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Mark Henry as Rick Ross

Well, if he's going to be like that about it, I wouldn't buy it for him.

Welp.

This is the greatest video ever. http://youtu.be/VarB6DFGCjU

SHUT THE INTERNET DOWN. This wins. Also was that Halloween Havoc 2000 ad supposed to be in reference to something in particular? That was when my interest in WCW was at an all time low but I cant remember anything futuristic or historic or whatever about that show.

Llub Eht YnnhoJ doesn't spell "killer," you fucking liar!

God the whole THEY FINALLY WON A WORLD SERIES AT HOME!!!! shit really needs to go away. Because those other two championships meant shit

Big draws don't generally suddenly happen in the wrestling industry. They're built up. The complaint is that WWE is doing a pisspoor job at building them. Punk's and Bryan's momentum were both killed by Triple H inserting himself into the program.

Yes. I wrote an article about NASCAR a few months ago. Fox and TNT inked their deal w/NASCAR when the sport was hyped as becoming the new American pastime. That didn't happen. At all. NASCAR's live attendance has completely tanked to the point where they don't announce figures anymore. (The excuse is that a lot of publicly traded companies own NASCAR venues and publishing those is advanced guidance, which is a hilariously lame excuse.) The reason for this is twofold: 1) When it was trying to become the new pastime, they put in stadiums in a lot of cities that didn't have any history of racing -- Chicago, Phoenix, LA, etc. They had some success at first but then the fad ended. In order to stage those races, though, they had to take events from elsewhere. So a lot of their small tracks in their southern core were dismissed. And that leads to 2) Their core fanbase is the white, rural/southern, working-class. This demographic was largely hurt the worst in The Great Recession -- all those Sun Belt construction jobs vanished and haven't come back. North Carolina is the essential capital of NASCAR and their blue collar job base shrunk by a giant amount and hasn't returned.Their TV ratings have completely tanked since they signed their first big deal in 2005. They're down almost 50%, in fact. But they still just signed a crazy deal despite the absolutely terrible ratings and demographics hardships. And they still inked a billion dollar contract.The answer is because of programming. Fox and NBC have new sports ventures and need live programming. The WWE is a different venture in that it can place its shows on sports networks AND strictly entertainment networks. NASCAR had pretty much four competitors for its product -- and two of them, Turner and ESPN, were already soured on them -- and drew a 10-year deal. The WWE has more options for broadcasting, is live, and has a decades long history of being one of the most-watched cable TV programs. Aside from football on ESPN, Raw usually is the most watched cable show of the week. That's an historic track record of ratings that any advertiser would want. Even if the ratings aren't what they were in the 90s (or even down from a few years ago), it doesn't matter. They're usually number one every week and they can appear on either USA/Spike/NBC Sports/Fox Sports/etc. without anyone blinking an eye. The WWE is the only national game in town for wrestling. It's an internationally known brand. It has changed its marketing and programming to avoid controversy. It broadcasts live and has a dedicated that has followed the product for decades. The fanbase is nationwide and not dependent upon one region. And it's a product that's built-in to have its audience "grow up" with the product -- like us, you get hooked as a kid and stay with it for years. The production values of the company are amazing. They're going to sign a ridiculously huge deal. It's a great television product.

CURSE YOU PERRY THE PELICAN!

"The celebrity buyer of TNA you ask? That's right you guessed it, Frank Stallone."

Well, I wouldn't call myself a celebrity or anything, but it's true that I found some change in my couch and I hope you guys are ready for missile dropkicks and a heavy dose of Sid every Thursday night!

... I'd hit that.

You know, if I was a billionaire, I'd buy the thing and give the blasted thing to EN090 there for being the damndest TNA fan there is.

I can't wait for TNA to be bought and they acknowledge it on-air. What this company needs is a new authority figure angle. That'll catapult them into the big time.

Sure, but you're the idiot that thinks Captain America was boring, so we all safely ignore your opinion on super hero movies.

Welp, here's one last Hallween treat for ya'll...hopefully everyone knows who this Jack-O-Lantern is...

Had my second child today. It's a boy! Little Landry and momma are doing great.

This should be Henry's new gimmick. Rolls to the ring in a maybach.

Phil literally just wrote that he was in the Schindler's List camp.

Ryback with a first-round shutout against Davey Richards.

