The Wrestling Thread: WWE WrestleMania XL - 6/7 April 2024

The whole show wasn’t like this unfortunately but a brilliant idea to have SmackDown emanate from the Rolling Loud music festival in Miami, Florida. Loved when WCW did this type of thing outdoors (Road Wild) and I can’t believe only now has WWE decided to give it a go (they saw how well Dynamite looked on the cruise, maybe?). Visually just completely different from what WWE normally do. Not sure how much the hip hop crowd was engaged with WWE (they may have been piping in either fake crowd noise or from the other arena) but hopefully WWE realises these outdoor events in summer make the show look far more interesting than normal and start booking these things in front of actual wrestling fans.

RAW had a load of problems (at 3 hours I have my doubts they’ll ever produce a quality show from start to finish ever again), but the best week of wrestling programming from the yanks in I don’t even know how long.

WWE has ran NXT shows from Download Festival before, I think they were just house shows though not televised.

Cumberdanes wrote:WWE has ran NXT shows from Download Festival before, I think they were just house shows though not televised.

Aye I was there the first time they ran shows at Download. It was when Joe, Balor, Nakamura American Alpha, Andrade etc. were all on the roster so it was great to see them. Also saw Bobby Roode make his debut when no one knew he had signed. Triple H came out to thank everyone for coming too.

twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1419643772103692288

The United States of America Vs. Vince McMahon will delve into WWE during the 1990s, at the time Rupert Murdoch had purchased the New York Post. For years, Post writer Phil Mushnick regularly hammered McMahon in his column with headlines like ‘Legislators Give WWE A Free Pass On ‘Roids’ and ‘McMahon Skips Through the Cemetery’ eventually capturing the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

McMahon, Kevin Dunn, WWE Executive Producer & Chief of Global Television Distribution and Blumhouse’s Jason Blum, Chris McCumber and Jeremy Gold will serve as executive producers on the project

God RAW was dire. It took 1 week. Mostly boring, occasionally nonsensical, plagued with rotten commentary, repetitive stale formatting, unfunny humour, and loaded with talent that aren’t over in the slightest and never will be. This was back to being one of those shows which felt like it was 9 hours long where wrestler after wrestler were made to look like losers. T-Bar, Mace, Keith Lee, Shelton Benjamin, Cedric Alexander and all the 24/7 chasing jobbers may as well all be released tomorrow.

The crowd while very lively at points, were also noticeably restless at others. There’s also a undercurrent of boos developing for Nikki A.S.H. At the moment it’s mostly drowned out by cheers, but the type of cheering which feels almost obligational in nature. Give it a few more weeks and Groundhog Day bouts though…

AEW was absolutely immense this week. I suggest watching it.

I’ve started watching AEW now, started from the Road Rage show on the ITV Hub

Are ITV going to be showing Rampage do we know? Or is there a better place to watch AEW other than on ITV?

Not seen an announcement yet from ITV or AEW in regards to Rampage, but it'll be joining AEW Plus on Fite.TV. It's currently available for $4.99 a month and allows you to watch Dynamite Live and on-demand thereafter in HD. They also stick with the matches and commentary during TNT's commercial breaks.

Highlights of AEW Dynamite are available on AEW's YouTube page, and full episodes of Dark and Dark Elevation are also uploaded there every week.

KK wrote:Not seen an announcement yet from ITV or AEW in regards to Rampage, but it'll be joining AEW Plus on Fite.TV. It's currently available for $4.99 a month and allows you to watch Dynamite Live and on-demand thereafter in HD. They also stick with the matches and commentary during TNT's commercial breaks.

Highlights of AEW Dynamite are available on AEW's YouTube page, and full episodes of Dark and Dark Elevation are also uploaded there every week.

Cool, I’ll have to check Fite TV out, do they show the PPV live as well?

Also, is the Dynamite broadcast on ITV edited down? Watching on the hub the shows last 90mins

Yeah, Fite also airs the PPVs for $19.99 each. YouTube airs the pre-show on PPV nights.

The ITV4 airing used to show the matches in their entirety if they went through a commercial break (in the US they're shown on TNT using picture-in-picture, which as far as I'm aware ITV only uses for horse racing) but these days they just show commercials.

Usually the only edits to ITV are with the commentary (ITV-specific dubs heading into commercial breaks) and promotional considerations. Maybe if there's something they deem to be too violent they might cut it. There were certain things Sky Sports almost always cut or freeze framed with WWF (such as baseball bats and glass).

ITV1 does show an hour edition of Dynamite on Monday nights prior to RAW.

