Robert s

My favorite Hogan-in-Japan spot is him spinning out of a hammerlock into a single-leg trip. I don't know, if that spot has a name, but I usually associate it with Tiger Mask (Sayama), so Hogan doing that same spot is extra-funny.

I am sad to say that this is not a US-specific phenomena. I am still shuddering thinking about what I have heard very intelligent people say over the last couple of months in that regard. The only difference might be that people here mostly grumble but in the end follow the rules to a certain degree for some time.

Come on, (Roberto) Fishman was right there.

50+ is the demographic, that watches TV the most. NXT's 0.4 from the table in Jericho's tweet puts them in the bottom quarter of the the list. Aand AEW's 0.29 is one of the lowest value in the whole column. So compared to other TV programs both have a relatively young audience (though AEW's one is definitely younger than NXT's).

So the Kings of Cable right now are Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham?

Yeah, I am not buying that. To think that such a video in this form is a good idea, needs much more than speech impediment. For god's sake, he started with "I'm Mike Quackenbush", basically saying that everything afterwards might be a work.

Using his promo-voice is also not the smartest choice if he wants people to take this as a heartfelt apology.

In continental Europe, none of the things you mention above are usually eaten for breakfast (okay, you can get some scrambled eggs in hotels that regularly deal with "outside" guests). Pancakes etc. are lunch/dinner food over here.

So good-bye Jerry Lawler, Steve Austin (is he currently under any contract?), Michael Hayes, Vince McMahon ...?

I suppose you mean "the day before Lent starts" (unless British people are so stern that they combine carnival and lent).

Sigi was not a founder of SWF, the SWS was founded by a group in Oberglatt (who trained and wrestled amongst themselves; I think Danny Michaels was the first president of the group), though Sigi joined at some point in 2000 and was at least promoting some shows (I guess if the show took place in St. Gallen or Thurgau, they were promoted by him). After the Oberglatt group mostly withdrew, a non-wrestler called Fabio Sessa became the head. He was the brain of the whole US invasion thing with booking lots of big named US talent (which caused the end of the promotion).

There was (and still is) a very small Swiss scene, that started about in 99. At first, there was a small local group that did shows in front of friends and family. In 2000, the expanded a bit, which is also when Claudio joined. At that point, they started to run about 10 shows a year in the German speaking parts of Switzerland. In 2004, that promotion tried to run a big show with lots of international guests (they got DDP, AJ Styles, Abyss, Disco Inferno and Sonny Siaki; Jeff Jarrett was booked for the show as well but no-showed as his wife got diagnosed with cancer - the contact to US talent went, I assume via Joe E. Legend to Scott D'Amore, who was also at the show). That show bombed spectacularly and the promotion shut down. Later on, some people tried to promote on a less regular basis, though also booking the occasional US talent (I was at a show in 05 that had Austin Aries defend his ROH Title and Honky Tonk Man was working the main event). Most of the people either were just not interested in working internationally, i.e. more than once or twice a months or were just not that talented. The most prominent wrestler besides Cesaro is Cesaro's former tag team Ares, who was main eventing wXw for some time and moved to the US, where he wrestled for Chikara a bit. Don't quote me on that, but I think he is married to Allison Danger (which is why he moved to the US). A couple of other guys worked semi-regularly in Germany and Italy. The Swiss shows when I attended them semi-regularly in the early 2000s usually were about 3/4 local Swiss talent and 1/4 German and Austrian wrestlers. And of course, if you want to go further back in history, there is René Lasartesse, a long time star of the German Catch scene. He died a year and a half ago at the age of 90. He attended one or two of those shows mentioned above in the early 2000s, an apparently told the people there that he tried to run shows himself in Switzerland in the 70s or so and failed. His conclusion was that wrestling as a business does not work in Swiss culture.

I am not sure if Otsuka ever cared about having an MMA career beyond getting a payday or two. I mean on the same day he fought Vovchanchyn in the PRIDE GP qualifier (which he lost by decision), he wrestled on a BattlArts show (the BattlArts show took place a couple of hours before he MMA fight). That's a double shot of a special kind. At least the pro wrestling show was in Korakuen Hall while the MMA show was in the Tokyo Dome, i.e. he had a very short walk to get from one show to the other.

Actually the fourth, Dimitrov, Troicki and Coris already tested positive. But looking at the pictures going around about the event, they basically tried everything to get infected.

"Cheese" can be so many different things, that I would not make a general statement like "I like / don't like cheese". For example, I could never eat cream or mold cheese. On the other hand, I could not live without 9 to 12-months riped hard cheese. Consider the tradition the making of such cheese has here locally, I probably would have to hand in my passport if I would not like that kind of cheese. The way that cheese is still produced to this day (some kind of three stage pasturing - in the winter in the valley, in spring and fall in low altitude mountain pastures and in the summer in high altitude mountain pastures), is even on some UNESCO cultural heritage list. And I am still amused that there is town on this world called New Glarus. The original Glarus is a Swiss canton valley that to some degree seems to be stuck in the 18th century. For example, to this day they still use the so called Landsgemeinde: the monthly votings are done literally in a public forum, voting is done by public gathering via raising of hands. At least Glarus is not Appenzell (another Swiss canton, relatively close to Glarus). There women's right to vote was only given in 1991, after they Appenzell was ordered to do so by the Swiss Federal Court (the Landsgemeinde there in 1990 still voted against women's right to vote).