Jesse Ewiak

I never said it makes sense to me, but I can totally see Vince thinking, "if Cena beats 'Taker, then 'Taker raises his arm, then all those fans who boo him will have no choice but to cheer him!"

I think they're honestly waiting for the last possible WM to do 'Taker/Cena because it'll like be 'Taker's real last ride and they want one of two things to happen - 1. Cena to beat 'Taker and end the streak - basically, his 'beating Andre for the first time' moment. 2. Or 'Taker wins and retires, but basically endorses Cena, passing the real torch of the WWE over to Cena.

Jake wasn't consistently more over though than Hogan was(Yeah I know, unaired Snake Pit angle). I watched everything WWE for a year and DB had Cena beat in pops all year. I've never seen the problems in pushing different wrestlers and seeing what happens. It's not like WWE is going to bomb ratings wise for putting someone different over for a few weeks to see if it clicks or not. The best wrestling companies always had multiple people at the top whether it be the AJPW Big 4, the Three Musketers or Lawler/Dundee/Idol. DB may be getting bigger pops than Cena, but Cena is still drawing more money than Bryan. Now, part of that may be horrible booking, but HiaC PPV numbers are is the only PPV in months to be up over last year and that can largely be pointed too by Cena's return + HBK as special ref. That's not even counting the obscene amount of merch he draws. Cena is still Hogan.

I'd rather have a guy have too much faith in the numbers than 98% of NFL analysts out there. As for Simmons, as long as you remember he's an NBA expert whose allowed to write about other sports, he's all right. His NBA stuff is obviously fantastic, but anything else I'm just there for the jokes and references.

Hell, Danielson had a much better interview a couple of years back with Alvarez on the Figure Four website, so it's not as if he can't have a good interview. But, whatever his other faults, Bryan's a much better interview than Shoemaker seems to be.

Cena's not turning heel as long as he's bringing in tens of millions of dollars for the WWE via merchandise.

Random thought. Let's say back in '99, Jarrett happily jobs to Chyna and doesn't hold Vince up for more money. As a result, when WCW dies, he's brought in on the IC/Tag Team level, is around for a few years, jobs to HBK on a random RAW in a great match, and so on, and so forth. Now, I think this means a few things, obviously. Jarrett probably ends up an Agent in WWE and/or a trainer who comes back and has a Golddust-esque run in the past few years. But, my question is, do we even have a TNA-level company in the past 10 years? Or is the WWE alternative for the past decade a series of money mark promotions that have a six months worth of shows, then shut down?

I thought the standard argument was that people only thought Angle was a great worker because of his Gold medals, not because Meltzer loved him. But, anyway, I don't think most of the audience were Meltzer readers at the Royal Rumble match that is being discussed, yet it got a massive reaction in the building. Most people like the go-go-go ubersuplex and finisher burning style that Angle wrestled. Even non-Meltzer readers.

When you were 12, did you care more about the new movies coming out, or movies that came out in the 60s? More about music that was current, or stuff from the 60s? Did you watch more Old TV, or did you watch more New TV such as pro wrestling or Cosby or Family Ties? Did you spend more time watching current sports, or did you not care about that and instead focused your time on sports in the 60s? The question isn't about total obliviousness. I doubt that Neal would even claim that: after all, Spidey-Re-Boot did $250M+ in the US and $750M world wide because it was another in the Spider-Man series, even if it was a re-boot. John I don't think anybody is claiming that teenagers and young adults don't prefer the fresh and new. The argument is, in the past, if you wanted to be entertained, there were times you had to watch something old because it was the only option on the TV that was viable at all. Sure, The Brady Bunch was old, but it was better than watching something even older or doing your homework. As a result, you may get into or even like something older because that was your only option. Now though, there's always something new and fresh. There's eighteen zillion Youtube channels, Tumblr blogs, and Instagrams to look at. There's no reason to go back to the past because there's a metric ton of new entertainment coming out daily.

