Go2Sleep

Probably trying to get close to the proper Spanish pronunciation where the double R would be rolled, but has no actual Spanish-speaking experience or education, so it comes out awkward with his American accent.

Does buying one of TNA's weekly shows before they got their first tv deal count? I wanted to see an Ultimate X match, so a buddy and I put up $5 each to order the second or third UX match show. Don't remember much about it other than Raven telling whoever he was feuding with (Sabu?) to "come out of the shower... I mean shadows."

It's interesting how the filmed segments have stayed consistent with what you expect from LU, but it's the live action and in-ring work that have dropped off a lot. The sloppy editing doesn't help, but I feel like we're seeing a lot more mailed-in matches than previous seasons. That said, Johnny Mundo + smoke and mirrors booking carried Vibora to one of the better matches of the season so far.

Not technically a ppv purchase, but I feel like my ticket buys for Lockdown 07 and WM 32 would've been better spent elsewhere.

That would be the most compelling main roster angle since WM 30.

He just straight up said "I don't like gays." I'm fairly surprised some of The Rock's old material hasn't come back to haunt him now that he's mainstream, but the current owner has literally said the N-word on tv, and the heir apparent did a blackface performance as a babyface. Wrestling seems to have some kind of weird immunity bubble for egregious bigotry, even relative the rest of the world where being a rich white man gets you out of most things unscathed. Shit, even Papa John had to symbolically leave his company before retiring to his castle and a lifetime of unimaginable wealth.

I feel like the title change match would've worked better as a ref stoppage. Since save rules haven't been enforced in 30 years, the finish just didn't have the impact it should have and Bate kind of looked like an idiot. Now the 6-man a couple weeks ago with UE vs. MM/Ricochet... There's a match that jumped up my rankings.

I hope Vince trots Hogan out at Summer Slam and the Brooklyn/traveling European crowd shits all over him. That said, as with anything WWE, I'm preparing myself for the worst. So it'll probably be a big pop, welcome back chants, bowing, etc.

I know my first post was a little tongue in cheek, but I really hope this situation forces a bigger conversation about Vince McMahon's obvious racism and that of the WWE in general. Considering he dropped an N-bomb himself on tv this century, I have no doubt he thinks Hogan didn't do anything wrong, and now, due to the political climate in the US and securing more money through the new tv deals, he doesn't have to bend to "political correctness." You'd have a hard time convincing me that this move and resurrecting the XFL on the back of the anthem protests aren't related.

WWE had their hottest babyface blow a 3-0 lead and get pinned 5 times in 20 minutes, lol.

Hogan said those things before America voted that it's ok to be outwardly racist again. WWE is just keeping up with the times for once.

Haven't watched a main roster show or read results since MITB, so I came to this thread to catch up on what was happening at Extreme Rules this week. I saw the card in the first post, and well, I can see why the thread became 50% soft-drink-chat.

At the risk of sounding too hipster, I literally do not know a single match that's happening on the Extreme Rules card.

When I think of missed opportunities in wrestling, WWE denying us the chance to see The Rock sell the 619 is way up there.

The other simple thing with Rock/Shawn is that their careers never really lined up for a real match. Rock was just breaking in in late 96. When Shawn wasn't losing his smile, he was in the main event scene while Rocky was firmly midcard, and they were both heels for most of that time frame. Shawn hurt his back in at the 98 Rumble, and didn't wrestle from Mania 14 to Summer Slam 02. The Rock blew up in 98, but by 2001, he wasn't wrestling full time anymore. At the aforementioned 02 Summer Slam, The Rock put Lesnar over and disappeared until the new year. Then he had another 3-month run in 2003, and one-off at WM 20 that was his last match until his 2011 return against Cena. Of course, you may remember Shawn retired in 2010 at WM 26. So Shawn's backstage shittiness might have cost us a retroactively bizarre 5-minute Raw match, but they only had about 5 months of meaningful overlap in their WWE careers outside of that. When one was a weekly regular, the other was only doing spot appearances from 1998-2010. The closest they got to working together was Shawn guest-reffing a couple of Rock's matches with HHH (the first real SD, and their Iron Man match at JD 2000)

So we're totally getting Swagger vs. Pentagon in a "first broken bone" match at some point, right?

I'm not gonna say UE is the next Shield yet, but in terms of trios that can have good 6-mans with any random roster combo... There's something there. Ricochet's matrix dodge of the high-low deserves a lot of credit here too. Great timing and subversion of the usual rhythm that kicked the match up one final notch. I feel bad for Bobby Fish missing out on this, as I've been pulling for him since I saw him working in Eldon, Missouri for Harley Race's promotion, but heel Roddy is really the perfect fit for this group in the ring.

Brock hasn't been entertaining for like 3 years now.

