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Based on a couple of other threads on this board - I now have theories on which accounts Becky is using as a sock puppet around here

Man, I'm not expecting that everyone in the board is going to develop class consciousness over night gather around the fire and sing Kumbaya into the bright sunny future, but all this talk of "She just should up and do her job godammit" is wack. We know for a fact that Vince McMahon is a crazy crazy man, you think working for this fool is fun in any way? The dude has made millions of dollars from people breaking their bodies and dying in their 50's and people are acting mad that his workers are going "Man, this job fucking sucks and does not make me happy at all. I hate this" ?! Crazy. (I shall now return to my void)

TBF, Naomi was going off on how the SDL women's roster, minus Becky and Charlotte, were being ignored. She's right. Several last-minute cancelled matches, her losing a 25-second match to Mandy Rose, no buildup for then champion Asuka leading into WM. She didn't blame Becky or Charlotte for that, in case that's a question for anyone. She directly replied to WWE when they announced the Women's Battle Royal. She made a lot of strong points, but the usual suspects came after her for the usual reasons, instead of acknowledging she was correct.

Our view for the G1 Supercard. History~!

One of my lifetime top 5 for sure and the reason I kept going back to WWF after he'd gone but before I discovered wrestling elsewhere - I wanted a taste of that world-weary, palpably actually-aggrieved wrestling that emerged after his heel turn until he left. I couldn't find it. But when it was there it sliced through the artifice - it was Bret, not Vince - and played with the boundaries of kayfabe/real without exposing the lie in a way that teenage sevendaughters could appreciate and adult sevendaughters likes even more nowadays. He was always a babyface, too - the world turned against him, it went completely mad, and we were asked to side with the world. He was never goofy enough to 'change persona' and ask us to buy some shit he wasn't selling last week or last year if it didn't make real emotional sense. I love that about him. His strength was his flaw and led to Montreal. If you put the pipebomb of CM Punk next to Bret snaps promo in 1997, I think Bret's is much better.

Pun intended? EC3 is nothing special in the ring, but it's utterly baffling that Vince gave up on a guy with that physique, a decent amount of charisma, and very good mic skills, almost instantly.

Oh. My. God. EC3 wrestled on the dark match. He had a manager. It was Drake Maverick.

Bubba Ray: "OK, so we're bringing in Enzo and Big Cass tonight as a worked shoot. We want to put it over by having someone really lay in some shots on Enzo. Any volunteers?"

Yo:

God, that look over Owen's shoulder directly into the camera. I'm feeling icicles form on my neck just thinking about it.

1) bounce through ropes 2) remove belt 3) kiss belt 4) give belt to ref 5) go back out and give glasses to a kid in the front row the other five moves of doom

It's astounding to you when WWE doesn't script a decent, simple feud? It's astounding to me when they do.

and because he always acted like he was legitimately trying to win an athletic contest even during restholds, it paid off in added believability with his roll-ups and flash pins. He was always trying to win the match. DDP and Jake Roberts were always 3 seconds away from winning because they had one super-protected secret weapon killshot. Bret was always 3 seconds away from winning because he knew dozens of reversals and counters, most of which no opponent could be ready for because even Bret never used them, but he knew them, because he'd been wrestling for basically literally his entire life. So the fans knew, no matter what the situation, he had something in his back pocket that would work. Speaking of always trying to win, a detail of Bret's matches that I always appreciated that I haven't seen mentioned before is this: he is the only babyface I ever recall seeing who would regularly glare and/or bark at the referee after a two count. Sure, in wrestling it's traditionally heelish, but every legitimate athlete in real sports, no matter how "babyface" they are, yells at the referee from time to time. It's the competitive spirit. Trying to get that call. Nobody's mad when their favorite baseball player shoots the ump a dirty look after a borderline strike call. Hell, usually we agree with them. (and true enough, Hebner was often dramatically slow for the sake of the narrative; Bret's objection was warranted ? ) Another aspect of him always behaving like someone who wanted to win and was trying to win should have been behaving.

Without getting too much in the standing stuff, I will point out we have no idea how the setup to Mania went down, or what was told to Sasha and Bayley was advance. There have been tons of reports lately of last minute changes to booking at the last second. Basically, would it really surprise anyone if they told Sasha and Bayley the plan was for them to hold the belts long term to add legitimacy to them and then they told the, they were dropping an hour before? Basically, I have heard so many frustrating things about WWE backstage now I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the talent over them.

So do I. You should see how flexible she is for someone in a rubber suit and gas mask.

Oh God, stop writing Bix's next long form.

