The Gaming Den

Brie Bella straight murdered Liv Morgan.

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/10 ... 5498943488

Women's Revolution!

Is there a legit "paying money for it" way to watch Quintet without UFC Fightpass? I don't want to give a cent to Dana White, but actual submission-based grappling that's largely Catch as Catch Can (with a side of Judo, Sambo* and BJJ) sounds like my jam. Especially seeing as it was founded by the Gracie-Killer, Sakuraba.

*Itself basically a fusion of Judo and CaCC

I think Taker might actually be a walking corpse now.

So 2018 was a funny year for testicles.

You know, I was tempted to just leave it at that, as a throwaway statement. But let's have a recap:

• AJ Styles and Nakamura going absolutely ham on each others' plums
• Daniel Bryan winning the title by hitting Styles in the cock
• To Ru Yano being himself
• Switchblade making it clear he's a heel
• El Desperado and Taichi representing Suzuki-gun in New Japan Pro Dick-Punching
• To cap it off, Martin Kirby won the Defiant Internet Championship via dick-kicking

There have been some great moments, great matches and great storylines in wrestling, the usual horrifying injuries and apparently also the worst Raw ever, but really let's just focus on the balls.

(For the record, my favourite match was probably Suzuki taking the IC title and also Tanahashi's kneecap. Favourite moments included two occasions of people halfway murdering Goto (before he picked up the win thanks to the referee halting the match long enough to recover, no wonder people punch them out), two occasions of legit catch wrestlers (Suzuki and Davey Boy Smith Junior) schooling ZSJ, and Chuckie T flipping out against a referee in one match, and in another match no-selling a shinai attack and chasing Jado out of the prefecture.)

So I don't know much about wrestling, but I did see a John Oliver segment on it, and am now an expert.

One thing, however, I don't understand, is why Roman Rains or whatever so dispiled?

Roman was reviled or despised because he was Poochie the Dog. If you tell people "You like this, this is the good popular thing that you like!" over and over again people tend to rebel against it. It's like how every big pop idol reaches an inevitable period of cultural pushback. Where it becomes cool to say you hate Britney or Bieber or whoever.

Compounding that is the fact that wrestling really does have winners and losers in the real world. If a character wins a lot they get paid more and as people lose more they get paid less and eventually will leave the company as they aren't a draw anymore. So Roman being pushed as nigh invincible for years and years means that if you had any character you liked besides Roman Reigns you would inevitably be in a situation where your favorite character would be in a month long build with the invincible Roman Reigns which would end with Roman crushing them every single time.

Not everyone hated Roman, some people (often young people) really liked him because he's the Charizard of wrestling and was the biggest and the strongest. But if you liked anyone other than that one guy you would sour on the guy crushing everyone without effort for many years.

As a non-fan, I'm still curious about what makes Roman a failure as manufactured champion as compared to previous big time face champions. Did he not pay his dues on the way up? Does he lack in ring charisma? Is his gimmick weak?

Of the three members of the Shield, the other two already had indie cred, whereas Reigns was an internal WWE choice and just shoved in there (Vince replacing someone else with him). And then of the three, he was the one gifted with automatic success.

His promo skills were notoriously bad, but let's be fair, you can say the same about AJ Styles and people love him. Still it doesn't help - and he was kind of protected when he had a team, but when he went solo, he didn't have a manager or advocate.

Every success felt like it was simply a manufactured victory for his destiny, and no matter how much the fans turned against him, Vince's response was to force him further down everyone's throat, to put him into even bigger things and give him bigger victories and accomplishments.

The biggest face champions that people remember, other than perhaps Hulk Hogan, were not brought in with a destiny laid out, they just became big-time and the company went "The crowd love this guy, we need to do something with him".

So basically, he's a Mary Sue?

Josh_Kablack wrote:Did he not pay his dues on the way up?

In a way, their obsession with proving he deserved the top spot proved his undoing.

You see, Roman's biggest problem simply came down to momentum. None of the things that have previously been mentioned are enough to sink a babyface on their own, but there's a difference between getting pretty damn over and being a Austin/Rock or hell, even a Cena level babyface that can carry the company around on their back for the better part of a decade. So when Roman failed to get over the hump on schedule WWE compounded their mistake by having Roman beat Daniel Bryan--the most recent beloved underdog babyface to win the title--to "prove" he had earned his title shot. Which, of course just kinda made people sad rather than prove anything because wrestling is in fact scripted and all you're proving is that you're sticking with what amounts to a poor casting decision. Roman ended up with a lot of "signature" victories that were actually pretty good matches but left fans feeling at best ambivalent when his hand was raised because he just beat one of their personal favorite wrestlers.

