cm funk

On RAW: I really liked the opening promo. HHH was great here. It couldn't have been easy to have the latest news with Bryan and to have to take the title off of him, but they went out there and got great heat for Bryan while doing so. Loved that HHH pimped having to qualify for MITB....except Orton, he's already earned it (and then later in the show we find out he's been given vacation time, lol). The crowd could have really been deflated by the news but instead it got them heated and riled up Sheamus-Barrett was great. Just two big badass dudes clubbering the shit out of each other for 20 minutes. There were so many moments I thought the match might end down the stretch....they did a good countout tease on Sheamus.....then Barrett went insane with the beatdown to the point where it looked like he might be DQd....then he fucked up getting over aggressive and got hit with a flash Brogue Kick. Great match. Ambrose cut one of his best promos to date. Great great stuff. Reigns was good, but Ambrose was a tough act to follow. Rollins' promo was good. Not great, but good, and he hit all the high points. I don't get the people who don't understand his motivation. The Shield had done everything there was to do as a group. He considered himself 'The Architect' of the group. He created it and now he's killed it. I loved him complaining about how Ambrose's crazy ass could end up dead in a ditch and "golden boy" Reigns with his passionate beastly ways would both be nothing without him holding them together and channeling them. Cesaro-RVD was a solid strong win for Cesaro. Heyman's trolling promo at the beginning was great, with them being in Minnesota and the crowd thinking for a second "oh my god is Brock here?!?!" Damian Sandow was pretty funny as an interpretive dancer and the crowd was getting into it in what typically would be dead spot after the big angle with Rollins/Shield/Wyatts/Cena. I felt bad for the Usos getting stuck in that spot but it turned out ok as a quick little comedy squash. Paige-Alicia was the drizzling shits. Paige is not working well in this 3 minute meaningless sprint RAW style. I feel bad for her. It's a hard match format for anyone to do well with. Paige was so much better in NXT than she's been able to show wrestling on RAW. It's maddening how on a 3 hour show they can't give the women an 8-10 segment and put it in a spot on the show where the crowd might give a shit. Alicia's post-match with Aksana was bizarrely awesome. Alicia was downright psychopath here. I thought Santino's inset promo was actually really good and he came out fired up and showed how he can actually work when he's being serious. Then Zeb started slapping Swagger around telling him to get his shit together and fired up Swagger murdered Santino. This was a quick fun time killing segment that the crowd was into. Main event was ok. Ambrose worked his ass off and was really great here. Cena came in for a hot tag, stalemated with Wyatt, led to Reigns getting the hot tag and him and Ambrose getting the shine at the end. Exactly how it should have been. I'm looking forward to the teased Ambrose-Rollins and Reigns-Orton programs coming up. Gotta find something new to do with Cena and Wyatt at this point though. I'd say put them both in the MITB and have Wyatt win, and let that be the blowoff. Hell, put the tag titles on Harper/Rowan too. The Wyatts with all the titles would be a great new direction for a few months. And the night after MITB Cena gets destroyed by Russev or something just to keep him off in his own little universe away from the stuff that really needs to get over right now for the product to be hot. That should be Cena's role now. He should have his own little pocket of John Cena stuff away from the main stories. Thought it was a good and fun show overall. The crowd was hot for a lot of it and into most of it. Dallas-Woods was the only thing that totally died and we started getting the 'CM Punk' chants. Paige-Alicia had no heat. Other than that even the quicky comedyish segments got the crowd with them. Thought everyone on the show was really working hard tonight, clearly wanting to step their games up with the bad news re: Bryan.

