cm funk

I've listened to the Abdullah pt. 1 and Thunderbolt interviews. Very entertaining. Gary was kind of annoying on the Thunderbolt one, and Thunderbolt lived up to his reputation......but it was a listen listening to Dave Drayson right now, who I'd never actually heard of before Wanted to listen to Mark Lewin pt. 2 2014 but couldn't find pt. 1. There's an 'adult' section now where Gary did an interview with a pornstar

Signature spots are fine with me as long as they are set up properly and executed creatively. Since Sheamus has been back from that long injury layoff I think he's been really creative with the forearm spot and gets into it way better than he used to. The teases worked into some matches get big crowd responses, and the spot itself is super over. The Sheamus spot that used to bother me was the "Brogue Kick" when they were giving him that overdone face push and he had to stomp the mat, slap his chest, and chant "BRO BRO BRO" in a desperate cliche WWE babyface fashion. It was lame as hell, and it didn't get over. And I've personally always hated the "stomping, clapping, leading the crowd into a finisher" spots because they're so contrived. HBK stomping the mat for the superkick being one of the prime examples. I LOVED when the heel would actually react to the stomping and pull himself out of the way of the kick. That was logical. 15 seconds of stomping and the crowd joining in.....made guys look like shit when they were in the corner and would pull themselves up right into a superkick. If I'm semi-conscious and have done ANY scouting he's not hitting that kick on me like that. That kick was always so much better as a flash KO spot.....and there are some great examples of it used that way in matches which got massive crowd reactions On a similar note......I always hated when Rock would beat people with the People's Elbow. I thought it was a great, fun spot and the crowd's obviously loved the hell out of it......but pinning a guy with an elbow drop? Made opponents look like shit. Cool spot.....NOT a finisher. He rarely executed it like a Muta corkscrew elbow which looked absolutely vicious.....or a Stan Hanson elbow which looked like he was legitimately going to bust a guy's face/skull into pieces. I always wished his floating DDT would be treated like a finisher more than it was. I think he got a pinfall off it a handfull of times.....but it was always treated as a transition spot after someone had been getting heat on him. I remember a while in 99-00 where he would pin people with the elbow on a regular basis

I'm sick of Lawler on commentary and think he needs to be put out to pasture for sure. I wouldn't mind him occasionally showing up to do angles, but he's beyond stale/lazy/uninterested on commentary. I'm cool with RVD right now because he came back to work with younger/newer guys and put them over. That's been the entire point of his current run, and I can't hate on that. He has a rub to give and is still really over, and he is willingly in the company to put people over. RVD "gets it" I've been down on the Miz in recent years but a lot of it has been up to shitty booking. Since his latest tv return the last few weeks he's actually been cutting good promos and being booked properly as a cocky, smug annoying heel. He was so miscast as a face for a while and they screwed him over with the way they wishy-washy booked him for months with no direction and one week he's a heel and one week he's a face.....and understandably the crowds hated it. I thought his match with Jericho on RAW was rather good and it made me remember why I've enjoyed Miz in ring in the past. Not like he's a great wrestler.....but he's serviceable when given things to work with, and has had his share of better than average matches with the right opponents As far as ADR.....he's honestly one of the best in ring guys in the company. I get why people don't like him and tune out on him and think he sucks or whatever......but it's totally down to bad booking IMO. He is really fucking good in ring and can go with anyone. Him and Sheamus are two of the most underrated guys by people due to the fact that they've been booked so poorly......but any time they're given a chance to go out and just have a hard hitting high level match on a tv show or a PPV they deliver the goods. Sheamus has been in some of the funnest tv matches this year IMO. I can say the same for Ziggler, who is also a much maligned figure due to booking rather than his performance

They've done a piss poor job promoting it on TV, when they've even bothered to do so. No logical content tie ins whatsoever, poor communication to the audience of what the service offers and why it's on paper so great, poor explanation to older/less tech savvy fans......very poor job promoting "special events" Which was why it was so jarring that RAW went into such hard-sell shilling the Network mode when most weeks they basically ignore the thing. For anyone who's been following the progress of the thing and is a weekly WWE watcher it was clearly desperate measure tactics It seems crazy to think how positive a lot of us were on the Network early on, and how it's pretty much been a complete disaster for the company on every level