I was honestly kinda surprised to see them make such an elementary mistake. I mean, yeah, sure, Hulk Hogan beat everyone they put in front of him... which is why they waited until the Ultimate Warrior to put another babyface in front of him. FFS, even fucking Stone Cold--the man considered the ultimate tweener by many--got perhaps his biggest crowd reaction by helping another face win the title! If Roman didn't annoy me so much I'd call it kinda sad.

Josh_Kablack wrote:As a non-fan, I'm still curious about what makes Roman a failure as manufactured champion as compared to previous big time face champions. Did he not pay his dues on the way up? Does he lack in ring charisma? Is his gimmick weak?

His gimmick being weak is an interesting take because in a sense it's true. Roman was the classic "Big Man" of a trio team and he was over as hell when in that trio. The Big Man is always popular for the same reason high flyers are always popular. The other two members of your tag team (that are smaller actually fitter guys) can do a lot of work in the match and then have one or two moments where they finally tag the big guy and he demolishes for a couple minutes before tagging out (because in the real world he's tired cause jumping around as a 270lb man is very hard).

When Roman went solo and left his trio his in ring performance went from being the awesome part of a match to being viewed by a lot of people as having a pretty thin repertoire of moves. Big guys have to be handled carefully and do best as looming scary background threats because the look of a 6'4 muscleman staring someone down is awesome but the reality of watching that muscleman have to do a bunch of restholds and long laying-and-breathing spots is significantly less awesome. The truly successful huge guys of history were always used more for their ambiance than their in-ring performance. There is a reason the Undertaker and Kane have spooky themed powers and stood around holding skulls and shit and people love them but Big Show who was just themed as a big athlete isn't thought of nearly as highly despite definitely being a better athlete.

Long story short big guys look great but perform worse and Roman was taken out of his role as "silent enforcer" and put into the role of "main star in a match every night" and it went poorly. To his credit he's clearly worked very hard on his in-ring performance over the last few years and looks much better now but people's impression of his solo run being not great matches was already solidified.

In other news, the orgy of wrestling that was Mania weekend is finally over. GCW affiliated shows (except maybe Joey Ryan's) and DDT put on insane events, the NJPW parts of the G1 Supercard rocked the house in, NXT was NXT and Mania sent the fans home happy-ish.

Now they may have fucked the finish to the main event, but they didn't fuck the winner.

I watched a little bit of the Supercard. NJPW needs to break up with ROH, it's not good for them. But there were some decent matches.

More importantly, Josh Barnett's Bloodsport was amazing. My favourites would be Killer Kross vs Davey Boy Smith Junior (who holds recent victories in legit catch wrestling and is sorely underutilised in New Japan), which had a lot of technical skill, some power and a bit of cheeky heel stuff, and of course the main event. Because Barnett vs Suzuki is a thing of beauty.

I was going to go to Starrcast II to meet/greet the Undertaker. He canceled.

They say never meet your heroes. Guess I won't.

Game On,
fbmf

For what it's worth, WWE forced his hand on that one. Maybe he was pre-emptive in signing up for it before checking with Vince to see if it's okay to visit a place and say hello to people, but I'd say most of the blame there lies with McMahon. (As with most things)

Koumei wrote:For what it's worth, WWE forced his hand on that one. Maybe he was pre-emptive in signing up for it before checking with Vince to see if it's okay to visit a place and say hello to people, but I'd say most of the blame there lies with McMahon. (As with most things)

I saw that when I researched it. I traded in Vegas for a Comic Con where he's making a (presumably Vince approved) appearance.

Game On,
fbmf

Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired.


People are getting hurt and I don't care if lapsed fan casuals don't understand how aging works.

As sad as i was to see Sting go, he knew when he had to quit.
Undertaker really should have gone after having gotten his revenge on Bork Lazor.
As much as it pains me to write this.

Oh yeah, WWE are celebrating Pride Month by holding another event in *checks notes* Saudi Arabia.

In less decrepit news: local shitposter wins battle royale.

Whipstitch wrote:Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired. Undertaker needs to stay retired.


People are getting hurt and I don't care if lapsed fan casuals don't understand how aging works.

He and Goldberg both.

Game On,
fbmf

Apparently they talked them down to Undertaker and Goldberg, at first they wanted Yokozuna. Who died in the year 2000.

Is there a wrestler who comes out to the Benny Hill theme song?

Edit: I just saw a picture of the Undertaker. Does he dye his hair with shoe polish?