caley

EXCEPT, for a brief period Stampede Wrestling promoted shows in British Columbia with Brian Adams' (the singer, not Crush) manager and he arranged to have some of the BC Lions as seconds for the faces, IIRC (or maybe special enforcers). Also Stu Hart played for the Edmonton Eskimos. The Edmonton Eskimos/Elks could be the team of the Bloodline, since Roman Reigns played for them. Lex Luger played for the Montreal Alouettes, The Rock and Brian Pillman for the Calgary Stampeders https://3downnation.com/2018/04/08/looking-history-cfl-wrestling-crossover/

I'll be honest I don't really understand what Cora Jade's new character/gimmick is (Sort of a punk/metal entrance attire, metal-ish theme and a stickball (?) bat) but she seems like so much more of a star now than her previous skateboarding wannabe gimmick.

My favourite wrestling shirt moment I've been a part of was my brother wearing a DDP shirt he found at Value Village and an old woman coming up to him and going "Excuse me, young man, what is Dop?" He still brings that up and hasn't watched wrestling in probably over 20 years.

Plus they had just brought in EZ Money (Jason Jett) and Kid Kash after their crazy ECW spotfests. I think they needed one or two more Chavo-level vets to guide the young guys along (Malenko, off doing comedy skits in WWE, would have been perfect go ground/lead the high-flyers).

I don't know why they don't put her back with the Bunny and reform a creepy/hot goth girl tag team. I think it brought out the best in both of them. Give them just enough wins to keep them competitive, then have them try to team up to steal Toni's title, even Jade's.

I don't want to pile on...but I will. That whole women's segment reeked of a Vince McMahon-booked women's segment. From the dreadful, rambly Paige promo (I don't remember how to spell her new/real name) to the stupid all the face/heels are suddenly friends. Like, there was no reason for Penelope Ford to be there, she's not a part of Britt's entourage, so for her to randomly come out with Britt to conveniently be one of the lumberjacks is one of my pet peeves of WWE (Especially the Vince booked stuff) where people with no association, suddenly are friends to counter the faces. Then during the match you had Willow chase Hayter off and Hayter run like the "proverbial scalded dog" (TM JR) which shows that not only are they not really listening to the fans opinion of Hayter, but a complete lack of understanding of her character. When has Hayter been a weak heel that runs away from a fight?! Also, Paige on commentary but cheering when Toni won the match like they were best buddies was awful. I hated this more than anything AEW has done in a looooong time.

Bray Wyatt repping Brand Supremacy is very silly-looking

I saw almost nothing this week (None of the Raw matches, none of the Impact! matches, none of the Rampage matches, 1 of the Smackdown matches) but I did watch NXT and Dynamite in full, so by my woefully uninformed opinion, Tyler Bate vs JD Mc...Don...Donald...Donough...is the match of the week. Bate is such a weirdo presentation-wise with the weird theme music, chants of "Big Strong Boy" and just a goofiness that doesn't feel like a natural in a WWE/NXT setting (He'd probably fit in much more organically in AEW) but he's a solid wrestler who gets over every time. JD McDonagh feels like a star, to me. He's almost playing a supervllain character: Good-looking rich guy with a strange sado-masochistic streak running through him. He could be big, real-big, with the right booking. Oh yeah, and the match was real fun and had an airplane spin!

"Who killed the world" is a Mad Max Fury Road quote, so I will only accept Nathan Jones (appeared in MM:FR) or Sid Vicious (Lord Humongous was his original gimmick which was lifted from Mad Max 2) as choices now and be super disappointed if it's anyone else.

It's nuts that they keep kinda burying and undercutting Gable and he just bounces back more over than before. Like, it wasn't until I wiki'd him the other day that I forgot he got thrown together with Bobby Roode and STILL somehow rode the pairing to a tag title...

I only saw half of Raw, a third of NXT, all of AEW (While sleepy), 1 match of Smackdown and the middle third of Impact! but Speedball-Dorada was my favourite that I saw. That spot where Bailey leaps over a sliding Dorada, lands on the ropes and Asai Moonsaults directly onto Dorada was something I'd never seen before.

There's also the first 20 seconds or so of silence punctuated by a repeated "Is this thing on?" that really lends it gravitas.

No matter how many times I look at it I can't make my brain view it as Country-Ass Boy only Country Ass-Boy making me think Gordy is somehow another one of Billy Gunn's relatives.

Perez-Meiko for me for that next to last strike that looked like it knocked Perez out cold, to the point the ref rushed over to check to make sure she was still conscious. I also really liked Imperium-Brutes and Danielson-Page. I MIGHT have even gone Best Friends/Death Trangle if the former had won the match instead of the latter (I think it would've been a nicer moment to have the "homegrown" Best Friends finally win a title as the first match after last week's brouhaha, a sort of 'Reward the fans in a time of turmoil' moment) and wasn't really feeling the closing moments. I...didn't watch Yuta-Garcia (DVD was filling up and needed the space) or Kingston-Ishii (Not sure the latterwas even shown on my cable outlet).

