Coffey

Like, ALL of their Pay-Per-Views are gimmick pay-per-views nowadays... Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber, Money in the Bank, Hell in a Cell, Extreme Rules, TLC. It's over kill. Admittedly, I loved when their were just four PPVs a year & Rumble & Survivor Series were the gimmick shows, I just don't know how it would really work today. WWE doesn't really do a lot of midcard stuff anymore. Storyline wise & the feuds are all recycled stuff between guys that have traded wins back-and-forth for five years. Wyatts Vs. Punk/Bryan makes sense. It makes sense because The Wyatts beat-up Punk/Bryan on RAW a couple weeks ago. The Shield/Wyatt stuff was just a teaser. So you don't throw out Wyatts/Punk & Bryan just to hot shot a clusterfuck match last second. I mean, I think more people care & would pay for Cena Vs. Del Rio than slapping The Usos & Rhodes Brothers in a big ass tag match. WWE is pretty stale top to bottom. There's a lot of great ring work going on but casual fans don't really give a fuck how "good" a match is. Shield/Wyatts will be hot. No reason to burn through it instantaneously. I mean, I know it's not like WWE has a great track record of letting stuff slow burn or play out over time lately but whatever. They're teasing tension between Shield/Wyatts & dissension between Reigns with Rollins/Ambrose. I think Reigns is going to be the next Batista style top babyface after he splits from The Shield & we might see the Wyatt/Shield confrontation/match be the catalyst for it instead of just being a heated feud.

Since RAW started, excluding Iron Man matches, what's the longest WWE match?

I disagree with the praise Natalya receives & think she's one of the worse off Divas. I don't think it would be a terrible loss if WWE parted ways with her.

I think the women are a lot more interesting to talk about. Mainly because in WWE, there seems to be a lot quicker of a turnaround. You rarely see a lot of Divas in WWE once they hit the age of 30 or so. Usually, anyway. Right now, on the WWE Diva roster you have: AJ Lee (26), Aksana (31), Alicia Fox (27), Brie Bella (30 in a week), Cameron (26), Eva Marie (29), JoJo (19!), Kaitlyn (27), Layla (36), Naomi (25), Natalya (31), Nikki Bella (30 in a week), Rosa Mendes (34), Summer Rae (29) & Tamina (35). On the NXT roster you have: Alexa Bliss (22), Bayley (24), Charlotte (27), Emma (24), Paige (21) & Sasha Banks (21). Aksana, Layla, Rosa & Tamina could be released & WWE could call up Emma, Paige & Sasha. One of the biggest "problems" WWE has ran into over the last few years is they either hire models & make them wrestle, or they hire wrestlers & make them model. If they hire wrestlers to wrestle & models to model, they're fine...but for whatever reason, we never get that. So we have had to watch stuff like Stacy Kiebler & Torrie Wilson wrestling matches. Now though, there's just beautiful women that know how to wrestle & with TV-PG, WWE doesn't do a lot of the raunchy stuff anymore. AJ Lee is pretty damn over. She has 1.15 million Twitter followers. A lot of little girls look up to her & that's with her portraying a heel on TV. If WWE would bother to spend the time to do so, I think the women's division could be a big thing for them right now. They have to shed the stigma that it's the "piss break" match. Give them actual stories, let them work real matches & I think with AJ, Kaitlyn, Summer, Emma & Paige they could have something. But it'll never happen if they keep putting people like Eva Marie, Aksana & Cameron in the ring...

And he's sucked for twenty years. Kane was the first name that came to mind when I thought "If I could get rid of anyone, one single person, who would it be?" Mask, no mask, heel, face, serious, comedic...it doesn't matter. He's done it all & it's all tired at this point. We've seen him shock Shane McMahon's testicles with a car battery, set Jim Ross on fire, use a voice box to tell people to "suck it!", cut a "Kanenites" Hulk Hogan promo, wrestle a technical match with Big Show for some reason, do the Hell No therapy comedy skits & "hug it out." His entire career is ridiculous. He's always just been a second-rate Undertaker at best & an unfunny, lumbering goof at worst.

