Professional Wrestling

I just returned from Orlando, where I had tickets to the Hall of Fame Ceremony, NXT Takeover, Wrestlemania, Raw, and Smackdown.

It was such an incredible weekend. I had been pretty cynical about wrestling lately, but I thoroughly enjoyed everything they did this weekend, which isn’t surprising because they were hitting on all cylinders.

I legitimately got glassy-eyed at a few moments, such as arch-enemies DIY and the Revival teaming up to try and defeat the Authors of Pain, during Bayley’s Mania entrance as I was thinking of just how far she’s come, from a young fan to performing at Wrestlemania as the Women’s Champion, and at Tye Dillinger’s debut for the same reasons.

We got to see some event-exclusive matches and segments, done before the shows start or after they went off the air. Before Takeover, The Drifter Elias Sampson came back, except wearing a luchador mask and calling himself ‘El Vagabundo.’ (He still had the guitar and played the same song he always does, though.) Once his opponent took the mask off, security came and forced him out of the building since he was supposed to be gone for good. After Raw, Goldberg came out and thanked the fans for this most recent run, and he said he was going back to retirement, probably for good, but ended with “Never say never.” And during a commercial at Smackdown, they annoounced Ziggler vs. Nakamura as a special main event, mostly as a way to introduce him to the fans so that they could get some buzz going, and also to make sure no one left during 205 Live.

I could not be more exhausted after doing so many late shows in a row, but it was totally worth it, and after some rest, I might be ready to do it all again if the opportunity came up.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7UGysLNnVQ

Simon Gotch has been released, supposedly because he is an unsafe worker. In addition to being primarily responsible for Enzo Amore’s concussion last year, he supposedly was also really bad at house shows.

Aiden English will potentially get a singles push now and some TV time again. Maybe he’ll be one of the guys moved in the “Superstar Shakeup” next week and with the return of Eric Rowan and Tye Dillinger called up Smackdown might have a decent undercard after that.

I’m told he also had a bad attitude and would often get into arguments and fights with other wrestlers backstage.

There was one story where he was being a jerk to Sin Cara, who got so fed up that he threw an unopened soda can at Gotch and knocked him out.

@SkeleRym, as a wrestling fan, I appreciate the Always Sunny clips with Roddy Piper as The Maniac much more.

A sports writer from SB Nation who had never watched wrestling before watched Wrestlemania and wrote a blog post about it. It’s a really fun read, and she managed to ‘get’ wrestling in all the right ways. Reading this made me appreciate wrestling as an art all over again.

I’d like to see Rym and Scott do something similar, but I know that they are too jaded and cynical to appreciate anything for it’s own sake anymore. :wink:

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Hearthstone: Face is the Place

Not sure whether Scott just posted in the wrong thread or this is a witty meta commentary on wrestling.

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I hope the second option is true.

Lol, it was way late.

Good way to start the superstar shake up with Miz (as Cena) and Dean Ambrose coming to Raw.

I was expecting AJ Styles to make the jump at the end, was glad he didn’t. I need Nakamura Vs. Styles round 2 here.

A couple of things which I like with these changes - I think the Miz needs to get into a similar feud that he has been doing with Daniel Bryan with Kurt Angle - including stealing his moves (I haven’t watch Angle so what are they?) while still using the Yes kicks he picked up in the last year leading up to an actual match between them at Wrestlemania 34.

Bray coming to Raw solves one problem I had with the Hardy Boyz being Raw tag team champs - When the Matt hardy breaks again we can definitely have the Broken Matt Vs Bray feud I want. Whatculture did a good video on why they can take their time to let the legal things settle down before they break Matt again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY429p7EH-s

Primarily it would be the Ankle-Lock and Angle Slam. This might help. However I kind of disagree. For one the personal connection is missing. The Miz and Daniel Bryan go way back. Secondly The Miz can’t really tell Kurt “why won’t you wrestle? Because the doctors won’t clear you?” because Angle has wrestled with a broken freaking neck plenty of times, not just winning his gold medal but also at Wrestlemania. It would also be a rehash, which isn’t necessarily bad but would be bad so close to his last feud.

