MORELOCK

That Cheetah Kid isn't Rocco - it's Abbuda Dein. Not Balls Mahoney...the other Abbuda Dein. Portrayed the other Cheetah Kid. Oh...and he also wrestled under the name "Prince Iaukea." Yeah. This guy: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=7202&gimmick=Abbuda+Dein https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Abbuda_Dein

All of this was stupid. If your best defense of an angle is "but WWE did something similar," that angle sucks. No one should know that better than AEW fans, many of whom are disaffected WWE fans. WWE were #2 at the time of most of your examples. And I didn't say it was a fatal error - I just said it was bad business. WWE has a long history of bad business decisions. AEW is in no danger of going out of business, but if their shows are hyper-focused on catering to a very specific demographic of hardcore fan that will already be watching, they are ignoring everyone outside of that demographic. Much discussion has been made of WWE leaving money on the table - I'd prefer it if AEW didn't do the same. You're welcome to call that whining if you want to, but all I'm interested in is a more entertaining kayfabe-based wrestling show instead of one that veers into Russo territory. It's objectively better for all of us if AEW grows its fanbase, and this ain't the way to do it.

I can take or leave garbage matches, but Ole Mancer's character work has been the best part of MLW other than maybe The Dynasty since I started watching a year ago. Just endlessly entertaining. He could be big for either AEW or WWE and either option would help him to ease up on the deathmatch insanity. ETA: Why *don't* they use Simple Man? My least favorite Skynyrd song by a mile, but it's not like they are mailing royalty checks to anyone for the copyrighted music they're using.

Can't send everyone home happy if we're all already home.

Then the others aren't going to know what the hell he's talking about. Which is another issue. Why waste that time? Does the fan that is going to stop watching because "I wish they'd just shit on the McMahons like they used to" really exist? What purpose does any of that serve for the overall show?

Nope. First tourney was in 85 and won by Muraco, prior to Race's arrival.

That era of WCW is a blind spot for me. I mainly can't stand it being used in any other spot than a manager tripping someone with a cane handle like Fuji. Didn't like Jack Gallagher's comedy stuff and definitely don't like it being used as a weapon to hit someone over the head with the expectation of selling.

I was trying to figure out what you were talking about and found out there are two Prince Iaukeas. Two Cheetah Kids, too.

Or sexually assault a woman and not even address it at all? I am not so sure. I know until he supports meaningful healthcare reform and amnesty for literally every nonviolent marijuana offense, he won't get a MORELOCK vote.

God, can we get umbrellas the fuck out of wrestling please?

I think you're misunderstanding the issue. No one wants AEW to pretend that wrestlers didn't exist outside of AEW. It's the potshots at Vince and WWE in general (comments about scripted promos, Cody's corny throne, the whole Brodie debacle) that come off as petty. To most viewers, WWE is wrestling. Positioning your promotion on-air as "the other guys" will only lead to being treated like "the other guys." It's a very #2 move. They should be worried about putting on good wrestling shows, not just shows that tell people how they aren't that other company. This is where the TNA comparison comes into play. Don't tell us. Show us. Also, the only people that really like those shots? Anti-WWE, dyed-in-the-wool AEW fans. They're going to watch anyway. But if you spend all your time making insider references and make your number 2 promotion look low-rent, you aren't going to pick up new viewers. Booking *everything* according to what hardcore fans want is bad business. Those fans are finite.

I know where I'd start. There are five clean shaven men in that photo, six if you count Ligero but I have no idea if he has a beard or not. Ligero is pretty goofy, but at least he looks distinctive. Everyone else is just so same-y, with their hip "I grow hair everywhere except the sides of my head" look. They look like an indie-folk collective.

Man, that group shot really underscores how similar every male wrestler in NXT:UK looks.

He appeared at Double or Nothing, so the music would have been played on AEW programming before, but they also posted one for Malenko and I don't remember when he would have gotten an entrance.

Punk's one of those guys that is HUGELY influential on the modern style - but not in a good way. What I mean by that is he's constantly hitting offense that someone his size, frame, and character shouldn't be hitting. He wants to wrestle like one of the all-time greats, but I don't believe him. His work is just not convincing. The Lesnar feud is probably the best example I can think of. He's also one of the godfathers of "let's make every match a five star match," and as a result, none of his matches have ever felt all that special to me - outside of Cena at MITB, which I felt was special due to the storylines, not the ringwork itself.

The wrestling discussion threads are for miscellaneous posts that don't fit in other threads. Mania talk goes in the Mania thread because it doesn't make sense for it to be in two threads (because people will post the same thing in both threads - like how the last couple of pages here are nearly identical to the last couple of Mania thread pages). Even when we do end up discussing a big news story in the miscellaneous thread, it gets branched out into its own thread. There isn't an overlap here - you know where the Mania thread is, @paintedbynumbers. You have somewhere to be or something? It's like one extra click or thumb tap.

I mean, Fuck Miz I guess, but isn't this one of those situations where it actually makes sense to say Fuck Vince? The Miz shouldn't feel encouraged to show up at events sick, and the company culture at WWE is undoubtedly to blame for that. Who knows how Vince could possibly retaliate at the people making the decision to sit out right now? What if the post-Coronavirus WWE suddenly doesn't have a place for those weak people who couldn't Man Up and wrestle during a pandemic? Meltzer or whoever can point to Reigns making the decision based on Miz, but it's clear Reigns should have been pulled the second all of this flared up. If it took Miz showing up sick for them to wake up, then I'm glad he did. I hope the whole roster sits out and tells Vince to go fuck himself.

I got to thinking after the clock talk in the Dynamite thread: how long does merch stay in the pipeline for WWE before being released, and then eventually pulled from shelves? The clock in question was released in 1999, but the images are almost certainly from early 1998 at the latest. I also remember seeing Ryback on a WWE gift bag in Wal-Mart and this would have been at least a year after his release. Back in the day I think I remember them releasing some Hasbro figures of people that were no longer with the company.

Is this a serious question? You know better.

I didn't mean to mock the concept of spoilers, just the idea that this is a show that could be ruined any worse than it already has been. Like, what could our WrestleMania moments possibly even be this year? Who's going to care? The only potential crowning moment with Shayna will likely be botched, and even if it isn't: what then? The best we can hope for with this show is a Good Match according to the current Good Match Formula and at this point that's more likely to turn me away than draw me in.

I'd like to meet, point at, and laugh at whoever could possibly be offended by Mania being "spoiled" at this point.

That's Sable when she was still with Mero and he was starting to go all Heel Savage on her. All of that plus Heel Nation Rock, Weird Makeup Taker, Sunglasses Austin, and Kane killing Vader would put the clock somewhere in early 98. That hybrid logo is weird as hell, and wasn't used for much. I just realized I'm not in the merch thread.

If I'm understanding the timing of this correctly, and you saw this on the Monday night that the Benoit tribute aired, it's clearly for him and not the Vince angle. Even if they would have gone so far as to lower the flag for the Vince angle, didn't the stock immediately take a huge hit because people are idiots and thought Vince was shoot dead? I doubt they'd still want to lean into that angle a week later after actual deaths.

It's also a lot easier to skip the shows when you consider that there will be no meaningful story development during all this. I thought they'd gotten all the WWE potshots out of their system. It's all very TNA.