Petey

Not sure Brock should be Bryan's first opponent back from injury for health's sake, but it's definitely a match I want to see.

I would email the tech support on their site. I had an issue with that a month ago and I believe it was something to do with PayPal. The tech guy fixed it up in like ten minutes.

I've only watched The Network on my laptop and the Roku (and played around a bit on my phone but nothing significant) and I really haven't had much of an issue with the Roku at all. In fact, during PPV's, I feel like I get less dropouts than a lot of other people but I also have a really strong internet connection and that might be a bigger factor.

I don't think the issue is as much Cena being unable to do charity stuff because he'd be a villain as much as if he were a heel, kids probably wouldn't be asking to meet him as a Make-A-Wish request and thus, it'd be one less charitable thing for WWE to talk about.

Not sure if you listened to the interview Ross just did with Tony but he mentions that when they did the game together, Heenan brought up the stuff and they did hash it out but Tony never bothered to contact Heenan after they worked together on the game and thinks that might have bothered Heenan.

That was a really funny exchange Bryan reading e-mail: "what would happen if HHH fell off a cliff and died?" Dave: "well, why would he be on a cliff?" Bryan: "I don't know, this is a hypothetical question" Dave: "but what reason does he have to climb onto a cliff? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd climb onto a cliff" paraphrasing, but the conversation basically went like that. I love when Dave sarcastically deadpans at taking every question literally. The end result of this discussion was, yes, if Vince is dead and HHH "falls off a cliff" the company might be screwed because they have nobody else lined up who would be capable of running the empire. Dave started mentioning how Vince brought in Jerry Jarrett and Watts when he needed help, and even dudes like Cornette and Ross and Heyman, but how there aren't people out there like that anymore. My initial thought listening to this is "give the book to Heyman" and Dave cut that idea off before I'd even finished it saying there is no way they would give Heyman creative control over their product. Which, I don't agree with and think Dave was off base with. He mentioned how much Heyman would butt heads with Vince/Stephanie because he was so out spoken and wasn't afraid to challenge them, but in this scenario where Vince and HHH are dead, I think Heyman would be Stephanie's first choice to help run things creatively Pretty sure Dixie Carter would be the chosen one. She's headed the TNA empire for a while!

I don't think so. JBL kept referencing it throughout Raw.

Same. I don't DVR Raw either so unless the MNF game is a blowout, I generally don't watch the show from September-December. I haven't watched Smackdown in well over a decade so the move to Thursday doesn't affect me one way or the other.

I always thought there was money in a Hogan/Nash match. Every time they teased "dissension" in the nWo, whenever it was centered on Nash being the cause, the crowd would go crazy. The match itself would have been terrible but I think the build would have been great and it could have done a great buyrate, especially if it were a co-main event with Sting or whoever defending the title in another match.

I've seen a lot of references to every angle having an expiration date and how the nWo greatly outlived its expiration date. When do you guys feel the angle should have ended? I was just about to turn 9 when the '96 Bash occurred, so I was a mark during pretty much the nWo's entire WCW run. I've also re-watched a lot of the Nitro's from the era via Classics on Demand, so I've seen the thing through different lenses. As early as the fall of '96, you can see the nWo transitioning from "group of outside invaders" to "dominant heel stable". It was still successful, Starrcade '97 proved that, but the transition happened fairly early into the run. I grew up in NY, so I was a huge WWF fan. I was also a huge Hogan fan and I followed him when he went to WCW, but it wasn't until Nitro launched that I really started to prefer WCW to the WWF. I was always watching WCW during the nWo's heyday and really only keeping up on the WWF through Livewire and some school friends who were pro-WWF. It wasn't until TYSON AND AUSTIN that I started to shift back to the WWF and was all in once Austin won the title at WrestleMania 14. I say all that because I think it matters in shaping my views on the wrestling I like(d?). The nWo was awesome. It was like a revolution. It felt so different than anything I had ever seen in wrestling. Even when it became more of a traditional storyline with a dominating heel stable, I was glued because it still seemed awesome. It took something that I thought felt more revolutionary and more different to get me to switch back. What re-watching the '97 Nitros taught me was that the fall of '97 was a pretty bad period for WCW, even if it was commercially successful, while it was really great for the WWF, even if their business was yet to boom. It really felt as though they were treading water from Road Wild '97 until Starrcade and it was at this point that the nWo's constant winning started to be way too much. It almost felt like there was no point in watching until Sting/Hogan. The Nitro after Fall Brawl '97 was one of the most depressing episodes of wrestling TV I've ever watched. Hennig beating Mongo in the main event for the US Title was the poor icing on the cake. It was horrendous. For anyone with a more critical eye than mine at the time, they would have already been switching to the WWF. And it would all get so much worse. With all that said, to answer the original question, I think the positives outweighed the negatives. Wrestling needed to change. It needed a kick in the butt. The nWo ushered in the change it needed. Sure, it may have killed the company, but WCW might have died anyway or at least shrank to a really small level, possibly taking the WWF along for the ride.

