The Endless Promo: Episode 8 - "Hey there! How'd ya like to powerbombed?"

Show notes!

WCW Nitro Rants

Thunder Rants

WWF Warzone Rants

Ask us questions for future episodes here!

Sweet, first to post!! Now all I have to do is listen to the episode...

for a moment I think that you were doing a crossover with the powerbomb cast

Another trash RAW. I was starting to enjoy the first hour, but then the next 2 hours were pure garbage. Ambrose was easily the best and probably only good part of the show. His promos were awesome.

Only reason I even watched RAW this week is to see if anything cool happens since they were in Chicago. They were a disappointing crowd. Hey at-least we got got this creepy funny sign.

I am more excited about WWE 2K15 than I thought I would be. Sting being in it is pretty awesome. WWE Smackdown Here Comes the Pain is still my favorite wrestling game ever. The career mode in that is really cool. Idk why but I have always hated when a career mode made me use a create a wrestler so it was awesome to be able to use whoever I wanted on the roster and play through the storylines and win titles and whatnot. I won so many WWE Championships with Chris Jericho.

what's up with the sound? It sounds like Tony was scratching all those Future End 3D covers.

where is there a problem at?

I could have sworn someone was eating cereal. Around 1h in, could be the same thing?

Don't point any fingers at me!

"Apologize for calling it 'snes'..."

I was literally thinking the same thing! Ugh... 'snes'

It starts after the intro and lasts throughout. IT IS LOUD.

Hmmm, I'm doing a sound analysis of the audio using high tech-equipment (ie: earbuds+iphone) and around 29:35 I can definitely hear some keyboard and mouse noises mixed with what appears to be spoon-on-bowl clinking and mouth chewing. Is it possible Cory was eating something? I have a feeling that's not what @madeinbangladesh is talking about though. Can't help there.

I heard some of that sound off and on during last week's show, but it wasn't a distraction or anything...

Back to wrestling games for a sec. I almost forgot about how much I LOVED Def Jam: Fight For New York! I literally played this until my PS2 broke. Maybe it was because I was in college and Hip Hop was big at the time but it was sooooo much fun. Awesome Create a Character Mode, really fun gameplay and it did what I always wanted WWE to do. A robust story built around your created character. My guy as pimped OUT! And it was definitely a wrestling game, not a straight fighting game.

It seems like it was just you. Are you using comp speakers or headphones?

dammit it's always me. Tony might have hacked into my computer and put some annoying 3d cover noises. It's TONY I TELL YOU!!! It's CON...sarsicy!!!!

BTW please watch and. . talk about TNA. That will fill up for the boring RAWs every week. I know you guys will like some of the stuff TNA has on

What night is it on?

Orale! We're comic book fans esse. We lie we cheat we steal. Viva la Endless Promo! Mamasita!

I've only been to two live wrestling shows myself. One was part of the Wrestlemanina X Revenge Tour that graciously came to my homeland of Guam. I got to see Bret and Owen wrestle. Back then I was a huge Owen Hart mark because I'm the younger of two brothers. I'll never forget he got on the mic in the middle of the match while the crowd chanted "Owen sucks," and he said "I don't suck. Guam sucks." I remember that making me smile as a kid. Only other show I've been to was Wrestlemania 21. It was okay I think.

Raw was okay but still mostly bad. You know how I know when Raw is bad? When the first match on the card is the match of the night. Ugh.

I'm trying not to stretch out my comment field so here's my two cents on Wrestling games:

Thanks for the podcast. If you guys are going to swear on the podcast then I'm going to start swearing in the comments. Just consider this my right to censor.

@inferiorego: Wednesdays at 9. damn. it's the review day so you guys will be busy. DVR is the only option I guess.

Also, that's comedy night for me/American Horror Story night.

yOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DVR IT. tHERE'S GOING TO A TLC MATCH NEXT WEEK. FROM WHAT I HEARD, THE MATCH WAS AMAZEBALLS AND EVEN BETTER THAN THE LADDER MATCH THEY HAD WEEKS AGO (WHICH IS MY MOTY SO FAR).

CAPSLOCK!

@inferiorego: What do you care about more: good wrestling or goofy gimmicks and promos? I think I know the answer. The worst part of TNA is the latter so I'd advise you to avoid it unless you really want some decent wrestling but at that point you might as well go the full nine and seek out New Japan stuff. No matter how TNA tries to build up the characters, story lines, and feuds it's not entertaining. At the end of every match whether the face or heel wins I just sort of throw up my hands and say "Who cares?!"