But it wasn't REALLY. Don Ohlmeyer was the NBC higher-up who was well-known for not wanting Norm MacDonald because he "Wasn't funny". It had NOTHING (wink wink) to do with the fact that Ohlmeyer's golfing buddy was OJ Simpson and nobody went after OJ like Norm and writer Jim Downey. Ohlmeyer said afterwards that MacDonald wasn't funny (Citing an interview with MacDonald where he'd said that Downey would bring him a joke that would kill but was hack-y and they'd agree not to do it, and how it only mattered to Norm if his friends at home were laughing at his jokes as a sort of comedy elitism that reinforced his beliefin him not being funny) but basically everyone around Ohlmeyer and the show knew that it was down to the OJ jokes. I think my favourite Norm-ism from this whole thing was Macdonald who came into work that week to be told he was being fired from 'Weekend Update' and he said "That's terrible" and when he asked why, was told it was because he "wasn't funny" and he said "That's even worse, I'm a comedian and I'm not funny!"

Honestly, I'd rather do a situtation where it looks like MJF is going to be awarded the title because there's no one left to face him, and then have Sting come down and win it from him. He's worked hard, he's reliable, no one dislikes him, give him a little reward for all he's done. Place would go bananas. He doesn't have to hold it long, just long enough til everything settles down, gives the fans something to cheer about.

AEW should bring in Vince Russo to oversee creative and he could run his dream of an entire wrestling promotion without a ring and everything taking place backstage. "Ok bro, when Kenny comes at you, you bite him. Now, Punk is there any chance your wife is also your sister because I got an idea..."

Dexter Lumis on Raw reminds me of when Kevin Sullivan was working with a young Mick Foley and said something along the lines of "I'm gonna find so much crazy shit for you to do!" Just seems like they are having so much fun writing for the character. I'd like to see a special bonus episode of Miz's reality show with Lumis stalking him.

So I was flipping around the dial the other night (All right there is no dial but scanning an onscreen TV guide doesn't sound as laid-back) and came across those WWE shows on A&E and I saw them talking about the Bellas and assumed it was a documentary about them and tuned out, only for them to start talking about Stephanie and the show was actually "WWE Rivals: Stephanie McMahon vs Brie Bella" with a write-up that trumpeted the Brie-Stephanie feud and how it was the first time women proved they could have a main event-level feud and match and I do NOT remember that feud/match being that big of a deal. This is WWE rewriting history, right? Even at the time, I don't remember this being a big deal but saying it basically rewrote womens' wrestling in the States is some high-level WWE craziness, right? Or was this some sleeper turning point that I somehow blacked out on?!

He was on the booking committee when Shawn was going into business for himself againt Bret Hart. I know he couldn't exactly fire Michaels, but it's funny that he'd talk about not having unprofessional guys on top when he rode the coattails of (arguably) the least professional world champ of all-time. Of course, Huter himself once compared WWE's new big signing to being a worse worker than a homeless man he met on the street durin Raw so...

Was HHH not the best friend of one of the least professional too guys of all time?!

This morning running errands, I got a mental image of this shoot fight with Punk swinging wildly (like his UFC fight) at the Bucks while Matt threw superkicks while slapping his thigh and Nick flipping needlessly off a table and it made me giggle.

I think there's no way JR goes anywhere for a while. Whether or not the other announcers hate him, he complains about guys, or even the wrestlers hate him, he's still the most famous "beloved"* wrestling announcer out there. It's like when Vince kept trying to replace him/downgrade him, the fans would always want him back. He's got a significant amount of mainstream cache from his time calling the biggest era of wrestling right down to memes (Every time there's a big hit, fall or some other nonsense in traditional sports, you'll always end up with a meme of JR shouting "He's broken in half"), and I think that's probably a much bigger selling point when trying to sell your product (Even as he undercuts a large portion of it!) to advertisers and TV Networks than trying to promote a guy in a mask whom no one has heard of as your lead announcer. *outside of message boards etc. a good portion of the audience still thinks of Good ol' JR as grandfatherly-type announcer.

My favourite is when someone follows you and you click on their bio and it's like "MAGA, God and Guns!" and you go "Hmm we would not be good friends in real life..."

Ospreay/Aussies-Triangle had the most mind-blowing high-spots and also the most roll-your-eyes suspension of disbelief moments (You guys stand still while I get my balance) and also the worst forearms of the week. Choo-Stratton was sooo stupid and sooo much fun. There was no need to suspend your disbelief, because it was so stupid in the first place (Since when has a 'Lights Out' match mean that you turn half the lights in the arena off!?!?). My point? Maybe if the trios match had opened with the Aussies getting out of a ringside bed, it might have gotten my vote. But I went Choo-Stratton for doing everything it was supposed to perfectly.