Great points... There was a very 90’s professional athlete vibe with Bret like we had with Gretzky, and Jordan at the time. You don’t get that hardly anymore sadly. Even Daniel Bryan lost that a bit with the scary Kane angle.

I mentioned earlier but the promo where Bret reunited with Davey and Owen is one of the emotional moments of wrestling history. Here are these heels who have all been feuding off and on for years and Bret rightfully points out that it was the fans who tore them apart. Owen is just crying his out and Bret tells him he loves him and they all hug and Bret just looks disdainfully at the audience. I'm on a work computer so can't be digging to deep into Youtube but if you haven't seen it in a while check it out!

That... was kinda lame

I fully understand why Sasha is frustrated. She is as good as any woman on the roster but only seems to get short pushes while Charlotte and Alexa seem to be pushed constantly. It would be one thing if everyone got their turn, but it always seems to be Charlotte, Alexa, and Ronda's turn, and everyone else has to get in where they fit in. I watched Wrestlemania at a friend's house, and one of the things that we talked about is how they have too many people. There is just plain not enough space to have Charlotte, Becky, Alexa, Ronda, Asuka, Sasha, Baley, Ember, Ruby, Liv, etc. People are going to fall through the cracks, and Sasha is pretty much in a constant loop of climbing out of the crack, just to be knocked right back down so she has to climb up again.

It certainly should be, it's a stupid move in the first place, risky as hell for both participants and brings with it a long list of shortened careers, serious physical problems and worst of all. it's totally unconvincing as a finisher as it requires far too much recovery time to make a pinfall a logical outcome. In other words, high risk = small reward; needs to go away entirely. What's lost in all this discussion is that once again,, what works at Full Sail doesn't necessarily translate well to the main shows. In NXT Lars was always about a nuanced performance, bright and articulate away from the ring, a snarling monster once the bell rang. A good deal of thought was put into the character just as a great deal of thought was put into the Lacey persona. They gave her a backstory that essentially sounded like John Cena as The Marine, you simply couldn't have someone with her background as anything but a natural babyface, so what do they do? Make her an entitled, arrogant heel. Simply brilliant character development, then unfortunately the bell rings and what we see is to put it kindly, not good. A huge part of this failure is predicated on her having a totally illegal move as her finisher. I've hated the gimmick of a closed fist as a finisher going all the way back to when Ron Garvin was doing it. Look, if your finisher is a totally illegal move, you are a de facto heel no matter how else you're booked. It's a sloppy bit of crap booking that needs to away sooner rather than later. That's two moves that have totally outlived whatever usefulness they once had. The diving headbutt was risky with a low reward back when Harley Race was first doing it (and it made no sense in the context of Harley's back story as a great brawler/wrestler. Race had so many ways to beat you it was always fun guessing how he was going to win this time; then for reasons that remain obscure to me he suddenly starts winning every match with this stupid diving headbutt that is shown to be as damaging to the person delivering it as it is to the person on the receiving end. In the case of Harley and later with Chris Benoit and Daniel Bryan you see the results of permanent brain damage in the two younger men. (I'm not going to turn this into a Benoit apologist discussion, but I do place a large amount of the blame for Benoit's basically turning his brain into Swiss cheese on the diving headbutt. In the case of all three men during their peak periods all three were in the discussion for GINA (Greatest in North America) and all three had volumes of ways to win a match based on being among the very best wrestlers on the planet. So how are these versatile and amazingly talented men booked to win their matches? Why with a diving headbutt of course! This went so far beyond lazy booking to drifting really, really close to criminal incompetence on the part of the writers for both WWE and WCW. Race was winding down his career when he started using the move as a finisher and seems to have dodged that particular bullet, we can (and have) spent hours discussing how Benoit was a pretty fucked up human being from the get go and pounding his brain into mush certainly exacerbated his turn into a monster, and now we have the questionable pleasure of watching Daniel Bryan (who has already shown clear signs of brain damage) continue to use this ridiculous high-risk=low-reward move as a finisher when he's clearly talented enough to do dozens of other things to win a match. SMH.

Didn't Bret kiss the belt in every defense?

Very poor form. 1. Lurk and learn. 2. Participate in discussions. 3. Establish yourself as someone who has interesting things to say on the subject of professional wrestling. 4. Establish your site as a destination that one ought to visit for specific reasons. 5. Failure to take steps 1-4 establishes you as an annoying spammer who might be harshly dealt with by people who are up at 3AM with nothing better to do than fuck with spammers. Not that I know anyone like that, just sayin'...

