goc

He kept it but that really doesn't matter. Vince has enough shares that he can't get pushed out that way.

Would anyone really argue that the weekly shows are better now with a unified roster than there were in the brand split era?

I definitely would not mind a new brand split. The brand split was better than what we have now. If you didn't like Raw then you had a whole different set of talent on Smackdown to watch. I'm not sure if they have enough depth to do it now though, at least not without really depleting NXT.

I did teams over singles because it was a lot easier. And I felt less guilty about not watching stuff outside of my areas of interest. The furthest I went out of my comfort zone was modern indies watching Briscoes matches.

This is most likely going to be the ballot I send in unless someone points out a glaring omission (that I agree with) 1. The Rock N Roll Express 2. The Midnight Express (Condrey & Eaton) 3. The Fantastics 4. The Midnight Express (Eaton & Lane) 5. Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard 6. The Fabulous Ones 7. The Nightmares 8. Chavo & Hector Guerrero 9. The Rockers 10. Doom 11. The Road Warriors 12. The Hardys 13. Los Brazos 14. The High Flyers 15. The Briscoes 16. Los Infernales (Satanico, MS-1, Pirata Morgan) 17. The Shield 18. Arn & Ole Anderson 19. MNM 20. The Nasty Boys 21. Jimmy Golden & Robert Fuller 22. The Freebirds (Gordy, Hayes & Roberts) 23. Jerry Lawler & Bill Dundee 24. Gino Hernanez & Chris Adams 25. Buddy Rose & Doug Somers

Where do we actually send our ballots? I'm pretty much finished up with my tag team ballot and that's the only one I'm doing.

Reigns has been booked like crap since. Rusev has been booked even worse. They may know how to handle the initial build, but they sure as hell can't sustain it. Even Brock was fucked around with his first year. I don't even mean the Cena loss, which I absolutely praised back then because it was right decision at the time (Brock walked away from his previous run and Cena was the ace, so they weren't about to put their eggs in the Brock basket again right away because that would've been a bad business decision if he had bailed a second time) - I'm referring more to the baffling Triple H series and WM loss. They know how to sustain it. They don't want to sustain it. They were done with Rusev. They decided to make something out of Brock finally and then followed through with it. I don't believe anything in WWE happens by accident other than fan responses. Yea I don't see Rusev as an example of incompetence. They built him up for a whole year to give Cena a Mania opponent. If he beats Cena where the hell does he go from there? You can't be the unbeatable foreign menace heel forever. It's a limited shelf life gimmick. I *liked* the new direction they started with him with the whole Lana/Summer Rae triangle thing it just didn't work because he got stuck doing it opposite Lana & Dolph. Lana was an awful babyface and Dolph Ziggler is terrible at absolutely everything. But Rusev and Summer Rae were doing great in their parts. And he was featured in an actual STORY with character progression which is an extremely rare thing now for WWE. Now he's stuck doing absolutely nothing because they don't care about him at all after they got all butthurt over TMZ putting out the story of Lana & Rusev being engaged.

I think that Shane coming back, even if it's just as an on-screen character with no backstage responsibilities is something that probably has HHH feeling paranoid. Even taking a backstage power struggle out of the equation, it messes with the idea of "HHH as the savior of wrestling" that he's been working so hard on creating. The narrative from a lot of the "ugh why can't Vince just retire/die already!" crowd has already turned into "Shane is back to save the company from Vince & Stephanie!" so if Shane sticks around for a while I could see that doing a lot to hurt HHH's smark cred as the future "savior" of WWE without anything even changing except Shane being on TV.

Because they've done NOTHING to fix the crowd reactions. They are the ones who created the conditions for the fans to react negatively to Reigns in the first place and then did not adjust the way they were presenting him to respond. At least the vast majority of the time. When they did present him as an ass kicker who was fed up with taking people's shit and he beat up HHH at TLC, he got massive cheers. From a crowd that not 10 minutes earlier was shitting all over him. And then he got a big positive reaction in the follow up when he won the title on Raw. But they quickly flushed all that down the toilet by going back to "smiling happy Reigns" in front of the crowd and monotone stone face Roman in backstage interviews.

This is what lends the most credence to the "political hit" theory to me. They showed with the big Rusev push that when they WANT to get someone over they can do it and they know how. Reigns was booked like crap after WrestleMania. This was a guy who went toe to toe with Lesnar and then got screwed by Rollins cash in yet it took him until the Survivor Series build to really confront Seth and go after the belt again. That's not a "we're all in on making this guy our ace!" push.

GIF/photo replies are better than just ripping into someone. They're good for civility.

The loser leaves town match was 6/6 so it was 3 months. Standard loser leaves for Memphis was 90 days, whenever they mentioned how long it was for.

So then you wouldn't have complained about how he was fresh out of his "incredible heel run in NJ" and then lost in his first feud?

