Oooh, Steve Corino is leaving RoH and becoming a trainer at WWE Performance Center. Maybe they’ll have him replace the overworked Cory Graves on NXT? I’d hate to see Graves leave, but Corino’s terrific as a heel commentator.
Anybody catch Cena on SNL? I forgot to DVR it.
It was OK.
His monologue was pretty stereotypical. He teased that he was going to sing a song, but random cast members came up to him wrestling style. It ended with him ripping the arms off his suit and, wow, he looks massive. He’s either been working out A TON in his spare time, or he’s about 2 in. from a wellness violation.
As for his sketches…also pretty good. I give him props for not playing “John Cena” in every other sketch like some hosts do. He was always a character. His characters were generic (if not boring) but he was rarely the star of the sketch.
He did have 2 shining star (get it? Wrestling jokes!) bits though. He played a hilariously accurate (and berry funny) Rob Gronkowski in a sketch. That was clearly his best. There was also a funny sketch in an adult bookstore where he would pretend to be in one of the books. He had a Fabio wig and had his chest exposed. It was good.
His Karate sketch was pretty stupid, the game show one was OK I guess, he had a good Chicago accent in a cop show sketch, and that’s it I think.
The ratings on SNL were apparently up. Wrasslin’ fans must want to see him I guess.
So they didn’t make him dress in drag? Male athletes on SNL usually wear ladies’ dresses.
Nope. The only thing that dragged were the shitty Trump related sketches because Trump is the newest form of LCD
I’m considering signing up for New Japan’s online netwok (only 999 yen a month, baby!) to watch Wrestle Kingdom 11 next month. It’s going to have Steve Corino and Kevin Kelly doing English commentary, and the card looks pretty promising;
- Kazuchika Okada © vs. Kenny Omega for the IWGP heavyweight championship
- Tetsuya Naito © vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Intercontinental championship
- Katsuyori Shibata © vs. Hirooki Goto for the NEVER openweight championship
- Kushida © vs. Hiromu Takahashi for the IWGP junior heavyweight championship
- Bullet Club (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) vs. Togi Hakabe & Tomoaki Honma for the IWGP heavyweight tag team championship
- Kyle O’Reilly © vs. Adam Cole for the Ring of Honor world championship
- Cody Rhodes vs. CJ Parker (!)
- David Finlay, Ricochet and Satoshi Kojima © vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Hangman Page and Yujiro Takahashi) vs. Chaos (Tomohiro Ishii, Will Ospreay and Yoshi-Hashi) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Bushi, Evil and Sanada), gauntlet match for the NEVER openweight six-man tag championship
- The Young Bucks © vs. Roppongi Vice for the IWGP junior heavyweight tag team championship
- Tiger Mask W (Kota Ibushi) vs. Tiger Dark
- A battle royal, participants TBA
I saw quite a few of these guys wrestle at the ROH shows I went to in August, and this sounds like a show that’s really capable of delivering. It’s going to be on at an awkward time for us Americans (somewhere around 3 AM eastern/midnight Pacific on January 4th), but I’m usually up at that time of night anyway. If I can get the evening off work I think I’ll probably check it out.
Damn, who hasn’t Cody whored himself out to? Has he wrestled in AAA yet? Alberto Del Rio burned a few bridges there, so maybe Cody can take his spot.
Looks like Ibushi wants to be a free agent as well. He could have been NJPW’s top draw after Nakamura and AJ Styles left, but he worked in the CWC and is now wearing a tiger mask and playing an anime character. Maybe there’s yen in it.
Too bad Ricochet is swallowed up in a 4x3 thing. He’s too awesome as a singles wrestler. His partner’s not the same Dave Finlay from WCW a couple of decades back is he?
This one is Fit Finlay’s son. I don’t remember the father going by Dave in WCW, but that is his real name.
Going by what it says in old RSPW posts, he went by “Fit Finlay” (it may have been just “Finlay” at one point) in WCW, but “Dave (and Sir David at one point) Finlay” on RAW about 10 years ago.
