Timbo Slice

All that's well and good, but with people souring on cable in the first place and them having good money come in from RAW and SmackDown!, I always saw the OOT as hedging the bet, so to speak. They should get a decent number with the renewal, and if the subscriptions grow after WM or what have you, they'd recoup that money pretty easily. That $96M in a year can come with 8 million subscribers to the network, which while not set in stone is definitely in range.

I only caught a few minutes but he was mainly talking about the show and the comics. No wrestling talk.

I'm a huge fan of CW Anderson's work so I'm interested in seeing his big matches again once I get there, but I always dug his gimmick as the long lost Anderson brother.

One good thing about The Shield having kind of a blah match at WrestleMania is that it seems like they're gonna keep them together for a while now that they know Bryan is firmly entrenched as their #2, which means that while Reigns got himself the big push at Royal Rumble, they can keep them together for a while longer to feud with the Wyatts if they wanted to.

Benoit/Sullivan was pretty damn crazy.

The main bridges were the indies that felt the need to offer a different style to combat the big dogs, so you had ECW go with lucha, the japanese styles, death matches, etc. APW out on the west coast with the New Japan Juniors style, and then ROH upping the stiffness and turning into a true "Japanese-style" promotion. Then WCW took ECW's ideas on the work, WWF took ECW's style on the attitude side of things and about a decade later, with ROH being the indy hub for so many, that style integrated into the WWE almost by default. It's just a reactionary business. People see what works and want to see where it goes.

It's a fine card, but I think what El-P might be talking about is how nothing about this year is unpredictable in any way at all. The only thing that's unpredictable is whether or not WWE is as big a group of idiots as we all think they are (which is totally founded), but the problem there is that if they really are that moronic, they don't deserve success in the first place. That being said, if they can't figure out that a WrestleMania Moment with 75,000 people doing the "YES!" chant is worthwhile, fuck 'em.

Not as good as the match from last year but it was fun.

Everything about this was Classic HHH (And not in the best way). A promo that goes too long without a retort from the other guy, an elaborate ruse that is unnecessary, and then a beatdown at the end that went way, way, way too long. Stephanie tapping into 2000 Bitch Stephanie was probably the best part of the whole thing, and then of course, when her big moment comes, Bryan yells at her for not slapping him hard enough. Absolutely hilarious. Supposedly, Bryan did a stretcher job for this thing afterwards, which is about par for the course.

Well, Meltz did say that Orton was the only guy today who could be a top guy in JCP.

I only think WWE can justify raising its price if they feel the market for cable subscriptions subsides. Right now, a lot of people are becoming disenchanted with cable as a whole and don't mind going to OTT services like the WWE can offer, but only if the price is worth getting out of the cable subscription. I don't expect them to raise the price for quite a long time.

Graves just doesn't interest me. I understand what he's trying to do, but it just doesn't seem natural. People talk about him as someone who could be like Punk down the road, but he doesn't have nearly as much charisma as Punk and while people will shit on Punk's work, I haven't seen much from Graves that tells me he's going to be some super worker down the road, either. Meanwhile, Zayn seems like he's just running in place, knowing he can go out there and have a good match with a lot of people, but after what he did with Cesaro, this seemed like a step down for him, with the match not really holding much interest with me.

When I went back to look at HHH matches, I had a similar opinion. I felt like he was cherry-picking his favorite 80s stuff and trying to make it his own, but ended up failing because it wasn't nearly as compelling. The idea behind those epics is that we're supposed to care that he's the guy having them, but he never gives you a reason to get behind him. If anything, it's his opponent you feel more for, either because you don't like him and you'd rather see HHH win out of spite or you love him and therefore make Triple H that much more of a heel. He's bland as all hell.

So from the WON this morning, it looks like they're talking to Spike TV about a return, which means Viacom backed up that big ol' truck of money, it seems.

And then when they have a tournament, everyone can compete for the Red Solo Cup.

Who had Carlos going into the WWE HOF before the WON HOF?

It still doesn't matter. You're talking about the opinion of 1 person against the opinions of thousands upon thousands. That's not nearly enough data.

It's Gary Thorne. Pretty good get by WWE.

Fuck it, that's awesome.

When there are multiple players in the mix to win and not a guaranteed winner because they booked themselves into a corner, it's my favorite match. Patterson really was a genius at booking it by letting all these angles play out during the match to keep things interesting, but there really hasn't been lately that would stand up as a top tier Rumble match. The only thing that caught my attention was when Santino was with Del Rio at the end of the 2011 Rumble. If he had won that, it would have changed the Rumble forever as a match where truly everyone had a shot, and they missed an opportunity there, I feel.

As opposed to the crap he's been wearing for the last decade?

...you mean they aren't already?

LL. Some people call him Uncle L because he's not exactly as young as he used to be make a name like LL Cool J seem cool.

We do care. One of the major reasons I thought to open this topic was a place to toss all sorts of financial stuff like that from you. The TV deals will get done, and the network has lauched. But there will always be Business/Finance stuff popping up, and it could use a good general thread to toss it into. Then if it turns out to be major, it can be broken out like is done out of the "Comments that don't warrant a thread". So... please keep tossing stuff in here, Chris. Seconded. The biggest thing WWE has going for them right now is how to build a good financial model because they want to keep the machine afloat and you've got the biggest finger on that particular pulse right now. It's great stuff.

I'm going through the NWA in 1989 right now and man alive is Lex Luger great. The four PPV matches I saw him have were all fantastic, and although I know Starrcade becomes a clusterfuck of sorts, he really did have one hell of a hot streak that year.