cm funk

most divas do terrible DDTs tho. I'd cringe if a shitty DDT from a Bella or Maria Kanellis got sold like it did any damage to their opponent

This will be the first time that I listen to Chris Jericho's Podcast, apparently! Seriously? You've been missing out my friend.... The Michael Sam stuff on RAW felt like such a desperate grab for attention. Even if he was going to be on the show, what is the point? He's going to cut a promo? Why? It just reeks of desperation and has "bad idea" written all over. Even if whatever bullshit they've cooked up here goes over well......there's nothing about this "angle" that makes the company look swell

I'm absolutely down with this. The rise and fall of Ryback is still something which makes me shake my head; they should have rolled the dice with him whilst he was hot. The numbers the HITC PPV with Punk got in contrast to the other PPV's around it clearly show people were behind Ryback and were tuning in to see whether he was to be the next big thing. It was just bad timing though. Ryback wasn't in any way ready to be the next big thing, but was shoved into the spot when Cena got hurt. It was too early to beat Punk when he was hot as the heel champ, and too early to boost Ryback into the main event. It was total NWA/WCW Dusty booking where Punk=Flair and Ryback=Luger, and they didn't want either to lose, so they just did a bunch of bullshit finishes which didn't help either of them, and actively hurt Ryback's momentum I was saying at the time and have said all along that they should have have taken the slow path with Ryback, they were building him to the IC/US title at the time, and he could have ran with one of those belts as a monster for a while, before they elevated him, ala Ultimate Warrior. But they panicked and hot shotted him too soon and the rest is history

That was so Dave, lol

L.A. Park (original) and La Parka

On the latest Observer Radio Dave is talking about the Bella program and how brother vs. brother or sister vs. sister never works. He mentions Jeff vs. Matt Hardy as a total flop because nobody bought it or wanted to see them fight each other. I'd add Edge against Christian (still billed as brothers when they split) as another example, or Scott Steiner against Rick Steiner He cites Ole and Lars Anderson and Robert and Ron Fuller as rare times that it worked For some strange reason he doesn't mention Bret vs. Owen, which to my mind is the most famous and successful example

The reality is that Batista is a much bigger star right now than he was 6-8 months ago. Guardians of the Galaxy has already grossed more than $250 million in less than a month and will be the highest grossing film of the year soon. To think that a guy who has just become a legitimate crossover movie star wouldn't have any value to the WWE is crazy. They are desperate for star power right now. Batista and Brock haven't crossed paths since their OVW days. To me that's as close to a "dream match" as they can book right now and would get them a lot of mainstream attention

Yeah, that, and that the same people don't get Dave's dry and sarcastic sense of humour. When there's a dumb question or Bryan says something stupid he'll pretend to take it literally or seriously and explore the stupidity of the question/comment by treating it like a legitimate topic, which I find very amusing, and it cracks me up when I see comments online about how dumb and oblivious he is. I'm like nah, you got worked, Dave is funny as hell

I actually felt the opposite. I thought they did a good job "re-building" Cena on RAW, to make him look strong and like he's coming back with a vengeance from the worst loss of his career, which is what they needed to do since they're rematching so quickly, but if anything it confirmed to me that Cena is going to lose again, in a more competitive match, but I seriously doubt that Lesnar isn't standing tall at the end of the night Of course, it is Cena we're talking about, and in general when I feel like they might be doing something interesting or different with him it ends in disappointment. I find it insane that they would have Lesnar beat the streak and then dominate Cena but lose to him the next month, but my expectations are pretty low and stranger things have happened. I'm conditioned to expect the worst from their booking

That was a really funny exchange Bryan reading e-mail: "what would happen if HHH fell off a cliff and died?" Dave: "well, why would he be on a cliff?" Bryan: "I don't know, this is a hypothetical question" Dave: "but what reason does he have to climb onto a cliff? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd climb onto a cliff" paraphrasing, but the conversation basically went like that. I love when Dave sarcastically deadpans at taking every question literally. The end result of this discussion was, yes, if Vince is dead and HHH "falls off a cliff" the company might be screwed because they have nobody else lined up who would be capable of running the empire. Dave started mentioning how Vince brought in Jerry Jarrett and Watts when he needed help, and even dudes like Cornette and Ross and Heyman, but how there aren't people out there like that anymore. My initial thought listening to this is "give the book to Heyman" and Dave cut that idea off before I'd even finished it saying there is no way they would give Heyman creative control over their product. Which, I don't agree with and think Dave was off base with. He mentioned how much Heyman would butt heads with Vince/Stephanie because he was so out spoken and wasn't afraid to challenge them, but in this scenario where Vince and HHH are dead, I think Heyman would be Stephanie's first choice to help run things creatively

