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MSG is class.

I'd rather watch Henry's retirement promo/angle thing with Cena than any CM Punk promo or match ever.

I don't know re: Kalisto. A distraction win as part of someone else's feud doesn't do much for him. Plus that seems like a stupid thing to book. The point of that is to make Kevin Owens mad so he wants to beat up Dolph I guess. But Kevin Owens is always mad. Kevin Owens' motivation to beat up Dolph is that Kevin Owens is a dick and Dolph is a person near him that is too happy. I'm just so sick of that pattern of booking feuds. Trading distraction wins. It means so little now. It's so rote and guaranteed to happen at least once on every single show that I tune it out.

Poor poor Lillian - they are going to milk this grammy thing for everything they can EDIT - YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT YOUR JOB!!! God Bless Cole for playing along. I AM AT LEAST PASSABLE!

In regards to Mark Henry - I know for me that the ultimate "Holy Fuck I love this guy" moment - was when he came out and was supposed to rip the cage door off except they forgot to gimmick the door/chain. So everyone was all LOL!!! LOOK HOW STUPID HENRY LOOKED!!!! and I was all "Umm... motherfuckers - he ended up legit ripping the door off"

Somber time of year for me. January 30th would have been my mom's 62th birthday; she passed away on February 11th of 2006 from lung cancer, so it's been almost ten years. I lived with her at the time(so, yeah, I lived the gimmick, LOL) and had to learn really quickly how to survive on my own with my meager radio station board operator salary. I still live in the same house with the dogs that she got about a year before she passed away (they're both 11 years old now). While I've made it this far, life is still a rocky road as I had issues even before her passing. She was never into the whole wrestling thing, but I took her to WCW Slamboree in 1999 since it was on Mother's Day and in St. Louis. She indulged me as it related to my comedy aspirations since my cousins and I would do amateur-ish recreations of our favorite SNL skits. While I'm still working on the whole life thing and I've got plenty of flaws, I hope she's proud of me.

Back on form this week, so it's time for another edition of How To Be A Horrible Person by the Total Divas! You might think I'd lead off with the big kerfuffle between Nattie and TJ, but really, one of them freaking out and the other being completely uncommunicative is really just a lesson in how to be Nattie and TJ. Nattie does, however, make the list for thinking that she needs to take TJ's mind off of wrestling, and doing so by bringing a bunch of wrestlers over. Everyone in that BRC/New Day match TJ was watching was at the party other than Xavier. Nattie also makes the list for telling her sister "not to send mixed signals" to Big E. She was rubbing his thigh. That signal ain't mixed, honey. Paige: "I was thinking that I would apologize to you if I know that you have been working hard, so I apologize to you." I had to play that back to see if that was an actual apology. Nikki gets runner-up horribleness for bitching about Brie not thinking about her while basically giving not the tiniest bit of a fuck about Brie's reasons for not wanting to do the commercial. The horrible winner though, comes out of our Eva/Mandy storyline. Is it Mandy for latching onto a friendly offer and being ready to dump her like a bad habit by the end of the first episode? Is it Eva Marie for having the political nous of a bowl of yogurt when given a gift horse in the form of Mandy who can draw heat away from her and then deciding to try and hook her wagon to that particular horse? Is it Alicia for holding onto a pointless grudge? Is it Rosa for being as deadly boring on this show as she is in wrestling? No! It's Mark Carano or whoever it was at WWE who watched the whole Eva Marie thing play out and thought, "Let's do that again!"

Maybe everybody just knows better than to step to Ron.

You never saw The Man With a Harmonica Meets The Man With The Golden Gun? Great fucking movie.

Via Ken Tremendous: "When the 1st quarter started Steph's season was 21st all time in 3s made. When it ended he was in 14th. He passed 7 people in 12 minutes." Jesus.

I thought Matt and I were the only two that backed NoC 2012 as the best Punk/Cena match. My favorite part, amidst all the counters, all the "Cena is too big and strong and determined for Punk to beat" and "Punk is too smart and too good for Cena to beat" storytelling is Punk countering the Five Knuckle Shuffle two or three times during the setup, and then at one point Cena just drilling him with a fistdrop with no setup or signal. Simple, beautiful pro wrestling.

I think rather than just going with the Brotherhood and continuing, I'm gonna find out. I will rule post-apocalyptic Boston even if I'm the only one left in it.

Apparently (according to the UK tabloids, so take that for what it's worth) Chelsea are seriously considering getting Pellegrini in as soon as he's available. Which, well, we've seen what happens when Mourinho takes Pellegrini's job (Real Madrid, Jose replaced Manuel), now we get to see what happens when Manuel takes Jose's job. It almost certainly won't be worse than Chelsea were (under Mourinho) this season. Dear the Glazers. Please sign Jose. He'll ruin everything, it'll be great. You can save money by closing the academy, because he'll never use anyone from it.

Fast and Furious 8 - April 14, 2017 Fast and Furious 9 - April 19, 2019 Fast and Furious 10 - April 2, 2021 All per Vin Diesel

But remember for anyone who's been following this since the Rumble thread, it ends with Flair institutionalized. Ric Flair being institutionalized is the only ending I'll accept. All Ric wanted was a Pepsi.

Nice to see that they're establishing multiple finishers for AJ. It looks like they might be finally getting around to making Smackdown feel more important. STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

With TNA being WWE-lite, is Kurt Angle's "Suplex City," "Bodythrow Subdivision?"

