rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016

shoulder surgery for cena holy shit yeah xp

at this rate nakamura's going to main event WM because he'll be the only one left

hey on the plus side maybe all these injuries will convince WWE to stop running these guys out for 4-5 high-impact matches a week HAHA JK pussy millennials and their surgeries, in my day we wrestled 8 matches a week and let me tell you those chin locks were difficult to pretend to get out of

Fuuuuuck biggest wrestlemania ever deffo gonna have a bomb threat and move to a 15000 seater cos of sgt slaughter killing cena in the name of syria and taking away yr guns and scottish golf courses leading to a main event of brock lesnar v. hornswaggle

new TEW game announced, fuckin' stoked.

Thats football manager for wrestling, right?

yeah exactly. and like FM it is intimidatingly complex at first view for anyone unfamiliar with the mechanics, but once you've got the hang of it the whole thing is like fantasy booking crack. the strength of the game lies in the massively dedicated modding community that exists around it, creating heaps of real-world mods with specific start dates.

Some of my fav saves of this previous version (TEW 2013) have included signing Shawn Michaels for WCW in 1996 and booking him as the NWO's third man, rebooking the Invasion properly with all the big name dudes, parachuting into the AWA in 1988 to try and save them from going under, bringing Vader into the WWF in 1994 and making him a major focal point of the company (complete with classic WM 11 main event vs Vader, running WCW from 1991 to try and turn them into a proper competitor for the WWF etc. etc. etc.

The best mod is always the 1983 one set immediately before WWF goes national (there's always one of these for every incarnation of the game, SUCH good fun taking over e.g. Portland and making them a national powerhouse). Also spent some time booking Bruno for the WWWF with an incredibly detailed mod that starts in 1970, which is just fucking nuts. It includes detailed biographies of all the wreatlers and companies, it's like playing through a history lesson.

* classic WM 11 main-event vs Bret Hart, that should've said.

basically i am nerding out about this. some ppl complain about how long it takes to play through these games, but tbh I can quite happily take things nice and easy booking a show or two each week. which is the same deal as FM i suppose, it can swallow your life if you let it, but it's nice to just have it on the backburner as something you think about at idle moments and play a match or two each evening

finally finished WK10. my review is SHUT THE FUCK UP MATT STRIKER

now i'm wondering what the main event picture's going to look like next year. assuming they won't do okada/tana again, who will it be? ibushi? naito, goto, shibata? kenny omega?

sike the actual answer is bryan danielson.

nakamura - styles to headline wrestlemania 32, cena - orton to headline wrestle kingdom 11.

i agree with stfu matt striker but i did enjoy the supreme awkwardness of him trying to squeeze more than a couple of words out of yoshi tatsu.

I never considered it but Orton and Sheamus in NJPW would find an answer to how actually make those two interesting. Well as long as they still dont wrestle each other. I'd really like to see wk11 headlined by Orton v Okada

Yeah there's a ton of guys in the WWE who'd be fucking magic in NJPW. Sheamus is a big one but I reckon the guy who would benefit most would be Barrett. That dude could absolutely main-event NJPW shows and put on great performances imo. Shame he's so crocked.

There are way too many vanilla foreigners in NJPW, so they stick most of them in the Bullet Club so they come across as bigger stars than they are. It would be so cool to see a real North American star tear through Japan ... has this even happened since the early 90's? Maybe Brock Lesnar as IWGP champion, but it wasn't done right, the company was terrible then.

But yeah, Okada vs Orton would be amazing, during their entrances, the entire ring might collapse under the weight of their combined arrogance and they wouldn't even get to do the match.

finally got round to watching the new episode of NXT, just hit the pre-match promos for the Womens' Battle Royal (I like this concept tbh, it's pleasingly similar to watching an old-school Royal Rumble) and maaaaan oh man, this girl Aaliyah / Nhooph / Nho Hope is just the worrst like why are they even letting her on tv at this stage, it is cruel and unkind and doesn't do anyone any favours at all

Alexa and Emma both have p. fucking great theme tunes imo

Eva Marie trolling the Full Sail crowd is the BEST, I won't go so far as to say that she is great, but that whole narrative that surrounds her now is GREAT

yeah after bayley got a good match out of her I've been thinking they should keep her there for a while, she feels like a part of the show now. which is such a bizarre turn of events. watch her get a huge face turn and become the top babyface of nxt

