goc

They don't have the balls but it would be a unique debut to have him claim credit, that's for sure.

I think the lack of the crowd response to Cena's "old man" comments would underscore the fact that there is still a very large portion of the audience that does not see him as the old worn out dude that a lot of the internet does.

Unless you were running a buffet.

I can't think of anyone on the roster that is a less interesting matchup for Bryan. (Well other than Kane I suppose)

Is Fujinami's lack of great matches in the 90s due to him falling off in ability or a lack of opportunities? Having just read all the 93 Observers, I remember Dave writing about Fujinami and talking about how he was kind of stuck in limbo because New Japan was building it's new generation of stars with Chono, Mutoh & Hashimoto and it didn't make sense for him to go over any of them and they didn't want to just make Fujinami a jobber for those guys either. This might account for his lack of great singles matches during the decade as much as him falling off in ability.

I can't see Vader fitting in on either side of the WCW/NWO war. Even though he didn't have the greatest WWF run, I don't think staying in WCW would have been very good for his career in the long haul either. He was never going to be the dominant monster heel after Hogan showed up, and after the NWO started he would have been knocked down another peg or two. I don't think Austin would have, or could have, ever been Stone Cold in WCW. Stunning Steve Austin was never going to go above upper midcard, especially not with him losing his hair. Dustin is the only one I think MIGHT have been better off staying in WCW, but then you have to think about the fact that after WCW ended, he would have been going to WWF as plain Dustin Rhodes with the Goldust character never having been created. The odds of him still wrestling on WWE TV in 2015 without ever having been Goldust aren't good.

I hope it draws enough interest for them to start doing regular Mid-South Wrestling uploads (who am I kidding)

Dave Meltzer was writing about this all the way back in 1996. The WWF was losing to Nitro at the time in TV ratings but were doing much better house show business than WCW. Shawn Michaels was losing TV viewers to Nitro when he was onscreen but he was a better house show draw than what WCW had. Dave didn't have a good understanding of the difference between the audience that watches only on TV and the audience that buys tickets to live events at the time, and I'm not sure anyone has a better understanding of it now. But it clearly exists and there is still evidence of it like Batista's return to Raw last year popping a big rating while the live audiences were rejecting him.

I don't know dates but he had 2 or 3 matches with Sheamus between Superstars & Main Event that was the highlight of Titus' B Show work.

Get over the ratings points and look at VIEWERSHIP NUMBERS and you'll see there really is not the massive drop off in viewers from better times. They still average over 4 million people watching Raw every single week. Nothing does the same in the ratings that it did 15 years ago, including prime time network TV because the television audience is much larger and more fragmented than it was in 98-99.

So if Raw is cancelled, obviously they throw together some recap/video package show. I would say they could decide to show the Rumble in full as part of it but they would have to do a lot of crowd sweetening before they'd do that.

Yea the Bubba complaint is really silly because if he comes out in anything OTHER than the Bubba Duddley gear it lessens the nostalgia pop. He wasn't there to be Bully Ray or become a regular again.

This could get interesting.

If they were determined to do the Roman Reigns push, the smart idea would have been to tell Daniel Bryan to keep it quiet that he could return and leave him as Plan B if the Royal Rumble didn't work out. Instead they essentially set themselves up for what happened last night by bringing him back and having him look like a chump in the Rumble. If you had the big Roman Reigns backlash last night without Bryan's return then you can at least counter that the next night on Raw with a surprise Daniel Bryan return. Now they have absolutely nothing in the bag to pull out and turn this around.

John Cena desperately needs to come up with a new finish and retire the AA for a while. At this point it's about as effective as a bodyslam in big main events.

I can't believe they couldn't come up with a better undercard than that. There's only one singles match, it's not like it would have killed them to have an IC title match or something.

This, like the 411mania comments section, reminds me why I no longer look for wrestling opinions outside of this board.

The guy already has a year in between all his matches and he looks worse and worse ever year. Waiting 2 years isn't going to get him into better shape, it's just going to make him look older. He isn't GOING to get in any better shape, it's why he's essentially already retired. He's completely broken down and they should never put him in the ring again.

Yea when people are advocating staying in the indies rather than going to WWE ("they're going to bury you CM Punk!") or that guys should WANT to stay in NXT rather than get called up to the main roster it gets pretty silly.

I liked what TJ Perkins had to say. I have no idea how much money he is or isn't making in TNA, but I do see a lot of silly things on the internet where some people really don't understand the point for a pro wrestler should be to make the most money he can not find the promotion where he can be "booked the best" regardless of whether that promotion is paying good money or not.

That would get me interested in Mania I don't even care how obvious the outcome would be.

Whatever happened to our topic maker? Did he go off the rails and I've forgotten it?

Not sure if this would generate enough interest for it's own thread so I'll just put it here: What's everyone's favorite announcing trope from the territory days? Just watched Killer Brooks vs. Johnny Rich from Georgia TV and Gordon Solie told me that was a match that could main event any arena in the world. I can't remember any time I heard that one thrown out where it was even close to true.