Jimmy Redman

The worst is when they use it as a verb, as a synonym for actual wrestling in the ring. "I've been sports entertaining for 10 years now..."

The more of the "real" Lana we see the more I miss the Ravishing Russian.

Sasha vs Alicia Fox was everything I wanted it to be. All arms and legs and rage and brawling. Please feud forever. I didn't think I could love Alexa Bliss any more right now and then she joined the Forearm Bitches in the Face Club. Yes please and thank you.

Steph has definitely helped him in recent years as the Authority. She cuts better promos and is more over as a heel. The most heat Hunter gets in his matches now is the moment when Steph gets hurt.

He and Hunter I find very similar, particularly in the sense that most of the time their alleged heat is being produced by someone else. Hunter had Chyna, DX, Steph, Shawn, Evolution. Edge had Christian, Lita, Vickie. He rarely had to go it alone, and when he did ( 2004e, 2010 for example) he was awful as a character and way less over. Vickie was one of the best heels of the century, and one of the main reasons why is that she gave Edge heat and relevance for so long.

Well you were the one who said he was "inexplicably" pushed. It's very explicable. He was over. Has nothing to do with how much we like his ring work.

Quality Edge Singles Matches With No Gimmicks Off The Top Of My Head Edge vs Brock & Heyman - Rebellion 2002 (basically an Edge/Brock match) Edge vs Angle vs Benoit vs Eddie - Smackdown 5th December 2002 Edge vs Randy Orton - Vengeance 2004 Edge vs Randy Orton - Raw July 2004 Edge vs Benoit vs Hunter - Raw November 2004 Edge vs Hunter - Raw February 2005 Edge vs Benoit - Raw April 2005 Edge vs Matt Hardy - Summerslam 2005 (great short match) Edge vs Cena vs Hunter - Backlash 2006 Edge vs Cena vs RVD - Raw July 2006 Edge vs RVD - Vengeance 2006 Edge vs Cena - Summerslam 2006 Edge vs Orton vs Cena vs Shawn - Backlash 2007 Edge vs Orton - Raw April 2007 Edge vs Benoit - Smackdown June 2007 Edge vs Undertaker - WM24 Edge vs Jeff Hardy - SNME July 2008 Edge vs Matt Hardy - Smackdown December 2008 Edge vs Jeff vs Hunter - Armageddon 2008 Edge vs Cena vs Show - WM25 Edge vs Rey - Smackdown 5th June 2009 Edge vs Jeff Hardy - Smackdown 12th June 2009 Edge vs John Morrison - Smackdown 19th June 2009 (He was pretty unbearable in 2010) Edge vs Dolph Ziggler - Rumble 2011 Edge vs Alberto - WM27 I mean, it's slim pickings for a guy so heavily featured on TV for a decade (its fucking Edge) and his strengths clearly lie in tag teams and gimmick matches, but there ARE straight singles matches there. Comparing him to Jarrett as a star is way off base. No matter if you dislike the guy, and Lord knows I do too, its pretty disingenuous to suggest that he wasn't over with a lot of people and didn't warrant a push. I do agree that it helps his legacy that he had to retire while he was relatively young and on top and never had a chance to hang around FOREVER and lose people's interest like, say, Randy Orton.

I can probably come up with something. (When did I turn into a moderate on Edge?!?!)

He was born in Madrid. But being a military brat who's dad happened to be stationed overseas when he was born will play just fine. It's not like he's actually one of dem foreign foreigners.

She's presented as a punk rocker type.

You're saying those were two of the greatest individual championship reigns in the history of wrestling? Well Cena's sure. Not sure what's weird about that. Sheamus is a personal favourite purely for the work. He was so great as a dominant babyface champ, having great matches with everyone in sight, knowing just how much to give to play his role, incredible selling, and two of the best matches in company history to bookend it. It's a great run.

The whole women's angle on SD ruled too. Becky didn't save Charlotte last week so the Welcoming Committee try to recruit her to their side. Then they take out Charlotte before the match, forcing Naomi to go it alone (it could have the added benefit of showing Naomi it's worth joining them too!). But Naomi proceeds to not only hold her own but treat Carmella like a fucking young boy and beat the utter shit out of her, before the numbers overwhelm her. But then Charlotte! She's here! Hot tag! Charlotte beasting fools was great and the people are going NUT for someone who was the best heel in the company like two weeks ago. But the numbers game catches up with them again. And then Becky! She's walking, clearly in no rush to make the save. Odd. She's smiling at the heels. Oh no! Don't do it! Don't shake their hands! Don't hug that gooofba-BLAMMO! WOO! BECKY! She'll never turn to the dark side! But AGAIN, it's 3 against 1 and the heels STILL have the numbers. But at least now the faces will be back to even the score, 3 on 3. I still like the ultimate goal of Charlotte Horsemaning Becky and joining the heels, but that will have to come way in the future when there are reinforcements for the babyface side. The immediate problem is that I'm not sure Lana is enough reinforcement, and there's nobody in NXT ready for a call up apart from Asuka. So I'm not sure how to even it up.

A heel being cheered is better than a face being booed in this case because then hopefully the idiot brigade is assuaged by it and they start loving him again, and hopefully when he turns back he retains enough of an edge to keep at least most of the cheers. Like I said, worst case, he gets booed as a heel and you have a new top heel. Best case, he goes on a tear as a heel and gets the crowd on board, allowing him to become what he was supposed to be all along - a popular ace. Braun already gets cheered wildly every week for beating up Roman. If there was no commentary you could watch this feud and assume he was the face and Roman the heel. So it wouldn't be much of a stretch. This is only in relation to potential opponents for a heel Roman run, and I'm certainly not advocating for him to be a babyface beyond that.

