cm funk

Meh Fans also used to throw batteries at wrestlers, slash their tires, etc etc I like it better this way. And, it wasn't even out of character for Sasha, both heeling on the girl, and giving her a hug afterwards

I think it would have been a vote of confidence for The New Day and would have led to months of entertaining television

But that really happened, and was real. It wasn't a planned spot. Sasha did it in the moment, and really made that girl cry. And it was great.

I'd like to see that! I miss Michelle McCool. That would add to the specialness of Taker-Cena, getting her involved in the build-up to the match.

Big E has been a victim of start-stop pushes like most (all of?) the roster They paired him as the muscle with AJ Lee and Ziggler who were being pushed hard at the time. They did that whole angle with Kaitlyn which was heavily pushed. They put the IC title on him. But then at other times he's forgotten about and falls into the 50-50 midcard. I really think Kofi should have won MITB this year (he's been in like every one of them and never won) and New Day would Freebird Rule the case, and Big E is the one who cashes it in. Big E is friggin awesome. He's an athletic freak, great look, can really go in the ring, and is entertaining and funny as hell with a ton of personality. Also, his twitter and instagrams are the best

Also, neither here nor there, but if I'm booking the belt is on Roman sooner than later......I guess at Royal Rumble......and Brock enters the Rumble and wins it.....setting up the rematch and your WM main event. That's a great story. Meltzer has speculated Roman-Cena at WM, which I think is bad idea jeans at this point. I think Cena-Taker is the money match, that's a match I've wanted to see at WM for years now, and it's special because they've so rarely crossed paths since back in 03 when Cena was still a young hip hopper heel. If this is Taker's last WM, in Texas at Cowboy Stadium, I can't think of a better match to go out with.

Same here. Some of my favorite matches of all-time have screw finishes or non-finishes. My favorite HBK-Undertaker match is Ground Zero 1997 and one of my favorite HBK matches period, which had no finish, which set up Hell In a Cell, which set up Kane, and which set up the Rumble casket match....... I totally get why people would look at Rollins cashing in, and the current situation with Roman on the verge of being Lex Luger'd if they don't play their cards right, and it tainting that match for them. I don't agree with them, but I get it. I, personally, loved the booking, and I loved Seth Rollins' run on top as a cocky chickenshit heel who could really go when he wanted to. Seth Rollins was one of the standout highlights of 2015 WWE for me. But I understand that not everyone feels that way.....don't like his promos.....think he wrestles too much like a babyface (which is a complaint I never got because you can be flashy and cocky as a heel), etc etc

Woah. Poll was tied 26-26 and I swung it in favor of Roman-Brock. I didn't even have to think about it. Love both matches, but Roman-Brock is my WWE MOTY. Awesome hard-hitting physical match on "the grandest stage of them all" in a packed outdoor stadium? Hard to beat that.

I love Austin, but Orton being mentored by Jake Roberts in 2015/16 is a terrible booking idea IMO. 10 years ago....sure.....but Jake was a mess 10 years ago...... If we want to talk about some booking changes, it doesn't have to be radical, but it has to be Vince giving up the reigns and taking a step back. We've seen how good the WWE product can be in NXT where Vince has no involvement. We saw it at times in OVW. We saw it on SD when Heyman was given a lot of creative freedom and butted heads with Vince and fought for his ideas. I still think Heyman could book a great product for WWE, hell go back to a sort of brand split and put him in charge of SD. The biggest obstacle seems to be Vince/Dunn. They have so many great creative wrestling minds in the company who are held back by the whims of those two. I don't think they need to go, but stepping back and removing themselves from the creative process, even if it doesn't produce better results, is at least worth a try. The stories about Vince are legendary though, and it seems he's getting more and more out of touch with the pulse of his audience as he ages, and he's Vince McMahon DAMNIT

