Professional Wrestling (WWE, TNA, ROH, etc)

I wasn't a huge fan of the way they kept interrupting the interview with Charlie Sheen and all those Touts, apparently under the impression that people wanted to watch wrestling.

I had no interest in the actual wrestling but the Tout thing was awful. Letting socially awkward weirdos talk in front of millions is never a good idea. Just made me feel uncomfortable

I don't understand why Tout even exists. It's like Twitter, but less convenient, because you have to set up a camera and shit. If you're going to go to that effort, there's this thing called 'YouTube'. You might have heard of it. It gives you sixty times as much talking time, with no requirement that you use all of it.

yea but WWE doesnt have investment money in YouTube as they do in Tout.

Looks like AW is gonna be in trouble

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I'm not big on the Tout partnership either. On one hand it's kind of innovative to have that kind of fan interaction and response as the show is going on, but at the same time it feels intrusive, not the kind of thing they should be doing.

Looks like the third hour is going to be replays of previous weeks/earlier in the show. I think I fast-forwarded through more than I watched this week.

Also, a street fight and a no holds barred match are apparently different enough that you can have fans vote as to which one you'll have. Who knew?

Yeah, so far it seems like it's a waste of that third hour. Nitro strayed into that territory back in the day when the first of their three hours became something of a glorified pre-game show, before they ultimately cut back to two hours.

what a waste. half of smackdown is just replay videos of raw storylines. they need to make it more like ppvs with more matches or longer matches or both

It's a shame because Smackdown used to do a better job of being the "wrestling show", still furthering angles but better emphasising the in-ring product.

Booker T is the new GM of Smackdown. So that means he will leave the commentary team then?

Presumably. It might turn out to be a better role for him.

fhew, he's back baby

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I find some of the web series that the WWE puts in their Youtube channel quite "entertaining" which say something.

We have Zack Ryder to thank for that.

I was watching WWE Vintage Collection, and I've noticed that the Attitude Era WWF logo is allowed to be shown on full matches when I was watching Edge vs Christian at Unforgiven 2001. I guess it's pretty good news since the DVD's won't probably blur the logo now.

So AJ Styles is having a match in which, if he wins, he'll get a paternity test.

What the fuck, Jao?

Enjoy that storyline for the matches only, because it is trash (although Daniels is doing great promo work with it IMO)

That has been the one resounding negative of TNA lately, don't let it ruin the rest for you

I was watching WWE Vintage Collection, and I've noticed that the Attitude Era WWF logo is allowed to be shown on full matches when I was watching Edge vs Christian at Unforgiven 2001. I guess it's pretty good news since the DVD's won't probably blur the logo now.

Yeah, apparently they've reached a new settlement with the World Wildlife Fund. Shame it couldn't have happened years ago, when they were releasing the Wrestlemania and Summerslam anthologies.

I still don't get why they weren't allowed to use that logo, given that it doesn't say "WWF", and they were allowed to use all their other, almost identical, logos anyway.

From memory, around the time they introduced the scratch logo they also violated the terms of an agreement they had with the World Worldlife Fund and given the specifics of the complaint, they were able to continue showing the previous logo uncensored while censoring the scratch logo and mentions of the initials. Messy, complicated, and I bet Vince and everyone else within the company hated the situation as much as the fans.

From memory, around the time they introduced the scratch logo they also violated the terms of an agreement they had with the World Worldlife Fund and given the specifics of the complaint, they were able to continue showing the previous logo uncensored while censoring the scratch logo and mentions of the initials. Messy, complicated, and I bet Vince and everyone else within the company hated the situation as much as the fans.

Basically the WWE were limited the use of the logo in Europe, particularly merchandise. I also remembered that when people said "WWF" on screen, that was muted too for a short while. For example this below video at the 1:08 point. It's still weird to see the WWF logo now though lol. Although, anything with blood, is shown in black and white when they do a close up on their face. I imagine that's because the product is now PG.

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Ah, that's right. Then the mid to late 90s wrestling boom came and the notion of limiting the use of the logo on merchandise went out the window. Unfortunately, it blew up in their face.

lol at Summerslam Fred Durst showed the finger