Timbo Slice

That doesn't have to do with being a publicly traded company, though. You book correctly, get people interested in the product, they're going to be buying the product whether it's a guy Daniel Bryan's size or a guy Great Khali's size or a guy John Cena's size on top. Using that logic, if there are that many people interested in Daniel Bryan, wouldn't it be beneficial to have him as someone who's constantly protected?

Bryan is one of the top merch guys in the company and is the most over guy in the company right now. From a "live crowd" perspective, I don't get this shit about him not being someone they can push. He organically got over on his own accord, really. It's classic WWE booking. If it's not a product of how they book the top of the card, they could give a fuck less. Orton hasn't been over in fucking years, yet he's the guy on top because Triple H can't keep his ass off TV. That's not booking to your strengths.

That's obvious but a fact the IWC don't care to admit to. WWE has always done its worst business with smaller guys on top. It's a relic of 80's culture. Some guy on WC flipped out when I claimed this, even after justification. I've talked to way too many casuals who see Punk and Bryan as inferiors due to size, especially Punk. It's not WWE's fault imo that as a business it gives the public what it wants. What's considered a bigger guy then? Cena's about 245 and 6'2" and that's about "average" in WWE-speak.

Worse than the last four months? Really?

That's not necessarily Bryan's fault. That's also the guy across from him.

Let's be perfectly clear about something: It doesn't fucking matter if Bryan gets a pinfall over Triple H. Period. There's no rub there. Trips thinks there's a rub, but there's no rub. Bryan organically got over and they used it as a way to keep their egos in check with this storyline. If the end result is Trips thinking, "What will really get him over is me dropping a fall to me!" that's the dumbest thing I can think of. I'm gonna be the first one to say it. You know what Bryan needs to do now? He needs to be the one that ends The Streak.

Shawn acting like a petulant child to HHH saying, "Let me do my job!" is pretty hilarious.

Oh FUCK that ending.

Oohhhh! I know! A HHH entrance in the same match!

Him being in this angle in the first place?

I'd be down for that. Or a Triple Threat between Backlund, Torito and Zeb where the winner gets a title shot against the Rhodes Brothers.

There's parts about the Divas matches that are getting tighter, but very few matches have good heat segments. Bob Backlund doing the PTP dance is a .gif waiting to happen.

Dutch is fucking killing them. Wow.

I don't know where they go with Heyman now. He can be the big blowhard for only so long without being a threat. Punk now becomes the big wild card now that this seems to have been blown off. If Bryan wins tonight, he's right there in the thick to be his first opponent.

Ambrose does seem like he's watering it down a bit to me. Awesome finishing maneuver but they booked themselves into a corner because they weren't gonna have Ambrose drop the belt without any build up.

BIG E~!

Aaaaannnnnd back to Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. I'm choosing Joe Buck and Tim McCarver over this bullshit for the next five minutes.

So...what was that?

I can't believe I saw that spot on a WWE PPV. God damn. Awesome stuff. Match was great, but outside of a couple spots, I don't know why the Usos were in the match.

I think he was screwed over with all the change in the Japanese wrestling scene when he made the switch to being a heavyweight. Considering the dearth of New Japan's heavyweights at the time, he actually could have had a good run there, especially considering Mutoh and Kojima were making their exodus. Plus, while Z1 was about doing a lot of dream matches with Hash, NJPW was still making a lot of money doing dream matches, and he could have had some run up top there. That being said, he was one of my favorite juniors of all time. His 1996 was incredible. Might have been Lyger's best opponent, too, and that's saying something.

It's your normal stuff from Nate, but even then, it still resonates well.

Nate Silver opens 538's new stuff with a bang. This is what I was talking about earlier. Grantland's content won't be able to match up to 538 from an analytical standpoint overall, no matter how much I love Lowe, Keri and Jany.

It's funny because considering Grantland's status as the offshoot of ESPN that people are more likely to read because they don't want to read the generic ESPN fluff, Nate Silver's 538 site, which will be presented similarly to Grantland, is going to blow Grantland out of the water for anyone interested in analytics. If there's one thing Silver gets, it's how to present analytical information in a coherent manner no matter the audience, something that I think only Lowe and Jonah Keri get on Grantland. Rany Jazayerli does, too, but he's too infrequent a contributor. This site is very analytical and strives to push forward ideas that aren't so much contrarian as they are outside the box. The biggest talking point from wrestling fans is how if someone has an opposite opinion of something, that he's simply doing it to buck a trend or be contrarian or stir up shit...but that's how analysis works. You're taking a deeper look into something and trying to see it from as many perspectives as you can. I can't even begin to tell you what sites like these and tOA and the older version of the DVDVR boards did for me in how I perceived wrestling, simply because a lot of people decided to look at it differently and made you think about those perspectives. Sure there were assholes who said it was their way or the high way...these are pro wrestling boards we are talking about, after all. It's not so much that Shoemaker is a bad writer. It's that he presents wrestling in an antiquated context with his bullshit "post-modern" gimmick.. I have no doubt that if he wanted to sit down and present wrestling the way he perceives it without having to water it down that he'd be perfectly fine. And the hilarious part is that Simmons would have no problems with it either. They fucking let Triple H sit there and give as candid an interview as you'll ever see on pro wrestling (with bullshit involved because it's Trips) and it was a great read because Shoemaker wasn't trying to spin it with his gimmick. Or Vince gave Trips an earpiece to give to Shoemaker so that he could yell the right questions in Shoemaker's ear. One of the two. Point is that basically everyone on here believes in transparency and can snuff out bullshit pretty easily. They just want to know more about something they're passionate about. The more information there is about anything, the more we can figure out so that we can understand it better. They don't care so much about being right as they do about finding new ways to look at things both already covered and not yet found. And I feel like that sentiment is growing more and more over time.

I don't really get why they take the moral compass and make him the centerpiece of this feud, now. Show was best on the side as a wild card, but now...I don't see it. Bryan is so over at this point and now you're going to dilute that by bringing Show into the equation. Supposedly, HHH and the McMahons are gonna be off TV after HIAC, so Show being pushed is probably what's going to make that happen. I don't see what the end game here is. They've now made Bryan's two big wins mean basically nothing now that so many other things are being involved.

Well that was...something.