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In it's still real to me news today, a juror in the Hogan vs Gawker trial juror #27 was dismissed today because he felt betrayed by Hogan joining the NWO 20 years ago.

The Miz represent the lineage of great heels such as The Mighty Atlas and Hans Schmidt. Real, proper heels. No one wants to cheer The Miz. Who would want to cheer The Miz? He's The Miz. He goes out there, exists and is-by proxy-extremely annoying, gets REAL heat-and then gets punched in the face by Roman Reigns. Or kicked in the heat by Kofi. Or AJ Styles or or or OR. It's formulaic, but it's a wonderful formula pro wrestling is based on. You may like cool heels-maybe you gush over Ric Flair saying how many cars he has and how many women he's slept with. Maybe you love Shawn Michaels making goofy faces and doing crotch chops. Me-I need a Bill Dundee to piss of Jerry Lawler and make him punch him in the face. And that's what Miz does. No wonder his feud with Lawler ruled. Ishii was trained by Tenryu and Choshu, and if you couldn't guess I like Riki Choshu a lot more than The Mighty Atlas, Dundee or Lawler for that matter. Ishii kind of has an advantage here. For years he was this really good midcarder, occassionally popping up in awesome brawls in a Big Japan or a Big Mouth Loud. The Wataru Inoue carry jobs were incredible. Finally New Japan pushed him and he started having all these great matches and it seemed like he could do no wrong. Yet here we are. His matches never relied on hierarchy as much as, say, Honma's do now, but it was definitely there and it has been lost over time. That is most unfortunate as selling is one of his strongest suits and what made so many of his matches worked. He dropped stuff like that and replaced it with more modern puro tropes and now I'm somehow supposed to believe that is five foot tall guy is some incredible badass guys two heads taller than him can't beat in strike exchanges. I'm said to have seen it happen but I have really grown tired of the one type of match Ishii insists on working over and over again, and him doing stuff like no-selling during the entire WK match and trading suplexes in the rematch has done him no favours. Keep wrestling classic. Vote Miz.

This question works perfectly if the voice reading it is Lord Alfred Hayes. -RAF

If only more football players and wrestlers smoked weed.

Having Jericho turn before any of those Y2AJ shirts could even arrive in the mail is some hilariously evil shit.

And 10 minutes later he used that glove to pay off his bartab at the Tampa Hilton.

I can't believe Greggulator found a way to "wait and see how this plays out" this thing. He proposes here that Jim chain himself to the proposition that the future actions of a bunch of irrational unknown human actors who have already demonstrated self-destructive or immoral behavior will, in the future, be rational and moral. If one needs any more evidence that his optimism over a WWE booking is misplaced...

Roman Reigns gives me no joy. His overall persona seems to be properly rated, but the dude is somehow overrated in the ring around here. Like, he has had more opportunities that anyone else in this tournament and the results are usually meh. If the goal is to have an average WWE main event that doesn't try to be anything else then the dude is your guy. I prefer my top WWE guys to mix it up a little, or you know, actually be good enough to break out of the everything-is-good-nothing-is-great WWE long match formula.

It's the perfect book for a glass table.

Peyton Royce will forever have a place in my heart for that tweet.

Reigns HAS improved his in-ring ability. It wasn't just Lesnar/Reigns for MOTY, but he was on fire during the early part of the year and having four star matches each PPV (even bringing guys like Big Show to four stars earlier this year.) In the ring, he's improved to a damn good main event-style wrestler. Booking wise he's shown flashes of being able to succeed well that are destroyed by WWE's inability to give the top stars any internal logic beyond "whatever he was written to do this week is what he'd do in any given situation"- but even TLC and the Raw afterwards (where he had Boston and Philadelphia excited to see him kick Authority ass and win the World Title) proved that he can succeed. That ties to the bigger issue right here- unlike people like, say, Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus (where they have every tool you could ask for except "the fans just ain't buying what they're selling", it seems to have gone worse with Reigns, where the fans have gone further to "The fans REFUSE to buy what Roman Reigns is selling, because no matter how good Reigns is, if Roman Reigns makes it to the top that inevitably means THEIR guy [whichever indy alumni they choose this week] WON'T." As a result, fans basically chose to ignore that Reigns became good less because "is he good or not" and more "You can't become a great wrestler! WE WON'T LET YOU! Even if you become good, WE VOW TO MAKE YOU FAIL!" Reigns is probably going to lose this match. And that's the whole point.

one more

Some Bossman gifs

Well this is going well

It's about damn time Stan went in.

