That is one of the worst things they're doing with the midcard right now. Ryback cut an excellent promo Monday which explains why he's come back as a face, and it was on the fucking after-show. You can't fit that into Raw?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdk1S3ySgLk

10/31/2014 7:56:49 AM

^ if it was on Raw, it'd've been scripted by a terrible Creative team and the promo would've sucked

Quote :

"The promo that Vince cut to promote the free month of November is pure gold."

You could so tell that Vince knew what he was doing completely sucked.

10/31/2014 8:36:47 AM

so, Orton betrays the Authority at Survivor Series, right?

11/3/2014 9:01:16 PM

Glad Vince and Dean are still buddies.

11/4/2014 2:40:01 AM

^^Dumb as it is, definitely. Of course it all makes The Authority look REALLY stupid, considering Orton has dicked over their golden boy the last 2 weeks.

11/4/2014 9:06:49 AM

^ Heels are SUPPOSED to look stupid. It's one reason they're heels and not faces.

[Edited on November 4, 2014 at 2:58 PM. Reason : /]

11/4/2014 2:58:23 PM

That's true, but it'd be a pretty ridiculous stretch to have multiple Raws ending with Orton attacking Rollins or vice versa, and then acting like it's a surprise when he turns on the team at SS. At least have some illusion of subtlety about a turn coming.

[Edited on November 5, 2014 at 8:40 AM. Reason : .]

11/5/2014 8:39:44 AM

I totally get what you're saying, but if you expect that to be enough logic to sway them, you haven't been watching enough Raw.

Ambrose and Cena get teamed up, Ambrose leaves the building because he doesn't care. The next week they're teamed up again and it's totally normal. There's no more logic in that than in being surprised that Rollins' and Orton's issues will come up at SS.

11/5/2014 4:11:16 PM

heard the best trivia today

who was the last WWE champion that is currently wrestling on the roster week-to-week (so not Lesnar or Bryan) and his name is not Cena or Orton?

11/5/2014 4:40:34 PM

first guess would be Sheamus...is he back full time?

[Edited on November 5, 2014 at 4:48 PM. Reason : Wikipedia says The Miz... LOL]

11/5/2014 4:48:09 PM

rumor has it The Authority is on the way out because HHH has breeded Steph again

11/5/2014 7:00:52 PM

The idea that Steph isn't an even better heel with a baby bump is ridiculous.

11/5/2014 10:08:22 PM

They're very image-conscious. Vince doesn't want to be on TV anymore because he thinks he's too old. Can't see them letting her on TV pregnant.

[Edited on November 5, 2014 at 11:01 PM. Reason : /]

11/5/2014 11:01:30 PM

TNA Impact has two weeks left on Spike. They're still looking to sign a new TV deal.

Lucha Underground has started on the new El Rey Network. It's being broadcast in English on El Rey (low viewership) and in Spanish on UniMas (much higher viewership). This is very well-funded, it has Mark Burnett of Survivor fame as a producer. Mexican promotion AAA are involved combined with some ex-WWE guys and guys around the American indies. The first show is headlined by a very good match between Johnny Mundo (John Morrison) and Prince Puma (Ricochet under a mask). They're also wanting to do man-vs-woman matches, but not as a comedy gimmick, and had one in their first episode.

Episode 1 (just 45 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQjDQ2z4H4c

Jeff Jarrett has signed a deal to distribute with American cable and satellite companies on January 4th next year the Tokyo Dome show for New Japan Pro Wrestling on PPV. This is pretty much the Japanese WrestleMania. The show will be on PPV live and also 7pm that Sunday night. Jarrett, some guys from ROH, and A.J. Styles and the Bullet Club will be on the show for American interest. Jarrett is negotiating with ROH to promote the PPV on their TV after ROH does their Final Battle PPV because ROH would be done for the year but would have 2 or 3 TV shows left for the year before they get back going in the new year.

New Japan are also looking to produce broadcasts of their shows in English for world-based consumption in the future, and the owner of the company is very interested in getting Jim Ross to commentate.

Smackdown is moving to Thursdays in January 2015.

