sek69

Looks like he slapped someone who works for wwe.com, seems like kind of a bitch move for someone with legit credentials to be beating up a web geek.

It was on WWE 24/7, so it's ready to go. Them wanting to add it is another issue.

I'd say it was mainly due to them wanting him to be the next Hispanic superstar, then booking him the exact opposite way a Hispanic star should be.

Didn't he get into a fight with Sheamus not too long ago? I remember him doing the not-at-all-requested-by-management denial on Twitter.

To me (and Dave) it was that they went so far as to have Russo meeting with the writers in person away from the view of any other personnel. It was one thing to have it be strictly via email and still have the plausible denial of "hey we were just asking him to look over some stuff", but to fly him in and then still pretend he wasn't officially on the payroll was a new level of stupid.

My god, the write up on this in the new WON. The lengths they went to cover this up would have made Richard Nixon blush. Dave's barely contained incredulity that all this was dove over Vince Russo is the cherry on top of the sundae.

I know a thread with a title like that could spark quite a psychological debate, but I know we have some folks here who have some Lucha insight, and I've always wanted to ask a few questions knowing full well there may be no answers so some of these. Why did they spend all last year building to Atlantis/UG for the 80th Anniversary show only to bait and switch at the last possible minute? Dicking over the highest paying crowd in company history doesn't make any business sense. Did someone have cold feet about jobbing? Payoff wasn't high enough? Now that the match is happening (probably....maybe) this year, they wouldn't dare pull it again, would they?

So if all accounts have Bryan returning around the Rumble, what's going to keep Reigns from becoming Batista 2.0 and getting booed out of the building for winning?

Yeah that was disappointing, you'd think he'd come up with something more crazy than that. As it is, this screams angle advancement. Either the Authority somehow gets people they want as the lumberjacks or its a big flashing red light that someone's going to turn.

Hart-Lawler was good in '93, but by '95 they were into the "kiss my foot match" territory and Bret feuding with Lawler's dentist. Flair-Savage seems like a solid pick thought, especially up against Axl/Ian and the rest of a weak field. S'plain. 1995 Raw (at least up to July) is a weird time that's half goofy ass cartoon gimmicks that got pushes that went nowhere and half guys who would end up being huge stars but were jobbers/newbies at that time. The same show with the Waylon/Jeff match has the "American Blue Blood" Hunter Hearst Helmsley making his Raw debut against a short haired jobber Matt Hardy.

It's been stated by Dave several times before he was put with Heyman that Vince recognizes Cesaro is a good wrestler but felt he was boring and thus was slapped with the "he won't ever draw money" label. It seems like he's been booked ever since then in a manner to justify that viewpoint. I don't get how putting him with a manager (Heyman is awesome, but this is one guy in the mid card who didn't need a mouthpiece) who only put over another guy and taking away his most over move was supposed to help the guy.

Vince thinks he's boring, and apparently it's Cesaro's fault that it didn't get him over to pair him with Heyman while he cut promos about his other client beating the Undertaker.

As a wrestling fan, I should be upset that they are basically taking what was pointed out to them (ie "maybe you guys should promote the Network more now that you hung your future on it") and turned it into another Triple H troll point. Instead I just kept laughing at how it went from funny, to unfunny, then such a running gag it went back to being funny again. Anyone else start noticing how Total Divas as a show seems to exist in a Schroedinger's Cat dimension? Some things happening there are part of WWE kayfabe like recognizing Tyson/Nattie and Brie/Bryan as together, but not Nikki/Cena? They pimp the show so much it's starting to become awkward, especially since he hasn't once attempted to help his girlfriend. All I could think about with the Steph/Brie segment is how big an asshole Cena is in storyline that he can watch Nikki get laid out and not even run out to help.

That Brock video was awesome, I want to spend money on SummerSlam now and I already pay for the network.

Troll Hunter is so great.

That had to have been an old page accidentally being reactivated, since 60 days is the penalty for a second strike.

To be fair, Orton does retweet a lot of fans and did a few tweets in support of kids fighting illness with some heartfelt words of support. I'm kind of turning a corner on him, he seems to be more of a human Grumpy Cat type of person than someone who's just a dick for the sake of it. If I recall, he fought against turning his character babyface at one point because his natural personality is more heelish.

Speaking of pre taped tv, I don't know if it's more noticeable because of HD or I just never paid attention back then, but it was pretty funny to see the obvious green screened crowd behind Vince and Lawler doing "live" intros to the taped Raws in 1995.

People also tend to have an attachment for TV shows that were around when they came of age. It's the same thing you see with shows that have been around forever like Saturday Night Live, the era you watched growing up was the best and the current era is crap. In both cases, most of the time when you try to pin someone down to describe why the current show is not good you don't get much better answers than "it's not what I grew up with".

I've been watching all the Raws in order on the Network, and there's nothing that better encapsulates 1995 WWF like watching Waylon Mercy make his debut squashing a young jobber named Jeff Hardy.

So has it ever been determined how much of the match was bad due to Taker being concussed rather than just old and broken down?

The Vince McMahon and Scotch at 3 AM Show sounds like the greatest idea anyone's ever had ever. Speaking of Network stuff, I tried using the Xbox 360 app since I was doing some work on it earlier. My god is that a heap of shit. I have 105mb internet hardwired to my system and the front page takes forever to load. I ended up going back to my PS3 that has a wifi connection and everything worked without a hitch. Anyone who uses their 360 as their sole streaming device probably should not even consider the Network (or probably already canceled if they did).

I agree. This was great stuff. This was my first time listening to the podcast and now I feel like an idiot for not listening to these shows before. He'd probably go crazy from trying to instill logic in an illogical company, but I'd love to see Chris get a job with WWE and help them straighten their shit out. Also it must be a Texas thing, but I wasn't expecting Will to sound like Sam Elliot.

What's funny is in the back issues of the WON going up from 1997, Dave stated there was a feeling that Bret was accidentally-on-purpose going long on his promos to short HBK on his promo time. The one that closed Raw when Shawn kicked him out of his wheelchair had to be aired the following week because Bret went too long.

I'd love to see that too, but it would probably get awkward with the episode where they basically accuse Lex Luger of killing Elizabeth.