I like Orton and think he's really talented, good worker, but I get why so many people find him boring and I won't argue with that stance He's been heavily featured on WWE tv for a decade with basically the same character. It's the same problem that Cena, Big Show, Kane etc. etc. have. Back in the day when a guy had a run and was cooling off he could go to a new territory. That is not a realistic option now. So you get these talented guys with good characters who some of the audience are just sick of because they've been around forever and are stale I definitely think they need to change the Orton character completely, do a 180 with him, but I don't have faith in the creative to deliver on something like that

Lawler wasn't well known nationally at all. Kaufman was, due to Taxi. Heck, Letterman wasn't terribly popular. He was on after Carson and had a niche audience, people knew him, but the majority of people weren't staying up that late. Kaufman was the star of that whole program. And honestly, it seems like something that has been romanticized due to the Kaufman documentary and Man on the Moon and the myth and legend of the guy now. There's probably a few people here who go long enough back to remember this, outside of the wrestling bubble was it even a blip on the radar at the time?

also, on the football v wrestling talk, I skip watching wrestling 10 out of 10 times if there's a game I want to see. In the fall/winter I rarely watch RAW live, unless there's just a terrible game on MNF that I have no interest in

I think the Thursday move will be negligible ratings wise. More people are at home watching TV on Thursdays, so despite going against the NFL on CBS, it should even out The Thursday night games are rarely "must see" anyway. SNF gets all the best prime time games now, and the majority of good games are on Sundays. MNF and TNF have marquee value, but they aren't "can't miss" weekly games. SD is total miss for me, I never watch the show, but it has it's loyal audience

this probably belongs in a John Cena Microscope thread but whatever I just randomly watched the Rey-Cena WWE title match from '11, and Cena is mostly good, very good base for Rey, but there is one spot where he catches Rey and audibly talks to him, and it just took me right out of the match, a match I was really digging. The match was flowing really well and Cena was rolling with the punches, and Rey was guiding him through it seemingly at points, and then Cena just is like "ok, we're gonna do this now" audibly and it kind of kills it for me That's one of my (and a lot of people's) biggest knocks on Cena. Scripted to the max, and you can hear him talking spots in matches. And it's not like he can't work on the fly, but it is really noticeable at times and it takes me out of the moment

This is a big pet peeve of mine about the current WWE style I can't lie, I do pop for some of the spots in the big matches, when they're done well and mean something, but I really don't need to see guys killing themselves to pull off crazy big crowd popping spots all the time. It's very much a symptom of the "pop the crowd" "make em chant" "social media" mentality of WWE right now. I would cringe at some of the stupid shit Daniel Bryan would do.....just incredibly reckless with his body.....all the diving into the dasherboards and the flying headbutts and the missle dropkicks. It produced great matches and he got super over doing it.....but at what price? I watched some of those matches and was just thinking, "you really don't need to be doing this". And now he should probably retire before he does even worse damage to himself I thought the Cena-Brock match at SS was great, but I could not believe Cena taking all of those suplexes like that. I mean, I get why he did it, he's a showman and he wanted to put over Brock really strong, and I applaud him for that, but it made me a little bit uncomfortable with some of those hard bumps he was taking on his neck and head I thought it 2014 we'd be past that kind of stuff. After Benoit and after Edge having to retire because of his neck it's kind of amazing and shocking to me how the company allows guys to work at a breakneck high risk pace. I've never been in the ring, I'm not a wrestler, but I've always been in favor of the "work smart" mentality. Cactus Jack and Sabu were two of my favorite wrestlers in the 90's, so that's a bit weird coming from me, but I was more of a fan of the characters and gimmicks they portrayed, and I didn't need to see Sabu flipping out of the ring thru a table and landing right on his tailbone or Cactus doing the nestea plunge to be entertained by them Also, the "no blood" rule in WWE is so bizarre to me when they have people doing all these crazy high risk dives and spots in matches, on a regular basis. From what I gather it's due to sponsors and the "PG" rating or whatever, and I certainly don't want to see blood in every match, but it's like they replace blood sometimes with stupid risky spots, and isn't that kind of ridiculous? I'd feel way safer having a stiff brawl and casually blading my forehead and selling my ass off than doing some insane dive out of the ring I don't know, I kind of roll my eyes at some of the old timers who are like, "these kids don't know how to work. back in my day we could work a headlock for 15 minutes" but it is kind of true. Sometimes less is more

