Petey

Adam Sandler is 47. Honestly, I bet Sandman and Vince would get along great.

I just watched MITB 2011 for the first time the other night (I was largely checked out of WWE from 08 or 09 until the summer of 2013) and was surprised at how much better the commentary was during that show than it is now. The focus was more on in-ring stuff and while you still had typical WWE buzzwords and the like, it wasn't nearly as awful. And Cole was still slightly in his heel mode (although not over the top). Even Lawler didn't sound like the video game version of himself. I wonder if that was a one-off and the commentary was still largely terrible during that time or if the great decline happened after MITB.

I know everyone talks about how much better the HHH-run NXT is over the Vince-run WWE (it is true) as proof that Vince has lost it and Triple H has it (or at least has it more than Vince), but I don't think it's quite an apples:apples comparison. NXT is one hour per week, taped in front of a glorified TV studio audience, with no actual television constraints and will wind up having like four big events to build to per year. WWE has three hours of 'A' live TV presented in front of a large crowd, another two hours of 'B/C' TV presented the same way, an hour of 'D' TV that is no longer on TV but is still presented in front of the same audience as Smackdown AND has monthly three hour major events. NXT should come off as much better than WWE. It has everything working for it. That's not to say that I don't think HHH taking over WWE from Vince couldn't result in a better WWE, but I'm not sure it's fair to cite NXT as 100% proof of that.

Every interview I hear and article I read involving Russo, he never says sports entertainment or sports entertainers. Always wrestling and wrestlers. It's creeping me out.

Wasn't Vince's issue more that they were allotted for X amount of minutes and wound up going over by double the time?

I would include Sting in that, maybe even more than Goldberg. While Booker, DDP and Scott Steiner were all main eventers at some point in WCW, Flair and Sting were the backbone of WCW forever and Goldberg was the hottest act they created during the Nitro era.

With you on this. Why do they bother announcing the departures of referees, especially now that they seldom mention them by their names on TV? Referees are people too ya heartless jerk.

"I've got to buy it, I've got to buy it. Chinpokomon!" Is that what you were going for because that's the vibe I got... and I loved it.

Amish Roadkill? Is the Nova shoot done through RF?

Totally disagree. She is about the only diva who looks like the type of girl who would follow wrestling, and looks like a hotter version of the pale outsider girl that the typical overweight, black t-shirt nerdy wrestling fan believes he can date (delusional or not). From the way she looks and carries herself, she is the perfect face, and the ideal antidote to the blond model types who the girls hate and the boys can't date. She is almost like a CM Punk in that respect, a 'cooler' version of the typical fan. The problem here is the abysmal booking. Her character needs to be less Mikey Whipwreck fighting against the odds, and more Daniel Bryan fighting against the tide, where she is fiery and competitive in the ring. Haven't seen her NXT stuff so can't comment on that. But I'm not sure Vince is all that interested in Paige appealing to the aforementioned demographic. Hasn't the consensus always been that Vince (and some other higher ups) are embarrassed by the prototypical wrestling fan? It wouldn't surprise me if Vince has a delusional view of the majority of his viewership and that people would prefer the blond model/barbie type. I know for me, as a pale person, I strongly identify with Paige and love her to death because she's showing the world that us milky white folks are people too. But I just don't know if Vince really cares about me. I think in his dream world, the type of guys who watch Raw are the Bros who are always out at the club chasing women and all that.

A million for the US sounds about right. I think they were hoping to hit at least 750,000 and were realistically expecting 800,000. I don't know how many non-US people are subscribing. It seems like there's still a lot of internet threads popping up from people around the world who are trying to subscribe. I'm sure there's a chunk of users doing this, but I don't think it's all that significant.

So is Striker taking over for RF as interviewer? I thought Striker was largely terrible as an announcer but I've always found RF to be a poor interviewer, especially when compared to Sean Oliver, so maybe Striker will be able to contribute more in this new role.

IIRC, the numbers they were hoping for were based off just US subscribers. I think it's safe to assume that they'll get a nice bump in total subscribers when The Network rolls out globally, but I also don't know what they're targeting worldwide.

