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WWE's methods haven't helped either. Someone mentioned that there's basically a lost generation of guys who never were even considered because they had that phase during the Big Johnny era where you had to be 6'2 250 pounds to even be noticed. Things got a little better thanks to the ROH guys who got over and changed perceptions somewhat, but then now you have the new Tough Enough where they stocked up with fitness models and bodybuilder types. Most of those kind of folks don't really have what you would call passion for wrestling, there's not much motivation for them to improve, but hey as long as they look pretty on TV that's all it seems to take to make Vince happy.

JCP 85-86 is right up there, say what you will about Dusty booking but there were strong angles up and down the card.

One of the people commenting on Deadspin's story just said "he was so pro wrestling", That just seemed like the perfect description. If professional wrestling as a whole was able to take human form, it would be Dusty Rhodes.

Just saw Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeting condolences, which is kind of mind blowing to see someone of that magnitude in their field. mention anything about pro wrestling. Of course he would have watched him growing up in North Carolina, but it was still amazing to see how many people Dusty had an impact on.

Loss mentioned it on Twitter, and I agree, that him hugging Magnum in his first appearance post-accident is one of the most emotional moments in wrestling,

Dusty is literally the reason I'm a wrestling fan today. My grandparents would spend winters in Florida, and my grandfather started watching JCP on TBS because he was a fan of Dusty from watching wrestling down there. I watched shows with him and he instantly became my favorite just based on his promos since he didn't really wrestle alot on TV at the time. Everyone loves the Hard Times promo, and it struck an extra chord with me since my dad was a steelworker and that promo was basically what happened to him at his job after he spent 36 years there, I can't imagine anyone who's had a bigger impact for a longer period of time than him, he's done pretty much every role you can do in the business and the list of people he's worked with and/or helped is like a who's who of professional wrestling.

Nothing's stopping them, but apparently WWE is worried that having another company producing figures of a guy they clearly have big plans for will piss off Mattel. Not sure when Mattel became this massive entity that must be placated at all times, but there they are.

WWE was mad ROH signed a five year deal with Figures Toy Company to make a Kevin Steen figure. WWE was worried it would piss off Mattel (who apparently is their most important sponsor) so the idea seems to be to steer potential talent away from ROH to Evolve to be their AA ball league like how NXT is their AAA ball league. So basically ROH might have royally boned themselves with this action figure deal if this scares away any future talent with WWE dreams.

The B&V(&C on Tuesdays) shows do wacky things like talk to Bryan's granny and have listeners create songs using drops from the show. Most of them usually are pretty funny, from listening to the show pre-edit, it seemed like they were afraid of the submissions going over the line so they pre-emptively pulled the plug. The way it was worded on the site made the show itself seem racist which wasn't the case.

LOL, the Tuesday Bryan & Vinny & Craig show originally started off with Craig saying the next song contest would be about Bryan's love of black women wrestlers until apparently people on the board said it was racist and the show was uploaded with an obviously added on intro and the whole opening segment dumped like a raunchy terrestrial radio bit. The funny thing was the whole bit was set up as a jab on Bryan's unexplained fandom of Naomi and how he's always saying she should win the Divas belt, and by the disclaimer that was posted on the show link you'd think there was a string of N-bombs that had to be edited out.

It's so odd that Springer has such little charisma here, considering his show is basically pro wrestling with non athletic people. I used to watch his show late at night during summer breaks from school and he was usually entertaining.

Has there ever been a more opposite display of likability between a real person and a character than John Cena? IRL Cena seems like a pretty great dude who devotes tons of time to charity without wanting any attention. TV character John Cena is becoming a pompous douchebag who has to constantly tell everyone how great he's been like the guy who's still talking about his high school football career at the 20th reunion. With anyone else i would think they were setting up a heel turn, but instead they keep trotting out this guy who despite their best efforts is still The Man at the moment and make him more and more unlikable.

I'm not the expert khawk is, but from what I've seen it seems like a little of both. They were running circles around their peers and their style was just so different for the time.

It's being mentioned how TNA is all about doing the full court press with social media pushing angles and whatnot, yet Mickie James was on twitter apparently fine after being seemingly killed by James Storm on Impact this week.

One bonus to the daily WOL shows is they've started to use the number from his syndicator as well as the WON number. That one does have a screener so it helps. Someone asked Bryan why he doesn't invest in one for his own number, and his excuse was something about how he doesn't feel he needs to have one. Then after tons of complaints about how it's a negative impression on the show having the calls being dominated by creepy women's wrestling fetishists he started caring about call quality.

The opening 20 minute promo of doom seems to be a vestigial holdover from the Monday Night Wars when they would be afraid people would change over to Nitro. Now it just seems like they're stuck in This Is How We Do Things mode, despite no one outside of the writers' room being a fan of it.

NXT is great largely because it's a one hour show like you had in the territory days with modern production. Like others have stated, it's one thing to only have to worry about 4 hours of TV a month plus a two hour special 3 or 4 times a year. WWE has 7 hours of TV a week (Raw/SD/Superstars/Main Event) plus a PPV every month. I agree the thing that will determine how the HHH Era ends up will be who he surrounds himself with. One of Vince's most glaring weaknesses is being surrounded with yes men who only end up further cementing him in his bubble. Unfortunately being the guy in charge usually means not too many people are willing to tell you things you may not want to hear.

I understand why they did it, and it was actually pulled off pretty well with the post match angle, but man there's nothing that creates a visceral feeling of "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this company" quite like a Dusty Finish. To be fair, it could be due to PTSD from growing up a Crockett fan, but there's something about a finish that gives the crowd what they are clamoring for only to pull the rug out from them just seem like a slap in the face. It just seems like a bad business move to even suggest to your customers they might get screwed over.

Regal just announced on NXT the July 4th Tokyo show will air live on the WWE Network and Brock will be there.

Dave basically said that as well, that if it was on Austin's show it could just be them fucking around but they aren't going to start running their own angle on the WWE Network with Vince in earshot.

LU is basically everything great about pro wrestling. It reminds me of a comic book alternate universe where what we know as Memphis wrestling was teleported to Mexico (I know they're based in LA but you know what I mean). I don't know how they can pay off the monster angle either, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since honestly they've earned it.

Yeah, when Billy shuts the fuck up and makes an album, it's usually still pretty good. In retrospect he should have gone the Trent Reznor route and done it all himself and just had touring musicians to play on stage.

I like how at first it seemed like they just snapped a finger and suddenly it was Stone Cold and Brock's smarmy advocate cutting promos, but if you think about it they set that up the entire podcast. Heyman told the story about ending a WCW show by cutting a wacky promo only to be admonished by Dusty for forgetting the money by not mentioning the show, and that's exactly what they did at the end. If nothing else, that should be shown to all the people in NXT on how to do a money promo for an event that probably isn't even going to happen.

Not to be "that guy" but Austin beating Lesnar would be like Andre beating Hogan at WM3. It makes zero sense.

The IC title match was so weird, the Sheamus stuff seemed like a planned spot but everyone in the ring was acting like it wasn't. It was like time froze until Dolph of all people started calling out spots to everyone so loud I'd bet even John Cena was like "dude, that was a bit much". I wonder if maybe it somehow got legit stuck and it threw everyone's timing off. I'm not usually part of the crowd that complains about PG, but when you bill a match on all the pain and agony it causes (when you can't really deliver on that in the current era) it's going to come off as lame. At least the tag chamber had the novelty of being something no one had seen before.