Billy Gunn left his boots in the ring after a match on Saturday’s AEW Collision. Daddy Ass hit the big time in wrestling in the WWF all the way back in 1993 as half of the Smoking Gunns tag team. He’ll turn 60 before the year is out. Remarkably he still looks great and he’s still a better wrestler than A lot of guys half his age. I can’t think of any wrestler from 1993 still going full bore in the ring as Billy has done in AEW. This may not be the end, many wrestlers have unretired, but it’s been a remarkable career.
Chris Jericho had his first match in 1990, and Rey Mysterio Jr. made his debut in '89.
And Sting may be a 64-year-old part timer who hasn’t wrestled a singles match in eight years and is on his way out the door, but he started in '85.
Gunn was in the WWE in 93, not his start in wrestling. Jericho and Mysterio didn’t hit the big time until several years after that. Wake me up when Sting actually makes it to big time wrestling or actually wrestles again. Any old man can limp to the ring carrying a baseball bat.
Anyway, all three of the guys you mention have shown remarkable longevity. Sting is too hold now but he was a huge star, peaking more than once in his long career. He could have done it a third time in the WWE if his ego wasn’t over inflated. I though Jericho was done earlier this year but somehow he worked off an expanding gut, I think it took more than sit-ups, but who knows, he’s back in shape, not exactly the athlete he used to be but still a top performer. Rey Mysterio may be wrestling when he’s 70 or 80, he’s definitely better than most wrestlers 20 years younger than he is. Billy Gunn is a remarkable survivor for a guy his size, and his recent efforts to push The Acclaim and his sons in the ring shows untapped talent that he’s had all along. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s done, it wasn’t fun to watch Ric Flair trying to perform past his prime, and then past his sub-prime. Flair might want to die in the ring, but he’s cheated death more than once already.
A few weeks ago, it occurred to me to put a poll in the Polls Only thread game as to which would lose first-- Roman Reigns, Hook, or Sting-- and now we have our answer.
Roman Reigns lost, and then Hook lost. Sting is still undefeated in AEW, though.
you ever noticed that for all the high flying off the top rope crap they do the luchas seem to wrestle until they’re 60 or longer?
Pretty good for a match with no stakes.
Luchadors are impressive. They’re smaller and more agile. I wonder if it will stay that way if they pursue extreme style wrestling more. Don’t know if Rey Mysterio’s injury tonight was a work but he’s may not make it to 60 with his history of injuries.
That Gunther/Chad Gable match on RAW was freakin’ awesome. Gable looked like a million bucks. He’s been one of the best parts of RAW for months now.
And to think that the best idea Vince could come up with for him was to have everyone make fun of him for being short.
I’m so fucking sick of Cody Rhodes.
Yes, you get kudos for reinventing yourself after leaving WWE, branding yourself across the Indies, having a hand in starting AEW, defying VKM and HHH, etc etc etc but even ambrosia tastes like ass after a while.
I thought most of the matches last night were boring.
Starting off we saw Ricochet carry Logan Paul through the match. I’ll give Paul credit for some things but he clearly needed to spend a lot of time stalling and once again Rico did the job.
The less said about Cody the better. Lesnar has always been boring but that match was predictable idiocy.
The Battle Royale was just like the previous 100 such snooze fests except for how obviously they were putting over LA Knight. Congrats to him though.
Rousey and Bazler was mercifully brief though as bad and pointless as all of Rhonda’s matches.
We had a women’s title match with a lame fake injury and then we end up with EIEIO as the champ. We should see plenty of great matches from that one trick pony.
Then we had another Seth Rollins match. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, shocked beyond belief that Judgement Day would interfere in this match and even more shocked to see Priest and Hornswoggle screw the match by fighting over the MitB.
Let’s not forget Gunther and McIntyre. Luckily no wrestling moves disturbed my sleep.
And then we had Tribal Combat. I figured they couldn’t go wrong with an actual fight to the death but it turned out to be just another wrestler carrying Reigns in a match. OK, there was a tiny twist at the end. So now they set up a 4 way family brawl as WWE tries to extricate themselves from the mess they created by pushing a no talent like Reigns to start with.
Special mention to Logan Paul for executing a slingshot lariat in his first try that was far better than any from Hangnail Adam Page over in AEW.
Someone pissed in your Frosted Flakes this morning, for sure. I’m not going to sing the accolades for SummerSlam, because it was a middling PPV, but IMNSHO it wasn’t nearly as bad as your assessment. Predictable…pretty much, but 95% of wrestling and even most other entertainment is predictable. I think it’s nice that the matches are given time to breathe (for the most part), something that even the PPV/PLE events didn’t do for a long time.
Hey! That’s a glowing review of a WWE event from me. I watched it, I didn’t tell anyone not to. I just call 'em how I sees 'em.
“OK Rhonda, here’s your exit. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
“Here’s a breadcrumb for you, JD. Be a lawn dart for Olmos.”
“See Rocochet? Miz put Logan Paul over and his career hasn’t suffered.”
“Don’t worry Drew. We did jack shit to promote your match but that doesn’t mean you’re no longer relevant.”
“We broke up the Dudleys, we can surely break up the Usos.”
Now you’re getting the hang of it!
Summerslam was OK. Brock raising Cody’s hand after their match was a great moment, and I enjoyed Logan/Ricochet and GUNTHER/Drew. The Ronda/Shayna match was just plain poorly booked - I don’t understand why they called it an “MMA rules match” when what we saw didn’t resemble an MMA fight AT ALL, when they could’ve just called it a submission match instead.
As for the main event, I’m going to share something someone posted on the Wrestlecrap forums;
That pretty much covers it. They’ve done “babyface has the match won and then one of Roman’s lackeys wins the match for him” so many times that I can’t even remember the last time he won a title defense clean. For as much as Roman is supposed to be King Shit of Fuck Mountain it doesn’t do him any favors to show him as being unable to beat a midcard tag team wrestler without his greenhorn little cousin doing his dirty work for him, and it gets boring when the audience knows how the match is going to end before it even starts.
My guess is that Jimmy is going to team with Zayn and Owens vs his fam, Zayn will favor it but Owens won’t, and there will be swerve teases for the next 12 weeks. The Bloodline is WWE’s biggest moneymaker right now, and they’re going to mash it in our faces every waking moment until the merch sales dip.
Jey, you mean.
Slate says Orange Cassidy is the greatest wrestler in the world today.
Cassidy says “Whatever.”