Dylan Waco

I have stayed out of this. My thoughts in brief. I had no problem with the Comments thread but I found it to be utterly worthless and uninteresting the vast majority of the time. I actually think Grimmas point about Twitter is dead on there in the sense that if I am going to make random quips that are by virtue of their inclusion in that thread not worthy of discussion, Twitter is where I am going to go. I guess you could say that broadly speaking the Animated GIF Culture nature of that Comments thread made it totally unappealing to me so I rarely went in it. That said, I had no real problem with it staying open. I think some of the complaints in here are bizarre (clicking on a bunch of threads that are clearly labeled is hard/annoying?). The Current WWE thread on the other hand had a lot of stuff I really enjoyed. The problem there is that it was just too broad and led to people ignoring other aspects of the board and turning that thread into a catch all dumping ground for everything WWE. This would not be a big deal if not for the fact that people would often be having the same discussion two or three different places, and/or would bury important stuff in the WWE thread just because it was there instead of starting a new topic that would be more focused. I wouldn't say I was all in favor of locking that thread, but I prefer more focused threads for the reasons I just outlined, and to that end I am fine with it being locked.

The publicly traded company issue is huge. I've pushed it before, but I think it has destroyed the WWE more than anything else.

I think the core-periphery model that geographers use is one that can easily be applied to modern fandom, accept I think they have two cores and those two cores are the ones outlined by Matt. In that sense I suppose you could argue that the WWE is kind of like Australia with it's East Coast traditional core (arguably the "family" base in the WWE scenario) and the "newer" West Coast core that has historically been centered around mining interest in and around Perth (this would be the "smart" fan core, that has historically been centered around more intensive and modern forms of fandom like tape trading, net culture, et.). The issue of two cores provides a challenge because the periphery matters big time as well, but it's hard to even address the periphery when the two cores can't agree on important things and/or are in competition with one another. This is especially complicated because the new standard for full integration isn't "who buys merch and goes to shows," it's "who is a member of the Network?" I think Matt is right about Bryan in that he appealed to both core's. He was a legitimate shot at getting both core's on the same page, and while that will never completely happen, I think the internet is rapidly changing the game on that front and eventually they will be close to getting there. The problem is what sort of state will the company be in as it regards new stars and talent when that point comes.

One of my favorites is Paul and Jos Leduc because while they weren't brothers, the impression I got is that the worked nature of their relationship was a really well kept secret relative to many others.

Would prefer that any discussion of Fiji's foreign policy not take place on this board, at least not in the micro sense. PWO and all. On me as a WWE mark...aside from someone like El-P who admits himself that he has little use for any modern WWE product up front, you'd be hard pressed to find someone more critical of the last year or so of WWE television than me. I get that not everyone listens to the reaction shows, but it's almost become an expectation that Johnny will come on the podcast to defend a show, and I will come on to bury it. On top of what kjh mentioned, I publicly called for people to get rid of their subscriptions and pirate WWE content after the bait and switch on Rollins/Ambrose last year. I've also almost always been the most negative of negative people on things like this years Royal Rumble match, the Punk/Ryback HITC bullshit cop out of finish from a couple of years back, and the depiction of black talent in the WWE. So to say I'm a WWE mark - which implies that I am some sort of apologist for the WWE product - is absolutely insane. Having said that, I will defend anarchist depiction of me in one sense - I like what I like and will publicly say so. I also watch tons of wrestling, including the majority of WWE tv over the course of the year. For that reason there are generally a lot of WWE matches and workers I am high on (though last year may have been a low in that regard, if we are looking at recent history exclusively). I have in fact said that WWE produces more televised quality in ring matches at this juncture in its history than any other promotion in wrestling history, and generally speaking I stand by that. But that doesn't mean I'm a "WWE mark." It just means I'm not a caricature, and if I like something I'll say so, and if I think something sucks I'll say so.

Who did he think the biggest black star in Memphis was? Did he think any of them had potential to go farther than they did both in Memphis and the business?

Another unintentionally hilarious comment.

Steenalized, like me, is an actual anarchist so that reply from the guy named anarchist is pretty amusing.

He put forward little to no effort on last years shows. If you are just happy to see him that's cool, but don't expect him to work hard.

The best possible opponent for Reigns would have been Harper. But they don't want him to get over so he'll get Show or Kane.

