Matt Hardy's current gimmick is the perfect example of "So bad its good". That really shouldn't work, but he has owned that character, and all the promos and everything he's done have just been Grade A comedy whether it's trying to be funny or not

Fuck it. I compiled a bunch of matches, some great and some not so much, into a playlist to watch here and there. It's reallllllly heavy on indie stuff, but there's a good portion of puro (including some classic Misawa and Hayabusa matches).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... WvJZ1z3-oN

So apparently, both Vince McMahon and Sinclair Broadcasting have made an offer to buy TNA.

I guess this is TNA's Final Deletion.

If it happens I REALLY hope they bring Broken Matt and Brother Nero over as who they are now.

I have no hope considering the abomination that was the Invasion angle.

Invasion? I mean, TNA has usually been a place where many WWE "rejects" go to. So this means we might see Lashley, Christy Hemme, Brodus Clay and the Hardys in the WWE again? Not to mention I bet many people haven't heard of TNA even. They're not a juggernaut like WCW was in its prime.


Yep, Stephanie shouldn't be the head of creative. I guess her parents couldn't find any other role for her in the company, however. Didn't she major in creative writing or something like that? Shane has more of business background.


Well, I admit I liked Batista returning, but him winning the Rumble was bullshit and I was like "what? seriously?". Many of us weren't really expecting him to win it. We expected him to get eliminated near the ned by someone and then feud with him and fight him at WrestleMania that year.

[quote="acid_bukkake]Crazy how a long run of mostly great matches and less force-fed writing can help a talented guy get over, ain't it?[/quote]
Well, I admit, Cena's 3rd reign was his best one match wise. He even got a good match out of fucking Great Khali. Who else has managed to do that?! Not even The Undertaker. But boy did that reign just go on and on AND ON. He won it back from Edge in September 2006 and then didn't really defend it until 2007 when he beat Umaga. He was in that Night of the Champions Triple Threat but whatever. No one believed he'd lose it to King Booker or Big Show(he was still ECW champion at the time, right?). Then Cena was in some stupid program with Kevin Federline. It's kinda mindblowing how WWE did that in the first place. I admit, as a 16 year old teenager who HATED Cena at the time, I was laughing my ass off when K-Fed beat Cena... but ye, fuck K-Fed.

Cena's match against Michaels at Wm 23 was kinda overrated, imo. Good bout and all, but it was nearly a carbon copy of his match against Triple H in the previous year. First his opponent outwrestles him, then the match gets even and then finally Cena overcomes the odds against a more seasoned veteran who was looking to get back to the top. In fact, wasn't the ME that year meant to be Cena vs. Triple H again? So what, was the fina outcome gonna be the same as in WM 22?

This is what happens when you read baseless dirtsheets, folks. Vince McMahon has not put in a bid to TNA, actually.

The Cruiser 4-way last night was pretty bland, but I'll be damned if it didn't get Cedric Alexander (at least) over with an audience that, most likely, hadn't seen him before. The dude's got a hell of a future and being around the talent he is will only help him improve.


I actually thought the K-Fed stuff was one of the better uses of a celebrity they've ever done. K-Fed was almost universally hated, the general consensus being that he was only famous for marrying/knocking up Britney Spears (which is true), and he was willing to take a bump and get some heat. Most celebrities want to look good, K-Fed wanted to get his ass kicked.

If we were to rank all the WM shows, WM23 would be in the bottom third of my list. It's a one match show (Taker/Batista, which shattered all of my expectations), and that main event could possibly stand as HBK's worst WM match (yes, I think the WM9 match with Tatanka was better overall). The ME was supposed to be Cena/HHH Part II, yeah, but HHH tore his quad during the DX Reunion Tour, and...

The less said about WWE from 2007-2011 the better. At least the '95 throwback booking of the past few years was heightened by a great roster. 2007-2011 just saw shit over shit over shit.

Celebrities appearances are generally a shitshow, however, the most recent appearance by Dr. Phil was amazing. He's giving Charlotte a pep-talk about she doesn't need Ric, and then Ric comes up behind him as she walks off and just keeps "woo!"-ing in Ric's face and it's just goddamn hilarious.

Hey, I loved WM23. It was a lot better than 22 was.

Depends on your criteria. Nothing was as lame as Boogeyman/Booker or the shyte idea of having Big Show/Kane as the tag champs, but nothing touched how great Mickie/Trish and Edge/Foley were. I'll take great high's on a card over everything being middle-of-the-road.

So is this possibly the best theme song in wrestling right now?

For original compositions? Maybe. I think New Day's is surprisingly good and I still love Wyatt's theme, but my favorite current entrance music is for indy guy David Starr (who uses Joan Jett's "Do You Wanna Touch Me"). This is also influenced by the PA breaking at the Beyond show I went to, so Starr made his entrance with the song playing on somebody's cell, hushing anybody who spoke for "interrupting Joan."