This clip is the reason I've watched TNA for a number of months and nothing has surpassed this level of awful goofiness. Before you ask, yes, I regret ever watching.

TNA gets a bad rap because they went through such a long stretch of being terrible. It's picked up since a few months back when they had a suprisingly good PPV (can't remember the name). It's improved overall but there's still too much weak stuff to watch regularly, at least for me. What we all need is someone who watches it every week to report on what's good and what's bad. I wish Ring of Honor had a TV deal like TNA does (or did). I think if they had more money to spend on production and venues it would eclipse TNA instantly.

Did you see the G1 this year from New Japan? I haven't seen anything better than that from any North American wrestling show maybe ever!

I think they were a confused when they filmed the rants from Nitro and Thunder. Are you picking your player or an opponent. Some guys are like "pick me and you won't lose" and other guys are like "pick me and I'll beat you down!". I wouldn't know what to do!!!

Also, just wondering what you think of the the My WWE Universe Mode on the newer games? I thought the purpose was to create a wrestler and have them run through all the shows and PPVs but my character barely get's booked. Maybe I didn't play long enough??

Well MadeInBangladesh sort of already does that though it's mostly him raving about how good it is. I have no ill will towards the guy but I think he gives way too much slack to that creative team.

Based on my personal tastes the best and worst thing in TNA are the Bro Men. They're the best over-the-top enhancement characters but at the same time that gimmick is horrible and borderline unwatchable. I almost feel bad for liking them as much as I do. They weren't on the show this week so whatever.

The worst thing on Impact this week was Manik vs Shark Boy. You wanna talk about complete filler booking... Not to mention James Storm's current angle being so stupid. And I'm sorry but the whole Knockouts division is just one giant botch to me. I don't think I've enjoyed a single women's match I've seen from that company.

I've seen some of the matches, not all of them and I think it was pretty great across the board. Mostly AJ Styles matches and various others. The wrestling is certainly good enough to disregard any narrative continuity they may have as well as the language barrier. In some ways the Japanese commentary is preferable to the stuff in America. Definitely worth watching for the work in the ring alone.

The greatest wrestling game is still No Mercy, right down to the controls. Why they don't just update the graphics, I'll never know.

@mezmero: you never really enjoyed any knockouts match? hmmmm how long have you been watching TNA? Just asking it as a genuine question. They have had some awesome to great matches. the division isn't what it used to be since Hogan came to TNA(2010), but the knockouts still makes the Divas took like crap even on their worst day. The most memorable match I can remember for the last few years is Gail Kim vs Taryn Tarell.

@madeinbangladesh: I've been watching I guess since the Menagerie debuted. I don't remember that match but for me personally it feels rather unremarkable. I mean 90% of the times that Taryn is trying to sell on the ground she looks like she has a big smile on her face. Even in the thumbnail you can see her corpsing. I'm sorry but I'll never consider someone who can't sell properly a good wrestler.

While I appreciate that Impact does hardcore matches fairly regularly whenever they make Knockouts do no DQ matches it feels like just a cheap way to get pops from the crowd. The spots begin to feel unnatural in that way and the match just feels formulaic instead of trying to tell a story. It ends up looking more like they're trying to go through the motions and just trying to meet the quota on spots.

I'm not gonna sit here and say that the Divas are any better. I admit they've been doing worse and worse lately as far as plot and character work but there are at least a few of them that I've grown to at least like which is more than I can say for knockouts. While Corey and Mat think Paige v AJ has been good, I honestly think Paige has had her best matches on the main show against Naomi. She unfortunately is kind of a non character even before the Funkadactyls broke up but I think she's at least entertaining in the ring and doesn't botch as much as some of the other Divas. And of course I love watching the NXT ladies the most right now.

@mezmero: The time Menagerie debuted was the time I stopped watching TNA for couple weeks because of how bad it became, and I've been a fan of TNA since 2006. It period of Time was just terrible. Then I came back when TNA did the shows in NYC. It started to get a lot better. I would say you have missed a lot of great stuff in TNA over the years and a lot of good knockouts action. You also missed a lot of stupid crap TNA has done. TNA's biggest flaw is that whenever they take 2 steps up, they then take 5 steps backwards. That has been their kryptonite since their existence. That's why a lot of people, mostly WWE fans, dismiss TNA.