Zeb is a great promo and deserves a ton of credit - but so does Rusev. Swagger was DOA before the feud and DOA after.

I forgot about Reigns which tells you all you need to know about his portrayal. He will get Show or Kane. Or they will do Ryback/Reigns v. Show/Kane. Sadly I'm not kidding. I think those are the only scenarios for him. But that's what happens when you are a target for assassination

Not good for Rusev. Orton is his best possible opponent at this point and Orton will come out of the Rollins feud needing a win. Which means this is almost assuredly the end of the Rusev run unless they pull something completely unexpected out of their ass. On the plus side the match with Cena should be good. Will be interested to see if Harper can get Ambrose back on track. Seems like Lucha Dragons v. Cesaro/Kidd is in the works, as well as Naomi v. Nikki Bella. I actually have a lot of interest in both of those matches, so that's good. My guess is they do a Barrett v. Bryan v. Sheamus v. Ziggler match for the I-C title. I absolutely hate that, but it seems to be what they are building to, and I like all four guys, so maybe they can have the rare really good multi-man match. I assume they are doing Ryback v. Show, which is actually not the worst use of show if they are insistent on having him on t.v. at this point. Miz v. Mizdow is also a given and should probably have good heat if nothing else. Could see Prime Time Players v. The New Day being a pre-show match. Absolutely terrified about what the build for that will look like. I don't care for the guy, but it will be interesting to see where they plug Bray Wyatt into all of this.

Once had a local conspiracy nut tell me that the majority of wrestlers are gay people with AIDS and that's the real reason they all die young. Of course this was drawn out over a thirty minute conversation that I couldn't escape because I was at work and he was a "customer."

I wonder what Portland and WWC tv were doing a that point.

This is in the upper tier of crazy things I've seen posted on this board. If you don't like the gimmick or his working style I get it, but this is a guy that had an insanely over feud with Jack Swagger. At a point where entire shows were dying huge deaths with nothing getting heat, Rusev was consistently getting reactions. He was the most over heel on the roster last year by a wide margin, unless you count Brock who wasn't really a heel, or Steph who isn't really a wrestler.

This years BOLA was widely praised, but PWG is not something everyone loves. I really liked the WWC tag team tourney from 86, I wonder if there is anything approaching consensus on that within the people who actually watch Puerto Rican wrestling.

Think Raw was a 3.68

I think the belief that they are just accidentally screwing up with Roman because they are clueless requires someone to be hopelessly naive. His situation has no historic parallel I can think of.

Danny Meltzer was the highlight of Mania weekend honestly.

Exposer theorized Rusev should have passed out in the STF. Could have saved his "never pinned or submitted" title and it still would have been decisive. Also would have put him over as tough.

I think Loss' theory is scarily plausible, and very likely true at least in part. The portrayal of HHH as the "defender of the faith" against the WCW heretics and invading UFC mongols is an odd heel role, but the key is not that HHH is a heel so much as it is that he is the sun god, and all others revolve around him.

The were in touch with the audience on every other thing on the show. Everything. You could argue the Divas match I guess, but I think it's clear they were pandering to the "give divas a chance" thing assuming this crowd would be hot for it (and in a sense they were as at times during the match they got real responses from the crowd, much more than normal anyhow). It is absolutely impossible to believe that the ONLY thing this company was clueless/out of touch with last night was the portrayal of the guy who they are allegedly trying to push as the top guy to the point where they did something that any sentient being on the planet knew would inflame the rejectionists. It has to be intentional. The alternative is to believe that the entire writing team has a blind spot that is uniquely, all time level bad when it comes to Reigns and Reigns alone. Basically in order to believe this isn't intention you have to believe the writing team/decision makers regress to Cro-Magnon status solely for Reigns segments.

I think he's fucked. There is no logic face with him to work with right now, at least none who can afford to lose (Ziggler, Ambrose, Ryback all need wins now). That means he's staying with Cena and will lose that feud just as Wyatt did. Then like Wyatt he is going to use the other part of his act (Lana). They are burning him to the ground. The only heel that matters to this promotion is the guy working a "defender of the faith" gimmick against WCW and now UFC.

Interested to see Parv address the main point of my macro v. micro booking point. The problem of Rusev is enhanced because NO ONE other than the established old guard, retirees, and movie stars are treated like stars.