It wouldn't be as horrendous an idea if Brock had the makings of a great babyface and was gonna come back and work full time. I think if Bryan was healthy and they were doing a Bryan/Cena rematch, this wouldn't be the worst idea.

I think the storyline has been real good (Steph is just tremendous), but I find it lulzy that they've been training hard with the goal of having a good match as opposed to training hard with the goal of having a crap match.

That Kevin Dunn piece was something else.

Digitizing the content is likely what is setting them back there, and with regard to their other libraries. In particular, adding closed captioning to everything seems to be the most difficult part. I don't know if upping the stuff on CoD (whether the video-on-demand version or the web version) makes it easier to up it to The Network, but I'm assuming that's the case.

I'd much rather Mid South instead of WCCW and I imagine it's like that for almost everyone. I'm not sure what their logic is behind WCCW aside from it was already on Classics on Demand so some of the work is already done. Also, do you really hope that they upload Thunder?

Agreed that Heat Wave 98 was a very good show. For 2000, I thought it was interesting that Sidebottom noted Austin's return as being bad since he was out of place. You're taking a guy who not even a year earlier was by far the biggest star and draw in the business and now it felt as though WWF had no need for him and really, had become a much better show without him (although that's more due to Russo's exit and an influx of better talent to flesh out the undercard rather than Austin's exit). Anyway, The good: The Rock/Triple H rivalry The bad: The first signs of the wrestling boom ending with the big decline in both WCW and ECW The ugly: WCW in general

Yeah it gives me hope that we'll get a little bit more diversified content over the next month or two, although Dave seemingly not having much faith in stuff like Mid South or some of the other territories being of priority is a little concerning.

I'm legitimately upset at that one. I remember the dude as the odd looking referee from my childhood.

I don't think Reigns/Cena would expose Roman. Cena's a great worker and I think would get a good match out of him. I think it's a little premature to think that the fans would give Reigns the Batista treatment if he wins the Rumble after Bryan returns on the same show. As of right now, I think Roman is more universally liked than Batista was when he returned and I don't think Bryan is quite as over as he was at the Rumble if only because he hasn't been on TV and won't be for another five months. If Reigns' popularity starts to decline before the Rumble, then I could see WWE having a problem on their hands. But I think Roman as a single star is still 'new' enough that the fans won't boo him out of the building.

I guess it's easier to be disappointed in making money that's less than what you expected as opposed to not getting paid.

Especially since there was absolutely no reason why Mania and KOTR shouldn't have been awesome with the roster and momentum they had. 2000 is one of the more explored years, was curious how people here viewed it in hindsight more than anything (similar to how 1998 doesn't look so good outside of 98). ECW was a trainwreck during this year too, with one of the few exceptions being Tajiri having an awesome year. I actually think that 98 WWF hasn't aged all that terribly. The wrestling itself is pretty bad but I thought the storylines were pretty good. It didn't hold up as well as 1997 or 2000, but I think it's closer to those two years than 1999 WWF. But yeah, the rest of 1998 wasn't all that great unless you were there in the moment. I rewatched some of the 98 Nitros on Classics on Demand and they were largely unwatchable. 1998 ECW also wasn't very good although a lot of that was probably due to Shane Douglas' injury and Paul's refusal to either strip Douglas of the title just wasn't smart.

Long story short. He was caught listening to a long range Raw Creative team meeting and Stephanie HATED him. Wasn't it an accident and that he fell asleep on the phone or something and didn't realize he was on the Raw creative team meeting conference call?

Then I guess you're just not a loyal soldier.

From about the summer of 2002 until the end of the year, the ratings looked pretty similar. Though I don't know what his tenure was as head writer.

I fail to see how that's funny. It's almost certainly going to happen and it's almost certainly going to be awesome.