offical wwe thread

[famicommander]

That Randy Orton/Alexa Bliss shit might be the worst thing WWE has ever put on television, and that's really saying something.

AEW is a bad, bad show lately. If Vince Russo were booking the ROH 2018 roster plus several senior citizens, this is what it would be. All Elderly Wrestling.

NWA's new "TV deal" is actually a subscription service where you have to pay 5 bucks a month to watch the shitty TV show plus 20 bucks for 2 hour PPVs. They actually charged people 20 bucks for a 2 hour show featuring Nick Aldis, Sandow, Chris Masters, Trevor Murdoch, and Tyrus/Broadus Clay. It's like the shittiest episode of Impact of all time, except instead of being free it cost 20 bucks.

NWA is only on Fite for the above prices. Fite also airs Ring of Honor, Booker T's Reality of Wrestling, Championship Wrestling From Hollywood, SWE Fury, and several other shows that don't suck as hard as NWA for free. But somehow they think people will pay to watch NWA.

Compare this to ROH 19th Anniversary, which is 10 bucks for a 4 hour show tomorrow (1 hour on the free preshow, 3 hours on the main card):
ROH World Championship: Rush (c) vs Jay Lethal
ROH World Television Championship: Kenny King (defending on the behalf of the injured Dragon Lee) vs Tracy Williams
ROH Pure Championship: Jonathan Gresham (c) vs Dak Draper
ROH World Tag Team Championship: Kenny King and La Bestia Del Ring (subbing for Lee) (c) vs Tracy Williams and Rhett Titus
ROH World Six Man Tag Team Championship: Shane Taylor, Moses, and Kaun (c) vs Bandido, Flamita, and Rey Horus
Unsanctioned Street Fight: Matt Taven vs Vincent
Pure Rules Match: Dalton Castle vs Josh Woods
Jay Briscoe vs EC3
Mark Briscoe vs Flip Gordon
LSG vs Danhausen vs Brian Johnson vs Eli Isom

The free pre-show starts tomorrow at 6:00 PM Eastern. The show is 10 bucks if you get it through a one month Honor Club subscription or 20 bucks to buy it outright, but not sure why anyone would do that given the subscription actually gives you more and is half the price.

 

[famicommander]

Glad the forum is back because every one of y'all needs to check out this Jay Briscoe promo:

He's the best promo guy in the business today.

 

[famicommander]

In a couple weeks NXT is moving to Tuesdays, Impact to Thursdays

Major wrasslin on US TV looks like this:
Mondays: WWE Raw, ROH TV show's web debut, AEW Dark Elevation
Tuesdays: WWE NXT, AEW Dark
Wednesdays: AEW Dynamite, MLW Fusion
Thursdays: Impact Wrestling, WWE NXT UK, WWE Main Event, NJPW on Roku (it's year-old stuff though)
Fridays: WWE Smackdown, WWE 205 Live, NJPW Strong, ROH TV show's syndication debut

MLW is teasing a new TV deal to be announced soon. Presently the show airs on BeIN Sports, Fubo Sports Network, DAZN, and Youtube. Presumably this is going to be a better cable channel than BeIN Sports, which is a low bar.

ROH is also teasing some announcements for the PPV tomorrow. They were set to extend their weekly show to two hours and go live every week before the pandemic hit so that might be what they're talking about, but it could be unrelated.

 

[famicommander]

Here's the Youtube feed for the free first hour for ROH 19th Anniversary:

It will be LSG vs Eli Isom vs Danhausen vs Brian Johnson and then Shane Taylor Promotions (Taylor, Moses, and Kaun) defending the ROH World Six Man Tag Team Championship vs MexiSquad (Bandido, Flamita, and Rey Horus).

 

[famicommander]

Great show tonight.

Bullet points:
-Bill Carr debuts, throws Taven and Vinny off a balcony through two tables
-Homicide returns. Previous tenures: 2002-2008, 2010-2014. 8th ROH World Champion.
-Chris Dickinson debuts
-Homicide, Dickinson, and Tony Deppen join a stable led by Brody King
-Maria Kanellis announces the return of the women's division, Angelina Love vs Quinn McKay
-Women's title tournament this summer
-Tracy Williams wins two titles in one night (Tag and TV), Rhett Titus becomes 2X tag champion
-Dragon Lee loses two titles without wrestling (I'm sure that will be his storyline when he returns)
-Amy Rose booted from La Faccion Ingobernable
-Rush retains the World Title over Lethal in a classic
-Gresham retains the Pure titleover Draper in what was likely the best match of Draper's career
-Briscoe pins EC3 in the best match of EC3's career, by a wide margin
-Shane Taylor Promotions retain the trios titles over MexiSquad, which then had a triple threat. Flamita looks to be on the outs.
-Dalton Castle pins Josh Woods, which likely means he has re-signed with ROH
-Flip Gordon over Mark Briscoe via low blow
-Brian Johnson pins Danhausen in a four way
-Further tension between Milonas and Bruiser; Woods and Silas

Now hopefully they can land La Sombra/Andrade. His two closest friends are Rush and Dragon Lee and he's a co-founder of Ingobernables with Rush.

 

[famicommander]

"Road Dogg" Brian James had a heart attack yesterday after Smackdown. He is currently hospitalized. Hope he gets better, he's only 51 years old.

 

[Syn]

"Road Dogg" Brian James had a heart attack yesterday after Smackdown. He is currently hospitalized. Hope he gets better, he's only 51 years old.

His older brother Brad died at 50 of a suspected heart attack too. Too many drugs catching up with them.

