sek69

1. I see where you're going with this, and it very well may be that they don't have faith in his promo skills, but what I've heard of him is Perfectly Acceptable Promo Work so far. I'm sure he knows he's going to have to step his game up if he gets the belt. 2. Agreed 100%. HHH has RAW set up where getting anyone else over is tough because he's taken the balls of everyone else on the roster. 3. I think he has improved. When he started, he was pretty much limited to the Generic Hoss Moveset, and while he's not the next Lou Thesz I think he's made great strides in terms of improving his workrate. He's been in matches with people other than Benoit where he's had to do more than be carried and he's handled himself well. 4. I think this point is what's causing the IWC heel turn on Batista. Now that it looks like he's going to get the title, all it does is start the countdown to HHH winning it back again. I could make a comparison here to HHH's idol, but I don't want Loss to have a stroke.

Assuming he wins at WM, everyone seems to be expecting him to be weak champion.

The prevailing wisdom amongst the IWC (I hate that term, but what else do you call them?) is that Batista is doomed to fail once he gets the belt.

I love how once it appears clear that someone new is getting a world title push, the IWC turns on them like one of Hulk Hogan's partners in the 80s. Obviously there's a big "now what?" factor after HHH drops the title to anyone, and that's mainly because he dominated for so long that no one is seen as a credible main eventer anymore because they've all lost to Hunter 657 times. Wrestling 101 says you put the title on your hottest hand. Batista's that guy now. He's over, he's got the look that gives Vince wood, and he shows signs of having charisma (which is all you need to be a top star in wrestling).

Yeah, HHH's promo wasn't really needed, it just made things drag too long. Didn't take away from the marktitude of HHH getting the Pimp Bomb through the table.

Even though the booking was about as obvious as you can get, I still marked out for Batista turning on HHH. I liked the callback to them turning on Orton with the thumbs down too. That's as close to continuity as we'll get with WWE programming these days.

I liked the 85-93 era of the NWA as well as the heyday of WCCW. I used to watch AWA and World Class on ESPN every day and I didn't even know the World Class stuff was years old until they made mention of someone as NWA world champion that wasn't right for the year I was watching it. There was just something about watching wrestling in front of smaller crowds in buildings that probably were used for flea markets the day before that made a better connection with me than the WWF having super mega shows in front of tens of thousands.

To me the main reason there's such a drop off is that WCW fans just didn't want to watch WWF programming, especially when it involved guys they used to watch in WCW used as jobber food on WWF TV. One of the side effects of the 80s-90s explosion is that wrestling audiences were pretty devoted to their favorite group. A lot of WWF fans wouldn't watch NWA/WCW stuff, and most of the NWA/WCW fans grew up on the more realistic southern style and had no need for the more cartoony WWF style. WCW had its silly stuff, but WWF was always seen as geared more toward kids no matter how much Vince would deny it. When WCW folded, a large chunk of their viewers were faced with the option of watching WWF programming or walking away from wrestling. Judging by the ratings RAW and SD get now, it seems almost all of them chose to walk away.

Because Stacy fucks whoever it takes to get/keep her position. She fucked David Flair to be able to graduate from Random Nitro Girl #4 to so-hot--we-stop-the-show Miss Hancock, then she fucked Test (who just happened to be friends with Shane McMahon) to make sure she had a chance in WWF/E when all the WCW rejects were being dropped left and right. Now she's a superstar and she didn't exactly go to bat for her man when they cut Test did they?

Reading Meltz's play by play of tonight's PPV and remembering the reaction the Diva Search got, I think we can offically say that the audience is tired of all these stupid broads wasting TV time for no purpose. Vince seems unwilling to understand that wrestling fans don't mind seeing women as annoucers or valets, but no one really wants to see them taking up whole segments of airtime.