sek69

Or as someone on Deadspin's comment section called it, "kayfabies"

Bryan just retweeted WWEs announcement of Angles return with Interesting and the hand-on-chin emoji. On one had hes been openly trolling the company about keeping him on ice, but on the other it seems to help his case that Angle got cleared with all his documented issues.

I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet, but isn't viral meningitis contagious? Like super contagious? I remember there being an outbreak at a college around here and the whole town was basically shut down.

Well damn. At least with Angle they can explain it by having the GM suit up to help his brand but it should be interesting seeing what pretzel twist they come up with to justify a SD guy appearing on a Raw PPV (assuming they even try to).

Looks like Bray is touch and go for the PPV, and if it's true he has meningitis I don't see how they could allow him anywhere near the building.

So I wonder what is going on with the Rotunda family, Bo apparently has been sick to the point that Bray (and Jo Jo) was off TV the last two weeks because of it. It would seem that it must be something fairly serious for him to miss the last two shows prior to a PPV he had a highly pushed match at. Maybe Bray's just as embarrassed as the rest of us of the Sister Abigail shit and is in hiding until the PPV. I just hope it's nothing too bad for Bo since I've been getting a kick out of his Miztourage character.

He's probably happy for the first time ever he's in the rasslin business since no one will care he's done most if not all the shit Harvey's said to have done.

I'm not necessarily saying Edge is HOF caliber, but it seems like there's more of an argument to be made than people seem to realize. He was part of a tag team boom that revolutionized the TLC match (for all the bad and good that led to) and he was the only one who was able to get a 100% heel reaction facing off against Cena at the peak of the anti Cena sentiment. I personally would have him at the level right below HOF, but I could see why someone would make the argument for him.

Well not paying guys makes both kinda shitty IMO. Paul was in a place where his company needed TV and PPV revenue to compete that Jerry never really was.

Not excusing it but one difference is that Heyman frequently was broke and trying to handwave it away, Jarrett had the money and seemingly just didn't want to pay guys.

So if Junkyard Dog ever gets voted in, what are the odds his HOF bio is just Dave calling him a fat tub of shit for 3 pages?

IIRC one of the issues with Jerry Jarrett getting in was him having a bad rep for being a poor payoff guy.

I get the impression Flair never really felt comfortable in the WWF at that time. He was only there because WCW management were being dicks, and nothing about him really fit in the 1991 "WWF Universe" (if you will). After the initial "oh shit, it's Ric Flair in the WWF" moment it was like Vince really didn't know what to do with him and he really didn't want to be there.

The one houseshow match that was in LA made it to 24/7 (and I think it's on the Network too) was OK, but the fan reaction was kind of meh since it wasn't like LA was a big Flair market. Plus you'd have to think there's no way Hulk would want to do even an house show match with Flair anywhere in a market the NWA had a presence in.

I don't think the two ever gelled IMO. Vince knew enough about Flair to build an entire Rumble around him and give him title runs in an era where most former NWA champions were jobbed out or given ridiculous gimmicks just to prove that the WWF was better.

if I'm thinking about it like I believe WWE is, I'm guessing this is the plan: Braun gets sick of the jabronies on his team and walks out and Kane gives the Shield a monster to destroy. Maybe Kane sticks around to do a program with Roman to avenge his bro, but doesn't he still have an election to win?

It is, but the hard part is getting them to see it's not a binary choice of what they are doing now or force feeding. Maybe the workload needs to be better balanced, we know Raw and Smackdown have their own staffs but who comes up with stuff for 205 Live? With all the writers they employ it seems like it shouldn't be difficult to spread the workload to help avoid burnout and raise the quality of all their programming.

