The Chief

Everyone talks about how bad they fucked up Starrcade (and rightfully so), however the following weeks with the title controversy were just as bad if not worse. Sting became just another guy in a matter of weeks. A rare example of an angle where every single aspect was executed wrong.

I never put that together before. That's just so strange, would they have "Lawler" as Hogan's little buddy? I'm struggling to see how a Lawler-type would be booked in the Hogan era.

Those are actully really fun to watch week to week and it's bugging the hell out of me that they just stopped. 1995 is when shit gets good.

You just need to put him against a super over babyface that the crowd will get behind. You don't need to get cutesy or complicated. Good vs. evil.

I can't picture Vince loving Elvis. I can't picture Vince loving any kind of music, really.

There's meta vibes to Bo's character where part of the gimmick is that he sucks. Angle never had that.

I would say debut him out of the blue and have him beat Cesaro, but Cesaro has cooled off so much I'm not sure how well that would work now as opposed to six months ago.

They need to team up Zack Ryder and Heath Slater and follow the exact same blueprint they used for Billy and Road Dogg in 1997.

Everyone go listen to today's Zack Ryder episode. Fuck man, it's so hard to not feel for the guy. They get into his burial in as politically correct a way as possible. I'd love to see them do something with him. The dude loves wrestling and it shows.

I voted yes. Sometimes you've just gotta make ballsy moves.

Just stupid. I'm actually more worried about Reigns. Cesaro is going to be over no matter what, however Reigns is going to risk serious backlash if fans see him as getting pushed at the expense of others.

Not sure I follow, all of Dean's matches have been built on heels targeting his injuries.

This was such a good show, so many good podcasts in the past couple weeks. Will's line about saving careers was incredible. I had some things to add for a few guys: LOVE the Zeb Colter/Rowan and Harper good old boys idea! This will never happen, but the Adam Rose gimmick needs an adult edge to it. I wanna see Rose doing lines off of strippers with Tommy Rich. I wanna see Ricky Morton passed out on the bus and Rose waking him up to rock and roll all night and party every day. Like a feel good movie where they show the 80's guys are still cool and can hang with the young crowd, and maybe teach them a thing or two. I think if Del Rio is sticking around, he needs to shed all aspects of his character. I would love to see him as a Mexican Ken Shamrock, maybe he loses all his money and has to go back to his roots or something. Kind of like what they did with Wade Barrett a couple years ago. Keep him as far away from Cena, Sheamus and those guys as possible, they're death to midcard acts. Let him tap out all of the midcarders for a few months. Dylan is spot on with Christian, I've been watching a lot of his older stuff and he was always great. There were so many missed oportunities with him over the years. At this stage in his life and with all of his injuries, he needs to be in a backstage role or doing color somewhere. I actually disagree on Fandango. I think he does a lot of little things with his character that people don't notice. He's great at being a creepy womanizing scumbag. He's so low he broke up with his girlfriend on Twitter! I like the ifea of him going through an assembly line of Divas. The guy has women on his mind at all times, nothing else matters. I like how his fueds primarily involve women over other wrestlers. He's a modern day USWA Chris Adams mixed with one of the guys Patty and Selma would try to hook Marge up with on the Sinpsons. Can't wait for part two!

Is that the one from 1997? I think they treat that as a Raw special. When SNME came back in 2006 they would always mention how it hasn't aired since 1992.

"They" didn't mention anything about Swagger tapping on Raw AFAIK.

I hope Heath comes back and throws this douche off the stage.

My problem with Dolph is that he tries so hard to make every single spot look KEWL that he breezes by a lot of simple stuff and looks sloppy as a result. He works way too fast for his own good, but I guess that's part of his appeal?

This match is horrible and it's not all on Miz.

I miss Bryan.

I don't remember where I heard or read it from but this has come up in the past before & was answered with "if you have a lot of top guys, you have to pay a lot of top guys top guy money" or something like that. I'm not sure how much validity that even has but it is something to ponder, I reckon. I do imagine that Cena makes more in WWE than most. Maybe it's a thought-process layover from the guaranteed contracts in WCW where guys would have stipulations where if someone made more money than them, their pay went up. I can see that to an extene, but it seems short sighted. Wouldn't a lot of top guys make your company a lot of money?

Almost all of those Austin main events have a shitload of energy which more than makes up for the kick-punch nature of the work.

I agree with a lot of this and before the Monday Night Wars, you saw this practiced. Then when it became all about ratings, the top guy needed to be on every week. You see how much they panic now to one bad non-Cena main event, it's ridiculous. I think having four or five over guys would help but they don't seem willing to do that. It's Cena then a huge step down to everyone else. No reason why they can't have some Piper's and Savage's to supplement their Hogan.

The Ascension HAVE to be debuting soon, right? That's the only logical reason why Rowan and Harper don't have the belts. Even if I think Ascension suck.

I've been watching some stuff from this era and I thought this was a tremendous topic. Brunzell was a guy I thought of so I was glad to hear his name in the discussion. I also agree that you could get some good TV out of Tony Atlas. Have him accept an arm wrestling contest from Graham. Tony pins Graham's arm down, Graham attacks him from behind and you're off to the races. Curious as to your thoughts on Jimmy Snuka? He's a good cosmetic opposite to Graham and you could get a cool visual of the Superfly Splash winning him the belt that they would replay in highlight packages for years. Was he still in Portland or did he start Mid-Atlantic by this point? I can't for the life of me picture him having anything more than a year on top, but he's still an interesting candidate. Snuka was also 40 when he finally came to NY in 82. People may regard him even higher if he spent more of his physical prime in NY.

Well fuck...