clintthecrippler

I honestly laughed my fucking ass off that they spent so much time and effort to dress up Bray Wyatt with mind games heading into a Wrestlemania match with Randy Orton only to have him lose clean via a single RKO followed by the 1-2-3...and THEN they did it again four years later!

It really is wild looking back in kayfabe that for all the effort that Blassie put into getting the championship back in his stable, and all the blood, sweat, tears, and poisoning of friendships that Heenan pulled off, and for the time that Jimmy Hart was able to control the Tag Team and Intercontinental Championships, that it was fucking MR. FUJI that ended the scourge of Hulkamania in the WWF.

Has any manager in wrestling history traded up like JJ Dillion did between Fall 1985 and Spring 1986? From: Buddy Landell, Black Bart, and Ron Bass (while also wearing very frilly over-the-top wrestling manager tuxedos) To: THE HORSEMEN (while also upgrading his suit game x1000)

Thats really fun to see after the Backlund/Undertaker story that Nash told during the Broken Skull interview with Austin.

Incredible find here, considering that Kidman actually got powerbombed 2-3 times throughout his career, and Flair won the NWA World Title coming off the top rope, this may be the new "huh, he actually hit the damn thing" grail here.

Heck, I said this elsewhere last week: 1. Imagine blowing the minds of a CZW crowd in 2011 by telling them that in 10 years that prime-time TV wrestling on TNT would have a Nick Gage vs Chris Jericho deathmatch main, it will lead into Jericho vs Juventud Guerrera the next week, and cause Pabst Blue Ribbon to talk trash online about Domino's Pizza. 2. and on that same night, the "B-show" will have a commentary team of Tony Schiavone, David Crockett, The Big Show, and Eddie Kingston. Also, as far as Triple H is concerned, all the people talking about him and Stephanie starting their own promotion after WWE gets sold, I would be shocked if (a) there doesn't end up being a LENGTHY no-compete clause as far as those two are concerned or (b) if they are both retained with some sort of corporate middle-management position that pays them enough of a salary to placate their egos. That said, if somehow either of the above didn't happen in the event of a sale and Hunter/Paul does get a little frisky about trying to launch his own promotion and attempting to set up meetings with television networks/media conglomerates, I could 100 percent see that being another reality check in him finding out that he's not as big of a mainstream name to Programming Executives as The Rock and Steve Austin, and without also having the major league pro sports connections that Shad and Tony Khan have, not even getting his foot in the door.

Cool, Fred Durst is All Elite (this IS who is in that picture, correct?) I guess that also means that both AEW and WWE talent were hanging out at Lollapalooza, since Bianca Belair and Meg Thee Stallion did their photo op as well.

I honestly think that whats kept Ricky going is that he has still wrestled SOMEWHERE every weekend in the 25 years since the last national run for RnR.

From tonight's GCW Homecoming show: The match was an incredible spectacle by the way.

If Punk draws even half as much money and PPV buyrates as "past his prime Roddy Piper" did that first year in WCW, I think AEW and TK will be very happy.

Scrolling by the pic of Old Man Cowboy Buddy Hart during an insomnia spell here on the West Coast and totally started wondering the context of why "THE TENNESSEE STUD" Robert Fuller was randomly taking a photo with a WWF Championship replica.

One of my current holy grails of video footage are the localized WWF promos for this Minneapolis house show where Ventura took on Hogan for the WWF Title. Hogan had Mean Gene in his corner, while Ventura had Prince's legit bodyguard Big Chick Huntsberry (who was having a "15 minutes of fame" moment in pop culture circles) in his corner. It's a fun little match actually. The previous month Hogan had lost by countout so this rematch had a stipulation where if Hogan got counted out, he would lose the championship, and they have fun working that stip. But I can just imagine how insufferable Ventura was in those local promos for the 2-3 weeks prior to this one!