I'm sure that this isn't an original thought, but i've been watching a bunch of stuff on the Network from the first half of '93 in the last week or so, and it occurred to me while watching Bayley's promo on the latest NXT that she is basically the 2015/6 female NXT version of Bret Hart

in so far as, like Bret, she's not particularly engaging with a mic in her hand but she's just this pure good-guy/gal babyface who made the breakthrough at the bottom of a heap of already established stars (Hogan/Savage/Flair/Piper/Perfect, Paige/Charlotte/Sasha/Becky) who all vanished p. much immediately leaving Bret/Bayley to carry the show single-handed by dragging 3* matches out of whatever hunk o' junk was flavour of that particular month (early HBK/early Razor/Yokozuna, Eva Marie/Nia Jax/Carmella) by hook or by crook. and like Bret in '93, she's doing a fucking great job of it so far

this girl Aaliyah / Nhooph / Nho Hope is just the worrst like why are they even letting her on tv at this stage, it is cruel and unkind and doesn't do anyone any favours at all

In her promo segment she said something like "I'm making my NXT debut tonight, and what a way to debut than to win" (sic). So either that was the best take they got, or they're actually trying to make her come off kind of dumb. Bad news either way.

and that twirl she did

So AJ Styles just dropped the RevPro title at York Hall tonight. Imagine if the next time we saw him it was in the Royal Rumble! But nah, I think he'll be doing the same as Nakamura and popping into the Performance Center for his physical next month.

yeah after bayley got a good match out of her I've been thinking they should keep her there for a while

The match was heavily edited for TV, supposedly it was brutal live, so credit both to Bailey for making parts of it watchable as well as the people who edit NXT.

There's no point in wasting a potential difference maker like Styles in the Rumble this year, everyone other than Reigns, Lesnar and HHH (presumably) is going to come out of that match looking like the jobbiest jobbers of all time.

Yeah wouldnt want someone to make it exciting or do anything different. Only surprise entrances allowed are midcard fodder from the attitude era or commentators doing a *oh thats my music boy what a surprise* thing that gets less funny every year.

So AJ Styles just dropped the RevPro title at York Hall tonight. Imagine if the next time we saw him it was in the Royal Rumble! But nah, I think he'll be doing the same as Nakamura and popping into the Performance Center for his physical next month.

Did you go this? Was round the corner and had forgotten it was on til people in Regal merch started showing up in the pub

I didn't go because of January funds and lack of Nak this time out but still looked a good card

They hold it in bethnal green right? I always think i should book up and go after work and then never actually do so

Did you go this?

Nah, London's an expensive place to visit, even if it is a short flight from Dublin and I could crash on a couch for the night. But I've been to a RevPro show before, Liger/Devitt in the summer of 2013 and it was good fun. The venue's really showing its age but it's a great place to see wrestling.

coming up nxt week

http://rumblemetrics.blogspot.co.uk/

There is a dumb sketch backstage with Noble and Mercury talking about an app of some kind JESUS CHRIST SETH ROLLINS JUST THREW AN iPAD that is the most decadent thing I have ever seen.

haha i've found myself wishing on a number of occasions that this guy would write more, but then i suppose the fact that he doesn't write reviews on every wrestling show he's ever seen is kinda key to the appeal?

i remember reading somewhere (possibly somewhere that was linked here? i don't remember) that half of all wrestling writers are autistic number-obsessives and the other half are perpetually outraged man-children, or words to that effect, and it's basically otm. I mean are there any wrestling writers who are worth reading besides Meltzer? Meltzer, for all his faults (and they are legion) is at least uniquely equipped to provide insight into the major stories of the moment.

i quite like Brandon Stroud as it goes, and I enjoyed quite a lot of the Masked Man's book but on columns and podcasts he's just unbearably smug and uninteresting.

it sucks because i've read a ton of really interesting and informative books by e.g. Tim Hornbaker, but there's a massive gap in the market for interesting and insightful wrestling commentary on the net. which, like, "duh, no fucking kidding, why the hell would that be a surprise?" i suppose but even so, it seems a shame

maybe this is something that will change in the near-ish future? the demographics into the old pro-rass do seem to be shifting quite a lot at the moment.

