I think Lesnar feels safe against someone who isn’t a submission specialist, but you’re right, he leads with his chin and I think he’s going to end up with Hunt’s foot in his mouth.
Interestingly enough he has been given an exemption to the 4 month rule imposed by the USADA . Fighters coming off of retirement are required to give four months notice to the organization in order to allow for out of competition testing.
Lesnar only signed the contract a day before the fight was announced.
We are expected to believe that he made a snap decision to re-enter MMA with only about a 4 week camp. I call BS.
Lesnar was only submitted once in his UFC “career.” Every loss after that was a brutal (and quite satisfying to watch) face smashing.
A question that I’ve been curious about: How does the WWE sell it when one of their superstars has been destroyed in real competition? I’m thinking specifically of Ken “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” Shamrock who entered the WWE after no one in MMA took him at all seriously anymore and Brock Lesnar who showed that he is nothing when faced with a skilled opponent.
How will the WWE sell Lesnar after Mark Hunt reminds him how much he hates being fought?
Does it make any difference to wrestling fans or are the two sports seen to inhabit different universes?
WWE is mainly interested in name recognition, and Brock wants the best of both worlds. If Brock loses in spectacular fashion, they’ll drop him faster than you can say “Rhonda Rousey.” If Brock puts on a good showing but still loses, they’ll still benefit from his name making the headlines. If he wins, even better.
I’m sure their lawyers have contingent contracts at the ready.
They took him back after spectacular losses to Cain Vasquez and Alistair Overeem why not now?
What do you think the WWE’s narrative will be if/when he gets his ass handed to him again?
Btw I’m sorry if this constitutes a hijack - it isn’t meant to be. I’m actually curious as to how him losing will play out.
Damn. American Alpha and The Revival can feud forever as far as I’m concerned. Those guys have so much chemistry together.
Soooo basically anyone who loses is just being called up right?
We’ve got 6 weeks to the brand split. I don’t see them calling them up now, or even days before the split. They should debut over the course of a month or two after the split. Otherwise they’re just a bunch of guys lost in a crowd.
Damn good Takeover tonight. Even the opening match was main event level.
American Alpha and Revival just seemed read each others minds. They went from one spot to another flawlessly. This is a good old fashioned feud between the hyper faces and the dastardly heels.
Nakamura is insanely over. They showed a couple of seconds of the audience singing his entrance music, and one of them was dressed like him with the half wig. Aries sold the hell out of the knee knocker at the end. It was a work of art.
Overall, I felt that that was a “just OK” show. Nothing disappointing, but there weren’t really any matches that stood out either.
Apparently, the mystery team that attacked AA after their match is called “the Authors of Pain” and they’ve been working the house shows in Florida for a few months but haven’t wrestled for any significant indy promotions as far as I know.
That’s what I get for staying out of the house show circuit for the last couple months! I didn’t know who these guys were.
Although they did look like they put Brodius Clay into the cloning machine and hit “send” twice.
They don’t care. Buh-ROCK Lezzzner is a character, not Brock Lesnar the person. They’ve had other MMA stars who came to wrestling after successful MMA careers, Brock had only minimal MMA success, but he started in wrestling and he’s got the name recognition and the body to remain a wrestling star.
Fair enough.
It was surprising to see Paul Ellering back in action, but if anybody’s going to head another Road Warriors knock-off team, it may as well be him. I miss the heel managers of old like Gary Hart, Bobby Heenan, Mr. Fuji, Sir Oliver Humperdink, Jim Cornette, Lou Albano, JJ Dillon, etc. Paul Heyman is the closest thing to a heel manager nowadays, but he rebranded himself as an “advocate.” Heel managers are a lost art form, as they added that extra element of uncertainty to the match.
So now we can look forward to seeing them feud with The Ascension? 
Two big pieces of news today.
The first is that, starting in September, WWE is going to be running two PPVs per month - one for Raw and one for Smackdown. Including NXT, that’s going to put them in the neighborhood of 30 live specials a year! :eek: I hope the creative team is up to it.
