Official Wrestling News Thread

Mod_Ro said:
I think people want to mix it up with the traditional Survivor Series match


As long as either of the makes sense for the storyline going into SS
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I never thought they should have went away from the traditional 5 in 5 elimination style match.

War Games shouldn't be every year, should only be used for big feuds and not just putting random faces and heels for no reason.
 
Chi-Town B said:
I never thought they should have went away from the traditional 5 in 5 elimination style match.

War Games shouldn't be every year, should only be used for big feuds and not just putting random faces and heels for no reason.
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The traditional match was getting way too misused at times so I get why war games was used but it shouldn’t be used at every SS
 
I’m gonna assume it’ll be Seth’s group vs whoever the fuck this year. And some random shit will be thrown together for the ladies as usual. They really should throw in at least one Survivor Series tag match tho. I get them doing War Games every year cuz it some ways it worked for WCW, but the matches themselves seem more like a danger to the wrestlers than anything else.
 
Chi-Town B said:
Ain't that the thing for Survivor Series now?
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It shouldn’t be

Also when they first announced Petco Park as the location this year I think a lot of ppl assumed we was gonna get a traditional 5 on 5 this year cause there’s no place to hang the cages.

but HHH can’t resist so I’m guessing they’re gonna build a structure for the cages to hang so we can get another year of the same safe ass war games match with the same spots including IYO jumping off the top YET AGAIN
 
I knew we were getting war games again

Only thing I miss about the traditional 5 on 5 is when they made it a big deal and had both shows invading eachother but it won't work cus they basically said fuck the brand split

Its hard to get excited for it when everybody can come and go as they please from show to show. If they go back to 5 on 5 they need to keep those mfs separated until Survivor series time
 
lol i thought it was already confirmed last year or the year before War Games is the new Surivior Series match going forward which im 1000% fine with. that 5 on 5 tag shit was getting lame expecially when they would have Raw vs Smackdown....the last few times was cheesy as fuck
 
Someone is going to die.

It is, unfortunately, just a matter of time.

When I was a young kid, my family and I were visiting a now-defunct NYC event called Queens Day in Flushing Meadow Park. It was a day of carnival games and attractions - everything from dance troupes to a Medieval Times-style joust to CPR classes from The FDNY. As we were leaving for the car, my mother stopped, looked at me and said, “Isn’t he one of the wrestlers?”

There, inside a carnival tent that beckoned you with a handwritten sign, was none other than what in my mind was one of Hulk Hogan’s most formidable foes, Big John Studd, signing in order to get people to come and learn about Brooklyn-Queens cable (Time Warner would later acquire them). My parents took us on the short line and we were ushered in to meet Studd, who didn’t seem Big, but Gargantuan in person.

I am sure the meeting was perhaps two minutes in reality, but as a kid, it was magical and lasted forever in my brain. He kiddingly joked about my younger brother hiding his Hulk Hogan t-shirt, talked about Bobby Heenan when asked and was just the nicest guy a kid could hope to meet in running into a television star ten minutes from your home.

I will always think of John Studd in high esteem, because without that meeting and his kindness, who knows how much further I would have fallen in love with professional wrestling. I have no idea if I’d be writing here or even caring about what the next Wrestlemania main event is. All I know is that in many ways, that meeting for me in 1987 was the kickoff of me loving pro wrestling so much more, because of that interaction - and somewhere in my files, I still have the autograph he signed on, of all things, a pamphlet for BQ Cable. There’s no photo, but a memory that even as I head into my 50s, I do cherish.

That memory was free and thanks to my mother spotting Studd as we were heading to our car in the parking lot after a long day. It was decades ago. Today, fans line up at massive conventions like Fanfest or Comic-Con, plopping down lots of money for photos and autographs as they are quickly whisked through lines and at times, even yelled at to move along. I doubt the quality of the experience is anywhere near what my family was lucky enough to have when my siblings and I were young, but there’s a good reason for that.

There isn’t a day that goes by where some WWE performer doesn’t have their life threatened in some way, and security measures have to be taken, because sooner or later, the law of averages is going to catch up and someone is going to die.

I can’t even say someone is going to be hurt or traumatized, because we’ve seen enough instances in the recent past. Bret Hart and Nattie Neidhart were tackled by a fan who leaped out of the crowd in the Barclays Center and tackled them in the middle of a WWE Hall of Fame ceremony. As satisfying as it was to watch Cash Wheeler deck the attacker, that doesn’t make up for the fact that Bret Hart, a cancer and stroke survivor, was physically assaulted before thousands of fans live and many more watching on streaming devices.

Seth Rollins was tackled and attacked by a fan on a live Raw in the Barclays Center (Brooklyn, what are you doing?) because some fan believed a fake Rollins online had wronged him. Sure, the fan was arrested, but to this day, I have no idea what the outcome of the case was, and neither does anyone I’ve asked. Is this fan walking around heading to The Barclays Center Summerslam weekend?

