Robert S

Let's see: - the opener had Teddy Hart refusing catching guys on dives - Ellsworth vs. Matt Riddle was fun for what it was - PCO took way more punishment than a 50-year-old (who is not called Terry Funk) should take, I doubt that the human chest ever should have that colour - the Clusterfuck was exactly that, a HUGE clusterfuck - the Sasuke vs. Janella main event was insane, either plus 10* or -10*; one of the commentators at one point said "Sasuke might be the Late Sasuke now" and he was only halfway joking, at another point Sasuke was going for a spot that he in the end failed setting up, if he went with that spot he might as well be dead now - the show ended with Sasule and Janella doing karaoke singing "It's my Life"

If Cornette ever watches that Clusterfuck thing he will either kill himself or die from heartattack.

So I plan to watch WM live this year. (I live in Austria, so the thin takes place in the middle of the night for me.) To have a chance at staying awake I bought a big bottle of Coke (the soft drink, not the ) and two bags of potato chips. Considering that I am 37 and eat about one bag of chips a year (and even then only in 2-3 sittings) there is a decent chance that this will kill me. But well, let's see how my body reacts if I eat and drink as if I was 10 years younger.

The Bloodsport show was hit-and-miss. Walter vs. Lawlor was the MOTN, followed by the Riddle vs. Suzuki. There were a couple of really bad finishes with the action being called like an MMA fight, i.e. calling a KO directly after the knockdown or a submission immediately after the hold is being applied, which just does not work well in a pro wrestling setting. The Severn vs. Dickinson match had a particullary bad finish, know idea what the plan behind that was. Maybe a spoof on bad MMA refereeing? The show itself was very short, like 1:50 h including a 15 min intermission.

To get into the mood I have been watching the last two Raws (not back-to-back, one last Tuesday and the other tonight). The low-points of the show were the Rousey-Angle vs. Steph-HHH build-up and the Nia Jax stuff. Rousey has an uphill battle in front of her, if she wants to succeed in her pro wrestling career. She is not over, pretty bad at the mic and if she can work in the ring still has to be seen. It was almost sad seeing HHH and Steph pretend that Rousey is hugely over, just because the script said so. Regarding Nia Jax I have no idea how they think that she can work as a babyface. Point 1 she is a monster wrestling an undersized heel, which is quite hard to get it working. Point 2 her screeching and her temper tantrums make her look like a heel anyway. I mean nobody considered Christian 2002 a babyface, did they?

And the shows are up. That's basically the Watts era (though it lasted a bit longer).

If people are willing to believe they would inflate the number to seem more important, why wouldn't they believe that they would deflate the number to potentially save money on taxes? They weren't a public company at the time, so I could see internal financials being a little murky. Even though they are a publicly traded company now they still are announcing fake numbers every year (at least on the broadcasts, I highly assume that on the financial reports they are using the real numbers).

The make-up department of WWE is absolutely god-awful, it has to be said again and again, they are doing a terrible job. I'm sure all those women look a hundred times better IRL. This. It was hard to look at Rousey with that silly make-up. And I don't want to write anything about Paige because wearing way to much make-up is almost like her gimmick.

Agreed that Heyman is a weird choice, but "Sarge" DeWayne Bruce is about as useless as it gets. A thousand Hindu squats and never drew a dime (Mike Graham™), ran one of the worst wrestling schools in history - The WCW Power Plant - with very few success stories and none that could work a full match before being reprogrammed (Big Show, Goldberg), and he ran future World Champion Batista out of the Power Plant. He makes Bill DeMott look competent. Batista wrote about it in his book: https://books.google.com/books?id=7kzVr6BJETsC&q=power+plant#v=snippet&q=power%20plant&f=false Was Big Show trained in the Power Plant? I thought he was a Monster Factory guy.

I was watching a random early Thunder and the highlights were: (1) Super Calo taking a bump that was crazy stupid even for Super Calo. (2) Raven pushing Saturn on top of Disco Inferno, who is lying on his belly. Both are selling being knocket out or whatever and referee Billy Silverman actually starting to count a pinfall (I suppose Disco was expected to lie on his back for that spot) though at least stopping at the count of two. (3) Lee Marshall shouting "Diamond Cutter out of nowhere".

He was nuts and had a huge alcohol problem which is a very bad combination. Maybe the second thing lead to the first or vice versa, who knows.

They paid for the TV slots or gave the TV away for free while the stations used to pay for territorial TV, didn't they?

I want Velocity. ;-)

More like that Roman Reigns is not such a big mainstream name as they think.

Will Goldberg be the main event or will they add a bigger name (Undertaker or Daniel Bryan would be the first candidates that come to mind) within the next few weeks?

There are so many unfunny (and offending) jokes you could make about that story. How about a women's rumble where all contestants have to wear a burqa? How about a wrestler trying to steal a title belt and having a hand chopped off as punishment? How about a wrestler stealing a valet from another wrestler and that valet getting stoned to death for it? I really long for the days where the world is not depending on fossile fuel anymore and can just say "fuck you" to such countries (disregarding the fact that King Salman took some very basic first steps in a not completely wrong direction) and just wait for the regimes to tremble.

The 81/82 Mid South TV shows on the Network I have been watching lately mostly were pretty good, lots of competitive matches and a great roster. And honestly if I can choose between studio wrestling and shows held in a "real" arena I will go for the latter. My favorite so far may be a 10 minute Paul Orndorff vs. Brian Blair match where in theory Orndorff is the heel and Blair the face though as both are announced hailing from Tampa, Florida Orndorff, wrestles in a somewhat respectful and clean way. As the match goes on Orndorff gets a bit more frustrated and wrestles a bit rougher, though still not going full heel or anything. The more Orndorff I see the more I think that he is one of the top workers of the 80ies.

If they would add Ziggler and Corbin to that match (instead of the 6 pack shit at the top) I am sure that the first few rows of fans would end up inside the Schwarzschild radius.

I thought he was a good hand in Chikara as part of FIST, though maybe a bit bland compared to Chuck Taylor and Icarus. I have not seen any of his work in Dragon Gate USA and Evolve.

That's two more things he has in common with Greg Gagne.

At Royal Rumble I had the feeling that Michael Cole is much closer in getting a beating by Booker T than Corey Graves. Booker T: "There are no timeouts in tag team wrestling." Cole: "There are no timeouts in tag teams (sic!)." Booker T (very annoyed): "I said wrestling, Michael."

Any chance it's late 90's? When it was littered with luchadores and all of that talent, it was a real fun show. I would bet it's 94-95. I would bet it just continues where they left off, given their patterns. If it's a lot, maybe 2-3 years, which would get us to 1992 or so. I would have thought so as well, but the show wasn't called Saturday Night until 1992, was it?

Any chance it's late 90's? When it was littered with luchadores and all of that talent, it was a real fun show. I would bet it's 94-95.

I tried to watch 205 Live this weak. However the reboot (or however you want to call it) does not change the biggest problem that the show happens in front of a totally dead crowd which is a huge turnoff for me. They should stop doing a live show after Smackdown and instead tape every three weeks at Full Sail. This would improve the show more than any new talent could do.