Timbo Slice

If they actually let Sting cut logical promos, I'd be more interested in the match. He's gonna bring his working boots just because, but I don't have high hopes there. The main is going to be the best trainwreck ever. But Cena vs. Rusev could go down as Cena's best WM ever just because. I really hope they put Rusev over, but who knows with this company anymore. And that's not a good thing.

KrisZ actually brought up an awesome point where Rusev could retain, Brock could retain, but you build to Reigns/Rusev probably at SummerSlam where Reigns winning actually means something. Of course, Cena winning the belt is looking like what will happen because he'll still draw if they're trying to make the U.S. title mean something again. But what do you do with Rusev now?

I was one of the guys that was arguing for the touring brand, but I don't see them as a weekly touring brand. The max I said was the PPV weekends and the specials. Good points were raised, though. I don't know who thought them touring 52 weeks a year was a good idea, but specializing events or piggybacking PPVs is about as big as they could get without stretching the brand.

I don't see how Roman can win right now. They haven't done much at all in making him look like a legit threat to Brock and Brock is doing his normal negotiation tactics to ensure he gets the best possible contract for himself, which means all signs point to him retaining. The problem now becomes about what you do with Roman, and right now, hanging him with Big Show or Kane helps nobody. He's in a pretty bad spot.

Robert Rodriguez considering what Lucha Underground has looked like.

That's more how they were booked, though. At that time, being a part of a tag team was just something you did. It wasn't really specialized. It's a little bit less like that right now, obviously, but one of the reasons they booked the way they did was that you could do a lot more by having featured tag teams on top to build to the big singles matches.

The Kikuchi/Kobashi tag is a strong feather in their caps, but I'm not sure if they have enough to make a list like this in the end, and I LOVE both of these guys. The one thing they have going for them is that they're a really strong heel team in an era that wasn't big on native heel teams, which made them unique. They'll be on the edge, but I'll consider them.

They're gonna make my list without a doubt. The evolution of them from a spotty tag team to one of the best storytelling duos in wrestling is fun to watch. Not sure where, but they'll be on it for sure.

Damn, this has been a really good week for podcasts.

ECW had higher production costs, was running the same buildings the RAW and SmackDown! tours were, similarly priced talent, etc. Everything from a numbers standpoint shows that you can do a tour with NXT at a fraction of the cost and if done correctly, can be profitable. That's what they're trying to figure out now.

Sean, if people were paying $60 on the regular to see ROH shows, they wouldn't be going to Sinclair asking for budget increases. Maybe for PPVs they can charge that, and that's four times a year for 1k-2k houses. If WWE knows they can get that, NXT would be on tour the day after WrestleMania. As it stands right now, they don't even know what they're booking for next week's show outside of Bill Simmons on commentary and something with Snoop Dogg, so I doubt they're that far ahead.

It's not competition to him, though. These guys like Bryan, who is the poster boy for what NXT does on a regular basis in the fans eyes, isn't seen as someone who can work on the level of their top guys to Vince and Dunn and what have you. As much as I wanted an NXT invasion angle or something along those lines, I doubt he sees NXT as competition.

That's ludicrously overpriced for ROH, especially considering that same weekend WWE was able to run $15 tickets. NXT running those rates would be getting into their main show house territory. No reason to go that high assuming lower production costs and smaller venues.

There's no reason to tour if it isn't profitable. They're doing just fine touring Florida. If there's money in the NXT brand, and it's obvious there is, touring is the next logical step. And as far as Vince getting involved, it depends on how they decide to tour. If they take the specials away from Full Sail, Vince most likely wouldn't be a part of it. Where he'd be a part of it is if they piggyback the PPVs.

Well, the biggest contrarian Flair opinions on this board were because he overstayed his welcome in a lot of fans eyes and they wanted to penalize him for it to the point where people forgot how fucking great he was for a 15-year period. That's not necessarily being a hater, but it's the idea that the best wrestler ever has to have a career that's great from beginning to end accounts for more than a prime that's in a lot of cases, even when you put up your faves against him, the greatest of all time. That's not a bad opinion, but the amount to which Flair was dinged was egregious in a lot of cases. Flair's going to be my #1 and I stand behind it not because I feel like it's the easy choice, but even with all the other great wrestlers out there who had peaks and might have even had runs that were better than Flair's at some point, I can't think of a wrestler who to me was considered the best more times throughout his career than him. There will be people who put Lawler or Funk or Jumbo or Hansen ahead of him, and I wouldn't bat an eye. To me, when Flair was at his best, nobody was better.

