sek69

Is there anything as consistently reliable as WWE being taken by surprise when their fans don't accept someone they feel should be a top guy? They really truly feel they know what their fans want yet never seem to actually listen to them.

What about Vince? Starts off promoting shows in bumfuck Maine to prove his worth to his father, becomes on air announcer/foil for heel color guys, has a test run as a heel in the USWA, reveals being the owner of the WWF while becoming increasingly paranoid during the Monday Night Wars, plays his top stars against each other until the situation boils over and he feels he needs to double cross one of them on PPV. Turns all that into becoming the biggest heel in the history of wrestling and creates the Heel Authority Figure trope that the business is still married to today.

The NHL also made a deal recently for MLBAM to handle their out of market games, I think there's a question there to be asked how to they allocate bandwidth, do the companies they do business with buy it like a giant sized version of a smart phone data plan or are there hard ceilings?

I really don't understand why people want to see a guy who A: has multiple concussions on record and most likely several more off the record and B: shows no sign of being willing/able to tone his style down return to the ring. Yes it sucks if we never see him wrestle again but that should be preferable to him becoming a Junior Seau or worse a Chris Benoit one day.

So the SuperLuchas story on TripleMania here seems to suggest Villano III had a heart attack of some sort during the match (if my Spanish is correct). If so, that's pretty disturbing. Of course if it's some kind of kayfabe to explain why the match sucked so bad, that's almost worse in a way.

The idea of not having Heyman on shows when Brock isn't there is mind boggling. No one else in the company can sell a PPV like him, and if you want to make SummerSlam the clear #2 show after Mania why would you not want him out there every week? They'd rather have the announcers out there insulting people who pay full price for the PPV. It's like this company hates money sometimes.

Funny enough, I was reading the 1997 WONs leading up to Montreal and apparently the skit where Shawn was showing his bare ass while Chyna and HHH were trying-but-not-really to cover it with signs was the straw that broke the camel's back and made Bret decide to sign with WCW.

I usually don't bother with the PPV hype stuff on the network, but the one from tonight hyping Taker/Brock is really good.

It was rough when III took his mask off post match and you can see the effects the stroke had on his face.

I'm no Striker fan, but I give him credit for doing what he could as everything was blowing up around him.

It is amusing to see HHH go from blue blood rich snob to crotch chopping adolescent making dick jokes almost literally overnight.

No one's under the impression there aren't all sorts of horrible people in wrestling, but most have the professionalism to not display it on worldwide TV.

I DVR the 3 hour version, start watching about an hour or so in, and just FF through all the dead spots. Raw's usually not to bad that way.

It's not just the reluctance to lose titles, it's throwing in ring tantrums and (legit?) stomping Vader just because he wasn't in correct position for a move. It's continually going into business for yourself on promos just to egg on Bret Hart, then having a hissy fit and claiming unsafe working environment when he has enough and goes at him in the locker room. It's trying to get fired so you can go play with your friends in WCW to the point of showing up in no condition to perform.

It's actually quite amazing that Shawn is held in any regard what so ever considering at least 75% of his career he was a completely unprofessional shithead. The only reason he never got thrown out on his ass and given the Warrior treatment was the fact the Monday Night War was going on and Vince was super paranoid to let anyone go. I was just reading an old WON from September 1997 how they had to edit most of a promo he did off a pre taped Raw because he was calling out the Undertaker (who wasn't at the building and was just shown on the Titan Tron in a pretape) to make him look like a coward to the live crowd. Hell, forget getting fired, how he avoided getting his ass beat by most of the locker room was a mystery to me.

With the Full Sail crowds, it's a case of the chickens coming home to roost. They built up NXT as the cool kids club, and now that they want to expand past that they are getting a backlash of sorts. I never got annoyed at the LU crowd, but then I guess I just kind of accepted that wrestling crowds in 2015 are going to do what they do and there's no point getting mad about it/

It's been funny watching the Full Sail crowd shit over every mention of the next Takeover show because they have to mention it being in Brooklyn every time. It's like a clash of everything mentioned in the "what's wrong with current WWE thread", with annoying entitled smart fans vs a company with a giant boner to troll their fans.

There's a chance a lot are just being trolls, but there's a ton of people on the WO forums who hate watch. I don't wade into the live show threads very much anymore because it's full of people who only post on how bad they think the show is and that shit gets tiring real fast.

So Uhaa Nation's NXT name is Apollo Crews. I guess it could have been worse, but I hate those "First name of one pop culture person, Last name of another" gimmick names.

Interestingly enough, the show popped up on the Comcast guide but the price is showing as $2.99 for SD.

At least with Mark Curtis I could believe someone that tiny could be sent flying by the smallest poke.

Man, that really is TNA distilled to its essence in GIF form. Speaking of ref bumps, it's always been a pet peeve of mine that refs take the slightest nudge and are dead for 10-15 minutes. I know mere mortals can't take the abuse pro wrestlers can (in kayfabe terms at least) but I can't buy an errant boot puts a guy into dreamland.

Is there any truth to the story Sheik was offered money to shoot on Hogan? Considering how highly Vince views loyalty to the company, maybe he thinks it was true and kept him around for that.

I don't think I can list 100, but I have a few things that I would assert are hampering WWE right now: TV production: Shaky cam/excessive camera switching/zooming in and out make it look dated like a 90s MTV show, not to mention tending to cause nausea in viewers. Security blanket booking: For a company that on one hand will ignore fans when they get behind a guy they didn't intend to get over, they sure panic quickly if there's one less John Cena shirt sold after a loss. Brand uber alles: Putting the company above the wrestlers may soothe Vince's ego to keep someone he created becoming a big star outside of the company, but because they de-emphasized making individual stars there hasn't been anyone who moves the needle since Cena became a top level guy 10 odd years ago. Spending time and effort making NXT a touring brand instead of the developmental group it's supposed to be is something that might be a bigger issue than we realize right now. It doesn't matter for guys like Joe and Balor, but nearly everyone else down there now needs to be spending more time learning instead of running around the country so WWE can wave their dicks at ROH. This may be tied in to my first topic about TV production, but stuff like "no one can look at the camera" in backstage promos and that thing where they keep the camera on someone way too long at the end of a backstage promo always come off to me like they're trying to do a SNL skit making fun of bad soap opera acting. The over scripting doesn't bother me as much as it does others, but man does this "we make movies" concept make nearly everyone involved look like geeks. Over reliance on stars from the past: Wrestlemania is at the point where it's a legit question if they can fill a stadium unless they bring back someone from the Attitude Era. Not to mention when they do, they are never put under the same conditions as the current stars (except when Cena was allowed to go toe to toe with Rock on promos) and it only serves to make the current roster look like geeks. The only other thing I can think of is how for most of WWE's history there were always multiple levels on the roster. Main eventers, Upper mid card guys who won more than they lost, mid-carders who usually went around 50-50, and the low card/jobbers. Now you have a handful of top guys, and the rest are interchangeable parts. Now that might change since they put effort into rehabbing the US/IC belts, but for now it's a problem.

An actual Scientific Wrestler with a lab coat and shit seems like a Chikara gimmick waiting to happen.