Loss

For the record, I do agree with a few of those things, I just hate hearing them all the time from people who think they're really making a great point.

I hope she at least stays in long enough to put all of her policy positions on her website. That will be interesting.

I am amazed after all this time that people who say the following things still think they're making original points: * that the title belts have to mean something * that clean finishes are good * that too much is given away on free TV I'm sure others can add more.

Jericho comes across as very, very confident in radio and print interviews -- which is fine, he knows how to carry himself as a star -- but I suspect that his cockiness motivates the writers to have fun with him. Plus, it's HHH. I just wonder what kinds of conversations Michaels and HHH have about the guy. HHH obviously despises him, but Michaels let him get quite a bit of heat on him and worked a six month program in '08, so I don't think he dislikes him.

I am long past the point where I care too much about who wins and loses worked matches. But Jericho losing three or four consecutive loser-leaves-RAW matches, after losing every match in the buildup to the first match, and losing matches to other people on Smackdown in the interim, is a little ridiculous. The formula is getting old. Is Jericho going to find a way to get back on RAW yet again next week and lose yet another loser-leaves-RAW match? He was a much better heel in 2008 and early 2009 when they actually let him get heat.

Joe Lieberman's political universe falling apart as he prepares to transition to a career in big health will be the highlight of 2012.

Surely, there's a good Democrat somewhere in Connecticut, although we've seen little evidence of that nationally. What's Ned Lamont doing these days?

I wonder why they were leaking that they were considering Punk/Hardy for Mania, knowing that.

I agree. Hogan/Piper and Hogan/Sting were probably the two best-booked feuds of that era and both had a long, slow build.

Smith's kids. I kinda thought Smith was kind of an obscure Hart brother to reference.

He only signed a short-term contract.

Yeah, Bret looked a little older, but he just looked like a guy who had slightly aged. He looked really great considering he had a stroke. I noticed he was a little more soft spoken than in the past, but that's usually typical of most wrestlers cutting their first promo returning after a long absence. After they have a week or two to get back in the wrestling mindset, the delivery comes back. Bret was by no means bad last night, but I think he'll be even better after he gets comfortable in this angle.

It's the WWE. Vince will never admit they were in the wrong (and really you can argue for both sides here anyways). And the Vince/Bret thing is called an angle... if they had Bret and Vince celebrating to end the night, there is no reason for Bret to return the next three months and have a match with Vince at Mania. Sure they could have had Bret lay a challenge to Vince, but after the Shawn segment, it would come off as Bret being bitter still. This way the segment painted Vince as the one unwilling to move on, and it worked IMO. Really, you are just nitpicking here, much like when you complained about Jericho's haircut and vest when he came back. Jericho's run turned out pretty good, didn't it? I figured the night would end with Vince not wanting closure and Bret finally punching him in the face to end the show. Vince spends the next few weeks begging for Bret to come back and Bret goading him into a match at Wrestlemania, and so on. The angle will still work fine, so I'm not saying they've blown it or anything like that, but in some ways, the less they do between now and Mania, the better, because the storyline is already built. I do like that they cleared the Bret/Shawn backstory as quickly as possible so Shawn wouldn't be the focus of Bret/Vince. I am also curious what other ancillary wrestlers Bret will interact with as part of this feud. Jericho was a disaster as a babyface, by the way, and ended up dropping the vest eventually.

The frustrating thing about the Bret angle is that Shawn got to say Bret was in the wrong and that he disrespected the business, but it happened 12 years ago. Bret got to make no points in return about Shawn. You could say the same about Bret and Vince. Vince refuses to come out when Bret asks him to, only doing it on his own terms. Bret still thinks Vince's apology is sincere, and the kick in the gut catches him off guard. He just looked really dumb. The TNA show was just so, so, so terrible. Hall and Nash look ridiculously old -- they look older than Hogan.

Was wrestling always this bad and I'm just now noticing? Both shows were pretty wretched tonight. I should save that TNA show anytime I'm nostalgic for WCW. If WCW was still around, that's what it would look like now.

That may have been in reference to Sting refusing to job to Terry Funk during the Flair feud.

Another issue is that they had so many top WWF feuds left unsettled at the time they were intending to start the invasion angle. It's hard to do WWF guys vs WCW guys when Austin/Rock and Austin/HHH were left dangling, and people were wanting to see those feuds properly blown off. Rethinking this, I think the timeline that maybe should be focused on more is not necessarily when they started the angle, but more when they purchased the company. Had they purchased them in October 2000 when they tried the first time around, they would have had time to factor rolling out the WCW guys into the Wrestlemania build, or at least saw every angle through to a conclusion by the end of Wrestlemania so they could switch gears the night after. As it stands, they closed the deal about a week before Wrestlemania with a full card already in place (and post-WM plans already pretty much set as well). I'm curious how far in advance they decided Austin was turning.

I think Dave talks about Brock Lesnar too much. Everyone does, honestly, but he really does.

I don't know that you should. Part of me wonders if the reasons for that high buyrate were: (1) the tease of Austin going babyface again in the build (2) the expectation that some other WCW names would make surprise appearances on the PPV Obviously, there was no way to know this at the time, but they could have done an angle with all the top names except Sting and Luger had they just waited longer to start it. By the following summer, they had Hogan, Hall, Nash, Flair, and Bischoff. If you assume it starts with Bischoff's July 2002 debut, they could have run it a year and had Goldberg and Scott Steiner join later. Guys like Benoit, Michaels, and HHH would also be off the injured list and they could use them as well. Hall and Nash get run out of town early (Hall's firing and Nash's injury), and WCW retaliates by sidelining Rock. Shawn Michaels, disgusted by what he sees, comes out of retirement to defend WWE. If only we could always look into the future ... had they stretched it out to 2010, they could also include Bret Hart and make Bob Ryder an accurate reporter.

Does Taker drop the belt before then, or do they have a title match? If he drops the belt, what would be the SD title match? Jericho/Edge? It looks like Orton/DiBiase will be another match on the show also. I wouldn't be surprised to see them reprise HHH/Batista to give HHH a high profile match and also let him get his win back from a few years ago. No clue how Cena fits into everything, but that's actually a pretty decent group of top matches when you add in Bret/Vince.

Why did he thank Justin Shapiro?

Come on, for the time, that was actually not that bad.

I think what distinguishes Bret from most people in wrestling is that I at least get the idea that Bret knows he's screwed up and his surroundings have been screwed up, while Ric Flair probably thinks he's a perfectly functional member of society, and misses the days when men were men and could grab women's asses in public and drink until the wee hours of the morning. And considering how absolutely terrible Bret's 40s were for him, that he hasn't gone even further off the deep end is a credit to him.