In some ways, I think his work style is a hinderance, when you're in a company which is as ludicrously obsessed with certain types of people having certain types of bodies as the WWE is. Owens's problem with the office (and everyone who's been trained to parrot the office's views) is that he's a workrate guy with a fat tummy. They don't know how to process that in the WWE, they never have. Think of all the years that they'd bitch about Big Show and Mark Henry being too fat; when did that complaining finally stop? When those guys gained even more weight and changed their styles from "surprisingly athletic big guy" to "slow plodding monster who just kills people and doesn't sell much". WWE is fine with fat monsters (think Bray Wyatt), they always have been; they're not fine with fat guys who are supposed to be top-shelf athletes (think Braden Walker or latter-day Matt Hardy). Management doesn't think of Owens in terms of guys like King Kong Bundy or Yokozuna; he's an indy workrate guy. He gets compared to Cesaro, to Bryan, maybe even to his possibly-poor-word-choice namesake Owen Hart. And Vince & Co. are utterly flabbergasted at the very idea of a fat guy who does workrate sprints and lots of MOVEZ. They don't like it, they assume nobody else likes it and that such a performer couldn't possibly be an effective draw. Their idea of an effective fat worker is a big mean guy who mostly squashes smaller performers and maybe takes one big bump at the end of the match for token selling purposes. Vince and his yesmen have always insisted that athletes must have those toned muscular bodies, or else nobody in the crowd could possibly believe that they can win a fake fight. Bray Wyatt is a fat monster? You lost me there. Bray Wyatt works a hard hitting fast paced athletic style generally. He is so not a plodding "fat monster"....nor should he be, because he's not that big, and he's very athletic and agile for his size I like Bray Wyatt as a bell to bell wrestler more than I do Owens. Is that a controversial opinion? I don't think Owens could have as good a match as Wyatt and Bryan had at the Rumble in '14. Wyatt's gimmick and character overshadow how damn good he can be as a wrestler. And I like Owens, don't get me wrong, but I'm already getting sick of his "indy-riffic" video game matches where you can see the spots coming a mile away. Same with Ambrose, who I really like too, but has fallen into the same trap. It's an easy trap to fall into in WWE. I'd be happy to never see another rebound clothesline from Ambrose or Corner Cannonball/Senton/Pop-Up Powerbomb from Owens for a long time. They're the signature spots that they work into almost every match and it's rarely creative or natural when you as the viewer at home see it coming a mile away. But hey, gotta get the moves over for the kids that buy videogames I guess, and pop the crowd

Also, I'm sure he's a nice guy and he's obviously talented to even get signed by WWE.....but he's probably much better off going back to the indies right now because he was going nowhere in NXT. I hope he proves me wrong and WWE kicks themselves for missing the boat on him. Wouldn't be the first or last time, but from what I saw I just didn't see him ever doing much there

On Sami Callahan/Solomon Crowe: I didn't see any of his indy stuff (CZW was his main promotion/most exposure?), but I know that he had some buzz and had his fans From what I saw of him in NXT......I didn't get it. He had some personality, okish in the ring.....but definitely didn't transition/translate well to that environment. I could see him in a circa 2015 Crash Holly role maybe? The hacker gimmick or whatever it was? meh. And you can't really blame "creative" because in NXT it's very hands on and the guys and gals there coming up with their own stuff with a lot of freedom. Not as much freedom as the indies, but way more freedom than the main roster Contrast him to "Sterling James Keenan" slash Corey Graves.....who I did see in ROH and some indy stuff and wasn't all that impressed with.....I think he's made a great transition into his current role in WWE and I've become a big fan of him. I was becoming a fan of him in FCW/NXT before he had all the head injuries, and was surprised because he wasn't blowing me out of the water before. The transition to on-screen talking head was out of necessity due to the concussions, but still

Not for nothing, but MNF did it's biggest ratings of the season with the Patriots playing a division rival, and it was a very tight game. I know personally I tuned in for the first 20 minutes of RAW to see how they handled things, then stuck with football for the rest of the night other than brief peeks at RAW. I know I'm not the only one. That's not to defend WWE or deny the downward ratings trend due to stale creative and the 3 hours of doom.......but I wouldn't read anything into Survivor Series/Sheamus/Reigns based on a bad number that was going to be bad no matter what happened the night before, short of an ISIS terrorist attack