[Edited on November 6, 2014 at 9:38 PM. Reason : .]

11/6/2014 9:29:31 PM

Ryback PUSH!!

[Edited on November 11, 2014 at 8:28 AM. Reason : /]

11/11/2014 8:18:30 AM

I'm waiting for someone in the main event to ask for a cage match so they don't have to put up with another bullshit interference DQ. Of course, WWE faces aren't that smart.

11/11/2014 1:25:21 PM

Quote :

"After a totally dead first hour, I mean crowd unbelievably dead, Vince McMahon came out for a cameo and berated us all for being a dead crowd, and told us to have some fun dammit. He mocked the crowd & City name & said other UK cities were louder. This was a quick 2 min promo on the stage and not taped for tv. Never seen this happen at a taping before, which shows how bad it was. Thanks Stephen Lyon St Helens England UK "

Well Vince, you can create a better show.

Also, came out today that Jim Ross will be announcing in English the January 4 Tokyo Dome show for New Japan Pro Wrestling that will be available on American PPV.

11/11/2014 5:06:46 PM

Khali is apparently no longer with WWE, doesn't look like a layoff as much as just quietly retired. Which is fine, because it hurts for him to walk with how big he is.

TNA may be going to Destination America, a Discovery Channel-owed station, in January. It has half the reach of Spike but the highest rated shows on the station do 400k viewers. So Ring of Honor looks like they'll become #2 wrestling promotion in the U.S.

Also, if you've not watched Lucha Underground and are sick of WWE, give it a shot. It's really well put together.

[Edited on November 14, 2014 at 12:05 AM. Reason : .]

11/14/2014 12:05:05 AM

Slater may have just had the line of the night haha

11/17/2014 9:47:00 PM

Finally watched the triple threat from Smackdown. Damn good match. Watch it.

Also Heath Slater rules.

11/18/2014 1:24:02 AM

Sting tonight?

11/23/2014 12:57:55 PM

He's not stung or stinging, he's Sting!

11/23/2014 1:56:37 PM

11/23/2014 2:26:47 PM

HO LEE SHIT

That main event was awesome. That's how you do a free PPV to get people to buy the network. Not sure whether I marked out more for Sting or for Big Show punching out Cena.

11/24/2014 9:00:21 AM

^Eh, Big Show makes turn #1446346. Seeing Sting on WWE TV gave me chills. Still looks nimble enough at 55 from the brief moments I saw (never watched TNA so I have no idea what his work rate may be now).

11/24/2014 9:18:25 AM

Sting looked worse last night than he did the last time I saw him in TNA. that bald spot... As fun as it was, the moment of him and HHH felt waaaayyyy too drawn out and took me out of the moment.

11/24/2014 10:25:16 AM

ha the dirt sheets finally struck with the "broken clock" analogy

11/24/2014 12:23:47 PM

^^^ He's in great shape for his age (mid-50s).

11/24/2014 12:33:36 PM

^^^^Don't care about Big Show whatsoever, just the fact that Cena wasn't the last man standing.

Which led into Dolph Ziggler being the MVP of that match.

11/24/2014 12:40:26 PM

Dolph has been the Sole Survivor twice now.

Miz holding both belts while Mizdow held air belts was awesome.

AJ's mic work is totally underrated.

THE ANONYMOUS RAW GM IS BACK!

11/25/2014 3:37:55 AM

I'm OK with the Larry the Cable Guy appearance, solely because it brought the return of Santino.

11/25/2014 7:44:04 AM

Quote :

"AJ's mic work is totally underrated"

No doubt! That post match promo after she lost to Brie last night was great.

