Vince treated everyone like that, not just the people who rebuffed his sexual advances. That’s a lot of receipts. Vince is done.
Everybody join in:
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye
Now we’re getting an Elimination Chamber match to determine Seth’s WHC challenger for 'Mania, which is what they should have done all along instead of that ridiculous story where he was begging Cody to wrestle him, which buried the belt since it made it look like noone wanted it and made Seth look dumb for wanting a match against a guy who’s won every single one-on-one the two have had.
DEFY and Progress Wrestling are merging.
If you have an NJPW World account, you owe it to yourself to watch last night’s New Beginning In Osaka show. It’s legitimately one of the best non-Wrestle Kingdom cards I’ve seen out of Japan. Okada and Tanahashi had their last-time-ever match before Okada departs for America, and Bryan Danielson and ZSJ had a rematch from their Wrestledream showdown that was even more of a technical master class than the first, but the shining jewel of the show was the main event - Will Ospreay, in his final New Japan match before he starts with AEW fulltime, leading the United Empire (TJ Perkins, Francisco Akira, Jeff Cobb, and Aaron Henare) against David Finlay’s Bullet Club War Dogs (Clark Connors, Alex Coughlin, Gabe Kidd, and Drilla Moloney) in New Japan’s first ever Wargames match. New Japan almost never does stipulation matches these days, and hasn’t really done hardcore wrestling at all since the legendary exploding barbed wire matches of the '90s, so this was a rare treat for the live audience, who were extremely into it and even started chanting “holy shit” in English at points.
The setup was a little different than how WWE does Wargames - they only had one ring, and a 10-foot cage with no roof that surrounded the ring area like the Hell in a Cell does. They also did two minutes between entrances instead of five. With that start I expected a quick match, but it turned out to run just over an entire hour of some of the most intense hardcore wrestling I’ve seen in years. Just an outright war between a band of brothers united by fighting spirit and a vicious street gang. Blood everywhere. Tables and kendo sticks and chairs and thumbtacks and barbed wire and people getting stabbed with forks and handcuffs and dog collars and simulated hangings. Near the end of the match Bullet Club got so frustrated they started dismantling the entire ring, stripping the mat down to bare plywood and tearing up the aprons and turnbuckles until the ring was a total mess and the boards themselves were starting to break and give way and people were falling through holes in the ring. Dusty Rhodes would be proud. Red Shoes was refereeing the match, and the English commentary mentioned that he’d reffed some of those death matches in the '90s and this was even crazier than those were.
I’ll spoiler the finish in case you want to be surprised, and because it’s one of the best finishes I’ve ever seen to a match of this nature;
Bullet Club manages to handcuff Henare, Perkins, and Cobb to the cage to keep them out of commission, because Finlay wants to destroy Ospreay. Francisco Akira catches a heroic second wind and saves Ospreay from getting pinned, but quickly suffers a five-on-one beatdown with noone to save him. Ospreay crawls into the ring to save Akira from a pin, and drags him to the corner like a soldier pulling a wounded comrade out of the line of fire. As they’re catching their breath in the corner, all five of Bullet Club are standing in the center of the ring staring down. Ospreay gestures for Akira to get away while he can and he crawls out of the ring leaving Ospreay alone. Finlay yells for Ospreay to get up and fight him, and with his last ounces of strength, Ospreay forces himself to his feet and runs at Finlay… and collapses at his feet before he can land a punch, after which Finlay pins him effortlessly to end the match.
Top notch storytelling that left everyone looking like a million bucks, and it blew any of WWE’s modern-day Wargames matches out of the water. This was the kind of perfect storm of brutal wrestling ultraviolence that should only happen once every few years lest the audience get used to it. I highly recommend checking it out, because it’s a match of the year contender for sure.
Brian Pillman’s 14-year-old grandson is being honored for preventing a mass shooting at his high school.
