dexstar

I hope they do a call back and Cena hits Lesnar with the chain but doesn't get the 3 count

Anyone else think Brock is interfering, Cesaro is assisting the beat down, and Cesaro "leaving" Heyman is a swerve because all three are now "Authority Guys"?

I'm normally an optimist with WWE, but after the past couple months, I assume Brock will come out and immediately get laid out by Adam Rose

Stephanie McMahon meets Piper Kerman - check out the new season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix! Though I would mark for HHH pedigree'ing Larry

"Jungle" - X-Ambassadors

Not to flood, but my fantasy booking for Brock tonight: HHH is about to make an announcement and gets cut off by the gong the druids come the casket comes brock pops out of the casket and F5's a stunt child actor in a wheelchair

The most infuriating thing about this Flo Rida intrusion is that the "official song" from last night is actually a good song and getting buzz in hipster circles and instead of a band like that they have Flo Rida doing club singles from over 12 months ago.

Me and my buds always boo him like crazy when we go to WWE, but yeah, it's not because we actually hate him. It's just more fun.

The 1 hr run time is a big aspect too - that HHH match and the Main had to be pushing an hour combined. Not sure how'd you cut that stuff up to fit. If they wanted to feature him, maybe they could just recut that "Monster" video to include the title win and give people the full Bryan v. Authority synopsis in one nice video.

Considering it seems like they have no idea if Bryan will ever wrestle again, I understand using the NBC slot to showcase people who are gonna be around in the future.

If Cena were to retire for a bit, and then return after a year or couple years away as a "legend", he'd get a mammoth pop. Remember - people hated him back in 2008 too, but when he came back early from the injury at the Rumble, the Garden went nuts for him.

That is correct. What a messed up story that was.

When I was a kid in the 90s, the Detroit News had a sportswriter who had a column on Fridays and basically did a small summary of the Observer news on WWF/WCW. I didn't know it was from the WON at the time but it was definitely a smart column that talked about things in hardcore terms, just really generally. I'm sure that wasn't the only paper in the country that did that. By the time we got AOL in 1996 I was already one of these "casual smart fans" or whatever. And I was 12, growing up in suburban southern Michigan. I'm sure that I wasn't that big of an outlier.

"X-Pac Heat" I am sure some dudes get boos because the crowd really wants them to go away, but way too often I think it reads as "I hate this guy/gimmick for some reason, but the crowds seem to react, so I can't be wrong, and they must all be boo'ing because they think it sucks too". I've seen it used with fuckin' Rusev already, and I think that's absurd.

I think a Swagger/Zeb patriotic face turn is the most interesting thing Swagger will have done in a long time. I've always thought Swagger "should" be more more than he's been but they've had a helluva time finding a role he seems comfortable in. The initial Zeb heel run was interesting conceptually but I don't think Del Rio was a good enough face to hold up the other end, and he was clearly getting overshadowed somewhat by Cesaro in the tag team, especially towards the end. I don't think Jack Swagger USA is a WWE Title type guy, but who knows. I definitely think he could have a good few months as a brooding face while Zeb works some patriot magic on the mic. That Rusev segment was fantastic.

I hope this new Big E persona gets to play out for a bit - I think it's got potential but it's so insane from anything he's done on Raw before I think everyone is a little shook.

Oh man, the idea of Jackass Bully Ryback gleefully playing the role of muscle goon troll is amazing.

That pop for Ambrose was some incredible, Austin-like stuff.

I want to buy a Jack Swagger "I Just Separated Your Shoulder" t-shirt.

Usos vs. Wyatts was a fucking ripper of an opener. I'm 100% more into this whole show than I was like 25 minutes ago.

A couple thoughts... 1. Reading other sites comments on the stocks and business and storylines and etc. is just sad - when you read some of these places you kinda understand why advertisers don't value wrestling fans, hahah. 2. I don't know if WWE can ever satisfy like some people want it to - I just don't think wrestling is really meant to be run in this manner, with a relatively static roster, 52 weeks a year, 3 hours a week (obviously not including secondary programming). They can't turn over like the old territories did, and even if they did, they still produce more TV. I really do feel kinda bad for the folks that write, because between the wildly shifting whims from up top, fickle crowds, and sheer amount of programming it has to be a challenge. It's fun to say "just do basic pro wrestling" but that's way easier to type than to produce for that amount of time with the restrictions they face. 3. The "is it good or bad" argument reminds me a lot of the real sports boards/blogs I frequent. There's a pretty heavy divide between people like me, who watch about 150 Detroit Tigers games a year but don't really get into second guessing and analysis, and people who get realllll into "fixing" whatever it is wrong. Same with football. I watch the teams I like because I like them, and since I have zero control over how anything happens, I just go along for the ride. That's a personal preference. I watch Raw the same way - I'm there to see where it's going and try to find what I like. There are a ton of things "wrong" but everybody has different definitions of "wrong" and I don't, personally, find it that fun to pick it apart on that level. If it sucks, I just check out for the night. Overall, I think WWE gives us a really broad canvas, and you can make it work for your preferences if you want. I like to fan-fiction the gaps in storylines in my head, or get real meta tying characters to real people. Also like to drink/smoke during the shows. I do enjoy reading the criticism sometimes though because as an eternal optimist it tends to bring up new points I wouldn't think of. The Todd Martin/Scott Keith style is super grating to me though.

I think that your "educated" consumer already views wrestling as a joke and isn't going to tune in for "pure sports" type stuff. I'd go the other direction - a self-consciously goofy comedy/action hybrid with 80s gimmicks and such. Really, I think something like a big budget CHIKARA has a better chance of attracting this type of audience than an updated port of 90s puro. When I show people CHIKARA, they usually think it's great and creative and fun. Now, that's in low doses. Are they gonna stick around long term? Probably not. And I wouldn't go quite as comic book nerdy as CHIKARA with all the time travel and stuff. But a fed that embraced all the silly "rules" of pro wrestling and tried to come up with a clever joke of, for instance, why clear felonies aren't prosecuted as assault and why things happen the way they do in wrestling could be one angle. Showing vignettes of crazy characters interacting in the real world, within the show, and letting the guys just completely drop gimmick and such outside of the "universe" that's established. I'd also suggest sticking to 1 hour episodes and only running for like 20 weeks, similar to a real sporting season. Asking the educated, mainstream, whatever we call it, fan to invest in wrestling is asking A LOT. Too much content, too much history, too much stuff to learn. Asking them to get into the workrate/pure type stuff sounds good in theory, but these new fans are still going to be confused as all hell by a lot of that, and not understand why what they see is "good". Asking them to embrace a weird, goofy, fun atmosphere with lots of easy to understand spots would be my direction. The single biggest hurdle is putting together the right people to write it. One man's cringe is another man's treasure.

Optimistically, maybe this can kick the Authority thing in a new direction. They come out to strip Bryan, "No Chance in Hell...", ballyhoo, Vince/Linda refuse to approve the move and that means some sort of corporate stalemate blah blah interim champion crowned and then match at MITB? Or something?

Brie is pretty happy in this segment despite the looming threat to her life from a demon and the fact her World Champion husband has to undergo "career-threatening" neck surgery.

Yeah, I'm friends with a decent number of dudes who follow wrestling but not hardcore, and they'll text me stuff from WrestleZone that I read in that weeks Observer. I always try to explain to them how Meltzer's breaking news and rumors and shit get distorted via the telephone effect when they go to that site, and that the Observer business analysis is what makes it worth reading, but it doesn't really change their perceptions. Plus, while being a wrestling nerd in real life is ok, I'll only reveal so much of that to others.