And we just watched Dean Ambrose dislocate his shoulder and pop it back in on live TV. Wonder if he’ll be out.
That was legit? I figured it was kayfabe because they ran the backstage angle on it. Or was it during that and I missed it?
Dean Ambrose already had an elbow scope scheduled with Dr. Andrews. That was just a way of writing him out of the script, if necessary.
Apparently Ambrose is so reckless, it’s hard to tell if his injuries are a work.
Anything interesting happen on Smackdown last night? I got Battlefront 2 for Christmas from my mother-in-law and spent all night playing that instead.
DBD told Shane he did the fast count to protect Shane from himself, and Shane bought it.
New Day dressed up as toys, Rusev and Aiden were Evil Santa and an emaciated snowman, much silliness ensued.
Dolph said we didn’t deserve him and left his title in the ring.
More promos for the all-woman Royal Rumble and Stephanie takes all the credit.
AJ, RKOrton and Shinsuke took on Jinder, KO and Zayn, Zayn got pinned as usual.
That all sounds about right.
I heard on a podcast that War Machine, Ricochet and a female to be named later (Tessa?) are signing in the new year.
Please be true and please go to NXT. I’m talkin to you Ricochet, you’re my dream wrestler I haven’t seen in person yet.
I love War Machine and am glad to see them go to NXT, but I’m a little worried they might get swallowed in the WWE glut. NXT already has monster tag teams with AoP and Heavy Machinery. I’m guessing SAniTy will get called up soon after losing the belts, so maybe Killian Dane and Hanson won’t get confused with each other.
As Prince Puma, Ricochet was fucking amazing and got over through pure talent. He had Konnan and Vampiro as mouthpieces, so he didn’t have to do much promo work. WWE ought to be able to teach him mic skillz at the very least. I’d love to see him work with junior heavyweights like Aleister Black, Adam Cole and Oney Lorkin. He worked so well with big guys like Matanza and Mil Muertes, so he could probably rock the house with Lars Sullivan.
Nope. Nothing interesting has happened on Smackdown for a long time. Crash of the Champions was a waste of time. Monday’s Raw was a great show, could have gone to it but I don’t feel like cramming myself into seats at the Dunk. Then Tuesday another lame Smackdown. Hard to believe these shows come from the same company. It’s not like I consider Raw to be all that great either, Smackdown may just be their way of making it look better.
They certainly have a lot of talent now, but so much of it is just in the mid-range of journeymen and they don’t know what to do with that. And they’re stuck with all these forms of multi-participant matches because they can hardly find two guys who can make a real main event match on their own.
I haven’t caught the latest details, but last I heard they were having a bad year, PPV sales way off of course because you can get all those for just $9.99 a month, and that may be overpaying because the network subscriptions are down also. But that info is a few months old, maybe they’ve caught up some since then, but it still sounds like the PWB are clearing the deadwood and can’t figure out where their future lies.
And then I heard something the other day about the trying to raise the XFL from the ashes. Hasn’t Vince pissed enough money away yet?
I’m pretty sure WWE’s last financial report indicated they had their best year ever, money-wise. Domestically, they may be attracting less people, but they’re getting more money out of those people, while increating international numbers.
As for the XFL, Vince recently started a new company to explore other sports and entertainment opportunities, and they have re-filed trademarks for both the XFL and for some other football-sounding league name.
Theory is that they may be looking to capitalize on much of the current discontent with the NFL, particularity since Vince’s buddy Trump is one of the chief NFL detractors.
As I said elsewhere, the only potential market for another football league would be a ‘junior professional’ league in secondary marketplaces. Hell, Columbia, South Carolina isn’t a big town, but they regularly get 80,000 to Gamecocks (college) games. If they had a CFL level pro team in town, they could probably average half that without even trying. Throw in patriotism and Christianity, prayers before games, music acts at half-times and they could do decent business across the south and parts of the midwest.
But that wouldn’t be Trump destroying the NFL out of spite, it’d be just Vince creating a B-level football league.
Do you live in Columbia Chi? I used to go to NCSU, and I never liked going there for football. The fans always threw crap at us. They still did it when they played Clemson this year, throwing crap into the end zone whenever they didn’t like a call. At least Clemson fans ignored us whenever we played them at their stadium, but Gamecocks fans have been and always will be dicks.