Better than the first episode, but still not terribly encouraging. Matanza looked like a jobber much like most of the Aztec warfare lineup. Swagger's debut was alright, but that new trios champ team sucks. The whole team only worked because of the Killshot/Fox dynamic. With Havoc, it's just 3 generic babyfaces with no chemistry. Honestly, Famous B's group should've won there. I will say that the editing and pacing seemed more back on track this week. I'll definitely tune in for the "3 ways to the grave" match next week.

The first time Shawn kicked out of the tombstone, it was a really big deal. Everyone else doing it every year after was fucking terrible. From around the same time, Shawn getting off the stretcher repeatedly against Batista with Jericho cheering Shawn on. Of course, Jericho was only doing this so Batista would hurt Shawn even more. Great story telling in the early stages of their memorable 08 feud. Though it probably shouldn't have been done, Mick Foley not saying I Quit when he was handcuffed and The Rock was blasting him with unprotected chair shots made Foley look un-submit-able and gave the Rock a violent edge that he was missing at the top of the card. Umaga starting to get up after the ring-rope-choke STFU before Cena had to put it on again for an uncomfortably long time was a nice touch on the monster/monster killer story they were going for.

I have to disagree with this on both fronts. 1. Rey worked on good rosters for his entire mainstream career. He worked with Eddie extensively in WCW and WWE. Granted Eddie's his only regular opponent that can be mentioned along side Misawa, Kawada, and Akiyama, but he wasn't exactly working with stiffs his whole career. Plenty of matches with Malenko, Psicosis, Jericho, Chavo, etc. Hell, even in his late-stage indy run, he was getting to work with Ricochet and Low Ki. 2. Other than Misawa, I'm not sure you could make a case for any of Kobashi's regular opponents being better than him. Certainly not Taue or Akiyama. If you compare Kobashi and Kawada matches with common opponents, I think Kobashi takes most of them (losing only Taue and barely Misawa). Kobashi was also way better in matches with North American opponents than anyone in AJ, even Misawa. And that's only the first half of his career... By the NOAH days, he was head and shoulders above everyone.

Like you said earlier, I think this criticism applies to just about anyone who works in WWE now, though. Even Daniel Bryan matches are like that now.

On one hand it's nice that we have a recent precedent for how bad you have to be for Vince to give up on you. Unfortunately, Roman Reigns clears "Big Cass level bad" by a lot and even Jinder is slightly above that threshold as well, so no hope on those fronts.

Another really good show overall. I feel like I got what I wanted out of every match. The opening tag was exactly the fun workrate match I was looking for. The crowd being way into UE was surprising, but props to Lorcan and Burch for keeping the pace up and not letting that get too out of hand. Even though UE retaining was pretty obvious, they had a lot of good nearfalls (or near "the finish is about to start" spots where the faces still made a good comeback after). That was a neat way to break up the double submission too. Dream/Ricochet was a fun back and forth match too. Dream definitely held his own, though it was more like Ricochet let Dream keep up with him, rather than Dream keeping up with full-speed Ricochet. Outside of the long distance SSP, Ricochet wasn't using his top-shelf stuff, but it's a testament to both guys that he can dial it down and still have a very compelling match. Dream definitely needs to start winning matches soon, though. The women's match was exactly what I said it should be right down to the finish, so I appreciate that. The announcers could've done better with the story that Shayna was a much better wrestler, but Nikki was double tough and crazy enough to keep coming right at her. Both women told that story perfectly in the ring. Black/Lars was solid for having a weak build. I was impressed by Lars working that pace and match length, even if Black is a guy who's gonna make most people look good in that setting. The first whiff on Black Mass was really bad, but at least they had the sense to not sell it for too long and get back to a proper finish. For another match with an obvious winner, I thought both guys came out looking good. The main event was nuts, right on par with their first match. Ciampa dragging Johnny up the ramp could've been really corny and dragged the match down, but his trash talk and the ring spot made it the dramatic tone it was going for. I was very worried we were gonna see EC3 interference when it became obvious the match was going into clusterfuck territory, but thankfully that didn't happen. I admired Johnny's arm tremor sell of the DDT, but it still felt a little underwhelming given some of the other spots in the match. Don't know how I feel about a 3rd match, since how much more can they realistically do? They really need a loser leaves stip, because NXT really isn't big enough for both of them at this point.

That was a nice little match with Dunne/O'Reilly. Dunne is easily the MVP so far this year, and I never understood why anyone hated O'Reilly. His facial expressions are goofy, but that works to his advantage selling (like that headbutt in this match) and he can absolutely go on the mat or in quick strike exchanges. Pretty much every NXT match he's been is has been good. Loved that even early on it felt like both guys were trying to win. Great finish too with O'Reilly unable to get the KO, so he yanks out the mouth guard as a great visual cue to mean "one more shot and he's out," but it gave Dunne enough time to counter with the injured arm they built up throughout the match. Hopefully after Shayna's through with Nikki, she can bully a few of the less intimidating looking women on the roster before Bianca puts her in her place. Bianca looked like she had it all together tonight.