Looks like there’s potential here for WWE programming making a return to Sky in the UK via the launch of Peacock:

Later This Year, Nearly 20 Million Sky Customers In UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland Will Receive Peacock at No Extra Cost with Sky Q, NOW, and Sky Ticket Subscriptions

Ad-supported Peacock programming will be available to all Sky TV customers at no additional cost, bundled as part of the entertainment membership on NOW and Sky Ticket, and include a wide array of content, including The Office, Rutherford Falls, Saved by the Bell, Equalizer, Young Rock, Kardashians, Suits, Downton Abbey, and more. Over time, Peacock will continue to enhance its catalog of content drawing on the best Peacock Originals as well as NBCUniversal’s iconic library of series and movies.

Just like in the US it would mean the closure of the WWE Network in those regions and content migrated over to Peacock.

Now TV is £9.99 so there wouldn’t be a price increase there, but you would have to pay £5 more if you wanted it in 1080p and presumably without adverts. 4K is coming to NowTV shortly too, though WWE hasn’t upgraded to that yet.

That would be a shitter, everything I've heard from the US is that Peacock is a massive step down from the network.

I'm mainly excited about this for young rock and saved by the bell.

I could have done without the main event (I’m not sure Jim Ross was too enamoured with it either by the end) but that aside this was an excellent episode of Dynamite. You can really sense they’ve got momentum behind them now. The climbing popularity as the weeks go by of Hangman Page reminds me of DDP in late 1996 through 1997. The intro they did for him and the Dark Order in the 10 man elimination tag was brilliant.

The fact they also announced they’re running The United Center (a large venue) for a 1 hour Rampage the night before SummerSlam indicates they must have something massive planned for that episode. “The First Dance” is the tagline. CM Punk seems obvious, but maybe there’s even more surprises lined up beyond Bryan and Punk.

Talking about that main event......

Domino's Disavows AEW's Bloody 'Pizza Cutter' Spectacle on TNT

Domino’s Pizza is disavowing any involvement or knowledge of All Elite Wrestling’s (AEW) bloody telecast in which one pro wrestler seemingly wielded a pizza cutter to slice his opponent’s head open.

The fast food giant might also pull its advertising schedule from AEW, which airs Wednesday nights on WarnerMedia’s TNT network.

Domino’s was not involved, nor had any foreknowledge, of the gory scene on the “AEW Dynamite” main event Wednesday night that showed wrestler Nick Gage apparently slicing Chris Jericho’s head open with a pizza cutter, spokeswoman Jenny Fouracre-Petko told FOS Thursday night.

TNT followed the blood-stained AEW action with a commercial for the family-oriented pizza brand in which Domino’s workers are seen slicing up a fresh pie for a delivery.

“We share the concerns expressed about this incident and the content of this TV-14 rated program, and are assessing our advertising presence on it going forward,” said Fouracre-Petko.

AEW posted a video of the bloody main event on its Twitter feed Thursday.

“Just like he promised, @thekingnickgage is CARVING UP @IAmJericho!” the wrestling promotion tweeted to its 644,000 followers.

https://frontofficesports.com/all-elite ... wrestling/

The least dangerous object in the match and yet the most visually disgusting was the pizza cutter. In fact they kicked the match off with the cutter slicing Jericho's arm (who then went off and bladed his arm). What was cutting Jericho's back up immediately was the glass, which appeared to have holes drilled in parts of it, some of which ended up in the crowd. I remember Mankind going through a load of glass sheets at Backlash 1999 in the Boiler room and Sky cut it out in the Wednesday replay.

I can't recall whether it was Ofcom or Sky's response, but what was frowned upon was the use of household objects that can easily be recreated at home. You're not going to find many kendo sticks, kitchen sinks or blatantly rigged trash cans lying around, but cricket and baseball bats, knives, cheese graters and the like are readily available. Or as Tony Schiavone once hilariously said on commentary about the cookie sheets (Uncensored 99, I think), they sound great but don't hurt.

I wonder how much will make the ITV edit later tonight.

Quite fascinated to see if ITV edit it too. Will have to stick the match on the ITV Hub over the weekend just to see.

Chris Jericho tweeted happy birthday to his wife the other day and it’s caused a number of people to notice how ~~insane~~ strong her opinions are. You can check it out at Jessica22035107. Pretty obvious how she’s spending her days while Jericho’s away…

Anti mask, anti vaccine, anti lockdown, hates Biden, pro Trump, conspiracy theorist…the whole shebang!

Bray Wyatt has been released.

Reavus wrote:Bray Wyatt has been released.

Absolutely shocking. Unless he's asked for his release I just don't get it.

The Wrestling Thread: WWE WrestleMania XL - 6/7 April 2024

Who is online

Affiliates