*the demographics of people that are into the....

that should've said. lol complaining about the quality of other people's writing

I mean are there any wrestling writers who are worth reading besides Meltzer?

If you count him as a wrestling writer, Hyatte's mop-ups were hilarious and made watching Raw or Nitro pretty much unnecessary for a good while.

Also, for good commentary, I don't know, I like the Shake Them Ropes podcast but that could only be because they feel the same way as I do about wrestling (WWE) a lot of the time.

I enjoyed quite a lot of the Masked Man's book but on columns and podcasts he's just unbearably smug and uninteresting

So true, I have never understood why people like him so much.

Stroud is really entertaining despite his many strange quirks and biases.

I don't mind Shoemaker (the Masked Man) myself, I listen to his podcast Cheap Heat but I don't go there for deep analysis or anything, it's just three mates shooting the breeze.

tbf i don't want deep analysis of wrestling at all, that's not exactly what i was getting at (realise that my own poor choice of words may have let me down here, "insightful" probably wasn't a helpful adjective). if i wanted "analysis" of wrestling i'd be more inclined to start posting on one of the more serious pro-wres forums where they get quite into dissecting matches step-by-step and drawing up interminable lists and so on.

Shoemaker is fine when he's getting enthusiastic about some old Texas territories shit that he remembers from back in the day, just as Rosenberg is more bearable when he's talking about re-watching old episodes of Tuesday Night Titans and Prime Time Wrestling on the Network. But when it comes to their take on the current product I find that you can listen to 30 minutes of them recapping Raw or w/e without them saying anything remotely interesting or entertaining the entire time. It's just... nothing. Half an hour of Masked Man saying over and over again "I thought it was fine" and Rosenberg saying "I thought it was repug". Great. Especially as they both seem utterly convinced that they are the authorities on the subject. Blech.

I quite like Sam Roberts' podcast I suppose, he at least gets interesting dudes on in his interviews.

I don't disagree, it's a matter of taste with Cheap Heat I think - you either don't mind them not really having a point about what's currently going down despite their self-professed Authority, or it annoys the shit out of you. At the same time, I'm not one for the Meltzer-style deep analysis, either - I dig good work in the ring, but for me entertainment trumps 'workrate' every time. There's room for a middle ground, and I think Rob and Jeff on Shake Them Ropes cover that pretty well, they balance insight with a good-humoured approach to a subject some people take way too seriously for my liking. (Admittedly I didn't like their show the first time I heard it, took a couple of gos to sink in but I've got a decent commute so I can do a whole episode from A to B.)

Oh yeah, I agree completely, I'm absolutely not a workrate hound and I kinda don't get people who are. As you say, a technically great match in the service of entertainment is dandy, but not for its own sake. And bad wrestling isn't always (or even usually) a bad thing. The wrestlecrap is often most of the fun!

Meltzer's really good for his profiles and obituaries and for his general comments on the industry. I don't really get why people would sit down and trawl through his match reports though. The omnipresence of his star-ratings system across the net is also really pernicious and has kinda accidentally cut-off lots of potential alternative ways of looking at wrestling - "Yeah this was good but I'm gonna take off a quarter star for the blown tope" *farts*

Got a night to myself and ive so far watched the threeway from the rumble, ultima lucha 1 and now brock v roman from wm31.

Fuck me last yeat had the best matches. Ive not even done sasha banks or wk9 or whatever yet either.

Brock Lesnar really is the greatest pro wrestler ever. I could watch him slap Reigns a million times.

