BEN!

To me Dillinger is like a Barry Horowitz-level talent with a Barry Horowitz-level gimmick. Miz is good in his role now because that's the level he should be playing at. He's not a Flair or Tully-type. He's a Honky Tonk Man-type. A walking gimmick with middling in-ring abilities but with the unteachable skill of making people want to see him get punched in the face cause he's got a stupid looking face made for punching. I like a good running gag more than the next guy. This Ellsworth shit is not a good running gag. He had a two-week shelf life at best.

Yeah. SUBMIT or SURRENDER is the only way to win. Blood being necessary for a good The War Games is a fallacy. War Games is so easy. It takes a special kind of stupid to mess up this match. That said there's been more bad ones than good but the same can be said of Royal Rumbles. Doing it in the Elimination Chamber would take the team strategery part out of it cause you know WWE would do random entries with silly light show effects and it'd always come down to the babyfaces being outnumbered 3-1 before another babyface's pod ever opened.

Yeah, I remember it airing here in that kind of late late Friday night timeslot paired with the North Georgia Wrestling Alliance show (Lugnut The Salvage Man, son). I don't remember if it replaced ECW or the other way around but I don't think either lasted very long in that slot. I think this is where Glenn Gilbertti debuted the Disco Inferno character working with Terry Taylor. I recognized him as "The Georgia Millionaire" Glenn Gilbernetti*. Also, Cousin Junior looking as big as Uncle Elmer. *From NGWA or maybe the predecessor Georgia All-Star Wrestling where Georgia just started a state lottery and Gilbernetti claimed to have won.

I hope Tugboat Girl never learns about any of this Sheik Tugboat stuff.

He carries it like Magnum leaving the steel cage, babygirl.

Imagine if there had been an ottoman on the A Flair For The Gold set and Shockmaster had tripped over that too. I find the idea of Sheik Tugboat to be hilarious but that was never a rumor until Bruce Prichard pulled it out of his ass on Flair's podcast. First, Prichard seems about 75% full of shit, 100% of the time. Second, his timeline doesn't work as Slaughter was already in as a heel while Tugboat was still a face. Tugboat turning and teaming with Earthquake and doing a program against Hogan/Warrior makes sense as I would think the running plan for WMVII would've been Hogan/Warrior II before Vince ran hard with the America conquering the foreign menace angle.

Carrotsticko was an asshole when he was a kid too.

I don't think they should do Brock/Goldberg III at the WrestleMania. At the Rumble: Reigns enters early, Goldberg at 27 and spears and tosses a couple of guys, Strowman around for the final four, Strowman eliminates Roman, Goldberg gets Strowman out right after, Brock enters at 30, wrecks Goldberg for a couple minutes, goes for a big clothesline and Goldberg dips his shoulder, Brock goes flying, Goldberg wins the Rumble. Challenges for the WHC. Styles can carry him to a long-ish main event-level match. Brock goes nuts on Raw, murders a couple of cruiserweights. Literally. RIP TJP. Gets Universal Title match at WM to satiate him. Jericho eventually cons his way into the match making it a 3-way. Brock squashes both guys, eats the shopping list and sends Jericho away to play rockstar. Holds the title until the SummerFest where he baits Goldberg into another match and he finally picks up a win over Goldberg. Also, Roman vs. Strowman. And Ambrose finally snaps on Ellsworth leading to a garbage match against Shane. And I guess, Rollins vs. Trips and Cena vs. Undertaker.

Well, of course he was going to turn on Sting. But yeah, he probably would've ended up just like The Boss, man is he big. Losing end of a hoss feud with Vader and then turn on Sting. Probably go over on Sting cause Hogan's coming in. Hogan beats him, takes his mask, and The Shockmaster gets revealed as Hulk's friend til the end, Brother Tropical Storm Boat.

The format being practically the same since the Monday Night Wars has been Raw's biggest problem for a long time. The extra hour just exemplifies it.