To be fair, the further away we get from the territory era the more people write them off. It usually comes down to a combination either "in the end, X promoter lost to Vince so they can't be HOF worthy" which disqualifies everyone who ever promoted wrestling in North America from the dawn of time until the 90s except the Lutteroth family, or not understanding the context of how big a draw a promotion was in a given area. A place like Portland has the added handicap of not having a ton of footage available and what does exist is usually multiple gen copies of stuff stored in Buddy's garage or wherever.

A big part of making a successful babyface star is having a proper heel foil. Austin would be a star no matter what due to his charisma, but he is one of the biggest stars of all time because of Vince. Mr. McMahon is probably the greatest heel character ever created, the way he would bump and stooge made anyone he faced seem like a bigger star because of it. He even did it recently for Owens. There's no one for today's babyfaces to play off of since we've had a decade plus of the Authority castrating everyone and even steven booking that cuts off anyone's momentum. It's all a vicious cycle, or a self fulfilling prophecy. They can't book babyfaces, and their heels end up getting cheered because they end up being the only ones booked worth a damn, so instead of trying to improve your writing it's easier to just say "well heels and faces just don't matter anymore!"

He also mentioned of people on the ballot he sees Minoru Suzuki and Ultimo Guererro as HOF'ers, so process that as you see fit. I don't necessarily disagree but it does kind of come off as the HOF equivalent of the current year argument fallacy.

WWE didn't have much choice but to adopt the idea though, since the last two guys they've tried to anoint as top babyface got swatted back in their faces. Now they're trying to pretend it was their plan all along to create a world where it doesn't matter if someone's cheered or booed when it absolutely was not the plan at the start. We've seen them do this multiple times, they will fight tooth and nail when something doesn't go the way they wanted it to, and then finally when it's clear the fans won't budge the company just pretends that's what they were trying to do the whole time. If the plan was to just make Roman a top star, there were about a thousand opportunities where he could have been turned heel and probably been a much bigger star than he even is now. But the idea was to make him the top *babyface* star, even if that meant repeatedly trying to ram the square peg into a round hole. It was only after years of that not working did we get the "I'm not a good guy, not a bad guy" stuff. They finally just started tailoring his character to the reactions he was already getting, yet all signs point to another WrestleMania being booked to end with him standing tall at the end despite knowing damn well how that will go over to the crowd in attendance. So WWE really shouldn't be lauded for finally being able to create the "shades of grey" world Vince famously mentioned in the 90s. Fans absolutely want to cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys, they just don't want it jammed down their throats in a ham fisted a manner as possible who that would be.

How long are you and other people gonna keep on with this narrative? Do you think Vince was still expecting the crowd to suddenly going to turn around on John Cena after 3 years of him getting booed and them still sticking with him? They were at least smart enough to eventually go the Bret Hart route with Cena and make it part of his character that some people like him and some people boo him. Cena also had several years as the Doctor of Thuganomics at US title level before being pushed as the franchise guy. Roman was framed as the top guy immediately after the Shield breakup when he really wasnt ready to be in that position. Of course the Bryan stuff didnt help, but the biggest issue has clearly been the company seeing fan resistance to him as a bug rather than a feature. Especially when they keep trolling by trotting out the old the fans dictate what we do line when that clearly isnt the case, at least not when their likes and Vinces differ. So no, I wasnt expecting them to give up on Cena back then, and Im not expecting them to suddenly change their minds on Roman either (unless he gets caught with a dead hooker in his trunk or something). Its just amusing to me to see them spend more effort on trying to get people whove made up their minds to suddenly start liking him than they have on literally everything else in the last five years.

None of them were able to connect individually as much as they did as a unit. The company will probably end up convincing themselves that the Shield getting huge reactions means the people accept Roman, only to be puzzled when another Mania coronation gets met with booing.

If you believe that's the whole story. If it is he's really stupid. I get the impression that it was more of a last straw than it being the only issue.

So the WCCW drop is continuing into 1988 amazingly enough. Bonus amazing moment is seeing a pre-Taker Mark Calloway under a mask as Texas Red show up managed by Percy Pringle of all people.