I haven’t seen the playback on peacock, but dude was sitting in the corner of the ring for like 45-60 seconds with a steel chair before R-Truth and Miz finally hit their cue for him. I understand he obviously can’t slip in and make a sneak attack, but maybe book a better run-in for the benefit of the live crowd and the tv audience?

And I could imagine an old-school wrestling booker yelling “PUT YOUR OTHER HAND ON HIS BACK DAMMIT!” during the chokeslam. Granted I could probably see someone the size of Jelly Roll picking up a small person like Austin Theory (granted he’s 2 inches taller than me and about the same weight, but I don’t have pecs and abs like that in fairness). All in all, it popped the crowd. That’s all you gotta do.

Also happy to see the photos of Jacob Fatu wearing a compression shoe after summerslam, so hopefully he didn’t fuck himself up too badly, and thankfully it wasn’t his knee. Wonder if they’re going to tell him to relax with the flippy shit and just be a beast? I like the unpredictability of him that he can eat your eyeballs, and still run up the turnbuckles and moonsault on people. I wonder if he and Roman Reigns were supposed to interact originally?

Another interesting thing that came from summerslam is that Liv Morgan and Cody Rhodes were the only champs who retained. Almost everything developed or continued a storyline.

Liv Morgan helped with the dissolution of the Judgment Day and extends her story between Rhea and Dom (as long as they create a new gimmick for Rhea where she becomes a Road Warrior so she can wear shoulder pads to protect that damn right shoulder).

Bron Breakker should hopefully have a similar run as Gunther as IC champ. It may not have helped that he won in Cleveland where fans are prone to barking to know if he’ll be a heel or face.

LA Knight could wrestle as much as Logan Paul and probably still be over as long as they trot him out to cut promos. That might wear out over time though, so hopefully that is used to elevate others during his reign. In the meantime, get Carmelo Hayes a Tinder Platinum account so he can get laid, gain some confidence and personality, and then he could be a decent program with Knight. Or convince MJF to headlock someone in front of Tony Khan so he can get released and sign while Knight is still champ. That promo will be Rock v. Austin right before Wrestlemania 17.

Nia Jax… we’ll get to see Tiffany Stratton I guess?

Drew McIntyre, CM Punk, and Seth Rollins are putting people’s great-grandchildren through college. Over a god damn return and a friendship bracelet.

I hate saying this, but Gunther is holding the secondary title in the company (it’s the new IC title in a way). Let him do a long run with it and put some guys over along the way, then give him the real title in time. Unless a bunch of other people end up with caved in chests like Kofi Kingston, I don’t see his gimmick going away anytime soon. People around me in the crowd were calling his match “real man shit” watching him and Priest fuck each other up for real. That visual of Gunther’s chest bleeding too was *chef’s kiss*. Also can’t wait to see Priest and Balor in the near future to push Priest some more. Hopefully he sustains it.

And the main event is the longest of all long-term storytelling that they finally got Roman over after 10 years. I’m guessing like everyone else is predicting, this storyline will reintroduce Brock Lesnar after a while and people will forgive or forget that he was subscribed to McMahon’s and Laurinaitis‘s onlyfans. I’m guessing they’ve hired 87 more Pacific Islanders too, and maybe Tonga Loa will finally get his shit together before he’s future endeavored. And Cody will probably wrestle some folks. Honestly though, I heard conversations in the crowd that they’re growing bored of him. That would suck if he ends up like the end of his AEW run where he’s despised but persists. That work in the long term I guess since everyone is jacking off to John Cena’s upcoming retirement tour.

He reminds me of this goofy dude at my job. That’s quite an art where your self-confidence can surpass being brutally annoying and ends up being charming.

I’m just now finding out he’s from Scotland, which is probably why I immediately like him. Scotland was probably hands down the best place I ever visited based solely on the people and their wit, although I learned quickly that I indeed do not have a drinking problem. I am an amateur compared to those pros.

