sek69

Well he himself said after all the hype there's nothing he could have done that wouldn't have been disappointing. What did people want him to do? Turn the RnR's moment into a shoot interview and steal the attention? He was there to document their careers and did that. Honestly, other than some of the speeches going a bit long I don't see why people would hate so much on a HOF show.

JBL giving this speech after this week almost seems like a rib....

Popped for Beth bringing out Tony Chimel to do the Edge intro.

Grandpa Ricky Morton sounds like the most fun family vacation ever.

Robert Gibson might have already said more words in his speech than he did in his whole JCP run.

They're trying to convince people that Roman is a top BABYFACE and he hasn't been (except for houseshows I guess).

They weren't trying to convince fans 3-4 years in Hogan was the top guy though. They didn't have to of course because he's Hulk Fucking Hogan and was over at the level he was pushed at. Bottom line is Roman's not over at the level they want him to be, despite the fact he's improved greatly the last few years. Call it pushback against what the company wants, or butthurt over Daniel Bryan, but the harsh reality is he's just not THE GUY no matter how hard Vince's boner for him is. It's even more exasperating when there's a clear opportunity to change direction with a heel turn that might end up making them even more money than they are now with the guy, but they keep fucking that chicken.

I mean, at this point they might as well have Will Smith appear for next year's WM to ask Roman "why don't they love you, man?"

The Rumble win, WM 32, presumably this year's WM, and plans already in place for next year's WM. And despite him oozing heel charisma, they won't turn him heel because he sells more merch than anyone not John Cena.

Rough picture quality wise ? Or just bits missing and not complete. Several of the wcw nitros and ppvs have a message at the start about it being "Shown in the most complete form possible" I did hear that when wwe got the wcw stuff (which included everything had been assumed by wcw when it bought JCP), that it was supposed to be a mess. Some of it wasn't labeled correctly or at all. The video of the Georgia stuff was like 27th generation VHS quality. Some of the WCCW stuff had some occasional video warps (probably from being stored in less than ideal conditions in the Texas heat I'd imagine), but the Georgia stuff was just poor from start to finish. I remember people talking at the time half joking that it looked like they ripped it off YouTube.

So I guess it really was the plan to start adding vault stuff after they filled out the "top three" brands. I would hope the Mid Atlantic stuff is next since there was a pretty full run made available on 24/7. IIRC the Georgia stuff they own looks pretty rough so I wouldn't be surprised if they pass on adding that unless they found better quality in whatever stash they found the Last Battle of Atlanta in.

That's Dave's writing style though. He wouldn't put anything in the newsletter, especially about someone he considers a friend, unless he was sure it was 100% correct.

Now I know why Dave does the "reading is your friend" gimmick on Twitter. Here's the portion from the actual story, apologies in advance if this is posting too much of the newsletter: So no, it wasn't just him being mean heel announcer on TV, he got butthurt at Mauro being proud of winning an award and went crazy about it.

Without copying and pasting the entire story, Dave isn't speculating he's clearly reporting from info he's received from Mauro directly and also from people in the company confirming JBL's behavior. He's not entirely blaming it as the cause but it was clearly a factor contributing to the latest episode. Anyone with mental illness is familiar with the concept of new stressors causing a return or re-occurrence of problems and by all accounts that seems to be what happened here. tl;dr basically no one should have to deal with bullying assholes at work, let alone someone with previous mental issues.

or......and I'm just spitballin' here.... MAYBE he actually talked to the guy and is reporting what he said in a way that conveys the gist of the story without going to deep in the guy's personal matters. You know, that reporting stuff.

His time with Mauro was much improved though. He was more of an full heel and nothing like the guy who had been mailing it in for a decade. Plus it seemed they had the best chemistry of any of the teams.

Mauro and Lawler were a good pairing, Lawler was clearly the heel and there was never a sense of personal animosity between them. Sadly Jerry was deemed an Old by Vince and is no longer fit for public viewing.

The WON stuff seemed like the straw that broke the camel's back. JBL's been belittling him for weeks, and him winning a best announcer award seemed to send JBL to another level.

So in the latest Observer, Dave talks about Mauro's absence from TV and states it's due to his bipolar issues as most people figured it was. He also seemed to make it pretty clear the trigger for this episode was constant belittling from JBL that more or less wore him down. I was thinking about this when reading it, do you think WWE has any culpability here putting someone who has been open and honest about previous mental health issues with a known bully week in and week out? It seemed like it was just a bad situation waiting to happen, and eventually it did. Especially in the current environment where they want to have a million announcers per show, it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to not pair those two together. They cynical, jaded, asshole smart fan side of me wonders if it was intentional since that's the kind of thing Vince seems to get a kick out of, but the reasonable side of me hopes that he would realize how bad that would look PR wise (I know PR shouldn't be the primary concern but we all realize it is with big companies).

If you plan to binge the episodes already added, don't skip the 12-30-81 show despite it being a year end retrospective clip show. They go over the Dusty-Kabuki feud and the promo with War Paint Dusty looking like Rambo is beyond words.

It was great, but it makes me laugh how he suddenly starts getting all gangsta when he goes into "Serious John" mode. Also wow has Nikki been absolutely useless in this feud. She's the third best Bella on SD after Maryse and Tyler Breeze.

The main show is supposed to run 7-11 Eastern time, so that means the preshow will start at 5 Eastern. It will probably run long like last year's did.

Roman's promo was so great and made me even more convinced that turning him heel is a money printing machine waiting to happen even if the dum-dums (tm Johnny Sorrow) cheer him ironically.

Speaking of, I wonder what the rights would be for rips of those DVDs Bill's ex was selling before she sold them to WWE. I see rips of other wrestling DVDs out that seem to survive the banhammer, but that might be more luck than any legal standing.

Would be much more optimistic to see them uploaded to a platform they're more likely to remain on than one that could be C&D'd to death at any moment.