shaming" (even though it isn't).

I'm looking forward to finally checking out Christian's big debut match this weekend. To no one's surprise, it scored huge ratings. What's up with Pac? Who knows. This has to be one of the "big signings" Tony Khan regrets the most - unless Khan got Pac for a bargain price, like one of those memes with pictures of wrestlers where you have $15 to spend and can blow $7 apiece on two main eventers and get Pac for the remaining $1.

#ForbiddenDoor

Glad he has a job on a "televised" wrestling program in 2021. Still, it doesn't sound like he fits at all with sex pest Tyrus. So random! You didn't mention Dave Marquez anywhere in your recap, so I did a little googling... David Marquez Reveals He Will Not Be Returning To Work On NWA Power Like Dave Lagana, Marquez seemed like a monstrously dumb person - I remember him defending the Cornette "starvation joke" on Twitter. Still, lack of brains and common sense aside, he was pretty good at his job. Apparently he was with the NWA for 24 years, so this has to sting. I wonder what happened.

Morrison and Monet does have a nice ring to it. Except, Sasha Banks definitely picked her own name. She gave them a long list of handpicked names. Sasha was the first name of one and Banks was the last name of another, and someone liked the idea of those two names together. Adam Rose also came up with his own list of names and gimmicks after the the brutally bad Leo Kruger name and gimmick failed.

How does SRS make up news? He seems like one of the more credible guys to me. Did I miss some bad reports or something? You're not confusing him with Ryan Satin, by any chance, are you?

For as much shit as the NXT random name generator gets, and rightfully so, are we really pretending Taya Valkyrie was an awesome name or something? To me, it's no better or worse than Franky Monet. Neither name is great shakes IMO.

Any idea what happened here? Good riddance though. Edit: He apparently posted this whopper before he deleted his account. What a delusional, infuriating, little piece of shit.

Oh yeah, fair enough. But isn't there a special that makes it $2 a month (or something like that) until the archive is complete? WrestleMania for the price of a couple of Whoppers seems like a fair deal - even if the show itself doesn't particularly interest you. BTW, if you're an Xfinity cable subscriber (not just internet), you can get Peacock for free.

These are the incompetent WWE docs we're talking about. One was already part of a massive lawsuit (CM Punk). Why would WWE want to cost Charlotte a Mania spot? Because they're mad at Andrade? Sure, they can probably be that petty, but it really feels like a stretch to me.

That only works when titles aren't as watered down and devalued as they've become.

It will probably end up being Asuka vs. Charlotte vs. Rhea at Mania - hardly the end of civilization as we know it. Unlike Charlotte being shoehorned into Becky vs. Ronda, her inclusion actually enhances this match because of her Mania history with both. I'm cool with it. Asuka vs. Rhea is not a compelling match - no story, no build, feels thrown together at the last minute (because it was) - nothing except good rasslin', which never means a damn thing in a vacuum. It needs Charlotte as the connecting tissue.

Horrifying thought I can't keep to myself: At some point, a couple of these guys will end up in NXT because that's the way the cookie crumbles in wrestling. Looking forward to GG Kool (Darby Allin) or Mack McKay (Jungle Boy)? (How are my "Random NXT Name Generator" skillz?)

Peacock was fine for Fastlane - a thousand times better than early WWE Network was with its constant glitches (both WrestleMania and especially NXT Arrival were rough that first year) - so don't skip Mania because of that. Skip it only if you're more excited for these IWTV shows and would rather prioritize those.

Cable subscribers get the $5 plan with ads for free. I think it's an extra $5 if you want to upgrade to the one without ads.

That's surprising. He doesn't seem like a bad looking guy. He's probably in the upper-echelon of what would be considered a "pretty boy" in wrestling. Granted, that's graded on a curve as it is - "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton, Ricky Morton, etc.

I know you're joking and mocking WWE, and rightfully so, but I wouldn't have minded a StevIe Richards reign when he was the leader of the RTC. I've always felt Richards was such an underrated and underutilized talent. So much range.

Aside from Fastlane (which had no ads live except for the ones WWE had already built in), I've only watched The Broken Skull Sessions with Randy Orton so far. Other than the show not really being formatted for ad breaks, it was fine. Maybe 5-6 ads, about 30-60 seconds each - not bad at all. Edit: Same for the Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster revivals, except there are obviously going to be less ads in a 24-minute episode than there would be in a two-hour Broken Skull Sessions, and those shows are formatted specifically to take ad breaks into account.

Sad news. Hoping for the best. There's a bizarre rumor that Vince thinks Edge looks old, and was looking older every week, hence the addition of Bryan.

Interesting statistic. So that recent women's main event, which Tony and the EVPs presumably hoped would bring in more women's viewers, probably ended up driving them away with all the bloodshed. There was even a shirt put out afterward of a bleeding Baker, which my friend promptly bought for himself, but the appeal is completely lost on me. I'll probably "dare" him to wear it the next time we meet (post-pandemic). Then Britt Baker complained to Meltzer that he didn't give the match five stars (I'm surprised that wasn't brought up here, or maybe I missed it - but modern wrestlers caring so much about one man's arbitrary ratings is another thread in itself).

My guess is this is all driven by the talent themselves - Bray and Alexa - because there's no way senior citizens Vince and Bruce are coming up with this stuff.