NintendoLogic

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

In this era of diverse revenue streams, I don't really know that there's anything fans can do to make WWE change course once they're dead-set on a certain direction. They'll push who they want and work their way backwards to come up with justifications.

If that was Dylan's best shot, consider me unimpressed.

Regarding ad-libbing in reaction to the crowd, I agree that there's not much that can be done if the crowd actively refuses to buy what you're selling. But Sheamus should've realized that they were going to shit all over the Wrestlemania sign point and axed it.

I was just thinking about whether the Rumble impacts Rey's standing as an all-time great babyface. I never heard Ricky Steamboat get booed out of the building the way Rey was last night. Replies to anticipated responses: -Yes, there were the "Steamboat sucks" chants at the Chi-Town Rumble. But he won that crowd over in the end. -The crowd wasn't just pissed that Bryan wasn't there. Rey was booed pretty heavily during his appearance in the pre-match video package.

When has Orton ever been box office?

If this board had likes, I would register a million socko accounts so I could like this a million times. It's the self-fulfilling prophecy at work. They've decided that they want Reigns to be a top guy, so he's pushed and protected until he's over enough to justify the push.

The amusing thing to me was how hot the crowd was for Reigns at the end. It's like they were desperate for something positive they could grasp onto.

I'm kind of in the same boat as OJ when it comes to Portland. There's way too much sitting in holds (or working of holds, to put it more charitably) for my liking. The 11/8 (I think?) tag is no exception. Buddy Rose tried to keep things interesting, but when Rip Oliver was in there, it was chinlock city.

Would the Boot Camp Match qualify? I've heard Eddy/JBL described as Southern style, but I don't agree with that. Your mileage may vary.

The Bash match is way better. I Quit matches tend to suck as a rule.

I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Dave would bash Cena for selling too much.

Yeah, he gave Hokuto/Kandori ****3/4 in his initial review of Dreamslam. He actually considered the Double Inoue tag to be the MOTN. I believe he bumped it up to ***** in the 1993 year-end wrap-up issue.

I wasn't quite as high on this as everyone else. The main problem for me was that the ending felt completely disconnected from the body of the match. I agree with Pete that it would have worked better if Gibson had made a spirited comeback and forced a desperate Morton to resort to the laptop. As it was, it felt like everything up until the finish was just killing time and working the leg was as good a way to do it as any.

Yeah, the story goes that Inoki did so much damage to Ali's legs that his mobility was permanently impaired, which played a huge role in the pummelings he took in the final matches of his career. You can doubt it if you want, but it's not something I pulled out of my ass. It's been put forth by boxing historians.

No. I kind of feel like inducting Ali would be in poor taste considering that the HOF contains Antonio Inoki, the guy largely responsible for Ali being in the condition he's in.

The fact that he only gave Misawa/Kobashi from 1/20/97 ****3/4 kind of rustled my jimmies.

I don't think it's about presenting strong women. Look at that Raw segment from last year where she put herself over the entire Divas division.

If you were a WWE Superstar, why wouldn't you wait until the end of the show to show up? It's not like you're going to miss your scheduled match because there are no scheduled matches and you only get put in one if you run afoul of an authority figure.

Sentiment in the yearbook note seemed to be pretty split, with roughly half the people posting thinking the match wasn't very good at all. Count me among those who consider the match akin to watching paint dry.

As an aside, when Dave gave Punk/Cena *****, rovert asked if there were any other matches he gave that rating to that weren't technically smooth. At the time, I suggested TM/DK. After thinking about it some more, the correct answer is "every Manami Toyota match ever."

Not if you include the time during the commercial break.

I was going to mention the Henry match, but it went 13 minutes.

Yeah, I suppose. Honestly, cracking the *** barrier isn't all that impressive when you only work a handful of high-profile matches with some of the best workers in the company. The Ultimate Warrior had a pretty similar batting average in his PPV matches. The fact that Rock ended up getting seriously injured in both Cena matches is a clear indication that he had no business in a wrestling ring. What? No, that's not what I said at all. How on Earth did you get that? I was saying that post-comeback Rock was so bad that he made Zenk look like a superworker in comparison.

Hence, why I said Rey Mysterio might work here in my post. I thought the WM 26 match was fine, but I wouldn't call it good. Punk vs. Rock was extremely disappointing. I saw Flair have a better match in 1990 with Tom Zenk than Punk was able to in the second biggest show of the year with The Rock. Cena also had a better match the year before at Mania even though I don't think that is a great performance for him either. Was 1990 Tom Zenk completely gassed two minutes into every one of his matches? And the Rock/Cena matches weren't good at all. Both the Punk matches blow them out of the water. Come on now. I have yet to see one match from Zenk in 1990 where he didn't do one thing that wasn't incredibly stupid or had a performance I would call good. This whole argument is uncanny ability for you to deflect my original argument into something else. You said Flair in his prime couldn't have a good match with Rock in 2013, I threw up that 1990 Flair had a good match with a renowned shitty worker in Zenk. Now we want to compare Zenk to The Rock??? You know who else was a renowned shitty worker? The Rock during his comeback. Seriously, he was probably the worst wrestler in the world during that period. His cardio was worse than the Ultimate Warrior's, and he was so juiced that he was practically immobile. He made the Z-Man look like Ricky Steamboat. I'd say the Rumble match was close to **** with the NWO match a bit lower. The Cena matches topped out at ***. I have no interest in getting into a semantics debate, so if that doesn't meet your criteria for "blew out of the water," feel free to substitute whatever term you think is appropriate.