I think the rumble triple threat is in my top 3 matches ever though with punk-cena at mitb11 and idk austin-bret or something

Brock Lesnar vs Jumbo Tsuruta all-time #1 dream match

Jericho doesn't want Sheamus on his show because he's trying to keep it entertaining, but could have his mohawk on the show to explain why it makes Sheamus look so stupid. Del Rio takes the mic and brags on winning the biggest Rumble match in history. He says if someone deserves to be on The Highlight Reel, it's him. Jericho says Del Rio's name is Spanish for jackass. He's not having Del Rio on his show because he doesn't feel like it. Rusev calls Jericho an American reject. He says it's a Rumble every day in Bulgaria. Rusev goes on and gets the "what?" treatment. He's confident about one of them winning the Rumble. Jericho says he didn't understand a word Rusev said.

ten points to the first crowd that starts a MID-LIFE CRI-SIS chant

https://45.media.tumblr.com/46072f5ef3c555e29a8003cadd661ab2/tumblr_o16fcqCEi91rnjfjfo1_r1_400.gif

i can't work out if he's trolling the smart fans or if he's really drifted so far out of touch. as a heel turn it works! it's just a question of how they make it mean anything beyond him shitting on the usual guys

Jericho has to follow the same crappy script as everyone else. He could be out of touch or it could be the writers, there's no way to know.

Jericho on NXT could be awesome as the arrogant vet who wants to teach the young wrestlers about how he thinks things should be done, he understands NXT-style old school wrestling angles and could totally pull off that character. He also wouldn't mind putting young guys over.

Meltzer has always been partial to storyline and entertainment over spot by spot analysis of matches.

Half an hour of Masked Man saying over and over again "I thought it was fine"

Yeah, from what I've seen, he doesn't have anything interesting to say (no inspired rants etc.) asks terrible questions during interviews. His columns for Grantland read like a guy writing essays for a social science degree in wrestling, which wasn't interesting to me in the least and 90% of the time I completely disagreed with his premise.

i can't work out if he's trolling the smart fans or if he's really drifted so far out of touch.

this is the guy who brought us the list of 1004 holds and the ten-minute soaking-up-applause on his return last year (two years ago? i can't remember)... i have a feeling he knows exactly what he's doing. and it's wonderful

as much as i don't want kevin owens to team up with anyone because he shouldn't need to, jericho and owens in tandem might be magical. RAW IS JERICHOWENS.

side note

i like that a thread called "rolling Jericho calls The New Day trap queens 2016" now has a literally-rolling-Jericho-in-2016 gif

maybe i'm being worked but he seemed genuinely proud of rooty tooty booty on his podcast

Anyway, enough moaning from me. TakeOver was great. And how about that Miz/Zayn match, eh?

Enhhhh if Nakamura was on smackdown he'd probably have had more good PPV matches than he's had in NXT by now, notwithstanding everyone in WWE creative getting lead poisoning in the last three months of every year

Think the thing that would most improve WWE booking at this point would be if all bookmakers stopped taking bets on the outcome of pro wrestling matches

i was at takeover toronto! took a train from mtl, drank in a park, saw the show, took a train to hmailton (!) to stay with a friend, turned around next morning and did the whole trip backwards... great fun but i am NEVER doing 12 hours of trains in ~30 hours again unless there's a death in the family or something.

then i got home and started watching survivor series and i was exhausted. by the time the goldberg/brock match started i was like "i am so tired. i am going to bed" but decided to like watch the first couple of minutes of the match? so in a sense i liked the end bc i didn't care abt it and wanted to go to bed

as someone very close to abandoning wwe altogether i thought lesnar/goldberg was hilarious and perfect

205 Live was alright. The talent is obviously there but it's lacking in story and promos, which is presumably the whole point of the exercise, to get these guys over so they stop sinking on Raw? It played a bit too much like a series of exhibition matches, but first week and all that. I'm pleased for Rich Swann though I wish there'd been more build, even *some* build to it. I fear they're gonna play hot potato with the belt till they find something that sticks.

Proof that Jack Gallagher is the man tho, that crowd was oohing and ahhing the whole gosh darn time.

he was definitely in "exhibition mode" but we learned from the CWC that he can bring some serious fire when he needs to, i have high hopes for that little man

my friend also said that "it's fun to watch jack gallagher and imagine he's sheamus's inner child" which made me lol

ooooh nvm he got that from br4nd0n str0ud

Absolutely, Gallagher is great as I'm sure I've said here before. I really hope he and the others get something to really sink their teeth into.

I caught the main event of TLC, it was a balls-out insane match and maybe the best TLC singles match I've seen. It really felt like they were trying to destroy each other through innovative use of the weapons, rather than moving from spot to spot like in 90% of these kinds of matches.

