(BP)

It's an angle. I just wish it wasn't. Even if everyone goes in with the best of intentions, it's going to end up being some scorched earth shit where everyone looks bad.

Shawn was insisting that the main event title match of Mania should always be a singles; although, he was actually pushing for Austin-Mankind, so he didn't exactly get his way. I'm sure the Rock loved that.

I voted The Godfather because I loved how it was subtly woven into his Nation character with the outfits and cigar, and then he was suddenly coming to the ring with a dozen strippers.

Sheamus is a good worker, pretty great at TV format matches in particular, but he only really interested me as a monster heel retiring dudes with the crucifix powerbomb on the floor. And obviously we've seen him and Bryan a lot.

With all of the window dressing, Wyatt/Taker and HHH/Sting will take up well over an hour of the show. I wish they had just pulled the trigger on Sting/Taker so there was one sad, slow match instead of two. Also, the best use of Jon Stewart would be Orton/Stewart/Jason Jones vs Rollins/J&J Security. Never happen, but I'd be stoked.

Maybe they'll have Bryan beat Sheamus at Mania with the Yes Kick in 5 seconds to mirror Mania 28. Then, when everyone shits on it because he was on the show for 2 minutes they can shrug and say, "What? He went over."

Everyone that hires Russo thinks they can harness him and cipher out his bullshit from good creative. The problem is no company besides WWE has had the infrastructure to do that, and even the successful stuff he did there is now regarded as cringeworthy.

Just watched Raw. It's funny that they ran two great brawl angles for a show that's ostensibly free when we hardly get any good enough to sell a PPV/Network Event all year.

You're right Chief, but it is how wrestling audiences have been conditioned for a long time between everyone coming out of retirement over and over and all of the Wrestlemania one-off appearances.

It was a relief that we didn't get Brock/Rock last year at Mania, as that would have been a waste with no benefit to the actual roster (except for their WrestleMania paydays...maybe). Of course, we ended up with Brock/Taker, and it certainly remains to be seen if anyone's going to benefit from Brock ending the streak.

Finally got to this last night. Enjoyed the Women's title match a lot. NXT does four-ways much better than WWE proper. I loved the main beyond words. I've only seen a couple of Generico/Steen tags, but I'm going to dig into their indy feuds when I have time. I wasn't that taken with Balor/Neville, but I'm going to watch it again. Neville has certainly grown by leaps and bounds in the last year, and Balor is going to be huge if Vince takes his gimmick seriously. It took nearly 15 years, but they've finally cracked the code to servicing the fans looking for a WWE alternative by creating their own counterprogramming. Like everyone else has said, NXT alone is easily worth the cost of the network.

The Yes! chants are a double edged sword because it's easy for Bryan's detractors in the company to argue that people just like to chant and Yes! is more over than he actually is. I don't think that's the case, but I'd be really surprised if that wasn't their mindset.

As one of the few Michaels marks on the board, I have no interest in a return match. I'm happy that he got out and stayed out on his own terms when few do. It is interesting that he wouldn't want to work Bryan because it's too obvious.

Since the Sting stuff is bound to get even goofier as Mania approaches, is it too much to ask for Hunter to bring in Nash, Hall, and Waltman as expert Sting hunters and have an entire Raw composed of vignettes of them searching for him Scooby Doo style?

Batista has signed on to play the Kurgan in a remake of Highlander. The remake seemed like bad news, but this has me excited. Hopefully we'll get a Michael PS Hayes cameo too. 😄

Booking issues aside, no gimmick match translates worse to video games than MITB. Just awful.

I believe this is when Sting came back after a pretty long absence where he got clean and became born-again. It was also a return to Crow-Sting after the Wolfpack phase.

Yeah, I doubt there'll be any repercussions. He'll just have his balls broken for like...forever.

It's a shame fake Sting looks so terrible because Hunter's reaction was great.

The Katie Vick joke - I laughed.

I think this comparison may have been brought up already, but wouldn't heel Bryan vs face Reigns right now go down like Cena's early programs with Jericho and Angle? What would they have to do make it work?

Oh boy, if they gave them 10 minutes and it was just some chain wrestling followed quickly by a bunch of finisher reversals and a finish, the crowd would piss all over the rest of the show. I would imagine they'll want everyone in as good a mood as possible for Brock/Reigns, but they have serious issues with their own audience so who knows.

I think Dustin probably would have floated around the US/TV title picture and then eventually ended up an NWO midcarder. His output in ring would probably be better than his initial Goldust runs though. I would hope Vader would have been kept strong and stayed at the top of the card as a foil for the NWO. I certainly would have loved to see Vader/Goldberg.

As someone in the crowd who actively booed, I think a lot of people there and at home were like me; we knew who was going over, knew what the reaction was going to be like, and had fun with it. I wasn't outraged by the booking, but I thought it was the laziest and least interesting thing they could do and was amused it went south. With regard to the OP's point, I had less interest in WWE this fall when they were kind of going through the motions. I'd finally stopped watching television completely and only saw a few ppvs even though I have the network. Now I'm invested again just to see if they totally screw up mania or not, so there's something to the hatewatching argument at least in my experience. I'd certainly not give other fictional programming, which Vince thinks of as his competition, the same amount of benefit of doubt. I'd just stop watching.

Guardians performed very well with women, so that's certainly possible. Batista and Brock shared the ring once during Batista's comeback for a staredown. I don't think anybody cared at the time because it was at the height of Bootista backlash, but that would be a huge match for say Survivor Series or the Rumble.