Sports Entertainment

Kirun said:

Not nearly as good as Hogan's turn, but still good.

To really put Cody over now they need to have Cena + Rock just beat the everliving shit out of him at WM, "steal" the title, and the buildup to him winning it back at SummerSlam with a surprise "help" from somebody like Stone Cold, HHH, etc.

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The surprise help will be from Roman if they're doing Roman vs Rock next year, and it'll be from Stone Cold if they're doing Cody vs Rock next year.

Quite frankly I'm not that into this whole thing, after clamoring for it for decades like everybody else. It just feels like The Rock is totally upstaging Cena's big moment and making it all about him. Cena is less Hollywood Hogan and more Rikishi in 2000 working on HHH's behalf.

Things that annoy me:

RAW last night probably had the biggest viewership in years, and...proceeded to not advance the story at all, instead recapping the heel turn about 50 times until it kinda stopped feeling cool. The whole show reminded me of the Dynamite after Brawl Out, where AEW popped huge viewership and fan interest to see how they'd address the very real backstage brawl between CM Punk and Kenny Omega etc, and instead they just mentioned it a few times and then did a normal episode.

Rock goes out after the PPV and does a press scrum patting himself on the back for playing the Final Boss character so well. Never stops annoying the fuck out of me how that keeps happening with wrestlers.

Rock pinned Cody at last year's Wrestlemania to set up their match this year, which isn't happening. So Rock just gets a win over Cody right before his big moment, for...what reason? Now he overshadows Cena's big moment, for... what reason? Guy is worse than Hogan in WCW.

Just seems like everything's all about getting The Rock over for when he runs for president in 2032.

The December PPV is called Ruthless Aggression and will be in Cena's hometown, make of that what you will. A good place for his last match, perhaps, considering those words were said by him before his first match.

Wrestlemania's much later than usual this year and actually coincides with the weekend before Cena's birthday.

Funny side note: Cena and I have the same birthday, same hometown, and same favorite restaurant. The coconut shrimp is particularly great

MusicForFish said:

Fuck yeah

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Lex Luger's been through a lot of shit so he deserves any recognition he gets. He had to live with Elizabeth dying and him being a part of that (bringing the durgs into the house and all that). Gottdamn.

Kaines said:

You mean this PLE that was created by a Redditor and isn't an official WWE PLE?


Right now, the last official PLE for WWE main roster is Survivor Series expected sometime in November.

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This "Ruthless Aggression PLE" thing was already going around well before that reddit post.

Found an interesting chart that most people have probably already seen, but I've never seen one that gets this close to the present before:


Looks to me like the 1998 level was the legitimate buildup of hardcore audience that would stick around, while 1999 and 2000 were full of "current thing" viewers who bounced as soon as it wasn't as much of a fad. It's always been weird to me that there was such a dropoff after the move to TNN and I think that just coincided with the fad dying down. What's the lifespan of most current thing fads? This one was basically two years which is a pretty impressive duration.

The 2014+ decline being due to cable is particularly notable (and is the same reason why AEW shows don't do as well as TNA shows did ten years ago, despite being a vastly better drawing company for PPVs and live gates). Moving to Netflix might be big for offsetting this.

Armadon said:

This was pretty good

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Watching that poor kid's heart break on live TV, lol.

TheNozz said:

So I wasn’t watching wrestling around the time of the infamous Scott Steiner math promo

did he ever cut similar promos, like with different subjects?

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Not really no. However most of Steiner's promos ever have been pretty great. Guy gives no fucks. He's wrestling's equivalent to Mike Tyson. You never knew if he was going to fly off the handle legitimately and kill somebody. Guy brought a goddamn tiger to a show one time. Another time he DID fly off the handle backstage and beat the shit out of DDP in a shoot brawl. Guy lived his character (to an extent). One of the greats and incredibly under-rated even now. Surprised he's still alive given all the 'roids he did