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However, the word came out instantly from TMZ that "Punk was angry when he found out he'd be wrestling Triple H at WrestleMania."

I think Shane coming back might explain any increased insecurity on Triple H's part at the moment, although I doubt he'll be around past WrestleMania. Vince choosing Shane to be Undertaker's opponent in a desperation move has got to be seen as a pretty big snub to his son-in-law. Instead of choosing a Triple H guy on the main roster or outside it (Owens, Sheamus, Balor, Joe, Nakamura, etc) for that spot, he went with his prodigal son, despite that having trainwreck written all over it. I'm sure Triple H will be worried that this will lead to Shane getting a foothold into the company again.

I think part of the blame for Bryan going too long at times goes on the booker.

I do wonder if Maroon knew about the seizures when WWE took him off the road last April. That would explain why he wouldn't clear him, while other doctors would.

Perhaps more hilariously so than anyone else in history.

The reason for all the Internet hype was because after his "shoot" promo on Raw, articles on Punk got hits, more so than other wrestlers of a similar stature. In that sense he delivered, even though WWE dropped the ball on the angle in spectacular fashion within a month (Nash costing him the title at SummerSlam, losing to Triple H, etc). After that he was pegged into place, as John Cena's understudy.

Hard to imagine the Jarretts could afford to pay Russo as much as the McMahons, unless Jeff was willing to pay over the odds to bring him in. Plus, a job with WWE was a much safer long-term bet than TNA in 2002, given the amount of startups that crash and burn quickly. I don't completely dismiss the theory out of hand, but if WWE had rolled out the red carpet for Russo and gave him carte blanche to book as he pleased, I can't see him intentionally sabotaging himself to get a job with a much smaller company. More likely, Russo pitched his ideas, Hunter/Steph buried him to Vince McMahon because it was Shane's idea to bring him in, and Russo then started being a headache because his ego couldn't handle anything but being top dog.

I think that's Russo trying to save face. It would presume he knows the difference between good and bad ideas. Maybe he started pitching overtly bad idea after he had got demoted so he could go to NWA TNA, but it doesn't make sense that he did from the beginning. The Torch coverage at the time was that he was brought back to be WWE's creative director (basically Stephanie McMahon's job until she became their Chief Brand Officer). That would have placed him above Bryan Gewirtz and Paul Heyman in the pecking order (the Raw and Smackdown head writers of the time). Shane McMahon was instrumental in setting up Russo's return. It's not difficult to poke holes in Russo's booking, especially when he likely hadn't followed WWE storylines all that closely for over two years. Steph/Hunter buried Russo to Vince McMahon as soon as he revealed his big idea, a rehash of the Invasion angle with Bischoff, Goldberg, Bret, Foley and Shawn, and got him demoted to a consultancy position.

He still probably won't put him on the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame ballot. :-/

Matthew Randazzo wrote a few columns for PowerSlam after Ring of Hell was published, so it could have come from there. My answer is who the f*** knows for sure. That said, even if you take everything with a big pinch of salt from his book and articles, clearly the WWE creative team is a dysfunctional workplace by any normal standards.

Using the term trope was unfair, as that's more an expectation on my part than the reality at this point. My main problem with the sequence of dropkicks was that it came immediately after Tanahashi had been destroying the leg with dragon screws and shortly thereafter Okada had to sell the damage like death again. That was just jarring to me personally, sometimes to the point of absurdity. I know it's an old spot, but Okada getting his leg destroyed only to counter a counter into a neck crusher on his bad knee just made him come across to me as incredibly stupid. I wouldn't say don't do the knee work like Dylan does, as it was an important part of the match story, but a personal preference would be for a more gradual recovery from the damage than going back and forth from two extremes. Using the dropkick to break Tanahashi down to set up the Rainmaker makes sense, but it's difficult to bite into the near falls off them as Okada has never won a match with the dropkick and probably never will. Bog standard opening was an exaggeration. There were some spots I liked in the opening portion of the match, but Okada and Tanahashi aren't particularly good at chain wrestling on the mat. They are OK at best. I just don't find it all that engaging. I've seen this story or similar ones before in wrestling matches by other great workers. It just wasn't close to perfectly executed in this case. Yes, there were many sequences that were pulled off seamlessly, but there were also several spots that looked dog rough or were overly convoluted. Plus, at times it became overkill. I'm not going to count all the counters and reversals in the match, but maybe if you're averaging 5 per minute you've gone too far? Part of the problem with the "top this" style is although the payback psychology can be cool, it can also make some of the kickouts predictable. You have to have the HFF spot to the outside. One Rainmaker won't finish Tanahashi because he kicked out last year. Okada has to kick out of last year's finishing combo. Maybe a more avid New Japan viewer would think Okada could possibly tapout to the Texas crowbar, but it wasn't something I was buying, as it has been a long time since Tanahashi has won a major match via submission. But this match was always going to be the wrestling equivalent of marmite, the people who love the Okada vs. Tanahashi series were going to love this match and those that weren't so keen on it, weren't going to have a revelation and change their minds, as it was more of the same, just taken to the next level.