I felt it wasn't a great ladder match, but a great match with ladders, if you get my drift. Plus AJ cemented his status as WWE's main event MVP this year. And I liked the whole show overall, especially after the first two matches.

There was a ppv this week? Wasn't there two last week? And the launch of a new TV show? How the fuck does any follow?

there's another one on the 18th
http://www.smarkoutmoment.com/p/wwe-ppv-schedule-list.html

Yep and then none for six weeks till the Rumble weekend. Which is for the best, all things considered.

WWE just signed Kimber Lee aka Princess KimberLee aka Chikara Grand Champion and afaik the first woman to ever hold the top title in a non exclusively female promotion.

and heidi lovelace and evie! two fucking finallys

nixon newell too, before she had a chance to become one

it feels like they haven't really been signing women from the indies so this just makes it even weirder that candice hasn't gotten in

whoa like SIGNED signed? not just for the global womens tournament?

I still haven't seen proper confirmation of this, just retweets from the same fan site. But if it's true, it's great news! They sorely need new talent that can go with Asuka, 'cause the Performance Center build-em-up scrubs are a long way from cutting it.

tbf by the time we see them in nxt, asuka will surely be gone... but it'll be talent that can go with ember, and an ember/evie/kimber/heidi + nixon four (five) horsewomen 2.0 is going to be innnnnnnsaaaaaaneeee

super excited that they're building nikki cross as this psycho tho and FINALLY had her eye that title... i would not mind seeing her take the strap off asuka (with sanity-related shenanigans no doubt)

tbf by the time we see them in nxt, asuka will surely be gone...

I dunno about that part. It's bad enough she had no one left to wrestle in NXT right now, you really think the main roster women, aside from the main eventers, are ready to tangle with someone like her? She would not be booked the same way. First things first she needs competition more on her level in NXT so she can lose but still look strong - it's unfortunate that they never gave Bayley a win over her. I think a strong programme with Nikki Cross or Ember Moon would help.

More importantly, you really think Kevin Dunn etc want someone like her on their TV?

Well she's not fat so he might have no problem*. However she may see herself as a professional who won't get in a hot tub with him, so swings and roundabouts.

*on the other hand, Steen is champ so maybe he is losing his influence.

oh shit new member of bullet club <3 <3 <3 https://twitter.com/njpwworld/status/807517526200438785

DASHING PRINCE OF DARK MATTER

this is gonna be gold

Also does he briefly wear the mask he wore when rey rey "disfigured" him? That was my fav Cody.

One thing that was wrong with the guy is none of his wrestling was done with any intensity. I can see njpw bookers sorting that out p quickly.

kenny omega's tweet a few days ago implied that it might be ryback. thank god it isn't

WK11 card is looking insane. Eleven matches, all with the potential to be good or great (even the rumble match is entertaining in its own way). It's too bad that Ishii and YOSHI HASHI are relegated to the trios match, and I don't understand why Goto and Shibata have to fight yet again (why couldn't the Nakajima vs Shibata blowoff happen?), but otherwise I have no complaints, the show will be awesome.

straight up what is the point of a division, and now a whole weekly tv show, where cruiserweights are mandated to wrestle like non-cruiserweights and aren't given the resources anyone else is on the main roster to get their characters and feuds over

i appreciate the little bitty strands of storyline they're starting to pepper in but... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

this show would've been a good opportunity to introduce win-loss records. it's playing like the CWC without any stakes, organization, or any real reason to watch the matches themselves

jack gallagher's lucky they don't care about how many wacky submission moves an individual wrestler does, but even he's starting to do the same things every match

love that headbutt though

It's been reported that Kevin Dunn and Vince McMahon are in charge of 205 Live, not HHH or anyone else involved with the CWC, which pretty much answers all of your questions.

not surprising!

i'm staying away from this UK stuff

since when is orton in the wyatt family?

also why is orton in the wyatt family?

About one month. I don't think the "why" was ever answered -- he was feuding with the Wyatts, then he joined them and people assumed it was a ruse just to screw with them, but now it looks like he's with them for real.