Because he's still in physical possession of the actual titles and the unbeaten true champion. And the people's champ. Do you think anyone in any crowd wanted to see Bryan hand the belts over and slink to the back in his neck brace? Cmon. That's a BAD heat angle for WWE. The angle they did worked as well as it possibly could under the circumstances Think of UFC booking where when a champ gets hurt he can be out forever without having to forfeit the title, but if he's out long enough they crown an interim champ and the real champ comes back for a big title fight. That's kinda what they can do here if Bryan is cleared in a few months since he never gave up his titles, and the crowds will be totally behind him and not view whoever has the other belts as the "real" champ. WWE did an actual interim champ deal when they were doing the angle with Punk, but that doesn't work here because they really have no idea when Bryan will be back, and The Authority would never be all "oh come back whenever you can Bryan and you're still the champ, but in the interim we have to have a champ" This set up Bryan to come back as strong as possible IMO

WCW in 99-00 was such a trainwreck and they were just throwing random shit at the wall. The only explanation for Mutoh going there is money and maybe he felt like going back to the states for fun. WCW was not fun in any way at that point in time. I kinda liked that "Deadpool" gimmick they briefly started with Raven, Vampiro, Muta and the ICP but it ended before it had barely started. WCW wasted Mutoh so badly, but they fucked up practically everything in those days so it wasn't a big surprise

If he goes back to doing the headbutt and the dropkick, then he's a frigging moron, no matter how they're pushing him. You're Brian fucking Danielson. You're one of the best wrestlers in the world. You've watched a shit ton of tape and wrestled everyone from KENTA to Kamala. You can figure out how to work a little smarter, to sub in some moves that aren't going to cripple you over time, and to probably be even MORE over because of it. Yeah, and I've been saying this for a while when it comes to his work. I cringe when he does the suicide dive spots and etc. I remember one time on RAW I got so angry at how stupid he was being with that shit, it was infuriatingly dumb. I can't claim that those spots don't get him over, but I've been sick of seeing it for a while. Every once in a while, fine, but he does the shit in every match. There was a period where he was doing suicide dives into the dasher board barriers like 3-4 times in a row, often violently crashing and burning, plus doing the diving headbutt and all sorts of other nonsense...... Nobody should be surprised by his current situation. And the sad thing is......he's a smarter worker than that. He doesn't need to suicide dive every show. He can mat wrestle. He's a great technician. Yeah that shit pops the crowd and gets you over, but great mat wrestling and strikes get over too, and you're not risking long-term health working that way. I don't know if they kinda look the other way with Bryan, but it was a little surprising he was actually hired in the first place due to his history of concussions on the indys and the eye thing and the shoulder thing and all the injuries he had. And hired at a time where they were really putting everyone through all the tests and being very cautious. And he's had a few concussions since he's been on the WWE roster too..... I'm also kinda pissed at the Usos doing the wild crazy dive spots in every match, multiple times. There's this really weird thing in WWE now where guys are permitted to do all this insane shit dive and bump wise......but they can't bleed? They can't work an old school violent style to get over? It seems so backwards in terms of concern for long term health of the workers. It's something that's been bothering me for a while now and the most frustrating thing about it is that there a lot of smart people in the company who've been around for 30-40 years and should know better

My understanding is that they patched things up a while back and are kinda working the animosity

huh I think Rollins has been cutting great promos for a while now and I'm totally digging the Owen Hart vibe from him. Maybe that's just me. I'm waiting for Rollins to open RAW next week and scream "I AM NOT A NUGGET" lol I also think he's a fantastic performer, and, I have faith in him to transition into being a heel in this context. I'm already liking what I saw from the SD spoilers. I see good things in Rollins' future. I think my favorite thing about all this is that Ambrose wasn't the one to turn. Ambrose as a babyface has been so awesome. If every show involves him cutting insane promos and getting the shit kicked out of him, sign me up

I can only speak for myself but I found myself starting to get a bit bored with The Shield as babyfaces. They're awesome and all that, and this year up til now with them has been fun, with the Wyatt feud and Evolution......but I just didn't see where you go from there. Just my personal opinion, but I'm really glad they broke up and looking forward to Rollins as a heel and Ambrose as a babyface. Reigns......eh, they've got big plans for him but it wasn't time to pull the trigger on him yet. He's being slowly primed, and I think this angle can only help him. Reigns-Rollins 1 on 1? I'd pay 5 bucks for that.

