cm funk

That was really annoying, taking an unnecessary pot shot at the DVDVR/PWO types (myself included) who've been pimping Henry's ring work for years. I was never on board with the "Henry carried Angle" crowd, but Dave's been stubbornly crapping on Henry's work for years and it always leaves me shaking my head. Also, Tatanka was pretty awesome in his 06-07 comeback run Just reenforces that what Dave likes and what I like are wildly different, but it's annoying when he's so smug about it

The pop for Orton as the surprise 5th member of Team Cena (ala Bryan at Summerslam that one year) would be massive, and it's in St. Louis no less. The pulling him from the advertising for Survivor Series feels like a bait and switch, because with this hot angle they've crafted they'd be insane to not have that happen. They also teased Ryback as a possible member of Team Cena, but right now it looks like Cena/Ziggler/Show/Sheamus/Orton. I like the way that match is shaping up Really good RAW this week IMO. Great closing angle. Fun matches. And guys were busting their asses. When was the last time you saw two guys bleeding hardway on RAW? I don't expect WWE to get a flood of complaints for the little bit of blood from Cesaro and Orton, so maybe they can stop treating it like a little blood is the end of the world? Hell, you see more blood in football and basketball games than you do in WWE at this point

long con

"Facebreaker" is that move HHH does as a cut off

Pinata on a Pole

It will be. Orton spelled it out when petitioning for the match, "I want the loser in the main event in HIAC" I enjoyed the show. 4 solid-good 2 segment matches in the 3 way tag opener, Orton-Ziggler, Rollins-Swagger and Rusev-Show. It was just a straightforward show with a lot of wrestling and minimal nonsense. I also thought the crowd was pretty good for the most part. It wasn't beginning to end heat, and they lost steam in the third hour as RAW crowds always do now, but they were hot for a lot of stuff. I also didn't mind them doing Cena-Ambrose here. Was hoping for more of a match before the shenanigans, but oh well. Both guys are going to be wrestling in long HIAC matches at the PPV, having them go out and try to do a show stealing opener probably wasn't the best idea when Cena is already banged up. And according to Meltzer the idea was they didn't want to do a PPV without an advertised main event and co-main event. Not like it really matters that much with the Network, which is why it also doesn't really matter that they aren't doing Cena-Ambrose at the show

Former subscriber. I plan on renewing in January for Rumble and Mania and will likely let it lapse again after that 6 month period. I just wasn't watching it enough to justify keeping it on top of other subscription services, and I was disappointed in the variety of content and continuing technical issues

I'd expect to see a bunch of NXT guys in there as well

Thank you for finding and sharing this. I can't believe I've never seen it before.

Has Kevin Sullivan ever been on the ballot?

He called Alvarez and Sempervive, who host Wrestling Observer Live on Sundays. Meltzer hasn't been on that show in years.

Even screwier was when Alvarez asked: "wouldn't it be worse for Bryan if the fans DIDN'T get into the chant?" and Meltzer was like: "NO it would be better!" Alvarez wisely chose not to argue and just moved on

Yeah, I was going to say, lots of good points hit but when the IC title was "unified" into HHH's vanity WHC that was a pretty big moment in the gradual downfall of the title. It's had it's moments since then after it was brought back (Orton's run probably being the best of the last decade) but it was NEVER the same after that I don't think I can pinpoint just one thing, it was just a gradual downfall of bad booking and the title sliding from a semi-main event level belt to midcard mediocrity. Several people mentioned Jarrett and I was going to mention that too. The "New Generation" era is where the belt really took a step back. When Jarrett was champ he lost all the time and even did a couple of false finish one day title switches with firmly mid-card at best guys like Savio Vega and Bob Holly. Michaels in 92-93 was a guy who everyone knew was on the cusp of being a top guy. When Razor got the belt he was one of the most over babyfaces in the company, right there with Bret and Undertaker, and in the mold of a "could headline a B-Show" IC champ ala Savage to Bret's Hogan, with Undertaker as a special attraction who didn't need titles. Razor dropped it to Diesel who was being groomed to be a main eventer. Then he lost it to Jarrett in a flukey way at Rumble 95 and the belt was slotted down into the mid-card. Jarrett was never a threat to any top guy. They put it back on HBK after he turned face and it felt more important again, then they did that shit where he forfeits to Dean Douglas who immediately loses to Razor....and from that point on it was just hot potatoed around and it never really meant what it used to. The Rock made it important for a while, and I thought Shamrock was a good champ too. They both held the title for 100+ days, 250+ in Rock's case. After Shamrock (98-99) the title changed hands 48 times over the next 4 years with nobody holding it for 100+ days, until Orton got it and held it for 200+ days. Orton made it important again for a while, but by that point with all the changes and watering down and inferior champions the belt was never the same I think they can bring it back to what it once was if they want to, but they have shown zero interest in taking the steps to do so

