Roundtable: Airing Of Grievances

Juan Bautista

1. Parents need to either cook or teach their kids to cook. I worked at McDonald’s for the previous year. I understand wanting to grab a burger, but these damn rug rats left a mess every time. The parents aren’t any better. Over the course of multiple visits, these people have cussed me out over pie, the size of the cups and wanting different fries while stuffing their faces with the fries they already got. The GM wasn’t any good, but that’s a story for another time.

2. Jason Garrett needs to go. Losing one game by 2 points, ok, that happens. When it happens again, tough luck. But over the course of the season losing all but one game by one point is just inexcusable.

3. The Red Sox have not made a big free agent signing. They missed out on Cole and Strasburg and they are risking losing Mookie Betts.

4. BoJack Horseman will abruptly end in a few short days.

5. Uber has drivers that shouldn’t be on the app. I have had drivers hit the curb while going 40 and they don’t know how to use or read a GPS.

Matthew Smith

1. First thing I have to get off my chest is that horrible, horrible Hell in a Cell finish. I know everyone in the world has covered it in great detail, but this was seriously horrible. It put a big stain on the PPV. If you bring it up, you won’t remember that Becky and Sasha went to absolute war or Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns flying around to beat Harper and Rowan. The only thing you remember the terrible red lights and the most confusing finish in WWE in the past 15 years.

2. Brock Lesnar. Don’t feel like I have to go in much depth here, but, yeah, taking the title off Kofi just to set up a feud with Cain that fell super flat was terrible. What’s even worse is the WWE Title match at WrestleMania is likely going to be Lesnar vs. Cain III. These two don’t need the title to have the “rubber match;” they need a proper build and a set-up like Lesnar vs. Goldberg – short match, lots of action and we all move on. The WWE Title should be positioned toward an Owens, Ricochet or Drew McIntyre storyline, so it gets the belt back on a year-round performer.

3. AEW’s women’s division. They do seem to be coming along a little bit, but where is Riho? Where is your Women’s Champ at? Who is threatening to take her to the limit? Because all I see right now is Brandi giving people haircuts and a few random matches here and there. I understand they have a lot of talent, but you have to keep building them up and have Rhio watch matches or something. AEW likes to take shots at WWE’s tag team division for being so poor. Well, the reason for it is the champs never get seen. New teams come weekly, then just disappear and the matches we do get are assigned to the pre-show. Well, that sounds like AEW’s women’s division right now. AEW Dark gets a lot of women’s matches, but I don’t think I’ve seen the Women’s Title since it was won, and I can’t think of a single woman knocking the door down for a title shot.

4. Using Roman’s cancer as an angle. As someone who lost their grandfather to an almost eight-year battle with cancer, I didn’t like anything about the Dean/Seth angle and dragging Roman’s battle into it. Part of pro wrestling is to escape from reality, and at the end of the day, I know Vince wanted to keep Roman on everyone’s mind, but this was tasteless. I’m very glad Roman made a full recovery and is kicking ass now, but when those lines were said and pitched, he was still undergoing treatments and his tomorrow wasn’t promised. These storylines should be left in 2019.

5. The whole handling of Luke Harper. A guy that broke away from the Wyatt Family, won the Intercontinental Title and put on a hell of a match with Ziggler at TLC, should have been in the WWE Title picture with Bray and Orton. WWE clearly doesn’t know what it had in Harper.

Steven Jackson

1. Here in the United Kingdom, the political situation has been a complete joke all year. I’m typing this on the eve of another general election (great Christmas present for us!) and I am completely disengaged with the political landscape. I actually would like there to be no government and us run the country ourselves as I’m sure we couldn’t do a worse job than what has been 2019!

2. I’m not a subscriber to the WWE Network as I refuse to pay for a service that has an event where Owen Hart died available for all to see. Therefore, I am still a DVD and Blu-ray collector. However, the WWE U.K. distributor has been terrible this year with its social media and annual sales. I always try to support it, but I really have felt annoyed that the DVDs I’d like are never cheaper after I wait all year for the Black Friday sales to get them. Really disappointing.

3. I don’t know what company certain people have been watching, but NJPW (and I’m not ashamed to say this) has been awful this year. Somehow, the momentum it created has completely dipped and I’m completely disengaged. NJPW has buried Jay White, bored me with another Kazuchika Okada reign, not developed the tag division and keeps leaving Naito out in the cold when he should be the face of NJPW. Things really need to change in 2020 if you ask me.

