2016 Pro Wrestling Thread

Speaking of Owen Steen, there was a tweet showing his reaction when he saw his dad win the title, and some ESPN guy I've never heard of before mocked the tweet, and backlash was swift.

Sports guy calls wrestling fake, wrestling fans freak out

Personally, I thought Cody Rhodes' reaction was the best.

 

And this is even better: The former head writer of WCW, who thought it was a great idea to put his company's world title on David Arquette and some time later on himself, thought Owens winning the new title represented the WWE hitting "rock bottom."

Russo says Owens’ title win means wrestling is at ‘rock bottom’

 

That ESPN thing was particularly rich considering his employer launched a wrestling vertical about a week ago....

 

Yeah, utterly ridiculous. He says Arquette was more over than Owens and that everyone knew who Arquette was.

Only thing I knew about him was who he was married to.

 

I truly hope that HHH's actions are the spark to a cross-promotional RAW/NXT battle where we see The Revival ending up holding the gold as well.

Because for fuck's sake I AM TIRED OF THE NEW DAY HOLDING THE STRAPS

 

Why would you say that? Don't you know New .... Day rocks? New! Day rocks!

 

I watched Talking Smack last week for the Bryan Miz work shoot work on the NetWWErk. But I watched again and realized its brilliance: It's a modern Tuesday Night Titans. Rene and Bryan are Vince and Lord Alfred. The talent come on and stumble over their stuff at times and riff a lot. I feel it's very loosely scripted at best. It's rasslin comedy improv at times. Heath Slater and Rhyno were fucking hilarious. Full disclosure: I'm one of Heath's kids.

And you need to look up AJ Styles and the Case of the Injured Jesus Zipper.

 

Oh, and SmackDown is doing a house show in Boise in October. I got row 5 tickets with a guy in the sports department and some of his friends. One perk of doing the WrestleMania travel package is that I now get presale codes for events in my area.

Think I should try to do something for the paper so I can meet people and do cool interviews, or just go as a fan and enjoy my last bit of fun before my second back surgery?

I mean, I wouldn't mind talking with Becky again ....

 

Hey Bradley, someone's working your corners:

Vince McMahon: Require Roman Reigns to remove his ILLEGAL vest during the course of WWE competition.

 

Raw thoughts....

1. No idea what to make of the end of the main event, but the match was great. I'm sure a lot of shit got thrown together in the last week because of Balor's injury and how that derails the whole fucking train, so I'm going to cut some slack on the logic in the storytelling.

2. New Day and Bayley cracked me up, but something is bound to change. Too much silliness in one segment. And it's only a matter of time before folks turn on the New Day. They've had a good run, but rasslin fans be fickle.

3. Charlotte looks great in black leather.

4. I don't understand where the Lesnar/McMahon/McMahon thing goes. I mean, how many other talent do you set up to job out to Snooze City? Do you just put Shane in a squash? What's the point? I mean, in a real-world logic the best way to really screw Lesnar is to let him sit out his contract. Suspend him indefinitely. Sure, he makes his money, but with UFC out of the picture if he gets a two-year ban, having him sit makes him irrelevant. Of course, that's out of the question because you have to have a storyline and get your dates out of the guy. So....what? I'm sure whatever it turns into, I'll likely shrug my shoulders. I got over Lesnar months ago, and even a lot of the die-hard Lesnar bro fans I sat around at WrestleMania were pretty underwhelmed by him. I want to watch him suplex like I want to watch Roman use a punch ever other move.

5. I'm really loving the new set. But do they have to have LED screens on everything? Now the ring posts? Next will be the ropes and the mat. And although I see both shows re-hashing a lot of production tricks from the original brand split in 2002 (SmackDown's side-screen min-bio, for one), I recall that the Raw announce desk being near the stage (like Nitro used to do) was a thing around 2002-04ish. But I wonder if they brought that back to get rid of announcer desk spots to protect Graves. He had to retire really early because of neck issues, right?

Speaking of, that leads me to SmackDown thoughts....

1. If you catch it quick, you can spot a stylized graphic of four knuckles and a fist at the beginning of the show-opening video package ... The SmackDown Fist Is Back!

2. I love Becky, but dayum that Alex Bliss has a booty for a Smurfette.

3. Still not sure why I should care for Crews?

4. AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose should hopefully be heaps better than the Ambrose-Ziggler match, which was fine but not up to my expectations for one of the Big Four shows.

5. Randy vs. Bray has my attention. Has anyone else noticed that Bray has a tattoo of Jesus on the cross? Either he's really religious or he's a fucking fruit loop, contemplating that shit like Rust Cohle.

6. The Headbangerz? Those guys have to be in their 70s.

7. I want every tag match with Heath Slater and Rhyno to be Heath getting his ass kicked, Rhyno dragging him to the corner and tagging himself in. Gore. Pinfall.

And finally....

8. For all the bluster over Bryan and Miz, all it leads to is a serious version of The Colonel vs. The Clucker. Surely, this is a rib on everyone.

 

That's a great comparison about Tuesday Night Titans. Tremendous.

 

At some point, they'll need someone to get drunk, go out there and poorly perform magic tricks like Paul Christy did on the original show.

YouTube it, or see if it's on the network. It's an epic trainwreck.