Brock Lesnar returns to Raw for the first time in three months for a show-long angle, culminating with an attack on Kurt Angle and a teased split with Paul Heyman. Plus, Ronda Rousey will wrestle on next week’s show, Bobby Lashley sings, a great match between Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre & more. We also discuss the deaths of several performers over the weekend with Brian Lawler, Nikolai Volkoff, Brickhouse Brown & Tracy Caddell passing away.
Wai reviews the season finale of Total Bellas (Season 3 Episode 10) Nikki Bella and John Cena call it quits, Cena guilt tweets & Daniel Bryan is cleared to return to wrestle.John reviews the post-Slammiversary episode of Impact with the follow up to the PPV, Austin Aries challenges Anthony Carelli, the debut of Scarlett Bordeaux, the end of Madison Rayne, throwback match involving The Young Bucks & more.
Wai & John review Being The Elite (Ep. 113) featuring an ALL IN dream match announcement, Nick Jackson turns 29 years old, Taka Michinoku’s “tell all” about the Val Venis angle, Kenny Omega’s secret to going unbeaten in the G1 and The Young Bucks’ new children’s book revealed. The Double Shot is available for all POST Wrestling Café patrons.
Anyone else a little uncomfortable/annoyed with how John and Wai seemingly go into detail analyzing wrestling deaths particularly how much attention WWE draws upon them on the show?
These are losses of human life.
Yet you spend plenty of time each time judging how much airtime and attention they are given on the show seemingly ranking how important these people are as a result of it. Seems rather morbid to me.
Was you Brain Christopher’s life worthy enough for a video package? Not according to Wai Ting. How is this a discussion worth having and where are you going with it?
My point of view is that they were mentioned in some way and that provides a huge show of respect to the performer. Simple as that.
Whether they get video packages with wrestlers talking about the performer throughout the show…or just a passing mention by commentary that’s one and done…its a huge show of respect to acknowledge this person to the viewers. If they choose to give more attention, fine…if they don’t that’s also perfectly acceptable. Either way the fans know and the fans can then proceed to further honor this person in whatever way they see fit.
Favouritism and ranking of importance are automatically shown when the WWE provides varying levels of public response to death. The goal of the discussion is to analyze why those varying levels of treatment may exist.
I believe Nikolai Volkoff had a more “Hall of Fame”-calibre career than Brian Christopher. Please don’t confuse that as my judgment of either man’s life.
I totally disagree that “it’s perfectly acceptable” not to at least make mention of two well known performers from their history passing away.
Volkoff was not a small figure in WWE’s history. He headlined The Garden lots of times, sold it out w/ Sammartino, was part of a Saturday morning cartoon, and was a memorable heel during the 1980’s. Christopher was a 30 year veteran, who was incredibly popular during the promotion’s peak period in 99-01 - so yes, I do expect more than a graphic at the start of the show.
The WWE has volunteered themselves to be the curators of history every year at the Hall of Fame when they have their ‘Legacy Inductees’ and that should extend to making mention of two well known figures on their largest broadcast, and a graphic doesn’t cut it for me. At the bare minimum, an acknowledgement from the announcers to address their careers and contributions should be standard practice. A video tribute would be nice, but I can also appreciate that time could have been limited to put together two pieces.
Go search for Nikolai Volkoff and Brian Christopher and tabulate the mainstream news outlets that covered their deaths and contrast that to the WWE’s coverage of them on their own broadcast.