Professional Wrestling

Well I complained about it but I finally found a browser lightcast's player works as advertised in. Microsoft Edge!

Yes, me who once said I never should have tried that combination, but yesterday I went against my better judgment and it worked! I'm finally caught up with SHINE again(as much as I want to be anyway, I'm not watching every World Wrestling Network tie in even if I get the free month subscription to work and and have no current plans to watch anything on that other network) is that because I watched so late? That couldn't be it right?

Still as you can tell I still can't get Lightcast's subscription to work. I go through three log ins, have all my information on hand to be sure it's right and still reset. Obviously it works for everyone else. I can buy the other services just fine, so why?

Still paying to watch good shows through a different service isn't the end of the world, the shows are good even if a little too much of that EVOLVE WWE shilling is getting into them for my tastes. I think the New York booker is different from Florida one, or at least has vastly different priorities in the new region/on road but I objectively can't say it's worse(SHIMMER's always been better than SHINE on a self contained basis and SHINE's not going through the obvious slump WSU was in). But lately it has felt unfamiliar...maybe I'll have more substantial things to post next year...

So, hey, Over The Top put the David Starr vs. Jordan Devlin match from this year (The one that got 5* from Meltzer) on their You Tube and you can watch it, right now, for free!

....so we all knew the wedding was going to go pear shaped, but I'll give it to WWE for not immediately going the obvious route right away.

I'll give them credit for not having Russev come down right away and break it up. This is much better.

Edit: And now Russev is finally here. Didn't expect him to be hiding in the cake.

Man, WWE is stupid. But sometimes, it's fun stupid. I know I kind got a chuckle out of this.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Dec 30th 2019 at 9:12:09 AM

Wasn't watching, gonna have to look up what happened.

Does kind of make you wonder just how far they take the kayfabe outside of the ring.

I looked it up. Holy fuck that's bad.

Bad enough that my top 3 takeaways from the entire episode are:

1. Confirmation that the men do indeed wear foundation (stage) makeup, and confirmation that in my previous performance experiences, the makeup people just didn't care enough to try to help.
2. How the fuck did they get Katie Vick to trend?
3. This is what Liv Morgan's return was?

And hey, Vince, Hunter, and Dunn were all not in attendance for this one. So people can't do the usual "blame Vince for everything bad". This at least in part falls on Heyman.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Dec 31st 2019 at 11:57:16 AM

Then again, wrestling's pretty much always stupid for the sake of fun, "class" be damned.

Video features:
Jyushin Liger, 36 year legend, retires tomorrow. Sacrificing a kancho for Chucky T, who is currently in AEW.
In his ass is Tommaso Ciampa, WWE's NXT stalwart.
In his ass, the guy who goose stepped, is Tommy End/Alistair Black, who is waiting in WWE for people to knock on his door.
In his ass is Sami Callihan, current Impact (TNA) World Champion.
In his ass is Cedric Alexander, former WWE Cruiserweight champion.
In his ass is Matt Riddle, former UFC fighter, now also in WWE.
In his ass is Jeff Cobb, still in Ring of Honor/NJPW as of writing.
In his ass is Brian Kendrick, on again-off again mentor slash "could have been" in WWE.
In his ass is Chucky T, who apparently didn't want to be left out.
In his ass is Pete Dunne, the Bruiserweight of WWE's NXT UK division.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 3rd 2020 at 2:21:27 PM

....Ladies and gentlemen....

The Chairman of WCW has passed away.

Let us all bow our heads in memory of La Parka and his wooden chair antics.

It's not the same La Parka. The one who passed away is La Parka II.

So... Impact put its top title on female wrestler Tessa Blanchard.
But there's a reason other women's wrestlers aren't celebrating her winning this "men's" title.

Because the day prior to this title match, she put out this tweet calling on women to support other women.

To which pretty much every woman wrestler who has addressed it had the same response: Tessa has for years been a notorious bully backstage, including getting people who she disagreed with blackballed (unable to be hired) by major promotions. One instance, corroborated by everyone else involved, detailed that during a match in Japan, Blanchard spat on, and used a racial slur against, a black/hispanic woman wrestler from Puerto Rico, La Rosa Negra. That wrestler basically had to make everyone else swear to secrecy, because of the risk of her career being derailed because of someone confronting Tessa's bullying. This was consistent with at least one other claim by a wrestler that Tessa spat on them as well, and consistent with Tessa's family (uncle) and friends (Charlotte Flair) also having been recorded used the same racial slur. Basically, they're coming out about it now because what seems to be sanctimonious hypocrisy got to be too much to bear, especially to see her get rewarded for it. Additionally, big moments like this are about the only times people will actually pay attention to these stories. Other wrestlers have in the past accused her of the same bullying and blackballing, and been ignored.

