caley

What's crazy is the bald guy looked like Brock Lesnar, so they shaved his head and made him look like Kane. The University thing is the worst and the clearest sense that most of creative is old men. I'm surprised he hasn't tried cramming other wrestlers into a phonebooth...

I think it depends what time frame you were in school. When I was in high school, the nerdiest things you could be into was basically comic books, video games and pro wrestling. I had a friend who I'd just sort of met because we were the only guys who didn't write serious stories in creative writing and each of us would casually, subtly drop wrestling references into our conversations before we both kind of realized the other was into wrestling, but kept it between ourselves (And then I just stopped caring whether anyone knew, which is why there's a photo of me in my high school yearbook kissing my copy of the Pro Wrestling Almanac...no there is no more explanation to that photo). All of a sudden, a year later, the basketball team all wore NWO shirts, and the various jocks would be quoting Stone Cold and The Rock at each other. It was totally weird.

The last time I saw a movie with him, I Googled "Is Gerard Butler okay?" because his face was perpetually red and he looked constantly winded and in pain.

i 01. Bret Hart: The first time I saw Bret Hart, I thought he looked really cool and I liked his nickname and then as I started to watch, he became a singles wrestler so his whole ascent up the card came at the same time as my fandom began so it was almost like he was MY pro wrestler. 02. Rey Mysterio Jr.: His early stuff is incredible. You go back and watch that WCW match with Psychosis and they're doing stuff that is still mind-blowing. The other thing about Rey is that he has no real BAD period (His late WCW/Filthy Animals stuff was kind of a dud but he was still delivering in the ring), even recently he's still incredible of some great stuff (The matches against Andrade, for example). 03. Tajiri: I mean, this might not really count because I saw almost none of his pre-ECW stuff and haven't really bothered to watch anything since he left WWE, but that stretch from ECW to WWE is full of some of my favourite moments: his Death Match against Super Crazy is my favourite ECW match period, his team with Mikey Whipwreck delivered more goodness, and his debut match in WWE with Regal in his corner is one of my favourite underrated WWE moments ever (The crowd who didn't know him losing their shit over every kick while Regal reacts with great facial expressions really selling the idea that Regal had no idea who he was or that he was capable of THAT). 04. Dick Togo: Man, when I started checking out puro, Togo was the guy who blew me away. He wasn't THE most acrobatic (though amazing for his size) but he had such incredible charisma. I remember showing my Michinoku Pro tape to a friend of mine who'd only see WWF/WCW and he had a similar body type to Togo and was absolutely in love with him (wrestling-wise), he'd sign for things as Dick Togo, do the same pose as him everywhere he went and once tried to do his senton bomb into a dumpster full of cardboard at work that went about as poorly as it could (He came down too close to the edge and hit the back of his head off the steel dumpster AND failed to crush most of the cardboard) so that also keeps him up high on my list. 05. Mick Foley: I don't think this needs to be explained. He's great. 06. Eddie Guerrero: And again... 07. Sid: When I was young, Sid seemed so amazing and scary and charismatic and fun, and then he would just disappear. A friend of mine taped Superbrawl and even losing to El Gigante, I was awestruck by Sid, and then once I tracked down WCW on TV, Sid was gone. Then he came to WWF a year later and I was so excited. And then he was gone. And then we got a free preview of TBS and there was Sid again and then he was gone and I wouldn't see him again until he came back as Shawn Michaels' manager. So, growing up, he had that mystery factor to him in that he would just appear somewhere and disappear again so I never got as bored of him as I would of other guys of that era. 08. Vader: Man, Vader was great. 09. The Ultimate Warrior: I liked him way better than Hogan from the start. That music still gets me jacked. 10. Lance Storm: This is kind of a weird choice, I'll admit. But when I started watching ECW, Storm was there as one half of the Impact Players and he just seemed sooo cool. The Calgary...Alberta, Canad catch-phrase. And then he had that fun run in WCW as leader of Team Canada and while it was basically a weak imitation of the Hart Foundation (Which is probably my favourite stable ever!), I loved every minute of it. His WWE run was pretty mediocre but this is my list so I'm not holding it against him. HM: Bunkhouse Buck (It felt wrong to include him since I was only basing it on his WCW run and never watched anything of his outside of that); Dustin Rhodes (I loved his early WCW run and some of the Goldust stuff and his recent run in AEW but there are a lot of BAD years in there, too); Mike Awesome (His ECW run was one of my favourite things ever but those matches are a little hard to watch now, knowing Awesome's fat); Chris Jericho (I was the biggest Jericho fan through WCW and most of his WWE tenure, but his AEW stuff has become such fast-forward-fodder that I could no longer in good conscience put him on this list); Scott Hall (Hall is one of those guys who always seemed soooo cool even though the matches might not be there and he phoned it in a lot); Steve Austin (Should be on the list, but his late WWE non-wrestler role REALLY annoyed me with the ATV and the "Boring" chants and the "What" chants (even though that was actually late in his in-ring career)) and TAKA Michinoku (As stated above, I LOVED Kaientai and TAKA was a big part of that but I never really saw enough of him to make a full judgement).