He was a fiat pick but Dynamite Kid was also either the biggest or second biggest draw in the history of Stampede Wrestling according to someone Bix mentioned to me who I can't remember at the moment. I can't imagine that was true. I'd assume that the guys who Stu flew around in chartered planes and who helped him build the big mansion were bigger draws than the guy on top as they declined and eventually sold out to Vince. I believe the story is that Dynamite drew the most dollars overall.. As in he consistently drew Stu money for years. Not a guy who came in for 3 months here, 3 months there. I have read Stu himself saying that Dynamite, not Abdullah or the Stomper, is the guy that made him the most money. Whether that's true or not is a different case but that's what he said. Did Stu have a percentage cut of DK's booking? He was a hot commodity at the time and with Japan and the WWF, if that were the case, I could see Stu doing pretty well from that. Also, he might have been looking at Dynamite being a key thing in selling to WWF, which surely made him very rich I have a hard time believing DK directly made more money or drew bigger for Stampede than Archie or Abdullah or Stu himself

Right, which if you're bringing back Austin to "give the rub" to a younger guy, would be the way to do it. Austin wins, because nobody wants to see Austin lose his comeback match (he lost in his last match way back in 03 vs. Rock) and people would react negatively to seeing him come back and lose. A guy like Ambrose, who is probably the most over guy and best all-around performer in the company right now, would get more over just by working with Austin. Beating Austin? The fans would reject it Let's not forget that what got Austin the most over and is probably his most loved match is a match he LOST @ WM and got over by losing I can't think of a single person on the WWE roster that I would book to beat Austin at this point. I can't think of anyone who I'd book to beat Brock right now either. It wouldn't mean anything. I'm confident enough in Austin and WWE that they know he can come back as a one time deal and put people over in a smart way, and make a lot of money doing so. He doesn't need to lose the big match for that to happen I also agree that if there was the right guy to lose to, Austin would do it. Austin 98 onwards picked his shots with who he worked with and who he did jobs for, but when it was time to lose he would lose. He would job to Punk for sure. But there isn't anybody there who it makes sense for him to lose to right now, imo

I bet subscriptions dropped like a rock after the first six months were up. I let mine lapse. I'll be back for Rumble, but nothing about NOC made me want to fork over another $9.99* a month *with a six-month committment. Yeah, I did the same thing. I'll be back in January. I haven't missed the Network for a second. Put some AWA and UWF and Florida and Memphis on there next year and maybe I'll stick around

No. Worst case scenario would have been Brock losing against Cena also, Austin is a "part-time wrestler"? lol. No. He'd be a one time wrestler. Also, who exactly do you want to "put over" be wrestling and beating Brock at WM? Roman Reigns? Yeah, I don't want to see that. Who else? Sheamus? lol. D-Bry? Doesn't need it. It's WWE's own fault and problem that they don't have guys ready and built up and strong to step into a huge spot like that, I can criticize their booking and product with the best of them, but you don't bring a Steve Austin back to beat him at WM unless you have a sure thing

