Robert S

Thing is, most of those sharks at the top of the business worlds are the biggest carnies of them all.

I guess it depends on what you understand by "one of the biggest stars". Top 5? Top 10? Top 20? Also what is meant by "modern era". Even assuming Meltzer meant the last 10 years and not the last 15 years, Mox is definitely not Top 5 and very likely also not Top 10. I suppose he would make a Top 20, but without coming up with a list my gut feeling would be that we would be somewhat at the bottom of such a list. Though I guess it depends on how many part timers you would include.

"one of the biggest company stars of the modern era" is not really a good description for Mox

I suppose if Laurinaitis hopes to get a pass on the criminal charges front by going "I was a victim as well" the DA will probably want more details than just corroboration on the (potential) charges against Vince. So I suppose he would have to spill the beans on a lot of other dirt.

I thought he would make it to Mania, though when I saw how bad he moved with his jumping knees to the corner, I almost assumed this might happen. I only watched the two Rumbles - the Tribal Chief has jumped to shark for me worse than Backlund allegedly did in his later years (which by all evidence was exaggerated anyway, and Logan Paul vs. KO did not interest me yesterday evening when I was watching the show either. The men's Rumble felt pretty forgettable, though I had to laugh that they did not manage to keep Andrade hot for a single night. Let's see when he wants out again. Also I agree that McAfee screwed up the timing completely which lead to them rushing through Omos' and Breakker's eliminations so that Breakker could get in his spear on McDonagh. I don't know why they did not call an audible and scratched that spot. Speaking of spots: was this the first Rumble appearance of Kofi without trying some silly "I am not eliminated" spot? The first two thirds of the women's Rumble was bad, bad, bad. Naomi was off on everything she tried and Ivy Nile and Maxxine were green beyond believe. Jade also had a funny interaction with Naomi that looked a-couple-of-weeks-into-wrestling-school bad. Actually shocking looking at who entered pretty early, that they could not hold the match together. At least that match picked up towards the end.

After reading the Abraham's book about Vince and the interviews she did w.r.t. Vince's childhood and adolesence I would be careful to believe VInce about anything reg. that time period, he is a very unreliable narrator. His personal version of his history seems to be full of exaggerations and telling stories of others as his own. I have no doubt that he experienced physical and verbal abuse as a child, though if it was beyond the typical level of abuse the average child had to deal with growing up in the 50ies, who knows. Same goes for the sexual abuse part. It could be that everything he said for example in the Penthouse interview is true, but it might as well be pure fiction.

Fair enough.

I am surprised that everybody seems to be excited for Copeland vs. Minoru Suzuki. (1) Suzuki is someone who is not above coasting through a match if he is not interested in it and I doubt that he was a huge WWE fan 15 years ago and (2) I am not sure if I have seen a single Edge singles match since the Smackdown Six era that I enjoyed that was not full of smoke and mirrors.

Even though the announcers always bring up Kawada, Kobashi etc. comparisons every time Kingston is wrestling, but at least the psychology is much more in the vein of Choshu or Hashimoto.

It would be very old-school WW(W)F though, Graham beat Sammartino with his feet on the ropes, Backlund did not quit himself but had to had Skaaland throw in the towel and Hogan lost it to André due to twin magic. Koloff beating Sammartino was clean as a whistle though, there is no footage of Stasiak vs. Morales, but from I can read on Wrestleclassics, it was the George Scott special (double pin with Stasiak raising his shoulder at 2.5).

They should try to sell autographed pictures of Fritz, David, Kerry, Mike and Chris (like Fritz did after David's death).

A picture of a B+ wrestler and a C+ popstar.

Motoko died a couple of years ago. Anyway, if they introduce Baba, it would be as part of the legacy wing.

Considering that the WWE somewhat seems to work together with AJPW (for now), is there anyone closely related to All Japan (in 2024) who could be introducted? Tajiri did not wrestle for All Japan in 2023, maybe Kensuke and/or Hokuto via Nakajima?

Just checked, the official distributor of The Iron Claw for Austria does not even list a release date (interesting because it is already out in Germany). IMDB lists mid-February or early March for a bunch of European countries. I would assume if the movie does not get some kind of Oscar push, it will get a very limited-only releases in most markets (e.g. I checked if there any German cinemas relatively close to me that would show it and no luck, the closest one I could find is in Munich, something like a 2h drive away; it's also not dubbed which limits the scope of the release further).

I am sure there were a bunch of young guys who got hurt really bad, Kentaro Shiga comes to mind, Takayuki Iizuka was a bit older, but he seemed to be on the brink of a big breakthrough when Nagai rearranged his face.

In don't know anything about the Ridge thing but using real injuries to boost programs is as old as wrestling as well. Hansen-Bruno, Khan-André, ... Hell, Ox Baker was a made man because Ray Gunkel died after a match with Baker.

It would only be a question of time until there is a Santino to Punk's Cornette.

I suppose Okada will get his win back against Danielson. Though politically this does not make that much sense. On the one hand is Okada not someone who gets hurt by losing to a US star (in North America), on the other hand it seems that Okada might leave New Japan anyway. If New Japan gets Danielson to do a job in the Dome, there are a lot of better candidates who would benefit from the rub (and I doubt that AD would refuse to lose to e.g. Umino).

The Iron Survivor Challenge rules are so convoluted. I am surprised that they are giving that gimmick another go.

I tried to watch an NXT show two weeks back because I wanted to "prepare" myself for Deadline. The wrestling itself was fine, maybe even good, but the skits were SOOOO bad. Let's watch the mafia eat dinner! Let's have a fake press conference of a fake dean (?) of a fake university! Let's watch a big simpleton having dinner with a 50ies-TV-style family. Let's watch a backstage argument where people are completely ignoring the camera. It felt like a mixture of an AEW b-show and Tuesday Night Titans, and not in a good way. Are they still trying to make movies? I hope the main shows are not like that because if they are, yikes. And if they are: Vince McMahon is out of the picture, there is no need to play to him.

I suppose running less house shows is a precursor to cutting down the size of the roster. I am especially wondering how long TKO wants to keep paying for I-don't-know-how-many people in the PC. In the longterm both running house shows (because it binds more people to the product if they have a semi-regular chance to see it live) and having the PC in its current state probably are worthwhile things to have, but in the short term, cutting both down will increase profits.

This. That had to be one of the worst performances on national television in years. AEW had some pretty rough women's matches in the past as well but none were in that league. 3 in 4 things he tried were screwed up. Thank god no one gut hurt. Some things you can put on the language barrier, but there was way too much stuff that he missed, was out on position for, stumbled through etc. for that to be an excuse.

As Flair's first wife pointed out in the ESPN docu a couple of years back, at a certain point the person Richard Morgan Fliehr ceased to exist and now there is only Ric Flair.

That is happened before (and might happen again in a year) doesn't make it less sad.