General

That tease at the end of Dynamite was a fudgein masterpiece. It cut off too early and didn't allow any breathing time, but the visual of The Elite sliding in to help protect Hangman was fudging awesome. Elite vs. Blackpool Combat Club is going to be so fudging good.

Fine. You wanna promo, I’ll start at the top. There ain’t no better than this.

You know they say that all men are created equal, but you look at me and you look at you and you can see that statement is not true. See, normally if you go one on one with another wrestler, you got a 50/50 chance of winning. But I'm a bucket of justice and I'm not normal! So you got a 25%, AT BEST, at beat me. Then you add probably PizzatheHutt to the mix, your chances of winning drastic go down. See the 3 way at GTZ, you got a 33 1/3 chance of winning, but I, I got a 66 and 2/3 chance of winning, because PizzatheHutt KNOWS he can't beat me and he's not even gonna try!
So Jaw, take your 33 1/3 chance, minus my 25% chance and you got an 8 1/3 chance of winning at GTZ. But then you take my 75% chance of winning, if we was to go one on one, and then add 66 2/3 per cents, I got 141 2/3 chance of winning at GTZ. Senor Jaw, the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you at GTZ.

Would like to see him try to bust this out again for old times sake.
https://twitter.com/WilliamRBR/status/163682624796...

That would be cool. I don’t see it ever happening. Unfortunately.

A lot has changed in this WWE 2K23 since the last game I played, 2K16. I'm not even going to bother playing it online, I know I'll just get my ass kicked.

I'm liking the Showcase mode, but what is the deal with having to blur so much stuff out? Any FMV clips showing the ref and/or commentary team, their faces are all blurred out, as are certain t-shirts and signs in the crowd (that I can understand, but not the others). In the few matches I've played of Showcase mode also, there is no commentary in the matches, just generic rock music playing throughout while you play.

I think Brock is way too beefy these days to pull off the SSP without risking a similar fate as WMXIX (or worse). However, that would 100% make a match vs Omos worth it.

I'm hoping that match isn't too long because I'm already planning for it to be the bathroom break match.

I think it’ll be close to the Braun/Omos match from Saudi Arabia last year. It’ll be short and sweet.

I saw a clip on Twitter where Alexa Bliss was a guest on The Masked Singer. I've never watched that show and her being on it isn't enough to make me want to change that, so that isn't what this post is about. But what I noticed was the on-screen graphic when she was revealed that said "Five-time WWE Women's Champion" and that just made me think back to when being a five time champion was actually a big deal. But now it feels like when you sign with WWE these days, five title reigns is the least you'll get. I can recall only one of Alexa Bliss' five title reigns.

Bret Hart was a five time WWF Champion. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was a six time WWF Champion. The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels had four title runs each. Booker T of course five time WCW Champion. That feels like nothing now, compared to the Randy Ortons, John Cenas, Triple Hs and Charlotte Flairs of the modern era. For the longest time from 2002 - 2017-ish, HHH, Cena, Orton or Roman (as a babyface) as champion meant I automatically wasn't looking forward to the main event of the next PPV.

With Triple H in charge, it sure seems like he is in favor of longer, more meaningful title runs. Asuka's 510 day title reign in NXT is a good example, it was excellent and certainly more meaningful than all of Charlotte's 3,281 runs with the women's titles on the main roster (okay, that's an exaggerated number...but only slightly). Who knows how much longer it could've went on for if she hadn't gotten injured? Gunther is doing his best to make the IC title relevant again. Bianca Belair makes a damn good champion herself.

So my question is, how do you guys feel about the longer title reigns, and how long is too long? For example, I feel like I would've been happy with another year of The Bloodline stuff, but I accept it is time to get the titles off of Roman and The Usos. I'm fine with how the tag titles are going to play out, but for the other, Cody wouldn't have been my first choice, but I'm fine with him too because it still makes sense and the crowd will eat it up. It'd take some phenomenal booking to make me want to sit through a 2 years period of Cody being on top though. But he also can't drop it too soon or it'd make his entire story feel like it was all for nothing.

I don’t think the length of the title reign means as much as the quality of the wrestler, matches and booking. Not a lot of people remember how long Bret Hart was champion during each reign, but the matches were nothing but quality. We all remember Diesel had a year long reign but the matches were hit and miss, mostly misses. Ric Flair was one of the greatest World Champions of all time for a reason. John Cena had just as many reigns, but he’s not in the same league. Short title reigns can feel like forever too, like stupid ass Jinder Mahal in 2017.

