So at the Smackdown after Wrestlemania, Roman Reigns ordered the Usos to go over to Raw and take RK-Bro’s tag titles for themselves. This lead to several weeks of showdowns between the groups and the announcement that at Backlash they’d be having a title unification match.
Then last night at Smackdown they had the contract signing, and when it turned into a brawl because that is the only thing that ever happens at contract signings on WWE TV, Roman came out and tore up the contract he wanted them to sign in the first place, and then had Paul Heyman talk Adam Pearce into making the winner-takes-all match into a six-man-tag with neither title at stake, thereby throwing the entire month’s worth of storytelling out the window and having Roman act out of character for no reason.
I’m certain that this must be exactly what was planned all along, and it has absolutely nothing to do with TMZ leaking the dashcam and bodycam footage of Jimmy’s most recent DUI the other day, and that even if it were they definitely couldn’t have done something more sensible like have the other team win the match.
Of course it had nothing to do with a year old DUI. The family pressure is on Jimmy not to fuck up and be the little bitch in real life. I don’t think Roman is in condition to go solo in a main event. The 6 man match could be a good show, better than we’ll ever see Roman do one-on-one.
I went on Twitter and saw that Vince McMahon was trending, so I feared the worst…
But no, Ryback’s been talking shit about him.
“Vince McMahon, like most promoters has an insatiable urge to have control. He had no control watching his mom get beat up as a child, which is a horrendous thing for a kid to witness, as their whore mom tries to make ends meet. Vince has failed to evolve. Fuck you old man.”
Shut the hell up, you racist, misogynist, overrated transphobe.
And when asked to maybe walk back that statement just a little, Ryback doubled-down. And he wonders why he isn’t relevant to anyone anymore, except maybe his fellow racist incel followers.
Modern house shows are a far cry from the ones of my youth, where youd be lucky to get a main event like Hacksaw Jim Duggan vs. Ted Dibiase and an undercard with matches like Boris Zhukov vs. Jake Roberts’ brother or Demolition vs. two anonymous local jobbers. It’s been a few years since I made it to one, but they pretty much always had guys like Cena/Punk/Bryan/Roman in the main event and multiple title matches which would invariably end either with the babyface champ retaining or a DQ so the face could beat the heel champ without switching the
I was spoiled. My local WWF wrestling venue was Madison Square Garden (MSG), and WWF always brought their A-game to MSG. If memory serves, WWF ran MSG the second or third Tuesday of every month, and the MSG show would start the next touring circuit (so once they headlined MSG you would start seeing the title match in Boston, Philadelphia and other WWF cities). Plus, even when I couldn’t go (and far more often than not, I couldn’t go because too expensive), the Garden shows were carried live on MSG Network (which was a local cable channel back in the day), so I got to see years of monthly MSG shows. This included my most heart-breaking match when the Iron Sheik defeated Bob Backlund (my favorite back then) for the WWF title. Surprised the sh*t out of me. Didn’t see it coming at all.
My local venue as a child was the San Diego Sports Arena, which, as my previous post implies, was considerably further down the totem pole. These days, however, WWE often runs Raw/Smackdown out of that same venue, and I think they do the occasional B-PPV there. I’ve gotten considerably luckier in the past decade seeing house shows in Seattle and Portland - there was one I went to in Portland in either 2016 or 2017 the night before a PPV which was basically just a dress rehearsal for that show, with all the same matches in the same order, except that they didn’t switch any belts in the title matches.
We get Raw/Smackdown up here about once a year since WWE doesn’t tour the west coast that often in general, but we almost never get PPVs - we had one in 2011, one in Tacoma in 2019 (Stomping Grounds, which was just plain awful) and an NXT special in Portland just before 'rona.
I saw NWA Mid-Atlantic wrestling at Dorton Arena in Raleigh NC before WCW bought them out. I also saw minor league hockey and roller derby matches there. Nowadays it’s mainly used for conventions and walk-through converts during the NC State Fair.
I don’t suppose you know why the women’s tag match wasn’t also for the title, especially if the champions were going over. Personally, I think whoever entered it just left it out, but from a house show perspective, no reason not to make it a title match.
In any event, that Reading show, except for the fact that it had no title changes, would have made a damn good pay-per-view event, at least from the perspective of the names on the card.
The toddler heckling Sean Spears is a 3rd dan in Jiu-Jitsu.
Taz explains teriyaki to Ex.
Ex comments that Julia Hart did a quick outfit change before her match. Taz explains it’s the same outfit, just different makeup.
Dances with Angelico
Taz did a Dante flip when he was The Tazmaniac in 1992.
Taz’s school had sirens instead of bells.
All things are possible if you’re going to be vague about it.
The Main Course:
“The Hollywood Hunk” Ryan Nemeth (with “Pretty” Peter Avalon) vs. Dark Order’s John Silver (with -1)
Ex: Do you think “The Hollywood Hunk” Ryan Nemeth is attempting to join the #Jade Brand with the green hair?
Taz: Well, it’s not really green hair. It’s more of a Carolina Blue. We’ll get to Nemeth’s hair in a moment. John Silver is introduced
Ex: OK, so you think it’s a Carolina Blue. To me, it’s like more of a Seafoam.
Taz: No, Seafoam is more of a green, OK? Seafoam Green is a true color, not Seafoam Blue, so you should learn the Pantone colors.
Actually, Pantone has both Seafoam Green and Blue.
You should have omitted “glorified”. It is a run-of-the-mill episode of Raw.
AEW @ the UBS Arena in Belmont still has lots of tickets for sale, starting as low as $29. Was about to go, on a whim, as it’s about 10 - 15 miles from me. Start the Ticketmaster process, 2 tickets for $58, total cost just over $100. F’n ridiculous. Didn’t finish that transaction. I hate hidden fees, and I especially hate hidden fees that are nearly the price of the ticket. As you can’t avoid the transaction fees even going to the box office, because Ticketmaster sucks sweaty, smelly, disease-infected testicles, advertise the f’n tickets at their actual costs.
