GuerrillaMonsoon

I always liked Tenta's, the nice level between the suspension of disbelief that he's going to get him over before squashing him dead

Watching Vader/Dustin King of Cable Semis from 1992. I'm of the opinion Dustin had the best sunset flip of any wrestler. It's a conversation I don't think we've had on here? Best sunset flip guy?

Given they've done some variety of it at 10, 20 and 30, I'd be surprised if they don't do something similar at 40. Alternatively, defending against Punk on night one, and then losing to Cody on night two is arguably the more satisfying end to Roman's title reign. Also from a perspective that you know they're dying to use the line about "making Roman look strong" in the build up and its difficult to do without being too shooty/everything else you see is fake. Roman cutting a lengthy promo about why he's going to beat Cody, and then ending it by turning to Punk and saying that he's just there to make him look strong, before walking out would be nice. Rollins/Punk feels more likely to be at the Rumble, even though Punk has already entered the Rumble match (double duty?)

I think there's pros and cons to having a three way at Mania. Having Punk in there minimises the potential of crowd turning on Cody and siding with Roman Two guys carrying the promo work leading up to it if Roman remains part time. Punk completes his story simply by main eventing without necessarily having to win. If Cody goes over by pinning Punk, does that feel an anticlimactic end to such a long title run? Or do you get Punk eating high profile losses out the way early and does it give you an opening to run Cody and Roman at SummerSlam with Cody beating Roman, while you do the Punk/Heyman stuff as well. Feels too similar to the Edge/Bryan match, unless you want to lean into that and have Romans promos focus on him predicting pinning both again. Also think it's a better use of that story rather than burning through it unnecessarily and having Cody/Punk #1 contender match at EC

How do we feel about a Cody vs Punk vs Roman main event of Mania?

I really enjoyed Riho's matches with Nyla, and the occasional contribution to a trios match, but yeah, doesn't really do a lot for me. I wonder how much that street fight between Tay/Jay and Ruby/Willow where most of them got legit hurt shook confidence in the division. That was the last real high profile match in the division as far as I can recall. Everything else has been largely.....2005 WWE womens division level promotion since.

Cinematic match where rather than film anything new, they just buy the rights to this: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3054929617864776 and insert various stills of Darby where Vader would have been without ever over dubbing the voice.

I'd be on board with the Devil being revealed as Ric Flair here. Everyone's expecting Ric to turn on the Stinger one last time, instead he's tried making good with Sting, and softening up MJF for Sting to have his last match with the champ, except Sting wants to wrestle Darby. Sting beats MJF, gives a shot to Darby, who surprises him with a flash pin, new champion. EVERYONE LIKES WRESTLEMANIA 9.

Is there an entertaining outcome here that involves Edge winning tonight? I hope Christian wins and cleanly too which is probably the most productive use of this. But if Edge wins and immediately drops the belt to someone who could use the rub thats great too. Given he didn't do it with any younger talent in WWE and yet to come close to making anyone else look better for being in the ring or a segment with him, that's hard to see happening.

If Kingston wins here, and the story is Kingston trying to overcome the odds and rely on results going his way to make it, having Garcia/Brody next makes it difficult unless you have Garcia upset Brody, or Kingston can't progress no matter what.

Apparently (according to Jarrett) - Ahmed went into business for himself here. It was booked that Jarrett would leave him laying and they'd build to the match from there, but he instead no sold everything, and there's this awkward tussle between them where he clearly won't co-operate.

Something I've never really understood in hindsight. If you've got Ric Flair on screen in 1991 as the Real World's Champion, and you've decided the house show market for Flair/Hogan is poor. Surely at some point you put Hogan over Flair for the real world title? Or was an agreement reached with WCW before this could eventuate? I'm trying to get my head around whether: - Taker beats Hogan at Survivor Series 91 for the WWF title - Hogan beats Flair at Tuesday In Texas for the big gold belt - Tunney decides he's had enough of the duelling titles. The Rumble 92 will crown an undisputed champion. - Flair wins. Is too much of a schmozz for 91, or even if Hogan beats Flair, there's no title on the line and he poses with it afterwards before they send it back to WCW is a thing.

I think we sleep on how much Shawn Michaels HATED Lex Luger in the mid 90s. Those RAW episodes where he was on commentary while Luger wrestled and just fucking buried him every chance he got were brutal.