The Shockmaster was supposed to be a masked character to feud with Vader. Then he fell and they ran with the clutz gimmick and I guess, the everyman construction worker character was so he could wear a construction helmet so when he fell down he'd have a helmet to scramble around for. Most of his matches were really fast squashes. Then they kinda tried to repackage him as The Super Shockmaster but I'm pretty sure he only had one match with that character and then he was gone shortly after. I think he left WCW cause he split with Dusty's sister-in-law. http://www.prowrestlingtees.com/super-shockmaster.html He only went to back to WWF cause they called him to replace Earthquake to do some jobs for Yoko but it was only a short stint cause he had an ownership stake in a nightclub so he was doing that full-time. He was in the nightclub biz before wrestling which is where he picked up these sweet dance moves. At least that's how I recall his story from an interview I once heard.

Cedric Alexander really wants to survive.

Brandi Rhodes at least kind of looks like she knows where she's supposed to be for spots. Has no idea what she's doing when she's there though. Russo was terrible in a train-wreck kind of way. Lagana was terrible in a boring kind of way. Death Crew Council. Death Group Group. I hope Ricky Morton hot tags a tree and Robert Gibson falls out of it. Was planning to put together a proposal to purchase Corgan's stock should he have chosen to convert. Waited too long to get the funds together though. Just didn't have anything smaller than a twenty on me.

I'm excited for tonight's Gang Warz. I mean there's so much at stake. You got the women putting aside their bad blood to team up to determine which women's championship gets defended at WrestleMania. The tag teams putting aside their rivalries to team up and determine which tag team championship gets defended at WrestleMania. The men putting aside their egos to determine which brand gets the #30 spot in the Rumble and which championship defense closes WrestleMania. And of course, possession of the coveted Bragging Rights trophy. That's all happening, right? I haven't been watching the TV. The only spot I really want is Ambrose to square off with Strowman, circle around and casually tag in Reigns and those two chuckle about it while the rest of their teams get pissed off. Then the ref orders Ambrose back in, he circles around Strowman again and slaps the shit out of Rollins which baits Rollins to tag in, and Ambrose gets him in the Crips corner. Now, clubbering would usually commence but that's four fistuses on one man. Here we got five men on a team so that's ten fistuses on one man plus Ellsworth has two hands which could theoretically be formed into fistuses as well. So that's twelve fistuses on one man, so we got us some ULTRA MEGA MASS CLUBBERING commencing. Ain't no one gonna survive!

*Chives

Man, that WWF Light Heavyweight tournament was just sad with guys like Brian Christopher, Scott Putski, The Fantastics as singles, and a bunch of other guys just thrown out there completely cold. WCW had guys flying around doing crazy shit while WWF was like here's Taka Michinoku and some short guys. The term 'light heavyweight' sounded outdated too. The belt was even sad and cheap looking.

Corgan should've asked for a mediation. To a jury he really is going to come off like a predatory lender cause he's been offered to be repaid but he wants the company that he's arguing is essentially worthless. Spike just cared about the numbers. TNA wasn't delivering the consistent 1.0 rating anymore. The news of Spike not renewing Impact and Russo stupidly exposing himself came out around the same time so people drew their own correlation between the two. I don't understand why anyone thinks Spike would care that Russo was back. He was part of TNA for most of the Spike run when the ratings were good and he left on his own volition because his ego couldn't handle working under Bischoff/Hogan. Really the only unsubstantiated speculation is me thinking Coker played a role in shutting the door on the Spike/TNA relationship. I don't remember the exact timeline but I think it went like: Late 2013: Bischoff sent home to sit out his contract, Jeff Jarrett leaves, Russo starts begging Dixie for a job Early 2014: Gaburick somehow becomes TNA's head of creative, even Dixie realizes he doesn't know what the hell he's doing and gives Russo a consulting job providing notes to Gaburick as well as the announcers, asks all involved to keep it under wraps for reasons unknown but probably just cause Russo's such an anathema to everybody from the wrestlers to the fans, the boys start speculating that Russo's back cause shit's got his fingerprints on it. Right before he departed, Jarrett brokered a working agreement between TNA and Wrestle-1, Muto wanted nothing to do with Russo so Gaburick had to let him in on the secret and assure him that Russo would have nothing to do with his guys. Like JUN-JUL '14: Scott Coker takes over Bellator from Bjork, news comes out that Spike isn't planning on renewing Impact in September, Vince Russo sends an e-mail to Mike Johnson instead of Mike Tenay and then admits that he's secretly working for TNA, Russo gets fired from TNA for not being able to keep a secret. Seiya Sanada becomes a fake Great Muta.* *That doesn't have anything to do with anything but I remembered it and it made me laugh. He wasn't even the first fake Great Muta in TNA.

