Loss

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

I think Cena/Rusev would have worked really well in 2007-2008. While there was a segment of the audience booing Cena at that point, crowds are more rebellious than ever now and I can't even imagine what the crowd reaction would be. I don't see Rusev getting cheered, but I don't see Cena getting cheered either. It's also possible all the heat could go to Lana.

Hell, they could easily start building to a Ryback babyface turn that would probably get him back on track too. It seems like there are so many guys with star potential that are just doing nothing right now.

I know I'm a broken record on this at this point, but Ziggler as the mystery partner would have been an instant elevation for him that got over huge. I'm not even a huge Ziggler fan. I just keep seeing opportunities come up like this where he would be the right guy and they go with someone else.

They are smart in how they are protecting Rusev. He is being put in position to have longer matches on house shows to give him the opportunity to improve and gain experience, but he's being kept in short matches on TV.

I love the Final Countdown one too. By the way, my e-book will have a full index of every wrestling video to air in any promotion in the entire 1990s (to the best of my knowledge -- and I'm pretty confident), listing the original air date, promotion, show, artist, title and subject of the video (be it a wrestler, a feud, etc.)

I'm still curious what Seth Rollins' new ring attire will look like. I have this feeling that people will hate it.

Taylor as a heel in 1987 was heralded by hardcores at the time as the next Ric Flair. He was that loved. Rotunda never had a run that excited people that way.

I don't know. They ended up signing almost all of them anyway, which makes me think in hindsight they simply should have postponed the entire thing until 2002.

And Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker. He also currently has JBL and Jerry Lawler on his announce team.

I'd have no problem with the repeat matches if they built off of each other, the announcers recalled the previous results and match strategies and there was something at stake other than pride.

Thank you for your utterly useless contribution. Thank you for taking the time to thank me. If wrestling is art, so is 3 card monte. Seriously, this has been a swell and civil discussion to this point, what's the purpose of popping in just to contribute nothing but snark? Dooley does a lot of that.

The Twitter for DiGiorno Pizza was a riot last night. There are more, but those were my favorites.

A lot of Keirn's best singles matches probably don't exist in full on tape, but the early 80s matches with Fujinami are really excellent. The Fabulous Ones were also a great tag team with plenty of terrific matches. Keirn was very good.

Thanks.

Does anyone know the date of the Raw where the Rock gave Faarooq an autographed picture of himself? I can't find a date for it.

That idea is great, but can that be done overnight? How many of the current crop are good enough workers to have a strong 15-minute+ match? I think it would have to be a process.

I finally had a chance to check out the match, which I thought was very good. More than that though, I was a fan of the overall presentation of the match, that it was something presented credibly with good announcing, built slowly with matwork to start and was contested over a championship that people cared about. Dave kind of walked through the idea of at the very least separating a few of the better working women from the pack in the latest WON, maybe as something separate from the Divas label. US wrestling has never attempted to push women on equal footing, but he pointed to the success of Ronda Rousey and made the action hero analogy that I thought was interesting and worth discussion at the very least. There aren't a lot of women that post here, so it's possible this is the wrong crowd to really ask this question of, but I do wonder if WWE has something special on their hands that could take off. They may not, but I do think it's worth experimenting with the idea of pushing at least one or two women as actual WWE superstars instead of divas, especially since the business model of WWE now should on paper mean that they can take more creative risks than ever. I'm not thinking of another character like Chyna where women wrestle men as much as I am thinking that trying to get over a women's feud as a serious upper card feud is a risk worth taking. Even if it's not something that would sustain, they may have the right talent mix right now to do it in the short term. There's no historical precedent for it, so it's hard to say if it would work or wouldn't. But on the strength of that match, I see no harm in trying.

I thought that was his gimmick. He's been booked to complain about his push quite a few times. Oh, how I love thee 2014 wrestling.

Did he do something new? Or are they still holding it against him that he dared get a concussion last year?

It just makes it weird that they aren't pushing Ziggler, when they have a spot he could easily slide into and fans love him so much.

is that a real thing that happens anymore where fans feel ripped off just because a heel wins? If the MITB match itself was good but a heel came out on top, I'd have a hard time seeing the fans feeling like they didn't get their money's worth. Hell half their heels get cheered anyway. You really want people to feel ripped off, then have Cena win it. It's more that I think Bryan forfeiting the title will leave people a little deflated. So why not balance it out by giving them something else really great to take the sting off? That's how WWE thinks -- they usually try not to do double whammies when they're doing something that they think may be a downer. And that's why I specifically said "fan favorite babyface". Of course Cena isn't the answer. Bray would be a better pick than Cena, sure, but if they are eventually building to a Brock title win, doesn't it make more sense to put the title on a babyface?