goc

I think it's smart that they are going to do Main Event live until WrestleMania but I'm not sure that will get the traffic that even NXT Arrival did.

It's not about royalties off of The Network so much as how are they going to be split up? With PPV money, it is pretty easy to split that up based on who is where on the card and how many buys there are. It gets a lot more muddled with The Network because it's set up with 6 month subscriptions.

I didn't even think of the tried and true WWE tactic of playing someone's music who is gone and having a midget come out impersonating them. That would be fantastic. Followed by doing it again later in the night and having Bad News Barrett come out.

It would be funny if the Chicago crowd was all ready to be a bunch of assholes because Punk wasn't there and then he starts the show and they all wind up disappointed.

One thing about 85 Memphis is that they weren't afraid to call out someone for doing steroids. Dundee talked trash about The Fabs being big from doing steroids, and then Dundee and Hickerson both at different times ragged on The Freedom FIghters (Sting and Warrior) for sticking needles in their ass. And people can talk trash about The Warrior being terrible, but 1985 Jim Hellwig sans Warrior gimmick makes the Ultimate Warrior look like Ric Flair or something.

I'm with you, I don't understand why anyone would be sympathetic to Punk in this situation. So they've treated you like the #2 or #3 star of the company instead of #1, how terrible. I think if the Mania Main event wasn't something people hated so much, he would have a lot less sympathy.

Thanks for this, cool stuff. It's interesting to see opening match guys making around $300 compared to some of the payoffs guys would talk about in the Memphis territory.

Well they do need another live test before Mania. I don't think there is any way in hell they would do that though.

I'm up to the end of November watching Memphis 1985 and I've seen very few promos kill someone's goodwill the way the "Freedom Fighters" first interview on Memphis TV did. This would be the debut of the future Sting and Ultimate Warrior. Lance Russell is practically gushing about how big they are and asks them if they're married. To which Sting says that they are looking forward to meeting the girls around the area and he heard the girls in Nashville are nice, which pretty much ends the screaming of the girls there in the Memphis studio.

I don't think Punk is coming back, but throwing him into the title match to make it Orton vs. Batista vs. Punk would be...really anticlimactic.

With the arrival of the WWE Network I've been watching a lot of....1985 Memphis. I've very slowly been working my way through it for the past like 6 months or so but I've been on a tear the past few days going through the end of August all the way into October. This was an interesting time seeing them keep trying to build a monster heel. Bota the Witch Doctor was actually a pretty interesting guy in the ring, at least based on the little that I saw. I don't think the fans bought into him though. Taurus Bulba kind of sucked and they took the belt off of him really quickly. What's really hooked me though is the introduction of The Stomper and the Tom Renesto heel turn into a manager after being the authority figure for a few months. There's a ton of stuff going on with Lawler not wanting to put the Southern Title on the line against Stomper because he has a match set up with Ric Flair for the World Title that won't happen if he loses the Southern belt. So Tom Renesto gets pissed as the match maker and lays into Lawler on TV, causing Eddie Marlin & Jerry Jarrett to come out which ends up with Eddie firing Tom Renesto off camera. Renesto comes back to say he quit & is going to become The Stomper's "booking agent." After Lawler loses the title match to Ric Flair (I'm not sure how they don't show it or say) he ends up defending the Southern Title against a returning Bill Dundee. Lawler doesn't want to fight him because the fans are happy Dundee is back but Dundee wants the Southern Title and a match against Ric Flair. Their Southern Title match is ruined by Masked Superstar, Stomper & Tom Renesto interfering. Then Lawler & Dundee team up again, while Lawler is pretty much openly happy they ruined the match and got Dundee to team with him again.

My secret wish is to see a Orton/Batista/Bryan triple threat at Mania where Orton & Batista double pin Bryan, split the titles between them and re-do the Two Man Power Trip. I'm sorry.