Would anyone else say that Michael Cole is finally tolerable without Vince barking stupid shit in his ear, and the commentary team just being allowed to tell the story of the match like humans?

Maybe bring back Tazz? They had a bit of chemistry back in the day.

This is one example of many of how Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn leaving the WWE has been a great thing for the television product. The camera work is infinitely more appealing, too.

Would love to see the company try to bring Mauro Ranallo back, too. He was dynamite behind the mic when he was allowed to be more of himself.

Micheal Cole was always my guy and I loved tazz on commentary

my dream return is Jim Ross

Ik he’s already resigned with AEW but it would be awesome

and again on Micheal Cole, I love his chemistry with pat mcafee, pat is a great addition to the commentary team especially with Cole

And we might get a Jesse Ventura return with Vince gone

maybe he’ll talk about his time when he was down at the Baja

Joe Hendry wins the NXT Title tomorrow at No Mercy or we riot.

He’s down to picking and choosing his own matches right now (I guess he did the main event for All In) due to health issues. I can’t imagine he has an unhealthy Fabergé egg addiction that he blew all his money on, and I do know his wife passed away a bit ago. I’m thinking like a mark to hope maybe he calls Punk v. Rollins at Wrestlemania. Really I just hope he enjoys what time he has left and knows that he will be regarded as legendary.

McAfee is like an enjoyable JBL. Weird though how many people from the sports-adjacent world, just like the entertainment-adjacent world are now coming to pro wrestling, which I guess is also sports-adjacent and entertainment-adjacent (I wonder if there’s a term for that they use?).

Also I'm hearing stories about Ricochet being terminally online and getting into it with a fan that really sounded like they were saying “I’ve never watched AEW, but now I’ll watch because I enjoy watching Ricochet”. He seemed to be criticizing his “fan” for maybe not being interested in something until something they took joy in (and honestly brought some of the whole indie wrestling to wrestling’s McDonalds) was a part of it.

Just a couple weekend notes for local wrestling if you're in the greater Philly area for wrestling:

CZW will be debuting in the Quakertown Farmer's market in Quakertown PA this saturday, bell time at 6. Planning to attend this one as a fan.

Phantom Six will be running their FIRST SHOW EVER! Sunday in Bethlehem PA at Bethlehem Brewing and they will be bringing in the TNA Tag Champions ABC for this one as well as an amazing card with all proceeds to suicide prevention. Will be working that one in whatever capacity promoter Dylan Quinn sees fit. Check out FB for more details! Tons of local wrestling out there that needs your dollar way more then WWE does this weekend and every other.

it sucks, but these pleas are what is keeping wrestling going on the small scale. Funny enough a site like this should be a gold mine for independent forms of entertainment to flourish, but alas.

And sadly this is at the point where the Amazon on rasslin’ is blowing away the metrics. Keep in mind; Triple H will have bad ideas (he fucked a mannequin after all), and wrestling will suck again. Shad Khan eventually will get an alert from his bank account, and the social experiment of TNA will eventually come to an end.

Hopefully, small-scale wrestling that is feasible can flourish in today’s society.

So… did this year’s Survivor Series hopefully put an end to WWE’s bullshit-ass variant of Wargames? I only look forward to whoever they have yell the name of the match for the cheap pop, but every match has been shit (and I was front-row for the 2022 event).

The women’s match really fit the narrative of “hey the guys have a match, so the women should get one too”. It blows my mind that those who are usually excellent workers (Bayley, Bianca Belair, Naomi) even looked like shit. Thankfully Nia Jax’s chairshots looked like garbage and nobody is potentially suffering traumatic brain injury, but god damn that looked like AIDS. And it’s unfortunate that Iyo Sky feels compelled to do a blind trust-fall into her co-workers (with a metal object wrapped around her). It’s shitty to think that 20ish years ago, women in this company would’ve been obligated to parade their tits and asses out in public view, but now they feel obligated to try to hurt themselves and others for a match that will really be forgotten.