The older I get, the more I realize that naps are fucking AWESOME.

That's an awesome way to get out of jury duty.

I liked the Kofi match

10 down, 200 more to make up for.

I only noticed now - as I work on the html - that Dean didn't come remotely close to spelling Mr Gannosuke's name right

The Steiners are sociopaths and wrestling is a fucking weird industry

Sympathy vote for Breeze, cause he rescued that dog.

Rewatched the main event. McGregor was doing really well, landing heavy to the body, busting up the face, until halfway through the second he suddenly dropped his hands and started standing straight up in front of Diaz. At the start of the second, it looked like the cutman had stopped Diaz bleeding, but then he missed a punch and slapped himself to open it back up. Is anyone saying Holm was exposed as an incomplete fighter in the 2nd and 5th rounds, and it just proves Rousey beat herself back in November? Because that seems like the sort of thing someone would say. Maybe we'll get a Hot Potato title at Women's Bantam now. Why is Bantamweight lighter than Featherweight? A bantam is a chicken. Chickens are heavier than feathers. Unless there's an absolute shitload of feathers, obviously.

You know people who complain about shitty fantasy booking? Well that's how I feel about page after page of hypothetical Wrestlemania stadium booking.

For the first time in probably close to a decade, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tonight. Christ what a film

If it wasn't for "NXT Godfather Triple H", "Hall of Fame Secretary of State Triple H" would be best Triple H.

I really enjoyed the 13-hour trailer that Netflix just put out for Season 5. It was definitely a step up from season 3, but I was a little underwhelmed by the fact that they set the table with 3-4 major story developments and not one of them was resolved. Who is their show runner, Andy Reid?

I give him until Smackdown before Vince decides he's a jobber and he gets booked to be the 3rd guy out of the Andre battle royal.

Eva Marie

That's not at all how I describe Stan Hansen. Not at all.

I think his argument would be that Lesnar's formula feels fresh in the WWE were everything else is is done in the exact same way. I'd disagree with him, but I imagine that would be his argument.

I'm going to hold off for voting right now. However, my inclination is to vote for the guy that is a human time traveling spaceship over the guy whose character work drains my soul of the will to watch wrestling. He's mechanically fine though I hate his match structures and hope spots for a big bad ass. If Roman were great, he would transcend the shitty booking like a lot of the big stars have done in the past. He's not great, he's pretty good. Plus this: Aero Star's trust dives are my favourite dives. I'll watch that Seth Rollins fancam before voting. The fact you can see the best of Aero Star encapsulated in gif form is definitely a knock on him though. Even if those gifs are incredible.

TNA Stink, you're wronk!

Most multi-dimensional wrestler in the world vs the most one-dimensional wrestler in the world?

"I don't believe in the no-win scenario!" Of course, I can stick to Star Trek and say "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.". In theory, the "right" answer is to do the killing and save the rest, but it's not an answer I'd want to give.

In an effort to learn more about Sean Royal, I read his wiki. Apparently in 2002, (same year the New Breed traveled back from), another Sean Royal turned up. They were both active for a time, and the older was being credited for championships the younger one had won. I really hope all of that is just time travel continuinty stuff.

I posted this on a couple of Rememberance/Armistace/Veteran's Days, but it's worth another. The story of Blears' escape from capture by the Japanese in the Pacific during WWII is the kind of shit you make a movie about: http://archives.starbulletin.com/2001/03/29/features/story1.html

How is Jimmy Valiant's book? Does it have a lot of content, or is it more of a coffee table book?

Can he do that now?

Both of you, please shut up. Don't make me get an adult in here.

Claudio tossing Big Show out was a big deal...for a few hours.

I have a hard time listening when he goes all melancholy and starts monologuing about how terrible all the old-timers are doing nowadays. Terry Funk even called him on it: "Well goddammit Ric, do you have any good news?!"

I only refer to him as Capt. Lou Albano did: "Dave Dogg". As I get older, I realize more and more that Albano never lied to us. - RAF

I'd watch 20 Godfather/Kama/Papa Shango matches , before I'd willingly watch one Pedro Morales match.