I just don't think a dominant babyface faction works. We were all expecting The Shield to break up quite a while ago and they morphed nicely into a babyface trio thanks to the Wyatt feud.....but really what else do you do with them as a group? I don't dig the "they go their separate ways but remain friends" angle. If you do that, then what? That doesn't work for me. I'm struggling to think of a babyface faction that worked that way, would love to see examples. I suppose the closest example would be The Freebirds? But they were heels, who only worked babyface when the crowd was digging them so much. There's also a major problem in modern WWE that there are no strong heels. The good heels get cheered now because the crowd is meta. The classic babyfaces get heel heat. The cool heels get face heat. This really isn't WWE's fault, it's just due to fans being "in on it" so to speak. Bad News Barrett, Cesaro......they get cheered because they are awesome. WWE wants them to be heels, but the crowd wants to cheer them. Zeb Coulter....crowds love him. He's such a heel....but WE THE PEOPLE got over huge with crowds. Bo Dallas who just debuted and is such a sleazy heel is already getting face responses. It just is what is. Look at the roster.....who are the heels? John Cena might get the biggest heel heat and he's the whitebread superman babyface. Crowds started trying to turn Orton face earlier this year when he was the BIGGEST snakey shitbag around and was involved with screwing Daniel Bryan over at every turn So I guess my question is.....what do you do with The Shield as a babyface trio? Who do they work with? Where are the strong heels to pair them against? If we're talking about drawing heat and drawing money I don't see what they could do with them at this point. They don't break up, then what? They go their separate ways, then what? This was a heat drawing money angle, imo, and maybe lets see where it goes from here and avoid the knee jerk "BUT I LOVED THE SHIELD" reactions

The Shield, as great as they are/were, didn't exactly turn in inspired heel work from what I've seen of their PPV matches, which is probably why they were already earning cheers as "cool heels" even before the turn. They've always been heels by association - they've relied on the "the numbers game" for beatdowns, but they've also taken that approach for their face work against the Authority. That's Wrestling Faction 101 stuff, no matter what side you're working on. More importantly, Rollins and Reigns spent most of their time in the tag division simply going toe-to-toe with their opponents. Outside of Rollins attacking Rey Mysterio after his elimination from the Survivor Series tag match, they didn't do a ton of deliberate heeling in the ring that I can recall. They yanked the Usos off of the apron to cutoff a Goldust tag attempt in their Hell in the Cell triple threat tag match, but that's not really heelish as much as it is smart. And Rollins' typical role within those tag matches was transitioning into and feeding the hot tag. His finisher is a nice spot but, outside of his middle turnbuckle stun gun spot, his control work in the PPV matches that I've seen consisted of rapid double-teams and pedestrian offense. More than once, he ate the opposing team's finisher to either end the match (Battleground, HitC) or open up the legal man to a spear from Reigns that would turn the tide or maybe even win the match (the six-man at WM29). Hell, he spent most of his time in the TLC handicap match giving Punk offense. Sure, part of Rollins' lack of opportunity to shine as a heel may be by design; Reigns was very clearly the guy they wanted to protect in the Shield, so that severely limited their options for structuring any kind of vulnerability into their tag matches that didn't compromise Rollins in the process. (The fact that Rollins is willing and able to take flashier bumps doesn't hurt either.) But Rollins never really stood out with what time he had as a heel anyway -- his stock only started to pick up once they started facing heels and he could open up with more aerial offense. Shawn Michaels was in a very similar situation when he turned -- even though his offense as a heel was laughable, he could bump like a fiend -- but he could also work around those limitations by being incredibly charismatic. Unless there's something amazing hidden in Rollins that we haven't seen, he doesn't have that same safety net. This whole angle started with them already working for the Authority as their enforcers -- they broke ranks once they found out that HHH had orchestrated the attack on them right before Wrestlemania XXX. Why would Rollins, only twenty-four hours after going to war with these guys, trust anything that HHH would offer him? Rollins has had a seething undercurrent of anger for a while now. Ambrose was the leader of the group at first, then Reigns, and Seth is like, "UMMMM.....I'M THE MAN. FUCK THIS." It's total Owen Hart heel turn-ish. Also, in terms of the way matches were worked, Rollins would often take pins but often be the difference maker offensively. Of the 3 he was the guy most likely to be put down for a 3 count due to his reckless nature, but also the guy who could come out of nowhere for the 1-2-3

