sek69

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).

I see it as more a reaction of "oh you push *this* little guy but not the little guy we like"

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.

The best part of the show was as everyone was leaving, the arena staff was passing out flyers for the Smackdown taping in June....that had Bryan's "Respect the Beard" logo as the whole front side.

I felt bad for poor Rey, as soon as he came out there was such a palpable feeling of "aww fuck this" in the building. Jesus could have came out in that spot and got booed just as bad. People were doing the Yes chants outside in line to get into the building and all the way up the escalators. It certainly isn't just hardcores or whatever vocal minority they want to pawn it off as. It was something being in the crowd for Orton-Cena, not only did they do the usual chants but in my section there was "Boycott Mania" and "end this match" chants. It was bizarre seeing a championship match get shit on like it was two geeks in a 9:30PM match on Raw.

Sometimes I think that on some level this whole Bryan deal is just some kind of meta trolling of the fans by WWE/Hunter/Vince. First they job him out on NXT, then they spend months having the announcers bury him as a geek, then they seem to be recognizing his ability and give him a title run only to lose in 18 seconds to a Friend of Hunter, then he's in a wacky big guy/little guy tag team where he has a inferiority complex, then they give him a clean win over the top ace of the company only to eat a Pedigree in seconds, then after dicking around with taking the title off him they stick him in a wacky heel faction only to turn him back in a couple weeks, It seems pretty clear when you look at it that they never had any intentions of making him anything more than perhaps a Santino level guy who gets a few more wins than the usual comedy act.

It's so puzzling that WWE seems hell bent on ignoring the fans with the excuse of "well Bryan doesn't move ratings/merch" when they've spent over a decade establishing that the WWE brand is bigger than any individual star. Cena was the last guy given the complete "this is the man" push, and the only others who actually pop a rating are returns of guys from before the current mindset. If they don't want to make him a top guy, I agree with Loss in that they really should stop dicking the fans around.

I always thought it was his passive-aggressive way of pointing out big jacked up and/or roid guys tend to look silly when they run.

I think it started to change around the time Hunter and her overthrew Shane as the heir apparent. Ever since then it seems she wants to be seen as the woman who's the boss of all these tough rassler guys.

So I finally got around to downloading the latest DLC pack for WWE 2K14 and was amused to find Ultimate Warrior had a higher rating in the game than Bruno (93 to 92).

I was there too, and it had a real car wreck quality to it. Especially since from where I was sitting you could see Taker getting more and more pissed off until you could see the point he realized there was no way to salvage the match. He just got this look on his face like "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" which just cracked me up. Plus when all the babyfaces came out to celebrate Angle's title win, he was *still* visibly pissed off.

I would think the idea would be twofold: keep the search functions from blowing up like mookie said, and also to keep the choices from being overwhelming during the launch period. It sounds weird, but if you give people millions of choices from the start they end up not watching any of them since your brain gets too overloaded to choose. I would suspect the content will expand as the service goes on, my only fear is if it doesn't take off like gangbusters it might fall in to the WWE 24/7 ghetto of being ignored.