Coffey

I'd have Rusev's first lost come at his own hands: just have him beat the slop outta someone with a chair, or refusing to release the Accolade or something. That way he gets an L to end the streak but still looks strong. Then Lana can cut a promo about how only stupid Americans care about Streaks and they care about results or something.

There's not a single match on Night 2 that interests me. Next match I care about is on the 25th: Makabe Vs. Okada.

Personally speaking, I think not having that emotional connection with a lot of the characters is why sometimes I feel a disconnect from pro-wrestling, WWE in particular. Thanks to the power of the internet, I still watch a lot of pro-wrestling in a vacuum. I'll pick & choose shows or matches & then watch them. After watching them, I'll say "that was good" or "meh, whatever" but that takes them out of context. If I pick a random show out of a hat, from a random week from a random year (this happens a lot on WWE Network) I don't really have any knowledge of the stories going into the match, or what all else was going on during that time period so it eliminates a lot of the potential drama that could draw me more into a match. This is a big thing in Japanese wrestling too, where over time moves mean more because of what happened to get from point A to point B. Making near-falls mean more & whatnot. That's not to say that I can't see a good match & think it was a good match. I just view it like a sporting event, like an entertainment piece, no different than if I were watching a ball game that was really heated & close. I do agree that wrestling nowadays seems to be more about the physical nature of things than the emotional investment. The bar has been raised world over. The deterioration of the DDT is one of the things that makes me the most sad nowadays. That's the natural progression of the industry, I get that. Maybe a lot of it is just nostalgia too. I grew up watching Jake "the Snake" Roberts win matches with the DDT. It was booked like death. Now I turn on RAW & see Miz doing a seated DDT, Randy Orton doing a hanging second rope DDT & Dean Ambrose doing a top rope Tornado DDT, all on the same show & none of them were worth more than a 2-count (which no one in the audience bought). When was the last time someone in WWE won a match without their finish or a small package/rollup/school boy?

On a recent Jim Cornette Podcast on MLW Radio, with guest Lance Storm, they were talking about the pro-wrestling attitude era & how it did damage to the industry long-term. Short term, or as they called it hotshotting, it was super hot & was drawing big numbers but long term, well, we can see some of the lingering effects still to this day. Anyway, one of the issues brought up that I thought was interesting & would make a good discussion was how they mentioned that pro-wrestling in general used to be more about an emotional investment. In the characters, in the stories. You would get drawn in by the story of the match & would care because you knew the characters. They compared it to wrestling of today where it's all about the physicality. The wrestlers have to do a lot more to get noticed because the bar has been raised so high. Jim Cornette even mentioned one of the Briscoe Brothers in ROH wanting to do a balcony dive (which he did) where Jim asked him why & no one else had bat an eye to that point. They also talked about the Moonsault as their example of things changing so much. When The Great Muta did it, it was insane, no one had seen it before & it was great. Then Big Van Vader was doing it & he was a super heavyweight, so it was insane. Then women were doing it, like Lita. Then midgets, etc. Eventually no one cares about the Moonsault anymore so guys have to "up the ante" and you start getting shit like double Moonsaults off of cages & whatnot. Which is a great "oooh & awe!" spot but you're kind of forgotten about afterward because you're just all about moves & no one really has a vested interest in your character or if you win or lose.

It wasn't anything memorable, IMO. I thought Makabe Vs. Goto was better & even that was flawed, slow starting & suffered from too many trading stiff shots spots.

You watched the first day of the NJPW G1 Climax, didn't you? When that show was over, I was cussing up a storm about forearm trade-offs in the middle too. Every damn match had them.

I'm on board with Ambrose Vs. Cesaro though!

I'm not no-selling this by the way, just taking me time before elaborating to formulate my thoughts & opinion into words. I'm trying to go back & re-watch some of his stuff, tag stuff with Koko, Bulldog & Jarrett in particular, to give him a fair shake as well. The big disconnect for me initially is that I always just found him boring & a lot of his stuff not too memorable. Like during his Blackheart run, to me, he just came off as a worse version of Bret, which maybe isn't fair to him. So I'll get back to you.

You would think, right? It seems flawed. But with the current direction of the company, with the roster cuts, the new USA contract, the lack of subscribers for the WWE Network, stock coming back down to earth, etc. I'm not sure WWE higher ups would see anything other than "pay more money" ya know? Plus, I really like the UFC idea where every other month you could have a different match on top. It would be really cool to see a PPV where the main event is the IC title or Tag Team title & Cena isn't on the show. That just doesn't seem realistic though with the current landscape of WWE. It would take a lot of work & reconditioning.

I actually agree with Bill. I'm not a big fan of 1998 either. Even though I was a lot younger back then & wrestling was super hot, I was a bigger fan of WCW in '97 I guess & sort of felt like the landscape was on the decline (other than the rise of Goldberg) in '98. I didn't know as much about wrestling back then but none of it stands up on rewatch really. I remember being really mad that WWF "won" instead of WCW. I also liked ECW in '99 as it was all new & different to me. I wasn't used to seeing things like table spots...but a lot of those garbage spots definitely don't hold up with 2014 eyes. Although earlier Bill mentioned that the commentators no sold the nWo still wanting to take over the company when it split into black & white Vs. red & black & I didn't even notice that kind of stuff the first time around. Gave me a laugh to hear it explained like that but it's so true. On MLW.com there's a podcast with Jim Cornette & Lance Storm where they talk about how the Attitude Era has done more long term damage than short term good. I'm not sure many people would argue against that but it was interesting to hear them talk about how wrestling has changed from being emotionally driven to physically driven. I think that would be a great discussion. I might make that thread, actually.