And when 30% of your main event injure themselves, including Bronson Reed killing his popular run so he could be a fat guy jumping down 15 feet to break a table, and Tonga Loa sadly not doing his current run any favors, why do this shit? I was looking forward to Bronson Reed in the next few months being a menace, but at least CM Punk and Jacob Fatu seemed to escape unscathed so there’s at least some potential angles that can be forwarded for the next few months.

I have a weird proposition. Maybe, we can do a thing once a year where 5 folks have a conflict with 5 other folks, and to settle the score, they do a 5-on-5 match where they fight one another, and they eliminate members one by one until there’s one team left standing? Or, if we have to add the suspense of a cage to make it seem more dangerous, don’t waste the time of the competitors running down the aisle, and have them directly at ringside making noise and surrounding the cage menacingly, although they’ll want to quickly make their way into the cage instead of spending valuable time bringing the Home Depot into the ring (that is surrounded by hard, sharp metal mesh). And if you can get disqualified because you climb out the cage, then we should put a roof on it (and weirdly enough, people can’t jump off it if that matters).

I even have a good idea for the name of the match. For a 5-on-5 elimination match, the winners will be the team that survives a series of eliminations. We can call it… Paulie L’s Thanksgiving WrestleFest.

I have an inside scoop that someone is getting color next week on Smackdown.

I’m at Saturday Night Main Event tonight. They’re really playing up the nostalgia for this show.

What a pussy. Cody Rhodes takes one piledriver and gets stretchered out. He didn’t even take four of them on the ring apron or the steel steps. No wonder he wasn’t All Elite. 

Negative 5 stars. It would be negative 15 stars if it was in the Tokyo Dome.

MSG house show tonight ended with CM Punk coming out in his towel to help Damien Priest from an attack after a steel cage match.

Outside the arena were folks handing out GCW flyers for their upcoming show at the Manhattan Center. Weird how Tony Khan is becoming 1980s Vince by bullying the indies. Hopefully he doesn’t fail to pay on an NDA after shitting on someone like the former.

I can’t believe he did that shit either…

WWE Raw content appears to finally be migrating over to Netflix. Very happy that unlike the Cock, you can search by year rather than attempting to guess what season you’re looking for. I did notice though that they’re missing content from 2002 to 2021, and the years they currently have up aren’t fully populated; not sure if they’re still in the process of uploading or if they’re still scrubbing through stuff to sanitize it up for public consumption. I was trying to look for some early 2000s Undertaker matches to see what version of his theme song they used to see if they’re still doing the lousy dubs for some of the old licensed music.

The only content for Raw on the Cock now is highlights and Raw Talk. They still have the PPV/PLE and Smackdown archives, although Smackdown is still a month behind the broadcast schedule (I heard internet rumors they would be posting episodes the next day in 2025, but again, that’s what the internet says). Cock also still has the old school content like WCW, ECW, Mid-South, World Class, and Smoky Mountain.

I’m guessing NBC/Universal is going to hold Smackdown hostage now as the last dying vestige of cable TV, which sucks because I’m not shelling out a single penny for cable just to watch a single show (I gave that up when I realized I was paying just to watch Jon Stewart when I could also just watch his shows on Comedy Central’s site).

I don’t have MAX, so I can’t update anyone on AEW’s streaming options or if they have their library available for old shows and PPVs. I was considering picking up MAX for other items, and they have a few gems from time to time to warrant checking out. I watched half an episode on a flight to Seattle with no headphones (granted I’ve heard the commentary is unbearable from time to time). I think I know what it is like to have ADHD now after watching parts of that show.

rn they have 2019 through 2024 for dynamite and PLE rn

The other shows are coming soon

…did Travis Scott just smoke a joint on live TV?

“I don’t even know if that’s PG!”

Also; love to my hometown for booing the shit out of Hulk Hogan. I was hoping Jesse Ventura came out and hit him with the Body Breaker, but it was already an overbooked show.

