Coffey

Yeah, this is the same company that recently (as in not aeons ago), dropped literal shit on AJ Lee & had Stephanie McMahon projectile vomit on Vickie Guerrero. So expecting something to be done in a sophisticated way is pretty much a pipe dream at this point.

The reason is because some fans are never happy, no matter what. Fans are fickle. The same people saying that it was too predictable are the same ones saying that Brock beating The Undertaker at Wrestlemania was stupid, even though no one thought he had a prayer. I see people turning on Brock already on other forums. I don't know if it's because he's part-time, because he ended the streak or what but it's really funny to me. The guy that I think is the most entertaining on the show, that is a great wrestler & has a genuine aura about him, something that no one else on the show has, and they're trying to find reasons to hate him instead of just enjoying the ride.

I would have the Roman Reigns Vs. Randy Orton match start with a Superman Punch, that drapes Orton over the bottom rope for the running dropkick. Then he staggers to his feet & eats a Spear for a clean pin in the middle in about 2-minutes. If they try to do a fucking 20 minute match with Randy Orton doing headlocks, Reigns is dead. DEAD. He'll be just another guy, like Sheamus was tonight. Nothing special, just another guy crammed into vanilla, forgettable matches that are a dime-a-dozen every week. He needs to be different & stand out.

How long is that Total Divas show even going to last?

The thing that I've really noticed is how giant everyone is. I mean, I always knew most guys in WWF back then were super-jacked. But you don't realize how big someone like Bushwhacker Butch is when there's guys like Warlord & The Ultimate Warrior running around. Butch is stout as fuck though. Don't really pick up on stuff like that when you're a kid.

How can it be a lawsuit? Someone made a joke at his expense. I don't think you can sue over something like that? He could have called him a "greasy spic", still don't think a judge would give a fuck. Especially when his answer was to retort with physical violence. I'm genuinely asking because I don't know. Like, a defamation of character lawsuit or something? It's certainly not wrongful termination, as Del Rio physically assaulted someone. If anything, the lawsuit would be from the guy that got hit.

Thanks to the WWE network, I'm gaining a new found appreciation for workers that I used to either despise or was indifferent to. I'm really enjoying The Mountie & The Bushwhackers lately, in example.

I was the opposite of Loss. I pretty much kept watching wrestling the way I always did. I remember reading the Benoit stuff when it happened and thinking, initially "What? there's no way." Then when all the details starting coming out, I thought "damn, that sucks." That was about the extent of my thinking. It was awful but I didn't know the people involved, so it didn't affect me any, or my daily life. I was never a big Benoit fan though, so maybe that had something to do with it. I remember sleeping though 9/11 when it happened, I slept until like 7PM that night 'cause I was working graveyard shifts at the time. I woke up saw it all over the news & everywhere I went and I didn't grasp the magnitude of how big of a deal it really was. I was in my own daily bubble. Admittedly, I'm not the most empathetic guy but when something like the Benoit incident happened, I kept my distance from others that were a lot more emotionally invested in it than I was, even on the internet. I didn't feel it was my place to express any thoughts or opinions on it, I wasn't as passionate about it as others. Never once did I think because Benoit went totally banana that I was gonna stop watching wrestling or anything like that. There's always been bad shit in wrestling & there always will be. There's bad shit everywhere. If you dwell on it, you'll go nuts. I know that's why I would never be able to have a job like a detective or doctor, I wouldn't be able to handle seeing all the filth of life all the time. Sometimes, at least for me, ignorance really is bliss. If you're exposed to the dirty underbelly of shit all the time, if you have any human decency whatsoever, it'll just eat away at you & erode you & rust you out like an old Buick. I see it today on social media all the time too. It's depressing. I have to actively hide people when they're talking about Gaza or Jerusalem, or about war & officers getting shot, or religious groups protesting funerals...I don't wanna be reminded of that shit every day of my life. The Owen Hart Memorial Tribute RAW & the Chris Benoit RAW where you could tell halfway through the show that more information was coming out, were two of the most surreal wrestling shows I've ever seen in my life. I remember people at school asking me about Owen Hart because they thought it was fake. How do you even reply to something like that? Make a joke & hope it isn't too distasteful? I didn't have any answer...

No match with Lance Archer will ever be worth seeking out. I really hate that he's in this tournament. He's not the only sack of potatoes in it this year but he's a pretty big, glaring bucket of shit. Before the tournament started, everyone pretty much already knew what to expect from the usual suspects. Which matches would be good, etc. Personally speaking, I know that I have a really bad habit of using past work to pre-judge wrestlers & matches. I do it all the time. Sometimes I think someone sucks so I don't think they'll do anything good. I'm probably guilty of the other end of the spectrum too, and overpraise someone that was just average because they were great in the past. The G1 Climax this year, however, has not made me regret any of that. Before the tournament started, I knew the names I cared about and the names I didn't. After catching up & watching most of the days now, not a single one of the guys that I didn't give a shit about has had anything that I would call "decent." The tournament, to me, feels quite lackluster this year & I have no idea what the hell Dave Meltzer is talking about. There's been some decent stuff, but nothing has blown me away & I don't feel like I've seen any Match of the Year contenders. Nothing in this tournament is close to the Wyatts Vs. Shield from Elimination Chamber to me so far. I had a lot higher expectations. Maybe the "new car smell" of New Japan is just dying out for me now since I've been watching for a couple of years now & am more familiar with the roster. That being said, outside of AJ Styles, anything featuring the Bullet Club is the drizzling shits.