The hard pitch of the Network on RAW last night and ANOTHER free trial I took as a very bad sign. They're clearly getting super worried about the subscriber drops and the slow growth of the thing. It's been discussed how they've done a poor job promoting the service on TV, and I suppose it's better late than never, but it felt like desperation. I'm not expecting any sort of subscriber growth at this point, and actually a lot of people dropping the service. I've already decided to drop it after SummerSlam because I'm not super happy with the variety of content (was really expecting Georgia, Mid South, AWA stuff by this point, of which there is none of yet). I do appreciate that they've added the Clash of Champions shows. They're banking on the MNW rollout as a big selling point, and maybe it will be for some people, but it's not something I'm super interested in. Also, several months in now and I still have a ton of technical problems, which is inexcusable and the frustration of that outweighs the positives of the service. I had major issues with the TLC ppv. It's very rare that I can watch something on it without a hitch, be it freezing/buffering/loading issues or the app just crashing out of nowhere.

I don't have any sort of hard copy wrestling tape/DVD collection, got rid of/lost all my VHS and only have a few DVDs, but as the owner of a massive music collection I can sympathize with the binder folks. It's kind of pointless to even keep so many CDs that take up a ton of space when I have a massive IPOD and external hard drives and a smart phone etc.......but it would be more work to just rip my entire collection and there's a lot of sentimental value in it. Not to mention my cassette tapes and records. I don't even own a tape player anymore but I refuse to get rid of them. I finally just parted ways with most of my VHS movie/tv tapes and it was a sad day As for wrestling stuff.....I have some stuff on hard drives. I couldn't deal with a massive, rarely watched collection of DVDs. I've already got a large enough DVD collection too

Yeah, I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country, but they heavily advertise the shows at MSG, Barclays Center, Nassau, Jersey, Philly Spectrum, CT casinos, upstate NY places like Binghamton and Albany. Just listening to WFAN AM sports radio and a few FM stations I hear their ads on a regular basis when there's a show coming up. I was impressed with the last ad I heard which had already been changed to the latest lineup promoting Rollins against Ambrose......and they do a good job on these radio ads promoting specific names and matchups. I'm sure they don't put that much effort into it throughout the country......but in the North East they do I do think overall it's promoted as WWE the brand being the draw though. That doesn't mean that there aren't performers who are individual draws, or programs that get hot and draw, but ultimately the brand is the draw. I did think at the time when Meltzer was criticizing Daniel Bryan as a failure on top that it was pretty insane. All empirical evidence showed that this guy was drawing. By far the hottest crowd reactions......crowds full of people wearing D-Bry merch and homemade D-Bry signs......almost always strong quarter hour ratings.....B house shows with him on top were doing just fine.....it was fairly bizarre how Dave wouldn't accept that he was drawing money. Him and Alvarez got into a few arguments on the subject and Dave was thoroughly owned each time and was really only citing a few weak PPV buyrates (wasn't Bryan's fault) and how shitty he thought some of his merch/t-shirts were (yet the crowd was full of people wearing the stuff and he was 2nd or 3rd in merch sales)

IWC is a catch-all term for exactly what it is. The internet wrestling community. It doesn't imply that everyone shares a hive mindset......I actually find that it's the people who use it derogatorily and think people using the term are 'dumb shits' are the ones who stereotype "THE IWC" the most. Dave sounds particularly hypocritical on this when he's been ranting about dumb wrestlers (Brutus Magnus for example) ripping on "the dirtsheets" etc.......and you get the same sort of ranting from a lot of ex-wrestlers anout "dumb internet marks and the IWC and the sheets" and they also just come off as terribly uninformed I mean ok, I'm not super big on labels either, but they serve a purpose. We could distill it down to "the pwo community" or "the DVDVR community" or the "F4W/WO community but there are huge overlaps in this tiny, niche online communities. The IWC simply mean the greater community of online wrestling fans. Is there a better shorthand term to use? I mean, like the term or not, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez are part of the IWC. So am I. So are you.