It's all speculation. Only person who said it could be FOX is a guy in this thread. If it was Fox it would be primarily tv driven, but if they could do live dates that make money they would do it. And if someone semi-competent was in charge of booking dates and promoting them they could make money. TNA is so weird when it comes to house shows. They run in places like Miss, Louisiana and Texas often and draw shit crowds, yet still book shows there. Maybe because talent could drive and didn't have to be flown in, I don't know. They've always drawn better in places like NY/NJ, Philly area and Chicago. I'm sure the reason they didn't run those places more is the price of booking the venues and flying in talent, but it's better than drawing flys in the bumfuck south. As far as TNA controlling the indy booking rights of their talent and taking a cut of it, it's one of the worst moves they've ever made, and that's a long list. For what they pay the people who would do indy gigs, and how little they book them on shows, that's shameful. Especially given the fact that a lot of guys could make more with indy gigs than being paid by TNA minus the cut they take. It also probably cost them a lot of credibility and talent that might have potentially been looking at them as an option. It's so widely known the way they screw over talent at this point that only people who have no shot at being hired by WWE look to go there. All the best talent now just waits it out for the chance of a WWE tryout.

They were all trying to be the first to POWERBOMB KIDMAN before he even existed. They all failed, obviously, because YOU CANNOT POWERBOMB KIDMAN!

Credit to Kharma for dropping so much weight, but has she, in fact, lost the one thing that made her special in wrestling?

Those are some Paul Orndorff breasts.

Wait, can we also count the Billy and Chuck theme here and make it five? I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but "YOUUUUU LOOOOK SOOOOOO... GOOD TO ME" was almost like hearing the glass break at one point. It was an automatic insta-pop from me.

I'm pretty sure the New Orleans Pelicans new mascot is one of the buzzards Bray Wyatt tells us to follow.

Given his post-wrestling tendency to beat up senior citizens, sucky attitude may have been putting it mildly. I believe he's a hairdresser now. You're thinking of O'Haire. Which really goes to underscore Jae's point that the initial Jindrak-Billy Gunn comparison sucks, since none of you can tell him apart from the others. I was talking about O'Haire. If he hadn't been a crazy dick (even by wrestling standards) he'd probably be main eventing. Yeah, but you're not telling us anything... we don't already know.

Oh yeah, well, you know I read, like, a story too, you know and it said Fuck you guys.

WHAT. THE. FUCK .

The Rosetta Stone as a pumpkin carving. Seriously.

GODDAMN IT I THOUGHT MATT MORGAN WAS MARK JINDRAK. You see? I never confused Billy Gunn for anybody.

Here's what I'm picturing TNA bidding process to be. Sadly, Randy voted how much he thought the promotion was worth.

People are so desperate to believe that guys like Punk and Bryan can be huge drawing stars, even when the evidence directly contradicts it. Going down 100,000 buys domestic is a pretty big deal, no matter how you want to spin it. Vince would be a shitty businessman if he just ignored it. And I'm not just blaming them, since Brock has shown he's not worth the cash either. But at least he could draw huge at one point and, theoretically, could again.

Josh Barnett got licensed today in Nevada for his fight against Travis Brown. It was conditional on him passing random NSAC enhanced testing (the WADA accredited testing program they came up with for Marquez/Bradley) through the end of 2014. The UFC will pick up the $20,000 testing bill.

That jacket's zipper is ruined ... ... wait, I can do that better ... "THAT GOTTDAMM ZIPPER ONNAT JACKET ... DAT ZIPPER, MAN ... IS FUCKIN RUINT AND SHEEIT!!" *guitar riff*

I agree with whoever suggested Richard Branson blasting Bischoff into space.

I've seen some things

Their ceremonies are the most anti-climactic shit too, but everyone but the NHL has butchered presenting a trophy forever.

Fuck him. Doink shoulda been champion.

I'm all over the place. I didn't love Captain America either but I've come to the conclusion that Chris Evans has not been a quality Steve Rogers. I did like the trailer for the sequel. X2, however, was great. It's still one of my favorite comic book films. I'd rank it up there somewhere with Nolan's Batman trilogy. Avengers, Man of Steel, etc.

I heard a rumour Julius Peppers turned up at the Bears Halloween party as Ndamukong Suh, and Cutler shat himself and fell into a coma. Half an hour later, when his old lady realised he was unconscious and not just sulking, they took him to hospital.

Big fucking boobs.

The biggest problem for a new ownership is that TNA's risen and fallen based on whatever was trendy on the indy scene at the time. When TNA began, the cruiserweight/workrate style was trendy, so the X-Division made TNA instantly popular with fans. Later in the 2000s, when SHIMMER made women's wrestling trendy, the Knockouts ended up being popular for TNA. By contrast, this year...there isn't really one distinct style you can point to on the independent scene and say "THIS is the trend right now" that can lead to a niche that TNA can build around. The only thing TNA could have is building to the people who want the Attitude Era back- and we've seen over the last 11 years that no, TNA can't do that right, even if they DID do it right people want the "wrestlers" more than the style anyway [so they'd STILL be unhappy with it], and as a result it'd fail with their attempt.

Just the son of some City Councillor. We have fucking tomatoes now?!? Thanks Thomas!

I will apologize for two things. One, if this has been posted. Two, if this is too much... but I will say it had me dyin