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I could see them using footage in a "here's some guys working in a place you probably never saw them in" type of deal, but a lot of the best WWC stuff isn't exactly WWE 2014 PG Rated Friendly.

So now they seem to be doing a heel gimmick now for the ref with the ponytail. This week's TV featured Ray Gonzales winning the title back from TNT, complete with both guys bleeding from forks, heel ref ignoring cheating, babyface ref dropkicking the heel, both refs getting in a brawl, and an angle afterward where TNT seemingly broke the face ref's hand. It was like Memphis and TNA had a weird baby.

I think Dave was more referring to the comments when Damien Sandow refused to go to the ring for his match during the Occupy RAW segment. He did his usual cryptic comments about something more to what she said, and then the next day on the B&V show Bryan said what Dave was talking about that what she was yelling to Sandow were more or less her shoot comments on CM Punk.

I'm a little baffled why anyone who would be a member of a site like this wouldn't be all over something like the network. Yeah, they might not add content fast enough for our liking at this stage but by all accounts there's tons of stuff coming pretty quickly. Plus it wouldn't have made sense for them to put everything up on day one since they knew there would be bugs to work out first. We're already seeing it now, more content appearing now that a lot of the launch issues are getting ironed out. The only way I can understand someone canceling is if your only means of access to it is the Xbox 360 since their app is still busted. Even if you have no interest in any of the vault stuff, every PPV for $9.95 is a ridiculous deal.

Fucking spot on, that pic is my mental image of 98% of the bitching threads at places like the WO forums.

I think the overall problem is that the audience WWE wants to reach the most (kids) have the shortest attention spans. It took over a year of almosts before the crowds started seeing Lex Luger as a guy who couldn't get the job done, but now after a 2-3 month period people were already giving up on Bryan ever getting the title. I can almost get why WWE seemed so bullheaded to change plans, it used to be that screwing the babyface would get the fans all irate at the heel and get them amped to see the rematch. Now, if a guy can't win within a match or two fans seem ready to just resign themselves to thinking it's never going to happen.

The Rumble wasn't unique in the sense that they weren't the first to do it, but the first several ones were definitely a big deal. The one that started with Ax and Smash as #1 and #2 made it clear this was such a big deal even tag partners will fight for the chance to win one. I think giving the winner a Mania title shot took a lot of steam off the Rumble in the sense that now there's only a handful of guys you can reasonably expect in that position every year. You won't see any winners like Jim Duggan as long as that's in place.

To be fair, for a while now Bryan would be asking him if it's going to be a three way for a while now (especially since Batista turned heel again). Dave would only give his "they could do that" or "it's a possible" in that cheshire cat voice he tends to get when he knows something has a good chance of happening but for whatever reason can't say it.

Yeah, they would probably like to move Smackdown to a better network/timeslot but I don't see Raw moving from USA unless some other network backs a truck full of money into Vince's driveway.

This. Made several good matches on the Texas project nearly unwatchable. I remember watching a pull-apart brawl in an early WCCW match and thinking a fan ran in the ring as part of the schmoz to break it up. Nope it was David Manning running around like a loon in the middle of a heated brawl.

Based on the snippets posted on the front page of WO.com, we should have a "Davey Richards is a Grouchy Hateful Vile Human Being" thread next. The highlights: He's glad he didn't get the call from WWE after doing the NXT tryout, said he didn't want to take away from his time going to med school/being an EMT to go to "wrestling school". Said everyone in NXT seems to be on eggshells afraid for their jobs (probably the truest statement) and not enjoying their time there. He did put over the Performance Center as a great facility. He said his bridge with ROH is completely burnt and he buried Delirious as only getting the booking job because he's spineless (?) and not because of any talents in that regard. Also buried Joe Koff as being more interested in TV business than wrestling. He did wish everyone there the best of luck, so there's that. He seems happy with TNA, which makes me wonder if they have some kind of special arrangement since it seems everyone being paid a living wage there is in danger of getting cut when their deals end.

So they mention the Bro-mans won the tag titles back from the Wolves in Japan, but Austin Aries still has the X title he lost on that same show. That Wrestle-1 show is now the Schroedinger's Cat of wrestling events now where it both exists and doesn't at the same time. They've been running Willow the Wisp videos for the last few weeks, but announce Jeff Hardy is returning at Lockdown. Is he doing a Mick Foley split personality gimmick or is he just going to show up for the main event in the Willow mask? The Sam Shaw/Anderson angle is like every bad Attitude Era WWF mid carder angle with 10% the production values. I think by the end of the show I had a nosebleed trying to figure everything out.

Hogan's had numerous back surgeries, and WWE is especially sensitive to neck/back problems.

It also doesn't give me much faith in HHH being able to put personal feelings aside for business. Vince has his issues for sure, but he never had a problem doing business with a guy he had problems with if he felt it would make money.

I used to love how Tommy Young would dive in to make a count if he was out of position. Charles Robinson sometimes sells people's moves better than the guy taking them, but not in a way that takes attention away from the match.

I was watching the showing of WM 25 on the live feed a few days back and I noticed the twitter scroll at the bottom was just saying "twitter handle tweet" over and over again for a few passes before someone caught it and it stopped.

This is going to sound like I'm an apologist, but all things considered the WWE Network launch was amazingly successful. Yeah, some things didn't work from the start, but the biggest mess arguably wasn't 100% their fault (Xbox 360 app being broken). Considering the amount of people hammering the service the first few days, I don't think they could have had it gone too much better. Their biggest hurdle to overcome probably won't be anything service related, but the impatience of the ADD Generation who expect large undertakings like this to work flawlessly from the jump. I didn't see too much of it here, but the WON board was flooded with threads full of people whining over the slightest bump in the road as if it was their birthright for this to be flawless. Protip: the free trial was more or less the beta test to see how well things held up when the floodgates opened. Clearly their biggest concern was the live feed since that's where PPVs will be shown, once that showed to be running smoothly (save for the hiccup during the NXT show) the VOD stuff started working better as well.

If people who read DA SHEETZ are such a tiny minority according to WWE, then why would they think leaking Punk being on Raw would mean anything?

Someone should tell Cena that mentioning he's doing the same thing now he did in 2002 is kind of the reason 75% of the audience is sick of him.

HHH probably has such a huge boner while doing this promo.

Oh my, HHH and Steph coming out.

The internet turning on crowds is a real snake-eating-its own-tail phenomenon.

Or it could be that they've done that match a million times in the last two weeks or so, and it's two characters fans have zero reason to give a shit about.

Knowing JBL is the mouthpiece, maybe Vince is pissed JR is doing good business with his speaking shows. Or that there's a lot of people on tweeting about how the WWE Network made them miss JR on commentary.

You think if Punk turns heel in front of this crowd, we get the whole Bash at the Beach 96 treatment with trash being thrown?