NintendoLogic

Last night's Raw isn't the only thing leading me to believe that I like Shawn quite a bit less than I thought I did. I recently compiled a list of my 50 favorite matches, and Shawn was only on two of them. Then again, I've always kind of had the sense that Shawn's been in a bunch of quality matches but not that many essential ones. Like, GFBE is objectively a really good match, but there's plenty of matches I'd place above it.

I like how AW concedes that a joke about Sandusky or the Colorado shooting should be grounds for dismissal. I guess comedy really is tragedy plus time.

Shawn's performance on Raw tonight has made me question every single positive thing I said about him in this thread.

The Angle/Cena feud was when Cena really started getting booed out of the building every night. Despite the WWE's comically heavy-handed attempts to turn the crowd against Angle (having him insult the troops, giving him Daivari as a manager, censoring the "you suck" chants), he was still getting cheered over Cena. Eventually, they just gave up and turned Angle face. The poinf of the promo where Angle said he didn't like black people and wanted to make Jesus tap out was that people would still cheer him no matter what he said or did.

Not to my knowledge. But they really were playing with fire by doing an anti-American gimmick in the wake of 9/11.

Not if they actually do kill you.

I recall the UnAmericans being concerned for their safety because they were drawing the wrong kind of heat. In certain parts of the country, a heel doing something offensive to the flag would probably cause a riot.

1997 is not the 70s or 80s. And even then, it would have been a much bigger deal if Bret Hart had humped the American flag.

There's tons of shit that worked in the past that wouldn't fly today, like sneaky Japanese heels. Society advances. And the degree to which heels in the old days had free rein to offend is overstated. After the Brazilian flag incident, people were saying that Jericho was just being an old-school heel. I can't find the post, but Dave said that any promotion that ran a flag desecration angle in the 70s or 80s would have been thrown off TV.

At its core, wrestling is escapist entertainment. There are some lines that shouldn't be crossed. If you have to hit that far below the belt to get heat, you're a pretty lousy heel.

Apparently, the last straw for A W was this tweet from Thursday: For those who are unaware, Rosa Mendes recently filed a police report because her fiance was beating her. And yes, he's having one hell of a Twitter meltdown.

So A W, the Kobe rape joke guy, got released today. To say that he isn't taking it very well would be quite the understatement. From his Twitter:

There may have been a degree of lifetime achievement with Benoit, but I think it was more a case of them needing someone to keep the belt warm until Orton and Batista were ready to be elevated. HHH had gone through the entire Raw roster, so they brought in a top guy from Smackdown for fresh matchups.

Dave's response to the lifetime achievement argument: The "you" in question is rovert.

I'd actually like to see a game where Alvarez taunts the player with "NO BUYS!" and "MINUS FIVE STARS!" He could be like the dog in Duck Hunt.

Isn't it basically the same thing he did with Jim Duggan? Taking badass brawlers and turning them into a kid-friendly comedy act?

There was also the curiosity factor of it being the first single brand PPV.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Kurt Angle. Debuts as a heel in 1999 Turns face with the rest of the WWF in 2001 Turns heel by joining the Alliance later in 2001 Turns face after returning from injury in 2003 Turns heel on Eddy in 2004 Turns face after the Cena feud in 2006 Then there's all his turns in TNA, which I haven't bothered to keep track of. Note that Vince directed him to join the Alliance as a mole, so depending on your perspective, you could add turning on the Alliance at Survivor Series and aligning with Vince the next night to the list.

I Don't even LIKE Kane that much! I was arguing against a Shawn Michaels match more than anything else there. Then you guys got all hyperbole on me and... bah. I wonder how bad his reading comprehension is to get that idea. He must only read capitalized words or something. It was a joke. Lighten up, Francis.

Most importantly, I hear the set has lots of Demolition.

If they have a problem, they should man up and unionize.

And goodhelmet thought he could contain Demolition to a single thread.

I thought that Eddy had become one of the WWE's biggest draws at that point, particularly among Latinos. Also, I wonder how many non-fans would notice Nash's buddy Shawn Michaels at the airport.

One variable that, to my knowledge, has never been examined in great detail is the relationship between the health of the wrestling industry and the health of the economy as a whole. A cursory look at the data indicates to me that the two track pretty well. It's not a perfect correlation, but it does appear to be statistically significant.

I've never heard Nash take credit for Austin and the Attitude Era before. A while back, Dave said that either Nash has undergone a significant mental decline in the past few years or Twitter has exposed him as just another dumb wrestler. I'm inclined to say it's a little from column A and a little from column B.