sek69

I love how Zeb looks like he's going to go Super Saiyan whenever one of his guys loses a match.

The peak of the Tanahasi love on that show was Mike already declaring him WOTY for 2014 and even Dave had to slow him down and say, "It's February" As far as Bryan's merch goes, I've bought one wrestling t-shirt in my entire life (Jerichoholic).....but I hear Dave and Alvarez harping on how terrible his merch is and I don't really see what's so terrible about it. I wouldn't buy any of it, but I wouldn't buy any of the shirts WWE makes. I think the maroon colour scheme works for Bryan, and those simple YES YES YES or NO NO NO shirts appear to have been big sellers based on how many of them you'd see in the crowd. And whoever said that talk about merchandise started because of CM Punk.....you can't be serious. Merchandise has been a talking point since the 80's. I'm sure if somebody wanted to bother going back through the Observer archives you would find lots of talk of guys who move merch. God, just in the attitude era, you don't think Dave was talking about DX and Austin moving merch? Or the nWo shirts? Or ECW shirts? The idea that nobody was aware of merch moving until CM Punk in 2011 is absolutely absurd I think what they were referring to is Punk was the first guy other than Cena to sell a ton of different shirts. As far as Bryan's merch goes, consider that Vince is seriously basing whether or not to give him the full main event push -not on him getting the best and biggest reactions on every show for months- but on shit like this selling: It's the same shit that went down when Vince had to be convinced to put the belt on Rey. As soon as they did it, he would look for reasons to get it off him. It sounds like internet conspiracy theory nonsense, but I could totally see them only making shit merch for Bryan and then Vince/HHH can say "well we can't make him a main eventer, the guy just doesn't move any of the metrics we look at".

The lineup is a legit concern until we see what's actually going to be available, but I wouldn't be too concerned about technical issues. MLB.tv has a couple million subscribers with access to all 162 games of every MLB team (minus blackout nonsense) and their service is one of the best available. One thing that WWE is going to have to really overcome is the perception among wrestling fans that the WWE Network is running off the same tin cans and string setup indy groups use for iPPVs.

The impression I get is that once WWE feels someone is injury prone they are less likely to push them in a position of prominence, with Orton being the exception that proves the rule.

"RAW (or SMACKDOWN) ROLLS ON" before every mid match commercial break is quickly becoming my #1 hated WWE verbal tic.

It's really amazing how much more tolerable Sheamus has been since he's back, I guess that's what happens when you don't have him be Irish Cena like he was before.

I wouldn't say it's my favorite, but Cena coming back as #30 in the Rumble was a legit surprise in the internet era.

Yeah, this is something different than anything else they have to deal with. With Benoit at least there's the argument that can be made that editing him out affects the flow of several years worth of programs since it would create gaps in storylines. This was a one time event where a guy died on PPV, and to be honest if that didn't happen no one would be clamoring to watch it, since everything that happened prior was a paint by numbers late 90s WWF B show.

Man has a solid point here. I don't have an issue with them showing the Over the Edge show, but I wonder what they'll cut out. I know someone uploaded the whole show in like 15-16 parts on YouTube and WWE only issued copyright takedowns on the parts where the fall happened and then later on when JR announced the death. I guess it will be similar on the Network. I kind of hope they cut out the interview with Jarrett and Debra that happened literally right after the accident, that always topped the Melanie Pillman interview on my personal "fuck, this is uncomfortable" list.

People who work for TV stations owned by Sinclair have similar stories of how cheap the company is run. Everyone thought ROH would have better production values once they were owned by a TV conglomerate, but this isn't Turner buying JCP here. Plus I'd imagine a born again liberal like Cornette probably would lose his shit with the right wing propaganda Sinclair stations run every election cycle.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Help me out. Quack's interview was pretty much just 40 minutes of him saying if you don't get the great angle he's doing then you aren't smart enough to be a fan of Chikara. As I said in the thread on the BOARD~! he sounded like a local community theater director who thinks he's the next Fellini.

It probably helped that Donald Trump is pretty much a pro wrestling character in real life.

Steven was his username, there's still some of his posts floating around in the Daniel Bryan Push thread.

So in the new Observer, it's mentioned Dave got the idea the Rumble crowd had a lot of out of town folk because the ROH show the day before had a house of over 1,000.

http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/88.htm

No one seems to know how the Mania payout will work with the Network this year. Perhaps they told the guys what to expect and Punk figured there was no point in waiting.

In the interview he did with Helwani, Punk seemed very noncommittal about his future plans. Looking back, I wouldn't be surprised if he already had his mind made up at that point and was just waiting for the proper time. Dave did point out in the BREAKING NEWS update that Punk's never been concerned about money, and seemed to be implying he's just tired of dealing with all their bullshit. He's one of the few guys that has fuck-you money, and that appears to be what he did.

Punk leaving most likely is the reason Bryan went from fifth from the top match against Sheamus to a top level match with HHH.

Cena's merchandise is perfect for the market that buys it. Bryan's merchandise seems like it was purposefully designed to not sell well.

There's no guarantee that they're going to get more TV money, and it seems a lock that the wrestlers will take an income hit considering Mania's going to be available on the network this year.

WO.com just posted that Punk told Vince he was going home and now he's off all shows for the next few weeks. I guess that explains the unusual addition to the Elimination Chamber, but I wonder if we get interviews of HHH saying Punk took his ball and went home.

My concern would be more towards Brock's tendencies to stiff the shit out of people and Taker being too old for that shit at this point in the game.

So I wonder is the Mania card we're reading about part of the work or the real card? If it's the real card, what's the point of running the angle if he's going to be on the 4th or 5th match? This is starting to smell like WWE trying to retcon trying to punish the fans by pretending it was part of the story all along. But hey, if it ends up getting the guy where the fans want, if they want to say it was the plan all along then whatever it takes I guess.

Well praise the lawd they acknowledged it happened.

I thought Dave was on the verge of being willfully ignorant by continuing to tow the WWE line even after the #2 show of the year just got roundly shit on by a city that can't be hand-waved away with the "it's a smark town" excuse. Dave hand-waved it as the Rumble crowd being heavy on travelers. The funny thing is the most traveled people there were probably from West Virginia. People were doing yes chants in line to enter the building and all the way up the escalators, and at no point did I think that there was an abundance of out of town folks (Pittsburgh folks can spot our own, it would be very noticeable if there were a lot of travelers).