Robert S

Same for me in Austria, but then looking at the current top 100 singles, I barely know any of the artists. But I don't think I even want to know them, to be perfectly honest.

The thing with Heyman that always gets me is that he was 5 years younger than me right now when ECW went under (and Cornette was an additional year younger when SMW closed shop).

Why did I expect the "good cause" to be something like America First Action?

Hmm... I thought that spot looked wonky, but when I did a quick rewind I only looked at Ripley (as (1) she is taller and (2) not as athletic). Somehow Corey Graves got a chuckle out of me with the "she should have turned left at Albuquerque" line when Bugs Bad Bunny went to the top rope. But then there was some real bad announcing tonight. Can we please finally cancel Lawler? His stuff was cringeworthy 20 years ago, but now? Jeez. I also laughed at the line that Danielson is reaching the end of the road while Riddle has his whole career in front of him. Riddle is 35, not 20. And somehow in the women's Rumble, of the two spots where someone nearly got injured (Ripley dumping Dakota Kai head first on the ring apron and Ember Moon shoot dropkicking Naomi into the face) neither involved Nia Jax nor Charlotte. Oh, and I counted to 15 (on the second ref) until Reigns somehow feigned standing up (they either should have done a dry-run or not have trusted Heyman being a handyman). Also shouldn't blatantly attacking a referee be a suspension or something like that?

It's never a good sign for your roster depth when you have to put three people twice on the poster.

That's some weird back-ass booking, after two wild streetfights designed as feud enders, they did a straight wrestling match (which still contained Foley doing a Nestea Plunge - though at least on the mat he overshoots in hits the guardrail with his head).

Weird match in that Ric Flair goes to the top rope twice and both times actually hits a move (the first time a tomahawk chop) instead of getting slammed down. Regarding the "Randy Peterson" thing: the worst is that nobody clued in Buffer about his error (it looked a bit like he had problems reading the name from a handwritten card) and he called im Peterson again in the main event.

On cagematch, I got some sort of SSL certificate error (to be honest, I did not check in detail what, I just closed the tab, when I retried a couple of hours later, the error was gone), other sites did not show any issues.

More like 6 TB (internal or external) going by current European prizes. For a couple of years I am thinking about setting up a NAS at home, the problem are mainly logistics (where to put that and how get the network cable there - I don't want that noise in the room where my PC and TV are located).

If they screw me, I'll probably say screw them and will use something that is synonymous to flood.

I would be shocked if they would not almost stop any investment (maintenance) on their back- and frontend, i.e. sooner or later the apps will be completely broken. I.e. us international users will pay more to get a broken product.

Yes, it took me until Xavier Woods or whatever to realize that nowadays people mean the term "playing video games" literally.

His grandfather and his uncle were literally making money, so it runs in the family.

classic chicken/egg problem

DSF showed the 97 WWF Raw, Shotgun and Superstars tapings from Berlin (with the Bulldog vs. Owen Hart European Championship tournament final) as a single show (I think before any of it even aired in the US). In the same year, there was a WCW house show that first aired on a pay-TV platform related to DSF (I think to kick-off that channel) and I guess with some delay also on DSF itself (maybe on New Year's Eve, where they usually aired PPV's for 6 hours straight starting at midnight). I think 97 was also the year where DSF stopped showing WCW PPVs (and moving them to the pay-TV platform), though Souled Out definitely still was on free TV.

It's kinda similar in the German speaking market. There was a WWF boom from 92 to let's say 96, especially in 94 and 95. In 94 alone, they ran 46 shows in Germany, Switzerland and Austria doing very good business. When domestic business picked up again, they seemingly did not even care when they lost TV in early 98. When they got back on TV by the end of that year, it was on a fringe station in a death-slot (though that was not solely WWF's fault; the station that they were on from 93 to summer of 95 tried to move programming from 10 pm to Sunday afternoon as they were doing such good ratings especially with kids and teenagers, that station almost got its license removed for that so most later TV station were very careful about when to air wrestling, even though 9 pm would have been perfectly fine according to all rules). It took them forever to get back to a level, where running shows became profitable again. Regarding ECW in German: do you remember the TV station? The only ECW on German free-TV that I remember was as part of a 1 h show (on DSF), that was usually 1/4 h new WCW, 1/4 h old WCW, 1/4 h ECW and 1/4 h SMW or something similar (I think they even had a AAA match or two there). That would have been ca. in 98 and 99. Initially, that show included some WWF as well, which apparently was the reason for WWF cancelling their contract with DSF (for two years, from early 96 to early 98, WCW and WWF were on the same free TV station, as insane as that sounds considering that was the time of the Monday Night Wars).

Sounds more like a Funkasaurus gimmick.

In sports they actually often do. Just some very common examples from football (the real one): - a contract last x years, but the club and/or the played has the option to extend the contract by a year or two at the end of the initial period - a contract is cancelled if a player does not play x number of games within a season (often used by clubs to be able to get rid of players suspected to be injury prone or when hiring players where they are not 100% sure about their quality) - a player can leave at any time (well, usually there are two windows per year) if he gets an offer from a club playing in a higher or better league or similar (or maybe getting an offer from a club that offers him a salary of at least x) - a player can leave if he finds a club willing to pay a fixed sum The third example could actually be how it might be for Jay: he might be able to get out of this contract if he gets an offer from WWE (maybe with some side conditions like he can only do that after 3 years of his contract are over). I mean I agree with you, most likely the story itself is not true or White was stretching the truth, just saying.

I would assume that a seven year deal would have some kind of cancellation clause.

Considering his appearence at Survivor Series, are we sure that Vince is not already a robot-mummy controlled by Triple H and Stephanie?

That was for the 97 thing, but I think they planned something similar in 2000 (I suppose with a New Blood TV show, or maybe one show for Bischoff and one for Russo).

I recently read the following Cornette quote: Anyone wager a guess from when this comment is?

Mid 90ies WWF? Have you seen the War Raiders?

I am too lazy to look it up, but wasn't the initial idea to do some roster split like WWE eventually did? I know that was already the plan for Starrcade 97 (the Bischoff vs. Zbyszko match) but I think they wanted to do something similar in 2000.