cm funk

I think they might be putting that in their back pocket for WM at Cowboy Stadium And as is the case with Taker every year these days they don't know if he can go until they know, and they had Sting coming in to hype the 2K game and going into the HOF and they wanted to start an angle with him and I doubt in the summer/fall they knew whether Taker would wrestle again or not, so HHH was an obvious and safe direction to go in Personally, I don't think he needs to come back for another match let alone a match a year from now, and I think the ship has already sailed on him and Sting.....but if they want to save that for a double retirement match in Texas it makes sense

The Tammy and Chris relationship was different........but never something that personally bothered me or made me judge either of them wrestling is a weird business....and open relationships are fairly common. there is loads of evidence that the two of them loved each other.....just look how long they were together.....and rather than Tammy being a "cold skank".......Candido is the one who got her into the business.....knew what she was up to "behind his back" and encouraged it at times. As long as she came back to him he didn't seem to care about her blowing and fucking dudes to score pills and coke for him and her Now obviously a lot of this is rumours and innuendo, and there were probably times where Candido would feel emasculated and get pissed off about it....but their relationship lasted in the crazy world of pro-wrestling for a long time and only ended because he died. With the open relationship and the drugs and the craziness of wrestling they still managed to stick together for a long time From the outside looking in was it a weird, unhealthy relationship? Maybe, but I can think of far more unhealthy relationships in wrestling

For as many people who badmouth Dunn there are people who like and defend him. Rock, Austin and Jericho all speak highly of him

I don't care for Alice Radley either, but that was a pretty random opening salvo to a thread like this, lol Cornette is annoying as shit on podcasts and the two of them together is completely unlistenable to me. I can tolerate Cornette with the right guest and right topics but he's a major turnoff to me these days. I appreciate his knowledge as a historian and respect him for the years in the business and the positive contributions he made, doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy listening to him ranting and raving about the state of the business and Vince Russo and politics and god knows what I've gotta go with Vince Russo as well. I can't think of anyone in or around the wrestling business who annoys me as much as him. Wade Keller and Bruce Mitchell annoy me quite a bit as far as 'rasslin journalists' go, but objectively they aren't all that bad. When Keller is on Jim Ross' podcast reviewing a PPV he's perfectly fine and raises a lot of intelligent points. A lot of his torch talks are great. Then there's a lot of times where I just find him absolutely ridiculous and can't listen to him Oh, I thought of one that rivals Russo.......Mark Madden. One of the reasons I quit watching WCW, aside from Russo, was Mark Madden on commentary. What an insufferable tool

Well, Sting supposedly wanted to work an angle/match with him. Meltzer said the 3 guys he requested working with were HHH, Taker and HBK

There are so many examples of this in sports, and in wrestling Billy Beane never made it as a player but he turned into one of the greatest team architects of the modern era Bill Belichick played at Wesleyan which was d2 or d3 at the time......arguably the greatest coach/architect in NFL history....at least in the conversation with Lombardi and Walsh (neither of whom had storied athletic careers as players) I could list dozens of the best NCAA basketball coaches of all-time who were fringe players and never made it in the pros In the NBA a lot of the GOAT coaches were role player types. Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Jerry Sloan, Rick Adelman etc. etc. And the same thing with pro-wrestling. A lot of the best trainers are guys who had nice careers but they were never the best worker or the biggest star at any given time. There's guys who 'never drew a dime' who've trained guys who drew many many dimes, and conversely there's guys who drew a lot of money who can't train guys for shit As for DeMott......doesn't matter that he wasn't a big star and didn't draw money in his career.....it matters that we've been hearing these stories about him being an abusive bully of a trainer for a decade and that it took WWE this long to part ways with him. I also agree that he'll likely be quietly brought back in some kind of role because they seem to love the guy. It reminds me of Michael Hayes and all the stories about him being a drunken, racist asshole that finally WWE couldn't keep ignoring, so he gets sent to rehab and sensitivity training and comes right back into the company......probably still drinking, probably still a crazy racist, sexist asshole.....but tamed a bit. I'd bet on the same thing with DeMott

Also, it's amazing how bad they've botched it with Orton. First they have him leaving to do a movie right when the fans are white hot and at a fever pitch for him (did the same with Ambrose as well), then wait way too long to bring him back.....then "swerve" us by having him swerve the authority into thinking he's in their camp.....which in theory sounds good but in practice has just cooled down Orton considerably and crowds aren't buying or into the angle Jon Stewart was great though, I do have to say that

I did find it interesting that Alvarez HATED this RAW, while Dave thought it was one of the better shows in months (which I don't get at all, but to each their own). When discussing the show Dave did seem to agree with almost all of Bryan's points, but still contended that it was a good show.