4. Everyone still relies on Amazon to buy everything and that has really driven me to distraction in 2019. There are cheaper alternatives to Amazon for everything, so just have a look around and help keep other retailers out there, too!

5. My final gripe this year goes out to the DVLA here in the U.K. Why is the driving theory test so hard and why are so many of the questions not related to driving?! It isn’t clever or productive, it is infuriating and irritating. It will still be around in 2020 as well, which makes it even more frustrating!

Neal Wagner

1. I love this sport, but a lot of time I hate the people that want to see one company or another fail. I’m an AEW fan and haven’t watched Raw in months, but I have chosen to not watch Raw. I don’t want WWE to suffer – just change its direction because right now it sucks. Just love your brand and don’t hate on others for not liking what you like.

2. There is severe oversaturation of wrestling today with shows on every day of the week. It is so hard to keep track and so easy to fall behind.

3. I have problems with the Patriots filming their opponents play calling, but a bigger issue when it’s the Bengals. THE 1-12 BENGALS. Why? You’ve been busted before and now you’re busted again and it’s not even over a good team.

4. Redskins need new ownership, management, quarterbacks, different Josh Norman (get his ass out of here) and brains. This organization has easily become the WWE of pro football.

5. I want ROH to succeed, but I hope it can get out of its own way soon. It’s been a horrible year from a public relations standpoint and it’s only getting worse with show cancellations and the recent Kelly Klein and Joey Mercury controversy. Get back to the company I fell in love with back in 2015 and get your head out of your ass.

Chad Gelfand

1. Lack of consistent storytelling in WWE. When Kofi Kingston lost the WWE Championship in devastating fashion after six months of holding it and a lifetime of chasing after that goal, and then subsequently barely said a peep, I knew that the storytelling was broken. How does a company like WWE do no follow up on one of its biggest stories of the year? It’s insulting that WWE wants people to invest all of these hours into the product, and a lot of it ends up not meaning anything in the end.

2. WWE main roster tag team wrestling lacking in importance. I’m a big fan of tag team wrestling, and it disappoints that in WWE the tag team division is in the state that it’s in. Nothing really feels important, the feuds barely have heat and a good amount of the teams are just singles wrestlers thrown together in a team. The Usos and New Day feud two years ago showed how good WWE tag team wrestling can be and I’d like to see WWE get back to that level.

3. Sasha Bank’s heel turn not being fully capitalized on. When Sasha Banks returned to WWE after a sabbatical and attacked Becky Lynch, it automatically became one of the hottest angles in wrestling, and Sasha was once again poised to return to the top of the women’s division. However, after a fantastic Hell in the Cell match with Lynch, Sasha’s character has been directionless. She’s lost a lot of momentum and she should be doing more than being Bayley’s lackey.

4. Hostility amongst fans when it comes to AEW and NXT. We’re in one of the greatest times to be a wrestling fan with AEW and NXT putting out great shows every week, but some fans have taken a tribalistic approach to this “wrestling war” where they feel the need to pick a side and take shots at people who may be bigger fans of one show than another. That’s unnecessary and instead of trying to divide the wrestling community, we should be able to appreciate each show for its own strengths and weaknesses.

5. The Rusev/ Lashley/Lana storyline. Rusev is getting big reactions, but he always gets over when he’s given something to do. This storyline is really bad. I know people say it harkens back to the Attitude Era, but there were a lot of bad storylines then as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPyrL5JRKEc

John Corrigan

1. Letting political beliefs dictate your love of pro wrestlers. Society is so divided right now that every aspect of our lives is being evaluated by whether it’s liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Pro wrestling should be an escape from all that. It’s supposed to be wild, politically incorrect and freeing. It’s supposed to be the place where you can live vicariously through these characters, release all your frustration and excitement and get lost in the show. Everyone has different beliefs – we shouldn’t “cancel” them if ours differ from theirs.

2. Wrestlers kicking out of moves that would kill you and me in real life.

3. People who want to proofread your story before it gets published. Unless you work with me, you’re not entitled to see anything before it goes to print. Have some faith!

4. Walmart in Franklin Mills is a cesspool of incompetence. Within the past month, I’ve gone there asking the workers if they carried lawn mowers and Apple air pods. The various answers included “we don’t carry Apple products” (they do), “we don’t carry lawn mowers” (they do) and “I don’t know.” I’m never going back.

5. Goodwillie never sending his fantasy PPV despite coming up with the concept and forcing us to endure an endless draft.