So Mookie can back me up with some of the particulars, but in talking with him, hypothetically, there is a chance some type of NXT touring schedule could be worked out, but it would have to be done in a very specific way. So the 4,000 seats sold in two hours is impressive, but the tickets are only $15 a pop. NXT production costs are tiny compared to what the big house shows run, but there are a couple opportunities here. On non-PPV/TV live shows, WWE averaged around 5k per in 2014. Taking into account that an NXT house show would be attended by hardcore fans that would definitely plop down their money if they came to their town, it's not inconceivable that an NXT show could run smaller venues and sell them out in the 4-5k range. Now let's say they raise ticket prices to $25 a pop or set up a few VIPs at $35-40 or even $50, you're looking at a per-show take-in of anywhere from 100k-125k on gates alone. Now, they won't be able to run 50 times a year like RAW or SmackDown! from a production standpoint, but as a hypothetical, I brought up a pretty easy scenario to follow. With the four specials a year and my idea about running a WWE Network show the night before your PPVs, that's 16 shows a year that would fill up arenas in the 4-5k range. That would bring in roughly $1.5M in gates alone. Of course, the production costs, renting the arenas, bringing in talent, putting them up in hotels, etc. would be something that has to be taken into account, but with relatively low production costs, lower rental fees on smaller arenas, and just a lower scale on talent all together, I don't see why WWE wouldn't take advantage of the opportunity. This all hinges on how long NXT can remain this intriguing, though. As many have said, NXT getting produced like the other brands would hurt it, but if it were still Triple H overseeing things with little oversight from the Raw/SmackDown! crew, then the product shouldn't suffer as a result and fans would still come out to watch it. It's all about where they feel the ticket price sweet spot would go. 4k on WM weekend where thousands of hardcores will be may not seem as impressive when you take a step back, but considering 2k spots in Cleveland and Columbus were sold out relatively quickly and they drew from miles around, there's no reason to believe that running a Saturday special the night before a PPV featuring NXT only talent in a smaller arena wouldn't do the same thing. The problem is that there isn't much to test for in Florida since there are only a few places that could run a show of that magnitude in the state, but there are plenty of ways they could branch out their touring. NXT doesn't figure into a lot of what WWE reports when it comes to their revenues since they tie it in to developmental, but I don't see that staying the same for long. Maybe they take the four specials and branch those out to bigger arenas to start, and then if they remain successful, try and do it by piggybacking the PPVs? There's a lot of scenarios that could work here, but the success is going to come in figuring out the market that would allow them to grow without overplaying what they have. The 2300 Arena is a fine venue and ROH loves working there, but running the SJSU Event Center and selling it out where hardcores will most likely pay twice face value in scalping just to get in should give you an idea of the ceiling NXT could hit with a semi-regular touring schedule.

Only two hours from Columbus to Cleveland, so I'm not sure about that even being true. If I were assuming geography, the NE crowd would go to the Cleveland show and the midwest people would go to the Columbus show, and there would probably be some people would have gone to both.

It was definitely a traveling crowd. It was only a couple hours drive from a lot of the NE hotspots and Chicago, and considering this was their first non-WM show outside of Florida, the majority of people who showed up were not local to Ohio.

I'm hoping Mookie can get back to me with some numbers so I can do a bit of analysis (probably with him) on the financial outcome of NXT selling out a 2k seater and then a 4k seater in the course of a month compared to house show attendance and where the growth potential can lead it. Because some back of the envelope math is telling me that if this continues to be an upward trend, it's going to be a much tougher financial decision than you might think.

Timeliness IS close to godliness.

I don't blame you. For as much as we shit on HTM in the ring, he's got one of the best heel runs of all time to his name, plus his stuff in Memphis.

I think he'll be my #100. Like a few guys, I'm gonna pepper the bottom of my list with personal faves, and Bobby is a shoe-in.

He's going to be on my list. I think since the indies became a big deal over a decade ago, he's been one of the best workers around, and his work in the last 18 months or so has been tremendous. If he has another good year in him with NJPW, I think it's gonna be enough to clinch him a spot.

So in adding the Japanese tag teams, I totally thought I added these guys but I didn't. Boo me. They really only teamed for about a year, but they had the tremendous Jumbo/Taue tag from 1/26/92 and the 5/25/92 Classico. Kikuchi as face in peril is one of the best things in wrestling and he really shined here. I feel this was where Kobashi showed he could hang with the top tier, and then with the unfortunate Jumbo issue, he seemed well prepared come 1993. I'm gonna have some difficult decisions to make when it comes to tag teams, but man alive, I would surprise the hell out of myself if I don't see them on my list. EDIT: I DID nominate these guys. I blame my massive sunburn.

Best underhand chop of all time.