Keith was in the first wave of internet smart marks, and hardly any of them were influenced by him. Keith had influence on the wave(s) after that when it started moving to Webpages, but the influence of Dave had already taken root by then. In fact, it had taken root in Keith's own writing simply because that whole first wave for the most part were influenced by Dave. Yeah, I consider the 94-96 AOL/webpage explosion "first wave IWC" because the internet was incredibly niche before that. Keith and people like him were super influential on that generation of kids/teenagers/young adults who were getting PCs and internet in their homes for the first time. You dinosaurs who were around on RSPW and Prodigy and bulletin boards I'd consider "proto-IWC" Those are just the labels I'd use, not diagreeing

I'm still shaky on this. Was it that he invented the "not-common wrestling fan" or that he made the common wrestling fan think differently? I think it's pretty fair to say that for a generation of first wave internet/IWC "smart marks" Keith was more influential than Meltzer. Now, Meltzer obviously had a huge influence on Keith's tastes.....but Meltzer didn't have a strong internet presence til fairly late in the game. Keith was the most popular * rating guy during the boom period of the Monday Night Wars and ECW. It's arguable that guys like Al Issacs and Scherer and Rick Scacia were more influential opinion makers among the masses of internet fans at the time. I'm the same age as you, and Keith definitely had more of an influence on me than Meltzer at the time. My tastes have changed a lot since then, as most of ours have, but I was firmly in the "WCW is holding down Benoit/Jericho/Eddie etc./want to see cruisers/high spots/want to see car crash table/ladder matches/ECW style stuff crowd" at the time. Scott Keith was the champion of that stuff and had a huge following of fans. Meltzer had a bigger influence on pre-internet smart fans, and younger fans now with his greatly increased online presence and podcasting, but that mid-late 90's pocket I think he was outpaced by several people. Obviously not in terms of news reporting and most of the newz sites copied his reporting (as they still do) but in terms of recapping/rating/championing stuff

Bo Dallas seems to be getting over pretty well as far as I can tell Adam Rose is a one note comedy gimmick that was never going to have a shelf life, especially because he's not a very good wrestler. I enjoy the gimmick and some of the stuff they've booked him to do. I'd enjoy a feud with Heath Slater/Hornswoggle. There's lots of undercard comedy stuff he could do that would entertain me. And the bunny has been a great addition to the JBL & Cole show. I don't see him as a failure at all.....pretty much exactly what I expected Emma was debuted/booked horribly since getting called up. She has way more to offer than what we've seen, anyone who watches NXT knows this. I don't think it's a small room vs. big room thing.....it's totally on WWE's booking/presentation of women. Paige has been booked horribly as well. Until they start treating the Divas division somewhat seriously, give them time to wrestle (to be fair there has been more of a trend in this direction), don't put them in death spots on TV/PPV......someone like Emma will struggle to get over. And I have to echo that comment about Coffey's opinions. Not trying to be a jerk, but I find myself disagreeing strongly with almost everything you have to say in terms of opinions on talent. You think Emma is terrible.......you hate Stardust (the live crowd reactions are in complete disagreement with you on this).....I think you're also an Orton hater IIRC......we have wildly divergent opinions

Heyman did talk about Axel on Jericho's podcast, and his take on it wasn't anything different than what some of us said at the time. The Punk-Heyman program was hot, but because Brock is never around they needed a guy to plug in as Heyman's proxy. He said it did Axel no favors at all because a) he wasn't at Punk's level, and if they really wanted to build him up/push him he shouldn't be losing matches, and Punk shouldn't have been losing either. It was a glorified jobber role to get Punk/Heyman over. He didn't mention names of who would have been better in the spot, but I imagine he would have rather had someone like Big Show or a rotating cast of monster of the week jobbers, maybe old ECW guys in one off spots. He put over Axel as a talent and boiled it down to wrong time/wrong place/bad fit for the situation

Curious about that as well......he was like, "If he REALLY wanted to do an accurate Vince impression" and Bryan was like...."stop, stop, stop right there, don't say it" Did Vince piss himself backstage or something?

