cm funk

I smell the bullshit... "An idea was pitched" is pretty vague; phrased like that, it could've been Borne pitching it. It gets even better. In his shoot interview he says he knows it's true because Shawn Michaels had told him.

Seconded. I was always a fan of the Sting/Luger tag team and their matches with The Road Warriors in particular. They also had a fun run in 95/96 when they were teasing Luger joining the Dungeon. Don't have specific dates but there were some matches with Harlem Heat and I think a triple threat with The Road Warriors that I quite liked at the time.

His reason for including Couture but not Schultz makes no sense

I thought the Muppets were harmless fun and I don't see how they damaged the promotions credibility any more than most of the goofy angles they do. Everybody watching knows it's entertainment, and knows when the switch goes from fun to serious. You can have your lighthearted comedy on the card and still do serious angles on top. My problem is that they are really bad at their serious angles. I mean, there was so much to nitpick at regarding the booking of the show.....a match that did nothing for your dominant world champion, Del Rio losing clean to the guy challenging for the other belt, Cena handling Truth and Miz with ease......that's your top 3 matches for Survivor Series all lessened in importance. There was so many dumb decisions made, the Muppets were really the least of their problems. I really have no idea how that kind of stuff isn't immediately shot down in the booking meetings. Maybe some of the writers don't get why those things are counter-productive, but surely there's people in that room who know better.

This is where Dolph Ziggler's push (and the IC title as it had gained momentum with Rey and the Jericho feud) first went off the rails. They wanted to put the belt on him after their SummerSlam match, and instead he lost like 2 or 3 high profile rematches and looked like a guy who couldn't win the big one. Then Rey dropped the belt to John Morrison, and when Ziggler eventually won it nobody cared. On Mistico, they signed him to make money, bottom line. Everything else is secondary to how much money they can make with him. Yes, he would have been better off with 6+ months in FCW learning the style, but neither side was going to go for that. It wasn't like a Del Rio situation where they lie to the guy and tell him he won't have to do developmental......Mistico was the biggest star in Mexico. For better or worse he needed to be fast tracked. And if making money > relative artistic merit, by all accounts he's been a success so far. And he's been a success while not speaking and looking pretty crappy in the ring a lot of the time. He can only improve as he gets more comfortable......so I'm really failing to see how this was a bad signing. And re: Averno. I'd look at him as an Undertaker "monster of the month" challenger. He doesn't need to be established beyond, "I was your rival in Mexico, and I've come to America to beat you!". It would help if they had a hispanic heel manager to reveal as being behind bringing in the Sin Cara Negro and Avernos of the world to challenge Sin Cara. In fact, I think they should really just pattern Sin Cara after face Undertaker of the mid 90's and book him off in his own little corner of the company, at least until he's better adapted.

The number and the fact that WWE published it doesn't surprise me at all. It is an interesting piece of information though.

I was on markier boards back during the early TNA days, but I recall everybody thought Harris was the one who'd have the singles career. Better body, flashier moves.....and TNA felt the same way because they teased a big push a lot and protected him more than Storm. In hindsight it's clear he needed that protection and had a lot of limitations.....but most people didn't notice that at the time.

There's a potentially great story here with Storm, Roode and Fortune........I hope for the company's sake they don't drop the ball on it like they do with most angles

His slight build hurts the perception of him, but damn, Christian really is a great worker all-around. A big part of watching wrestling is suspending disbelief, and when he gets cooking out there I can buy him hanging with just about anybody

There's been rumors for years about Dixie and Jeff Jarrett......and there's been rumors and evidence of JJ being a bit of a speed freak.....there's probably some fire to that smoke. With TNA's track record of enabling drug users, it wouldn't surprise me at all that Dixie uses herself and facilitates the environment Nash's alleged threat could literally be anything though, picking out TNA wrongdoing is like shooting fish in a barrel

I watch some UFC shows via streams and I can say 100% if streams didn't exist I wouldn't be buying them. Streams cost them some business, but there's no way it's anywhere close to 100,000 buys per show, because most people who stream are like me and just wouldn't watch or would wait for the show to be uploaded the next day. I will never pay $40+ for a PPV, it's just not worth it, and it still seems easier to get people interested in throwing in on a big boxing event than a big UFC I'd go to a bar to watch them if there was a bar near me that showed them, but I live in a rural area and UFC charges such an exorbitant fee (I believe it's 2K) that it's not worth it for any of the local bars to show them. I'd have to drive like an hour away to the nearest BWW

Seriously. Too many cooks. And wasn't the only reason Roode won the BFG series because Crimson got injured? I thought the idea all along was that it was a vehicle to push Crimson, who Hogan/Bischoff are super high on for some inexplicable reason. I'd like to think the recent booking is all being done to get the belt on Roode eventually, probably after a heel turn, and that Hogan's comments about him were all part of an (in their minds) elaborate work.....but it's impossible to give TNA the benefit of the doubt on anything