Hit Row being released both makes a lot of sense and no sense at all. Like, they brought them up, did a whole big promo and debut of them , as well as putting Top Dolla prominently on that stupid A&E WWE Pickers show and that makes no sense. On the other hand, it was easily one of the "hippest" most current-ish gimmicks they had going, so it makes total sense that they got to the main roster and the creative went "I have absolutely no idea what this is?!" I mean, if you turn to NXT you have a guy doing a University gimmick and he wears a big red sweater with a capital A on it as he'd strolled in out of a 1940s college movie.

Oh man, I just caught up on the other three episodes. Episode 2 is very dark, especially for JPTTY but it was still funny. Episode 4 was very good and I love the title "Joe Pera Listens to Your Drunk Story". But Episode 3 ("Joe Pera Shows You His Second Fridge/Talks About Teen Crime and Punishment") was one of the funniest ones yet. I laughed so many times: at his random insults of Las Vegas, and was losing it when the Melskys came in to talk to the principal with him and Mike was completely unhinged one moment ("I'm gonna smash my head through this computer") and then silly (Him laughing at "Mr. Pera Balls" before catching himself). I notice they've twice mentioned that it's 2018 and about Sarah wondering if something big coming, I wonder if we'll see a time-jump in here to bring it to Covid times, or if they'll have the season end before it gets there.

'Jacket Time' has to be the silliest/laziest team name they've come up with in a long time.

I've only watched the first episode so far. I saw people in the group talking about it being a little darker this season. I think the pandemic hit Pera pretty hard. For such a positive guy, some of his tweets/IG posts suggested he was struggliing through it.

Angel's ECW promos were pretty awesome, when he would say "Papaaaa" and it sounded so sinister and menacing. Then he and his cohorts would take off their hats and go "We're DA BALDEEEEEEZ" and all that menace disappeared. I remember when P.N. News was briefly in the Baldies. For some reason, his terrible, homophobic cheap heat rap (which I now think was pre-Baldies) has stuck in my head all these years later. Sure, I can't remember what the four digit code is to lock/unlock my cable box, but I can recite "I've been around the world from Philly to Bombay/If you come from Philly then you must be gay/My name is PN News and I make the big bucks/Cuz everybody knows that Philly sucks/Yo baby yo baby yo" despite not having seen the clip in 20ish years.

Panini is still around?! They used to sell hockey stickers/sticker books about...oh man...30+ years ago. Oh man...I'm so old...

I have a friend who used to wear a black trenchcoat all the time, one time he dropped by my work with his friend while wearing said trenchcoat and a backwards baseball cap, his friend with long blonde hair was with him wearing a toque (beanie if you're not down with the Canadian lingo) and a co-worker looked at them and went "Oh that's hilarious, you guys dressed up as Jay and Silent Bob!" and they had not intended to do so and things got a little awkward.

I think the other thing that hurts her/her character is that she's written to brag and boast like any good heel does but when she loses she merely laughs it off EVERY time. So it's impossible for anyone to get anything over on her character-wise because if they lost to her then she was right (And if she cheats to win, then she also laughed that off) and if she loses, she laughs it off as a fluke. Just recently, she lost to Nikki ASH via MITB. The next week she mocked her for using the briefcase to win, beat her repeatedly, lost once (laughed it off), got the title back and Nikki was much colder than she was coming in. Generally, your heel champion loses and either gets incensed or laughs it off then gets their comeuppance again. There is a really, loud, unusually loyal following for Liv that I've often thought WWE could tap into but they seem to be oblivious to this fact.

That's the one. In one night I got to see Rey Mysterio Jr, Juventud Guerrera, Lance Storm, The Great Muta, Mike Awesome, Booker T, Norman Smiley, PCO, Sting & Vampiro and I literally can't remember a single moment of in-ring action because the show was such a mess.

You're lucky, I got the night after the above PPV which began with a lengthy Vince Russo promo where he repeatedly "shot" and talked about "your hero Goldberg" and my friend and I (Who watched literally all the WCW that was on TV) went "Wait, are we supposed to like Goldberg again" and ended with Goldberg putting Midajah through a table backstage on the screen (which we couldn't even see from where we were seated!).

