Coffey

you seriously have the worst opinions about everything Well seeing as how I don't even know who you are or remember a single one of your posts, thanks, I guess?

Emma just isn't very good, straight-up. However I don't think that really matters so much to this issue. WWE seem like hypocrites here.

I had never seen her work before & just assumed she sucked. The first time I ever saw her actually wrestle was on NXT against Bayley in a match that I just assumed would be a Bayley showcase match. I was wrong. It was in the first round of the NXT Women's Title Tournament. I won't say she's great because that would be hyperbole. I will say, she impressed me & was a lot better than I thought she was going to be. I think she has potential.

I love RybAxel. They're like a throw-back tag team to the 80's for me. Ryback is like the bully in every teen movie from the 80's. It's priceless. I, too, wish they played up the dumb jock thing more. They're a pretty good team, honestly. There's just not a lot of them flying around in WWE right now. Usos Vs. RybAxel has happened so many times already for no reason that it would be hard to make a crowd care about it now. I wouldn't be mad at them getting a run with the belts though. Maybe after The Ascension gets called-up & topples the Usos, WWE will look at RybAxel again & try to do something with them.

1. Probably Luke Harper. 2. Rusev Vs. Big E, Hoss on Hoss crime at WWE Money in the Bank 2014. Good, stiff sprint with a SICK bump off the Spear. 3. Tomohiro Ishii, Katsuyori Shibata & early André the Giant. 4. A ROH show in Dayton, Ohio back when Homicide & Samoa Joe were still around I think. I went to a WWE house show back when D-Lo Brown was still employed there, so it's been awhile for sure. Not a lot of live shows around me & it's not fun to travel to shows solo. A lot of my friends don't watch wrestling like they used to. 5. Does John Cena Vs. Brock Lesnar 2 at Summerslam count? That should be good. I need to catch up on my New Japan as well. I still need to watch Dominion. 6. There's a lot of fun stuff on the post-show(s) for RAW/PPV on the WWE Network. Anything where Renee Young gets ribbed is great. A Terry Funk promo from an Insane Clown Posse show (of all things) had me in stitches though. He straight called Piper's mother a whore & I just fell the fuck out. 7. Stuff about the time frame for the return of Daniel Bryan. It just keeps getting worse & worse. 8. I'm not sure. I can leave most of them. Steve Austin has a few good ones. I used to listen to The LAW a lot but I find myself disagree with them so much & I can't stand Meltzer talking, so I stopped. I like the pre-interview parts of the Ross Report when he just talks about wrestling. 9. The Elimination Chamber: The Wyatt Family Vs. The Shield. A hot crowd & a great match with a clean finish.

Paige is not great, all around. Maybe terrible is too strong of a word but she needs work. You can tell that she's really young & pretty green. She can't talk, at all but not a lot of people can anymore. Scripted promos kill a lot of talent. Her ring work isn't great but like Natalya, if you slap on a submission people ooh & awe & think you're some how "technical" all of a sudden. Even the little things, like Paige's ring entrance, really, really sucks. I don't think she was ready to get called up at all. She wasn't impressive in NXT but a lot of people fawned over her around the internet because she was pretty. They'll deny that's what it was, but that's exactly it. Overrating her because she was attractive. Same shit that happened with Trish Stratus. Obviously some people might disagree with that assessment & could probably make a great argument to the contrary but that is what I have seen & what I feel. If Paige looked like Jazz, no one would care about her at all, in my opinion. Paige is a decent bumper already though. That match at Money in the Bank with Naomi wasn't terrible but that was mostly, surprisingly, because Naomi was doing big, athletic spots. Paige took a couple sick bumps to her credit though. Or maybe to her detriment as the back bump to the outside was dumb. Paige also suffers from horrible booking. Her debut was the pits with her being the in-awe newcomer stumbling over her words to just be in the same ring with the real "star." Then all of her matches were her taking a beating (even by people the live audience has been trained over the years to not take seriously) until she could hit a move to get an out-of-nowhere win that made them all look like flukes. Then, last night, AJ Lee just beat her right after her return, pretty much reenforcing that belief that she was a paper champion & a fluke. She might have reached her ceiling in NXT as I'm not sure what more the people down there actually learn once they're put on TV. She certainly doesn't seem like she's ready for RAW. Then again, WWE put people that aren't ready for RAW on RAW all the time, like Cameron or Eva Marie or girls like Kelly Kelly in the past & Paige is certainly better than them. She's still really young & barring injury, she'll get a lot better. She needs a lot of work though, all around. On her character, her ring work, her promos, everything. Even the shit that a lot of us never talk about & act like it doesn't matter (ring attire, makeup, etc.) -- I know it's a faux pas to mention that stuff...but it matters on the big stage of high def. WWE RAW. I'm all for the women in WWE getting more shine, getting treated better & putting on good matches. The crowd seemed really into the AJ Lee return last night on RAW & the confrontation between AJ Lee & Paige, so I think it's possible, it just takes WWE to get behind them & treat them as equal to the men...which is a long, uphill battle. I have seen great women's wrestling. Mostly in Japan. As long as the fans are acting like Trish Stratus Vs. Lita is the top rung of the ladder, women's wrestling in WWE will always suck. Same goes for the commentary team burying the women, that doesn't help anyone. I know it might not sound like it from this post but I do really like Paige. She's only 21-years-old, for heaven's sake, so she obviously has a lot of upside. Putting her in the ring with Cameron, Aksana, Alicia Fox & Brie Bella is not going to make anyone care about her. Just being better than the rest of the division when the rest of the division is the drizzling shits doesn't mean you're good though, the bar has to be higher.