If think Bobby Roode's theme is glorious, just check out the #gloriousbomb videos on YouTube via Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano. Oh man, hilarity through-in-through.

WrestleMania 22 was better than it looked on paper. The only bad matches were the Playboy Pillow fight and the Booker t vs. Boogeyman ones. Not like anyone expected those to be any good, anyway. The only letdown was the WHC Triple Threat. it didn't even last 10 minutes. Angle, Rey and Orton did their best to do everything they needed in 9 minutes only, but that match should have gone on for about 17-18 minutes. Hell, Kurt Angle should have faced Undertaker at that WM. Instead, Taker got a mediocre casket match against Mark Henry.

Edge and Foley stole the show as I had predicted. Triple H vs. Cena was OK and had a great crowd to go with. HBK vs. Vince was more entertaining than I had expected. Mickie vs. Trish was a pretty good match as well. MITB II was not the best MITB match by any mean. I mean, Ric Flair and Finlay on a MITB match? Eh... but i was still a good ladder match.

WM 23... I agree that Batista vs. Taker was pretty good. And even if I knew beforehand already that Taker won the match, Batista Batista Bombing him left me at the edge of my seat. I jumped in joy when taker kicked out of that. The rest of the event was forgetful. I mean, the Battle of the Billionaires was fien for what it was and it helped the buyrates but it's memorable because Trump was at ringside. Not for the match itself.

SmackDown Live is a consistently better weekly program than Raw across the board. What writers write where and what changed? I assumed it was the same writers on both shows.

Yeah, SD > Raw for a little while now but Raw always has/had the upper hand, historically speaking. All the major returns, main angles, big matches happen at Raw from what I have seen. Let's see if they can build SD to be strong enough to compete with Raw's happenings/booking. Based on my rather passing observation, SD is looking pretty promising atm. Admittedly, I've been taking somewhat of a break from WWE programming as I've a found other alternatives to satisfy my rasslin' needs so take my 'observation' with a pinch of salt.

Also what do you guys think about Ziggler? His overall potential in the WWE, the botched pushes & his own shortcomings, hit 'n miss mic skills & solid ring skills, overselling & making others look good etc. That passionate promo he cut (I admit he cuts similar promos on a regular basis & ends up losing 9/10 times but this was something special, dude was almost tearing up) really got me thinking. Should he just go somewhere else for now or he is still salvageable?

As for the favorite wrestler themes, the two songs Motorhead (RIP Lemmy & the band itself) wrote for 'A-itch. Living Color's Cult of Personality is a great song regardless of my affinity towards Punk. Killswitch Engage's This Fire Burns got me into harsh vocals in general. Nakamura's theme & the accompanying theatrics are pretty awesome. Really dig The Shield/RR's theme as well. I also appreciate most of what Jim Johnston composes.

SmackDown Live's booking is fucking superb. Raw's booking has been in the fucking trash for weeks now. Compelling stories, compelling characters and titles worth so much. The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, John Cena, Dean Ambrose and AJ Styles have never been more important in the canon of the WWE Universe than they are right now, and it's all because the stories and booking is there to support them.

Honestly, Raw has a bigger roster, but they're not building meaningful stories, matches and characters around them, so it's hard to really care about anything that's happening long-term. It's a hindrance, and the brand split was supposed to fix what is currently wrong with Raw.

WWE had better wrestler's theme songs and show's and PPVs theme songs in the past than it does today. I mean, Nicki Minaj of all people had a song of hers used for WrestleMania. That's just sad. I know not everyone likes Nu Metal but I'll take Limp Bizkit, Saliva and Drowning Pool songs ANY DAY over Nickelback, Green Day and Nicki Minaj.

I've always preferred original theme songs as wrestler's entrance music. A notable exception is, obviously, "The Game" by Motörhead.

That's flat-out wrong. Have you listened to any of the songs CFO$ produces, or any of the music selected for NXT and main-roster events? It's pretty much all upbeat, driving rock music. The new Raw theme (and the current NXT theme) pretty accurately reflects their most recent music selections.

I've never watched NXT, so no idea what theme songs wrestlers have them.

The new Raw theme isn't bad but I'm not particularly crazy about it. Raw is War and the Across the nation themes were the best Raw themes, imo. SmackDown's were A Beautiful People and the one from 2004-2006 which name I cannot recall.

Well you should watch it, even if for the reason I just suggested. The intro music for NXT has basically set the new standard of event music for WWE.

To touch on theme music, Motörhead's "The Game," "King of Kings," and "Line in the Sand" (Evolution theme) were all penned by Jim Johnston. Motörhead just performed/recorded them (hence why "The Game" is just "My Time" with different lyrics/vocal patterns).

Didn't know that, thanks for the info!

Is any shock that with SmackDown Live, Ambrose, Styles, Cena, Miz and Ziggler are the most relevant wrestlers on the WWE roster today? Good googly-moogly.

Weird. Take a concept like "define these characters and let them interact accordingly" and a show gets better. It's almost like the writers on SmackDown (which I think were the top writers for NXT last year) actually understand decent booking.

