The highlight of that entire segment was the look Perry gave the hard cam while hugging TK. Picture perfect.

The faces, 100%! The face he gave when they unmasked him was also brilliant.

My 8 and 5 year olds think that Nick Aldis should be fired for taking Carmelo Hayes over The Bloodline, Seth Rollins, Randy Orton, and AJ Styles among others.

Got to love WWE draft logic.

I don't know if this should go in the NFL Draft thread or this one, but I will say that seeing Tony Khan with a Bobby Heenan Era neck brace during the draft telecast legit made me laugh out loud. TK, Kayfabe King.

Had a close last call night at an independent wrestling show. We were sitting front row and a wrestler was outside the ring in front of us when another wrestler took off and did a running dive on him from the ring.

The problem became the guy on the outside didn’t catch the guy jumping, I did from my seat in the front row and the large man on the outside (300lb+) fell into my 5 year olds legs.

My 5 year old is fine just has a bruise on his foot but the big guy who was playing the face didn’t even check in him. The guy playing the heel immediately got up and hurried to the kid and made sure he was OK before he went back into character.

They really need to be careful when going into the crowd. It happened to me, about 14 years ago at an ROH show. Austin Aries against Kenny Omega. We were in the 2nd row, and 2 douchebags had taunted Austin Aries at previous shows. Omega ended up reversing an Aries charge outside the ring, sending Aries into the crowd, which was specifically designed to take out the 2 a-holes in front of us. But they carried him over like a wave, and Aries landed right on the chair where my 6 year old son was sitting. Thankfully I had seen this happening in real time and grabbed him and pulled him out of the way. It would have been an injury for sure, Aries hit the chair pretty damn hard, he was swearing.

One of the funniest ones was at Smash Wrestling probably in 2016. This guy called Muscle dove out of the ring, and with his momentum he accidentally clipped a 70 year old man who was nicknamed Santa because he looked like Santa Claus. The guy's chair just tipped back and he started to do this slow motion fall back, Santa was definitely going to get hurt. I'm a row back and I start pushing on the guy's chair to make it stop going back, Muscle pulls it from the other side to save the guy, and he ends up staying sitting and not falling down. During the intermission I bumped into Muscle and he thanked me for saving Santa, we had a good laugh. Christmas was saved.

The local promotion here does a lot of diving into the crowd. Fortunately, though, they limit it to specific areas and the staff is quick to move people out of the way.

It’s just annoying because I’ve put enough thought into it to realize that 90+% of jumps(in this promotion) happen to the hard camera side so we do not sit there and this jump was to the opposite side. Now I’m questioning where we should sit at this show period that we attend monthly.

How about 10 rows further back :confused:

I get it, but it would just be a totally different experience and also the kids wouldn't be able to see as all the seats are on "the floor."

As a veteran of countless indy shows, small enough to have no barricade/minimal barricades, I honestly don't know that there's THAT much thought put into where spots like that happen.

Obviously if there's a safety issue for them in one direction versus another then probably, but thinking back to the promotions I've visited that did spots like that fairly frequently the primary thought process (if one existed) was probably "where are the smarts sitting". There was a tendency to work toward/into sections where they knew they were least likely to encounter an issue but other than that it feels like maybe you're giving a little too much credit for forethought on their part.

FWIW.

I don't watch enough to fully understand his gimmick but that Joe Hendry theme song has been stuck in my head for a week.

The crowd in Lyon is absolutely apeshit crazy, one of the hottest crowds I've ever seen. Puerto Rico level.

Also, the French, unlike the US and Canada, are used to very big time soccer, so their chant game is top notch.

Crowd is just insane.

Meat & potatoes match in the main, crowd elevates it into a a solid 3.5 or 3.75 with no problem.

The crowd was like if Hogan-Rock at WrestleMania lasted 3 hours. Too bad it was such a predictable and mediocre show outside of the opener.

Weren’t people predicting the Wyatt 6 for this show?

They should do more of these destination PPVs. The crowds are always amazing.

Between this one, the two Saudi shows, Germany and Scotland later this year and Elimination Chamber being in Australia earlier in the year they are around half the PLEs being international this year.

NGL, if you like the Japanese style of slobberknocker match, Shingo vs Kidd for the NEVER Openweight wasn't bad. Not bad at all.

for those that wondered...

You weren't kidding. The spit was a great touch. And good lord I can't remember a match where chops were that vicious in a long time.

Nemeth and Finlay was pretty good too.

Is there such thing as too many Samoans? And Jacob Fatu hasn't even made his debut yet.

I did not expect to see Guerillas of Destiny in WWE.

And 6'7" Hikuleo has a NJPW contract that expires in July.

"Yo Dawgs, I heard you like Bloodline, so I got Bloodline in your Bloodline so you can watch the Bloodline vs the Bloodline"

(the only question is which one is Bloodline Black and White, and which one is Bloodline Wolfpac)

Yeah, seems pretty much destined to be where this goes

Botched the ref pull.

Tanga Loa debuta con Botch en WWE. Jodido eh.

pic.twitter.com/JC3cyTmKTz

— Falbak (@Falbak_) May 5, 2024

I just saw a clip from the big fight in Westlemania 40. I didn't know a Rhodes kid was wrestling at the top of the game. "The American Nightmare." I got a kick out of that.

