Pro Wrasslin' Thread: I don't know what I just saw

[Stro]

When it still sucks who are smarks gonna blame 

[nachobro]

braun vs aj

strowman is such a good big guy, tossing aj around like he's nothing

[nachobro]

dominic saving his dad from retirement too beautiful

[Human Snorenado]

When it still sucks who are smarks gonna blame 

...Kevin Dunn? Kevin Dunn.

[nachobro]

no nxt announcement yet tonight as promised by meltz and jericho, still time after the tag match i guess.

[Human Snorenado]

no nxt announcement yet tonight as promised by meltz and jericho, still time after the tag match i guess.

I imagine that if it was going to happen, it would have happened in the first two hours. Probably got pushed back a week.

[nachobro]

maybe that was dbryan's career changing announcement that he never made: a return to nxt on weds nights

[nachobro]

braun and seth just won the tag titles 

[nachobro]

most heyman moment of the night: natalya being attacked by sasha backstage followed by sasha telling her to go to hell along with her dead father

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/LORAFRIMANEE/status/1163640267741769730

[bork]

https://twitter.com/LORAFRIMANEE/status/1163640267741769730

Corny as fuck.    Dominic absolutely TOWERS over his father now, lol.

[nachobro]

So they announced the NXT news in an email instead

[Stro]

That's good that it will be available next night on Network instead of the 30 day delays for Raw/SD.

[Human Snorenado]

Raw and SD show up on Hulu the next day, but Raw is edited down to 90 minutes and they pretty much always cut the best match or two of the night in favor of promo parades, talk show segments, and other dumb shit.

[nachobro]

last night's raw was all pretty good so i wonder what they cut. i'd say joe/cesaro but that was a KOTR match

also the press release on NXT says it will still be at Full Sail
https://www.wwe.com/shows/wwenxt/article/nxt-moves-to-usa-network?sf217821656=1

also the commentary team is staying the same

https://twitter.com/mauroranallo/status/1163817129759522820

[Stro]

God Mauro can't even do a tweet about the move without shoving in a reference

[nachobro]

MA

MA

MIA

[Human Snorenado]

last night's raw was all pretty good so i wonder what they cut. i'd say joe/cesaro but that was a KOTR match

also the press release on NXT says it will still be at Full Sail
https://www.wwe.com/shows/wwenxt/article/nxt-moves-to-usa-network?sf217821656=1

also the commentary team is staying the same

https://twitter.com/mauroranallo/status/1163817129759522820

Just from looking at the results of last night's RAW without having watched it yet, I'd bet on the New Day/Revival match being cut, and probably the women's tag match too, along with a bunch of backstage stuff, maybe including the Elias/Truth segment. If the Revival are on the show and aren't in a title match, 95% of the time they get cut from the Hulu replay

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/MikeSchutte/status/1163872953492279297

[Stro]

Hey guys, remember the set up to the endgame of the Invasion?


Vince returned to TV after a 3 month absence and a week later comes out on Raw and says he's "sick of this Alliance crap, sick of this Invasion crap" and sets up the winner takes all Survivor Series match really out of the blue. All of the sudden he remembers these are his shows and he's going to start booking the matches he wants and fuck the Alliance

The same night 4 Alliance members lose their titles, DDP makes his first in arena appearance since Summerslam and is promptly destroyed by Kane. Austin wasn't even on the show due to Vince busting his head open the night before. Then on Smackdown Shane and Steph brow beat all of the losers and try to kick them out of the Alliance only to be stopped by Austin (except for Chuck Palumbo, who was told he was a fucking loser, a nothing piece of shit, and his firing stuck). The only angle I've seen wrapped up in such a blatant "this angle sucks, I'm tired of it" manner by Vince himself is when he killed off the NWO forever after Nash's quad injury.

[nachobro]

Was that the show where they constantly cut to Austin in a bar the whole time drinking and not being able to decide who he wanted to work with and then swooped in (probably driving drunk since they showed him downing a whole case of beer) at the last minute or was that the Invasion PPV?

[Stro]

That was the Raw before Invasion PPV.

The next week after Vince's announcement is the start of the MOLE angle, which is such a shitty way to end this whole thing. Shane/Steph say there is a mole who will turn on WWF tonight, so everyone is paranoid and turning on each other and shit, Austin asks for Kurt to meet with him and point blank asks him to join the Alliance, Kurt then joins the Alliance, but it was Vince's plan all along for him to be a mole and turn on the Alliance at the worst possible time (during the Winner Takes All Match). And once again the only thing they can think of to make the WCW side look strong is to have yet another WWF guy jump ship which really says everything about the angle as a whole.