This SummerSlam build-up is a complete catastrophe. Not just in the ratings but in Steph/Brie "main eventing" RAW twice, Brock & Cena not being there & the mid-card matches meaning less than nothing. I don't know if it's just a case of the WWE Network making WWE feel like they don't have to try real hard or something, since people will see it & already have it anyway & it's $10 now instead of $50 but it just seems so lackluster. And now, next week, we're getting a Hogan celebration with a bunch of old farts instead of more SummerSlam build? I mean, they don't exactly have a lot of time & it feels like they've already wasted two weeks... Even though I have WWE Network, I don't care about this show at all. I want to see Cena/Lesnar 2, but there's like no build so it's all because I know what they're capable of due to their résumés, not because I'm drawn into the story.

Disco Inferno's inclusion has totally killed the MLW.com podcasts for me. Dude is just...well he doesn't entertain me.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Maybe I'm just in a pissy mood (like always) but I shut it off. Without DVR, being able to fast-forward commercials & shit, I just can't take it. This week it was really noticeable to me that the show is either on a commercial break or back from the break but shilling something. It's like one big, long 3-hour informercial. I can't do it.

Just listening to the JR Podcast with Kurt Angle. He made a point before the Angle stuff started about how being the Champ, being the man in wrestling is so hard. Harder than people realize. Then he speculated how many champions since the title came to be in the early 60's had become divorced while being on top. I thought that was pretty weird. A lot of wrestlers cheat. A lot of wrestlers break-up. Wrestlers are always on the road. I don't think it's exclusive to just the guy on top.

Have you not seen the direction our society has been heading in the last couple of years? We're raising a society of pussies, OF COURSE people get upset over that fucking shit nowadays. It's pathetic.

Am I crazy if I am operating under the assumption that at Summerslam the live crowd is going to be in favor of Stephanie McMahon over Brie Bella? I know that Steph & The Authority are supposed to be the heels but Brie is just so bad that I think the crowd are going to cheer Steph like she's the face because she's been more entertaining. That seems to be how crowds work nowadays.

Maybe this is random but I would love for WWE Network to have all the old episodes of Confidential uploaded too. I really liked the WWE Cribs thing where you could see how the wrestlers lived. I distinctly remember Al Snow owning an absurd number of hockey jerseys.

Pretty sure they were leather shorts, I don't think it was a skirt.

Is the IWGP title on it? EDIT: Just went & looked. I like the older ECW title belt better (the one Raven had) than the one they used. I wish the WCW U.S. title was on there too. The new WWE Title looks like trash, it being on there is funny.

Right but when you streamed a PPV did you feel like you were actively destroying pro-wrestling?

So change it from DVRing RAW to downloading RAW the next day off of a torrent site. Now it's illegal. I think the point still stands. People used to stream all the PPVs every month illegally. A lot of them still do. Now people stream the WWE Network. Especially in other countries. At least with the WWE Network, they're getting $10 a month from some customers that they used to get $0 from just for the convenience of a working feed for the PPV each month. Granted that's at the cost of PPV going from $40 to $10 or whatever the drop was.

I really think it was silly launching without the Nitros already on there, honestly. I guess they wanted to save that for the people to re-subscribe but to me, that's a big draw. Especially the Monday Night Wars era where I know I missed stuff because I was watching one show over the other.

One of the big things that I still love about buying music is the awesome stuff you get when you buy the tangible copy. Digital music is great if you just want to hear a single, or make a workout/driving comp. or whatever. When I want to enjoy the music though, part of the appeal to me is putting the music on. I've just recently gotten into buying vinyl. Going through the old records at music shops & hunting for records I want is a big part of the appeal. All the cover art & inserts in the albums really makes it feel special. I love professional wrestling as I have watched it for pretty much my entire life. I still follow it quite closely & it's a big part of my daily life but I've never felt that real connection to wrestling if I'm not at a live show. Just watching shows on my computer feels like just listening to mp3s at the gym or in a car. I like the idea Loss suggested with a tiered subscription. When the music industry took a real big hit to sales because of digital distribution, some artists tried to combat that by giving perks inside of their physical copies of music. Like exclusive bumper stickers or whatever miscellaneous schwag. It would be cool if, as part of a tiered WWE Network subscription you could, in example, get the monthly PPV poster shipped to your mailing address.

My big issue with the WWE Network is who is the target audience? The big draw I see is for current, upcoming PPVs & all past PPVs. Personally, I've seen all the past PPVs, when they happened. The current PPVs for $10 is a nice QOL improvement from having to d/l the day after or find a (low quality) stream. It seems like a lot of current Network subscribers are people that were already watching everything online anyway. Do fans of the current product clamor to see past PPVs? Do people in other regions not just stream the Network now via watching online Streams like we used to do with PPVs? I guess I just don't see a whole lot of growth potential but then again, I don't know anything about business. The number can't realistically go down by opening it up to the planet, I would assume but that's going to cost a lot more money to make happen, right?

Yeah, nothing worse than the Wrestling Observer reporting on non-wrestling stuff to me. But I know it's part of the show now, so I just avoid it altogether. I still don't believe in this magically, ficticious world of cross-over appeal between wrestling & MMA. Also wouldn't be surprised to see women from Total Divas get the axe. I assume they have some episodes in the can already. If not, they can just put another girl in there. Women like Rosa, Cameron & that don't really add anything at all to WWE.

I thought he already got fired with the mass layoffs last time?