11/25/2014 8:44:26 AM

so C.M. Punk has made Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling Podcast the #2 podcast on iTunes in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, #1 in the UK, and #4 in Germany that's also since been uploaded at least in part to Youtube

he did a 2-hour-long interview on Cabana's show and stated the following, from Bryan Alvarez's Figure Four Weekly Newsletter:

Quote :

"Punk has clearly put as much as he could behind him, as he was fairly reserved throughout, only raising his voice when it was really warranted. And while there was a ton of pro wrestling political bullshit that made him hate the both WWE and the business in general, his departure from the company was all about his health. A disturbing number of summaries on wrestling news sites spent most of their time on wrestling political bullshit, with many either ignoring the medical issues or glossing over them. If you haven't listened to the podcast yet, you need to. Hearing all this in Punk's voice is crucial. But anyway, it goes something like this: No surprise even though he never really went public about it, but the company rushed him back alarmingly quickly from his various knee and elbow surgeries. That's why his elbow was taped increasingly heavily for years. Dr. James Andrews cleared Punk to return from his late 2012 knee surgery several weeks early over the phone to WWE medical staff without consulting or examining him. Keep in mind his first match back was a TLC match on Raw that had originally been scheduled to main event that year's TLC pay-per-view. Dr. Chris Amann, WWE's current primary road doctor, basically refused to diagnose a concussion suffered right before (as in a day or two before) the November 2013 European tour, and passive-aggressively asked Punk if he felt he could work the tour. Punk spent the entire tour with terrible post-concussion syndrome, vomiting and dry heaving after every single match. Meanwhile, Punk suddenly developed a growth on his lower back that was covered by the waistband of his trunks. Amann said it was probably a fatty deposit. He asked Amann to cut it out as is par for the course for him and past WWE doctors to do (for some reason, the wrestlers enjoy watching, so they have a high awareness of how common it is). Amann refused for some reason. After recovering from the concussion, Punk started to feel awful constantly, worse than he ever felt before. He talked about this right before he left in January, as he had a Q&A the weekend of the Royal Rumble at Wizard World Portland. At the time, he said "There's a lot of miles on me. Right now, I feel a lot better than I have. There was the three months there, for a while, where I felt really, really horrible, and then we were trying to figure out what was wrong, and I think I was literally getting a MRI a week, and blood work, and all this stuff, to just try to narrow down exactly what was wrong with me." He chalked it up to exhaustion and needing a break. As explained on the podcast, Dr. Amann was constantly prescribing him Z-Paks, the popular five-day course of the antibiotic azithromycin, which caused him to, well, crap himself on SmackDown (he tweeted about it and WWE made him delete it). He suffered a concussion in this year's Royal Rumble and somehow passed a "bullshit test" (presumably Dr. Joseph Maroon's ImPACT test) while texting Cabana and listening to something on his headphones. Amann wouldn't cut the growth out because he would have needed to put Punk on antibiotics (Punk had been on antibiotics on and off for months, so you can imagine how he reacted), then they wanted him to go to the ring and run the ropes (ostensibly his exertion test), and he flipped out, leading to him going home with Vince McMahon's blessing, but not actually quitting (the gossipy part is that he was fired months later on his wedding day after he inquired about getting an expired, uncashed royalty check reissued and new royalties being held up). He went to AJ's doctor, who diagnosed his "fatty deposit" as a full-blown MRSA (antibiotic-resistant staph) infection, telling him he should have died."

WWE's only statement to Yahoo Sports:

Quote :

"WWE takes the health and wellness of its talent very seriously and has a comprehensive Talent Wellness Program that is led by one of the most well-respected physicians in the country, Dr. Joseph Maroon."

Alvarez later corroborates the working while maybe with staph not for Punk but for another wrestler, Hardcore Holly, that recently released a book and writes about it.

Quote :

