sek69

From what I can gather, Dave seems to get the willies over stiff Japan matches anymore after seeing the ravages caused by 90s All Japan.

Two things come to mind: I think people are concerned about Brock because it's still in the back of people's minds that the last time someone showed up on Raw looking that shade of purple, he died the next day. It's an irrational fear (I still think he's just extra red due to being a naturally fair skinned guy in the summertime), but I get why some people are so wrapped up about it. How do Wilson and Barrios figure they have any juice to even attempt a power play? No matter what happened with the Network or TV rights, I can't imagine anyone trying to pull a coup on Stephanie will end well with Vince still in the picture.

As someone who is also a huge fighting game fan, it makes sense. I mean, why wouldn't games featuring compelling characters and (usually) well written stories appeal to us rasslin' fans?

I always get the impression that HHH and Steph look at him like he's their drunk uncle who you try to avoid getting seated next to at Thanksgiving.

Semi off topic, but Jake's run in AAA circa 1994-ish is probably his last great run before the demons completely took over.

Was it ever determined to be true that he was trying to ply Rosa Mendes with booze after she'd been to rehab? I seem to recall it being one of Dave's blind-item-but-not-really-if-you-think-about-it deals when it happened.

His problem is he would get loaded and forget to not say things he's inclined to say privately in public.

Over/Under on how quickly his "hacks" surpass Kurt Angle's? There's no way Hayes on Twitter ends well for anyone.

What's sad is Austin is probably in the best shape of a group made up of him, Bret, Hulk, and Taker. It's good that he seems to both saved his money well and has successful post-wrestling business ventures, so there's going to be no need for him to do it unless Vince backs a dump truck full of money to his ranch.

I recall Austin saying after his retirement that he was told he had the neck of an arthritic 80 year old, I can't imagine him wanting to risk it. Then again, there keeps being talk that they want to run Wrestlemania 32 in Cowboys Stadium to get an attendance over 100k. I'm sure WWE would feel they'd have to get Austin on the card in Texas to ensure that.

Cesaro continues to impress me by how he seems to have at least one spot in every match where it seems he has his opponent dead weight him on purpose so he can lift him anyway.

Man, I love Brock's promos. It's such a refreshing break from all the overscripted promos full of verbiage people don't actually say in real life to see a guy say "I'm gonna beat his ass". That's all you need in wrestling ffs.

Ambrose needs to throw the double birds while handcuffed to complete the morph into Attitude Era Austin.

I get that they need subs however they can, but it was still kind of shocking for them to go straight "if you bought this on PPV you're an idiot" there.

Man, that main event was off the charts in terms of emotion. You could really tell most of the crowd was older fans coming back to see Atlantis keep his mask, and god damn were they into it.

Yeah, in that episode Peter was trying to get Cleveland to show anger over his wife cheating on him. He took him to a wrestling show and they had a Randy Savage type doing a stereotypical pro rasslin' promo. It was clearly one of their usual voice actors doing the part, but I guess people saw the character and just assumed he was doing the voice.

So in the daily WO update there was a plug for the latest ROH tryout, and I see they're charging $300 a pop with a limit of 35 participants. Does anyone get hired from these or is it just a quick way for the company to pocket $10k from werkin' the boys?

Lance Storm made a great point how the MNW series really drives home how stupid it was not having the full Raw and Nitro libraries up at launch. They could have easily done a Netflix style recommendations thing where watching MNW would steer you toward the Raw where Foley "really put asses in seats" and won the title, or any other milestone reference point. Instead you have to go to YOU-TUBE (as Bryan would say) and watch it for free because they thought it would be better to dole out the content people want in small doses.

McMahon's Millions ending with the stage collapsing on Vince?

I don't know about the rest of you, but WWE's new belief that there's no reason for a wrestler to sell a beating/injury from the previous week because the fans won't remember is quickly becoming my most hated quirk. You're flat out saying your fans are too stupid to notice the guy who got destroyed last week is now walking around fine.

The latest issue of the WON features Dave recapping the Grantland article on TNA and pretty much ethering Dixie Carter. He more or less takes every quote she made in the whole piece and points out how full of shit she is.

We've already seen that: there was a generation of fans who started watching the WWF in the 80s post-Expansion and accepted Vince's version of History. Some eventually stumbled upon the truth, while plenty of others never did nor never cared. Heck, we have a generation of fans who buy all the nonsense in Shoot Interviews and Shoot Books. What can one do... I just have the image in 20 years of El Hijo del JDW (renting the gimmick of course) attempting to set the record straight in a future full of people who solidly believe WCW was run by meanies who only wanted to rob food from the McMahon family's table.

I agree with you 100% re: three hour Raws. All WWE sees is extra money for another hour, but the long term effects are going to be way more damaging than whatever extra cash they get. A bad Raw a few years ago was just a bad Raw, now it's an intolerable waterboarding to endure without DVR'ing it first and fast forwarding past all the horribly written and/or acted angles.

There's that, and also the real human tendency to accept something as true if you hear it repeated enough. Like how the next generation of wrestling fans will probably grow up accepting the WWE version of history since it's likely all they're going to hear unless they happen to stumble across a forum like this.

It wasn't helping they were clearly killing time until the football game went to halftime to do the Cena/Lesnar angle.