2015 Pro Wrestling Thread

The Oakland A's Josh Reddick (a self-professed wrestling fan) apparently used bagpipes as his walk-up music today. I'd love to see a clip of that.

 

I couldn't find it, but apparently, Reddick has used it before.

 

Piper's death is devastating to me. I haven't felt this sad over a celebrity death since Christopher Reeve. My idols keep dying.

 

Observer from Aug. 3:

- They have a pretty savage takedown of Hogan, noting pretty much all of the sleazy stuff he’s been involved with the past few years. Beyond the racial slurs, they point out the recorded jail conversations where he slags on the victim of his son’s car accident, his efforts to make money off of his daughter, and the weird relationship between him, Bubba the Love Sponge and Mrs. Sponge. It’s also noted that Hogan was probably on steroids from the 1970s all the way through the 2000s, given that he got “sick” and much thinner in the early 1990s, when his supplier was cut off from him and he tried to go clean.

Obviously, he’s been dropped from all WWE merchandise and future plans. He was also removed from a movie, Celebrity Death Pool, as well as an animated Scooby Doo movie. He was replaced on the Aussie tour from Aug. 6 to Aug. 8 by HBK. At Raw and Smackdown shows, all Hogan signs are being confiscated, and anyone in a shirt is being told to cover it up or to leave. Axel Mania shaved, and he and Sandow have dropped their gimmicks. Hogan was originally going to be an Austin podcast guest on Aug. 3; that’s now going to be Paige.

Best line from Meltzer: “Granted, he was just a ranting father talking about his teenage daughter to the wife of his best friend that he was fucking and figure nobody else would know. I mean, if you can’t trust the guy who lets you sleep with his hot wife, or the hot wife who sleeps with her husband’s best friend when her husband set it up, who can you trust?”

- Daniel Bryan is on a media tour for his book, and is acknowledging publicly for the first time that he’s not cleared because of concussions. He said he’s been cleared medically by his doctor, but not WWE’s. The company is leery because he’s had several concussions already.

However, it could come to an impasse at some point, because Bryan is insistent that he’ll wrestle again. He has three years left on his WWE contract. It’s believed he makes more than $500,000 per year, but that’s what he would get with the combination New Japan and indies deal that some of the bigger non-WWE stars do now. It’s unclear how much wiggle room his contract has for him to get out, since they are using him in non-wrestling roles (Tough Enough, Total Divas).

Also from Bryan: In 2010, if Heyman had taken control of TNA, he would have signed with them instead of taking a WWE developmental deal. He was surprised by the Rumble reaction for his no-show in 2014, but knew that this year, people would be pissed that he didn’t win.

- GFW had a heavily comped crowd of 3,000 at Vegas tapings. They don’t have a TV deal yet. They’re using the six-sided ring, and the lighting was supposed to be pretty good. Jarrett, Scott D’Amore and Sonjay Dutt are running creative, with a few others chipping in. Kevin Nash is part of the GFW roster as of this week too. The matches ranges from bad to meh, with the best reactions to heel manager Henry Maxwell and heel commentator Sonnen.

- The latest ROH show featured a 60-minute draw between Jay Lethal and Roderick Strong, with Lethal retaining his title. It was noted that it wasn’t an Iron Man match, and there wasn’t an announcing of the time during the match, so the finish was kind of random. Four-star match (very good, but not an all-time classic).

- Strong re-upped with ROH for a year. WWE had been sniffing around, with the thought being he would be an NXT guy. With Strong re-signed, WWE isn’t believed to be after anyone else.

- WWE sent William Regal, Canyon Ceman and Seth Rollins to the Pro Wrestling Guerilla show on July 24 to scout. AAA sent Konnan, and TNA and ROH have been pulling from the company recently too. Kevin Owens, The Young Bucks, Ricochet and El Generico (Zayn) all worked their way up PWG to their next feds.

