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Re: Edge vs. Punk, I'm not sure how much longevity counts for if you have several long layoffs due to injury and WWE keeps pushing you on top long past your sell by date just because you were once red hot.

Was that specifically ECW's fault or the natural evolution of the art-form after kayfabe was killed? The problem of wrestlers taking insane amounts of punishment to get themselves over as being really tough and focusing more on spots to quickly pop the crowd than heat and psychology was a problem that pervaded the industry. I'm sure ECW can be partially blamed, but to give them all the credit for those trends is probably overrating their influence, which is hard to tease out, because there were a lot of cooks around that somewhat independently went in a similar direction to the route ECW went down.

I think an argument could be made that Austin was the best TV worker in WWE in 1998. He had a lot of fun matches with a wide range of opponents when he was given the time in a variety of settings (singles matches with Goldust, Kane, Ken Shamrock and The Rock, tag matches with The Undertaker/Vince McMahon against The NAO, Rock & Owen/D-Lo, Kane & Mankind, etc). There were no classics, but with the crash TV format of Raw, no-one else was having any either.

Yeah, I was talking about the Google trends in my post (so Roman Reigns has been searched for slightly less than Randy Orton and slightly more than Nikki Bella, which isn't mind-blowingly impressive). My point was that from my experience at Cageside Seats, that Punk stories generate a lot of traffic (much from search engines), so his high placement wasn't surprising to me. The rest of my post I wasn't referring to CSS.

I think a big part of the WWF cooling down after SummerSlam in '97/'98/'99 was being moved to a much later time slot, sometimes on another night, to make way for U.S. Open tennis coverage on the USA Network for two weeks. You weren't going to shoot any big angles during that two week period. That cooling was forced by the network they were on.

Looking at the hits for Cageside Seats articles, Punk stories always do really well, so him being the second most searched for pro wrestler (I don't count The Rock, as this year it's been all acting accept for his cameo at WrestleMania) wasn't surprising to me. Regarding Reigns, he was behind Bryan and Orton (amongst others) and only one spot ahead of Nikki Bella, which proves that he hasn't broken out of the pack yet.

I'm not sure '98 is a good example, as even though the pay-per-view main events by and large sucked and the cards were full of filler in the latter half of the year, there were tons of memorable angles in that period (Austin losing the belt, the Zamboni and hospital attacks, McMahon firing Austin, Austin taking McMahon hostage, the build to the Deadly Game tournament where Shane and Rock turned heel, etc). I think it's partly a consequence of the brand split and moving to brand only pay-per-views, which hurt card depth and made the B-shows seem less important.

Montreal was a really unique situation because it was picked up by the Canadian media as a significant news story and the WWF was forced to acknowledge the truth that he was leaving. The Internet definitely played a big part in that story gaining momentum, but I think the Canadian media being more willing than the U.S. media to cover wrestling seriously was equally, if not more, important.

I think it says a lot about TNA that Sting's run there was barely touched upon. But it should have been talked in more detail. I can see it being seen as a total black mark other than him finally becoming a good promo, because well it's TNA, but there's pockets of evidence that he had a positive impact on ratings and pay-per-view buys, especially when he first came in. Moreover, signing Sting was important in getting Spike TV to move TNA Impact into prime time and his loss (along with Hulk Hogan and others to a lesser degree) probably led to Spike TV losing interest in airing TNA on their station.

The full movie can be seen here: Evil Undertaker is in another couple of fight scenes with the Bollywood hero later in the film.

From the BOARD: "People take rumors too seriously. I know. but what a coincidence that with the exception of Punk's match with HHH and Bryan added to the title match because of the fans, that we had the top matches at Mania in December. Lots of lucky guesses and bad rumors going around. Lesnar vs. Reigns was decided either shortly before or shortly after Mania. The Lesnar-Cena match was the booked Lesnar-Bryan match from the start, the booked story of crushing the fans hearts with a reality check, and then Reigns saves the day. It can all change, and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Last year's main was first supposed to be Rock vs. Lesnar, but Rock opted out, and then Austin vs. HHH, but Austin wasn't willing."

Who else do they have? Daniel Bryan is on the disabled list. Dean Ambrose is off shooting a movie. Batista isn't back yet. Bray hasn't turned face yet. The only possible alternative opponent is Roman Reigns which they're wisely saving till WrestleMania. Hoping Cena haters tune in for another beating and Cena fans tune in to see him overcome the odds was the only card WWE could play.

Which is why Vince McMahon gave him carte blanche to deck him one.

No he didn't it was in F4Weekly so it was Bryan and/or Bix.

Alex Greenfield posted this about Kevin Dunn in the comments section of Cageside Seats a couple of months ago:

"Has anyone ever clinched feud of the year six weeks before the first lockup?" - Dave Meltzer

What about the Super J cups in 1994 and 1995?

Bill Watts thought Paul Heyman (like Brian Pillman) was horribly overpaid when he came into WCW as head booker, Watts was looking for a reason to fire him in order to cut costs after Heyman refused to renegotiate his guaranteed contract and eventually did so over the belief that he had been falsifying expenses (the story was that he had allegedly been staying at his girlfriend's place in Atlanta whilst charging the company for hotel rooms). Heyman sued for unfair dismissal and apparently accused Watts of making anti-Semitic remarks in the lawsuit.

Yeah, I know he's doing a grandstand challenge, but I'm not sure he could possibly come across more annoying and obnoxious.

Russo's going mental on Twitter, trolling all the dirt sheet writers, asking whether they have the Spaldings to come on his podcast.

It was basically a column where Bruce detailed all the problems SMW faced in the summer of 1994, in particular: (a) Ripping Jim Cornette for his plan to do a bait and switch finish in the upcoming Rock "n" Roll Express vs. Chris Candido & Brian Lee, Morton's hair vs. Tammy Fytch's hair stipulation match, where the RNRs would lose but Candido would get his head shaved instead. ( Claiming Corny was ripping of the fans by bringing in an impaired Terry Gordy and trying to pass him off as the great wrestler of the past. © Making fun of Cornette's belief that "There's no such thing as too much heat." by taking The Gangstas gimmick to its extremes, suggesting if Cornette believed that then he should book superfan Heather Norton, her mother, and front office employee Pam Lawson as their hos and put Gordy in black face to play their befuddled maid, amongst other scenarios. After the column was published, Cornette gave Wade Keller a threatening phone call.

I think a bigger problem than the parity booking is the booking of the final day where one wrestler after another chokes against a lesser opponent to miss out on the final before someone back doors there way in. To do that once to mix things up would be OK for a change, but that's happened four straight years now.

Vince Russo buries Spike TV as a bad television partner for TNA (and doesn't understand basic probability theory): http://www.cagesideseats.com/tna-impact/2014/8/2/5963201/vince-russo-buries-spike-tv-as-a-bad-television-partner-for-tna

Very good show as always. I'd pay $9.99 for the Good Will Wrestling Network. I think the problem with the WWE Network at the moment is that we won't see the kind of ideas proposed on the show until (a) they start making a big enough profit from the service that they can afford to invest more in its presentation and new programming and ( they hire more people with product knowledge who would come up with cool ideas that wrestling fans would pay to see. I think with the international roll-out and their two biggest shows of the year, they should get to the stage where that can start to happen by the end of Q1 2015, but it'll probably be a very lean period until then, other than adding more Raws and Smackdowns to their library.

WWE lost $14.5 million for the second quarter of 2014 and WWE Network was at 700,000 subscribers by the end of the quarter. http://ir.corporate.wwe.com/Cache/1001189361.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&FID=1001189361&T=&IID=4121687