goc

It's probably worry over a cumulative effect. You can only patch something back together so many times and he's had a lot of problems in the shoulder/collar bone area.

Damn that would have been awesome.

As far as I know, DDP is the only guy who took a buyout from Turner to come to WWE. I bet he probably regrets that now.

You would think Eric Bischoff, who tries to promote himself as a "marketing" guy, would have been trying to get this done. But I've never really heard anyone even talk about changing the name. I can't even see how it could be seen as a bad move. The people who watch Impact are going to watch it regardless, I think that's been proven by the way the live number and the replay usually averages out to about what they used to do on Thursdays before the move. So you are not going to lose these people by changing the name, and you have no real recognition you lose outside of your fanbase by getting rid of the name because there is nothing positive attached it.

I think if they had signed the big stars they wouldn't have made them all look like chumps collectively like they did with The Alliance. I just can't see guys like Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Hogan or Sting just going along with anything and everything the writers come up with if it's making them look like total chumps. None of those guys would have let themselves get done the way DDP did.

This is true, but the thing is if you have Austin as the face of the company, who the hell does the Alliance have that looks credible against him? That would have made the whole thing even more lopsided even if Angle had joined the Alliance. The whole angle was never going to work because they didn't want to buy the real stars out of their Time-Warner contracts.

I think it depends on how he sees things playing out in the future. If he feels TNA is safe to just stick around on Thursdays and do the same as it's always done, he'll probably stick around. If he thinks the whole thing is going to end up sinking he'll probably jump off.

I thought so too for a while, but then I realized they had booked themselves into a corner. They had Noble win a bunch of matches against Palumbo before the turn, so where do you go after it? The logical end to the angle had to be Noble beating Palumbo for revenge, but he'd already beat him in all the buildup leading to the turn.

HHH/Steph/Angle love triangle. Really the hottest, best booked storyline in years and it just completely died at the end when it was about to REALLY take off because of HHH being an insecure douchebag.

The problem is that Edge is just played out period. He can't be a babyface at this point and he's done absolutely everything he can do as a heel. Even time off didn't do much to freshen him up, I really have no idea what they could do with him at this point that wouldn't feel stale.

Worse than Colin Delaney? That one never made sense to me. "Hey, look at this stupid fucking kid who shouldn't even be in the ring. He's a loser, he has no chance whatsoever, and you know this because we keep telling you over and over. Now watch as we build the entire show around him for months on end!" And then the sudden heel turn and the even more sudden release. What the hell happened there? Did Vince just finally watch ECW for the first time in forever and go "who the fuck is that anorexic midget? Wrap up his angle and pink-slip the little bastard pronto." Colin was bad, I agree. I watched that whole thing as I was REALLY into new ECW at that point. I agree they really really blew his push, because I think if he and Tommy Dreamer would have beat Miz/Morrison for the belts then they could have got him over as the underdog who really has no business winning but somehow pulls off upsets. Instead they had him keep losing until the point when he finally got a win it didn't matter. And then the heel turn was REALLY stupid because you just spent months building him as weak and unthreatening and then expect him to go get heat? But Escobar was worse because their original idea for him had a LOT of potential. Young heel comes in as Vickie Guerrero's boyfriend could have gotten him, or someone else over. But instead they were broken up about a month into the thing, then Vickie gives him punishment matches for another month and he gets released.

I don't think it has anything to do with cheating, it probably has to do with the breakup being messy. You know how it is when one person in a breakup doesn't want to move on, and imagine if you had to work and travel with this person. I think that is a fine justification for moving her to SD, but everything beyond like the Piggie James angle is just petty bullshit.

Norton's seems like one of the most ridiculous ones as they hardly ever did anything with him. Vicious and Delicious is the biggest push I can remember, and even that wasn't very long. I think they could have done a lot more with him though, he always did some kind of amazing feat of strength like picking up The Giant that made you notice him but then he'd just kinda disappear again for a while.

Well no one answered that question and I found it on my own, this is from an interview with Escobar: "Then we started doing the vignettes, and Vince (McMahon) wanted me to be this ruthless, very intense, very intense Latino, and I said 'Cool, I have no problem with that.' But the people that were in charge of putting my matches together were telling me some other things, and I was like 'Who do I pay attention to?' Obviously I was going to pay attention to Vince, but at the same time, I have this guy in my ear telling me 'you have to do this,' so it was kinda' confusing at times. I think I did the best I could with what they were giving me to work with." As a side question: do you guys think a situation like that is a purposeful sabotage by the agents or them just wanting Escobar to fit into their new favorite mold of methodical heel.

I didn't think Lanny ever wrestled for WCW, at least that's how he made it sound in his shoot on 57talk. That is probably the least ridiculous figure on this list though because as it was explained, Lanny's contract was a gift to Savage for getting them the Slim Jim sponsorship.

The move to Smackdown makes a lot more sense in that light, obviously if you had to move Cena or James because of their breakup, you would move the one who isn't your top star.

You know, I wouldn't be that suprised if Kofi is on the list of next year's post WM cull. I remember when Kofi debuted there was some talk about how over he was with the crowds without a real push, but there were a few people backstage who didn't like him. Well it seems like they were going to run with him for a while there when he first started the feud with Orton, but I guess those few people managed to get their way and cut him off. I don't think they are ever going to attempt to move him up again, and he'll probably spend the next year treading water putting over whatever heel they are trying to build at the moment.

I think WWE is going to be fine, and more than fine if they manage to find another Hogan/Austin/Rock. Really the company is only going to be as hot as it's biggest star, which is Cena right now. Cena is a draw and a star, but he's not an Austin or a Rock. So they do good but not great business. It's still far better than their last slow period after a boom which lasted about what? 6-7 years? 91-97? That got progressively worse, while things have picked up from where they were in 02-03.

I think Ross is far too smart to go to TNA. He may be a little upset that WWE doesn't want him to do announcing anymore, but I think he'd still much rather do stuff for DVDs and 24/7 and spend more time working at his restaurant than go down to the circus in Orlando. I think he knows it would do far more to hurt him than help TNA.

It's a hell of a lot nicer than some of the things the fans have said about him on message boards for the past few years. Tenay blows.

Speaking of Escobar, is there any reason they screwed with his push so bad? They bring him as Vicki's BF like they were going to push him as a heel, but then she dumps him a few weeks later for being a "loser." Then he goes on to pretend he dumped her and lose a bunch of punishment matches and get released. It was pretty much the WORST booking of a new guy I've ever seen, far worse than Spirit Squad or anything. Did he just piss off the wrong person backstage or what?

The Gangrel story doesn't seem to make much sense. Why would he get rehired because he was complaining about a burn that would have had to happen years before?

Haha that's a good point, the number of votes is more than the number of people who watch NXT.

I do not remember this story. That is an absolutely CRAZY story that she was helping with pyro and met Vince face to face. I wonder if they tightened up security at all after that. I mean it's really easy to just name drop someone now in the days of the internet.

That is a REALLY stupid idea. I don't know how anyone thought that could work.