[bork]

I like the main event line-up that finished up the Invasion storyline:

Team WWF (Chris Jericho, Big Show, Kane, The Rock and The Undertaker) defeated The Alliance (Booker T, Kurt Angle, Rob Van Dam, Shane McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin)

Out of all those guys, only two of them -Booker and RVD- were brought in post-WCW buyout.    I will never understand why they didn't let this storyline slowly build and get the bigger names to come in as their old contracts expired.  If they had delayed this by like two years, they could have had Hogan, Nash, Hall, Flair, etc. on the Alliance side.

[Stro]

They idea was that they had to strike while the iron was hot as soon as possible and were essentially going to do the brand split with the WCW side being a mix of the talent they got in the buyout with a big name WWF star (I think Rock and Angle were the names at the top of the list) and some of the promising mid card guys like Edge and they'd worry about getting the bigger names later since they were old anyway and buying them out would upset the pay structure of the company.

However, USA wasn't interested in giving TV time to such a damaged brand as WCW without the big names people knew, so they convinced DDP (who was IMMEDIATELY berried for no reason), Buff (who was fired within 3 weeks), and Booker T (who had heat for hurting Austin on his first night and then was turned into a comedy Rock bootleg playing second fiddle to Shane and being embarrassed weekly for months) to accept low ball buy outs, but USA still wasn't feeling it, and then the WWF brass realized they didn't like any of the Power Plant trained guys they had and kept pushing the start date for the new WCW back and it was a week by week thing where what they were going to do changed on a whim. Eventually Vince said fuck it and they started the Invasion stuff with nothing really in mind beyond getting the brand and and talent back on TV, but then that Buff/Booker match shit the bed and any and all plans for WCW as an individual brand. On top of that, the WWF guys didn't want to work with the WCW guys or make them look good because they felt their spots were going to be taken.

The angle as a whole was booked from week to week, with Smackdowns especially being written day of which is why they were so match heavy in comparison to Raw. There was no end game in mind. No goal. No story arc planned. Vince didn't even participate for the bulk of it, I don't even remember the story reason. Maybe it was to work on his marriage because he said he had been in therapy and gotten back together with Linda when he returned. I also don't remember how/why Shane and Steph were allowed to just be on the WWF shows and book matches and shit. Maybe from winning at Invasion? The whole thing was the slapdash, half assed bullshit it came off as on screen behind the scenes as well. Kurt Angle might have the most schizophrenic booking of any single talent over a 6 month period that I've ever seen.

[nachobro]

Sorta sounds like the original plan with Thunder. Supposedly the NWO was gonna take over Nitro and Thunder would be a WCW show but no one thought to check what the network execs thought who then nixed the whole thing

[Stro]

I think the original idea for what became Thunder was the thought of a NWO show sometime in 1997 but they realized it was a dumb idea and wouldn't work, then Turner demanded they do a second weekly show anyway and by then no one wanted to do it because of all the extra work and then it became....you know, Thunder.

[nachobro]

ya bischoff has talked about it a bit on his pod. basically said it was a mandate directly from ted to have a second show but they got zero extra hands or budget so they just said fuck it and having to do anything on it was essentially a punishment

sidenote i like that the house ads on the network for thunder archives really just shit all over the show and play circus music while showing clips

video: https://www.wwe.com/videos/20-new-episodes-of-wcw-thunder-added-to-wwe-network

[Stro]

and they STILL don't have all the episodes of Thunder up. Or any Saturday Night past 1993. In fact, they show how much they really give a shit about the WCW footage (which builds a significant percentage of their VOD service they've built their company around) by the fact that they've had almost 20 years and still haven't even opened, organized, or digitized arguably MOST of the JCP footage available (which also includes Georgia, some St. Louis, whole decades of TV, I think all of UWF shows and they have all of Mid South proper and don't have all of them up either). When they put up the Battle For Atlanta show that was thought to be lost to time, it had in fact been sitting in a box unlabeled since 2001 (and who knows how many years before that, presumably since 1984 as it was the master). They recently put up some JCP events like the Crockett Cup, an event from 1984 with Steamboat/Flair, GAB tour tape, shit they've had sitting around in their vault since 2001 and they're just now getting around to digitizing them. This doesn't even taken into consideration all the actual WCW proper footage still absent like all Saturday Nights between the middle of 1989 until the show was actually renamed Saturday Night and then only through 1993, no Worldwide, no Main Event, no Pro, no Power Hour.