Mid South 10/30/82 is some good shit, friends.

I want a million dollars but life isn't fair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rMTHBSwuI NSFW. The director/writer/editor/set designer/costumer/music composer (!) Anna Biller has apparently made something that Jess Franco and Paul Naschy would have shared credits on back in the '70s.

You only know Rob Gronkowski because he's Mojo's friend? That definitely qualifies as the "wrestling bubble".

#1 is people who would never try to powerbomb anyone deciding to try to powerbomb Kidman.

I know that's Gabe but he looks like one of those Zika virus babies

Uhm, Star Trek? If only they still made those Police Academy films at the same rate they used to.

The other night i rewatched one of my favourite matches of all time- CM Punk Vs John Cena at Night of Champions 2012. This match is EVERYTHING a WWE main event should be- great video package, actual big fight feel, molten hot crowd in one of the wrestlers hometown and a rivalry where the two guys bring out the absolute best in each other. The match itself is perfectly executed imo, Punk wrestles possibly his best match in WWE, top 3 anyway. Everything he hits is so crisp and clean and Cena sells it like a champ. Cena gets his licks in too, getting more and more frustrated as the match goes on because Punk has his number at most turns. The crowd eats every bit of it up and they build to a great finishing stretch that doesn't over do it on the finisher swapping that some main events can be guilty of. The finish is ho-hum but it takes nothing away from the match This is the match that should have main evented WM 29 and not Rock/Cena 2. This match closing Mania with a few more months build up and heat would have been off the chart but we'll never know. Punks WWE title run wasn't outstanding by any means (and people may have different opinions on him now) but there was some great moments and matches throughout and this is the peak of it. Some wrestlers just bring the absolute best out in each other and Punk/Cena always gelled. Flair/Steamboat. Austin/Rock. Punk/Cena.

1) 11-29-2009 - Roughriders vs. Alouettes - "Illegal substitution. Too many men on the field. Saskatchewan. That's a ten yard penalty. We'll repeat first down" 2) 7-29-2004 - Mets at Expos - An in-person baseball rarity as Eric Valent hits for the cycle. I'm a Mets fan, so this baseball rarity ranks above my #3, which was even rarer. 3) 5-7-2011 - Tigers at Blue Jays - Justin Verlander throws a no-hitter while facing the minimum 27. Only base runner was on a JP Arencibia (of all people) walk.

I blame Ziggler.

Props to Cole for keeping a straight face through that.

#Booty

This could go in the LU note but I'll stick it here anyway since it's more of a comparative thing. I'm 22 episodes in now and the major strengths of NXT TV are the same as LU TV. They come from being pre-taped and working towards a goal. 1. Characters have clear motivations. 2. There is a hierarchy. Wins and losses matter. Someone is obviously higher up on the card than someone else, and you can point to evidence to show this. 3. There is a progression from week to week. 4. They do a very good job of shifting from one feud to another, and then paying off the feud. Often times, right after the pay off (or even built into the payoff) is something that transitions things to the next feud fluidly. It's all very basic storytelling, elements that stem back from territorial studio-based wrestling. Maybe some of the specific details of Lucha Underground aren't "traditional" in that it's more of a hyper-reality based fight club setting than a psuedo-sports setting, but the structure and formula and the gears behind the machine have a lot more in common with something like Mid-South or Smoky Mountain (or NXT) than they do with current WWE TV.

"In the Air Tonight" is better than any 80's one hit wonder they can shoehorn into this trailer in a cynical attempt at Gen X nostalgia. I liked this movie the first time when it was called The Commitments.

I'll disagree but I never liked it when X-Files got too cutesy. There's a difference between inserting humor into a show and just going all out wacky~! and this, to me, was dog shit. We only have six episodes, Mulder just learned about a new conspiracy, and hey, let's forget all that and go with a full-on sitcom episode. Ugh. I liked the shout out to Kim Manners, though.

Look at their faces Foley is the only one transfixed with the possibilities. The only who recognizes the power of the future. The only one already wondering how to harness this to connect with your favorite porn starlets.

Edit: to stay on topic! Good Lord.

I'll take random air horns going off over fans chanting 'we are awesome' every day of the week and twice on Sundays. We are agreed on the second point.

I woke up early for every damn presale and couldn't get shit from ticketmaster. Just instant "sorry no tickets available" messages. I'm getting bent over by stubhub for the shows that weekend. Luckily the NXT card looks like show of the decade material, so I feel like I'm getting some value because it's way more expensive than the last two years. I guess at least I'll save some by not having to fly and I can get a cheap hotel in the burbs since I'll have my car with me. Of course the down side to that is driving through fucking Dallas and what I'm sure will be an exorbitant parking fee at Jerry World.

MWT!

Also, JJ played field hockey as a kid. That's almost as "middle class white kid" as you can get.

Bad Religion: No Control (1989) Against the Grain (1990) Generator (1992) Recipe for Hate (1993) Stranger than Fiction (1994)

Man, all the best to the Hitman. Put cancer in the Sharpshooter.

That is fantastic. I sure miss the pre-52 DC Comics.

I don't know if it has been posted - I checked a bit - but this piece by Bix on Paul Wight's aborted boxing career is a very good long-form piece.

Based on his Twitter feed the best thing for his comedy career would be never trying comedy again.