Coffey

I think the Dust Brothers have been pretty much the best non-Titus O'Neill thing going in the WWE for the past couple of months. They haven't done anything in a month. I concede, when the bell rings, they're good. Goldust obviously being better. My problem is all the out of ring stuff. These "comedy" vignettes & whatnot. Stardust just looks like a moron. I guess I don't "get it."

I don't want this Stardust wrestlecrap going any further, that's for sure.

I hope it's a key to a locker with a pink slip.

I am not a fan of how this show is building to a showdown between Stephanie McMahon & Brie Bella. That should not be a focal point of the road to Summerslam. EDIT: I guess I'm out of touch. The crowd ate it up.

Which was admittedly better than midgets beating off in trash cans, cage dancing strippers, The Dupps, etc.

Is "none" not an option?

To me, Jeff Jarrett has always pretty much sucked. TNA certainly wasn't anything special when he was around. Why would I have faith in him to do any better with Karen Angle by his side? Same as when I heard news about Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins wanting to get into pro-wrestling. That's great, but why would I watch? What's the hook? Just indie name guys & expecting them to put on good matches? What is going to make it better than NXT?

WWE have a lot of guys on their roster right now that I really dig. My problem as a fan and a viewer is they keep putting the people I care about & want to get behind in the ring with people I don't care about nor want to see. Granted, I doubt many of us here are what WWE would consider normal, everyday fans. I haven't been to a live event in years, in example. I do have WWE Network but before the Network, I'm not sure what the last WWE PPV that I paid full price for was. I certainly don't go on the website & order merchandise. I am curious if that's a mentality that other fans would have though. Like, I'm never, ever going to care about Randy Orton, The Big Show, Kane, etc. ever again...but they don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. If I were a big Roman Reigns fan, a feud with Randy Orton is exactly the sort of thing that would make me not care about him anymore. A guy being pushed as the next great main eventer, that only has four moves, and you're going to put him in a feud with a guy, that will probably last three PPVs in a row, that does nothing but headlocks. Complete apathy. At this point, in WWE, it feels like there's only a few ways to get looked at as if you're a big deal: squash people the caliber of Orton, beat John Cena or put on great matches. Instead, you're more likely to trade wins with Orton/Jericho, lose to Cena & if you put on great matches, you'll get cheered like Dolph but it doesn't mean WWE will ever care.

Foley getting thrown off the Cell, Snuka's top of the Cage Splash & The Rockers break-up are all good inclusions. So is the towel being thrown in for the Sheik/Backlund match. Maybe something TLC related, with Jeff Hardy jumping/falling off something high?

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin hitting the first "Stunner" on Vince McMahon, maybe? Or maybe the Austin 3:16 promo. Austin & The Rock are the two biggest stars along with Hogan, so they both have to be involved some how, I'm sure.

Reading all the news about this & replies on various wrestling forums, this is one of the most fun days I've ever had on the internet. I can't stop smiling! Just losing my shit. I'm legitimately happy about this news. I don't know if that's terrible or not but that's honestly how I feel. TNA is so far beneath WWE that I don't think it would happen, but if Steph or Triple H threw in a random, off hand throwaway comment tonight shitting on TNA that would be the grand finale to this knee-slapper of a day.

I hated Day 2 & thought it was super overrated, even by a few people here in this thread on this site. Not that Day 1 was anything great but at least it had matches I cared about. Getting ready to watch Day 3 & the bar isn't real high, so hopefully it's better. Okada Vs. Makabe should be good. One of the matches of the tournament I'm anticipating.

Kinda think this is where he's going to be anyway, honestly. Or he'll get turned into a Seth Rogan comedy character. I guess I just don't have a lot of faith in Sami Zayn on the main roster. Do people see him in NXT right now & think "this guy has RAW main eventer all over him." I just don't see it. Of course, I didn't see it with Punk or Bryan either & they proved me wrong. I've been wrong before, I'll be wrong again...but I still think the odds of being a Paul London are better than being a C.M. Punk.

Kids also don't have any money and the marquee shows (RAW and PPVs) are both on school nights. So they have to talk their parents into letting them watch the violent show, stay up past bedtime AND spend money...

I just can't foresee WWE every really doing anything risky since becoming publicly traded. I just think back to guys like Daniel Bryan or Fit Finlay getting fired over things that should have been complete non-issues. It's hard to be a program based around physicality to elicit an emotion when everytime you do something that cause people to express emotion, you have to apologize & take action. I used to put some blame on the TV-PG rating but I think the rating isn't so much as the problem as what WWE interprets PG in 2014 as is. It's not like I'm clamoring for women running around in thongs again, or guys bleeding in every match...but it would be nice if someone got accidentially busted open in a cage match if you didn't have to see them get medically attended to mid-match from a ref wearing latex gloves. Should John Cena turn heel? I mean, honestly, at this point, I don't think it matters if he does or not. I just don't feel like anything would be any different. To me, it would just be like when Randy Orton turned heel, or anyone else. All that changes is his opponents. I don't think alignment changes matter anymore; kayfabe is dead. The fans know about his Make-A-Wish contributions. They know he's dating Nikki Bella. They've seen him on Howard Stern & Nickelodeon shows. He's been humanzied. There's not really any mystique anymore. I more think he'll just stay a babyface (or whatever he is now) because WWE don't want to rock the boat. Don't want to worry stockholders... *IF* WWE want to turn him heel, I think they have a pretty good story laying in the weeds with John Cena becoming obsessed with breaking Ric Flair's title record until he's forced to take drastic measures to do so.

I think it's interesting that he says he thinks that Seth Rollins looks like a star but Dean Ambrose doesn't.

Judging by what I've seen of Davey Richards in the past & semi-recently a couple weeks back on Impact, I think NXT would have done him some good. He reminds me a lot of Teddy Hart, which is not a compliment.

Booking for TV ratings, heel authority figures, 20 minute show opening promos, crass humor (projectile vomiting, dropping shit on people, etc.), McMahon's all over TV (was Vince, now it's Steph & Hunter), etc. They're definitely are a lot of them.

Wait, what? I thought the main event match was supposed to be Rusev Vs. Sheamus? When did that change? That kinda makes me sad.

There's just so many guys in the tournament this year that I'm apathetic too. Made worse by the injury to Ibushi getting replaced by Honma. Outside of Styles, the whole Bullet Club stable just sucks to me. I'm never going to care about Anderson, Gallows, Fale, Takahashi or Tonga (although I like his new facepaint look). Not real high on the inclusion or Shelton Benjamin or Yano either. That dude is the shits. Up there with Iizuka & Capt. New Japan for fast-forward material to me. Any match-up between Suzuki, Styles, Tanahashi, Okada, Shibata, Ishii, Makabe & Nakamura I'm down with. Everyone else in the tourney is very "meh" for me. Including Goto, whom my friend John loves but I feel like he's lost a step & his selling is the pits.

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.