I would dig the hell out of an Ambrose-Brock program/match, but I don't think it's in the cards. They delayed an actual PPV match with Ambrose and Rollins this long because I assume they want a rematch on the Sept show and the blow off at HIAC in October. Which isn't bad in theory, but this program has kind of cooled off a bit because they've treaded water with it for so long, and having Kane involved so much, while it makes sense storyline wise, kind of drags things down in a lot of fans eyes

What I've been thinking all along is that there's a good chance Brock "loses" by DQ because he's just beating the crap out of Cena, "victimizing" him, and doesn't give a shit about winning or losing. And at the end he stands tall with the title, even if it doesn't belong to him officially, and he and Heyman just take it anyway It sets up the Sept rematch, which is the show they are really gonna load up on because of Network renewals. If they aren't going to put the title on Brock (which I think they should, for all the reasons already discussed here and elsewhere and the fact that the mentality that the champ needs to be on house shows and on every tv show is very antiquated) they can at least do this all in a way where Brock murders Cena in the process. If Super Cena overcomes the odds yet again they're just pissing $ down the drain I refuse to believe they'd be so dumb as to beat the streak and then turn around and beat Brock and completely waste that. Brock should not ACTUALLY lose again until WM. WWE does lots of dumb shit, but that would be beyond the pale. I guess will see.... I'm pretty mild on this show going in. On paper it should be a good show, but WWE tv and creative lately has been extremely underwhelming and lacking. Between the incredible dropping the ball with Cesaro, the weird way they've been handling Ambrose-Rollins, Reigns falling incredibly flat as the next big babyface, them ruining Wyatt and making him "just another guy" in the span of 6 months, and shit like them straight up copying TNA angles with the aborted Kofi/Big E/Woods deal (which could have actually been good, but apparently it was just some sunblock induced fever dream) and the awful Claire Lynch storyline which Steph and Brie did not need......it's very hard to be feeling positive about the current product

Similar to this.....why did they play Brock's theme at the end of the show?

Didn't Brock's lawsuit cover the USA as well? I think the idea was that the court considered a seven (?) year non-compete clause ridiculous. I think that allowed him to compete in MMA (which was included in the non-compete) in the States as well. This, and also that WWE was trying to claim that the NFL and NJPW were "direct competition" which was ridiculous WWE non-compete clauses are pretty much unenforceable. I'm fairly certain Del Rio can go work in AAA and there will be no consequences other than maybe wasting money on lawyers and a frivolous lawsuit. They already have a potential headache with Mysterio right now as well as all the other issues the company has at the moment. There seems to be a lot of bad blood between Del Rio and WWE right now, so they might be super petty about it and go to war with him and AAA (and the El Rey network show gives them something to work with on the competition claim), but they also have to worry about Del Rio possibly counter-suing them with racism charges which is the last thing they want