Professional wrestling exists in a world that transcends and cascades back and forth between fantasy and reality and the best performers have always been the ones who made you believe or made you angry - The Terry Funks, The Roddy Pipers, the Ric Flairs - all of whom had been attacked at different points of their careers by fans.

We all know the stories of Blackjack Mulligan or Ole Anderson nearly dying at the hands of fans with knives. There was even a fan who tried to shoot Jake Roberts at The Spotatorium in Dallas during a WCW event. Tod Gordon recently recounted a story on his podcast of having to talk fans out of assaulting Bill Alfonso in 1995. Heels regularly had their cars overturned or set on fire in the territory eras. None of it is excusable but there are some fans who will look back on that as when “real men” were involved in wrestling and how “real heels” got “real heat.”

The reality is this, however - as insane as that behavior was, it was somewhat of a controlled environment and while there were certainly near-tragedies, thankfully they were a rare occurrence and for the most part, the pro wrestlers got to go home.
 
Today, however, thanks to the Internet and social media, going home isn’t even an option for some talents because even when they shed their public persona, they have to worry not just about who they may cross paths with in public, but who’s going to break into their homes.

Over the weekend, details came out surrounding a Canadian man named Shawn Chan, who “allegedly” believed that WWE star Liv Morgan had wronged him online in an online forum, so he acquired a passport and flew to the United States the same day it was issued, made his way to Florida, where he entered Morgan’s backyard, attempted to open the doors to her house, picked up her property and left a note so disturbing that Morgan contacted WWE security with the video footage from her property. Chan was arrested by federal authorities outside the WWE Performance Center, but what if he had entered the PC? What could he have been planning? Worse, what if Liv Morgan was home? What if her mother or another family member answered the door? It could have been tragic.

Sadly, this isn’t even the first instance of such a thing happening. Former WWE star April Mendez wrote in her excellent memoir Crazy is My Superpower about frightening instances of hotel staff trying to enter her room and being followed from a gas station all the way to an arena by someone. Either of those situations could have ended tragically.

Former WWE star Sonya Deville literally lived through the worst case scenario for being a public figure, having a deranged stalker break into her home with all the intentions in the world of kidnapping her. The stalker, now serving many years in prison, had relentlessly sent messages to Deville that were ignored. By not getting the reaction he desired online, the stalker intended to harm Deville, who by the grace of God, escaped her home with friend and then-WWE star Mandy Rose.

Deville’s stalker was caught and is in prison. Liv Morgan’s is awaiting arraignment. The attackers of Bret Hart and Nattie Neidhart and Seth Rollins were at least arrested, but what is going to happen when there’s a moment that someone is assaulted or worse when they least expect it? If someone knocks on your door, you answer it, but what happens if that person pulls out pepper spray or a knife or a gun? You certainly hope you’d be able to defend yourself or be safe, but there’s no way to know until you’re in the middle of a dangerous, unthinkable situation and for many, it would be too late before they could even process it.

In 1989, an actress named Rebecca Schafer answered her door and on the other side was an obsessed fan named Robert Bardo, who had been stalking her for several years. Schafer had, as many actors and actresses did in that era, answered his fan mail. He showed up trying to see her on a TV set but was thrown out by security. He returned with a knife a month later. He was ejected again, so obviously, he was known to be a threat - but that didn’t stop him from finding, even well before the advent of the Internet, Schafer’s home. He arrived with a gun and when she answered the door, expecting a script to be delivered, Bardo murdered her.

Now think about the wealth of information that can be found online with relative ease and imagine being a WWE talent traveling the world and going in and out of hotels and restaurants and arenas. Not only are you living in a fishbowl, but there are websites, social media accounts and more that are pretty much tracking your movements in real time. My brother, the same one John Studd teased as a kid, texted me yesterday showing me a Facebook group his friend belonged to that showed where a WWE star was getting their Ubers in Pittsburgh yesterday. His response and my own were the same - this is insane.

When WWE stars landed in Pittsburgh yesterday, on a private chartered flight from Saudi Arabia, there was a crew of fans waiting to try and get autographs and photos. Now, I’m the biggest Mark Hamill fan you can imagine, but I can’t even envision the idea of standing around a baggage claim in an airport hoping to get a photo with a jet-lagged and exhausted Luke Skywalker. Yet, here they were, lined up with photos and toys and whatever else will make them Ebay riches, asking talents who had just flown across the world, hours after taking bumps, to sign their lives away and pose for selfies.

One talent told the fans, “No thank you.”

One of the fans immediately barked back, “Why not?”
 
