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It's all a big work. I can see WWE "double crossing" Lesnar to get him genuinely mad, so that the stories of him "quitting" spread faster, while Lesnar milks it for all it's worth to try and land more concessions from WWE management. But I find it hard to believe that Brock walks out on the company before collecting every last cent of his fat contract. There aren't any other options out there to make such easy money.

To be fair, next to no-one watched his K-1 debut.

I don't really believe that anyone is truly Teflon to bad booking. I think Cena had the wind taken out of his sails in 2008 when he was playing second fiddle to Hunter on Raw and was pinned at four out of five PPVs by Orton, JBL and Batista. There is something to what Loss said about Cena needing a win after losing to Rock at WrestleMania plus if Lesnar had demolished Cena it would make it hard for fans to believe anyone else on the regular roster has a chance against him. Also, from a backstage standpoint, it'll stop Brock from getting the "who has he put over since coming back" catcalls that The Rock received. Brock showed he can play ball last night, that might help him out in the long run politically, even if it took the edge off his unstoppable aura a bit.

Bryan on the radio show was acting like it was the worst booking decision ever, which is a bit much. Between Dave going off about people saying ROH wrestlers have no psychology and can't work but still praise WWE matches like Kane vs. Orton and Jericho vs. Punk, and Bryan making a dig at people who say Vince doesn't change his mind and they are instead covering their asses, this was quite the show.

I can't wait till Paul Heyman tells Dave Meltzer that it was all Kevin Dunn's fault as he told Vince you can't put the UFC guy over the WWE guy. The result was only surprising if you thought WWE would do the best thing to make money off the Lesnar deal rather than satisfy their egos.

It really questions the randomness of the testing if Rey shows up backstage one day when WWE management is already disgruntled with him and he's told to take a test straight away. He was probably long overdue a test, but I don't think other part timers like Undertaker or Triple H would get the same treatment. Which is the problem here. There's nothing wrong with Rey being suspended for amphetamines if he gets popped for it. What's wrong is the many guys who are likely popped for similar stuff that we never hear about because Vince McMahon pressures his doctors to accept their excuses.

Loss, Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye on December 31st 2000 was a key show, where pro wrestlers and MMA fighters had worked matches, as it kickstarted the New Year's Eve tradition, which Pride and K-1 later took over. It drew a near sell out crowd at the Osaka Dome. Also, Cro Cop was a ringer in the sense that Pride kept it quiet that he had trained in takedown defence, so everyone in New Japan thought Nagata would win, as he was a national calibre amateur wrestler in his youth. His loss to Fedor two years later should probably be on the 2003 yearbook too.

Albano vs Hart is an interesting comparison, given that in Memphis Hart was unquestionably the top manager who the territory revolved around, while Albano was at best the most important of a trio of managers that all had their runs managing opponents for Bruno/Backlund, but never the sustained focal point of the promotion. Hart was one of the managers WWE brought in to replace the Three Wizards and though his work there wasn't as memorable as in Memphis, he still had a successful run.

Rey took that advice to heart as he refused to lose to Dolph Ziggler in 2009.

Russo knows how to lie with statistics. Like taking the lowest rating of the previous regime for a lame duck show and the highest rating when he was in power, while looking at overall trends in ratings is a better assessment of his abilities. So you get Russo bragging about taking a 2.6 rating and turning it into a 3.4, when the average of before compared with after is statistically insignificant.

New Yorkers tell the truth! Explain Paul Heyman to me then?

TNA sues for breach of contract, maybe? I dunno. But, Bix is right, WWE has mentioned TNA before anyway, on the Hardys' DVD when Jeff went there the first time, and Flair (ironically enough) took a shot at them on one of the legends shows. That would assume that TNA actually has a written contract relating to their consent of Flair's appearance. Chances of that are? 100%, as WWE didn't want to use Flair unless there was a contractual agreement in place. Dave didn't report that WWE agreed to mention TNA on their programming, just that it was a major sticking point. Given that TNA never got that mention, as Dave said on his radio show over the weekend "TNA had the winning hand and they were the ones who folded the cards". I suppose TNA gets the consolation prize of one of WWE's performers appearing on one of their DVDs which will likely mean jack shit.

Wasn't the injury angle only done because she was hurt for real on Dancing With The Stars?

I think there's an argument that Sheamus squashing Bryan in 18 seconds works better than just giving them 6-12 minutes to have a basic back and forth match that wouldn't be memorable after the monster epics that followed it. I mean this was closer to Diesel vs. Backlund than Bruno vs. Rogers or Warrior vs. Honky Tonk Man, but putting over the new champion quickly over the hated heel champion is a tried and true WWE booking formula, and most fans in the arena did pop big for it. Really most of the WWF sacred cows in the mid 90s were only sacrificed because they jumped ship to WCW (Hall and Nash), were being pushed out to save cash (Bret) or suffered career threatening injuries (Shawn), freeing space at the top of the card for Austin, Foley, Rock and Hunter to break through. Now, you need guys to voluntarily fall on their sword to create a new guy and it's not surprising that they rather opt to put over established stars that are their longtime friends, which also guarantees a higher spot on the WrestleMania card and being able to hold onto it for longer (Flair over Shawn, Taker over Shawn and Hunter for the last four years).

Personally I think that Rock winning works much better for a rematch, as I don't see much point in another match between the two if Cena had already defeated the outsider he's been burying for a year. Given this result, I think they announce Rock vs Cena II and Brock vs. Taker tomorrow night for Mania next year, unless they squeeze the former into the SummerSlam card, which would probably be preferable as I'm not sure WWE could drag it out in a compelling manner for another year.

I can't see WWE advertising a TNA PPV when they refused to acknowledge on their website that Flair still works for TNA. I'm guessing they're just getting a booking fee and assurances that Flair won't badmouth their company on TV.

I can't blame Santo for wanting to protect his brand. Eddy didn't work as a Guerrero till he was ready, there's plenty of other examples in lucha where green sons of a legend work under another hood until they're ready. Some people are never ready though.

Didn't it get good ratings the first year?

Well, it depends if those people are being honest with MKJ. I wouldn't put it past FCW management to work the sheets and the boys on this issue.

I've said it before but you with WWE you do get a genuine sense Mike has sources ranging from wrestlers to office people to high level management while Dave seems to rely on Creative team douches. Mike was doing his radio show doing a long form review of Raw he went from getting the OMG FCW IS CLOSING DOWN email to finding out that it probably wasnt the case in the space of 5 minutes. I need to listen to what Mike has to say regarding FCW, but on the Jericho issue the creative team douches were right. Remember the line in the Observer about how people within creative still believe Jericho is coming in soon after Dave ran with the Jericho is not returning story. What can you do when you have the better source, but your source is being completely dishonest? Well, you should be able to sniff out the BS, but Dave has his blind spots.

I saw the video. I don't know how it was perceived in the arena (let us consider for a moment, that a good chunk of WWE's audience wasn't even born when the company folded) but on TV it looked very awkward and fleeting, especially given the timing. He should've done it during a promo segment. At least he would've had a shot at avoiding the camera changes then. Yeah, he should've waited till Hunter and Shawn's promo segment!

Sort of. Austin insisted that he do a normal piledriver, but Owen assured him he could do the reverse sit out piledriver safely and Austin agreed to take the move, somewhat reluctantly.

It is true however that Austin's neck was in pretty bad shape before taking Owen's tombstone piledriver, but it's a stretch to say that "it was obvious that something would have happened to Austin anyway next time he took a piledriver". From Torch Newsletter No. 443:

I guess Ross is shirty with Page because DDP was Bischoff's biggest backer in WCW.