They’re going with a heel turn for the Rock. Not sure if it was planned or they just are taking advantage of the heat.
last and corny say they’re taking advantage of the heat because punk getting hurt again messed up at least 5 or 6 months of plans …
I gotta give kudos to the Orange Cassidy vs. Michael Taven Texas Death match, especially the part where Orange found a Valentine’s Day heart-shaped box from Chuck Taylor full of thumbtacks. Both guys landed HARD on those tacks. For such a lackadaisical character, Orange sure takes a lot of nasty bumps.
I’m also digging the “We’re the EVPs, so fuck you” angle the Jacksons are using. It embodies everything Cornie already hates about these guys, even the part where they push/not push their stooge friends. How does Cornie criticize them for getting the same dislike from fans as his heat for them and capitalizing on it?
Wrestlelamia reported that the WWE’s insurer may be able to settle with the woman suing Vince and Laurinaitis without their permission and keeping this under the covers. I don’t know if that’s true, but they’d be highly motivated to do it before a continuing lawsuit brings forth more information bad for the company.
I’ve only come across them a couple of times - does Wrestlelamia do any original reporting, or are they just another of the 500 sites repeating everything Meltzer/Johnson/Sapp and maybe 2 or 3 others actual report? All I remember is that their YouTube channel was unforgivingly cringey. And if this is just repackaging Meltzer, Meltzer mixes far too much opinion and conjecture into his reporting, and it’s gotten a lot worse over the years. Then 500 sites pick up whatever Meltzer rambled (and he rambles a lot) and report Meltzer’s speculations as fact, leaving out any nuance Meltzer may (or may not) have applied.
IANAL, but my understanding is WWE could only settle WWE’s liability. McMahon and Laurinaitis will still be on the hook.
No idea but I’ve never seen anything from them that wasn’t being touted elsewhere. I don’t look at any of the sites consistently enough to tell where the stories originate.
I feel myself turning into a Logan Paul mark. When all the men’s EC participants, made their entrance, Drew McEntire was giving his opponents the thousand yard stare. When the came to Logan’s pod, Logan breathed a patch of steam on the glass, wrote a script B in the steam, and waved bye-bye. He also took some sick bumps, including a Lashley Spear through the plexiglass.
Nia Jax makes me giggle. She so damn nasty. Some fans were chanting “My hole! My hole!” She’s like the female version of Mike Meyer’s Fat Bastard.
another meh PPV with no surprises…
I thought women’s Elimination Chamber was pretty good. The main event was just a basic title defense, terrible way to end a show like that.
A former wrestler says he was depushed after refusing to let Terry Garvin blow him.
Ole Anderson was one of the best heels ever and part of the Minnesota Wrecking Crew and the original Four Horseman. I loved wrestling as a kid and Ole was my favorite bad guy.
wow … he was a character from what I’ve heard …
Minoru Suzuki is going to wrestle Maki Itoh in a special intergender match for DDT’s sister promotion.
It’ll be amusing to see such a legit tough-as-nails fighter in a comedy match with a girl group singer, but I hope Jim Cornette’s heart can handle the stress that knowing about this is gonna put on it.
I remember Ole and Gene Anderson from Mid-Atlantic when I was a kid. Ole always had Gene be the fall guy while Ole faked an injury, and would then step in miraculously healed and cheat to win. Later, he became a babyface in Georgia Championship Wrestling, but I always knew he was going to swerve back to heeldom.
He was Dusty Rhodes’s tag partner in a cage match against the Assassins with brother Gene and Ivan Koloff as guest referees. Sure enough, Gene turned on Dusty and stomped him into a bloody mess as Gene and Koloff joined in. The Assassins were like “whut?” and joined in as well. Other wrestlers tried to come to Dusty’s aid but kept getting knocked off when they tried to climb into the cage. It was the grandest betrayal of them all and Ole was the star.
I think he was the head booker of GCW before all of the NWA territories merged to become WCW, and he got phased out. Jim Cornett said Ole called him a fag and Baby Doll a fat ho, so he wasn’t that popular backstage.