Professional Wrestling

So Crown Jewel has been canceled.

Has it? According to Dave Meltzer:

What I was actually told was that unless the State Department tells them they can’t go or Donald Trump tells them they can’t go, then they are going.

Meanwhile: Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic to play in Saudi Arabia for the first time

“WWE Crown Jewel Now Listed On WWE.com Following Brief Removal, Show Still Scheduled To Happen”

Hm. Interesting. Developing story, at the very least.

Last night on RAW Roman Reigns announced that he is relinquishing the WWE Universal Championship (the top title for the RAW brand) and will undergo treatment for Leukemia. I don’t like Reigns’ character and find watching him wrestling extremely boring, but nobody deserves that and I wish him the best of luck and a full and quick recovery. Apparently he has been in treatment before in 2008 before starting his wrestling career.

Of course this being wrestling and all, there is always the possibility of an announcement being a “work”, though I doubt this being the case here. For one, in the following announcement on their website, WWE used Reigns real-life name, Joe Anoa’i. For two the entire locker room was taken by surprise it seems, and quickly sent well-wishes. And most importantly, if this was a work it would without a doubt be one of the most despicable acts in the service of promotion a product a company would have ever done, and I doubt even WWE would joke about cancer.

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They’ve done a lot of dumb shit, but it’s always been OVER THE TOP dumb shit, like blowing up Vince’s limo, or that time May Young gave birth to a hand. This is too subtle for Vince.

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I put nothing past WWE, but I believe this is legitimate. I hope he can recover and lead a happy, healthy, full life, whether he wrestles again or not.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been watching a bunch of CMLL lately. They stream or post archives of almost every show on their YouTube.
https://youtu.be/zOPHPRosMrY

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I don’t know, the commentators reactions and the fact that most people had look like they’ve been crying tells me it’s not a work. Hopefully he’ll make a speedy recovery.

I can’t imagine that it’s a work - doing something like that, especially while they’re promoting breast cancer awareness month, would be a PR disaster that they REALLY can’t afford, especially with the Saudi Arabia disaster show going on.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people on wrestling forums saying, “Damn, we’ve been saying we wanted Roman off TV for years now, but not like this… Maybe we should stop wishing on this monkey’s paw.” I really was expecting a lot of shitty fans glad that Roman is gone for a while, but I’m glad that’s not the case.

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I’m not really surprised. Browsing /r/SquaredCircle it was easy to notice that for all of the Roman hate every time the performer was mentioned apart from the character there was nothing but respect. I’m sure there are extra shitty fans that are happy , but that’s with everything.

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So they actually went through with Crown Jewel. I didn’t watch it, but from what I hear it was one of the worst shows in the history of the business, including

  1. Giving the son of the owner of the company the title “best in the world”.
  2. After Reigns relinquishing the title due to cancer, handing that title back to Lesnar, a part timer everybody absolutely fucking hates.
  3. A main event featuring four old-timers, who are legends but also absolutely by now are also has beens.

I would rather watch the following:

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By the sound of it, they couldn’t get any more tone deaf if they’ve had had Hogan back for a tumble.

You say that…Hogan was there to introduce the show in the opening 3 minutes.

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You’ve got to be kidding me. I thought they’d shoved that balding old racist deep, deep into the WWE disgraced star memory hole, after the revelations about all the racist shit he was caught on tape saying and doing came out.

Yeah, I forgot about the Hogan thing (again I didn’t actually watch it). He was there and did an introduction. A couple of months ago, shortly before I quit, they put him backstage to get “reacquainted” with the locker room, had a bit of chit chat and said “how sorry he was” and warned about how people should be more careful now that everyone has a recording equipment in their pocket (yes, this is basically what he said).

A bunch of people, most notably The New Day who are three african americans and one of the most popular acts on the show, released statements on social media that they are uncomfortable with it, but are willing to give a chance, with strong undertones of “fuck this” without coming out, saying it and getting themselves fired.

This decision was part of why I cancelled my WWE network subscription, though admittedly overshadowed by the absolutely atrocious booking of the last year. Alongside the Mulah thing from WrestleMania season the straw that broke the camels back, and I am not exactly sorry for this decision.

Edit: And what I didn’t know before I just looked at Wikipedia to see the entire card: Lesnar beat Strowman for the Universal title in 3:15, and Shane McMahon was inserted in the tournament at the final minute to replace The Miz and beat Ziggler in 2:30. Two minutes and thirty seconds for a fucking tournament final. But hey, the four 50-year old men got a half hour match. Just what the fuck booking is this?

If you want a breakdown Post wrestling did a 4. Hour talk about Saudi Arabia and the WWE then donated over 1200 to the jourlist protection fund.

This one, I assume

Yup that one. 15 characters of filler.