Bierschwale

Paragon Pro champ Jessy Sorenson! I think that EricR is the only other person alive to have watched an episode of it.

Cole and Tazz were a great team in the first part of the decade. It really just has been beaten out of him, though he shows flashes of the excitement when he can get away with it like at Survivor Series last year.

Double post.

I think that it was actually Del Rio. It was in a fatal four-way with them, Sheamus and Ziggler, and there's a spot where Alberto kicks Christian in the back of the head to break up a pin and Christian is just OUT after it until the scheduled finish which was him winning, and that was his last match (he was supposed to face Big E. for the IC title the night after). It's a ridiculously violent kick. https://youtu.be/cMmp2anCmC8?t=1m30s

Had gotten stuck on #102 (the Cross/Justice-Styles/Williams tag that gets re-aired in full). The Blackout-Tank/Trash match is a ridiculous brawl, and I loved the Gangstas ripoff angle of them trying to roadhaul Tank. The Lost Boyz-TNT spotfest from #103 is classic early indies stuff. The Ferrara/Penzer stuff is kind of dumb, but it also means promos from Behrens and Dan Wilson and I fully approve of those.

It's a commitment to long-term planning, but a commitment to incredibly stupid long-term planning and a beyond stupid culmination of that plan, and then they didn't use any of their escape windows. It's a disaster all around. Loss mentioned using One Night Only and Badd Blood to get the Bret-'Taker-Shawn title progression, but what about just using RAW, when RAW desperately needed a huge Nitro-like moment? Unless the mess of the "lost my smile" debacle and Bret already having lost it on a RAW earlier that year was what killed that, which is its own epic of terrible decision-making.

Just send them all over to NOAH.

2015 blows.

Parv bringing up Mamet through GGR makes me think about promotions as booked by other screenwriters... Aaron Sorkin: A really intense version of early RoH/early EVOLVE. A babyface would be the first one to break the Code of Honor as political protest. Neil LaBute: Creative peak ECW. No qualifications there. Todd Haynes: Toned down JCP. Baby Doll becomes the promotion's biggest star. Eli Roth: CZW at its most Lobo/Zandig-est. Trent Acid and Jimmy Rave as the wide-eyed babyface stars.

I mean, a great panel be damned, this deserves listening just because of the episode title.

The treatment that Sheamus gets at places that aren't PWO is a disgrace.

It also gives them the ability to book him during the second hour on PPVs, which came out as being their new big idea after he lost to Lesnar because they wanted him to feature earlier so they'd have a better chance of the kid fanbase seeing him but stretches to even before then. Since his return from the arm injury in 2013, he's worked 23 real PPVs (counting EC this year but not Beast in the East when it wouldn't have mattered anyway) and only seven of them have been the main event. Assuming that he's good to go for SummerSlam, it's 7/24.

I think that Sheamus cashes in at NoC, because they wouldn't want the World title to overshadow Lesnar-'Taker, because they're idiots.

I just want to show off the sheer brilliance and momentum kept up for the WWE title picture this year in one list: Royal Rumble: Cena-Lesnar-Rollins for the title. Fastlane: No Lesnar so no title match. WrestleMania: Lesnar-Reigns-(Rollins) for the title. Extreme Rules: Orton-Rollins for the title. No Lesnar. Payback: Ambrose-Orton-Reigns-Rollins for the title. Elimination Chamber: Ambrose-Rollins for the title. No Orton or Reigns. Money in the Bank: Ambrose-Rollins for the title. Battleground: Lesnar-Rollins for the title. No Ambrose. Just phenomenal continuity.

I actually do think that there's a discussion to have about what Trips really thinks of Cena, beyond "he makes us a lot of money". I think that there's a lot of coincidental stuff, like the reformation of DX right as Cena was taking off, and arguably the entirety of the booking that Cena's seen since becoming the true ace that has rarely ever cast him in the best of lights.

I doubt Bill Watts had the slightest thing to do with what Virgil was named in 1999. Curly Bill is a "generic Western" name that also happens to be funny when applied to a completely bald guy. The day that I doubt the ability of a wrestling booker to make a petty in-joke with a lower-card wrestler's gimmick, particularly when that wrestler is Mike Jones, is the day that I never watch wrestling again.

He had also been selling his leg for 25 minutes at that point. That was a situational blowoff so he could do the finish spot that they wanted.

Didn't he also wrestle as Curly Bill briefly? What the hell was that? A veiled reference to Bill Watts? Yup, when he was aligned with the West Texas Rednecks. No idea the reasoning behind the name. Maybe this? I think that it'd be a half-and-half.

I've soured on the in-ring rebound (I think that he has the house show mentality of "well, it's my deal, I'm the only one who does anything like it and it's really easy to pull off, I should get it in for the crowd" with it and that's why it's so overused.) though I do like when it gets countered and that it gets countered fairly regularly. But I actually love the clothesline on the outside, which isn't supposed to be him getting momentum from the ring, it's just a deception tactic for him to hit a discus clothesline that almost always looks nasty.

That's true, but when the finish is TKO via attempted cinderblock murder (which I still think was awesome), I can forgive that for not being a deathblow spot. When you think about how they have to do those types of matches in an era without blood so you can't have literal "blood feuds", you have to do something else and I think that those have become "adrenaline feuds", I suppose. The hatred is so strong that the need to continue the match and win is so great that the selling of a spot like that can't be as prolonged. Since you can't show the obvious external damage, you have to maximize the internal damage (oh God, we're back to "Cena as Hamlet"). I think that that's a pretty decent reason to dislike the style, but it needs to be judged spot-by-spot/match-by-match.

Rollins volunteered to take out Ryback so Ambrose/Reigns could take care of Bryan and win the match. If the argument is that they should have just powerbombed Ryback on the ramp, I get that, but that wasn't really what they thought served their purpose with pushing Ryback and the Ryback-Shield feud, and the visual of him running back to the ring but not getting there in time is great. Plus, Rollins was already HHH's handpicked star so him getting the big spot served to get over his identity AND since it was the first pinfall TLC match, they did feel a need to book some kind of ladder spot. They're flaws that exist because of how the match was meant to play into that bigger picture.

This isn't actually true, for what it's worth. It was a delayed cover attempt because he spent time selling his back, then had to clear the table out of his way as he crawled over to Rollins, and then got to Rollins for the cover but saw Kane get onto the apron before a count could be made and knocked him off, at which point Rollins was back up.

Ambrose sells limb damage more often than anyone else in the company. He spent an entire month selling his leg after the ambulance match with Wyatt. Insane complaint. The funny/kind of infuriating (in terms of Dave's "next-level psychology" blinders) thing is that I'd say that Ambrose is one of the most NJPW-like workers on the roster when it comes to fighting spirit stuff and selective delayed selling. That Show match was ALL fighting spirit. He had a match with Sheamus last year where he ate a Brogue Kick but was close enough to the apron to roll out of the ring even though he was completely dead, and climbed back in knowing that he was going to get kicked again because he didn't want to lose the US title (it was the return match after he lost it in the battle royal on RAW that was supposed to be spite-booking for The Shield beating Evolution) on a fluke knockout move. That's as close to the Ibushi-Nakamura finish from the 2013 G1 as you're going to get in WWE.

This RAW is incredibly dry but it also feels like maybe the best one of the year.

She was pretty much a face when she and Trips ran down the card.