And before anyone cries about politics, the Undertaker got a big pop. People just don’t like Hogan anymore for good reason.

Thought the first Raw of the "Netflix Era" was pretty solid.

Still kinda baffled that Rhea Ripley just beat the hell out of Liv and took the belt from her with relatively little fanfare and I consider myself a big fan of "Mami".

Like, if that was the plan, they should have just done the "shocking" thing like they did with that first Smackdown show on Fox in 2019 where Lesnar squashed Kofi in seconds for the title.

A few things I was bummed about was they still cut into commercials during matches. Except for international streams (bunch of Bolsheviks). Also of course the Rock says “bullshit” in the first few minutes (and also is filmed drinking before he hops into his truck). Like we all said earlier though, still won’t be the norm for this to be Attitude/Ruthless Aggression Era 2.0 (with the exception of the Rock and Travis Scott running afoul of public intoxication laws).

Granted the Rock’s whole segment was baffling like he wanted to come out and be “Dwayne” and adorned by all the casual folks checking this out for the first time. So all of that at the expense of the whole Final Boss storyline, and no payoff from the end of Badd Blood. Unless this was him saying he’s not trying to hijack the main even at Wrestlemania again. Still had a better segment than Hogan (poor Jimmy Hart).

I feel they stretched this feud out so much since Rhea kept getting injured by tiny lil’ Liv. The actual match probably lasted too long since they didn’t have that many matches scheduled (we didn’t want to put Bron Breakker or Gunther on the debut? We didn’t want to make too much money?!?), so probably told them to go long. But yeah, 10-15 minute squash matches aren’t entertaining. Also, was that supposed to be a last woman standing match, or was that the Mandela effect messing with my head?

At least you have a couple of people coming back for her to feud with like Lynch and Flair, and maybe Jordyn Grace coming in to potentially have matches with.

Punk v. Rollins seems like the match they were going to do at Wrestlemania 40; probably wouldn’t have been as good since Seth was being held together with duct tape at the time, and Punk got injured at the Rumble. At least it worked out in the long-run with Punk’s feud with Drew McIntyre for the remainder of the year, and it quickly transitioned from that feud back to Rollins.

If I do my Tony Khan message board booking, I’m guessing Punk somehow gets a main event match at Wrestlemania at the expense of Rollins, then Rollins costs him at Wrestlemania, and we do a couple more Punk/Rollins matches for the year (I don’t know if Seth can survive any more promos though). I keep forgetting that he has a favor from Heyman, so that’s always an extra little nugget you can throw into the proceedings. No clue what you do now with Solo, seeing how half his bloodline is injured and they just did the blow-off with the Tribal Chief storyline (although they still have half the population of the Pacific Islands to employ to continue the story). My money is they start going rogue and causing chaos on Smackdown as a way to start building up Jacob Fatu before they strap a rocket to him. I’ll miss the “I LOVE YOU SOLO” line. Brought a couple of my friends to a Smackdown show last month and they all enjoyed Jacob Fatu.

Okay, yeah, this was wild, too.

People in my life who know that I'm an active wrasslin' fan have been repeatedly asking why the crowd was so relentless in booing the Hulkster.

To me it's as simple as most of the WWE Universe figuring out that the real-life Terry Bollea is a selfish liar with racist tendencies and that he's not a good person in most senses of the word. I wouldn't blame anybody for not wanting to cheer someone like that even if they were a "legend" in the business.

Also, I frankly don't buy that it simply was because he supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election and that the show took place in liberal California. The Undertaker wasn't shy about publicly sharing that he was voting for MAGA last year and he didn't get booed when he came out...

