Migs

Pretty much this, but let me clear this up for you guys. "Manhattan Center" is the name of the entire building. Within that building are two rooms that house events, Hammerstein Ballroom, and Grand Ballroom. Hammerstein is the bigger room, and the one used for the early RAW's, the One Night Stand PPVs, and the bigger ROH shows over the years. That can hold close to 2500 like Dylan noted. It has the trademark balcony facades that you are probably familiar with. Grand Ballroom is the smaller room, which I don't believe WWE ever ran (I could be wrong). ROH uses this one when they don't think they can fill Hammerstein. It holds about 1200 maximum. I *think* this is the room TNA ran when they did tapings at Manhattan Center. EDIT - I just scanned through some of the early RAW's, and it looks like for the most part they used Grand Ballroom. The first RAW is Grand Ballroom for sure. I checked One Night Stand, and that was Hammerstein. The TNA tapings were definitely in the Grand Ballroom (at least the one I attended).

Yeah, I really liked that first post-Final Battle TV episode. Elevated Castle, set up Fish as a potential challenger for O'Reilly, good six man as a main event. I like the tournament building to the title shot too (as someone who was an indy nerd when all those guys were on their way up, I'm probably the target audience for that). Agreed that Cody joining the Bullet Club makes him less interesting. They had a shot to make him a real heel, but aligning him with the Bullet Club puts him in that same tweener role that the rest of the Club.

Agreed, and I think the focus on Meltzer now is probably a bit misguided. There's likely a large effect among "hardcore" circles from the way Meltzer wrote about puro and lucha in the late 80s and early 90s (particularly with the way it coincided with people starting to get online, RSPW, trade trading, etc.), but that's history and can't be changed. Meltzer praising something can help, but influence is so diffuse at this point that one person really can't shift popular opinion in a big way.

Also, I was at a WWE house show tonight. Thousands of kids were chanting "Lucha, Lucha" along with Kalisto. Do with that what you will.

To establish the claim that lucha is less popular than puro because of racism, at some point you have to actually point out someone being racist, rather than just softly and broadly appealing to racism in the surrounding culture, which doesn't predict one way or the other whether someone will like or dislike lucha. And who are you talking about with the "overall coverage"? PWO is such a small cross-section of total wrestling fandom, yet you are asking personal questions of people posting in this thread. Wrestling coverage that we follow and the narratives built are American. Americans think Japan is cool, and have a lot of issues with Mexicans. Those are true statements. Lucha is dismissed by overall coverage, so we are left with few explantations 1) lucha is inferior to puro 2) lucha is very difficult to get into, and that barrier is too much 3) there is something else going on here Can't it be 2 and lots of different number 3s? People have laid out a lot of reasons for not liking lucha, and a lot of reasons lucha doesn't have the same standing in the intellectual wrestling community, and like any interesting questions, it's usually a lot of things at play. I'm sure there are some people who exist who won't watch lucha libre because of some bias toward Mexicans. I'm not sure why they matter when a) the people you're talking to are not those people and even you seem to recognize that there are other factors that are probably far more relevant.

Well, they are uploading 2007 Smackdown to the network now (after doing 2005 and 2006 last week), so 2009 might not be too far away.

Bad times. Smackdown was pretty great in 2009 with Rey/Jericho and Punk/Hardy. Got pretty terrible when Taker came back though. Not to mention we got a bad Kane world title reign in this period as well. Summer 2009 for Smackdown is super fun, and then basically the moment 'Taker comes back everything gets flushed. They spent so much time building up Punk and Hardy, and then 'Taker comes back and its like, "Ha, sorry, these little men couldn't possibly beat the Dead Man, screw them." But from the moment they moved Jericho and Punk over until then, the wrestling is on par with the Smackdown 6 era.

2006 and 2007 Smackdown is going up.

They have uploaded 2010 and 2011 Raw, so there's now a complete set, minus any stray missing episodes (are there any other than the Raw Bowl one?).

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

That's probably a fair point. They have sort of used Castle as a way to get the crowd jacked early in the show, successfully. Perhaps they're a bit leery about moving him out of that role. If the TV is pushing toward Castle v. the Bullet Club, then I am all in and going to try to watch ROH TV weekly again.

Didn't he kill his parents though? Or was that Kane? Seriously though, the KO example is a perfect one. Everything he does, he does for his family. It's not unreasonable that Alexa Bliss is also more complicated than "total bitch." Shouldn't we be happy that WWE has progressed beyond "catty" as a personality trait for every single female? With that said, yeah, she broke kayfabe, and yeah, it was jarring. But Bryan and Renee encouraged her, so that's obviously what they wanted. When it came time for her to turn her game-face back on, she did just that and heeled it up with relish. I think the quick flip was really what felt jarring. Felt like it missed a step rhetorically - she's overcome with emotion, and then immediately flips back to being unpleasant. It needed a more gradual transition or the announcers calling it out - "Wow, you really put your game face back on."

The distraction wasn't intentional. Styles just wants to kill him so much that he got distracted when he saw Ellsworth.

If ROH knows he is a money draw then they are fucking insanely stupid. It's been obvious for atleast 18 months and he's on the undercard of their biggest show of the year facing Colt Cabana. Wow, he may move up to the TV Title level? Dude should be the focus of the company. He's not a money draw. He's one of the more popular acts and is very over, and has been featured on their TV for two years now. But if you look a card like SOTF weekend, with the Bucks, Cole and Lethal in Japan, the attendance was way way down. Those guys are the draws. I know you don't follow the product, but the Cabana match had a story and as a tag team they were headlining major shows (Glory by Honor weekend). Cabana has been a draw in his return so I actually think that match was a step in the right direction for Castle. The early 2017 posters have him prominently featured, the company isn't stupid to his popularity. I don't know if they have the top heel where the base would get so invested in his feud that it would actually boost business. Cody is a possibility. A TV title feud with Scurll isn't anything to scoff at. That belt is nearly as strong as the main title. I think part of the issue with him not being in a title picture is the way ROH promotes and structures it's cards. In another promotion, the Cabana match, which absolutely did have a good story behind it, might have been 2nd or 3rd from the top. But ROH almost always goes with the belts on top, for better or worse. So he almost needs to feud for a belt in order to be put in a position to draw (which I guess would point to Scurll being his next feud, which I'm less excited about than others, it seems).

AJ Styles is insane.

I'm curious where they go with Miz from here. Do they transition him to Ambrose?

Didn't like the beginning, but they got there by the end. Really enjoyed the finish. Did a good job with the finish teases too.

You need to be put in a spot to draw. The third match on the card isn't that. Castle needs to work with an actual heel, which unfortunately ROH is pretty short on. Maybe they'll be able to establish Cody as one.

It was obvious he was a money draw a year and a half ago. He's gotten among the biggest, if not the biggest, reaction on every show I've been to. Meanwhile, the ROH World Champion is someone who's so beloved that people walked out during his celebration.

I don't have crazy high expectations for anything other than the main event (which feels like it's a setup for another spectacular Styles performance). But everything else has at least some potential and I don't see any big disasters. Should at least be a pleasant watch.

Was at tonight's show live. Thought it was good (and it was a big win to be at the Hammerstein and not Terminal 5), but it seemed to lack a blowaway match to put it over the top. Really liked Bucks-Briscoes and Lethal-Cody, but neither broke ****, I thought. The main event felt like they were trying for a big epic and didn't quite get there. I still feel like there's an anti-climax when Dalton Castle wrestles in the third match, Maybe more thoughts tomorrow.