"Nothing denied, nothing actually addressed. So how do we parse all this if we believe Punk, which is pretty easy for a number of reasons? Chris Amann comes out of it looking the worst for obvious reasons. He misdiagnosed and improperly treated a highly contagious infection that not only came close to killing Punk, but could have wiped out the whole roster. And why? So he could make his bookings when he was dead? Punk repeatedly characterizes Amann as lazy rather than incompetent or caring only that he made his bookings, which I found...interesting. While Punk claims that he got everything he wanted "and then some" from WWE and just can't give the specifics of the settlement, that and the distance he kept anyone else at WWE away from the MRSA misdiagnosis made me wonder if he was restricted in terms of how he could word his accounts of what happened. It was as if you expected him to deadpan something like "Yes, WWE literally almost killed me" and it never came. I'm not the only one who felt something was off, but it could also be nothing. Besides the wording of WWE's statement and fact that Punk dealt with his issues with WWE intelligently (in the sense he didn't talk about his situation until he had a legal settlement from the company), there's something else that gives his allegations an air of truth: the same thing happened to Bob Holly when Dr. Ferdinand Rios was in Amann's role. In his book, The Hardcore Truth, Holly wrote about what happened to him the day Eddie Guerrero died. He had found a bump on his underarm that wouldn't go away. "By the time I got to Minneapolis, I felt like I had the flu. Dr. Rios checked me out backstage and said I had a staph infection and it had spread to the forearm. He told Johnny Laurinaitis that I was really sick and needed to go to the hospital to get it taken care of. Johnny said that I was needed on the overseas tour, so the hospital would have to wait. I'm not one to complain but even I said to Johnny, 'I'm as sick as hell, man.' Johnny insisted I go overseas. I thought it was just another case of working hurt—you work through it and it goes away eventually. If I'd refused to go, they would have probably fired me. Maybe that's how Eddie had felt." By the time they got to Germany, Holly's forearm had swollen up to twice its normal size. Rios attempted to drain the infection, but it didn't help; the infection had spread to the bone and Holly was hospitalized: he had MRSA. Surgery didn't work, so they put him on Vancomycin, the "last resort" antibiotic. It worked. The doctors told him that arm would have been amputated from the shoulder down if it hadn't, and quotes one of them as saying that "That man [Laurinaitis] is the reason you ended up in the hospital and nearly lost your arm." Holly even wrote that "Because they'd gone against Dr. Rios's orders, the company was very liable and they knew that they had set themselves up for a huge lawsuit. I could tell because they were kissing my ass the whole time I was off, telling me not to worry about anything and that they'd get me anything I needed." By the way, you know how Laurinaitis said Holly was needed on the tour? He was in a battle royal every night."

11/29/2014 10:26:38 AM

11/30/2014 10:26:43 PM

Good grief, that Punk interview basically confirmed most of the worst shit the IWC believes about the WWE. Not sure how enthusiastic I'm going to be about Raw this week.

12/1/2014 8:45:11 AM

holy shit not even close to the right thread

[Edited on December 1, 2014 at 8:15 PM. Reason : .]

12/1/2014 8:15:32 PM

What is the purpose of the new day gimmick?

12/1/2014 8:56:06 PM

so Vince won't be accused of being racist, even though an all black group screams racism thanks to the PC police

12/1/2014 8:58:08 PM

Are they 3 Kirk Franklins? So far all we know is they wear blue, dance, are smiling, and embody black church goer stereotypes

12/1/2014 9:32:48 PM

Here's the thing that's missing from New Day:


TESTIFY

[Edited on December 2, 2014 at 8:34 AM. Reason : .]

12/2/2014 8:33:22 AM

CM Punk signs with UFC!

12/6/2014 10:33:17 PM

That almost might make me watch UFC...almost. Doesn't seem like a good health decision, but he'll definitely get paid.

12/6/2014 10:46:29 PM

Lesnar's a free agent once WrestleMania is done, so he could be back in UFC too.

12/6/2014 11:31:41 PM

One million buys. Legit.

12/7/2014 1:58:41 AM

Quote :

"Doesn't seem like a good health decision, but he'll definitely get paid."

so he left WWE because of the concerned of his overall body condition and he wants to go the UFC? Where they purposely punch people in the face?

12/7/2014 9:47:53 PM

Don't think UFC would make the fight, but Punk has been challenged by Jason David Frank, better known as Green Power Ranger.

12/7/2014 10:56:55 PM

12/12/2014 12:14:43 PM

NXT show was awesome as per usual. Another Steen/Generico December program awaits.

12/12/2014 12:14:59 PM

^^strange I was just watching that the other day

12/12/2014 3:08:31 PM

I read that they're going to make Finn Balor's face/body paint a full-time thing. I really hope that's not true as the "big fight" feel of it was a lot of what makes that special.

12/12/2014 3:50:33 PM