I can kinda get the "they could go their separate ways as singles and be friends" idea, but really, what is the point of that? there wasn't anything left for the Shield to do as a unit. They were teasing a breakup last fall and it was surprising to an extent that they didn't jump the gun, kept them together, and milked a babyface run out of them. What else could you do with them as a trio at this point? I know everyone expected Ambrose to be the one to turn and break them up, but I like this way way better, because Ambrose is so money as a babyface right now. If Ambrose turned a ton of people would have bitched about it, only because people had been predicting him to turn for months and months. The Shield was getting played out IMO, there wasn't anything left to do with them than have someone turn and break up the group. Of the whole Shield/Wyatts series my favorite was the one where Seth walked out on them because of all the bitter infighting and it forced Ambrose and Reigns to be bros. I feel like this a nice continuation of the story. I think Rollins will be fantastic in this role and I'm already digging the idea of Reigns and Ambrose "US AGAINST THE WORLD" babyfaces with their backs against the wall. lot of mileage there, plus there will be an undercurrent of "maybe Ambrose will turn too...." which, he probably will, at some point, but they can get like 6 months out of this booking wise A lot of people complain about long-term booking and inconsistency etc, I don't see anything inconsistent about this at all. And the Shield were a group for like 2 years! It was time to mix it up

also, smh at comments vis a v Rollins' motivation for turning heel He was "the Architect" of the Shield. He sweat and bled and kept the unit together. HHH gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. Fuck those guys. Rollins gettin PAID and all that. He's the man now, dawg. This isn't complicated storytelling.

I couldn't disagree with this post more the Shield, imo, had run it's course. Yeah, they had a fun babyface run, but what then? Where does a 3 man group go from there? If they kept the group together, who would they work with? There's nobody. This is way more interesting than keeping the Shield around as a babyface trio, imo. And I think Rollins will knock this out of the park. And it's major heat on Ambrose and Reigns. I love it.

I laughed at this post I saw a comment somewhere that Bo is the epitome of the troll face internet meme lol I BO-LIEVE in punching him in his stupid face

They mentioned Kofi's tweets on the pre and post shows. Cole/JBL/Lawler never seem to be clued in on this stuff

I dug the main event a lot but I had a MAJOR issue with a no holds barred elimination street fight turning into a standard 6 man in the middle. The opening brawling and everything once it broke down again was great, but that really bugged me in the middle. I get why they did it (Batista and HHH get blown up) but there are other ways to structure the match to give them breathers. I wouldn't have minded Evolution showing up to fight in street fight gear too, but meh, you never see that in WWE. Shield are already in street fight gear essentially. Also, my network stream on PS3 started crapping out during the entrances and died midway thru the main after running fine the whole show. I had to switch to my laptop which I was not happy about. 3+ months since the Network launched and this shit is inexcusable. I won't be re-subscribing. Fun show after lackluster TV build leading up to it. I'll add full thoughts later.

And of course the guy kicks out. Ahhhhhh the indies...

This was the go-home show. If they were going to do that why wouldn't they set it up tonight? Unless it's a setup for RAW the next night? RAW was pretty dull and dreadful tonight. I liked the Big E-Rusev confrontation (first time anyone's gotten over on Rusev and could be a good short power match), I liked the contract signing, I liked Cesaro ambushing Sheamus and laying into him with dozens and dozens of forearm shots, Alica Fox, Adam Rose and Hornswoggle/Torito. Bo Dallas' debut came off well. But this is mostly midcard stuff and not much in a 3 hour show.

Yeah, it's actively turning me away from Wyatt segments now Doesn't help either that this Cena feud has been going on for 3 months and feels like the same thing every week. So ready for this to be over. The one upside to that segment would have been Lawler taken out so I wouldn't have to listen to him on commentary, and they couldn't even throw us that bone

Russo Erik Watts Jarrett Cyrus Dusty Zbyszko Bischoff Hogan Brooke Hogan Sting Foley Cornette Dixie I'm guessing Eric Young had match making power at some point because why the hell not thinking any more about this will break my brain