GUNTHER having a long reign doesn’t make the IC title important. The quality of him as a wrestler, the quality of matches and the quality of booking is what makes it important. Miz didn’t really hold onto it forever, but he made the title important.

Austin Theory looks like he’s holding that US title for awhile and it means something. Dean Ambrose held it forever and it didn’t mean anything. The least important title for the least important member of the Shield.

Lol gotta throw a big yikes at that last line ol’ Bucket. Solely because I don't know how one measures the importance of stable members. They were all booked well at times, poorly at times, yet all carried on and rose to be top guys. I'd say they're even if I had to. Subjective opinion aside, of course. If I'm sharing my favorite: IT'S MOX BABY (and was even when he was Ambrose, being booked like butt by McMahon).

But otherwise I agree for the most part. I enjoy long reigns if they’re booked strong and the matches are good. I do usually hate when titles get hot potatoed though. In that regard, length can help illustrate the importance of a title. I don't necessarily feel Theory is making the US title seem all that prestigious or important though. The match with Cena will help that, but otherwise he just sorta floats around with it. Reigns on the other hand has made the Undisputed World title(s?) seem like the biggest prize WWE has to offer once again (finally), and the Usos + the current storyline have done wonders to rejuvenate the tag titles. Let's hope that continues post-Mania.

Anyhow, ROH Supercard of Honor card looks fudgein stacked. Gonna be a good Mania weekend, boys.

ROH World Title - Claudio Castagnoli (c) vs. Eddie Kingston
ROH Tag Title "Reach for the Sky" Ladder Match - Lucha Bros vs. The Kingdom vs. Top Flight vs. Aussie Open vs. RUSH & Dralistico
ROH Pure Title - Wheeler Yuta (c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata(!!!)
ROH TV Title - Samoa Joe (c) vs. Mark Briscoe
ROH Women's Title - Athena (c) vs. Yuka Sakazaki
AAA Mega Title - El Hijo del Vikingo (c) vs. Komander
ROH 6-Man Tag Title - The Embassy (Brian Cage, Toa Liona & Kaun) (c) vs. AR Fox, Metalik & Blake Christian

Yeah, I left out Ric Flair in my list because his title reigns are combined through multiple companies (and WWE doesn't even count them all in their canon or the number would be higher).

What I meant with Gunther, his in-ring work being great as well as the booking helps make the title relevant, definitely. I'm not convinced Otis could be pulling off this kind of reign.
Good booking is important and is the key to how I could tolerate Roman being on top for 2 years. He's still not very good in-ring imo, but because he has been so good at playing a cool heel it helps make it easier to overlook that. Now if only Vince had the balls to pull the trigger on a Cena heel turn in the late 2000s...

With Bret's title reigns, the lengths of his reigns weren't as important because he wasn't defending the title on Raw every week or on monthly PPVs (I think they only started doing a PPV every month in 1999). But each title win was memorable and meant something. Can't really say that for Alexa Bliss (just using her as an example, I don't blame her for it because she has no say in the matter) whose 5 title runs happened in much less time than Bret's whole WWF run as a main eventer. Charlotte as well, will beat her dad's record while not being an active wrestler even close to the amount of time he was doing it full time for. If her title reigns were longer, meaning there'd be less of them, they might mean something. As of now, she is I think at #14, and according to cagematch stats, 6 of her reigns were less than a month long, 3 were less than a week (2 of those were MITB being cashed-in on her immediately after winning). For her, imo she needed fewer and longer title reigns.

I wasn’t saying Ambrose/Mox is the worst of the 3. At that time, the US title meant practically nothing and there wasn’t as much focus on him as there was on the other two as tag champs even. He was the least important member of the Shield at that time. If you want to see that as something else, OK I guess.

BucketofJustice wrote:

No, don't be so hasty, I just didn't understand what you were saying... which is why I said I wasn't sure how one would measure importance. It seemed like you were saying overall, as in the long run. At the time, sure, he was booked to be the least important in Vince's eyes (for whatever reason) despite easily being the most over. Never really understood their apprehension with just getting behind the dude until they had to neuter his character and have him talk to plants as a face and/or wear a goofy gas mask as a heel. The self destruction that took/takes place in WWE always baffles me.

Imagine how much better the main event of WM32 would have been if they just had Triple H either a) lose the Rumble to Ambrose, or b) drop the title to him at Roadblock the next month? Built-in Shield story, a guy the crowd actually wanted to see in the main event, etc. But instead Triple H holds his "star power" above upward mobility for the younger wrestlers and slots himself in, and it's easily Top 5 worst Mania main events of all time, at THE worst Mania of all time (imo) and only served to make the audience even more anti-Reigns at the time.

