rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

The suspension is up before the ppv, they can smash his face in again on SD, send him off TV for "surgery" and bring him back in time to save the day at Battleground.

Bryan and Mauro to call the Cruiserweight Classic, they know their audience when they want to

I'm surprised Bryan is back for that; just going by what I've read of the type of person he is, especially from his own book, I can't imagine it's easy for him. I mean, even Edge had more of a clean break and a longer time away from the business before he returned.

He used to be *indie superstar* though, it makes sense the thing that draws him back is essentially WWE welcoming the indies under their banner. Might not be the same as why tf am i not headlining the biggest wrestlemania ever?

Oh no, I get *why* he's the choice for this, it's totally appropriate. But it must be difficult for him as a person whose first love is wrestling, not peripherally but being in the ring actually doing it, having to sit there on the outside and talk about people who are essentially his peers, even more so than his WWE colleagues. I mean, we don't know that he's doing this of his own accord or whether it's something he's been persuaded to do as a contracted talent. I really hope it's the former, and that he's coming to terms with the end of his in-ring career.

I think Edge, CM Punk, and even Jericho when he left in 2005 were completely burned out on wrestling after doing it for 15 years without a break. Bryan's really the perfect guy for this gig, and I'm sure he knows it.

Dragon also spent 2 years on the sidelines, barely wrestling and eventually coming to terms with having to retire. Punk and Edge had to wrestle up until the day it was over, so it might be quite different.

You both missed my point but whatever.

i get you, i was surprised about this after he bailed on his tribute shows or w/e. i've just assumed this has been really difficult for him and he doesn't want to be around wrestling for a while

which is probably a lot to assume

anyone check out WCPW? i don't follow the whole whatculture thing but it sounded fresh so i watched the first ep. it's weird because it's built on a website that mainly talks WWE and the brit fans keep doing WWE chants (including "what", seriously) and the announcers keep making cheeky little references. the announcers talk way too much and it's just dumb heel/face banter. and it's weird they're really putting damien sandow front and center, going to be weird seeing him in that kind of spot.

idk how much more i'll watch. i wish they weren't going for a whole new promotion. it's all on youtube so why stick to the formula? i like big damo though.

Has anything interesting happened in nxt/lucha underground recently? I've have had like crazy work and travel etc. And just been so out the loop. Whens ultima lucha or the cruiserweight thingy?

Not seen much at all of the second lucha season actually.

Cruiserweight thing starts in the next week or so. Draft next week, battleground being built like one of the major ppvs with some of their biggest money matches (shield triple threat, cena/aj, Owens/zayn, sashay back on ppv)

All this going on and somehow the most exciting thing in wrestling rn is a hardy boyz feud happening in tna

Fuckin weird

Is shield triple threat still on?

How is that not the card for summerslam? I wonder what the hell do for that. Post draft too, I hope its not a mess.

Two weeks till the Draft, no?

The triple threat is still on the cards for Battleground. They've really laid no groundwork for SummerSlam at all, you wouldn't really know it was happening NEXT MONTH from regular WWE channels.

lesnar is in summerslam, they've mentioned that a couple of times. and that they'll announce his opponent on smackdown. lol.

you know, smackdown. on the night that it's on now, which isn't tuesday, even though they only ever say "smackdown" in a sentence if that sentence also contains the word "tuesday" now.

spoilers circulating about who it supposedly is. if they're right - i'm excited.

all the good matches are at battleground so all the rematches will be at summerslam! bc they still think rematches are bigger deals bc I guess it's the territory days

more likely the sudden plan to brand split has them scrambling to blow this stuff off when possible, and why not. everyone pays the same 9.99 for summerslam that they pay for battleground.

I guess so but summerslam has been consistently the best show of the year for nearly a decade now, so reducing it to battleground pt 2 doesn't really fill me with joy

maybe i am naive but i don't see a problem with having an awesome show a month before summerslam (even if it makes summerslam less awesome)

you know... as long as battleground IS actually awesome

I guess so, I'm just so used to the interim ppvs being dog shite filler and when there is a build up with rematches at the big 4 they tend to be less special.

in conclusion, the brands should be split into raw and nitro with alternating monthly ppvs and 2 month builds, with the exception of, of course, the annual world series of pro wrestling megacard

sick of interim b-level ppvs, even if battleground is awesome I'll still confuse it with payback or fastlane or vengeance or revengeance or angertime or punchstakes or doomsdeath or goreballs

i will never mistake punchstakes for anything

ahh - ultima lucha starts this week! feel that this season of lucha underground hasn't really hit the same heights the first did as often as often as the first did (one obvious reason being that matanza vs all-comers is not quite prince puma vs all-comers), but the ul lineup looks great

Holy shit you guys I just watched the Final Deletion on my lunchbreak and I have a grin on my face a mile wide. Can’t wait to get home now to watch again on a big screen.