Kane, Christian & R-Truth are the first ones that came to my mind. Probably Jerry Lawler too. Although they're damaged goods right now, I think Drew McIntyre, Dolph Ziggler, Wade Barrett & Jack Swagger are salvageable. I would launch Curtis Axel into the sun. That dude is never going anywhere. How has Teddy Long had a job for so long? He doesn't even DO anything... Looking at the roster on WWE.com, I'm surprised some of those people are even still around. Plus, why does it list Los Matadores & Epico/Primo both? Just to make the roster bigger? Half the people on there are non-wrestlers or guys not around anymore. Seriously, look: http://www.wwe.com/superstars The roster is DREADFUL. There's like, no star power at all. It's all jobbers, non-wrestlers & guys like Rock, Taker, Brock that are never around. Think of how many scruds are going to be in the Rumble early next year. Holy crap... EDIT: anarchistxx replied while I was typing. I would put Heath Slater in the Dolph Ziggler role. Slater makes dudes look great. Break-up 3MB, put Slater in that role, push Drew Mac as a mid-card heel again & can Jinder. I still have faith in Gabriel, think there's a place for guys like Santino, Ricardo, Clay & Otunga but really struggle to defend the other names. What is Sandow ever going to do? What is The Miz ever going to do at this point? It's just like when Jericho comes back now. I mean, why? It's the Christian spot.

Name names! Who should go? I think it's always an interesting conversation. I mean, on one hand you need job guys, on the other hand, the show really feels stale because it's the same people going nowhere just trading wins back-and-forth forever. They're also real people with real families though & them getting fired would suck for them. It's not like there's a ton of people on NXT waiting for the call up right now. I really enjoyed the ending to the show tonight. That crowd was electric & I was feeling like a kid again during the Wyatt/Shield stare down. Good stuff.

Big John Studd came to my mind first. Terry Taylor too, honestly. The non-Saturn parts of Raven's Flock (Sickboy, Reese, Lodi, Van Hammer, Scotty Riggs). The majority of the crappy stable guys from old WWF in the late 90's -- DOA, Los Boricuas, Mean Street Posse. Dan Maff too.

Crazy crowds, to me, make the shows (or a match) a lot more fun. I think back to old ECW crowds, or the Toronto crowds (especially for Hogan Vs. Rock at Wrestlemania) or the post-Wrestlemania RAW crowds the last few years. They make it so much more fun, for me, as a viewer to watch. It feels different. Granted there's a fine line too. If a crowd is just trying to be smarky, like some ROH crowds, it goes beyond fun & just becomes distracting & annoying. The Rock Vs. Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania X-8 is the biggest example of a crowd making a match. That match was certainly not anything special work wise but with the crowd going totally bananaâ„¢ for even back rakes, it was hard, at least for me, to not get sucked up in the atmosphere. When Hogan "hulks up" that place loses its damn mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHoIm72F9Nc

The Jim Ross Blog from his website yesterday afternoon: Feel like he touched on several talking points that a lot of us could agree with. Found it interesting & thought I would post it here for people to read if anyone missed it.

I'm a pretty shallow guy, so yes, depending on what she looks like. It's not like you have to talk down to her & act like she's stupid because she doesn't read dirt sheets or message forums. I dated a girl once that wasn't into pro-wrestling AT ALL. Used to clown on me, playfully, for watching it. She would still watch some stuff with me but she didn't care about it. Sort of how I felt when watching something with her that I didn't care about (like that god-awful True Blood show on HBO). Actually, that could be quite fun. You could go to local shows together or get tickets to a RAW. Forewarning though, that shit is expensive nowadays. Not just the tickets but you know you're going to have to buy her some merchandise & concessions too. You can always order & watch a Pay-Per-View together which turns a Sunday into sort of a geeky date night too. At least you two would have something in common.

Current Fav Five (as in, from current stuff, not anything I've watched from any era) - Hiroshi Tanahashi - Katsuyori Shibata - Kazuchika Okada - Roman Reigns (The Shield as a whole have been great, especially Reigns/Rollins in the tag scene but if I'm just picking one, it's Reigns) - Antonio Cesaro I want to mention Summer Rae & A.J. Lee is some fashion too because I think they're doing good things in WWE & NXT respectively for the ladies. Also, some of my favorite in WWE, like Brock Lesnar or Mark Henry haven't been around for awhile. The Rhodes brothers have also been awesome, as have The Usos. The tag stuff in WWE lately has been golden.

Why don't you just stop reading the internet?