As someone that started a 1984 WWF watch project recently beginning with that first Wrestling at the Chase taping that everyone debuts at, the fact that there was literally THREE WEEKS of syndicated television where Hogan goes from his return to the WWF (after is heel run there ended three years prior) being in Backlund's corner for a singles match, and being in a tag team with him a week later, and then one more week of television passing before he beats the Iron Sheik for the Championship - all while the local NY promos still promote a Backlund vs Iron Sheik rematch during the first week and then Hogan being named the replacement due to Backlund's injury on Week 2 local promos - was some serious whiplash that I can't possibly fathom in today's WWE for any wrestlers debuting without that Goldberg-style legacy run prior. Hell, even AJ Styles had to lose at Wrestlemania to Jericho before being inserted into a PPV Championship Opportunity a full three months after his debut at the Royal Rumble.

And as if the decision to try that wasn't insane enough, they threw him out there in MSG BEFORE he had debuted on TV so the crowd that night literally had no reason at all to expect someone other than Snuka. That crowd turning on him before his entrance was finished, and then starting a "We Want Snuka!" chant during the match, and booing him when he climbed to the top rope for the finish...if the dude was a Bret Hart level worker he still would have been burnt toast after that.

I think it would be way funnier - and better for wrestling in general - if Eddie and AEW just straight up no-sold Bully Ray's attempts at trying to insert himself into an angle and thus don't do jack shit to help Bully Ray make money off of any of this.

I have in my head that WWE ran this exact angle on a random RAW a few years back. I'll be damned if I could tell who the wrestlers involved were exactly, I just remember the bell ringing, the "end boss" heel on commentary gloating about how his opponent is going to be softened up, and the face then immediately kicking the first opponent in the groin to end the match on a DQ.

I can forgive WWE's seamstress misspelling Megadeth on a random patch that is one of dozens of pieces she's working on that day, and Dolph for just rolling with it since he probably got it an hour or so before heading to the ring. It's not like Dolph went to a concert that Megadeth was playing at (along with Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax), and bought a bootleg shirt OUTSIDE THE SHOW that he was watching these bands at.

I still say Hogan got the last laugh by making Shawn lay on the ground for about a solid 30 seconds before finally moving in for the big leg, and then peacing out after the match and saying "yeah, we're done".

Road Warrior Hawk taking his shoulder-first bump through the middle turnbuckles into the ring post was always gnarly and is grossly underappreciated, with the only "through the turnbuckles shoulder post bump" topping that being Psicosis charging into the turnbuckles, his opponent moving, Psicosis flying through, hitting the post shoulder first, but then following that up with a flying header to the floor.

Samoa Joe cosplaying as 1984 Bill Watts in NXT? That's something I didn't know I wanted until now.

I personally got a kick out of Drake pulling the "back in my day" schtick and then listing a bunch of names that, aside from Bull Pain (who legit dated back to the previous generation) and MAYBE Eddie Kingston, would not have been welcome in the wrestling business 20 years prior to that or would not have risen above TV job/outlaw duty.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Dave's stream-of-consciousness shoved those together during his recaps as well. The Bret Hart biography/documentary that everyone has been talking about for the last week was one of the WWE A&E productions, so there wouldn't be any production crossover with Dark Side on Dynamite Kid.

I think you might be conflating the WWE A&E docs and Dark Side of the Ring together?

Or heck, the next evolution of this, start to swing like he's going to do an unprotected head shot, only to pull back, poke him in the stomach with the end of the chair, and then hit flat across the back "because that's the sports entertainment way".

I am going to be genuinely disappointed if this ends up being a one-and-done because I personally would love to see the heat build beforehand by having Ryder beat 1 or 2 of the more undercard-ish GCW deathmatch guys using only his WWE moveset. Maybe even do an angle where he says "fine, I'll wrestle a 'warm-up' deathmatch against someone that's not Nick Gage" and go through the trouble of setting up a light-tube board, a fuckery board, and a couple of panes of glass in the corners, tease whipping him into those a couple of times only to have him not take those bumps at all and have him win with the Rough Ryder (I think that's what his WWE finisher was called?).