Shit, look at all the WWE shit they still don't have up. 

Also, one of the key writers during the Invasion was....

[nachobro]

and now he's giving us god rollins

[Human Snorenado]

From the start of live NXT until they inevitably yank it from Full Sail is gonna be the wildest time ever, that crowd is going to vociferously shit all over everything that smacks of Vince influence, and I am here for it

[nachobro]

wrestle daddy dexter lumis is gonna be huge on live nxt, calling it now. dunno wtf is gonna happen to velveteen dream but i'm glad he'll be on tv at least

[Stro]

I would still expect NXT to be the best show they have, but it's definitely going to start having more promos, backstage segments, rematches, and talents getting over exposed by being on every week.

[bork]

https://twitter.com/IAmJericho/status/1163818694344003587
 

[bork]

WTF happened to Charlotte's face?  Too much botox?  She suddenly looks like she's nearing 50.

[nachobro]

jesus these close ups on charlotte

[bork]

That Smackdown ending 

[nachobro]

what the fuck was that 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Stro]

How was Murphy/Bryan

[nachobro]

Fantastic match, I really enjoyed it.

Other than that goofy ass ending, Smackdown was really excellent last night.

[Stro]

https://twitter.com/BossMoz/status/1163998153428754433



 

[nachobro]

[Sideshow Raheem]

Down goes Chris Jericho ...

in a terribly scripted and dull "rap" battle.



I watched it and can honestly say I have wasted my life. I mean, even more so now.

[Stro]

Chris Jericho has been such a lame asshole for so long it's almost impossible to remember there was a time when he was cool and entertaining. However that time was about 20 years ago.

[Sideshow Raheem]

Chris Jericho has been such a lame asshole for so long it's almost impossible to remember there was a time when he was cool and entertaining. However that time was about 20 years ago.

I liked the bit where he returned to WWE, incited the crowd for 10 straight minutes without saying anything, and then left. That was amusing. Oh, and when he called Tom Phillips "Tim." I think he can still be entertaining.

Whatever they paid him to be on The D-List Celebrities' Lame Rap Battle Shizzow, it wasn't enough.

[Trent Dole]

I still dig Chris' work.

[Stro]

The title histories during the Invasion

Champions as of the start date which I will go with KOTR 2001 as that's when Booker T arrived and the angle started in earnest the next night on Raw. This was 6/24/01. The angle officially ended 11/18/01.

WWF Champion: Steve Austin to Kurt Angle to Steve Austin
WWF IC Champion: Kane to Albert to Edge to Lance Storm to Edge to Christian to Edge to Test to Edge
WWF European Champion: Matt Hardy to Hurricane to Bradshaw to Christian
WWF Hardcore Champion: Test to Rhyno to Mike Awesome to Jeff Hardy to RVD to Jeff Hardy to RVD to Kurt Angle to RVD
WWF Light Heavyweight Champion: Jeff Hardy to X-Pac to Tajiri to X-Pac
WWF Tag Team Champions: Dudley Boys to APA to DDP/Kanyon to Kane/Taker to Dudleys to Jericho/Rock to Test/Booker to Hardys to Dudleys


WCW Champion: Booker T to Kurt Angle to Booker T to The Rock to Chris Jericho to The Rock
WCW US Champion: Booker T to Kanyon to Tajiri to Rhyno to Kurt Angle to Edge
WCW Tag Team Champions: Palumbo and O'Haire to Kane/Taker to Booker/Test to Hardys to Dudleys
WCW Cruiserweight Champion: Shane Helms to Kidman to X-Pac to Kidman to Tajiri


At the end of the angle, the US/IC and tag titles were unified, the WWF LHW title got retired and WWF took the Cruiserweight title which was retired in 2007 and revived in 2016 (in name only, it doesn't share the title lineage), and the WCW Championship was renamed the World Championship. In December 2001, the WWF and World Championships were unified into the Undisputed Championship which then became the WWE Undisputed Championship and then WWE Championship. In 2003, the US title was revived for Smackdown, and the WCW/World Championship was revived on Raw as the World Heavyweight Championship with the Big Gold Belt but technically a new lineage. New tag titles were brought up but had no linage to the WCW Championship. Also in 2002, the IC and European Championships were unified, which was then unified with the Hardcore Championship, which was finally unified with the World Heavyweight Championship. The IC title was revived in 2003, and the WHC would go on to be unified with the WWE Championship in 2014 to be known as the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which then became the WWE World Championship in 2016 when the WWE Universal Championship was created for the second brand split.