Pray it happens sooner cause this Stardust shit is embarrassingly horrific.

Speaking of Chris Hero & the ROH Pure Title reminded me of one of my favorite moments in ROH: during an ROH Pure Title Match, the power went out for a short time. Chris Hero informed the ring announcer to tell the referee that during the blackout, his opponent had used all of his rope breaks. It was just a funny moment making the best of a bad situation.

It's a shame that no matter what, some fans will never give the women a chance.

This. Although the match was still good with some insane bumps. That Rollins bump on the horizontal ladder was nuts.

Match was legit. Jeez. This show is on fire.

So I guess we can't have too many good things in a row, gotta throw in that WWE "comedy."

Goddamn, the women put on their workin' boots tonight.

That curtain jerk tag was awesome. I can't wait for the Luke Harper solo push. Dude is MONEY!

This would be insane! Would immediately shake things up & would be totally unpredictable. What do you build to, what's the blow off? Ambrose as Champ that can't be controlled by The Authority 'cause he's nuts, a feud with Seth Rollins to continue & tease dissension/jealously from Reigns? Then an Orton babyface turn cause Triple H has given Rollins Orton's spot? That could work. You can still do Cena/Lesnar as it doesn't need the belt. You can do Triple H/Reigns. And then Ambrose/Rollins for the title program...but they would take a third seat behind the other two feuds and then what does Orton do for Summerslam? As a babyface against Kane for punishment?

I think it would be cool if Rowan & Harper won the tag team titles & Wyatt won the Money in the Bank match so RAW can open tomorrow with the Wyatt Family coming out with all the gold. That being said, I think the Usos will retain & Cena will win the title. The Usos can lose to Ascension when called up & Cena gets to his feud with a returning Lesnar. I guess neither of those circumstances is terrible. A disaster to me would be Orton winning the belt, or Del Rio. I actually like Ryback & Axel, it's a shame they're such jobbers. Maybe "Stardust" will turn on Goldust now or something? Who knows.

At this point, I'll take ANYTHING new. Even fucking Santino: World Champion. I don't care, just not Cena or Orton again.

It's true that Josh Matthews getting replaced by Renee Young on the panel is nothing but a 100% positive all around.

I would have Vader third, actually, behind both André the Giant & The Undertaker.

Speaking of The Exotic Express, I wonder a lot about how many of the current crop of guys ever watch or know of old footage & whatnot. I'm sure they have access to the WWE vault, no? You think Adam Rose has watched any Adrian Street...or Adrian Adonis for that matter? Or even Boogie Woogie Man Jimmy Valiant or Jimmy Garvin?

I feel like I'm in bizarro world or something because this Stardust shit is cringe-worthy as fuck to me. I want it to go away.