I guess it makes sense for Orton because he's already done everything there is to do in WWE, and he's said in interviews that he feels revitalized by this new direction for his character.

Poor luke harper. That guy deserves to be main event.

Any early suggestions for 2017 thread name? January should be great with wk11 and the rumble.

- more belts than main-eventers
- hide your kids, hide your wife, because WWE is filling its cruiserweight and womens tournaments
- how to make nobody care about a shield reunion
- official ILX petition to get DUSTIN a WWE contract
- braun, nia, brock, GM mick foley and various other monsters
- kevin & chris's bogus journey

I'm glad that jericho clearly reads this thread and realized his character needed a new direction

spare thoughts:

-i enjoy reading lance storm's thing about the charlotte/sasha match that i didn't actually watch, which is a condemnation of wrestling fans but really a condemnation of bad wrestling announcing, but also pretty good as a condemnation of wrestling fans. it's pretty lol that he's literally like "uh read a BOOK you nerds" but it illustrates, in general, the problem a lot of us have, where we're too stuck in the meta vince mcmahon has nurtured, we demand storytelling but look at everything through the lens of the things we're not supposed to think about -- how strong a wrestler is made to look in the present moment, especially. ofc it's also WWE's fault for being so shitty right now, and possibly always, that they can't tell a story 99% of the time so the other 1% doesn't stand a chance, and they're so focused on training fans to think a certain way that eventually you get trained to react a certain way. but if they ever actually did turn a leaf and give us a decent story to follow, would we allow it? should 'storytelling' even be a priority?

-next week's smackdown is basically a PPV on television simply because there's literally 2 months between actual SD PPVs. which is annoying imo, but everyone on reddit and wherever is treating it like a great thing. i like the idea of 2 month PPV builds. i wish the brands alternated every month and never shared a month. the hope is that you don't have a weekly TV show that's just all build all the time, or awkward holding patterns when they get one of those weird 6-week breaks. actually spend those 2 months putting on a good show with important matches that eventually lead to a PPV. i think a lot about how the first season of LU was amazing for like 32 episodes, and then ultima lucha was announced and the 5 or 6 episodes between took a nosedive because it was all build. and that was just one PPV.

-i have to catch up on NJPW from dominion on in the next 2 weeks. it took me like 2 months to get through the 2 BOSJ matches i consider "enough" to say i've officially gotten through BOSJ (the final and ospreay/ricochet). i don't think i can watch these tournaments unless they're happening in real time. i also don't think i should have a njpwworld subscription anymore.

I liked the finish of the Charlotte/Sasha match. The first 20 minutes were 'uh oh they're doing Bret/Shawn at WM12' but it really kicked into gear in the last third, making the overtime actually worth something.

My only issue with the booking of their feud, is that it would be totally fine to cycle Sasha out and slot in a new challenger for Charlotte, if they gave a toss about booking undercard feuds. I don't think it's an unfounded fear to believe that Sasha will spend the next few months swimming around in the doldrums with the other women who aren't getting title matches, since title matches are the only ones creative seem bothered doing anything creative with. At least on Raw at any rate; SmackDown! actually has a mid-card.

i like the idea of 2 month PPV builds

I LOVE the idea. But those days are long gone, man. The best we can hope for is NXT doing better lead-ups to their TakeOver specials; the last couple have been fun in the end but the builds weren't what they could've been.

have p. much 100% checked out of wrestling for now. whole thing just feels like a colossal and unconscionable waste of time. enjoy checking in on whatever Miz and Styles are doing on SD very occasionally. has James Ellsworth won the world title yet? everything about Raw is just terrible. every single fucking part of it.

the Lesnar / Goldberg match was the kinda thing I would've got worked up about once upon a time and is symptomatic of many of the problems with the way they run things today, but I lolled when i read the report. i don't think that's a good thing necessarily, when formerly devoted fans start feeling that way.

i'll check back in for the Rumble and Mania I'm sure, but short of something truly magical happening (hasn't there been talk of Styles getting a match against Taker / a returning HBK(?!)?) i think i'm out for the foreseeable. had enough of their bullshit

Rolling Chris and Kevin's Bogus Journey 2017

Bug in that link: I had to add the 'www.' to make it work for me.