sek69

Wouldn't crowds start cheering Reigns the moment he turns heel? Well that's what Vince has wanted from the start, so at this point I'm sure he'd be willing to take what he can get.

It almost seems like they finally realized their best bet with him is a heel turn. From a business standpoint it makes the most sense since he's been the defacto top heel for over a year and a half anyway.

If you're not judging Ambrose as a full time top act (and you're in your rights to do so, I suppose), then what other full time top acts does the company even have? Ambrose is only a top act by default because he has the belt, considering he spent his time prior losing feuds and getting ragdolled by Brock. As far as other full time top acts you have Seth, Roman, Enzo & Cass (they're already seen as top guys by the fans), Balor (seen as top by the company it appears), and Jericho is full time at the moment even though we know that won't be for long. Plus they have guys like Owens and Zayn who are clearly going to be more focused on now. Right now SD has Ambrose, Cena for PPVs and TVs, the desiccated corpse of Kane, the Miz and everyone else is pretty much the C Show All Stars. How are they supposed to draw anyone to houseshows with their current roster?

You say that, yet Orton is the only full time top act they put on Smackdown (Cena's not doing houseshows for the rest of the year).

At this point I'm thinking the big guns from NXT have to be going to Smackdown. If not, it makes no sense for them to do the whole draft/brand split with the supposed intention of Making Smackdown Great Again only to kneecap them with this roster.

Del Rio is apparently already in burysville and counting the days until his contract expires.

Correction -- all gone. Really odd. Clicked on 1981 & 82 and saw a ton of files, went back and now its all empty. I'm still seeing everything. Maybe it's frequency capped? This must be it, everything's still showing for me.

There wasn't anything particularly bad about Smackdown, but starting off with a battle royale that exposed how thin the roster is was a really bad idea.

Of all the baffling choices WWE has made recently, this has been by far the most puzzling. Of all people to put in with Lesnar, why the guy who's shoulder collapsed under the weight of taking the garbage out?

Well his point is that the business he knew is dead. Which would be a good thing, of course.

Wasn't Cole producing the announcers in NXT? If so, then it makes sense him and Graves had such good chemistry. Also it seems both Dave and Wade made allusions to there maybe being something up with Charlotte, but that may have been them trying to figure out why they blew their wad early on what was being pushed forever as a big Summerslam blowoff.

Every time I see Dana Brooke, all I can think is her mom must never have told her to stop making faces or it will stick that way.

The best part of Roman winning a match is the camera frantically panning the crowd to find someone cheering. Also there has to be some angle planned for later or the internet will burn to the ground if he beats Balor.

I'm sure if TNA decided to launch an Intercontinental title they'd get a phone call.

Did Carlos Colon not ever copyright "Universal championship" at any point in the last 40 or so years, or did WWE forget Puerto Rico is part of the US?

Interesting that Dave said the Cesaro thing was shoot-ish in the sense of he apparently decided to do his own angle in the promo and they're running with it. Interesting if this turns out to be his Austin 3:16 moment.

The name may not mean much to people outside the Pittsburgh area, but for those of us who grew up here every generation knew Bill Cardille. In the 50s-60s, he was the host of the Studio Wrestling TV program that nearly everyone in town watched to follow hometown legend Bruno Sammartino. The generation after that knew him better as "Chilly Billy", the host of a show that aired schlocky horror movies with a cast of characters - kind of a tame version of Howard Stern's Wack Pack- like Terminal Stare, a zombie like silent woman who would stare menacingly into the camera while Bill talked about the upcoming movie. People of all ages knew him as the host of the local segments during the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon every Labor Day weekend. In addition to all that, he was also the weatherman for the local NBC affiliate (where the wrestling show was taped in its day as well). Sadly, very little if any of the footage still remains of the Pittsburgh studio wrestling show. It was kind of the NXT of its day, as Bruno would give guys a test run in his circuit before taking them to New York. George Steele had one of his first big heel runs here, and my mother (who was hardly a wrestling fan) had fond memories of going to a big show at Forbes Field. The shows were extremely popular, and it was one of the reasons Pittsburgh was always part of the WWWF circuit and still gets semi-regular TV and PPV shows to this day. Bonus trivia, Bill Cardille had a cameo in the original Night of the Living Dead movie as an easter egg to the locals since the movie was filmed in the Pittsburgh area.

He struck me as different, which is refreshing in WWE these days.

I think it's because he wasn't as "polished" as much as some of the more experienced guys, and maybe a little subconsciously that no matter how much we complain about it WWE has trained us to think of someone with a speech impediment as bad.

For those who missed it, Coach was on ESPN defending Vince in the new round of concussion lawsuits saying he (Vince) takes care of all the old timers and all he asks is they show up at WM weekend to sign autographs. Obviously there's lots wrong with that statement, and Dave called him out on it as well as former WCW announcer Chris Cruise. Coach apparently didn't know Cruise's background and tried big timing him saying he knows more because he spent 10 years in the business. That resulted in an epic DAVE'D moment in response pointing out Cruise's wrestling and news background. Coach then tried to big time Dave himself by pulling out the "newsletter writers trying to get famous off me" line, leading to another epic DAVE'ing and half of wrestling twitter booting him in the ass.

Latest content dump is 2006 Raws for those who were looking forward to that.

The only way NXT could start harming the bottom line is if the carrot of future WWE paychecks stop being the lure for indy guys it currently is.

NXT signings aren't adding a ton of cost to the company, and if they did the cost could be justified by having to fill out two separate shows. They've already made it clear they view NXT as a cost-of-doing-business to build for the future, plus most of the A tour shows are probably drawing enough to balance out some of the costs.

I know, I just wanted to sneak in a Futurama reference whenever I can.

I don't know if it's 100% across the board, but the general rule of thumb is that if you've used a name prior to WWE they can't keep you from using it after unless you sign the rights over to them. Dustin used the Rhodes name prior to WWE, but Cody didn't. Sucks for him, but WWE is technically correct, and as Hermes Conrad would tell you, that's the best kind of correct.