Apparently after last night's Episode 4, all the taped ROH matches have aired. There will obviously be a live Supercard of Honor next week, but I'm wondering what happens from there. A short break to get more tapings done? Or a longer break until we get closer to whatever the next "big event" they plan to do, with another batch of 4 episodes leading up to that?

I wish they'd book out college gyms and concert halls again like back in the day to get that old school ROH vibe back a little. I've really dug the episodes they put out but ROH, to me, will always be a little less polished than it is these days (and has been since like 2014ish).

You telling me not to be hasty is pretty ironic haha

Alright haha

Anyways, Charlotte just cut a promo and turned on the crowd after getting blatantly put off by “what” chants. Looks like we’re getting a heatless heel vs heel Women’s title match as the main event of Night 1. Yep, Vince is back in creative.

If they don’t reroute to have the tag title match main event Night 1, that will be very goofy.

I saw it as a baby face promo that failed. She reacted like any normal person with a story to tell would. Whether she’s suited for being a baby face is a whole different story, and the answer is clearly no.

Well yah, it was supposed to be a face promo but she practically pulled a “you people” with that brick line. She reverted back to a heel because, like you said, she’s not well suited as a face. The crowd wants to boo her, so ultimately it’s gonna feel like heel v heel at Mania. That + the lack of build makes that match being a main event a joke (even though it’ll probably be a fine match).

They certainly dragged that out until the last second but that was an effective segment with Rey finally popping Dominik and confirming the Mania match. Good stuff from them tonight.

This has been the least hyped I've felt for a WrestleMania in years. The Bloodline stuff has been good, but I dunno, maybe not good enough to carry the whole event on its shoulders.

Still am hyped to a degree though. Gonna spend the whole weekend doing nothing but watching rasslin'.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Yah that’s what I do too, watch old/other graps to get in the mood. I haven’t been truly hyped for a Mania in a long while but usually always end up having a good enough time with the pals I watch with.

As good as the Bloodline stuff has been, it really is this IC Title triple threat I’m most looking forward to.

I’m hyped for Mania. It’s going to be good. I do feel like something is missing, though.

After the Usos attacked Sami and Kevin, Jey is still glaring at Sami like he might be right. Jey still being conflicted is great, and while part of me wants Cody to win, I also think that Jey fighting Roman is the ultimate payoff.

Ultimately, I’m loving the way it’s going for the most part. Way more options for what can happen, and way more intriguing options than there’s been for anything in WWE in forever.

Andre Battle Royal confirmed for Smackdown next week, and both Lashley and LA Knight are in that match. If that's the extent of their Mania weekend, that's pretty lame, so I'm hoping they initiate some sort of quick angle to get a singles match added to the main Mania card.

Anyhow, other than that, I think the card is pretty much finalized (except for the teams in the women's 4-team tag match). I updated the prediction thread with the full card (as of right now) and the 10 bonus questions. I doubt many folks will be predicting but it'll at least be fun for those of us who watch regularly.

Lately I've been craving some old ECW circa 1997 and will probably watch some of that next weekend. I just hope NBC doesn't make them butcher the audio during certain crowd chants.

in the meantime I'm currently going through 2003 era SmackDown and am currently up to a few weeks before WrestleMania 19. The shows overall are still pretty good, minus the cringe bra and panties matches, and nonsense like Al Wilson and Dawn Marie.

Yah 2002-2004 had some pretty great wrestling, the roster was awesome back then. Other than those classic cringe moments, I’m sure you’ll find some gems in there.

Every once in a while I like to watch old PPVs synced up with the “What Happened When” podcast with Tony Schiavone and Conrad Thompson that correspond with the show. Can get juvenile but sometimes it’s fun to hear the Tony’s opinion of some of the shows he called back in the day. Been doing that a bit for Mania season.

I'll say this: while I still think there are far better matches for Lesnar at this year's Mania, the segment between he and Omos on Raw last night did go a long way toward getting me at least marginally excited for the match. It's kind of refreshing to see Lesnar playing the underdog role and being the one who needs to retreat as opposed to his opponent. I don't expect the match to be great, and hope it's still just a short Lesnar-style match, but it'll be nice seeing him be the one trying to take his opponent off his feet as opposed to the opposite.

Why are FTR to the point of leaving if they can’t beat the Ass Boys? Didn’t they come back like 2 or 3 weeks ago or something? How did this happen? What did I miss?