The other news is that they’ve released the full list of names that’ll be appearing in the Cruiserweight Classic, which starts taping at the NXT Arena in a few weeks and will air throughout the summer concluding in a live special. Most of these names I’m unfamiliar with, though a few we’ve seen on NXT before, and there’s a couple big gets in Zack Sabre Jr. (who’s the reigning PWG world champion right now and the 2014-2015 winner of Wrestling Observer’s “Bryan Danielson Award”, formerly the Best Technical Wrestler Award until Bryan won it nine years straight and then retired), Kota Ibushi (who won last year’s New Japan Cup and had high-profile matches with AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura) and Cedric Alexander (who just left ROH a few weeks ago). Right now I’m wagering on either Sabre or Johnny Gargano to win it, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out, because it’s likely that a number of these guys are going to be headlining the next generation of NXT after the mass call-ups coming soon.
That many PPVs is stupid.
They don’t make any money from them anymore.
But hey, like the 4.5 hour Summerslam thing, Vince seems to be obsessed with throwing up as many hours of programming as he can, viewer fatigue be damned.
Last night’s RAW was actually pretty decent, mainly because of Kevin Owens. One could expect a plethora of MITB promos, but they were done well, except for constant mention of “Wrestlemania calibre matches.” Not this year’s WM at any rate.
KO tattles to Stephanie that ADR is late. “Isn’t that kind of irresponsible and unprofessional of him?” ADR comes in all furious and curses him in Spanish. “Oh, aren’t you something? I can yell at people in another language too! Vous avec avous avec avous!”
He works the tag match with ADR in dysfunctional fashion, gets the pin, and comes back to commentary to gloat about it. “What did I do to deserve sitting next to Byron Saxton? Does anybody trust Alberto Del Rio with a hammer?”
Sami Zayn got in one of his WOW moments with his pin of Cesaro. Thing is, in NXT he had 5-6 WOW moments a match, but in the main roster where matches are shorter, he gets in 1 or 2. That’s how much WWE relies on promo time, but in tonight’s case, they didn’t suck. (Except for “Wrestlemania calibre matches”)
The VVs seemed to be channeling Damien Sandow in their promo, and apparently they’re going to make Simon Gotch throwing Enzo through the ropes a thing. Oh horrors, he might get another concussion. @Enzo, a promo about fellating a trombone doesn’t really work. Like Xavier’s playing, it falls flat.
It was worth it to see SHIELD together again. It’s obvious they have great chemistry together, even if they’re supposed to hate each other.
John Cena put over AJ Styles in his promo, and was even allowed to mention other Feds like RoH without having to buy them out first. Funny how his and ND’s promos worked in the word “Bullet” a lot when referring to Anderson & Gallows. Pretty clever how they mentioned the Bullet Club without mentioning the Bullet Club. “You can take that Bullet Train right back to Japan!” “Your club will be out of here like a bullet!”
I’m wondering if AJ’s choice of signing the contract that stipulates “without the Club” opens the door to other former members of BC (like Finn) to emerge during his match with Cena. I’d rather Finn make his debut solo, not under the umbrella of a faction, but on the other hand, a 4-Horseman level coalition would be awesome. The Wyatts almost had it, but injuries and bad timing killed their momentum.
And now, please enjoy Rey Mysterio pinning Joey Ryan to win a Japanese 24/7 championship which has been held over the years by such titans of the sport as a taxi driver, several ladders and other pieces of furniture, a dog, a monkey, several audience members, a pork cutlet, a pile of rice, a pair of men’s underwear, an invisible man, and by the title belt itself.
That’s insane… they should have somebody win the title in New Zealand, then travel over the International Date Line the same day to Australia and have somebody else win it the day before.
In TNA news, last night, Pop TV had technical issues that resulted in about 1:45 of the scheduled two-hour broadcast consisting of the same three commercials on endless repeat.
Ratings numbers to compare “That 70’s Show” commercials to normal Impact numbers are not yet available.
And this was apparently a PopTV problem, completely unrelated to the ongoing financial issues last weekend, where the TNA finance officer was apparently having to make desperate calls to secure financing for the Sunday PPV a few hours before the show was supposed to start.