Gonna be so interesting to see if they can build on this from here or if this was just a one-time lightning-in-a-bottle crazy Hardy Boys deal.

If they can somehow maintain this vibe and keep making it work for them then an 11th hour reinvention of TNA into a pro-wres B-movie with hilarious production values and ridiculous acting could be one of the stories of the year.

delightful! it's an extraordinary... xylophone

Final Deletion was certainly different. If you're TNA and won't tour/can't tour then maybe there's not much point in filming in front of 600 people who were papered into the building, why not have "feuds" play out as a sequence of mini-movies. Nobody's paying money to watch any of these guys wrestle live, so if it's a TV show only (that's about wrestlers) then film it as a TV show.

Brock won his fight at UFC 200 fairly convincingly, it'll be interesting to see how Orton vs Brock plays out now. There's really no way Orton can credibly beat Brock (I mean, he CAN, it's a worked fight, but come on) so who knows how they'll promote this.

Was ufc 200 worth watching? I was mostly gonna tune in for the jones fight that got cancelled.

I've watched most of the show so far this evening, just the Brock fight and the main event to go, and it's been decent.

The Final Deletion was great. Matt Hardy is impressively committed to this character. His twitter account is something else lately.

I hadn't been following TNA or the Hardys, so I figured this was all pretty out of left field, particularly for Matt. But turns out he'd been doing comedy stuff for a while under his Big Money Matt persona, e.g. this and this. Some of the seeds of Broken Matt are there.

i like this ospreay, be like this more ospreay

Big props to both Ospreay and Vader for turning this shoot into a work so impressively (or was it a work from the very beginning?)

Brock lolsner

:/

USADA seems so nuts though, in my limited experience following UFC. apparently he passed 5 other tests? does anyone ever get popped with these and it ends up being nothing? to an outsider there's a weird dissonance between USADA's "mighta possibly had a violation thingy" wording and the entire world basically declaring he (and jones) guilty

anyway apparently he might be barred from performing in NY for summerslam because pro wrestling is a totally real sporting competition

Well WWE already fired Billy Gunn for cheating at an unrelated weightlifting contest in his spare time

Lol at how much this appears to have backfired for them

Do part timers in WWE get Wellness tested as much as full timers? I guess that WWE will claim that this didn't happen under their watch and it'll give them an excuse to do nothing until it's time for Brock to lose to Reigns at WM33.

In better news, episode one of the cruiserweight classic was awesome and I can't wait for next week.

draft rules are set.

- Raw has the first overall pick
- Since SmackDown Live is a two-hour show and Raw is three hours, for every two picks SmackDown Live receives, Raw will receive three picks
- Tag teams count as one pick unless a Commissioner/General Manager specifically only wants one member of the team​
- Six draft picks will be made off the NXT roster​

any predictions? they can't do a draft and end up making smackdown a "b" show right? kinda defeats the purpose of dressing it up as a draft. also, the 6 nxt callups... my guesses are:
american alpha, finn balor, bayley (the "easier" three), and then... carmella, hype bros, andrade?

joe? he's been fantastic

the draft idea is cool and i agree that it would look bizarre for RAW to draft all the superstars and then smackdown keep drafting b-listers ("with the second pick of the draft smackdown takes... heath slater"). obv this whole thing is predetermined but i do think it'd be a cool idea to let the respective showrunners (have they determined who this is yet?) actually just draft who they want.

i think the mcmahon kids are the "showrunners" but they pick their GMs tonight at the top of raw, i think

steph commish of RAW, shane smackdown. picking GMs tonight. there is a potential spoiler on who the smackdown GM could be (wwe.com published something and didn't change a name that they were supposed to, or something).

convert this binary to ascii to see what they accidentally left lying around in a story:
01111001 01100101 01110011 00100001

this is my cool new way to hide spoilers

that just says 'yes!' afaict?

oh oops now i get it SPOILERS FEEL FREE TO DELETE MODS

samoa joe i can only see going up if they take the nxt belt off of him, which i imagine they won't do tonight... he'd be great on the bigger stage though.

he's anchoring nxt right now but they really need to bring him up before he literally dies of old age

whoa it'd be interesting if they called him up to smackdown and he defended the nxt belt on that show for a little while... not a great idea nvm

raw's getting a cruiserweight belt

i'm actually watching raw :x

foley raw gm lol, talking about how this "feels like the monday night wars" and reminding everyone how much better this dumb split would be if they just BROUGHT BACK NITRO