I just want to say that I am very excited to have Zayn, Owens, Styles and Nakamura, my four favorite wrestlers in WWE, all on Smackdown. Then add in guys like Harper, Dillinger, Ziggler and Corbin this could go quite some places. I guess Orton and Rusev are okay too, and I could even see Jinder be a good performer. Perhaps a revival of the days of the Smackdown Six coming though I am not sure who the remaining two would be in that equation.

Also nice to add in Charlotte to the Women’s division and The New Day to the Tag teams. It’s unfortunate that The Miz, Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss are gone, but considering that most of what was passed back was enhancement talent like Slater & Rhyno, Apollo Crews and Calisto, I think the additions definitely outweigh the subtractions for Smackdown.

However, one thing displeases me about Smackdown, and that is JBL. I knew he was a shit before, but the recent revelations are kind of astonishing and I hope he gets fired, preferably into the sun, soon.

Outside of Zayn and Owens, I feel like Smackdown got the short end of the stick in the draft.

That said, Zayn is one of the few guys that I enjoyed the most on Raw. If they had just kept Dean Ambrose on SD and moved Cesaro over, I could pretty much stop watching Raw and save a few hours a week.

JBL is the worst, and I guess there were a ton of ‘Fire Bradshaw’ chants at Smackdown, and one guy was thrown out of the show for holding up a “JBL Bullied Me” sign right behind the announce table.

I could have gone to SD last night, but I was so burned out from Mania weekend that I just couldn’t bring myself to go to more wrestling. Tonight there’s even a local indy wrestling show that I go to often, but I don’t know if I can even commit to doing that just yet.

I never liked JBL when I watched wrestling when I was younger, but I always figured that was just his character. What are these recent revelations that make him so despicable?

I’m so so so glad that shit is starting to blow up outside of the standard Wrestling circles, even NYT is reporting on it. I’ve never liked JBL.

Basically it has been known for a while that JBL is kind of a dickhead and was constantly playing “big man on campus” during his active career. This includes one incident where during a big melee in the ring at ECW One Night Stand 2005 he beat up The Blue Meanie for real, causing him to suffer a head wound that needed 12 stitches to close.

Recently professional wrestler Justin Roberts published his autobiography. In it he accuses JBL of all sorts of bullying and hazing, e.g. just throwing the luggage of other wrestlers down the street or forcing people to join the heel bus even when they are faces so they remain within JBLs grasp. He also accuses JBL of stealing Robert’s passport during a european tour, causing him all sorts of trouble. Wrestlers John Morrison (now Johnny Mundo in Lucha Underground) and Joey Mercury confirmed in interviews that they were involved. They were themselves bullied by JBL and were supposed to steal the passport, but both said they didn’t do it. Meanwhile JBL’s response to Roberts was, and this is a quote from twitter: “I didn’t take Justin Roberts passport … he was hated by the whole crew. He’s an idiot.” Which is, you know, the kind of thing a bully would say.

Almost at the same time it was revealed the the recent departure of Mauro Ranallo from WWE and the Smackdown commentary team specifically was because of bullying by JBL, including statements to the effect of “You don’t deserve this and nobody cares” when Mauro won an award for his commentary. Ranallo also suffers from clinical depression, a fact known to the entire locker-room which makes things all kinds of worse.

This whole thing now has also been picked up by several large publications that don’t cover Wrestling specifially, like Sports Illustrated and Deadspin. Meanwhile Dave Meltzer, the most respected reporter in the wrestling business, has deeemed this to be a natural outgrowth of the WWE corporate culture and Vince McMahon’s personality specifically. Meltzer said that in any other company JBL would have been fired a long time ago. Also notable is that CM Punk during his infamous Pipebomb promo was cut off right before launching into a rant over the WWE’s hypocrisy in supporting an anti-bullying campaign.

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I can’t say I’m surprised. I started watching again recently, and JBL came off as a bully behind the announcer’s desk.

It is a shame that Miz and Maryse went to Raw - Rusev and Lana Vs Miz and Maryse could of been a fun “Who is the better couple” storyline they could do without it being something to push Total Bellas storyline forward.