I thought the way MVP was brought in as an investor was kind of clever (if you remember back to when he debuted on SD his gimmick was that dumbass Teddy Long gave him the most lucrative contract in WWE) but man the authority struggles/owners/gms/"powers that be" stuff is SO played out. I'm ok with it with Hunter/Steph and whenever Vince is around because it's common knowledge that they own and control the company, it's reality based, and they actually draw money and get people over with it. When has TNA ever drawn a dime with all their bullshit? They haven't. If you had to list em all they've probably had 50 different authority figures over the years, and often 3 or 4 or 5 at the same time. What is the point of all of it? It doesn't draw money, there's never any real consequences or consistency, it's the laziest lamest wrestling trope at this point and probably turns off more people than it attracts

No, I just meant Meltzer's story on why she was cashing out was fishy. I assume there was a lot more to it than "$ to build a house".

Doesn't appear so http://www.insiderslab.com/PR4/WWE/ It is striking how much Stephanie dumped last year. The story that the money was being used to build a house always seemed fishy. Would make more sense if she was flipping it into safer investments

I'm defending RAW and WWE and my argument certainly wasn't "ignore 70% of what they do" at all. I'm more along the lines of "ignore 20% of it" and nobody is putting a gun to your head forcing you to like everything or watch every segment. You're allowed to change the channel for a bit or go to the kitchen, or walk your dog or put it in the background and surf the web a bit. That's how I watch it. WWE's shows are for the most part pretty good and entertaining and have been for quite a while, IMO of course

I was listening to part 3 of the 4 part Steve Austin-Eric Bischoff interview (highly recommended listening) and Bischoff hit on a very good point about bad comedy in wrestling. How....wrestling should always have comedic elements....but the bad comedy skits are just....bad....and they make you walk out of the room or change the channel....because they are just bad comedy. And that is so true. Bischoff talked about how Steve had some hilarious comedy in his work.....but it wasn't cheesy over the top bad comedy....it was little things and it was good and it worked because we cared about the Stone Cold character and and we could laugh with him, or laugh at him sometimes if he showed a little ass, but the audience got it and was in on the joke. A lot of the bad WWE comedy stuff is just bad. Not all of it, and I have a higher tolerance for it as a life long wrestling fan, but there's at least one thing a week that makes me cringe and embarrased to be watching this crap. Austin made the point that he wishes wrestling could be treated more seriously top to bottom, and not have "cool off" comedy segments mixed in with serious stuff.....where the tone of the show is all over the place and it makes it harder to take the more serious stuff seriously. I agreed with everything both of them were saying.

Foley took a few too many chairshots to the head I honestly think long-term this is going to be a blip on the radar for WWE going forward. They lost investor confidence, and it's their own fault for over promising, but these people who bought into the hype were, frankly, idiots. Anyone could analyze the WWE and see the peaks and valleys in stock price and business and come to the conclusion that it's a stock you should buy when it's low, sit on it, ride it, sell high on it....rinse, wash, repeat. The WWE's business model is profitable, diversified, and sustainable....and they have the built in advantage of essentially being a monopoly in the wrestling industry with no real competition in sight. Seemingly lost in the all the craziness and massive sell of of their stock now is that.......they did get a sizable increase in domestic tv rights. They did get a better deal in the UK. I don't doubt that they will get a better deal in India and other countries when deals come up. The Network start up costs are the big sunken cost on the books and they've been very up front about that. In time I expect the Network to be profitable, and I think they were ahead of the curve with it. And we all knew before it even started that there will be a gradual price increase on it. Attracting corporate talent might be a short-term issue because at the moment WWE has the stink of failure on it, but I don't think it'll be that big of a deal. And Vince/WWE have always been good at hunkering down during lean times, so if it comes to cutting costs on TV/live event production it will probably be minimal and barely noticeable to the average viewer Now, they do need to keep putting on a good core product, and should probably be adding more varied content from their library onto the Network and pushing it more on TV. They need to work hard at this stuff. If Sting is really in the fold now.....promote the hell out of him and at the same time roll out old GCW/NWA/WCW content on the Network. Guarantee people will sign up for that stuff. Don't blow your load all at once......but start doing more to attract the supposed 50 million people with an "affinity" for pro-wrestling