The fact that the question is asked out loud by anyone who is allegedly an adult is the proof of the problem. We live in a world where far too many are seeking the mental or emotional reassurance of their worth through their pretend relationships with celebrities. When they don’t get it online, or believe they have been wronged by someone impersonating said celebrity, it escalates in their brain because emotionally, there was always the potential of something setting them off - and sometimes, when it comes to celebrities, they’ll never know who is set off or why until it’s too late.

There is no doubt that social media has exacerbated all of this and made it worse. There are all sorts of stories of disturbed people entering the properties of names like Taylor Swift and Sandra Bullock, but while that is equally inexcusable, Hollywood names often have their own security, something even the average WWE talent cannot provide for themselves.

WWE and AEW have their own security team and there are outfits like Atlas Security, but for the most part, WWE and other wrestling talents are off on their own, the last vestige of vaudeville type performers running from town to town. Unless you are one of the few who have earned and received a private plane or bus, you are traveling amongst the masses, and that means you never know who you are running into - or who is seeking to run into you, that you’re not even expecting.

In the past, the era where I grew up watching WWF, it was relegated to a few hours a week on television and then it was gone until the next weekend. Now, with social media 24/7, endless streaming and YouTube accounts and TikToks and TV shows on every day plus PPVs, pro wrestling has never filled more hours weekly for the average person who wants to watch it, which means, sadly, for those who are likely to become obsessed or hinge their importance on one fantasy subject, there’s no off-switch.

They are going to be more overstimulated than a child walking through Disneyland, going from Twitter to Discord to Twitch to YouTube to whatever. We’ve all seen the online responses to articles or message board authors over the years that make you tilt your head and wonder what they are thinking. These are those who may end up one day being the most dangerous person your favorite pro wrestler ever encounters.

There is so much vitriol aimed at WWE talents online these days, it’s disturbing as someone who cares about pro wrestling and sees it as a third-party to witness. A few weeks ago, it was all about what an awful person Charlotte Flair was. This week, you’d think CM Punk had been the new Chris Benoit because he decided to apologize to Saudi Arabian fans. Sami Zayn was being compared to Hulk Hogan because Karrion Kross lost at the Night of Champions PPV. Jade Cargill was attacked because how dare she be booked to defeat Asuka? Somehow, on social media, these are all criminal offenses and everyone is a vigilante looking to deliver justice.

Everyone has an opinion about their sports, their celebrities, their movies they care about, but they don’t own these things. Star Wars fans can, unfortunately, be pretty unhinged at times, which saddens me, but watching some of the attacks on Punk for going to work Night of Champions and then, playing a babyface to the crowd before a show he’s supposed to be a babyface character on, has been mind-numbingly insane - especially given it’s not like Cody Rhodes, John Cena, Jade Cargill, Asuka, etc. were all receiving the same level of anger. Is CM Punk truly a terrible person or have fans bitten too hard into the persona he portrays on television, much as they did when Roddy Piper and Terry Funk were terrorizing their television screens?

No matter what the opinion is, Roddy Piper was stabbed several times over the course of his career and I don’t think CM Punk, or anyone, deserves that treatment, but if you look through some of the discourse online, you would think CM Punk deserves to be marched to the electric chair, which is insane.

And, that my friends, is the crux of the true problem facing WWE wrestlers and other talents today. It’s discussed openly in locker rooms about how scary the online communities are, the threats that are shared, and how they have to have their heads on a swivel all the time, even when they are traveling together, because you never, ever know.

I have friends and family members who have shared similar fears, but they work in law enforcement and have admitted that every time they pull over someone for a traffic violation, they have to worry about whether someone is going to attack or pull a gun on them, because you just never know what could happen. The difference between them and your favorite pro wrestler is that at least those in the law enforcement world are armed.

No matter how tough these talents may or may not be, no matter how much they entertain and inspire or even enrage you, none of them deserve the worry, the PTSD, the assaults, the threats or the fear that they live with regularly, just because they want to put on a costume and entertain you.

If I saw Big John Studd at a fair today, my first thought wouldn’t be awe. It would be: where is his security?

I implore everyone in a position of power in WWE, AEW and beyond to implement everything they can to help protect talents on the road. Counsel with sports teams to see what they do to protect their players. Add more security to meet talents at airports and/or oversee hotels. Put everyone in the same place. Hire drivers with security experience to transport the talents. Minimize the potential of risk on the road.

I am sure there are a lot to the security protocols that WWE and others already enact that the average person will never see, but the real worry to me, is that when some of these talents go home or even more onto the independent scene - where security is haphazard, unless Atlas Security is in the house - that is where the real danger will lurk, in the shadows, where no one can see it coming, because the worst threats are usually the ones that are unknown until it's too late.

Someone is going to die.

It’s just a matter of time.

That is my fear.

I pray it never comes to pass.
 
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