Ditto. And it's yet another nostalgia buil-up with a 50 year old guy who retired more than ten years ago. But that's what WM has become anyway. Since Taker will most probably never work again, they have to rely on the last few huge names they can still drag from their last golden era. It won't be pretty once they really all get too old to show up. Austin is ONE OF THE BIGGEST WRESTLING STARS OF ALL-TIME God, I hate to sound like a dick, but some of the reactions to the idea of Austin @ WM are so myopic and "in the bubble" You don't even watch or like WWE anyway, jeez

This is the kind of comment I hate and shows a real lack of reality to me, no offense Nobody wants to see Austin come back and have his first match in over a decade at WM and lose. Maybe you do, but you'd be in a tiny, tiny minority Who do you propose he should "put over" by losing? God that would suck and be such a shortsighted waste of time. You don't bring back a LEGEND like Austin for one more match and beat him, lol. I'm so glad you're not booking WWE

Also, 2001 Austin is ridiculous in retrospect. "The Bionic Redneck". he came back with a huge chip on his shoulder, pissed off, in great shape, and worked his ass off. Those matches with Benoit and Angle where he's taking all the suplexes and headdrops. All the nutty bumping he would do, like take a punch and backbody fall and flip himself over.........hahhahaa. It was great stuff, but knowing that he was on borrowed time on that neck and was retired by mid '02 aside from a comeback match at WM with Rock where he had a panic attack and was hospitalized the night before the match...... I still enjoy 2001 Austin (Austin-Angle at SS is one of my favorite matches) but I have conflicted feelings watching that stuff back

When I started watching WCW "Stunning" Steve was immediately one of my favorites. I was a kid who preferred heels, and he was so cocky and charismatic while doing all the perfect heel work of bumping his ass off and stooging when he had to, and being a complete dick as well. I loved it. I remember being so bummed and upset when he was jobbed out in the early Hogan years, and couldn't believe that a guy that awesome was jobbing to Hacksaw in 19 seconds or whatever it was. Then when he showed up in ECW it was cool as shit, and when he went to WWF and debuted in the Rumble (at the same time as Vader, another favorite who got jobbed out in Hogan era WCW) I marked out so big for it. And his first 6 months or so were a bit rough (DiBiase was a shitty manager and Austin was miscast) but damn when the Stone Cold shit started happening he was an instant star. I still remember seeing those real early black and white promos, and he was calling out Roddy Piper, and I was just instantly so into the character. Bret Hart had been one of my favorites for years at that point, and Austin calling out Bret when he was on his sabbatical after WMXII, and Bret returning like "fuck you, stop saying shit" and that great Survivor Series match, which led to Rumble 97, which led to the I Quit match, which led to the long and awesome Austin v. heel Bret w/ The Foundation feud......such great stuff. 99 era WWF on rewatch is pretty shitty, but at the time it was over as hell and people were coming out of the woodwork watching it and digging it. By then with his various injuries Austin didn't have a lot of time left in the ring. He worked for most of that year, but by August/Sept he had to go have the fusion surgery and was out for a year. When he came back in '00 they dropped the ball on the angle/storyline big time. Nobody wanted to see heel Rikishi, nobody wanted "I did it for the Rock" and HHH was already the hardest pushed guy in the company and didn't need that "I was the mastermind behind all of this" shit. That Foley investigating who ran over Stone Cold crap was brutal as well. I've never even watched the "3 Stages of Hell" match because by that point I was so turned off by the product. A lot of people call Austin's heel turn at WMX17 as "the end of the Attitude Era" but to me it was much earlier than that. SummerSlam 2000, or that crap in the fall when Austin came back, it was drizzling shits and when I noticed my friends just tuning out on it and losing interest

