sek69

So all during the build for Mania, Dave was admonishing anyone in WWE who was griping about the Rock because he was going to pop a bigger buyrate and in turn make everyone more money. They did pop a record buyrate, per Vince at the investor call it was the biggest money making show ever. The guys just got their payoffs and the mid-low card guys all ended up getting far less than expected. So the idea that Rock would lead to everyone making more money seemed to not be the case, which is a pretty ironic lesson in trickle down economics.

Still, it's a lot of work for little reward. Even if she wins (which seems unlikely), she's not going to have any real power in the Senate. All they're ultimately doing is spending money to further the idea that the McMahons fail in everything they do outside of pro wrestling.

So what's the actual point in all this? If Linda wins, all they accomplish is blowing a shit ton of money just to be a junior senator in a small state where she'd be the main focus to be unseated in the next election. I keep hearing "it's all about the power" but you get power in Congress by hanging around forever and collecting appointments to various committees, and there's no way Linda would last long enough for that. It's not like she could springboard it into anything higher either, so it's just like the McMahons decided to flush millions down the toilet for no discernable reason.

I hope so, I actually enjoy the majority of audio shows they have on the site. The only recent exception had been the Todd Martin shows where it sounded like he was going to shoot himself in the face at the mere mention of WWE. It was funny how on a Bryan and Dave show, some guy who was either legit stoned/slow or a troll called in and spent most of his time asking if he could give shout outs (or as he called them "put overs") to people. The next day there was a post on the main page stating that if you're going to call in you better know what you're going to say ahead of time.

So Bryan invested in a new setup that allows him to have up to four phone lines available to call in on. Every show on the WON Empire now seems to have a call in segment and quickly two things immediately became apparent: 1. The same people call in on every show, and since you can't listen to the show while on hold it creates a lot of repeat questions. 2. Bryan didn't take the time to learn how any of it works, hanging up accidentally on Lance Storm and then subjecting the listener to his call waiting beep (which to be fair was his phone company's fuck up, but it makes him look bush league as hell not knowing how shit works ahead of time). I hope this is just a fad that will go away once the buzz of owning new toys wears off, not every show needs a call in segment and it's starting to get grating.

I thought it was funny that he told Paul to knock it off with mentioning his kids, Heyman does it again, and Steph comes out to cut a promo and beat his ass. If it was anyone else in this segment, it would have been played as "well that guy's a pussy who needed his wife to fight his battles for him".

I see it as a can't win for losing situation. If all those people showed up (or even half that list), the complaint would be that they overstuffed the show. I don't really sense anyone was hankering for any of the names you mentioned, Edge is the only one who would have got any reaction (not counting guys on the injured list like Barrett or Henry). Warrior would have been cool but he's not really a guy associated with RAW, plus he's had fights with Vince and is completely insane.

Seems like an easy fix is to do what major sports do for their stats and set minimums, so a guy who only pitched a handful of games doesn't show up in the list of ERA leaders or what have you.

Finally got to watch the LA Park-Jarrett angle from AAA on YouTube tonight, didn't seem as OMG RACISM~! as Dr. Lucha made it sound on his show with Bryan last week. Quick synopsis: Park and Abyss had a match for Park's AAA Latin America title, Abyss had Jeff and Karen in his corner. Park overcomes both Jarretts interfering like crazy to win the match, only to have the Perros Del Mal run in and beat him down. They tie him to a chair with duct/electrical tape, and put a serape and sombrero on him to make him look like a stereotypical drunk Mexican. Karen was outstanding, posing next to him for pictures like she was a tourist. What stood out to me is that Park's mask was pretty much entirely ripped off for 3/4ths of the match to the point where they had to blur his face on TV and he had to hold whatever was left with his teeth. It was interesting to watch a whole episode of AAA TV for the first time in months. I have to agree with a commenter on cubsfan's site who pointed out AAA is trying to appeal to the same demographic that ECW appealed to in their heyday, but that group really doesn't exist in Mexico. It's certainly different from the product CMLL offers, which seems like the lucha equivalent to 70s WWWF trying to draw today, but I don't know if ECW-ized lucha is something that has legs.

I don't think either Luger or Hall could walk to the ring at this point. For vastly different reasons, obviously, but still.

The crowd wasn't booing when he stood back and let Big Show beat up Cena, the boos only started when he attacked the Rock. The commentary was clearly in full heel turn mode, saying Punk turned his back on the "WWE Universe" (ugh), which made it unintentionally funny saying it when half the crowd was still sort of cheering him. I'm sure he'll come out next week and go all out heel in a promo to cement it. He's always come across as a guy not entirely comfortable as the Smilin' Babyface WWE Champion they wanted him to be after the big angle last summer. I think he'd be the first to admit he's kind of a dick and being a heel seems like a much more natural fit.

It's not even hyping Brock-HHH, it's just hyping Brock being on the show. Also Mike Sempervive has been filling in for Bryan this weekend on the Dave shows. They have been so much better than the interruption fests Bryan-Dave shows tend to turn into, it will probably mean Bryan will never take any time off ever again due to everyone liking Mike's ability to discuss MMA and pro wrestling without it turning into "here's why I'm right and you're wrong".

Group photo from the F4W get-together in Vegas for the last UFC: Is Dave secretly a fan of the forgotten NES classic Mother?

A better team (that they might actually have a chance of landing) would be Demolition and Animal just to watch everyone's heads explode.