I figured it got the main event spot because the third hour has been death in recent months, and they wanted the real main event (Roman and Cesaro) at 10 to try and retain some audience into hour 3. They also opened the show with Undertaker, because they've learned that nothing keeps people hooked for 3 hours. As for the angle: I didn't find it tasteless so much as weird because Reid's death is not something really established on WWE tv. Most people watching wouldn't have any clue. That said, of course it was tasteless, but what else is new? I'm not going to get all worked up over it, but I did feel bad for Charlotte having to do this scripted angle when clearly just talking about Reid or thinking about him (like when she's won her titles) causes the Flair tears to flow uncontrollably That said, when she cut her promo about how "we grew up watching our parents on TV and in WWE" I wanted Paige to heel on her something fierce I missed the beginning of the show. Did they do a "Paris Tribute" video package to open the show? Someone mentioned them treating it like Warrior dying. All I saw was The Usos with the red, white and blue which I thought was subtle and cool and looked to be a personal choice on their parts. Cesaro-Reigns was really good and I liked the 6 man, hoping those 6 and 4 others are in a SS tag. Owens-Neville and Del Rio-Kalisto were good but not great. Didn't care much for Ambrose-Ziggler at all.

Nope. It was a WWE garbage match in a cage. Their brawl on RAW was better and more intense.

You could almost compare that to Luger-Flair and all the bad Dusty finishes. Would Lex have been the next Hulk Hogan if he beat Flair for the title? Would Ryback have been the next megastar if he beat Punk for the belt? Probably not. He would have been the modern day Diesel most likely

probably because it was a new and intriguing matchup to fans, and Ryback had been pushed like he was the next Goldberg or Ultimate Warrior with nothing but squash matches on tv, and even then he was pretty slow to catch on and was heckled with "GOLDBERG!" chants at every other arena It was a bad hotshotted booking choice and very shortsighted, and ended up doing more damage than good for Ryback, and it took him a long time to get back on track. They weren't taking the belt off Punk, but they weren't going to beat Ryback either. They booked themselves into a corner.

Yeah, Brock has had some questionable and downright bad booking since his return. I didn't mind him losing to Cena in his first match back, because it was a great match and portrayed as a war that John Cena barely survived after taking a hellacious beating, and that Cena was lucky to walk away with a victory. I didn't like Brock losing to HHH at WM, but he did win 2 out of 3 matches in the feud in pretty convincing fashion. The losses didn't hurt him much because he's Brock Lesnar. It didn't destroy his invincible monster aura at all As for Ryback, he doesn't have the special "it factor" aura that someone like Lesnar or Goldberg has. Put Ryback in the exact same role in 97-98 WCW, same matches, same booking, same everything.......he doesn't get anywhere near as over as Goldberg did. Put him in 02 WWF with the Lesnar monster push and beating Rocky at SummerSlam.....it wouldn't work. Because he's not Goldberg, and he's not Brock Lesnar.

Funny, I was thinking of Diesel for complete opposite reasons. They pushed him to the moon and it didn't click because the two best and most popular guys on the roster were right there and got slotted below him. And Diesel was really over before they hotshotted the belt onto him, changed his character, and tried to push him like he was the new Hulk Hogan. He was a failure on top and got progressively less over the longer that push lasted. He was very over in both WWF and WCW, and was a complete failure when pushed like "The Man" in both promotions. That disproves your "take a guy who's over and give him a big push and have him win all the time = success" theory. It proves the opposite in fact. They pushed HHH like he was an unbeatable wrestling god in 02-03 and built RAW around the guy, and it tanked