You're probably not going to be happy about Joe Gacy's new NXT character...

Cesaro fixes the cable?

That's true! It had such a 'Street Prophets talk about what's coming up on Raw for eons before actually wrestling a match' vibe to it.

Hit Row could be big big stars if they don't mess around with the formula. So they won't. I'm pretty sure Swerve will be turning on Top Dolla for the latter's monster push within a year.

I wish there was somebody honest enough and senior enough to write a history of how WCW conceived a big debut named the Yeti and ended up with a guy in a mummy costume doing THAT. Like how many committees or writers or focus groups or whatever did it go through where the Yeti (Presumably at SOME point, a big furry monster-type character) ended up being a bandage-wrapped mummy?! And presumably SOMEONE told him to do the double-bearhug and presumably SOMEONE told him to shake as he applied it because I can't believe these were the actual wrestler's decisions. I would watch an entire documentary about what happened that night. And just when I think we've seen the most bizarre wrestling clip ever...a new contender emerges. Why did Piper go THERE?! He could have bitten him on the upper outside thigh, or even more on the cheek but he's...right in there.

I now have visions of Punk living out his "boyhood dream" and dancing down to the ring to the strains of (his re-recorded with his own vocals) "Sexy Boy"

This reads like one of those Facebook posts designed to steal your password information: "Your NXT name is your first car with your mother's maiden name and your billed weight is the last four digits on the back of your credit card".

One thing AEW does that drives me nuts, that is also something I HATE that WWE does, is have wrestlers hit these amazing crazy moves out of nowhere that haven't been done before, has the crowd whipped into a frenzy and then it's a two-count because the matches almost always have to end on a finishing move. Example being the Spears-Sammy match with the double-springboard into the top-rope stunner: the crowd pops for the dual-springboard, then for the middle finger, then even bigger for the move itself. The match should end there, but instead they meander around for a while, the crowd cools off, then Sammy hits his finisher for the win. That's exactly how I feel about Britt-Soho, there's some stuff, there's the big top rope spot, they meander around in the distraction finish after the crowd has died. Man, that Cody-Black match was a mess. Crowd turns on Cody from the get-go (Big pop for the lights going out, thinking they're getting some kind of debut, only for it to be the Cody entrance which seemed to tick everyone off). Then the crowd boos Cody mercilessly, including every time it looks like he's going to win, and Cody is noticeably affected by it. Then the announcers hype up about how intimidating Black is, only for Brandi to no-sell said intimidation, roll into the ring and flip off Black. Then you have Arn getting on the wrong side of the ring, trying to manuever around the post and fall off the apron, awkwardly get back up and bump into Cody, the weird spat with Cody and Arn, Cody intentionally/accidentally hitting the ref, and a mist spot (which Black has never used before, right?) to get the win. I assume some of this will make sense as we move into a Cody heel turn (I have to think with the crowd turning on him, that's where this is headed) but it was just dreadful. And, look, I love Arn Anderson but he has been an absolute disaster as a manager/coach. He just seems to be in the way or distracting or confused by what is going on most of the time. When he came in as Cody's manager, it was one of those things where you go "Arn as a manager makes so much sense, why didn't someone do this beforehand?" and then you watch him as a manager and go "Oh that's why!" Same thing with Arn as a commentator for WWEWCW: "Why didn't someone do this sooner?!" Then you hear him tell quiet, almost inaudible stories and struggle to keep up with the action and go "Oh that's why!" I think Miro's line about his God and his wife being the the ones who control his body "One demands pain, the other pleasure" was the line of the night. Also, was I hearing things or did Tony say Omega was about to hit the "One-Legged Angel" in that first match? I hope it's a tease for the debut of Zack Gowen!

If only Foley hadn't objected to "Mason the Mutilator"! I can just hear Vince's pronounciation in my head: "MEWWWWWW-tee-lay-TORRRRRRRRR"

I always thought the Apollo Crews name was the laziest. It always felt like "He's kinda got an Apollo Creed feel or maybe Terry Crews...Terry Creed!" "Wait, hear me out, Apollo Crews!" "Brilliant!"

That wedding (and last week's bachelor/bachelorette parties) is probably the best bits of WWE comedy written in years. So stupid, but silly enough that it was highly entertaining. I think my favourite part was when they said cut to the chase and Andre Chase said "Did someone say Andre Chase" and Gargano loudly said "No one said that!" I would like to see Gargano re-sign in NXT, because I think he and Ciampa could basically be the vets who mentor and feud with the younger talent. I do like the shocking Mandy Rose return was that she no longer has blonde hair.