@madeinbangladesh: Oh I've seen plenty of awful stuff they've done simply through Botchamania. I think for me wrestling is at it's best when it's the full package. When it's part ballet, part opera, part comic book, and all parts are working in unison it can be glorious. TNA mostly has the ballet down but the other two parts? NOPE! It's hard to get invested in matches with such horrible build up attached to them. I almost wish the creative side of things were still a horrible train wreck for me to enjoy but right now it's worse than that, it's boring.

That's how I feel about WWE. I find 90% of WWE boring, idiotic, or unwatchbale. TNA hasn't been boring for me for 3 months now.

Oh come on dude I'm talking about creative side being boring not the actual wrestling. Not that WWE is perfect in that aspect either but do you honestly get excited when you see Gunner and Samuel Shaw shooting the breeze back stage? How about when Anderson tells MVP to stop being such a jerk? Or when Bobby Roode tells Eric Young how ready he is to fight? If you're a show on national television you need to at least make the home audience care about the characters and they are incapable of that. I just think if Mat is anything like me, he's not going to like TNA.

The gunner/Shaw stuff is easily the weakest part of the show.And you're just taking small 30/60 seconds backstage segments that only helps build-up their in-ring stuff for later on and over-criticizing them. And I get what you are saying. TNA mostly has been focusing on the Wrestling side more than the story-lines have been weak. They now have more of a simple structure way of implementing stories into their matches. I say it is much better this way, but they def need to work on their creative side to get more people invested in their wrestlers. I think it's better this way though because over the years, TNA has a bad rep of doing awful story-lines and over-booking a lot of their story-lines. It is much better to keep it just simple and focus on the wrestling more for now.

ANd if mat can watch the abortion WWE puts on every Monday, I think he can stomach TNA.

Well, it's not like WWE is any better. I mean SharkBoy is not for me but neither are Los Matadors. It's just stuff you skip. And if you wanna talk about one giant botch? That's the divas devision 90% of the time. I can see why people like TNA so much BUT they've suffered through some of the worst creative and management I've ever seen. Really I think it's one of those "pick you poison" type of situations. And you're right that TNA faithfuls cut them too much slack creatively but so do WWE faithfuls. Maybe because WWE has three shows people can find more good stuff there, just because they have so much air time.

But yeah, AJ was tremendous! One of the best of the tournament. But I REALLY liked watching Okada, Nakamura, Shibata and Honma. But almost everyone is ridiculously good because it's supposed to be the top stars of the company. I really wish this was on TV where I live. And I totally love the Japanese commentary. It's a nice mix of getting to pay attention to the match without distraction and having someone get excited about what's happening in the ring. The only thing I wish is that they'd label the signatures and finishers with closed captions so I wouldn't have to look them up separately. This might have been my favourite match of the tournament and it came on day 1, completely knocking me out! AJ is a perfect heel and Okada reminds me of a Japanese Johnny Cage (not sure how accurate that is). Plus he's outrageously good.

@d9000: Yeah I try not to cut slack to WWE either. I mean if you want me to be honest I think I'm ultimately not a WWE fan at least not anymore. However I am a fan of Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, The Miz, Luke Harper, and a handful of others who are good enough at the wrestling side and character side of things that they aren't hurt as much by WWE's inability to write and book a consistently compelling product.

As far as AJ Styles goes I would definitely consider him one of the best in the world at the moment. As amazing as all his matches with the younger dudes in G1 were I actually think I might have enjoyed his match with Minoru Suzuki the most. If you wanna know how to work arms in a wrestling match, Suzuki puts on a clinic and Styles sells it so well. That match was definitely a case where you don't need to know anything before hand to enjoy the show other than the fact that Bullet Club is real. I feel sort of crummy after I found out Styles was at PWG last month since it's literally within walking distance.

WHAT! That's cool (although that in particular sucks). PWG seems like fun for sure. Southern California must be a great place for a wrestling fan. And I'm the same way. I've got a laundry list of people in WWE that I care about watching and an equal list of people I'll skip. Suzuki was great in a lot of matches including that one. Maybe I like it so much because it was the first match I saw, what's it called when you're traumatized in a good way?? I just saw Styles against Kyles O'Reilly on ROH TV, seems like he shows up no matter what he's doing. It's cool that guys like him live on the outside of WWE, proving that WWE may have most of the best North American wresters in the world but definitley not all of them.

If it helps I thought that was a great women's match. Gail Kim's one of the best ever and it was decently hard core. I also watched that Ladder Match between the Hardy Boys, the Dudley Boys and the Wolves that you mentioned. I thought that was great too. That doesn't mean I'm gonna watch TNA regularly though, mostly because I don't get Spike TV. But it's good to know when there's a specific match to seek out.