This is not a board that hates on WWE nearly as consistently as you defend WWE. It's great that he's a self-made man. He's not a likable person and his attitude is a turn-off. I could acknowledge that he's special and deserves his spot if I was a wrestler while still resenting the hell out of him for it. Those ideas are not in conflict with each other. I think where we differ is that I truly believe that 90% of what makes a guy a star is not whatever talents or qualities he possesses as much as it is being presented as a winning winner who wins. That's obviously a very surface description of it, and winning at the right times against the right opponents matters too. Just as there are some cases where a loss is good for a guy. Still, the point is, booking matters far, far more than whatever talents or traits a guy has. If other guys were booked like Brock, Austin and Undertaker, wrestling would have a bunch of full-time Brocks, Austins and Undertakers. I'm not a consistent WWE defender, but I am a glass half full kind of person. I will criticize the bad booking/writing/use of guys etc. as much as anyone, overall the product is not good right now and they've dropped the ball on numerous guys who could have been big stars for them, but I like to generally be positive about things I post, especially here where weekly WWE threads are full of bitching and complaining And, I happen to like and respect Brock, both as a performer and a person. Lots of people like him. You don't like him and don't find him likeable, and that's fine, but don't project your opinion on others. Also, that whole "anybody can be a huge star with good booking and if they win all the time" argument is horseshit, and you know it's horseshit. Let's not name the laundry list of guys that that was tried and failed with and it didn't work because either they weren't any good or they didn't connect with the crowd, or the push felt forced and the fans resented it being forced upon them. This happens all the time, in every promotion of every size, all over the world, past present and future. So give a fucking break. As far as the "home town promotion" thing goes. yeah, WWF/E is my home town promotion. I grew up in the North East in the 80's. That's what was on tv, that's what ran house shows, and that was my brand of wrestling. I obviously have a much larger frame of reference now, but it wasn't like AWA and JCP were even an option for me then, other than the magazines and reading about guys in other promotions. When I finally started getting WCW on TV in the early 90's I became a big fan of that promotion. I was a big ECW fan since around 94. Criticizing somebody for that is just stupid . Everybody has a "home town promotion" mine just happens to be the one that put all the territories out of business, outlasted WCW, and is "the world leader in sports entertainment", for better or worse

That said, I think Breeze and Ziggler could have some really fun matches........and I've become a pretty big fan of Breeze as a performer and I know he's a guy that HHH & Regal really like......so I want to be cautiously optimistic here

On Brock, and criticizing him? Seriously? This is a board that hates on WWE consistently, and someone like him who's his own man, bucked the system and is a true wrestling success story in an industry where it's pretty rare.......c'mon And any of "the boys" that are jealous about his "special treatment". They should be. They should be thinking "how can I be more like Brock". He's not the only one who's gotten it, and won't be the last. When you're a special talent and a draw you get special treatment. Brock is pretty much the reason for ESPN covering WWE. Who the fuck else on the roster could have caused that? It's like when all those rumours about guys being unhappy about Rock coming back and "taking their spots". lol. He's The Rock. You're not. As for Tyler Breeze.......not a good way to debut him. On Smackdown which nobody watches or cares about, WWE doesn't even seem to care about that show. RAW is the A show, and what happens on SD is barely even noted or referenced on RAW. And, I'm a big fan of Summer Rae, ever since she debuted with Fandango, I've been on her hype train since day 1.......but having a valet doesn't fit the "Prince Pretty" NXT character. Also, I've been a Ziggler fan (and I know the majority of this board have never been fans).......but 2015 Dolph is pretty not good. He's a guy that I wanted to see leave and go to Japan or the indy scene. He's been around a long time, he's stale, and his work has really dropped off IMO. I always liked him better as a heel too

He said subscribers to the website. I don't think he cares how many people actually read the Observer, and I get the sense that the majority of their subscriptions are podcast driven

Have any referees even been on the WON HOF ballot before? I thought "Red Shoes" and one of the famous lucha referees had been, but I might be misremembering

Orton really hasn't turned that many times 2004 - Evolution turns on him, weak run as top babyface on RAW 2005 - Turns heel by starting the "Legend Killer" gimmick. This is the best run of his career which includes long feud with Undertaker, feuds with Cena, HHH and Hogan, Rated RKO and Legacy, amongst other things. 2010 - Comes out of Legacy breakup as a babyface for the first time 5+ years 2013 - Turns heel by cashing in on Daniel Bryan at SummerSlam and joining The Authority 2014-Present - Turns on The Authority/Rollins, taken out by Curbstomp, comes back as a babyface 5 turns in 10+ years is nothing in modern WWE, and that 5+ year run as a heel is almost unprecedented