I actually had this thought this morning. I think it’s way too smart of an idea, but what if the XFL isn’t going to be the new NFL, but rather the new NCAA. Vince can market it as “You can play football without those stupid college “classes” and you’ll get paid for it!”
That will have more of a market than a pro team will.
What I’ve heard could certainly apply only to domestic ticket sales and PPV sales. For years WWE has been increasing it’s profits in every other area, merch sales, movies, and video games. I think their only consternation is maintaining the expensive wrestling show productions that form the basis for the rest of their product line.
So, who’s hyped for Wrestle Kingdom next week? The show airs live from Tokyo next Wednesday night/Thursday morning at the ungodly hour of 2 AM Eastern/11 PM Pacific, with live English commentary on NJPWWorld (only 999 yen a month!), and it’s got a pretty stacked card;
- IWGP Heavyweight championship: Kazuchika Okada © vs. Tetsuya Naito
- IWGP United States championship: Kenny Omega © vs. Chris Jericho (no DQ)
- IWGP Intercontinental championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi © vs. Jay White
- Fatal four-way for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight championship: Marty Scurll © vs. Hiromu Takahashi, KUSHIDA, and Will Ospreay
- Hair vs. hair death match for the NEVER Openweight championship: Minoru Suzuki © vs. Hirooki Goto
- IWGP tag team championship: Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. © vs. EVIL & SANADA
- Cody Rhodes vs. Kota Ibushi
- Gauntlet match for the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag championship; Bullet Club (Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, & Bad Luck Fale) © vs. Ryusuke Taguchi, Juice Robinson, & Togi Makabe ; CHAOS (Beretta, Toru Yano, & Tomohiro Ishii); War Machine (Raymond Rowe & Hanson) & Michael Elgin; and Taichi, Takashi Iizuka, and Zack Sabre Jr.
- IWGP Jr. Heavyweight tag team championship: Roppongi 3K © vs. the Young Bucks
- New Japan Rumble, participants TBA
I’ll be up late watching.
Didn’t the USFL try that, when it signed Herschel Walker one year before he was eligible to play in the NFL? (IIRC, back then, juniors couldn’t get into the NFL, but Walker had already won both a national championship and a Heisman by his junior year.)
The problem with a league that takes in underclassmen is, what happens if it goes out of business after one year? Since they are professional football players, they cannot go back to the NCAA, and the younger ones would still be too young for the NFL.
I still would not be surprised if the whole UFL was just a cover to get players signed to be represented by Alpha Entertainment. “Yes, we have some of the best young players in football signed, but unfortunately our league will not be starting up for logistical reasons, so they are free to play for the NFL…with each of them giving Alpha Entertainment a 10% cut as required by their contracts, of course.”
999 yen = $8.83
Verrrrry tempting
I know Jericho will job to Omega, but it will still be magnificent.
War Machine + Michael Elgin is fucking scary, as well as the three Tongans.
I hope Sabre Jr. gets squashed. “NI’m Ne Narry Notter nof nestling.” Wanker.
I honestly don’t think Cody can keep up with Ibushi, but I’m sure he’ll make up for it with good ol’ American cheating.
Good that the former CJ Parker found his niche.
Marty Scurll is just too cool for words. That being said, I hope he never comes to WWE. Creative would ruin him. See CJ Parker.
WhatCulture Wrestling loves Tetsuya Naito. They opine that he captures the snotty millenial heel to a T. Or should that be ティー?
I know precisely nothing about NJPW other than that the marks freak out about it. I don’t want to buy it myself, but I would love to watch it without anyone telling me anything about it because I would love to go into it with an open mind and see if it really is as great as everyone says it is. Oh well, laziness wins the day.
STC, you can see some NJPW stars on Ring of Honor. They frequently exchange talent. Does Sinclair Broadcasting have a station in your area?
AXS, which you probably have in your cable subscription, runs New Japan on Friday nights (with JR on commentary!), and they’ll be showing Wrestle Kingdom in bits and pieces in the weeks after the event itself, so you can check it out there if you’re so inclined.
Aside from that, as has been mentioned, New Japan has a talent-sharing agreement with ROH and their top guys appear on ROH’s PPV and weekly TV frequently. I first got into New Japan myself when I went to Death Before Dishonor in Vegas last year and got to see Okada and Tanahashi and Naito and EVIL and Haku’s kids live in person.