Oh, I don't know, maybe. I've never had exceptionally long hair personally. It was just something I noticed a few weeks ago during Sasha's walk to the ring & now I can't not see it. She's pretty good though, so no complaints!

Watch an episode of NXT & take a shot everytime Sasha Banks does a hair flip...

I don't remember where I heard or read it from but this has come up in the past before & was answered with "if you have a lot of top guys, you have to pay a lot of top guys top guy money" or something like that. I'm not sure how much validity that even has but it is something to ponder, I reckon. I do imagine that Cena makes more in WWE than most. Maybe it's a thought-process layover from the guaranteed contracts in WCW where guys would have stipulations where if someone made more money than them, their pay went up.

Goddamn, I'm not. I HATED the brand split. The whole false-premise that it was like two different companies & shit. Smackdown still always felt like the jobber show with B-PPVs that a lot of people didn't care about. The "big" stars would all be on RAW & getting sent to Smackdown felt like a demotion. Not to mention the whole two world champions crap, which made the mid-card belts even worse by default. I think the negatives far outweighed the positives. Sure, we would have fresher matches every now & then...but you can still have that now by just not throwing everything out there on free TV. Stop giving away matches on RAW. Build up the physical confrontations. Stop having contenders beat the champs clean to earn a title shot. This is why I think Brock Lesnar would be a great WWE World Heavyweight Champion right now. He's not over exposed & still feels special BECAUSE he's on that part-time contract & not on every damn show. It's crazy to me reading on other forums people not wanting him to get the belt because he's part-time. If anything, that feels like a positive to me. If John Cena wasn't on every show under the sun, that might freshen him up too. But a brand split isn't the way to go about that. I would rather they just cancel Smackdown entirely. That show is worthless.

This picture just popped up on my timeline! This just made my entire day! :lol:

I read this same thing like a month ago & it was why I picked the Usos to win again, against my better judgment, and lo and behold they won. I don't really think the Ascension are ready but the tag belts on Rowan/Harper don't really help them any either. Of course, neither does another loss. The Wyatt Family have really fallen off lately. Still putting on good matches (at least anything with Harper) but they feel pretty directionless. I don't know if they will add a new member, or split or turn babyface or what. They've been on a pretty big slide since Elimination Chamber. That feud with Cena didn't do Bray ANY favors, that's for sure.

Well, I liked the third fall of the Wyatts Vs. Usos anyway... This show has been awful.

Jericho winning there is one of the dumbest things WWE have done this year but whatever. I don't think they give a piss about Wyatt anymore after feeding him to Superman Cena. I feel the same way about Chris Jericho in 2014 as I do about Rob Van Dam in 2014...if I had a time machine to go back to 1998, I might give a fuck. Otherwise, they both suck & I just want them to leave forever.

Man, you would have HATED stand-up comedy in the 80's!

So the WWE Network is $9.99 per month with a 6-month commitment. So then, why do they charge $9.99/mo. for each month, six times, instead of one fee for $59.94 for the whole six months? So when they go to draw the money from your account one month & it doesn't send the money, how much do the other $9.99/mo. become, since the "committment" wasn't fulfilled? Seems stupid to me... GAH

Underrated, there's a lot of people I want to name-drop. One Man Gang, Tito Santana, Butch Reed, Adrian Adonis, Bam Bam Bigelow. Actually, I feel like a lot of the bigger wrestlers are underrated as a whole due to working the big man style, especially in the United States. Now, more so than ever, if feels like if you're not doing high spots, the crowds turn on you. Obviously Bam Bam isn't in that category but the thought just occured to me. Overrated, the first person that came to mind (and this won't be popular) was Owen Hart. I think after his tragic, early death a lot of people started acting like he was better than he was. I never really got into him, ever. Everyone in wrestling talks about how great of a person he was and I don't doubt that but on-screen, he just bored me. I didn't want to see him.

I liked RAW a lot tonight. The Swagger/Zeb/Lana/Rusev segment was great, old school TV. The Sheamus match was fun. Fandango/Dolph was OK. Big E./Cesaro was fun. Thought Jericho's promo was good. Main was OK. Don't really have any complaints. Was a good week.

It also just seems exceptionally corny...

Two random WWE (NXT) thoughts, that doesn't deserve their own thread, but I think are more relevent here (as they're WWE related): Enzo Amore is really good. Maybe not as a wrestler (I haven't seen him wrestle yet) but as a mouth piece. He's over at Full Sail, the crowd was super into his return & I think he "gets" it. The whole catchphrases & gimmick & everything...he reminded me a lot of Road Dogg during the height of the New Age Outlaws popularity. Maybe it would wear thin if you saw it every week, but I hope he can become a good mouth piece for someone on the main roster. Justin Gabriel has all the potential in the world. When I first saw him on RAW, after the NXT season, when The Nexus did their debut on RAW, I thought he was going to be a bonafide superstar. I thought he had a great look, was a good wrestler & was going to be this generations Ricky Steamboat or something. Maybe as a mega-face that was super over with the ladies, sort of like what Jeff Hardy was. I'm not really sure what happened...he never really got a shot. He did some tag stuff & now he's back down on NXT. What happened? Did he get hurt, or does WWE have no faith in him because he's not a great talker or what? He makes everything looks so effortless in the ring.

You think the term IWC is bad? There's a YWC now! Youtube Wrestling Community. I'm not joking. A bunch of dudes, with followers, constantly uploading videos doing "reviews" or shows & "predictions" before PPVs & whatnot. Then them all using the YouTube comments to troll one another & call each other names. There's not an eye roll big enough for that but I've heard people say it with total sincerity.