I'm the same way at the moment, the fumbling of CM Punk's push has really turned me off on the company as a whole. It's harder to ignore all the little things I don't like when the big picture is so bad. And, they're fumbling the ball on Daniel Bryan horribly since he won MITB.....it's reminding me of when they gave MVP the losing streak gimmick with the idea it would get him over as a face, and he never ever recovered his credibility. It's October.....he's supposedly going to be in a main event match at Mania.....nobody is going to buy that he can hang with the big boys when he can't even beat Sin Cara or Cody Rhodes Probably the most interesting thing will be to see how HHH inserts himself into/tries to upstage The Rock's return, because you know he will. Rock has been vocal about HHH in the past, so they'll turn it into a worky-shooty angle and Rock gives HHH his seal of approval

Rumble 99 was awesome, and it led to one of their biggest "b-show" PPVs ever, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Austin v. Vince cage match I'm fine with retroactively crapping on the attitude era, because most of that shit does not hold up well, but that was Austin v. Vince at it's peak and it absolutely drew assloads of money for the company

He sells a shit load of merch still, and is their best house show draw. At this point it's as much a function of the repetitive super push the WWE machine has given him, but it's kind of scary to think where they'd be at without him. Randy Orton was the most over guy on RAW after he went face, they try to build SD around him and that brand tanks. Not really Orton's fault, the SciFi move was very bad for that show, and I think he's on one of the best rolls of his career performance wise.....but if anybody was in a position to rival Cena it was him and it just hasn't worked out

I agree with this for the most part Cena seems to be the glue that holds the WWE formula together at this point, but it's as much them as it is him. I'd probably vote CM Punk or Christian as my wrestler of the year, but I wouldn't advocate anybody voting for them, if that makes any sense. I couldn't even imagine voting Cena as the wrestler of 2011. Isn't it ok to just say, "hey, wrestling pretty much sucks right now, there is no wrestler of the year this year"?

I don't follow Japan very closely, but New Japan seems fairly stable, why doesn't Tanahashi merit consideration?

I have to preface this by saying I didn't watch the show and have just been seeing people's reactions to it online. I did see the ending of Hell in a Cell which was really, really well done. The way I see it is HHH levied a massive fine on and fired Truth and Miz for doing essentially the same shit wrestlers always do. How many times did Trips run in on matches and put hands on referees? So right there he looks like a hypocrite to all the boys. Then he really crosses the line and beats the shit out of them while they are handcuffed. Clearly showing that he can't control his temper and be levelheaded. Combine this with all the shit with Nash and Johnny Ace and Stephanie and inserting himself into a match with Punk and nobody knows where he's coming from and when he might fly off the handle. Also consider that HHH has always been a pretty big dick who hasn't made many friends in storyline. He's always been a dangerous egomaniac and essentially a loner who manipulates and uses people around him. John Cena, #1 babyface and presumed leader of that side of the lockerroom, immediately had issues with him. Why would any of the babyfaces trust HHH any more than the heels would? And Vince might have been a nut, but he's Vince McMahon, the guy who built the company. HHH is essentially a peer to most of these guys, or maybe an older brother figure, it's natural they won't have the same respect for him as they would Vince. I don't know, it just seems totally logical to me that everybody would quickly revolt against him.

Yeah, I don't know if I could justify putting him in, but I'd have thought he'd have at least been on the ballot! He had a pretty nice career and was easily one of the best working big men of the last 20-30 years.

Was Bam Bam Bigelow ever on the ballot, and if so, what kind of support did he get?

I haven't seen a Mutoh match since probably 07, but personally I enjoyed his toned down style a lot more than his "prime" stuff.

It won't happen. If it were me, I'd cut down on the PPV schedule. It makes sense to have monthly shows on the cable channel, and having like 8 PPVs a year instead of 13 or 14 probably wouldn't lose them money, and it would absolutely help the creative process. It's not like it's TNA where they do monthly PPV because that's what you're supposed to do......WWE can make shitloads of cash with well promoted shows Focus specifically on 5 or 6 shows, have a couple of throwaway gimmick PPVs, and then do the "b show" stuff on the channel, where it would be a monthly glorified house show type of thing

Terry stooging entertains me to no end, still to this day. Hell, you could argue he did that for most of his career. Chainsaw Charlie will forever be the funniest thing that wrestling has ever produced.

Jim Cornette is way, way out of touch and I wouldn't trust him to be my latex salesman That said, I think ROH has a chance with Sinclair. I listened to the Alvarez podcast with the CEO guy, and he's a big fan of wrestling who has a realistic idea of what it is and what it is capable of doing money wise

Inoki is a god Hell, at least he never booked an angle where he wrestled god. On television. And made Shawn Michaels his tag team partner. Ha! Vince McMahon is the ultimate bastard.