I didn't know if I should reply to this thread or the Current WWE thread but what I quoted was here, so I guess I'll reply here: I have not posted here in a long time, about a year, but this quote above by Loss is awesome & right on the money. I know Loss & I haven't seen eye-to-eye in the past on things, but he's a very observant & intelligent guy & he articulated this point in a few sentences with what would have taken me multiple paragraphs to say in a worse way. I don't know Nell Santucci, he's a newer member, but I was enjoying reading what he was saying in the Current WWE megathread & agreeing with a lot of it. Not all of it, mind you as some of it seemed like hyperbole, but I thought he was making some good points. For it to be completely disregarded by cm funk was disheartening to say the least. When it broke down into petty name-calling, I just didn't want to read it anymore. That's the sort of stuff that will run people off & stifle conversation which doesn't really do any of us any good, right? Personally speaking, I want to read the bad just as much as I want to read the good opinions about shows. I thought Hell in a Cell was a one-match show (the tag title match) but found RAW last night pretty good as a lot of unpredictability took place. So reading opinions that are the opposite of that, someone loving Hell in a Cell & hating RAW would be more interesting to me than just reading someone that agreed with me. Telling someone that doesn't like the current product to stop watching is a cop out to me. It's not like we're fair weather wrestling fans that just hop off the bandwagon when everything isn't peachy keen, right? The majority of us here have been watching for over twenty years. Telling someone to just walk away, Lord Humungus style, after that amount of time because they don't share your exact sentiment is being naive.

Wow, alright, since you're just going to hold a grudge & throw a fuckin' pouty fit, I'll just go away.

We need some criteria set in stone. :-) Like, what are we supposed to base our votes off of? Personal favorites? In-ring work?

Let's be honest, there's not a single wrestling fan that thought Linda had a prayer. If they're a wrestling fan that knows anything about politics as well? Everyone knew it was a waste of time & money. Just like last time. She doesn't know what the fuck she's doing. She doesn't have any experience. She can't talk to save her life. What positive does she have going for her, exactly? She has money? Well now she's $100 million lighter.

If you know someone like Ric Flair is going to get a ton of points, are you going to rate him lower because you know he's going to show up & put someone else higher on your list so they have a better showing? If a couple different people were to do that, it would definitely affect the list & could get a guy to drop a spot or two. I guess that's the nature of the beast & kind of the point though.

That would be fun but I don't envy the guy in charge of it; tallying up all the votes. Seems like a lot of work!

Thinking about it, I've seen almost Rey's entire career & he doesn't have a bad period. I think his Filthy Animals unmasked run in WCW was probably his worst but even then, the matches weren't bad. I mean, when he's going over Scott Norton in like ten seconds after a low-blow obviously that's garbage, but I don't think those are the types of things that people remember great workers for. Mysterio also has going for him working in all three big U.S. promotions of the cable era & being good in all of them. I think you & I greatly differ on Savage though as to me, he's in my top 5. He's also one of the biggest reasons why I got into wrestling period too though so maybe my opinion on him is slanted. His early stuff was great. His WCW stuff, not so much. I need to re-evaluate a lot of guys too, like Martel, Morton, Eaton, Santana & Anderson.

The whole list is hard. Which is why it is both frustrating & fun. Funk, Flair, Savage, Steamboat, Hennig, Rude, Hansen, Williams, Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, DiBiase, Lawler & Vader I have all ahead of him. Which of those, if any, would you disagree with? Then there's guys like Liger, Guerrero, Windham, Tully, Gordy, Jumbo, etc. & it starts getting fuzzy.

I have him in the 20-25 area but on any given day, his number can jump or fall three or so slots in either direction.

Rey Mysterio, Jr. is interesting to talk about as his career has to be winding down now. I think he's great but I never bought him as a top guy. He has a pretty stacked résumé of great matches but I still can't put him ahead of SO many guys. Curious where abouts everyone else has him landing?

The thing that bothers me the most about A.J. is that WWE has portrayed her as a literal child. Like she's a twelve-year-old running around or something. I didn't watch a single second of RAW tonight & I don't feel like I missed anything. I think the ship has finally sailed for me.

He's never not going to be on there. It's his radio show. Dave's constant "ya know?" drives me insane! Plus, to be perfectly honest, when they start talking about MMA, I either fast-forward or shut off the show. I just like to hear post-RAW & post-PPV opinions I guess. I mean, I don't think I care what Meltzer or Alverez either one ever says, it's not like it sways my opinion any, but I do find that Bryan tends to be closer to my opinions than Dave does. Although both of them seem to be completely ignorant to the rest of the world. It always blows my mind when they don't know, as an example, who a top athlete is, or don't get a TV or movie reference. It's almost funny while at the same time being somewhat sad. Also, it made me literally laugh aloud, almost to the point of tears, when I heard that Dave Meltzer reviewed that new shitty Kevin James movie...just because there's some MMA in it. What a fucking joke. The same reason I don't want to listen to Jalen Rose talk about the New York Yankees I don't want to hear Dave Meltzer talk about movies.