 

[famicommander]

I agree with every word Lance Storm says here. Baker vs Rosa was a fantastic match, but AEW is so fucking stupid about it. Baker loses the match and is rewarded with a big celebratory promo sequence on Dynamite and has her bloody face already plastered on merch for sale. While Rosa wins the match which should blow off the feud and put her over big, but she follows it up by being off TV for a week and returning in a meaningless Dark match. Alvarez tries to argue that maybe it's because Rosa isn't signed yet, but if that's the case... the when the fuck wouldn't you just have Baker win the match? Or if the plan is to continue the feud and eventually have Baker go over, how the fuck are they going to top that street fight?

Some wrestling promotion, I don't care which, should hire Lance Storm. And Lance Storm's job would be to listen to every pitch for a storyline, match, or spot and have him parse out the logic of what is implied by the pitch to these people before they put it on television.

 

[Splitt442]

Lance's commentary has always been high quality, I rarely find myself disagreeing with him.

 

[famicommander]

Lance's commentary has always been high quality, I rarely find myself disagreeing with him.

He seems like the perfect guy to be a producer or coach in Ring of Honor. He had a few matches there through the years but never an extended run.

 

[norton9478]

A decent commentary.

It all depends on how you do it.


Also:
Muraco beat Snuka.

 

[famicommander]

Ring of Honor's COO has said on their podcast that ROH is currently averaging between 400,000-500,000 US viewers. That would put the popularity of US wrestling shows as follows (TV viewers only as we have no way of tracking or comparing streamers):
1. Smackdown
2. Raw
3. AEW Dynamite
4. NXT
5. ROH
6. Impact
7. MLW Fusion

After that you get into indies with regional TV deals like Championship Wrestling From Hollywood/Memphis/Arizona, SWE Fury, or Ohio Valley Wrestling.

 

[famicommander]

Since moving to Peacock WWE has been going through their entire library and removing racist stuff before posting it on the new service. So far they have cut out several instances of Vince saying the N word on TV and Roddy Piper's blackface skits from the 80s.

I don't envy whomever has that job. Imagine sitting through hundreds of episodes of Main Event, Velocity, or Jakked looking for racist stuff to remove.

It's mostly racism they are removing but also ultra violence, sex stuff, and other forms oof bigotry.

 

[famicommander]

La Sombra/Andrade says he wants to stay in the US and resume wrestling quickly.

So that rules out a full time deal with any of the big Mexican or Japanese promotions.

Seems like a two horse race between ROH and AEW to sign him, unless Impact comes out of left field.

 

[sylvie]

Fucking stupid.

I watch WWE Network once per year. it was nice knowing that I could watch whatever I wanted from any point of time. Now we have to get potentially censored material on a shitty streaming network that apparently doesn't have any pre-2008 content... ???

Is Miami Vice on Peacock, anyone know? It's free with unbearable ads on NBC roku channel. Would pay for Peacock if I got Miami Vice and the *chance* of 90's WWF.

 

[famicommander]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated has officially recognized MLW titles as "world" titles.

At this moment the only "world heavyweight" titles PWI recognizes are:
WWE Championship
WWE Universal Championship
AEW World Championship
IWGP World Heavyweight Championship
MLW World Heavyweight Championship

That means that PWI places the MLW belt above:
WWE NXT Championship
ROH World Championship
Impact World Championship
AAA Mega Championship
Any CMLL World Title
AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship
Dragon Gate Open the Dream Gate Championship
DDT KO-D Openweight Championship
Pro Wrestling NOAH GHC Heavyweight Championship

What kind of crack are they smoking at PWI these days? MLW is a nice little company but they're a distant 5th place in the US behind WWE, AEW, ROH, and Impact in that order.

 

[sylvie]

yeah but all those awards are fucking made up.

It's not like the stanley cup or the superbowl.

get over it

 

[famicommander]

Huge downgrade for the new IWGP belt:

That shit looks terrible

 

[wataru330]

Hurt Business only lasted not even a month past Black History Month?

Fuck
You
Vince
!

 

[famicommander]

Hurt Business only lasted not even a month past Black History Month?

Fuck
You
Vince
!

They were just an old man version of the Beat Down Clan anyway.

 

[famicommander]

Tonight on Impact James Storm will wrestle his 1000th match for the promotion. Pretty incredible for anyone to make it that long.

I heard Eric Young tore his ACL in the match. Apparently he finished the match and then wrestled another match that will air next week before he realized how bad it was. He will miss 6-9 months, unfortunately. This is the first injury of his 24 year pro wrestling career that will cause him to miss a match.

 

[Syn]

I hear New Jack responded.

 

[famicommander]

-MLW is about to announce a new TV deal. Not sure if this is for a second show or if it's a better TV deal for Fusion.

-PWI actually recognized the MLW title in January. Source I saw was just outdated. At the same time they recognized the titles from AAA, CMLL, AJPW, STARDOM, NWA, Impact, and ROH to go along with the ones they already recognized from AEW, WWE, and NJPW. They still don't recognize the NXT, Dragon Gate, DDT, or NOAH belts.

-Road Dogg is doing much better after his heart attack and is headed home

 

[famicommander]

 

[jro]

Tonight on Impact James Storm will wrestle his 1000th match for the promotion. Pretty incredible for anyone to make it that long.

I heard Eric Young tore his ACL in the match. Apparently he finished the match and then wrestled another match that will air next week before he realized how bad it was. He will miss 6-9 months, unfortunately. This is the first injury of his 24 year pro wrestling career that will cause him to miss a match.

I watch bits and pieces of Impact most weeks, and any time Storm and Sabin are on it's like the adults are finally in the room. Both still fantastic workers and such strong presence/characters. Both will retire having received far too little recognition for how good they really were IMO.