Johnny would probably have nothing but positive vibes about the full 3 hour shows, and I get being upbeat and positive and not wasting your energy on negativity, I try to be the same way......but a RAW cut in half on Hulu is a completely different thing from 3+ hours live on Monday...... I didn't have strong feelings one way or the other on RAW.....but I did think the segment with Steph and Cena was really, really bad.......and I was so burnt out/bored/annoyed by the show that I just turned it off before the main event....because I didn't care. That's very rare for me. There was some stuff I liked on the show......I always find little things to be entertained by.....but overall the direction of the product feels hopeless. I feel bad for Reigns.....but it's not like we all didn't predict this last year

That's an interesting take and I tend to agree with it I find myself far more interested in the crowd responses to RAW and the 'special events' and the 'meta heat' and trolling of their audience than the actual product. This is not really a good thing business wise, but I'm morbidly fascinated watching them crash and burn spectacularly

I respectfully disagree with you on this There was a perfect story there of the cocky, arrogant, annoying HBK getting his comeuppance from his former tag team partner, the guy he turned on and superkicked and tossed into a window. And the crowds were white hot for this angle too, the pop when Marty shows up on RAW and Michaels is completely freaking out and running away was insane That's such an odd choice of "this is where it went downhill" when about a year prior the f'n Mountie had the title

Same here and I voted for that Also have loved Mizdow for the most part and loved R-Truth and Little Jimmy. Truth was so entertaining during the first few months of his heel run

Konnan has to be involved in this, selling Russo to the non-wrestling people on the El Rey side. Ed Ferrara and Disco are Russo apologists and regular guests on the MLW podcasts. Even Bauer is a bit of a Russo apologists with the "great ideas....just needs to be channeled and harnessed" line

also, he's never held the IC title, so this would make him a modern grand slam champion

If this is the direction I wholeheartedly support it and it's something I've advocated the company do with the IC and US belts for YEARS. If it's a multi-person ladder match for the IC title @ Mania with over guys like Ziggler, Ambrose & Barrett and a returning Sheamus that's the best possible spot he's going to get at this point. If he wins it's a cool moment and instantly elevates the title to more important status than it's had in forever. He can cut a promo about how the IC title used to be the title that the best wrestlers wanted, and he's the best wrestler in the WWE.

This. Also, the move from Ohio to Florida was reportedly a total disorganized clusterfuck. They had like 40+ guys under contract going from OVW and Deep South which had weekly loops to Florida where they're just sitting around doing nothing. It seems like very little planning and foresight went into it beyond "lets go to Florida!" and the way it was implemented didn't really make sense. It's night and day under HHH from where it was with Ace.

That's not what he said. He said 'something happened' and didn't want to speculate because people twist his words and report his speculation as fact. You are putting words into his mouth that he didn't say. All he knows is that he was there, was going to be on the show, and wasn't used. Orton was at shows for weeks and weeks and they kept delaying his return.....this could totally just be WWE booking on the fly as they often do

what an odd choice expect the video package to be a lot of them eating sardines and licking peoples faces and doing that wacky dance they did

I feel like WWE needs to keep Brock around.....and I don't know if the new UFC drug testing reaction to Jones and Silva will play into his interest in going back to MMA or not, but it might....and I just can't see Reigns beating Brock right now and the audience buying it.....but if Brock is staying and they put him over......Reigns is fucked....and they clearly aren't trying to kill Roman's career. I would think if they thought Brock would be around after WM that having Bryan win and then lose in a valiant fight to Brock while Roman regroups himself would be the way to go. But, of course, WWE's booking has been all over the place and big picture wise terrible for the last few years........so I wouldn't trust them to get any of that right anyway

A lot of good talent was signed by Ace, but to me a lot of it is offset by the development system falling apart under him, and all the shitty wrestlers he signed, and all the bathing suit models signed as divas

There was actually a lot of audible spot calling on this show, it wasn't just Cena. Maybe it was the dead crowd, maybe it was the way they mic'd things, maybe the acoustics of the arena.....but it was happening in every match

it came about because after Eddie died crowds were crazy hot for Rey, despite the terrible exploitative booking centered on Eddie (some of the worst stuff in wrestling I've ever seen). They couldn't ignore how much the crowd was feeling Rey at that point, and Vince was dragged kicking and screaming to do it by many accounts

To be fair......Rollins and Orton is such an ideal match. It was built up for months.....the crowd was on the verge of going nuclear to see Orton turn face and fuck up this punk Rollins.............then he goes to do a movie. And in the meantime they've kinda killed the curbstomp as a death move which does Orton no favors. Then they held back on Orton's return waaaaaaay too long. I thought he should run in and RKO Rollins at Survivor Series (in STL no less) to take the power away from HHH and really make him a white hot babyface. they waited so long that this felt lukewarm so yea, their priorities kinda suck.....and this is a shining example of bad booking

I think their goal was to put sympathy on Reigns. Bryan was working total heel in that match. Bryan was working heelish I suppose....if wrestling and targeting areas of the opponents body is heel........but Reigns wasn't exactly working babyface....unless just selling and powering out of stuff makes him a babyface. I don't know.......there was a weird dynamic in play here where babyface Reigns was sucking.......they both were kinda dicks a bit in the buildup. The crowd was def more in favor of Bryan.....but as it went on Reigns got some of the crowd on his side and people popping for some of his spots. I just think this was kind of no win situation and bad booking choice.......but Reigns winning the Rumble was a bad booking choice.....so at least they're being consistent and sticking to their plan I can't buy Roman beating Brock at all, and Roman as the top guy in the company quite possibly might make me stop watching for a while. Nothing against him, I just don't like this.

I think Paige may have been literally concussed on the Alabama Slam because she looked really out of it and wrestling on fumes after that spot