I thought he was fantastic in his heel run in WWE as Marvelous Marc. His "match" with Sable where he acts like he is going to lay down for her only to roll her up is one of the better douche bag heel moments I've seen.

There should NOT be any kind of "title goes on last" rule. It's been proven to be a bad rule too many times, Jericho/HHH being the #1 example. I hope Meltzer is wrong and they ARE going to turn Batista. I think he would be able to generate some REAL heat, especially if they decide to use him as The Authority's new hand picked guy. I kind of want to see them do a 2 Man Power Trip re-do with Batista & Orton too.

Batista isn't good enough to turn himself face by mic work alone. I was actually pretty intrigued by what they did with Randy Orton trying to get in Batista's head about getting booed for his return. I thought it was nice that they actually incorporated reality into it, but it seems like they are going to try to work the fans into cheering Batista. They could do that if he wasn't in the title picture. But they seem determined not to change that, for whatever reason It really seems stupid to put the title on Batista for movie promotion, if that is really the whole reason they're so stuck on it. It didn't do shit for them when it was THE ROCK! And he is The Rock, he's actually famous for being a big time movie star. Batista is famous for being a wrestler. It's the only reason he's even in that movie to begin with.

So are people ready to revisit this now? I'm actually interested myself in going back and watching some of the things I didn't care for in 2002 and seeing whether they were better/the same/worse than I thought. Stuff like Austin vs. Jericho from No Way Out and HHH vs. Hogan from BackLash. Obviously there's better matches on the Network though.

If you type in WCCW in the search you also get a lot more stuff than what is under WCCW in the Vault section. Nothing for AWA or Mid-South though.

With business as bad as it was in 1995, I kind of don't blame them. If you weren't going to draw, there was a lot less money in being a heel because at least the top babyfaces had something to help supplement bad paydays.

If you look at the schedule you can see some stuff that isn't in VOD yet but you can still play. I'm just browsing around now but there's definitely ECW shows on the schedule next week that aren't in the Vault.

I wonder if any of those people who said "Bryan shouldn't win at Elimination Chamber, it wouldn't be a big enough moment" changed their minds.

Really not much old footage outside of the Pay Per Views. I hope that will change over the next 6 months or I'm not sure I'll keep it after that.

Anyone else planning to try to sign up right at launch? I work Monday night so I have a few hours before I go to sleep during the day to check out The Network so I plan to be waiting at 8:59 AM for them to let me sign up.

I think there's some merit to your criticism of Del Rio, but I also think he's one of the worst booked guys in the company. For as much as they feature him they never actually give him anything to do. The only character progression he's had in his entire run was beating up Ricardo and getting rid of him. As for the PPV, I'm really hoping that Titus & Darren have a good match. Titus seems like he could be a big star so I'm hoping they don't have a bad match that makes them give up on him. I really don't know where they are going with the Elimination Chamber but I've already said here multiple times that if it was me I'd call an audible and have Daniel Bryan win the title tonight. There are a lot of different scenarios from there, but I think Daniel Bryan defending the title at WrestleMania would do a lot to keep the crowd into the show. And it's a lot easier than trying to figure out how to shoehorn him into the title match after Batista won the Rumble unless Bryan is the champion. Or they could just do some overbooked double pin scenario for the finish of the Chamber match and re-do the WrestleMania X scenario that some people really seem to want.

I don't take notes when I watch wrestling either, even if it's for putting together a ballot. I write something down after the match but I don't want to get distracted while I'm watching it the first time. If I don't remember a little detail at the end of the match then it's probably not something that would have influenced how I'd rank it anyway. I'm much more interested in how I feel about the match at the end than any individual part of the match. There were a couple spots that I liked in Steve Regal vs Buck Zumhoffe, which is more than I can say for some of the things I don't remember at all like whatever tag match had Wahoo & Tom Zenk that was also in my bottom 10. But those few spots didn't make up for the fact that I actively hated that match after watching it, which I also didn't feel about the matches I've completely forgotten.