The ongoing complaints about match placement are interesting. It's clear WWE has an established pattern for PPVs by now: a match they expect to be good on first to get the crowd going, title match A, womens/tag filler, title match B, filler match with whichever one of women or tag wasn't used before, main event with John Cena/HHH/Taker. It's clear if Cena is on the card, his match is going on last no matter what. Him not being in the title picture for a while is just driving the point home they haven't been thinking "title match goes on last" for a long time, it's just the guy they do put on last has been the champ for a lot of the last decade or so.

Kane's been in matches with guys who were in the top ten of their time and not looked out of place. I think he has the same problem Taker had in the 90s when he was constantly matched up with guys who no one could possibly get good matches out of. Not to mention I can't blame the guy for not going balls out every night with some of the bullshit he's been thrown into over the years. I was thinking about this the other day, was his debut angle ripping the door off the Hell in a Cell and killing Taker the last time he was involved in a feud that didn't end up Wrestlecrap material?

I think what aggravates people is that Kane has shown that he can ramp it up and and hang with guys considered top shelf workers, but has more often than not relied on his monster gimmick to coast in matches where he could get by on being big and scary.

Dave and Bryan seem to be defensive when people joke about the "plans change" meme, but this seems like a case where it did actually happen. The Bellas mocked Kharma when she left after announcing her pregnancy, and the whole deal with one of them winning the title when their deal was ending that week was to set up her return to get her revenge and squash them. It got reported, WWE had one of their "word got out, we have to change this" spasms, and we got Layla coming out to zero reaction instead. They never seemed to be able to find a way to write her back in, so I guess indirectly it's because of Meltzer. Wouldn't say it's his fault though.

I can't speak for the man's music tastes, but I've never heard anyone speak of Lita's band as anything worth listening to.

I think they will at least call her up, I just wonder if/when they do she'll get the Molly Holly treatment and have the announcers talk about her granny panties. I suspect if WWE wants to keep having women wrestling, they will have to start going back to women who can actually work a match. Like what was stated earlier, the model types are starting to get to the point where it's not worth the hassle anymore. Not only did Maxine and the Bellas leave, Kelly Kelly is on that Stacy Keibler-esque long term leave that doesn't appear she'll ever come back from anytime soon. They're going to have to start hiring women who actually want to be in wrestling, and they're going to have to come to terms with those who want to be there not always looking like Vince's ideal wank fantasy.

TNA should just fuck with them at this point and have Kenny come out with one of Eric Young's old TV belts and say he's the Real World Tag Team Champion.

The reason Mark Madden bashed ROH for using the arena football guys as promotion was that the team pretty much burned any goodwill it had with anyone in town by taking the team out to Olive Garden when they were in Orlando and firing everyone (then leaving them stuck with the check). So ROH teaming up with them to promote a show here was pretty tone deaf on their part.

I honestly don't see why so many people have such hatred for ROH. I don't think the TV is horrible, the announcing was terrible at first but Kevin and Nigel seem to have got their acts together in terms of being an old school straight announcer/ex wrestler color man team. Neither guy is the second coming of Gordon of course, but better than what WWE and TNA offer most weeks. I'll grant you the formatting is a little odd, having the big "Inside ROH" promo block in the middle of the show like that. I get that they are trying to get guys a chance to show personality to the viewers, but putting it in one block like that just makes it fast forward material. Davey to me seems like the John Cena of ROH. He doesn't bother me nearly as much as he seems to bother practically everyone else, I just figured that his gimmick was a weeaboo type who favored Japanese pro wrestling rather than like , anime or whatever. He seems like a guy who just watched puro tapes 24/7 without understanding any cultural differences why guys act all stoic and shit. Also I agree Steen celebrating his title win by stuffing his face with cake was by far the best thing they've done so far. But yeah, I have ROH TV on my weekly DVR rotation and I don't really see why it gets hated on so much. Best I can gather is that it seems like some people are still holding on to the days where Joe, Punk, and Danielson were regulars and of course nothing today is going to compare to that. Even Dave was comparing Spike's investment with TNA to Sinclair/ROH as proof that perhaps they aren't into ROH for the long run. Of course ROH's production values are going to be less, Spike is part of the Viacom empire which is worth billions. They have the capital to prop up a money losing wrestling venture. Sinclair's earnings are less than $100 million. Not chump change, but they have less room to work with in terms of how much they can burn. Could ROH TV use an upgrade? Sure, but it doesn't seem fair to compare to TNA when they are bankrolled by someone who probably has the net worth of Sinclair lost in their couch cushions.

Saturday nights on WPGH were the best here. You had WCCW come on at 10pm, GLOW at 11pm, and NWA Worldwide on at 12 midnight. I always liked Worldwide more as a kid, they had matches from arenas instead of the TV studio (which made them seem a million times more important to me even if they were still mostly jobber squashes). Plus the ring they used had different ropes that would make a snapping sound when someone would hit them, which for some reason was the coolest thing in the world to me at the time.

I was amused by Dave's theory he posed on one of the radio shows the other day that the most popular women in US wrestling tend to be the one's who are just hot enough that you find them attractive but not so hot that you'd think you wouldn't have a chance to bang them. I got what he was trying to get at, the stereotypical wrestling fan is going to tend to be somewhat resentful of the unbelievably hot chick since it will probably remind him of a chick who doesn't give him a chance IRL. On the other hand, Trish Stratus.