   


Oh and the set up for the unification matches was Commissioner Mick Foley coming out and SHEWTING on how he's barely been used because Vince came back right after he was made commissioner, so fuck Vince, and there are so many fucking titles that mean nothing and if you don't have a title there must be something wrong with you because when he was champion, titles still meant something. He's bitter as fuck and berries the angle, the titles, a random shot at X-Pac, Vince, and the writing team. I believe he quits or is fired on the Raw after Survivor Series but I don't remember exactly. He also got some stuff wrong so JR and Heyman shit on him for having brain damage.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/SeifertESPN/status/1164217099377684484

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/BossMoz/status/1163998153428754433



 

How the hell is this storyline still happening? It wasn't good enough to even get a mention during Summerslam but it's been going on for at least 3 weeks at this point.

[Trent Dole]

They have literally no idea what they're doing with anything until the day of for most shows cause Vince keeps changing what is left of his mind.

[bork]

Chris Jericho has been such a lame asshole for so long it's almost impossible to remember there was a time when he was cool and entertaining. However that time was about 20 years ago.

I liked the bit where he returned to WWE, incited the crowd for 10 straight minutes without saying anything, and then left. That was amusing. Oh, and when he called Tom Phillips "Tim." I think he can still be entertaining.

This one, right? 



Good stuff. 

I still dig Chris' work.

Me too!  Well...I can't say I'm that big on his current gimmick in AEW or what he was doing in New Japan, lol.

But he keeps coming back and reinvents his look/gimmick, and it helps to keep him interesting.  I loved the whole "list" shtick.

[Stro]

If anyone was wondering if Jerry Lawler had matured or changed his perspective after his 11 months away from WWF in 2001, his first match back is Trish vs Lita (which is about as sloppy of a match as you can possibly get) where he squeals about puppies and wanting to kiss their asses. Then, during the actual Kiss My Ass Club segment, he makes blowjob, ass eating, and multiple fart jokes. He actually adds fart noises to the replay.

 He was in his his early 50s.

[team filler]

da king 

[Sideshow Raheem]

Chris Jericho has been such a lame asshole for so long it's almost impossible to remember there was a time when he was cool and entertaining. However that time was about 20 years ago.

I liked the bit where he returned to WWE, incited the crowd for 10 straight minutes without saying anything, and then left. That was amusing. Oh, and when he called Tom Phillips "Tim." I think he can still be entertaining.

This one, right? 



Good stuff. 

Yeah, that's the one. It's great, although I would have sworn it was longer.

I love the list, too, and the man of 1004 holds.

[bork]

Jericho did that two weeks in a row, IIRC.  Unless it was on SD too.

Another story going around backstage as it pertains to NXT’s future is that it will continue along its same path with Triple H heading up the brand and no real direct involvement from either Vince McMahon or Kevin Dunn. The Wrestling Observer Newsletter notes that this will probably be the case as long as ratings are good and that while ultimately the company is his and he will give suggestions here and there, he will most likely remain “hands off” due to time constraints he already has that will get worse when the XFL launches next year. It was cautioned, however, that if AEW begins winning the “ratings war”, Vince wouldn’t hesitate to get more involved not just creatively, but perhaps by using more main roster stars on NXT or even moving NXT out of Full Sail University

Still expecting Vince to get involved.

[Stro]

Absolutely because I'm 100% convinced AEW is going to have better ratings, at least at first. Despite Double Talk Dave saying otherwise, obviously the NXT/AEW fan audience has a big crossover and people are going to tune into AEW because it's fresh and unknown how they're going to run TV, and you can just watch NXT the next day on the Network anyway.

I see NXT getting sub Smackdown viewership, AEW being somewhere between NXT and Smackdown and sometimes more than Smackdown in the first couple of weeks unless they really shit the bed.

[nachobro]

So Moxley got MRSA in his elbow and had to pull out of All Out. Now Pac is subbing in vs Kenny but didn't he just get some awful leg injury a couple weeks ago?

[Stro]

apparently Fenix suffered a bad leg injury last night as well.

All Out (Of Healthy Talent) 

If Ambrose can't be cleared by the time they run TV they might be fucked for a bit, as he was clearly the guy with the most buzz and juice behind him and he was the guy they were advertising first for TV matches.

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/ShamrockKen/status/1165067744468983808

Ken Shamrock has lived a hard life.

[Stro]

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/ShamrockKen/status/1165067744468983808

Ken Shamrock has lived a hard life.

The best part is that Ken Shamrock tagged the wrong twitter account after tagging the right one earlier.
https://twitter.com/ShamrockKen/status/1164612218891186182