Dustin's "finally I'm the normal one" line was gold, no pun intended

That Swagger-Kofi match was pretty fun

Yeah. Punk was red hot after the Jeff Hardy feud and they went out of their way to squash him and job him out and position him like he wasn't on the same level of the real stars. He recovered and overcame it, but they really booked him like a chump who had business being champion

Natalya was around for years before the "farting Nattie" gimmick. She debuted on SD! in 08 and got the standard WWE women's wrestler treatment (this was back when RAW and SD! each had a women's title iirc). Then she got moved to ECW and was paired up with Tyson Kidd. Then DH Smith came in and they did the Hart Dynasty gimmick. Hart Dynasty got a push when Bret came back in the fold, were tag champs for a while, then it kinda tapered off and they did a lame breakup that led to nothing. Then Nattie had that pairing with Beth Phoenix as the two "monster" divas that lasted for a while. When that stopped they kinda moved on to other girls and weren't really using her, which is when the farting gimmick started and it was the only way she was getting on tv. Then they paired her with Great Khali and she would come out dancing with him and be ringside for his matches. That was one of the most awful and humiliating gimmicks they've given anyone, male or female. It's up there with the legendary "Molly has a fat ass" and "Jillian has a giant mole on her face" shit. Vince loves this type of comedy and loves to rib talent on air with shitty gimmicks. Natalya to her credit is a good soldier and realized that a) it was better than not being used on tv and that she might have been on the chopping block (she's been around longer than any diva at this point and women in the company don't typically have long runs), and doing what's asked with a smile on your face, even something that shitty and dumb and potentially career ruining, gets you brownie points. Who knows why they gave her that gimmick? Maybe Natalya farted backstage once. Maybe Vince had a disagreement with Bret and decided to take it out on her. Could be anything

"THIS IS AWESOME" and "HOLY SHIT" chants in WWE are still pretty rare and generally reserved for truely awesome matches and holy shit moments. It's a lot different with the smaller indy crowds and TNA crowds (back when they actually had hot crowds) who will chant that stuff at practically anything, and the promotions will throw out random goofy stuff with no rhyme or reason in a tail wagging the dog kind of way

TNA dabbled into this stuff with Joe and Doug Williams. I was a HUGE fan of the Doug Williams as X-Champ push because he didn't do any flying or high spots, it was just all technical wrestling and mat stuff, while all the guys in the division were flyers. Reminded me of Dean Malenko in WCW, where you had all these luchadores and Japanese high spot guys and Dean's style was just grounding them, working holds, and suplexes. TNA did a good job with the X Division for a while. It was pushed like.....the top guys in this division are great.....they could hang with anyone in the company....and unless you're a really freakin good heavyweight you can't hang against the class of X-Division. That's how you should book a junior/cruiser/"X" division. When you get a guy like a Rey Mysterio who gets super over working in that division and is super impressive you get fans thinking "what if Rey matched up against some of the other guys?" It creates interesting matchups that fans will pay to see. WCW did it right for a while. WWF/E has never really grasped the concept or done it well. If they'd had a cruiser division they could have got Sin Cara over properly then transitioned him into working with heavyweights. They drop the ball so hard with smaller guys. And I don't think guys should be pigeonhold into the "junior" division, guys like Rey and Bryan and Generico who can clearly hang with anyone and make bigger guys look better than they actually are should be used to their full potential, but there's other guys who would benefit so much from having a division they could be showcased and get over in. When was the last time Justin Gabriel got any sort of push? How long has Kofi been in the same spot essentially just treading water doing nothing? These are talented guys who could get really over and draw money if put in the right spot