Tessa also hasn't denied or apologized for any of it. Her speech (cut from the broadcast of her win) does include the following lines:

Honestly? That seems to me like both an admission and a shifting of blame.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 13th 2020 at 2:49:50 PM

There were two of them?

I never knew.

I mean, it's still a shame, because someone died, but where's the original?

Apparently retired (as much as wrestlers ever seem to) and still alive.

Go fuck yourself, Tessa Blanchard.

An in other news on who can go fuck themselves, Triple H, and a good chunk of (western) wrestling fans.

Basically, Hunter/Paul/Trips/Fuckhead said in a press/business meeting that Edge may have to heavily weigh a return to wrestling because he has kids to care for, while Paige (the victim of the crime of non-consensual pornography release) probably has children that she hasn't been responsibly caring for.

I found out in some responses that apparently Paige has previously had a miscarriage and can't have children.

So she tweeted out a response basically saying that if not even her boss (who claims to be some champion of equality now) doesn't respect his female employees, of course the "fans" wouldn't.

And some of those "fans" tweeted disgusting replies, either supporting or defending Hunter, throwing insults at her, or throwing insults at people who come to her defense.

I'm just so done with most wrestling fans. They just blame everything bad on Vince, but give Hunter, and Heyman, and others, a free pass, partly because those fans are the damn enablers or part of the problem themselves.

The joke was that Paige had kids she didn't know about, not wasn't taking care of. A woman. Not knowing if she had kids or not.

This is merely a factual correction. I take no stance on the appropriateness or reaction to the joke itself.

Not sure if someone already posted this, but Chris Van Vilet had an interview with Chris Benoit's eldest son. The one from his other marriage, by the way. Basically, things about his dad, wrestling in general...

Anyway, if he DOES wrestle in AEW or NJPW, let's all pray he never does the Diving Headbutt.

Edited by SunPraiser on Jan 21st 2020 at 8:59:47 AM

He's probably never going to wrestle. He keeps saying he will, but both Lance Storm and Davey Boy Smith, Jr. have offered to train him, and then he doesn't.

The Dynamite show on the cruise ship was cool, it was a fun setting.

Especially that main event. Pac, you should have known better than to put a guy like Moxley in a submission hold.

I've been wondering for a little bit, so I crunched the numbers to see how Kofi's reign fared as a "fighting champion".

Results:

• 10 successful defenses, 1 loss (one dark match retention on 205 Live is not counted)
  • 8 legit wins
  • 1 win by DQ (the Bar attacked him in his Winner Take All match against Universal Champ Seth Rollins the Raw after Mania)
  • 1 Double Countout (vs Randy at Summerslam)
  • 1 loss
• 2 triple threats (AJ Styles and Sami Zayn, Dolph Ziggler and Samoa Joe)
• 1 steel cage (vs Ziggler)

The (officially recognized) days:

• 180 days as champion
• 1 defense every 17.18 days
• 23rd longest title reign of all time (the 135 reign)
• 26th most combined days as champion (out of 51 recognized individuals)

The opponents he beat have all won at least one top title in WWE (or WHC or Universal), NXT, TNA, ROH, or IWGP

• Daniel Bryan: WWE, WHC, ROH
• Kevin Owens: Universal, NXT, ROH
• AJ Styles: WWE, TNA, ROH, IWGP
  • While he didn't pin AJ in a defense (triple threat), he did pin him in a WWE champ vs US champ match
• Sami Zayn: NXT
• Dolph Ziggler: WHC
• Samoa Joe: NXT, TNA, ROH
• Randy Orton: WWE, WHC

I wish there was an easier way to search for how many times someone defended a championship per reign.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jan 31st 2020 at 11:31:54 AM

Joey Janela, you are a glorious madman. He booked Minoru Suzuki vs Orange Cassidy for his Spring Break PPV on Game Changer Wrestling.

He's a bad, bad boy.

I'm surprised AEW hasn't booked him against Darby Allin for a full "let's see which performer tries to kill himself the most elaborate way" match.

So how have wrestlers shown they have turned heel or face besides beating up their former allies? One example I can think of Steve Austin shaking hands with his former biggest enemy, Mr. McMahon, at WrestleMania 17.

Edited by DS9guy on Feb 7th 2020 at 2:34:12 PM

One of the main ways is just using heel in-ring tactics. But there's also: being "preachy" about a positive social concern, being proud of your heritage (if you aren't American), beating up someone more popular than you, accurately pointing out some of the fans flaws, etc.

Which is to say: you're a heel if the fans decide you're a heel.

Yeah the classic is using Heel tactics of undeserved violence or low blows in the ring (this being particularly true of Técnicos and Rudos in Lucha Libre, who are particularly defined by their difference in unabashed brutality).

Though then again there are guys like Pentagón Jr. (whose page I created yesterday incidentally) who has always been a Heel, talks like a Heel, fights like a Heel, acts like a Heel, looks like a Heel, but is so awesome everybody loves him.