There’s not being any good at this and being so bad that she couldn’t wait for a drumroll they had rehearsed waiting for. The latter just doesn’t seem likely to me, especially because Stephanie being oblivious in asking for the drumroll then getting cut off is EXACTLY the type of character beat that they like to hit… Read more

Is it what it was in the ‘70s-‘80s or even before the back to back folding of ECW and WCW in 2001? No. But it’s certainly the best time to be a wrestler in the west than it’s been since 2001, with a lot more wrestlers making full-time livings in the business than any other time in the WWE monopoly era. And if Matt… Read more

That poor fucker. TNA gonna TNA.

I had a different read on it last night: I thought they were trying to harness Rousey’s bad acting in a way that worked. For example, I thought her cutting off the drumroll was clearly intentional and supposed to be her cutting past Stephanie’s faux-friendly bullshit. In that context, her rough delivery felt natural… Read more

Technically, Impact has run a Mania weekend show before (Westbury Music Fair in 2013), but yes, that’s a good hook for them. Read more

That’s not the idea. It’s not whether she can, it’s waiting for her to get the chance. Read more

I thought the implication was that Angle was telling the truth on Sunday and lying on Monday after having his job threatened. Read more

Unfortunately, yes. The launch of that show was one of the catalysts for the Russo article I wrote last year: https://deadspin.com/vince-russo-one-of-pro-wrestlings-biggest-bullshit-art-1794338204 Read more

But that’s not really the case (and it used to be even less accurate) about it just being WWE. Read more

This is an interesting argument: Sure, he had only been at it for a few weeks over a quarter century ago, but did Russo completely folding when WWE was nice to him poison the well? I suppose it’s possible, especially since you can’t take his version of what happened at face value and there’s probably a lot about that… Read more

This. Vince having a relationship with multiple wrestling reporters (including Wade when he was basically a kid), Vince giving Wade on the record interviews, WWE giving Dave access to internal business records for a story on stadium shows, the infamous wrestling reporter tour of the WWE offices the week of SummerSlam… Read more

In a 2018 context, where the opinions are being broadcast on Twitter, podcasts, etc regardless? Nah, perhaps moreso because I’m doing it here and it’s self evident in each blog what type of piece it is. Read more

That’s fair, but it’s also outlet-dependent. As a freelancer for this site usually doing a set amount of blogs a week, yeah, there’s going to be some opinion in there when I’m not doing a history piece or reporting on something. If I was on staff somewhere and was just able to spend my time chasing stories, then yeah,… Read more

The people who will argue that “X isn’t a news outlet, it’s a blog” are so weird to me. It’s literally just a way of formatting articles., and the line gets blurred with sites like USA Today running on WordPress. Read more

I would say the flaw in the WWE style that hurts drama the most is how so many of the wrestlers have a singular finishing move. It helps A.J. Styles’ matches a lot that he has at least three, maybe four that he can be expected to win with. Read more

IIRC Daniel Bryan did at least two different gauntlets on Raw during his big push in 2013-2014. Read more

He gets pushed because he’s charismatic and looks like he should be playing a sexy werewolf dude in a vampire show/movie. Read more

Benoit was the first to do his version, wasn’t he? Read more

The more I think about it the more I wonder if Watts truly “got” Junkyard Dog and why he was over. Did he see a guy who was a brilliant, hilarious talker and incredibly charismatic? Or did he think he got a black guy over with black fans by pushing him on top and that was it? That most of the “replacements” (like… Read more

Sort of. It was a DQ in Mid-South as well, but he has always insisted that he was going to bring at back after a while in WCW. The main reason I always heard was to make the top rope moves seem more dangerous, with the one you cited being secondary. Read more