sek69

Well of course he's not as good, no one can out-Vince Vince, that's just the vibe it seems he's going for.

I think the issue is not so much that Vince has rules for announcers, it's more that he changes them on a whim frequently for no apparent reason. Plus as we've seen with Byron Saxton the announcers are frequently browbeaten until either they become too gunshy to be able to show any personality and/or have any passion for their job beaten out of them. Just look at their most tenured announcers now: Lawler: Doesn't even bother to watch the shows he's not on and offers little other than the occasional joke to remind people he used to be funny once. JBL: Vince's on air avatar who is the only one allowed to speak freely without being yelled at, frequently steamrolls other commentators. Titus shutting him down on Raw last week was one of my top moments of 2015. Cole: After his heel run burying every babyface on the roster, he's been reduced to a catchphrase generating machine that is eerily similar to 80s-early 90s Vince minus the IcoPro suppliments.

The funniest part about that memo leaking is that if/when Vince finds out about it his takeaway would be to have the announcers take shots at the internet rather than realizing the vast consensus being people find his company's commentators to be painfully overproduced.

Navigation complaints I can kind of understand (look at WWE Network still being clunky on most devices), but aspect ratio? Surely people weren't expecting 16:9 on 40+ year old footage.

So from what's available, has anything come up to disprove my theory that Mil Mascaras is like an inverse Hulk Hogan in terms of effort put forth outside his home country? 95% of the US based matches I've seen him in were underwhelming and probably most of his quality Mexico stuff was in the era before footage was widely available.

100% agree with all of this. Announcers being left alone was a tremendous improvement, no one's going to think Cole is the next Gordon Solie but he sounded like a human being instead of WWE Catchphrase Bot 3000. It was so refreshing to watch a WWE show without the 90s MTV zoomy shakey-cam bullshit. The Japanese crew wasn't perfect but it was worth a few missed shots to not have to worry about becoming violently nauseous during a heat segment.

Since I don't get El Rey here, I watch the Unimas version and man is it hilarious the lengths they are going to censor Catrina's cleavage. They added a black bar on her chest to fill in the down-to-there cut on her outfit, and when the action would spill out of the ring near her they were doing obvious post-production zoom ins to avoid showing her too much on screen. I'm not unfamiliar with Mexican TV, hell the edecanes in CMLL wear more revealing outfits than she does, so it's amusing they feel her boobs are too hot for TV.

I realize Sr had Billy's run planned out to the day, but it seems like he kind of had the mindset that since he was a placeholder champion there wasn't a reason to try to maximize the money he could draw during that time. Reading the list of matches in the OP made it clear to me other territories had him in more interesting and money drawing positions than Sr did. Of course this could me being blinded by my own biases here since I find that era's booking terribly bland overall. I mean, obviously it worked for them since they ended up building the foundation of the largest wrestling promotion in the world today, but watching 60s-70s era WWWF (with a few exceptions) is not my idea of fun times.

Also, man is it disheartening to see Lana go from Ice Queen in charge of the monster Rusev to being reduced to the middle of a property dispute and catfighing with Summer Rae.

Not that it disproves anything you said but Rosa is with Adam Rose now.

I would have thought a Bruno rematch would have been a big MSG match. I realize Graham won the belt in Baltimore but it seems like it should have been a no brainer to do the rematch in NYC. Also it seems like VJM actively worked to make sure SBG didn't have much chance to get super over. All the appearances in the actual WWWF territory proper were either against guys who were mainly tag team guys or people like Bruno and Gorilla who were nearing (or at) the end of their times as major players. I kind of understand why SBG was so upset now, guy was clearly the most charismatic person in New York by far and the guy had to go outside the territory to get booked like a proper world champ. Considering the era he was in, it probably would have been too much of a kayfabe break to come out and say that so we ended up with the bizarrely bitter guy we know today.

On the (last?) tapings Kurt Angle announced he has a tumor in his neck and would be out indefinitely. They did an angle where EC3 took credit for it, not sure how you would even do that, but either way looks like TNA's not going out without making sure they have the award for worst angle on lock.

The Authority is veering into nWo territory where they never take any significant losses and anyone they face ends up looking like an emasculated chump. It's getting harder to be invested in any storylines since even if the babyface does manage to get a win, the Authority always gets the last laugh.

From The BOARD: So for one, this probably explains the "Thanks for all the fun times" tweet from James Storm, and secondly things mist be really getting to the end if Dixie has to enlist legit nazis to give her people bad news in her place.

I know it's sometimes hard to believe,but it is possible to be a conservative (even one fairly hard right) and not be completely batshit. I've seen well thought out arguments for things I don't personally believe in, but there's something about this particular issue that causes even the most educated conservatives to lose their goddamned minds. My theory is that this case might be the closest thing so far to finally making it clear you can't use "because BIBLE!" as a justification for being a discriminatory asshat anymore.

I will now only be able to hear Mr. Backlund's voice when reading Scalia's writings. This will enhance the entertainment value of the Supreme Court greatly.

I recall Dave first saying he had a concussion right after it happened, then when he worked a few more shows he was all "well I guess not since he's still working", then after he disappeared he turned into Cryptic Dave being all "well I can't really say but it's probably what everyone thinks it is"/

My impression is they were hiding it because it would more or less validate CM Punk's statements that the concussion protocol in WWE is bullshit. Looking at the timeline of events it appears that Bryan got hurt, did their concussion tests and passed, and when he tried to keep wrestling he had more symptoms.

Speaking of Bo, the deal on Smackdown of him wanting to join the New Day could be tremendous if I had any faith in the writing team.

Jeff/Karen Jarrett and Vader have made appearances so far.

This. As I kid I thought he was dead for a minute.

Wasn't he basically there to draw in Canada? I figured it was just because he was the exact type of musclehead that Vince couldn't wait to push in the 80s.

Maria Menounos channeling her inner Captain Lou:

What a ridiculous criticism. "Too lazy"?! Dusty died less than a week ago. They didn't exactly have a lot of time to put something together, and what we got was top notch from a production quality standpoint. I will agree that I didn't particularly love seeing so much recycled footage either, but I understand it considering the circumstances. The new footage was all tremendous. One question about the Stephanie/Dusty in-ring promo: At the time, I heard murmurs that Stephanie (or was it Vince?) was unhappy with it because Dusty ad-libbed. Was that internet bullshit? On this special, Steph seemingly confirmed the ad-libbing but then went out of her way to say she loved it when Dusty walked away from her, forced her to grab his mic, smirked at her when she did, and what an honor it was to have such a moment with a legend, etc. From what Dave has reported on the issue, she was pissed that he went out and pie-faced her on what turned out to be his last appearance in front of the live crowd so he wasn't allowed to be on TV anymore unless it was a pre taped deal. It was great how he told the story, implying that the current roster is afraid of upsetting her and here comes Dusty giving zero fucks.

Say what you will about Cheeseburger (and I have no opinion either way tbh), but Liger being a huge mark for him is one of the greatest things ever in wrestling.