The Wrestling Thread

[Raging Justice]

I know Donald Trump is polarizing. I an NOT trying to start trouble, however you feel about him is your business. I just think it's interesting that he talked about Kane and Undertaker recently.



Took me awhile to find a clip without your typical, narcissistic youtuber having to inject their commentary about it.

Some may have forgotten, but Trump is a WWE Hall of Famer and famously had a hair versus hair feud with Vince McMahon involving Umaga (R.I.P.), Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Almighty Bobby Lashley (who is still a big deal in WWE right now).



I wonder sometimes how much of a boost this gave Lashley's career

[Reprise]

2K has released some WWE 2K24 news today, revealing who the cover stars are. Cody is on the normal version Rhea and Bianca are on the Deluxe and then there's some special 40 years of Wrestlemania cover too.

Nothing highlights my disconnect from modern WWE fans, modern wrestling games fans and modern video games fans more than the response to that "news" tbh.

Since when did people care about who was on the cover of the games? I swear that's something that has become increasingly talked about and speculated about each year over the last decade. It's just bizarre in my opinion.

In my opinion, the 2K games fucking suck too. I continue to be baffled by how much people seem to like those games. They have been reusing and polishing the same dreadful engine and gameplay system for decades. It originated in WWE 2K12 on the PS3 and 360, two generations ago, for Christ's sake. And even that was a modified version of the engine that originated on the PS2 games. Ever since they started motion capturing moves as well, it has made the game look and play incredibly stiff. Those games are dreadful.

Anyways, back I go to playing WCW vs nWo Revenge, WWF No Mercy, Fire Pro Wrestling D, Giant Gram 2000, WWF Smackdown Here Comes the Pain and WWF Day of Reckoning

[Raging Justice]

Well to be fair, in this case it does seem to indicate who their current favorites are. Some people still think Cody is the future face of the company, Bianca gets booked like she's Wonder Woman, and Rhea has had a vice grip on the Raw women's title and is for all intents and purposes the leader of the Judgement Day.

It's all very tiresome to me, they keep pushing the same people. At least AEW has some variety in that regard.

[Reprise]

I can *kinda* understand that, but it's still something I just can't quite get excited about personally. Could you imagine Square-Enix hyping up the reveal of the new Final Fantasy game cover or something?

Also, those are just predictable choices. Oh wow, who could have guessed Cody is the cover star?

And I don't get people hyping up annual franchises that copy and paste their games anyways.

Speaking of AEW, I finally started catching up on it. I watched one and a half episodes of Collision last night and then I will catch up on the latest episode of Dynamite once I have finished the Collision episode I am half way through. Collision is ok... I had to skip through some parts. Tbh I preferred the show when it was Punk's thing. Even if I hated Punk (I don't, but let's pretend I do), at least the show had a clear defined reason to exist and was presenting some fairly coherent booking and storylines, with a fairly consistent roster. Fast forward to now and the episodes I watched felt a bit Rampage-y. A bit like Dynamite Extra. But it isn't bad by any means. It's just the show is a bit aimless from what I saw. It was supposed to be Dynamite's equal once upon a time...

I am looking forward to seeing the full Hook and Joe match. The clips I saw looked great and I am a real sucker for the 'plucky underdog' getting a shot of adrenaline trope. I don't think it makes Joe look weak and the match looked fun as hell. It reminds me of The Undertaker vs Jeff Hardy on Smackdown or The Rock vs Hurricane Helms years and years ago.

[Raging Justice]

I can *kinda* understand that, but it's still something I just can't quite get excited about personally. Could you imagine Square-Enix hyping up the reveal of the new Final Fantasy game cover or something?

Also, those are just predictable choices. Oh wow, who could have guessed Cody is the cover star?

And I don't get people hyping up annual franchises that copy and paste their games anyways.

Speaking of AEW, I finally started catching up on it. I watched one and a half episodes of Collision last night and then I will catch up on the latest episode of Dynamite once I have finished the Collision episode I am half way through. Collision is ok... I had to skip through some parts. Tbh I preferred the show when it was Punk's thing. Even if I hated Punk (I don't, but let's pretend I do), at least the show had a clear defined reason to exist and was presenting some fairly coherent booking and storylines, with a fairly consistent roster. Fast forward to now and the episodes I watched felt a bit Rampage-y. A bit like Dynamite Extra. But it isn't bad by any means. It's just the show is a bit aimless from what I saw. It was supposed to be Dynamite's equal once upon a time...

