sek69

One thing that I never see get brought up too much is how many of their creative issues stem from the "we know better than you" mindset. It's pretty irritating when one side of their mouth talks about how the fans have the power to make stars, while the other side kneecaps most of the guys who get themselves over. Not saying Zack Ryder was going to change the face of wrestling, but the level they went to bury the guy just to prove the fans were wrong for liking him was beyond petty to me. I mean, ffs they were so bent on doing things they way they want instead of what their audience was asking for their #2 show of the year got hijacked. I'm not sure if it's their preconceived notions of what a star is, or just Vince being a size queen as usual, but it's clear we're not going to see any significant changes until that mindset is replaced.

I figure the angle from RAW leads to Bryan coming back and telling Steph he's not surrendering the title, Hunter takes exception, and off we go. Seems odd though considering the rumor mill was saying Hunter vs Roman was on the books for SummerSlam.

Honestly, I only DVR Raw to skip commercials. If you start watching about 30-45 after it begins, you can FF all the commercials for the whole show. Sometimes I do skip ahead if someone is doing a promo that goes on too long or there's an especially bad comedy skit, but for the most part I watch the whole show. I don't get how someone is able to assess the quality of the show if you watch less than a quarter of it. To me it's like skimming a few pages of a book and declaring it sucks. It might, but how can you know for sure?

Ever since Loss mentioned it on Twitter, I can't unsee Nattie as the Meg Griffin of WWE now.

I may have been reading it wrong, but I took it as most of the panic coming from only getting 50% when Vince stated on at least a couple different conference calls the expectation was to triple, double at least.

It might have been worse if they realized WWE's core business was bullshitting people.

Not only that, now there's a second law firm investigating them for potential securities fraud. It's becoming apparent that Vince either doesn't understand how the stock game operates or he's been a carny so long he thinks he can pull a work on Wall Street.

How did no one in WWE see that launching the Network would negatively impact their TV deal? Clearly their ideal goal is to have Raw and Smackdown on the Network as soon as they can, and there's no way NBCU would go for that. Why would they want to give WWE more money to cushion the loss of PPV revenue when NBCU is owned by a major cable provider (Comcast)? Clearly the company is undervalued due to the wrestling stigma, but if Vince actually honest-to-goodness thought tripling the rights fees was possible he's way more out of touch than anyone suspected.

A few years back Bob Carter was worth an estimated $4 billion, I can't imagine someone would be in his line of work for as long as he has and not be that rich at least. That's why TNA has been around as long as it has, them losing millions is a drop in the bucket for the family. In fact, Bob probably considers it the cost of doing business just to keep Dixie occupied so she won't get any ideas of trying to run the company.

Well at least if Cena won it, that would end the run of IC champions jobbing constantly after winning the title.

I agree no one's come close since him. One thing that helped was being so small made ref bumps look like something more than just a booking tool. Plus I still mark out for the time on Nitro a fan ran in and Mark took him down in a second.

The Shield was a WWE gimmick.

For all the love NXT gets, the debut of Adam Rose and pending debut of Bo Dallas made me wonder if NXT is really preparing guys for the main roster. In terms of in-ring they seem to be doing a solid job, but it seems like they do a better job of creating gimmicks to get over with the NXT crowd instead of the WWE one. With the notable exception of the Wyatts, everyone so far called up with their NXT gimmick seems to have not gotten over in the big leagues. WWE already seems to see Adam Rose as a flop after only 2 weeks, and as great as the promos have been for Bo Dallas, I see him being the next guy to get a start-and-stop push before being condemned to midcard hell.

Of course, since half his gimmick now is being a IRL internet troll.

It would have been a good way to cap off the story of him turning face because he respected Magnum for one. Plus it always seemed that since JCP had such a thing for heel champs, it kind of made the babyface challengers look like chumps to me when even if they did win the belt, it was only for a couple of weeks (or less) before they lost it back.

Meltzer mentioned in one of last week's shows that from what he's been able to gather from speaking to folks in the company, very few people in TNA are making decent money.

From how Dave was talking, it seems like Barrios is going to fall on his sword for this. They arranged all the TV rights and Network deals to specifically protect anyone in the family from any blowback. Probably going to see a Game of Thrones style slaughter of anyone not named McMahon come Monday.

Maybe they can do a Pitbull #2 deal and have Bryan come out in a halo that Kane can throw him around by.

WWE is in an unusual place in that obviously they aren't a real sports product, but at the same time they aren't the usual TV drama/comedy/soap opera either. I guess in a sense they are portraying the matches as athletic contests, but invoking kayfabe in 2014 just seems wrong. What I don't get is advertisers see wrestling fans as all inbred morons who don't spend money, but WWE is a billion dollar company. Where do they think that money comes from? Even if its parents buying stuff for kids, someone's still spending actual dollars in the process.

Kind of hard to blame the world when you can turn on RAW and see bad horror movie rehashes and evil Russian angles straight out of 1985.

cubsfan's site has all the goings-on in lucha, along with uploads of most of the TV shows/important matches.

No, but they keep trying and it's why they weren't able to get a bigger increase. Also I notice how they quietly moved the goalposts in that release mentioning a 3x increase world wide in TV rights fees where every investor conference call leading up to today stated they expected 2-3x increase in US alone.

They never bothered to attempt to do it to the folks who mattered. They spend all their time running away from real sports comparisons until they realize that's where the fat TV money comes from. Then they decide they want to be treated like real sports, only you have folks who cover real sports for a living like Colin Cowherd on ESPN regularly mocking wrestling fans for being "booger-eaters". Yeah, he's a douche canoe, but his voice is the one that gets heard by millions on TV and radio and he's not the only one re-enforcing the stereotype. WWE never seems to bother doing anything to change the impression of his audience to the folks he wants to get paid by. Racing purists don't like that NASCAR has evolved from the old days of moonshine runners and fights in the infield, but they get a blank check from every major network every time their TV deal is up for renewal. It didn't seem to hold them back that their fans had the same "poor white trash redneck" stereotype us rasslin fans do.

Wasn't one of the weird Vince directives for guys to intentionally not play to the crowd?

If I recall correctly, he was with another wrestler who got involved in a bar fight and got the black eye in the process of trying to break up the fracas. It's not the audience that matters, if Vince knows someone got their ass kicked it has a chance to change his mind on someone. Sheamus is probably safe since he's a Friend of Hunter, but plans change by the minute it seems.