I feel kind of bad for Jimmy Hart when Hulk Hogan was booed out the building. (This isn't the first time, see Wrestlemania in Tampa Bay albeit in a smaller crowd)

It really does suck to have the WWE universe completely turn on a legend, but it's all Terry Bollea's fault for being a egomaniac asshole who had racist tendencies and the sheer absurdities of his lies. Like with Vince Mcmahon, Hogan is simply too important and long-lasting to the WWE and wrestling in general to be scrubbed away, so the best move for Trips and Nick Khan to do is don't bother dealing with him again.

Also helps that Taker was kinda there to give Reah a rub (that she 100% did not need)

Hogan was there to sell shitty beer to people that think Bud Light makes you gay...

I wonder if she teased bisexual Undertaker backstage that she got the rub from the actual Undertaker before he did?

Nah, it just makes you a poor judge of beer and makes you pee plenty. Sort of awkward that CM Punk had to cut a promo at the beginning of Raw surrounded by Real American Beer and Saudi Arabia ads (I laughed when he did the ear cup after getting out of his rental at least).

I thought last night’s Raw was them finally settling back into standard or sub-standard television after the big pomp and circumstance of moving to Netflix. Hopefully another billionaire starts up a company to motivate them a bit to attempt to bury the competition again (shit…). I probably was also negative about the new episode since I ditched work early due to feeling like shit, so they were competing against some sharp pain in my stomach and didn’t do so well.

First segment was CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Drew McIntyre ruining any hope for Joe Hendry to be recognized on a larger stage in the Royal Rumble. Best of luck to him in the Saudi Arabia Rumble since at least one of those people won’t be there.

Next was the predictable debut of Pentagon Jr. vs. Chad Gable, who has been used great to get everyone but himself over (especially if they wear masks). I thought this match sort of exposed Penta since the WWE is not as fast-paced as anywhere else he worked before, and he’s dealing with a completely different ring type. Not sure if they have some sort of long-term plan to develop a bigger division of flippy shit guys. That’ll suck when he’s the WWE Speed champion in a few months. I will concede that my opinion differs from the collective internet’s review of the match, but the match should’ve ended with that Mexican Destroyer (at least it was towards the end and was sold a bit).

Dom Mysterio is either going to get a face turn after the backstage segment, or they’re turning his character into a bigger simp. I guess he was still getting Liv Morgan’s bags out of the car since we didn’t see him later.

Apparently there was an interview with the LGBTQ collective (in fairness, I think Zoey Stark actually has a boyfriend, but she also has two friends who can help her out on the road in Sonya and Shayna). I don’t remember seeing this.

Sheamus beat Ludwig Kaiser so that Sheamus can lose to Bron Breakker at Saturday Night’s Main Event. Also; why are we putting the wrestlers not on the show in the crowd with the rest of the marks holding their $500 plastic belts? Shouldn’t they be in a luxury box (those are actually cheaper than ringside seats most of the time)? I will admit, Ludwig Kaiser is fun to watch and puts on good matches. His match with Punk at the MSG house show after Christmas was really good as you would expect, and we made fun of his arched back the whole time (I tried getting the “SCO-LI-OSIS” chant going).

Rollins does a backstage segment. He wrestles Drew McIntyre next week, followed by pissing directly into Sami Zayn’s mouth some more. Then we find out that the Wyatt Sicks got moved to Smackdown. I don’t have cable so I am ok with this. Then The Miz and Sami Zayn get into an argument outside of Adam Pierce’s office, so they book the match that they already advertised on a screen graphic at the bottom earlier so thankfully this pretaped segment confirmed what we were already told…

Gunther talked down to Jey Uso. Jey said the catchphrase. Everyone brought a t-shirt. The Netflix audience again was deprived of watching Gunther beat the fuck out of someone live for the second week in a row, but we got more advertisement for the show on the rival streaming service (unless you live outside the US; I guess you’d see SNME on Netflix too). I wonder if the ad spots for SNME are getting booed by the live audience with the shots on Hogan in them?