The company uses a mixture of established talent (Chris Hero, Drew Galloway / McIntyre, Evan Bourne) with up-and-comers. They have a devoted following, and only run at a 300-seat building, so tickets sell out in 5 to 10 minutes.

- Tough Enough on July 21 did 1.14M viewers. It’s below the show that follows it, Chrisley Knows Best, which does 1.77M. Total Divas does around 995,000 viewers, and costs way less to produce.

- There is heat between Alberto Del Rio and Luis Urive, a.k.a. Myzteziz, a.k.a. the first Sin Cara. Del Rio has threatened to beat the crap out of Urive. It’s unknown what started the beef between the two, who did not like each other in WWE either.

- NWAClassics.com is mostly from the Paul Boesch cards run in Houston, with about 500 to 600 hours of content. It’s being offered as a streaming service because WWE offered less than $1M for the collection, when the owner (Bruce Tharpe) wanted close to $7M.

- AJ Lee is taking some bookings, but isn’t eager to do everything. As a result, her price is $15,000 plus business class travel and hotels, or it has to be something like a Comic Con that would help her image.

- ROH will only have 11 p.m. airings on Destination America starting July 29. It’s unknown if it’s a temporary switch, or permanent. The network said they wanted to try some non-wrestling programming in that time slot. They were also moved from NESN at Sunday 8 p.m. to Mondays 4 p.m.

- Bully Ray is no longer with TNA.

- TNA shot angles and did announcements at tapings for a big Genesis show. They didn’t mention the date, and things are so weird at the company right now that it’s unknown if it’s actually happening, or if it’s a rib to try and get dirt sheets to publish false info.

- There is no update on Cena’s face and nose injury. Alicia Fox also suffered a mild concussion in her match on Raw.

- Eva Marie wrestled on the July 22 NXT show. She’s improved from “terrible” to “bad.”

 

Aw, poor original Sin Cara still mad because everyone ripped on him for quitting his match with Del Rio over his finger? After seeing what Cena did, no wonder everyone hated him.

And hey, terrible to bad. That's progress!

 

As long as they don't scrub Hogan from the title histories and the Network -- which it doesn't seem like they're going to do -- I don't mind the WWE expunging him from the current product.
But man, he's starting to make Ric Flair look like he's got his shit together.

 

Yeah, but they've scrubbed him from the Hall of Fame, at least, last I looked. If they're going to do that, at least announce it and say he is being taken out due to his comments instead of being discreet with it.

Then you get into them taking people out, which no other Hall does?

 

Went to antother NXT show in Lakeland last night. What a fantastic thing it is to have this brand touring just about every month up and down the state.

I'll post some pics later but man I had a blast. Got to see Becky Lynch and Charlotte (my first, and probably last), The Vaudevillains, Finn, Bayley, Dana Brooke, Emma and the meet and greet before the show as Solomon Crowe (who put on a fantastic match with Finn in the ME) and Enzo, Big Cass and Carmella. (I got pics with all of them).

 

It's standard operating procedure for them, but the Piper tribute video was flippin' amazing.

 

Totally agree. They are the best at making highlight videos.

 

Naturally it won't happen, but wouldn't it be cool to have Cowboy Bob come out and help his kid with his cast as a tribute to Piper?

 

Thoughts while watching Raw:

- Good tribute to Piper, as others have said.

- So, uh… Is JBL a face announcer now? From how he was reacting in the Neville vs. Rollins match, it certainly seemed that way.

- Probably didn’t need a third straight week or so of the Prime Time Players on commentary.

- Again, nice to see the Divas division getting more time, but to sound greedy for a second, it would be nice if they gave Charlotte a tiny bit less of a push. Unless they actually do swerve at some point, they’re giving her the clear push to the top.

- Liked the confrontation between Miz, KO and Cesaro (the latter two mostly). It had some bumpy moments, but Miz was surprisingly good in the segment.

- Pairing up Sheamus with the Wyatt Family kind of works for me.

- Hey guys, look! King Barrett is still around!