I thought Del Rio's character and presentation was great until they went over the top with the "this is my destiny" shit and it was clear that they were never going to book him in alignment with that. You can't write/book a character like that and have him come up short when it comes to being THE guy. He would beat practically everybody, clean most of the time, by submission, and if not clean he would do it in a crafty heel way.....but they never went all the way with him, and that really hurt him. The first time he actually won the title it was for 3 weeks or something, interrupted Punk's run, and was only done because they had a Mexico tour coming up and wanted the strap on their only Mexican guy. They went from having this great character who debuted breaking Rey Mysterio's arm and was over right out of the gate....and slowly pissed it down the drain. By the time he won the Rumble (by eliminating Santino last? really?) and curtain jerked WM and LOST he was fucked and had been pretty directionless ever since. His face turn might have actually worked if it wasn't so horribly done, and when they aborted that and did that double turn with him and Ziggler I thought "ok, they're getting back on track" and then they botched that too I'm reminded of a recent Jim Ross podcast I listened to where he broke out that old "wins and losses don't matter" talking point, which is f'n retarded, especially in the context of what he was talking about. "folks, this is good ol' JR, telling you wins and losses don't matter" when talking about Jericho beating Wyatt in their first match, and how "there's gonna be a payoff of Wyatt beating Jericho. Is it predictable? yes. But Jericho is putting him over"........like, has JR gone legit mental? The Wyatt character was killed by losing to Cena at WM. He's salvagable, but that really hurt him and killed the gimmick. That whole feud did. He should not have lost to anybody, not this early into his run. The Destroyer and Eater of Worlds eats a clean loss at his first WM? Now he's not special, he's just another guy. Wins and losses DO matter, despite how WWE likes to book shit, and it's laughable how JR will still white knight for their booking and talk down to fans like we're idiots and "trust us, we know what's good for ya" with his mentality. Wins and losses, done WELL, work. Seemingly two of JR's favorite wrestlers are Undertaker and Mankind. Why did Undertaker get as over as he did? because HE NEVER LOST. And when Mankind beat him on a few PPVs in their feud it was a BIG DEAL because NOBODY EVER BEAT UNDERTAKER. Why did Cactus Jack/Mankind get so over despite almost never winning any of his big matches? Because he had violent wars and at the end if he got pinned you didn't think "he's a loser" you thought "holy shit that is one tough SOB". All of his most famous and memorable matches, did he actually win any of them? So yeah, wins and losses absolutely matter, but done well and with some thought put into it. I don't watch a lot of modern NJPW, but I watch some and I follow the product. I like how they book when it comes to wins and losses. Top guys lose clean sometimes, and when they do it matters. They don't just trade wins and losses and act like shit doesn't matter. There is some unpredictability to it which makes it exciting and interesting. Tanahashi and Okada don't always win. Nakamura doesn't always win. AJ Styles, the champion, did well in G1 but didn't get to the finals. I like that. That's something I've always liked about the puro mentality of booking, which is a style of booking that WWE has never seemed to grasp

How should a Hispanic star be booked? Serious question because we discussed this very topic on a soon to be released podcast of Booking the WWE. I still want you to answer this question. Honestly I always think how Loss once talked about how refreshing it would be if a wrestler could be gay without it being part of his gimmick, and think that could apply to Black/Hispanic wrestlers. Why couldn't Alberto be pushed like any strong heel, just one who happened to be Mexican? No Speedy Gonzales style exaggerated accents, no one beating it down your throats that he's MEXICO'S GREATEST EXPORT, MAGGLE! It also doesn't help the writers seem to have no idea how to write for a Hispanic character despite them insisting that's the core of his gimmick. I don't see the point in having a wrestler who just happens to be gay without it being part of his gimmick, as if it's not part of his gimmick it serves no use. "While I'm a wrestling bus driver, I'm also gay, but that's not relevant. So ignore it, but don't." "What are you telling me for?" A wrestler who just happens to be gay without it being part of his gimmick would just be a normal bloke wouldn't it? And that'd be dull. There's enough dull blokes in wrestling. If anything mentioning someone's gay makes an issue that doesn't need to be made. Sexuality doesn't make someone anything, it's just a thing. Like a chicken wing. I mean, why would we know he's gay? Why would he tell us? Much like why would someone tell anyone they're straight? I mean, sexual orientation isn't an event or interesting. It's just a thing, like having blonde hair or blue eyes. Then after telling us it's part of his gimmick. If it's not part of anything, why even reveal it? He'd just be a normal bloke, like any number of normal blokes who aren't made more or less interesting by their sexual orientation. And normal in wrestling is boring. Because if done well it would be a great character and completely different from anything done in wrestling before? It's realistic and relatable to people who live in the real world, where there are gay and lesbian people who are *shock* normal people who don't bash you over the head with their sexuality and aren't over the top gay steroptypes. I thought that they were going in that direction with Darren Young but they never went anywhere with it. Expecting some sophisticated writing on a touchy subject is way too much to expect from the WWE though. It would be cool to see, but I have no great expectations from the creative end of their company, and when we do get some subtle and nuanced writing I'm pleasantly surprised

they have both claimed in interviews and on podcasts that the double turn wasn't planned and was just something that happened organically. I find that highly suspect given the way they'd both been booked prior to WM. I guess they think that it adds to the myth of the match, and I'm cool with them presenting it like that, but I don't buy it

listening to the latest MLW and Disco Inferno is really white knighting for Russo. I know they're tight, but this is ridiculous

oh, and how did I forget the Bret/Austin double turn, which they both claim wasn't intentionally done, and I find it very hard to believe them