sek69

I wonder if it's Shane feeling that he needs to have a Mania match to justify sticking around, or does Vince really think a Shane match would be a big draw?

True, but again on WWE TV where 95% of their fans get storyline info from, you have your supposed top babyface acting like a dick and your top heel completely justified in his behavior. So either Cena wins and validates his opinion that AJ is a zero, or AJ wins and comes off as a valiant babyface overcoming the odds of the oppressive heel Cena and his sort of brother-in-law GM plotting against him. It's a weird dynamic to have where two characters seem to be written as the complete opposite of how they're supposed to be pushed as.

I'd like to see Styles win. It kind of sucks that he basically carries Smackdown since day one of the brand split, only to have the Cena Express roll in just in time for the march to Mania and get all the glory. It's another thing that makes this storyline so weird since AJ is basically 100% correct in his heel promos. It's also the kind of shit that encourages the "you deserve it" chants that a lot of people here hate when companies like WWE kick guys to the curb who carried the ball for them just to reward their security blanket guys.

Not to say that he doesn't legitimately support the cause, but above all else John Cena is a #brand robot and his significant other is a main cast member on a E! show with a high female audience.

Maybe he mentioned his name on the Today show, but what we saw on Smackdown was John Cena not even acknowledging the name of his opponent. Doing that reminded me of the old wrestling trope of build up your opponent so when you beat him it doesn't come off like you just beat some unimpressive geek. Actually they way they presented it made Cena look like a dick so it didn't really do anyone any favors.

It always appeared that early on WWE seemed enamored with him getting 50/50 reactions since both sides were so adamant. Looking back, it was better than the "we'll make you love him" approach they took with Roman,

It made for a really good angle and back and forth promo on SD, but man was Cena referring to AJ as a "guy from Atlanta he's fighting at the Rumble" a burial to non-fans and/or casual fans. It was a noticeable flat note on a show that has been running circles around Raw's stories for months. Either they telegraph an AJ win, or Cena beats a guy he considered such a geek he couldn't be bothered to inform the hosts of the show he guested on what the guy's name is.

To be fair, people (in the business normally) have been saying Dave's ruining the business) since like the second day he had a newsletter.

The 6:05 NWA Saturday Night show is a treasure trove of this. You can pick nearly any episode on the Network and likely find several.

It's more likely they were pulled just to spend the weekend backstage at a WWE show to learn the proper way to genuflect to your elders and whatnot.

Strowman for me, and not in that "ironically liking a big man" style that seems so pervasive these days. I didn't think he was anything more than Vince's big stiff flavor of the month until a few weeks ago. They were doing a backstage promo between him and Foley and Mick was asking him why he was terrorizing people when he told him Sami wasn't there. Braun's deadpan response of "I can multitask" won me over. Just the way he said it made me think "ok, this guy gets it" in terms of not being just another personality free musclehead.

Didn't LU just name Dorian Roldan as the new person in charge of the wrestling side of things since everyone else involved were TV people?

Apparently AAA is taking a huge percentage of the booking fee when one of their guys works an indy show, and the guys weren't always aware of that until after the fact. Pretty funny to see them using the "guys who want to be here will be here" talking point at the press conference today when they don't seem to want to pay anyone.

Baby Doll and her new biker boyfriend are diehard Trump supporters, been posting a lot of "deal with it" type memes on Facebook this week.

Part of the problem is that they sold it as like some game changing service with tons of promotions signing on, and they really haven't delivered anything past the WWN stuff.

Steamboat-Savage from WM3 had about a million two counts in 1987 and is still considered a classic.

HHH was on Observer Live to do a PR fluff interview on the new WWE animated movie and wrestling Twitter demanded a hard hitting takedown apparently.

Basically they didn't want to wast the time/resources on a 30+ year old case that would have been hard to win based on the passage of time and a defendant who most likely would not have lived through a trial anyway (and he wouldn't have as it turned out). For anyone to use that as some kind starting off point for a "he was never convicted" argument is baffling. It's like when the Enron guy had his conviction thrown out when he died. It didn't suddenly mean he didn't rob the fuck out of those people.

To be fair, I think the argument is more that we all know wrestling is full of and run by sleazy people so anyone appalled at sleazy behavior must be white knighting or some such thing. To use the parlance of his people, Parv is just being a bell-end at this point just for the sake of doing it.

So now that Parv has been thoroughly proven wrong, time to turn the smarm and assholishness up to 11 I suppose.

A win over Taker would probably garner the exact same reaction regardless if the intention would be a heel turn or not. And I would love for that to happen either way.

Mentioning that he was brought back years ago with no fuss outside the hardcore bubble ignores the fact that the retrial attempts got a lot of attention the last year or so. More people are aware of it now than back then, and it was noticeable when they cut back to the crowd after showing the video and there was a palpable sense of uneasiness. Half the crowd was standing and cheering and half had a look of "uhhh, did they really just do that". On top of all the did--he-or-didn't-he stuff, the final photo from Tamina's Twitter of her holding her presumably deceased father's hand struck me as something entirely too personal to be something added to a video meant for public consumption.

Dave said on last night's show that it looks like they're going to be on the network, At least now the reported lowball contracts offered to guys in the UK tournament kind of make sense if they can still work in ICW.

The opening RIP screen was fine since it had to be acknowledged, but man was that extended tribute video to Snuka was uncomfortable.

Jesus. I never expected to live in a time where Big Show was rocking a six pack. Unless it was like, a literal six pack.