I am looking forward to seeing the full Hook and Joe match. The clips I saw looked great and I am a real sucker for the 'plucky underdog' getting a shot of adrenaline trope. I don't think it makes Joe look weak and the match looked fun as hell. It reminds me of The Undertaker vs Jeff Hardy on Smackdown or The Rock vs Hurricane Helms years and years ago.

I was a bit surprised that they portrayed Hook that way. He used to have a badass aura to him.

[Reprise]

I was a bit surprised that they portrayed Hook that way. He used to have a badass aura to him.

Doesn't he at least have that aura again to a greater extent, than he has the last 6-9 months, whilst he's been having nothing matches with jobbers, only being on the pre-show of PPVs and having a mid-card feud with Jack Perry?

I am finishing off that episode of Collision I was in the middle of. Daniel Garcia is awesome (obviously I already know this, just reinforcing this fact). The main event with him and FTR against the House of Black is fantastic (I am still a week behind). Not sure I will keep up with Collision though, unless I hear about something particularly great happening in an episode. I will probably just stick with Dynamite moving forward until Revolution (if I can even maintain keeping up with AEW until then).

[Raging Justice]

I was a bit surprised that they portrayed Hook that way. He used to have a badass aura to him.

Doesn't he at least have that aura again to a greater extent, than he has the last 6-9 months, whilst he's been having nothing matches with jobbers, only being on the pre-show of PPVs and having a mid-card feud with Jack Perry?

I am finishing off that episode of Collision I was in the middle of. Daniel Garcia is awesome (obviously I already know this, just reinforcing this fact). The main event with him and FTR against the House of Black is fantastic (I am still a week behind). Not sure I will keep up with Collision though, unless I hear about something particularly great happening in an episode. I will probably just stick with Dynamite moving forward until Revolution (if I can even maintain keeping up with AEW until then).

I don't really watch anything on TV on weekends so I put on Collision just for the hell of it when I actually remember that it's on. Frankly, I don't really watch anything on TV besides wrestling these days, I used to be a big TV watcher a few years ago but...I don't know, things have changed. I don't feel like there's much worth seeing on TV these days other than the occasional great show like Better Call Saul (which I never finished watching). Seems like the good stuff is on streaming now, for better or for worse. For example, Netflix has a Scott Pilgrim cartoon I heard is good and another animated show called Blue Eye Samurai that I heard is very good. Plus Netflix has my favorite current show which is Cobra Kai, though I don't know when that show will come back for what will probably be its final season. Amazon Prime has Reacher and Invincible. Disney has the Star Wars stuff, which a lot of people hate these days, but I'm still curious enough about what's going on in that universe to want to catch up on The Mandalorian and watch Ahsoka Tano's own show as well.

Anyway, got off on a tangent there, the match with Hook was great. It just wasn't booked quite how I expected. It felt like a great white shark (Hook) ran into a Megalodon (Samoa Joe), if that analogy makes any sense

You ain't a badass in my part of the ocean bitch By the way, I know megalodons are extinct. Probably a bad analogy. The post match stuff was great too, reminding us of Joe's upcoming triple threat match. Swerve is really getting over. I like that Hangman is back in the main event picture. I had hoped that his feud with Swerve would elevate both men. I don't think it necessarily elevated Hangman but it did bring him back into the main event scene. It most definitely elevated Swerve though.

[Reprise]

Yeah, that triple threat is going to be amazing. It's great to see Hangman back in the main event and Swerve being elevated to that status.

I completely forgot about Battle of the Belts, so I ended up watching that too last night. The street fight was a lot of fun. It reminded me of early 2000s WWE. Julia Hart and Anna Jay was pretty weak (Julia is mighty fine though! Both women are), but the main event with Cassidy and Preston Vance was good.

Guess I will get onto Dynamite tonight.

About television, I haven't actually had proper television in about 3 years. I only stream, which is partly why I find it odd and amusing that wrestling fans online still talk about television ratings so much.

[Reprise]

Hah, speaking of streaming... It has just been announced that Netflix have got the rights to Raw.

Edit: The deal begins in Jan 2025. USA, Canada and UK are part of it. Not sure what other regions are included.

[Reprise]

I don't ger the rankings AEW has started again, that everyone on social media is arguing over whether it's a great idea or a dumb idea.

I had completely forgotten they even used to do that to be honest. How does it work any how do people become "number one contenders"?