I love Gilbert too! Different strokes and all that

I really like Paul Jones in the early-mid 80's and will never understand the hate he gets. To me he's a perfect midcard heel manager. Kind of buffoonish and over the top, but he's a guy I find it easy to "love to hate". The Paul Jones' Army feud with Johnny Valiant was great stuff, imo To me Oliver Humperdink is an easy choice here. I never liked anything he did in 80's WWF or later his WCW stuff. To be fair, I haven't seen a lot of his Florida stuff which is what is most highly praised by people, and what I've seen is far better than the later stuff. And he's praised by a lot of people, like Moody and Sullivan, who I generally trust opinion wise, so I'll cut him some slack, but as a kid I just thought he was terrible. I remember when Bam Bam showed up in WWF for the first time and they did that bidding war for his services and even as a young kid I could not believe that Bam Bam would go with a loser like him when guys like Heenan and Freddie Blassie were right there I actually liked Fuji too. In kayfabe he wasn't an objectively good manager, but I really liked his character. I thought he was really effective managing Yokozuna as well, and really added to the overall presentation of that character. Fuji cutting broken english promos and laughing maniacally while Yoko just stood there breathing heavily and looking massive and menacing.....I thought that pairing really worked well. I loved when they brought in Cornette as their "American Spokesperson" too I never thought Whippleman was very good, but it was more because they paired him with monster characters when he seemed like such a comical jokey heel manager. Those pairings in the WWF in the early 90's never worked for me, because it was guys that you should be taking as serious threats, and their manager is a joke. I liked him a lot more when he was paired with guys who were losers, or the comedy stuff with Bertha Faye and The Fink. Maybe "Downtown Bruno" worked better in Memphis, but on the big stage he was just way too cartoonish to me to be managing a Giant Gonzalez or a Mr. Hughes or an Adam Bomb who they were pushing like they were serious monsters Also, I loved "Sir William" and this was as a kid not having seen any of him as Bill Dundee at the time. I just thought that act with him and Regal was so great. Sir William was such an annoying troll.....and he wasn't a manager.....he was Regal's "butler" and manservant lol As far as other managers I just thought sucked.....John Tolos leaps to mind. Skalland was awful. Johnny Valiant never did anything for me. Moving out of the 80's....ECW had a ton of shitty manager types, but most of them were entertaining on some level. As an example....Jack Victory and Jason "the world's sexiest man" did nothing of note as managers, but they were perfect as stooges, and were entertaining as these lame hanger-on guys who were perpetual fuckups but the guys they were with kept them around seemingly only to eat offense and run shitty interference. ECW had a lot of characters like that who were objectively useless in kayfabe, but added some comic relief to the proceedings. I think we've all had useless friends who we hang around with because they are loveable fuckups who might actually stumble into being useful at points

Nope, he said Bam Bam was the one being negative, always saying that this and that guy had to go but everyone at the meeting had him on their list as a guy that should stay because he was a top guy and could go in the ring. Yeah. This is a prime example of why people shouldn't trust "recaps" of podcasts and shouldn't trust second hand reports of stuff Meltzer says or writes, as an example of stuff that is regularly butchered. This guy recapping on Rajah got what HHH said about Bam Bam completely ass backwards. What he said is that "the kliq" had heat with him for whatever reason, they just didn't get along for whatever reason whether it was due to him or them, but that when Vince asked them they would put him over as a guy who they could make money with and never tried to bury him. I have no idea of knowing how true that is or isn't, but what HHH said and what this dude who recounted it said were not the same thing. I wouldn't doubt that HHH is kind of full of shit there because Bam Bam and Douglas and Candido and a lot of other guys thought the Kliq guys would smile in their face while stabbing them in the back behind the scenes, but that could be chalked up to general paranoia and politics. And then again, Bam Bam was notoriously hard to work with and stubborn and flighty over the years from most accounts, and Shane had a big chip on his shoulder and a big ego, so who knows how much of this stuff is truth and how much is fiction. There's too much smoke to the fire to take HHH's account as the gospel, but I wouldn't put 100% faith in the tales of the guys who had beef with the Kliq either. I like how Bret looks back on those days now and admits that they were kind of just all acting stupid and kind of rolls his eyes at it all with hindsight and perspective

Tremendous! How can anyone hate on Alvarez? That was great