I've been spoiled by PWO. The people here & the conversation has definitely influenced my perception & perspective on pro-wrestling over the last few years. As I watch more stuff & become more familiar with the work of other wrestlers, my opinions often change. Wrestlingforum.com is like a hybrid forum of marks and wanna-be "smarks" (*cringe*). It's just a huge mass influx of many, many fans, mostly with negative attitudes, all trying to appear more "smart" than the other while being overly concerned with being labeled a mark or getting worked. So when thread polls or lists pop-up, they're entertaining for me to read. From the era of Twitter, the fans trying to be perceived as insider fans or whatever the fuck the term is this week, you'll get people trying to name-drop ex-wrestlers just because they've read other people say they're good. Things of that nature. Or people being contrarian just for the sake of it. I come on here & I go to the Microscope & I can find a thread on most wrestlers name-dropped & read page after page of well-written replies about the strengths, weaknesses, flaws & positives about most wrestlers, along with good matches recommended & whatnot. So when I see a thread over there about Top 10 WWE in-ring workers (or something similar) at first, I'm thinking...what the hell is even the criteria? Isn't that subjective to begin with? Obviously different fans look for different things & when you factor in how long you have been watching, with your age & how much exposure to certain wrestlers you have, your opinions will differ. I was certainly not expecting to open the thread & see names like Rob Van Dam, Randy Orton & Dean Malenko though. How many matches did Malenko even have, total, in WWE? Someone even said Lance Storm. Heh. Everyone & their mother was listing Kurt Angle & Shawn Michaels & I remember reading them both being picked-apart here over the time I've been around. Just a completely different world from one website to the next. I wonder how much of that is related to simply the average age here being higher? Or maybe it's just from seeing more stuff, I'm not sure. I just think it would be a different beast entirely around here, with people making arguments for names that would not even come up over there. I know this is a random reply & that board has nothing to do with this one, it was just something I was thinking about is all. I know there was like a Top 100 worker thread (something like that) which had people, including Loss & Dylan (if I recall) working pretty hard to update it & change numbers & whatnot. If that list is just WWE work only & only a Top 10, what names come up? From the change from WWWF to WWF in 1979 to present day, who are the ten best workers in WWE based on solely their work in WWE? It's hard to look at a wrestler with a clean slate & being able to distance their non-WWE career (like work in Japan, territories or WCW, etc.) from how you perceive them. At least it is to me. I'm pretty fucking sure Rob Van Dam is not on any list anyone here would make, regardless.

I feel like everything that could be accomplished with cruiserweights would be better with tag teams. At least then it doesn't hurt guys' careers later on when they're seen as beneath the top guys. A good old fashioned tag team division, with teams, doing team moves & team strategy could work.

I was just talking with a close friend about this exact thing today. Talking about Charlotte, in NXT & how even though her expectations should be extremely high because her father was Ric Flair, they're lowered because she's a woman. Compared to someone like Camacho where his father was Meng/Haku, so the bar wouldn't be that high to begin with but was higher because he was a man. There's definitely a double-standard in pro-wrestling, at least WWE, when it comes to the sexes. Naomi isn't great but she's an athlete & she has improved by leaps & bounds in her short time in WWE. But she has a big butt...so her entire offense now revolves around her attacking people with her ass. It's demoralizing as a viewer. WWE told us that Molly Holly was fat. And she was a heel because she wasn't a slut. It's shameful. AJ Lee got over pretty damn well. Was a pretty good worker, a helluva bumper, a good talker. Had over a million followers on Twitter. She gets on commentary & they clown her like she's in a high school locker room. Why did Cameron get a job at all? She wasn't a wrestling fan, couldn't work, couldn't talk...brought nothing to the table. First one eliminated on Tough Enough. Couldn't even name a pro-wrestling match after her "Alicia Fox Vs. Melina" soundbyte. She was obviously only there because she wanted fame & fortune. So what did WWE do? They hired her anyway...and gave her exactly what she was after. Now she's on a WWE reality show... How does that make someone like Natalya, or a woman that worked her whole life to be a wrestler feel? Or the Diva Search competitions. WWE is just super sexist & they'll never put the women in a position to succeed as workers. They'll always be treated as second class & inferior to the men. That's why the Diva match is the "cool off" match in-between main events. They actually go out of their way to put that match in-between two hyped matches to bring the crowd down. Think about that. If you busted your ass to improve & then your role was to go out there & bring the crowd DOWN, how would you feel? It's a damn shame. Think of all the potential female fans they could grab if they did treat them as serious competitors instead of afterthoughts, whores or piss breaks.

Well, there could be. The problem a lot of the times seems to be with the performers themselves. No one seems to genuinely want to be a real heel anymore. No one wants to get screamed at, spit on & have fans want to assault them. They do spots that get pops, they tell jokes that make people laugh, they have entrance music that makes people stand up and sing and dance and clap and cheer. No one goes out there & just wants people to fucking hate them anymore. Nowadays the only heels that really work, where people actually dislike them, are when they suck. But if you go out & purposely suck, you're not going to last for very long. In a PG environment, of a publicly traded company, that intertwined with social media, how do you get over as a heel where everyone hates you? You can't have merchandise. You can't have toys. You can't have cartoons. You can't have a Twitter account. A lot of that means leaving money on the table. At the end of the day, it's a job. Who is going to do that?