So we can basically add him to the list of “wrestler’s kids who didn’t quite have it”, which is kind of a long list.
I mean, ya’ll would probably know this more than me. Who is the kid of a wrestler that has mirrored the success of their parentage? I can think of Charlotte and Randy Orton, but honestly that’s about it. Maybe Bray? Is he advanced enough for that?
I’d say Bray rose higher than Mike Rotunda. Rotunda used to be Barry Windham’s partner (and Bray’s real name is Windham Rotunda) before he was Irwin R. Shyster, and he was mid-card at best solo. Windham is the son of the late great Blackjack Mulligan, and they enjoyed roughly equal amounts of fame till daddy got busted for counterfeiting. Whaaaat?
Cowboy Bob Orton was more of a midcarder, probably best known as Roddy Piper’s fall guy, so I’d say Randy rose higher than he did.
Ted Dibiase did better than his father Iron Mike, but TD Jr left the profession pretty quickly. Similar to the Hennigs: Larry “The Axe” was big in AWA, and son Curt “Mr. Perfect” did better in WWF & WCW, but 3rd gen Curtis is a jobber.
The Anoa’i family is a yuuuuge wrestling family tree. Rikishi’s sons Jimmy and Jey Uso have won the tag belts several times. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has definitely fared better than Rocky Johnson.
What makes you say Dave Jr isn’t going to go beyond what his father did.
Fit is mostly known these days for hanging out with a leprechaun.
His kid is young and I wouldn’t be shocked if Fit actually told him to go wrestle in Japan first. Learn more than just ‘US style’…work yourself up the ladder there and then get the fat contract.
He’s currently a tag champ and gets to work with some of the best wrestlers in the world.
As for wrestlers that have had better careers compared to their parents…It might depend on your criteria of ‘it’
But Macho Man Randy Savage is one definitely of them.
Eddie Guerrero is another one. Oh and of course Bret and Owen Hart.
Oh and Vince compared to Vince Sr.? 
This era I guess you can say that Roman is already more succesful than his HoF father.
Wikipedia has a long list of multiple generations wrestlers. List of family relations in professional wrestling - Wikipedia
Depending on what is ‘it’ you can argue that several were bigger, lots are on the same level and many others are not.
For instance, Road Dogg and Natalya I’d put on the same level as their parent. Different era, different type of career but they sure were succesful.
Looking at that family page, I never knew Sam Houston and Baby Doll used to be married. Also, Shawn Michaels married one of the Nitro girls. I wonder how their paths crossed?
Señor Benjamin is Matt Hardy’s father-in-law. I thought he was his gardener. Maybe he’s both.
A few hours after posting that, while driving home, I thought “Oh shit, I forgot about the entire friggin Anoa’i family!”
I have to admit I’m really intrigued by the Foley/Zayn/Stroman storyline. Foley faked sending Zayn to SD in exchange for Eva Marie just to get Zayn pissed enough to face Stroman with the proper amount of rage. I really didn’t expect that development.
I had kind of resigned myself to Zayn staying in JTTS detail because he’s so good at putting his opponents over, but now they might actually book him a win over Stroman? I don’t think the big guy has been knocked down yet, much less pinned. Damn you WWE, you hooked me.
I however am getting really annoyed at the lack of pushing American Alpha. They know those guys are hot, they know they get a reaction, what the FUCK happened to “if someone has a hot hand, let them run with it!”??? Did Chad Bagels piss in Vince’s cornflakes?
I say it’s because “there can’t be more than 2 hot tag teams at any one time regardless of brand”, so Vince can’t see past New Day and Enzo and Cass.
Sure there are other champs and yeah they’re doing stuff, but no pushes.
If there is thought given to it, I think it’s a matter of they Wyatts having the titles now, so have them feast on at least one JTTS team first. The Hype Bros are perfect for that. (or were, depending on how bad Ryder is hurt)
Except they already got to #1 contenders spot and had it taken from them for no reason.
Geez, you could do a line drawing of an only slightly caricatured Onie Lorcan and use it as an illustration of a D&D monster. Match between him and the Glorious One was a Study In Human Variation.