I vividly remember working a call centre job for a bank in my early 20s, and coming across a guy with this surname and pronouncing it Cockburn, and the tantrum voice-breakingly shrill response of "ITS CO-BURN, YOU FOOL" from the guy in his mid 50s on the end of the line, and choosing to double down on it with a "Oh. My apologies, it's been put on the system here as C-O-C-K-B-U-R-N. I'll change that for you now", and hearing this uncontrollable and escalating "nononoNONONONO NO!" at the end of the phone before a handset being smashed down. I've made it a mandatory mistake to make whenever I come across it from there.

I fell asleep twice during this episode and didn't see the end of Mox/Lethal. I came here to read the reactions, and my understanding of turtling is when you're taking a shit and it's head is poking out but it won't fully come out so it goes back up in. I'm assuming Mox didn't do this to Jay Lethal but I went back and watched to be sure.

Brian Cage as the least charismatic and timingless version of Paul Schaefer please.

Speaking of bad Dusty impersonations. Johnny B Badd vs Scotty Flamingo in a battle for who is the prettiest man in WCW with dueling bad Dusty promos is.......yeah, look, it doesn't age well.

In the sense that all other 7 in the ring were down after the trash can spot, and then only the heels got up when Asuka came in, to set it up, it felt forced. Also annoyed that when the four heels have weapons, their opponents on the ground motionless and they somehow manage to slip on a banana peel and lose, it made them look weak. Wasn't a fan of the finish - felt a bigger, new and improved Damage CTRL laying waste to four big names, and then you lead to them eliminating the weakest link that was holding them back previously in Bayley seems a bigger deal (and if you happen to get to Bianca/Charlotte in amongst it, bonus) rather than all four looking like losers to a team that didn't need the win, leading to losers taking out their frustrations of losing on the biggest loser. Agree with the earlier suggestions of removing the cage door position - maybe in favour of what they did with the Elim Chamber earlier in the year (and the ropes in the middle of the two rings)

https://i.ibb.co/VYYkgfb/Screenshot-2023-11-26-195225.png I mean, granted its not the West Side Story face off before they awkwardly try to navigate the ropes to attack each other that they've done in most years, my point re: it feeling like everything leading up to getting the shot of each team in an opposing ring feels meaningless, and that its all lead up to giving us this image.

Happened in the womens, mens it didn't in fairness.

I feel like Miz/Gunther was the wrong match for the wrong occasion. Miz wrestling like he's Flair circa 2002 and just outrageously cheating his way into giving an unsuspecting Gunther a run for his money was probably the way to go. Not Miz taking 80% of the match as a legit threat, and then just running into the inevitable wall. (Thinking Big Show/Flair for the ECW title eons ago). Really hate the WWE booking of War Games in that nothing that happened before the final entrant matters, and that everything must lead to a stare-down of both sides from opposing rings. Would love to see the little stories in a match where The Numbers Game wears the opening guy down, and has nothing left to offer, before being subsequent easy prey for the opposing side, or that there's a big spot early in the match that plays a part in the finish. I even miss me some overconfident heel team adding their manager into the mix and the weakest link being the one to surrender. Subsequently, they all feel homogenised and as if they're giving us a match in spite of the gimmick. A traditional Survivor Series matchup could have still worked here if booked completely at odds with the Wargames matches, especially when you consider LA Knight goes from main eventing against Roman to not even making the card. Something surely could have been done with him, KO, Waller/Theory, New Day, Street Profits/Lashley, etc.

If Pepsi Phil was one of those five guys in-ring and Taker, Rock, Austin or Goldberg were coming out to interrupt just in time for Mania season...

Haha, I believe it is. The really awkward Tony Atlas racist promo that almost certainly was written by Bill Watts saying that Ron Simmons should be working in a cotton field, the Robbie Walker beatdown and I assume Scorpio debuts at Clash as Simmons partner

Watching Watts-era WCW Saturday Night 1992. There are a LOT of "upcoming young star babyface" angles overlapping (Erik Watts, Robbie/Bobby Walker, Marcus Bagwell, Shane Douglas, to a lesser extent Dustin Rhodes too). The break up of Rhodes and Windham is such a good angle though - I love the idea of Rhodes teaming up with either more established babyfaces (Steamboat), or guys you could argue are more over than Windham at the time, or made logical sense as a partner (Armstrong recently coming off a program with Pillman). Rather than Jimmy outright turn heel on Jey at Summerslam, it would have been cool to see Jey attempt to defend the titles with Cody, Rollins, Sami etc before Jey turned on him. I'm surprised it's an angle that's never been replicated again. For every bit I enjoyed this, Tony Atlas as a heel fucking suuuuuuuuuucked.

So they weren't going to rename Nick Wayne after his Dad? Nicholas Cage would have been OK with it