In other news, it's all but official that TNA's tape library is getting sold to WWE, but Corgan will be rebranding the company. It'll be interesting to see if he sinks or swims since I've heard good and bad about his run with Chicago's Retribution Pro.

Is it, tho? The last "rumor" I heard reported was that Dixie Carter did pretty much everything possible to sabotage and make a mess of the deals, and whatever deal WWE put in was so low that it would've been considered a "last ditch effort" by TNA.

Former Bundesliga (German top football league) goalkeeper Tim Wiese will debut in his first match on November 3rd, together with Cesaro and Sheamus (don't know them) against "The Shining Stars" (don't know them). Triple H has been his coach btw. From Werder Bremen and 1899 Hoffenheim to WWE, quite a career. He's been part of the German squad at the 2010 World Cup and 2012 Euro Cup, too.

Supposedly, Lesnar's wrestlemania opponent is set to be Shane. I really have no idea why they would do that and they better not do some bullshit angle like they did last year.
And yeah, Dixie Carter has never had any business running a wrestling company. The best things to come from that situation is Jim Cornette's commentaries.

Shane must have a fucking deathwish man. That dude is going to die someday doing some stupid/insane spot. I remember when my brother & I along with some friends were 'training' for wrestling we always avoided powerbombs, piledrivers & all that other dangerous stuff. Meanwhile, this guy has been throwing himself (usually from great heights) & on top of that he is nearing 50.

Lol, even though I don't always agree with "Corny", the dude is just too hilarious to hate. Plus he has some genuinely interesting stories to tell about the business.

WWE No Mercy Gotta love the championship match being the first of the night, only in WWE...

Despite the weird order of matches at No Mercy, it was a really good B+ PPV. Ziggler/Miz was easily the match of the night, for me at least, those guys told a damn fine story and got the crowd invested in it from beginning to end.

Miz carried Ziggler, but yeah, in-ring stories is what the company is lacking.

The match order at No Mercy completely killed the show. I get why they did it, what with the debate and all, but this was literally a show where you could watch the first 45 minutes, be pretty much completely satisfied, and shut it off immediately after. Between that and every match not for a singles title being a heatless snoozefest, and this is easily the lamest WWE PPV since Wrestlemania. Chalk it up to an experiment that just plain did not work.

Still, it speaks wonders to the general quality of each show on a week-to-week basis that this is the first real big misstep for Smackdown since the brand extension, while Raw has been bad show after bad show for a month straight, and everything they did before that outside of that first show after Battleground wasn't that much better. Smackdown is just a better show, plain and simple.

I kinda want to see Cena match Flair's record. They're doing such a good job of building both Ambrose and Cena that I'm doing the thing I'd never thought I'd do in my lifetime: root for John Cena. There's a chance I'll mark out like a little bitch if Cena takes the title from Styles as WrestleMania. Somebody give the SmackDown Live writers a fucking medal. Holy shit - they did the impossible. Now all they need to do is take Reigns off Raw's hands and they can turn that shit around in two months.

The show order was fine, but they should've had Miz / Ziggler headline considering the emotional investment from the crowd. Orton and Wyatt just don't work well in a match together. They're both slow and methodical and it just ended up being a snail's pace of a match, which is possibly the worst way to end a pay-per-view. Luke Harper coming out was cool, but he doesn't have enough crowd pull for it to be a "holy shit!" moment.


okbro, whatevr u say

Honestly, that's the perfect endgame for the AJ Styles title reign. Styles should keep the belt all the way through the end of the year, and then around the Rumble they can start pointing out more explicitly that AJ Styles is the one guy in 15 years that John Cena just cannot beat in a one-on-one match. They've wrestled four times now - two singles matches, one triple threat, one tag - and every time aside from the tag match, AJ has pinned Cena. So come the Rumble, John Cena promises to win the Royal Rumble and go onto Wrestlemania to face AJ Styles for the WWE Championship. He wins the Rumble, and in the buildup to the show, AJ wants added stakes in the title match: If John Cena loses, his career is over. Cena accepts, they have a 5 star match at Wrestlemania, and Cena wins to tie Ric Flair's record.

And the best part is this isn't even strictly fantasy booking anymore. This legit could be what the Smackdown writers do, and it's fucking incredible to think that.

People rooting for Cena online? Never thought I'd see the day.

If you watched the show(s), then you'd know the context and reasoning behind it.

Have been taking a break and seems things are a changin'. Good for them, I guess. For now only ppvs and those youtube highlight videos will do.

The weird part about Cena is that the hatred was rarely directed at him and almost entirely at the booking surrounding him. Which Rumble was it that he was the surprise return? '08? HUUUUUUUUUGE pop, I mean "Flair comes back to Nitro" size, that died down because the fans remembered what the shows were like with him on the card. It's the same issue that Reigns is facing now: he's a competent talent who has a lot of positives but holy shit the writing is awful surrounding him.