I think the difference between today and even ten years ago is sure, yes, most teenagers and young adults want something new and edgy, but until very recently, sometimes all that was on TV or the radio was something from a few years back. So, if you wanted to watch TV, you were stuck watching a movie from 10 or 15 years ago. Now, instead, there are literally hundreds of Youtube 'stars' that none of us have heard of, but have millions of subscribers who are mostly kids under 25. So, you don't need to watch anything "old" because there's always new content on the Internet.

The thing about 'smart TV's is if you have a liberal definition of it (ie. it can connect to the Internet and has apps), most new TV's made in the last couple of years are smart TV's. For example, I bought a cheap $250 Vizio a year or so back and it has Netflix on it. I've never used it because I have 12 other devices that has access to Netflix, but it's there.

The thing is, we basically have squash matches now. How many 3 minute matches has 3MB, Santino, Sin Cara, or whoever had in the past few months? No, they aren't pure jobbers, but the JTTS is alive and well in 2013. And honestly, I think most WWE TV outside of RAW could be 'pushed' guys beating 'unpushed' guys in matches. They may not be 3 minute squashes, but is there really any question outside of the markiest mark about the result of a 7-minute Cesaro-Sin Cara match on Smackdown?

Eh, considering the reason we didn't have a Austin/Pillman feud in the WWF was likely because Pillman got in that wreck that indirectly led to even heavier drug abuse and probably contributed to his death, it still connects to something pretty morbid. Like way too much in wrestling.

Eh, while I agree that Bryan's stop-start push sucks, it's far more likely that the slight increase in HIAC numbers came from Cena being back after two PPV's, not the Bryan story. Especially when Battleground bombed and NOC didn't exactly have big numbers.

Eh. Angle was still getting 4 stars from Meltzer up 'til this year. Plus, his induction was never based on drawing money. There was a blowback to Angle among the PWO crowd, but most people, up until very recently, would've said Angle was still putting out awesome matches stuck in a horrible promotion.

Cheap footage to buy, especially for a pilot where there's no guarantee you're going to be picked up by the network.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-sw...-still-use-aol/ According to this article, about 2 1/2 million are still subscribed to AOL in some form.

To be fair to Keith, he may have crappy reasons for 'why' it happened and crappy opinions on specific matches, but he usually isn't bad on history he's familiar with (ie. Hogan-era WWE & WCW and so forth).

To be fair, I trust Sims over the Mexican postal service.

Isn't your last line true of everybody in the WWE not named Punk, Cena, Orton, Triple H, Lesnar, The Big Show, Mark Henry, Daniel Bryan, or The Shield?

Tito Santana is loved on this board. Kofi Kingston is hated. Slasher is saying that if you dropped 2013 Kofi into 1985 WWF, he'd be over bigger than Tito in the same position. Not that surprising it got heated a little bit.

The basic problem with the Diva's division is the WWE still hasn't learned that not every woman they hire has to wrestle. There's no reason, for example, the Funkadactyls or Askana needs to be in the ring. The same thing for prior Diva's like Maryse. They can be characters without getting into the ring even semi-regularly while other characters can be wrestlers.

His schtick is pretty embarrassing, though. It is something that would really turn off a new fan, or an old fan trying to get back into the show. Surely there are better ways to do a comedy character than that? People who say this I think betray a real lack of awareness outside of the "bubble", because in my experience, every casual and non-smark fan I've ever met loves the shit out of Santino. Yup, an anecdotal point, but the only person who Bryan Alvarez' wife marks out for? Santino. Now, I do think there's a point that there are too many 'joke' characters on TV, but Santino is the cream of that crop.

"The sidebar on the Ultimate Warrior seems out of place and inconsistent with the rest of the book (obviously you aren't going to ask this unless you preface it with "critics say..."), why did he feel it needed to be included?" He answered this in either his Grantland podcast he does or the podcast with Simmons. Basically it was, "Warrior's too wacky not to write about."

Ironically, you'd probably get better results for Scarface here, because it's become "the" movie for rappers and wannabee gangstas of all creeds and colors to reference.