Neville doesn't have a character. He's "The Man Who Gravity Forgot" and is pushed as just this amazing best P4P wrestler type......and he isn't. Aside from some cool crowd popping offense.....why is he a babyface? Why should I be cheering for him? There's nothing of substance to get behind. Due to the way he works he almost has to be a face....but seems like he'd be better as a heel. I liked his tag team with Oliver Grey much more than I've liked his singles run. I feel like his future, if he's going to make it in WWE, will be in a tag team. As a singles I can't see it unless WWE develops a WCW style cruiser division for the undercard.....but when is that going to happen? Not to go off on a tangent, but WWE never putting together a strong cruiser division and pushing it has baffled me for years. They're supposedly interested in tapping into the ever growing latino demographic (as they should be) yet the product shows no signs of it. In all the years since Eddie died they've pushed Rey, Del Rio, Sin Cara and Vickie Guerrero. And they have Puerto Ricans cosplaying Matadores with a mini bull mascot. That's it. WCW proved that luchadores who are under hoods and don't speak English can get over with American crowds. With the dire 3 hour long RAWs that the crowds and audiences end up dead for the bulk of hours 2 and 3.....wouldn't it help if you could throw out some crowd popping cruiser stuff? It helped WCW a ton during the days of 3 hour Nitros. And they've already got some of the talent needed to do it. Tyson Kidd, Neville, throw Kofi in there to reinvent him, Justin Gabriel, KENTA. I think Generico has upper mid-card potential but you could start him off in a cruiser division to establish him with the audience. And, sign some luchadores and you've got a pretty good cruiser division. But they won't do it, because Vince and Kevin Dunn don't like it and they'll point to their half-hearted attempts in the past as proof that it doesn't work on the big stage of WWE.

It's what happens when you put under-trained people in the ring, and expect them to work a fast paced 3 minute match on tv. I don't really blame Aksana for that. They had a screwed up spot and Naomi was on the mat and Aksana was supposed to be in a control segment, so she defaulted to a ground strike to maintain control. Naomi, equally inexperienced, didn't see it coming, and rolled right into it in the worst way. They were both inexperienced and it wasn't either of their fault that it happened, it was WWE's fault for putting them in that situation

I don't know what the deal with Bourne is. They trusted him enough to have him be the guy to work with and train Floyd Mayweather, they were really high on the guy at one point. And his "synthetic marijuana" suspensions seemed like bullshit. Either bullshit that they'd suspend a guy for that, or it was a bullshit cover for something harder. Then he had all bad problems with his ankle. I know he did one match in NXT but I don't know if he's fully recovered from the injury to where he could work a full WWE schedule. Everything surrounding Bourne news wise the last several years doesn't really paint a picture Drew Mac was definitely underutilized. That guy has superstar potential if a smart booker would tap into it. Tall, athletic, great look, good in the ring, decent talker, charisma......it's amazing how WWE wasted him. I'd like to see him in ROH, debuted and pushed the right way he could be an epic top heel in that promotion. TNA is a dead end, and NJPW has their quota of gaijins at the moment I liked Aksana. She oozed sex appeal, and I liked her character/acting in segments a lot better than some of the other divas. She wasn't good in the ring, but she definitely worked hard at it trying to get better. Compared to when she started in NXT where she was basically learning to run the ropes for the first time to now.....she improved a lot. There were those reckless/over enthusiastic spots though where she would injure her opponent which probably did her in Teddy Long hadn't been on tv in a while and I assume this was just a mutual retirement sort of deal. Yoshi hadn't been used in forever. They didn't even use him in NXT much. Talented guy who got over with WWE audiences when he was actually used and pushed on tv. Just another case of WWE having no idea how to push a Japanese wrestler. Brodus - I liked Brodus, but what else could they do with him at this point?

You're ridiculous. They've had THREE matches this year. One on RAW in April, one on Smackdown in May, and the one the other night on RAW. And they weren't all the same match.

Last night's show had an awesome long Sheamus/Barrett match and a long Shield/Cena/Wyatts main event that wasn't anything special outside of Ambrose but was at least good. There's still good long matches on almost every show. But yeah, of course Bryan being out hurts, he was THE workhorse and best wrestler in the company. And it hurts that the tag scene thinned out with the Rhodes Bros de-pushed (they were part of great matches on RAW every week for a while) and Real Americans broken up. But there's still good wrestling week to week and most weeks you can expect at least one very good-awesome match.

5. 6 if you count the Virgin Islands Personally I cross my hands down across my body and bow my head. I don't think that's disrespectful. I never liked putting my hand across my heart even back when I was learning the pledge of allegiance in 1st grade. JR is such a fuddy duddy