goc

"Killed the dude's career" is such a laughable over reaction. The only way you could think that is if you had really ridiculous expectations like he was going to come to the main roster and immediately be the undisputed #1 top guy, go undefeated in the Cena feud, win the World Title and main event WrestleMania. Which would be a really silly thing to think about a guy with Kevin Owens terrible ring gear and that works his indy spot fest style.

People in ECW said they wanted to stay there and not go to WCW and WWF. It's one of those things you're supposed to say. No one signed with WWE to stay in NXT forever, they signed with WWE to make main roster money.

Drew Galloway. I think I would have nominated him and thrown him on the very end of my list if I had known I was gonna change my mind and do a ballot.

Changed my mine about doing a singles ballot and just turned one in.

It's not all about booking. Stuff like Emma the goofy girl who does a stupid arm dance and Adam Rose and the Rosebuds is something that appeals far more to an audience of 300 nerds in Full Sail than something that actually has legs on the main roster. It goes back to something people have been talking about for a while now about whether or not NXT is really doing a good job of getting people ready for the main roster.

Any time I watch a match with Hamada in it he is sure to surprise me with something incredibly athletic even if it's just landing on his feet on a back body drop. I'm not at all a fan of "athleticism for athleticism sake" in wrestling but Hamada usually uses those spots to transition from his opponent's offense into his own which I find far more interesting than just doing flippy offense for the sake of doing flips.

It's the same reason they wouldn't clear him before: because they didn't want his appreciation nights taking the shine away from Roman Reigns!

The live report I read was that he got cheered.

Besides, I'd take a bloody Jim Duggan brawl over a "technical classic" any day.

It seems really silly to look down on a wrestler or count it as a negative against them for making an effort to make their matches not all feel the same. Especially when that's one of the big criticisms of WWE style. Ok so maybe the kid in the audience won't pick up on the fact that Cesaro countered a move he got hit with last week but it's not like it's somehow going to make him less of a fan. WWE runs the same pairings into the ground by having guys wrestle each on TV multiple times in a short time span, why wouldn't guys want to try and build off of those previous matches even if just to keep themselves sane and not repeat the same spots over and over?

I keep reading how "interesting" it is and I have no idea what that even means. Are people forgetting that the man has a brain lesion? He's not trying to go wrestle somewhere else. More than likely he finds it depressing to be around wrestling and not be able to wrestle and would rather just stay away from it for now or possibly forever. He might just want to move on entirely.

Boxing, like MMA, has the ability to charge exorbitant ticket prices so more than likely boxing will have the bigger gate even if Mania has the higher attendance. UFC had an $8,000,000 gate off of UFC 196 and with a crowd a little under 15,000 people.

I also find myself in the "I don't quite get it" group with Cesaro. He has really good matches but I can't remember any that I would really call GREAT matches. He beat Rusev in the DVDVR March Madness poll which I just couldn't believe because as far as work goes I see Cesaro and Rusev as pretty close but Rusev is about 10 times more interesting as a character than Cesaro.

Saw someone on twitter arguing about Angle over Lawler because Angle had more "variety" but I really don't see that. Certainly not in his TNA work where from the little I have seen I really haven't seen him work differently when he's a face or a heel. Then there is his insistence that everyone he wrestles from Jay Lethal & Frankie Kazarian midcard types to Sting & AJ Styles main eventers get to have an "epic" match with him including way too many finisher kickouts and Ankle Lock reversals. There was a match with AJ Styles during the attempt at having a second Monday Night War that I thought went so far in that direction that it was to the point of parody in that it was just a finisher, kickout, lay around, get back up and have the other guy hit his finisher just to wash rinse and repeat for about 3-4 minutes. Angle is not a guy I would associate with the word variety at all.

I agree with that, but I was saying the same thing at the time about if he would have won. You beat Cena in your very first feud in the company and where exactly do you go from there? You've already accomplished the biggest thing there is to do in WWE.

This is what it seems like to me. We're at a point where people were freaking out about Kevin Owens being "buried" after losing a feud to Cena that saw him presented as a big threat to him and where he beat the top guy in his very first match on the main roster. And now some people are having a fit about AJ Styles not being immediately put in the main event despite the fact that he's gotten tons of TV time and is presented as well as just about anyone on the roster. People keep having crazy expectations and then going crazy when WWE doesn't live up to them. Like anyone who thought AJ Styles was going to debut at the Royal Rumble and then be in the main event by WrestleMania wasn't being realistic at all.

That's what happens when you wildly cheer for entertaining heels but people refuse to learn the lesson.

The only "big plan" for New Day is going to be entrance related. Their match is set already and if Rock was going to do anything substantial other than be some kind of "host" they'd have promoted the shit out of it.

They can report on it but that doesn't mean they can show the video of it and ignore requests to remove it.

Don't feel bad, Duggan has a legit case off his Mid-South work and I would have ranked him for sure. I love Golden but I'm not sure I could have put him onto my list but he's by far not the craziest nominee to rank.

According to wrestlingdata.com the man under the Ichiban mask is Killer Karl Krupp. Not sure why Boesch didn't just use him as his evil German character instead of making him a very white evil Japanese masked man.

So AJ coming in and losing his first feud(s) would have been better than them pretty much making Smackdown the AJ Styles show and building him by winning the Jericho feud? A feud that is essentially the only actually interesting story they have going right now. He's "just another midcard dude" yet gets more TV time and focus than the guys you listed like Del Rio, Sheamus and Wyatt.

Good for him. I doubt he sees even a fraction of that after appeal but I don't buy the argument that there is a "public interest" in seeing celebrity sex tapes.

Thinking that WWE signed a 38 year old guy to immediately put him at the very top seems like the real fantasy. He's gotten a lot of TV time since he debuted and is in a good position it's really silly if anyone thought something like he was going to win the Royal Rumble in his first appearance in the company and then main event WrestleMania. EDIT:Childs beat me to the punch.

But how does one sell merchandise if they aren't over?