I pretty much am in line with your take although I was personally bugged more by the inconsistent selling (to the point that it veered over into absurdity for me personally) than the overuse of dropkicks by Okada (which was a trope started in the Tenryu match). I dubbed it a ridiculous match on Twitter, as I think that was an apt description, both as a positive and a negative, although some may just be on one side of the spectrum.

Fabulous work here!

I agree that it is more unlikely that La Sombra gets such a degrading gimmick in today's environment, but WWE is hurt by their past. You can't remove the stain of decades worth of offensive racial stereotypes overnight, especially when they haven't yet been completely eliminated (see New Day before they turned heel and R-Truth, for example).

Re: the Honma deal, it sounds like Dave's badly handled discussion of the situation was based on what his New Japan sources were telling him. Of course, you shouldn't always believe what your sources are telling you and repeat verbatim.

Probably not wise to do a death exploitation angle on the same show they did the Paris tribute. I mean we all know it was shameless PR, but to reveal their true colours three hours later is quite the juxtaposition.

That was in the Observer update today. I'm worried that Dave may follow suit, as the 15 year rule originally came from the baseball HoF. That would obviously be a big mistake unless the eligibility criterion was also changed to 40/20 instead of 35/15.

With the gate you also have to factor in the local market. Does it have a large population base? Is it a traditionally strong market for WWE/wrestling in general? Is it a tourist hub? Is it easy to fly to? Lots of variables there.

Really? I always thought this was related to the Jimmy Del Ray incident.

WM 30 drew a $9.8M gate, which would be no. 3 of all time behind WMs 29 and 31, which both grossed around $12M. As Matt D says though, the majority of the tickets sold would have been before the main event was even announced.

I think part of the reason it still did 600K on pay-per-view was because people didn't have confidence at that point that the stream would work without a hitch, and also because it wasn't rolled out initially worldwide. We have nothing to fairly compare it to, so it's hard to say whether it was a good or a bad number. Looking at the card, it probably would have done the lowest PPV number since 2011 because of the lack of The Rock, if it was available on traditional pay-per-view. I'd think it would have done about a million buys worldwide though, a respectable figure. And Loss, we all know if it had drawn huge, Triple H and Steph would have taken all the credit.

Wasn't the Tatanka suspension deal that he had problems of someone else's doing? He returned at the 1996 Royal Rumble for a couple of months before leaving again, which if he was seriously involved in that incident, I don't think would have happened.

Joe, WrestleMania 30 was not the highest grossing WrestleMania of all time. It was actually the lowest grossing WM in many years due to offering it for a cutdown price on the WWE Network. That's not something I'd hold against Bryan for obvious reasons, but let's keep the facts in order when we stump for candidates.

I don't think I could vote for anyone who stayed at the independent level, even if they were a great worker, but I think getting over on the indies before achieving mainstream stardom is a positive for a case in today's era.

Given that Styles is primarily a work candidate and he was churning out high quality matches in TNA/ROH/indies on a regular basis from 2002-2013, it would be wrong to say he accomplished absolutely nothing. Clearly, Dave values that a lot more than his electorate does.