Papa Hunter's love is the richest prize in all the WWE Universe. So the Universal Championship match should close the show. On the other hand they've got that piano version of Sasha Banks' theme ready to go for Raw in case she splits her wig.

I'm planning on being John Cena. I'm not dressing as him or anything just telling a girl I'm never going to marry her or give her children and then kick her out of my house when I'm done with her. Rapadoo! BUMBADUMBUM

Ron Fuller would've sold this company to Billy Corgan twice and turned a profit each time.

I don't know about marital status but they aren't still together. Unless Pondo's cool with her dating another dude.

It bugs me way more that TNA used Chelsea Green and Laura Dennis earlier this year and announced signing them under those names and then they just show up later in the year as people we're supposed to have never seen before. They've used Laura Dennis for several years and now she's supposed to be completely untrained. And I know I've made fun of TNA not giving any of the new female signings last names but if 'Van Ness' is the best they can come up with. I think I'm mostly bugged by them being used as a backdrop to get Maria even more TV time.

Billy Corgan's lawyer is super casual in the court documents. Everybody addressed by first name only. Corgan's goal is getting TNA for what he's already paid without having to inherit any of the debt. He knew what kind of financial situation the company was in. Anybody with any knowledge of TNA knows that their cash flow has basically been around $0 for the past 3-4 years. Also, acting like being TNA President meant he could do actual business stuff is like if Jack Tunney marched into Titan Tower and started firing people. I have no idea why he wants a jury trial. He should really just take Anthem's payoff and maybe the Grand Championship belt and go hit the podcast circuit. It's hilarious how some people act like Dixie Carter's some evil mastermind. She's way less hands on than people think. She just sticks her fingers in her ears when she gets bad news and tells her incompetent executives to handle it. That's how you get a CFO juggling debts and playing shell games and bikers strong-arming production workers. I want to say the period when TNA was overpaying Bruce Prichard was when Panda management was in the process of transitioning from Dixie's father to Dixie's brother and any TNA business Panda was handling including payroll was being transitioned over to TNA to handle in-house. So at that time, the payroll issues were Panda's fault. After that though, it's all TNA. Russo didn't have anything to do with Spike dropping Impact. Dixie Carter gave him a consulting job because he cried poverty and she took pity on him but Spike wouldn't have given two shits if he was back with TNA or not. Hogan/Bischoff raising production costs through the roof while dropping ratings through the floor already had Impact as good as done when their deal came up. I think what really sealed their fate was Scott Coker coming into the picture with Bellator. After Spike cancelled Impact, Bellator got Impact's old production equipment. All this said though, I thought TNA was like $20 million in the hole so they're doing way better than I ever would've thought. Morale up, everybody!

That line's just chalk, Ron.

Forget about The Bucks Of Youth, it's all about the Buck Of Bunkhouse and the Colonel showing up. Also, Meng and Barbarian clubbering on some spot monkeys. Maybe Road Warrior Animal and Heidenreich so that guy in the truck can get raped again. Toss Helms and Shannon Moore into the lake. Instant 3 Count concert. Toss Evan Karagias in there too if they can find him. Otherwise, just replace him with Vanguard-1. As much as I like the idea of doing wacky shit from the Hardy compound, three times in less than half a year is too much. Maybe one match during fall sweeps and a full show in December so the Hardys can get their Christmas party subsidized but other than that it's overkill.