They would cheer him. Then he would finally be cheered. That's the whole point. This is a possible solution to the problem of Roman being hated. And I think Finn Balor actually could go up against heel Roman. They could have done a double turn with Braun and Roman. There's also Nak and AJ but that's a brand issue.

This is what I'm saying, honestly, I don't know. I think there is definitely something special about Cena and he would have been a big star either way, except for the most hideous of mismanaging. The question is whether he'd be quite AS big as he was in reality. I suppose it also depends on when exactly he turns and what they do with it. On the subject of Roman, I think he has much more potential for a turn to work simply because he doesn't have that special connection to a generation of kids the way that Cena did, and kids are the ones you're pissing off the most with a heel turn. You're not risking as much merch/kid money with Roman so the risk/reward ratio seems much more conducive to a turn with him. Like, worst case, you have a new top heel who doesn't sell as much merch as he did as a face.

Pushed consistently sure, but the same as like, Orton and Edge and Hunter and Batista were pushed consistently too. But he was clearly on a level above all those guys.

Honestly I don't know. And we'll never know. But if pushed I would guess that a Cena turn would have taken away a part of his unique appeal - as a guy who basically exists to be an anathema to the adult male audience. Part of that was his steadfast refusal to turn heel, which is what those people wanted him to do. Whether the trade off of a heel turn allowed those people to come around on him and become his fans enough to offset that, that is the question. I'm honestly not sure that it would have. It's easy to forget now that booing the top face is en vogue, but when Cena happened it was a crazy, unique thing. A top babyface who is rejected by a large part of the audience BUT is still a massive draw. We'd had unpopular or failing babyfaces before, but none who were still making so much money that you couldn't turn them or demote them. But somehow with Cena, it worked, because in the first place, he had a massive and rapidly expanding fan base that went to shows and spent money and he basically cornered a whole new generation of kids to be his fans. And in the second, the people who hated him didn't stop going to shows or spending money (well at least, not enough of them did), but instead they kept going and spending money and just booed Cena hoping that he'd go away. But he didn't go away, he was making them too much money. So they kept booing louder, and his fans kept cheering louder, and suddenly the Cena Thing happened. The people who rejected Cena were the ones who ultimately, and ironically, kept him on top forever, because booing and rejection simply became a part of his charm, and not a way to signal to the company that he shouldn't be pushed as a top babyface anymore. This was all fine and dandy when it was Cena's special thing, but now...it's happening again. Over the years there have been isolated incidents of crowds booing the face because they're in a smark town or they like the heel better or whatever, but now it's actually Happening Again. The vocally dominant adult male crowd has decided to reject Roman as the top babyface. They do this by going to shows and booing the shit out of him. The problem is that this no longer works. All it does is embolden his fans to cheer louder creating the "Lets Go Cena / Cena Sucks" atmosphere that WWE loves, and it tells WWE that this guy is getting the most noise out of the crowd, how cool is this, we have the next Cena. The more they boo, the more WWE will want to push him. It's a game to WWE now, trying to troll half the crowd as much as they can to elicit the biggest reaction out of them because they like how it looks on TV, and they know they're getting their money either way. The smarts have outsmarted themselves, and I still don't think they understand that. They turned their only weapon against an unwanted push (short of not watching) into a marketing tool for WWE.

"That's jaywalking! ...and jimmywalking!"

Sheamus World Title run in 2012 was big for me. Cena in 2006-07 of course.

I think people see the "line" as going straight down since the Attitude Era, when in fact it went down from 2002-2004 and then picked back up once Cena came in. Before drawing power became as obfuscated as it is now, Cena was a demonstrably big draw.

Roman is never going to "convince" the people who are booing him to change their minds with more great matches. Just like Cena never did. It's not about workrate, never has been. The people who boo him vociferously decided long ago that they hate the guy for whatever reason (his push, Bryan, etc.), and the people who boo him for fun because everyone else is are just doing it because that's what you do at a WWE show now. Great matches aren't going to change either of those things.

Holy shitballs guys it's official. Alexa Bliss is my new favourite wrestler. I'm pretty sure she's already the most GIFable wrestler of all time even though she's only been on the main roster for like 9 months. Alexa screaming at Alicia Fox while she was Hell in Peril and Alicia Fox going "I'm trying!!" is why I love Alicia Fox. Woah at her and Sasha, I need them to get it on immediately. Bayley's hot tag here and laying into Alexa was the most aggressive she's looked since she was stomping Sasha's fingers off. This was all a great showcase because before this match I would not have thought that there were even 8 women on the Raw roster.

I think when the question is whether some obsession about male wrestlers is weirder than an obsession about female wrestlers...the female stuff will always be weirder.

Well yours is my favourite Southern accent so this is a huge wrap. This was the most fun one yet. Feedback is appreciated because we were kind of wondering if we should cut out the middleman and just do wacky and funny matches.

When Byron was talking about Booty Os and JBL was smiling politely at him not saying a word you could literally see the gears turning in his head: "I have to be nice, I have to be nice, I have to be nice..." No. 1 Contender for the World Heavyweight Title Jinder Mahal. No. 1 Contenders for the SD Tag Team Titles Breezango. Heel faction of Natalya, Carmella, Tamina and James Ellsworth standing tall. Smackdown: Revenge of the Jobber