2023 Pro Wrestling Thread

IMDB.com has someone named Chad Governale playing Hart, and the role is listed as "Gary Hart (Look-Alike)," whatever that means. The way that's listed and the fact that this Governale guy doesn't have a thumbnail photo next to his name has me believing Gary Hart's not going to have a big presence in the movie.

P.S. Aside from MJF as Lance, the most interesting casting to me is Chavo Guerrero Jr. as The Original Sheik.

 

AEW's Ryan Nemeth (aka Dolph Ziggler's brother) is playing Gino Hernandez.

 

Yeah, maybe they’ll just have him as a background person.

I get it that the main focus is the Von Erichs, and there’s so many characters that were a part of World Class that they probably can’t fit them all in unless we want a five-hour movie. Looks like it’ll be good though. They made the historic scenery look authentic, which sometimes doesn’t happen with wrestling films and TV shows.

 

For me, I grew up in the northeast, so it was the WWF and Hogan. But in the beginning, the one UHF channel on my TV that worked would have World Class, so that was my first exposure to wrestling.

The kids in my sixth grade class would talk about Hogan and Mr. T, and I’d be talking about the Von Erichs, and the kids would look at me wondering what the heck I was talking about. It didn’t make me more popular.

Then ESPN replaced the AWA with the Legends of World Class shows, so I got to see most of the episodes at 4 p.m. after school. Even though I knew the show were a few years old, I still got into them as if the storylines were brand new.

As for family, my parents didn’t like wrestling, although as I mentioned in the International/Israel thread, I parlayed that dislike into getting my Mom to take me to my first show in exchange for me going for an additional year to Hebrew school to go to confirmation class.

My grandmother was a wrestling fan going back to Gorgeous George, although I didn’t know that until the last year or so of her life.

One time, my parents grounded me from watching wrestling for a few months because my grades were mediocre (I just snuck around and watched it with no volume ).

We went to my grandmother’s apartment, and my Mom came up to me with an amused look on her face and told me that Grandma decreed that as long as I was in her apartment, the ban on watching wrestling was lifted. And Grandma and I watched a bunch of WWF squashes as she jeered Ted DiBiase.

 

New SmackDown GM Nick Aldis -- good pick, but too bad it went over like a lead balloon with the live crowd.

Does this mean Billy Corgan can take credit since both brand GMs are now former NWA champions? Hell, even NXT's guest GM this week was an NWA champ.

At least that ensures that no SD superstar that is released will have their belongings thrown into a trash bag.

 

I’m fine with Aldi’s as GM. Besides, if it was a bigger star, fans would be expecting that they would be eventually part of an angle where they get back in the ring.

I like how they’ve just approached having Pearce be there to move things along, but not be a focus. The evil GM thing over played out.

Thst said, I’m sensing we’re getting another brand supremacy thing for Survivor Series even though they never do anything with it afterward.

 

I'm fine with that, but only if they involve NXT, too. I thought that year was a blast. However, NXT back then wasn't as young as it is now and had more folks that could believably contend with the main roster (Keith Lee, Undisputed Era, etc.).

 

Wonder if this is a little gesture to Adam Cole weaved in by KO at the end of his interview last night.

 

Nice tit for tat.



And classy move for AEW to show a little of MJF behind the curtain from the Jewish sports conference in Foxborough.

 

I fully expect the big guy in the blue T-shirt to be signed by AEW this week.

 

Well, if they're done with Luigi, the pizza guy.

 

Confirmed: Hunter has the book.

If you have noticed a change in WWE programming, you are not alone. Levesque, who is WWE’s Head of Creative, has overseen all of the creative on SmackDown and Raw since the merger, which is precisely what his job description entails.

The difference is that Vince McMahon, who is synonymous with all things WWE, is no longer directly involved in dictating the weekly creative in the same manner he once did. McMahon remained the title of Executive Chairman in WWE, but he no longer possesses majority control of the company. That has allowed for change in the new regime, particularly in the creative department.

Multiple contacts within the WWE and UFC have confirmed that Ari Emanuel, who wields power as the Endeavor CEO, is behind the change. Emanuel has long been a firm believer that, in order for an organization to be as effective as possible, people need to do the job they are assigned. In this case, that approach has empowered Levesque to exert his full influence in the company’s creative sphere.​