The Irish lady who isn’t Becky Lynch beat the jobber from Damage CTRL. These two can probably thank Penta for taking up some time for their match (it really takes a lot of effort to beat Chad Gable after all when you’re the best luchador in the world). So I’m guessing Lyra Valkyria will defend her “workhorse” championship on March 22 in Belfast Northern Ireland on a house show. WWE will call it a homecoming. Many tensions will be ignited based off their ignorance.

Sami Zayn beat The Miz with the Blue Thunder Bomb that Michael Cole and Pat McAfee both described as “devastating” just to let the audience know that they do pay attention to YouTube. This helped fill the required 3 hours I guess (although apparently the show was 2 1/2 hours).

The second most dominant women’s wrestler (behind Michelle McCool of course) Rhea Ripley came out. Nia Jax interrupts in her heat-getting leopard print body suit and even unironically body-shames Bayley in the front row (at least in this case Bayley has the excuse of being in her hometown, but do you know what they do for CM Punk in his hometown when he’s on the opposite show? HE DOES A SEGMENT IN THE RING!). Jax pushes Bayley down. Ripley fucks up and headbutts a Samoan. Bayley recovers since she landed on her big butt and helps get rid of Jax. Thankfully Liv Morgan was kept 1000 feet away from the ring. Pat McAfee fucks up and spoils that Nia Jax got moved to Raw. I expressed some interest in buying the Rhea Ripley action figure they plugged and weirdly mentioned how many articulating parts it has…

Damien Priest vs. Finn Balor for the main event in a street fight. Great match to get the value out of their fancy new drone cameras (can’t wait for one of those to fall into the crowd). Damien Priest throws Finn Balor through two tables off the top of an entryway, which results in them putting Finn on a stretcher during the commercial break, only for Priest to throw him back into the ring, Finn to miraculously heal from a severe injury, and two more table spots. Something something Damien Priest wins. Again, I’ll remind you all that Bron Breakker and Gunther did not wrestle tonight.

No rappers got high in the audience and The Rock didn’t drink and drive tonight. Also I’m finding out that the folks outside the US get interview segments during the “commercials”. That’s some bullshit that they don’t get commercials, and they don’t have to live under the fiefdom of Elon Musk. 2/10 (2.6/10 in the Tokyo Dome).

I think you can still do it well if it's booked properly. Booker ZJ would have John Cena come out at #1 and Joe Hendry come out at #2. That way you can have the whole "say his name" thing play out like a normal entrance. Then, as long as Super Cena doesn't immediately dump out Joe, you can give him the rub of being in the ring with a WWE legend and taking it to him. Nobody seriously expects Hendry to win the thing and go on to main event WrestleMania when he doesn't even work for the company, but you can totally do it in a way that puts a shine on him and creates a memorable moment for the fans if it's done early enough in my opinion.

Oh, and it's 100% happening btw as WWE and TNA are now officially official partners.

You know now that I think about how you stated that, I look at Cena’s farewell tour as less of an acknowledgment that he isn’t getting work in Hollywood at the moment, and more as him using his last (very well funded) run to push the newer generation and take advantage in the new resurgence of wrestling. Sucks that he was on top during one of the most criticized periods, but at least he won’t have Bull Buchanan waiving the American flag behind him while he gets booed out of the building.

Granted, seeing how even CM Punk wants that good Cena Match money, I’m guessing his appearances will probably be carefully coordinated by Paul (or Paul). Now I’m worried that Cena enters #1, Hendry #2, give that big rub, something-something-something, Cena wins from the #1 spot. Then Rock enters #31 and eliminates him, Rock v. Cody in Vegas…

It’s weird that WWE is using the same cutthroat business strategy to this time revive the NWA system that they massacred under the previous administration (that the administration before that one participated in). Poor Tony Khan is now Angelo Poffo running outlaw shows against Verne Gagne and Jerry Jarrett. Although seeing how much people hated Vince McMahon for killing the territory system, it makes sense to maybe mend those fences (even though there’s hardly any other houses up now after the 90s).

Speaking of, Joe Hendry just won the strap over Nic Nemeth.