There's also a meta thing were fans are pissed at WWE for giving them a shitty product. Shane has always been the defacto "good McMahon" for a lot of them, him coming back also gives them hope things can change. The fact that Shane's comeback storyline as a face is "The WWE is shit, people don't want to watch it on TV and it's losing money" is odd. The fact they want the fans to agree with Shane when he points out how dreadful the product is means they must be aware of it, but do nothing about it. Like how CM Punk went from upper-midcarder to hottest act in the company by cutting a promo about how awful the WWE is. I maintain that the fans, as in the crowds who boo Cena / Reigns etc., are just constantly being worked. Constantly. I don't know to what end, or to what direction, but I don't see how this isn't self-evident. I mean look at that stuff with John Stewart at Summerslam. He interfered EXPRESSLY to stop Cena tying for Flair's record and EXPRESSLY as a representative of the fan at home. I don't see how anyone could view it any other way. It's an obvious work and has been for years. Agreeing with you here. When I read what Shane's comeback was all about it seemed like a way to work the "Fuck WWE, worst Mania ever~!" people into blowing their loads.

You should have asked them if they were REALLY fans of Roman Reigns or if they just bought his shirt because it looked cool.

If it gives us a return of Bully Ryback backstage segments, count me in.

Thinking the same thing. Plus logic hole if Shane/Taker goes on before Reigns/HHH and Shane wins why would Hunter be able to wrestle later since theoretically he's out of power. I guess they could say that he's still under contract as a wrestler but it's primo Swiss cheese booking Maybe because he's the WWE Champ? The real stupid part is that he would still be front and center at the next NXT Takeover show. No way he gives up his smark credibility by not doing his show opening speech.

A stretcher match used to be an awesome stipulation. It was pretty much just a no holds barred match where the only way to win was for one guy to be so badly beaten he had to be carried out on a stretcher. Check out The Fabs/Moondogs stretcher match for an example. The goal isn't to put someone on a stretcher but to beat the shit out of him to the point where he has to be put on one. Now they are fucking stupid with the whole "push it to the finish line" foolishness. WWE is good at ruining gimmick matches though. I never really had an issue with the "touch all four corners" strap matches but WWE using those goofy ass red and green lights makes me not ever want to see another. And I can't believe anyone in here is complaining about the War Games rules. The coin flip and numbers advantage was the whole psychology of the match. It kept the babyfaces having to fight the odds the whole time.

Golden, along with all the other Alabama homesteaders like Bob Armstrong, Ron Fuller, Jerry Stubbs, etc. is hurt by the fact that there is no real house show footage from the glory days of that territory. The only full matches any of them have is after Southeastern changed over to Continental and even then it's still just sub-10 minute TV matches. The only guys I can really see making a whole case out of based off the Continental TV footage is The Nightmares tag team. There is some good tag stuff with Jimmy Golden and Robert Fuller on Continental TV but not a whole lot of it as both of them would take long spells off and there are big gaps in the footage during the time periods they actually were around.

How is Vince suddenly not an untouchable boss just because he's bladed before? He's the head of the company. If he doesn't want you to touch him, then you don't touch him. It's not somehow different just because he's the boss of a wrestling company. And why are you even talking about Vince flipping off the referee? That's PART OF THE SHOW. Titus randomly grabbing Vince wasn't.

How is that an apples to apples comparison? It would be more like an NBA star grabbing his coach just like that and getting suspended. Also does the NBA commissioner have a history like Vince? Really horrible comparison. History like Vince means WHAT? He wrestled Kurt Angle on a plane one time and committed the terrible sin of pushing people in pools? Well as far as I know he never pushed Titus in a pool. Nothing you are trying to reference makes him fair game to be aggressively grabbed for no reason. Especially when it's on camera. Vince waving poopy pants in guys faces? The fact he wrestled and bladed? The fact it is said horse play is encouraged? Also Vince pushed him back just as or more aggressively. Should Vince be suspended too for being unprofessional? Also, way to ignore the fact your comparison was horrible. It's not a horrible comparison imo. I also didn't see you acknowledge how hyperbolic your statement of "something that everybody else does" is when you only have 1 example to go with it.

How is that an apples to apples comparison? It would be more like an NBA star grabbing his coach just like that and getting suspended. Also does the NBA commissioner have a history like Vince? Really horrible comparison. History like Vince means WHAT? He wrestled Kurt Angle on a plane one time and committed the terrible sin of pushing people in pools? Well as far as I know he never pushed Titus in a pool. Nothing you are trying to reference makes him fair game to be aggressively grabbed for no reason. Especially when it's on camera.

Yes. Because if this was a story about an NBA player grabbing Adam Silver like that at some event and getting suspended over it the story would be "what the fuck was he thinking grabbing the commissioner like that?" instead of talking about how it's some injustice borne out of racism.

I don't believe it's a "small little action." He aggressively grabbed the head of the company for no reason. You couldn't do that in any company in the world and not get reprimanded. And the fact that Titus did it on camera is worse because I could see Vince thinking he did it just to try and create his own angle. I realize the popular opinion is that it wasn't a big deal because the popular opinion is "Vince is a senile old man who needs to fuck off already" so there's probably a lot of people who would be happy if Titus had punched him dead in the face but he's still the head of the company and you don't grab the head of the company like that. Period. And one time with The Rock going off script does not = everybody.