BucketofJustice wrote:

The Ass Boys refused to grant them a title shot under any circumstances until Dax put their AEW careers on the line. The Gunns kept getting involved with FTR during the FTR/Briscoes feud so this had been lingering. I think they’re playing off FTR’s “will they/won’t they” go back to WWE contract situation.

OK. I’m pretty sure FTR are locked up with AEW contract wise so I would be surprised if they lost. If they lost and then went to RoH, that would be good for that roster but be a severe downgrade for them I think. Then again if they’re not locked up then doing this for their way out makes sense and that tweet Dax put out with a WWE paper in the corner makes a lot more sense. Seems like they rushed a career vs. title match since they came back not long ago, but I haven’t been the best at keeping up with AEW so probably wrong about that part.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider it a true downgrade for FTR to end up in ROH, after all they were the previous ROH tag champs for months, but yah it would definitely be a slight step backwards for that same reason.

I guess FTR’s AEW contracts are legit up in April, and Dax is constantly tweeting about their status and future without actually revealing what the plans are. So there have been all these rumors swirling about whether they’ll re-sign with AEW or not since like January. Either, yah, this is a good way to write them out of AEW by putting a newer team over on their way out, or it’s just a good opportunity to capitalize on all the buzz surrounding their contract status.

I expect they’ll win the titles and stay in AEW now that red flags are popping up everywhere that would suggest McMahon has a tighter grip on WWE’s creative than anyone’s letting on. I don’t think they want to wind up in clown suits with giant clocks around their necks lol

It would be a downgrade. Go from being very over on national TV to on a taped every so often TV show behind a paywall. That’s a downgrade, no matter where they are in RoH. I don’t think that they’d be playing contract stuff up in AEW, without being locked up. That would be dumb, so maybe TK would let them do it for some dumb reason. I don’t know about Vince being back in charge of creative or helping with it, since the second that’s confirmed the government will be all over that, but yeah being dressed like Doink 2023 wouldn’t be my first choice haha

I just don’t see it as a downgrade, especially when you consider that the rosters are interchangeable anyways. Claudio, Joe, Yuta, Briscoe, etc… they’re all technically ROH and don’t feel like they’ve been downgraded whatsoever because they can all still appear on either show. Obviously if FTR’s AEW contracts expire, they wouldn’t be signing EXCLUSIVE contracts to ROH. They’d still be able to swap wherever, whenever, depending on the booking.

And they’re not really playing any contract stuff up directly ON AEW programming, Dax just talks about it on his own (maybe too much). Khan famously doesn’t get involved in how wrestlers go about their outside ventures or social media presence the way WWE does (for better or for worse) so Dax is free to drop teases either way all he wants. That’s why no one knows the legitimate reason for the titles vs career match - is it just AEW catching wind of internet buzz and playing a little inside baseball, or are FTR actually planning on taking off in April? But I agree, I don't see them taking off anytime soon.

As for ol’ Vincent Kennedy, there are major red flags that were reported on just the other day. Apparently shows are suddenly being rewritten day-of far more than ever since Triple H took over, certain gimmicks are being eased back toward the direction Vince wanted them before stepping away, and apparently there has been a “Mr McMahon’s Office” sign backstage every week for a while. Heck, they even reshot a promo recently to remove the word “wrestling” from it. Not saying they’ll ever come right out and admit he’s in charge again, but Triple H even already acknowledged that he gives input so its possible he's doing that more often nowadays. Which would be fudging terrible considering Vince is trash garbage. Though I’ll admit WWE has only been slightly better, VERY slightly better, with Triple H in charge. Don’t know how one can watch the Wyatt crap, or the Women’s division in general, and consider Triple H all that great a booker haha

I dunno if that's fair to suggest Triple H isn't a good booker. We've already seen that he is (peak NXT years of 2014-2019 say hello). Unfortunately In his current role I think the people most disappointed are the ones who thought he'd instantly make Raw and SmackDown feel like those years of NXT black & gold era or something. The only way he'd have been able to do that is if he pulled a Vince Russo and did a "reboot" of the entire company. Otherwise, there ain't a booker on the planet that could've washed the stench of Vince off the product in 9-ish months or however long he has been in control now. Instead he was placed in a role where he's pretty much "playing with someone else's toys" so to speak.

I can't argue about the Bray Wyatt stuff being pretty lame since his return, which is especially disappointing because he was given more creative control over it than last time, and they even hired that dude from Marvel to work with him on the White Rabbit stuff. That could also just be because maybe Wyatt isn't the creative genius he was once thought to be.