I heard Curt Hawkins say on a couple podcasts that he could've made decent money on the indies for the next decade, but with his daughter being born he felt WWE held more security. Hawkins is probably a success story overall. He opened a wrestling school that's produced some good ones and books local indy shows.

Frankly, I'm fine if they aren't A+ workers. I don't need everyone to work a 5* MOTYC every night. I think they are what the division needs right now. An actual women's tag team to carry the belts with an actual team name and branding. Great characters and mic skills, and they are natural heels. So they will be good foils to whoever comes after them.

The IIconics are growing on me and I like them.

If you're working for a company and you're working your ass off to get a promotion, someone who the manager likes or the owner's kid or some bullshit receives the promotion instead...and instead of deciding to go look for another job where you'd be treated better OR sucking it up, realizing you're better off with it than without it, and working just as hard for the person in charge... you decide to make it your mission to undermine the person who got the promotion instead of you out of spite...how much better than your peers are you, really?

The issue is giving her a chance to sink or swim in a marquee program with the woman who has been beating Charlotte for months, and just pinned Ronda Rousey. Again, it's like plucking someone obscure from NXT, put them on TV for a few months doing backstage skits, and then their first program (and maybe match?) on the main roster is against Seth Rollins or Kofi Kingston for the top men's title. If you want to see if she can hang, okay, sure. There's plenty of other choices to see if she can be the face of a women's division on one of the shows if they're not keeping the titles unified. But to have her prove herself against the top woman in the company who is on a massive hot streak right now isn't fair to anyone. Becky deserves better than someone who has only wrestled two matches on the main roster (on Main Event), and Lacey probably doesn't deserve to get thrown into the deep end like this because if she fails, that's it.

So as I said somewhere on here over the weekend and I'm not just making this about race, Kofi Kingston was so fucking over and the Mania crowd was diverse to say the least, there were people CRYING over his title win.. it's perfect. Vince has a whole fucking roster of women from all different backgrounds, how is it that we keep getting Charlotte, Lacey, Alexa, Mandy.. I'm not even saying they shouldn't be given an opportunity. Obviously Charlotte is fucking great most of the time. But damn. Can we get maybe a little diversity at the top of the card..

Here's an idea. Why isn't her first feud against the woman that just beat her clean as a sheet - ASUKA?!?

Becky wins both belts at WrestleMania in the first ever women's main event. Becky two belts. Riding high. Let's capitalize on this momentum by having her feud with Dollar Tree Charlotte.

"Be a professional... DO YOUR JOB..."

Or: Professional Wrestling includes going out there doing your fucking job, even if that includes getting pinned by someone that might be lesser, because IT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB. Be a fucking professional and don't give away the match because we all see that her and Bayley are all smiles when they're winning and they look like they want to be ANYWHERE other than walking to that ring when they job. If she doesn't want to continue, ask for her release. I'm sure she's be fine taking a 100k a year deal then be happy when Cody tells her to go job to Britt.

Low-key WWE's cutest couple.

Bruce Pritchard is back, baby

A deep dive for the Stern aficionados out there. I’m looking at you @MushroomJones

It is so weird to say this and maybe the alcohol was kicking in too much but Teddy Hart being the voice of reason in explaining the meaning of Wrestlemania weekend and talking about the fans and other things made all the sense in the world.

I could take of leave EC3. Drake, on the other hand, is first in line among people who need to be allowed to show more personality on TV. Guy's an absolute pisser.

I don't care that she's right, I'm stoked for it to make tv anyway. It probably won't.

The best part of all of this?

Actually, I don't think a lot do since he was doing that to Hogan.

I hate to say it but Alvarez was right. I remember listening to the post-Rumble show and Dave was like oh it sets up the feud with Asuka perfectly and Alvarez said they won't do shit with that.

I hope they actually go through with some of these teases. Drew on SDL would be a good change for him. Kind of annoyed the Usos lost the belts to the Hardys. I just don't care to see the Hardys as champs in 2019. Loved the IIconics segment. Lacey putting Becky down was nice. It was good to see Becky actually sell it his time, but I'm still in the camp that Lacey needs a better finisher anyways. Maybe, just maybe they wanted to have someone who hasn't been put down by Becky before, and would provide a fresh match up where the outcome isn't super obvious.

As someone who’s medicated for mental illness, I would have a ton of sympathy. It wouldn’t excuse how she treats people sometimes, but it would explain it.

I know it's her decision, and she might want to keep it quiet and I wouldn't blame her at all, but coming out and talking about it if that were the case could really help a lot of people. Not that I'm saying she owes anyone any explanation, just that a lot of wrestling fans deal with those issues and she might help someone feel like they aren't alone.