Interesting how it came about, 'cause I don't think I knew whose idea it actually was until looking into it

Kinda feel bad for Minnesota as they seemed to allocate alot of resources to getting Wrestlemania to come to town next year and were the absolute front runner. Seems new ownership stepped in and decided it is going to be in Vegas according to Minnesota officials. I really hope this isn't a permanent move to hosting WM in Vegas each year but considering it's the home of basically everything to do with new ownership I guess it isn't out of the question.

On the scale of Wrestler Yikes taunts, this is the equivalent of Snuka off the top of the cage: Sheamus compares Gunther to well.. another Austrian.

https://twitter.com/EzhnoHowahkah/st...31653074485685

Big yikes. I always had M. Bison vibes myself.

Bummer for them for sure but I think I'm going to try to make it to my first Mania.

It's amazing what Vegas can handle event-wise. I was there last year while Taylor Swift was at the stadium and the NCAA Tournament was at T-Mobile. Hotels were not noticeably more expensive.

Without getting into too much detail, our company shares a factory with the folks who make the WWE metal products. And they shipped an enormous box of leftover stuff to us that included belts. No one really wanted them and we can't sell them for legal reasons. They're technically "flawed" which is why they weren't sent to the store, but the flaws are like a tiny bit of black paint missing from an area or a small crease that likely would have formed the minute you played with it anyway. But I figure I'd show what I nabbed.


Never held or been near a belt before. I'm pretty shocked at how heavy these things are and it's impressive that wrestlers just carry them around like it's nothing.


These are apparently close to the real thing. The main difference is the real ones have a leather strap while these use a fake leather (a pretty big difference in cost). The real ones also use cubic zirconium and these are just glass crystals (I don't know if you could even tell the difference). The plates are the same though and boy are they heavy.

There was also an NXT UK Champion one that I didn't photograph because I left it in my car. But it's gorgeous and I don't remember ever seeing it on TV before.

This tweet should have the video clip where that belt was introduced.


https://twitter.com/WWE/status/1220438424450224128

That's the one. It's a gorgeous design.


One thing with the pics I posted of the older belts is they are dual plated. It doesn't show up well because the lighting is crap but the silver parts are like a mirror finish. I guess they used it for a short period of time before going all gold. Can understand how having a mirror finish would not be good for TV.

RainMaker, please don't wear these over your shoulder to wrestling shows.

They do look amazing though!

I am very, very, VERY jealous of you, RainMaker :)

No chance of wearing them. My niece and nephew are into wrestling so they'll likely get them. My niece has become a huge Cody fan. Was going to grab her some Cody side plates for it but those things are $100.

Might keep the old ones though. The winged eagle is my favorite.

So WWE and UFC were just sold again to Silver Lake? I guess I'm confused by the wording as the sale to Endeavor was such a big deal and this is basically just a footnote at the end of an earning report.

Best I can tell this takes Endeavor private, but not TKO Group Holdings (which owns the combined WWE/UFC). This is the other Endeavor assets,
Endeavor Agrees to Silver Lake Buyout Deal Valuing It at $13B

Jesus Christ, Tommy Billington is a carbon copy of his uncle. The resemblance is wild.

Much like G1 Climax, there are matches in BoSJ that are just sneaky good/interesting but are destined to get lost amidst the big picture.

BoSJ Night 2, semi-main between Despy & Fujita feels like one of those matches to me. Really good work by both, subtle storytelling going on, and Despy getting a Korukaken crowd to cheer for his opponent is top notch work by a real pro. Unlikely to be a difference maker for the tournament outcome, just damned quality profressional wrestling.

Minneapolis to host 2026 SummerSlam | WWE

I get two nights of Wrestlemania. I don't necessarily agree with it but I get it. Who asked for two nights of SummerSlam?

I wonder if this has something to do with Minneapolis putting together a huge pitch for Mania, believing they had it, and having it snatched away for Vegas.

It's some kind of unique deal, they announced the 2026 location even before the 2025 one.

Ok, two things about Anarchy in the Arena.

One: on Dynamite, one of the folks on another wrestling board I hang out at said the equivalent of "Why is Darby Allin bringing out a flamethrower.. we all know he's not going to set some motherfucker on fire"

Apparently Coach Tony (who used to actually post on that board, and posted a big donation for the funeral of the site's founder last year) may still read the board, because you guessed, it, some motherfucker (Jack Perry) was set on fire.

And secondly, after Brawl In, did anyone think that in the year of our lord 2024, that Jack Perry would be a heat magnet (in all senses of the word?)

How can you be a heat magnet when your heel run has consisted of all time record low rated programs and attendance? I mean I get it. They turned absolutely nothing into something (even if no one wants to tune in to watch it.)

It takes time to go from building a star inside the building to your existing fans, and the word spreading enough to grow a fanbase.
Very few people can do that. I could go outside and start singing Seth Rollins' song, and I can pretty much guarantee that no one would know what I was singing. WWE grew their numbers the last several months because of The Rock.
The problem with AEW right now is that it's not cool. So no matter what they do, the same people will constantly be trashing them. They need to give the fans more reasons to tune in to watch the wrestling. And wrestling alone is not a reason.