Admittedly, NXT was a lot better booked, you’re right. But Triple H, at this point, has had enough time to course correct from Vince’s vision far more than he has. To his credit, the Mysterio angle is all him and that’s finally been getting entertaining, and he seems to be sticking the landing with Bloodline (even if that started with Vince). But just about the entire rest of the card for most shows is still on the dull side imo. Just seems like more of the same, with slight improvements in some corners of the shows.

Wyatt can take some of the blame for his stuff too, I guess he has a bit more control over his character, but at the end of the day, it’s still the booker’s call to allow him to have that control. The buck stops at Triple H. And to be fair, I highly doubt it was Wyatt’s idea to cripple any mystique his character or the Uncle Howdy angle had by booking a neon, glow in the dark Mountain Dew advertisement for one of his first PPV matches back. Silly decisions like that, or having Lashley arbitrarily body Uncle Howdy right off the show, leans a lot more “classic WWE booking” than anything else.

@PizzaTheHutt Have you dilly dallied with WWE 2K23's Universe Mode at all? Or GM Mode? Notice any bugs/crashes or anything?

Think I may snag it some time this week or next. Been getting the itch to book some Universe mode.

I haven't touched those modes yet. I played through Showcase mode and started up one of the MyRise modes. When did MyRise become a thing? It's its own little original story mode and is pretty cool so far, they tell you to play through it multiple times to see how all the possible choices can play out.

No major glitches that I can recall, just a couple of slight annoyances, things that should have been fixed in the PS2 era but are still happening on PS5 for some reason, like setting up a table in the corner and then I Irish whip an opponent into it but he kinda clips through it, or another example was Steve Austin pulling a ladder out from under the ring and then dropped it in front of the apron and just starts walking back and forth unable to just step over it to climb back into the ring until I went out of the ring myself to lure him away from getting caught up by the ladder.

I don’t understand why some people is saying that Vince is there and is in creative. Whoever is starting needs to stop being dumb. It might seem like it sometimes, but people are quick to forget a few things. First, WWE’s DNA is full of Vince. Like, the company and him are synonymous and have been for decades. Second, Triple H learned under Vince. While he obviously likes other stuff too like Crockett and whatnot, Vince taught HHH and even if other people also taught him things, it was all done in WWE. Third, Nick Khan went out and said Vince wasn’t in creative. That absolutely 100% has to be the truth, because he’s a company officer and if he’s lying then that has serious SEC implications written all over it. Especially since they’re in sale mode and Vince was ousted because the dangling dingle dangled too much and the NDAs were found, there’s no way Vince should endanger any of that. He has billions to make.

No, the booking isn’t perfect, but there’s no way that WWE would have a paradigm shift in philosophy because HHH took over. He still has work to do, like with the women in general and making most of his rehires seem important, and making anything not Bloodline-related matter more. But, what’s hitting right now is fantastic. I hope after we’re done with Mania, we see some improvements.

Nick Khan also said there were no fights in the stands for the past 15 years in an attempt to make WWE seem all shiny and nice despite there being one in Boston a few months ago. He’s a yes man, and has been caught in lies numerous times. Same with Vince. Same with Triple H. Again, Triple H literally already admitted that Vince has input in his creative, it’s really not hard to believe that the shady dude who has a history of playing by his own rules may be doing the same thing right now. He’s obviously not back in any official capacity, but he is confirmed to be there weekly, it’s nowhere near out of the realm of possibility that he’s pushing Triple H toward his desired booking. Dude already changed the WWE bylaws via SEC filing even after stepping down, he’ll do what he wants regardless. As long as they don’t come outright and officially give him the job, they can do whatever they want.

To Pizza’s point, we saw how Triple H can book when Vince isn’t pressing him with NXT, there’s likely a reason it’s so wildly different now. Thankfully it’s not as bad as when Vince had full reign, but it’s mostly just dull. Again, just my opinion, but for my money, The Bloodline stuff is the only truly fantastic thing about WWE right now. Some of that is actually competent booking for once, and some of that is because it’s being compared to the turd Vince has squatted out for the past decade, so anything would look like gold in comparison. Even the Sami/KO stuff depended on a segment hawking t-shirts on the road to Mania, so there are still some whiffs even in that angle.

I also hope it steps up more after Mania, but I feel like people have been saying that for months. “I’m sure after SummerSlam Triple H will pick it up”, etc etc. He’s had enough time to start steering it that way, but so far he’s only been riding the Bloodline angle with a few decent storylines sprinkled underneath it. I just want it to be better, but if you’re digging it now, that rules. Folks should watch what they enjoy.