sek69

OK, serious question time...what does HHH do on NXT? I know it's his pet project, but how much of a hand does he actually have in running the thing. I know he's got a much broader scope of what kind of talent he's willing to bring into the company. That goes back to him hiring Mistico and Amazing Kong, and I'll give him full credit for that, despite how those two panned out. But the actual NXT product that we see...how much of that is actually him? Look, if HHH takes over for Vince, surrounds himself with guys like Ryan Ward, and tells them, "I'm gonna go hit the gym, you guys take care of shit around here, don't screw anything up", I would be perfectly OK with that. And that very well may be the model he aims for when he takes over (whether or not circumstances allow that to happen is another story). But just last year, HHH followed up a legitimately selfless loss to Daniel Bryan at Mania by main eventing a pair of PPVs against one of the hottest acts in the company while Bryan was buried in the midcard against Kane, and then followed that up by splitting up said hot act for no good reason whatsoever so one of it's members could spend the rest of the year palling around with him. Am I really to believe Kevin Dunn held HHH at gunpoint and forced him to put himself in high profile angles at the expense of hotter, better acts? Is that really so unlike HHH? Or do you agree with me that maybe the situation is a bit more complex than people are painting it as? Pretty sure he's backstage at tapings producing, he was the driving force behind the performance center they all train at. I don't assume he's up all night with NXT scripts fretting over match finishes, he probably tells Ryan Ward who he wants to push and approves the final results. He honestly comes off as Vince with far. far less micromanaging tendencies. That alone bodes well for the future of WWE, since that seems to be the driving factor behind the quick burnout time on the creative team.

Well what he does have more direct input on (NXT) has been demonstrably better than most other wrestling shows so we have that to grade him on. Of course they benefit from only being an hour a week, I'm sure NXT would be just as unbearable as Raw if it was 3 hours every week. I don't expect WWE to be drastically different if/when he takes over, there's still going to be an advantage to being a tall muscle guy after all, but just the fact that he seems to be willing to go out and find the best guys anywhere in the world is an upgrade.

Well it was 1981 South Africa so it wouldn't have been as over the top there as it is to us now.

Pretty much any licensed music is going to get dubbed over since they'd need to pay out a new round of royalties for it.

I get HHH as a parent not wanting to open that can of worms any sooner than he has to (I mean, his girls will find out eventually because internet), and I don't think Chyna being in the HOF is a hill worth dying on to use a CM Punk-ism. The podcast was entertaining in the sense of listening to a couple of guys who've done everything in the business shooting shit for an hour. It reminded me of going to the American Legion with my dad and listening to the old guys swap war stories. I think Hunter was caught a little off guard by Austin going right to the "kayfabe is dead" stuff right off the bat, but I thought it was a pretty interesting look at how his mind works. Anyone who's ever had to deal with corporate speak and/or workplace politics could figure out the dots he was trying to connect when he went into COO mode. I actually wouldn't mind Stephanie being a guest at some point, she seems like someone who would do well in a shoot-ish environment where she didn't have to play bad guy all the time.

So I tried to sign up, but my debit card didn't go through (my bank put the transaction on hold since i had a previous card used fraudulently and they saw a transaction from Japan and freaked out) so my account's set up but trying to watch any videos leads me back to the payment screen. My bank went back and approved the charge but I still get redirected. I guess there's probably zero chance there's any way I could contact any English support so I guess I'm SOL.

Another interesting point, he admits the WWE Network is geared toward the hardcore audience, but there's still barely any pre 90s stuff available a year after launch.

I thought it was pretty interesting Austin asked if the ending of Raw was a sign Bryan might end up in the title picture after all and HHH indicated they might be moving away from prior plans.

So if only a vocal minority want Bryan on top, why did they book the main event of Raw to make you really want to see Bryan in the main event at Mania?

Bret was famous for his promos going long, he may have inadvertently created the 20 minute WWF/E promo.

Yeah so now there's doing a 100% John Cena push, where you're supposed to have doubt that a guy who always overcomes the odds will somehow not overcome them this time.

Why would you keep putting Bryan and Reigns together for segments? If the supposed goal is to make Roman into THE GUY, it would seem that the last thing you'd want is to have him anywhere near the guy getting 10x the reaction.

Man, not even five minutes into this and the smugness is unbearable already.

From today's update: I wonder if that means someone clued them in to who Jon Jones is.

I get the feeling they are going to try to "prove" Roman isn't the hand picked guy kayfabe wise by throwing him in all sorts of wacky handicap matches to make him defend his shot. Of course this will probably only make him seem more like Always Beatin' The Odds John Cena and only irritate people more.

They wouldn't be able to use the 80s WWF logo on any new products, the deal was they can keep it on any of the existing footage but not on anything new.

It's true, the diehards realized house shows are largely irrelevant in terms of advancing any storylines (nothing counts unless it happens on TV) and mostly don't go to them as much if at all. Kids don't care and just want to see their heroes in person. This is nothing new by the way, I was the same way as a kid. I didn't care the NWA show I went to on a Friday night in 1987 didn't have any real meaning. I just wanted to see the Horsemen, Dusty, Nikita, and the Rock n Rolls in person and enjoyed the shit out of it. Also great was 9 year old me embarrassing the shit out of my mom by yelling "DICK MURDOCH IS PLAYING WITH HIMSELF" when he was doing the hide-the-object-from-the-ref routine.

I never noticed it before until watching the Mid South episode on the Network, but Ernie Ladd sounded exactly like Morgan Freeman in the promo he did.

They probably do something similar to what they did for WWE 24/7, where all the categories we see are folders on the server end and when stuff disappears they just make the folders hidden. The stuff that was there is still uploaded, I'd expect it to be up in other categories once they take off the Christmas themed intros (kind of like how the Nitros disappeared for a day or two while they did those).

I could see them putting Vader in the role Giant ended up in, kind of like the enforcer for the NWO. If he would have stayed on the WCW side, it'd have been silly to book the NWO so strong when they had a 450 pound monster on Team WCW.

Considering they tend to focus mainly on 80s AWA, most of the GWF shows would have been better anyway *ducks large objects thrown at my head by khawk*

Most midcard or lower ex WWE guys have stated how while the annual figure you hear sounds impressive, after you take out for taxes and travel expenses the actual take home pay is far less. That's the reason a lot of the top guys buy their own buses, it's cheaper than shelling out travel costs in the long term. As far as contracts go, didn't Savage get WCW to sign Lanny as well? He never actually worked a match for them as far as I know, so that might be the winner here. *edit: upon further review, it looks like Lanny was officially working for WCW from 1995-1999 and never worked once for them. Talk about living the gimmick, he really is a genius.

That's awesome, Johnny! My three-year old watched tonight's Smackdown! with me (poor kid). During the casket match he kept pointing at Kane and saying "He's big like you, Daddy." I'm nowhere near as big as Kane lol. My son's almost three, and one thing I've learned is how keeping your arms at your side and slightly raised is the best way to take a big splash with minimal damage. I used to wonder when I would see guys take splashes like that "how does just putting your arms like that do anything?", well now I know.

My understanding is that the show will be Smackdown but what takes place will be what they had planned for Monday's Raw.

Yes, I've been watching all the 95 and 96 Raws and it's amazing how much of it seems new to me since I spent so much time channel flipping in those days.