I was hoping they would do stuff like that. I don't know what day/time the WCCW shows that they have up aired but it'd be neat to try to air those, Prime Time Wrestling, other stuff in their original time slots. Hell, have ECW on at 2AM on Saturday nights or whatever time it aired on MSG back in the day. While I think it'd be awesome, I don't know if it'd lead to a serious increase in subscribers. I feel like most of the people who were going to get it, got it at launch. Maybe there's a few people that are holding out for more stuff to be added to the library like Attitude Era Raws, Nitros and the like, but I just don't see that being many folks. I don't know how many people who watched during the Monday Night Wars and haven't consistently watched in 10 years are gonna be all that jazzed about being able to go back and watch stuff from when they were fans. As for the current fans who haven't subscribed, I'm not sure what else the Network could offer. Their biggest weapon was WrestleMania and they already fired that one. Unless they're able to figure out a way to make the PPV's more of a must see/subscribe again, I don't think they're going to see a big increase in subscribers.

Off topic: Vince's history of trashing stars gives me cause for concern for Prince Devitt, Kevin Steen and KENTA. The idea that Vince McMahon would give enough thought to any of those guys to consider them "stars" worth "trashing" seems highly dubious. Yeah I was gonna say that I think sporadic and Vince define 'stars' quite differently. That's not a knock on the aforementioned trio as I've seen a lot of Steen and KENTA and think both are great. I've never seen Devitt but have always heard great things. But yeah, being successful on the US indies and/or Japan's big wrestling scene is probably not enough to make Vince consider them 'stars'. As for the actual topic, I know everyone says the angle was impossible to screw up, but I disagree. First, the WWF obviously didn't execute it well as business was largely down (save for the Invasion pay-per-view itself), so there's proof alone that it was possible to screw up. Second, the timing was bad. I first heard of the news on the Friday night before the WrestleMania 17 go-home Raw. So the WWF is in full fledged Mania mode with everything for the card set and now rather than continue on like planned, they make the biggest acquisition in the history of the business and need to address it. I think if they were able to make the purchase right after WrestleMania, they would have greatly benefited because the post-WrestleMania time period is always a lull and they're usually just treading water until SummerSlam. This would have been a great way to garner interest in the in-between period. From a storyline perspective, WWF would have been in a more "clean slate" and wouldn't have had any real established storylines that would have needed to be completed with WCW on top of it. Like others have mentioned, babyface Shane owning heel WCW hurt it from the beginning. I get why they did it-- add even more fuel to the McMahon vs. McMahon match and set the stage for a mega McMahon vs. McMahon feud-- but it wound up just confusing the fans as to who they should cheer. They would have been better off going with Vince buying WCW and he's gonna run it as a separate brand and now make twice the money. I think one of the issues they ran into in terms of running WCW as its own brand was that they didn't bring in enough wrestlers in order for WCW to operate as its own entity. I don't just mean at the top of the card, but WCW/The Alliance always felt more like a big stable as opposed to a total self-efficient company. I do think Vince really needed to bring in Goldberg, Sting and Flair on top of the guys he did bring in. Steiner and Mysterio wouldn't have hurt either. With more name power and a more fleshed out undercard, WCW as its own brand would have been more viable. I don't think you needed Hogan/Hall/Nash, at least in the very beginning, as I think the fans were pretty done with them aside from as a nostalgia act(s). I guess if you wanted to look at it from an angle perspective, all the WWF really needed to do was bring in Goldberg, Sting and Flair and have WCW actually look like a threat. Making it look like real outsiders like the early nWo attacks in WCW would also have helped. But all of this is a fantasy and had almost no chance of happening. It's a shame but I don't think there was any reasonable way that the execution could have lived up to the hype.

That's a good point. I always thought that they'd start cutting back due to a finite amount of storage/server space but if they can afford to keep all the preshows up, I guess we're in the clear.

They upload more around 5 episodes of Raw per week, which I think is more than fair. That said, I am a little disappointed that Raw is the only thing that's getting constantly uploaded. There's still gaps with ECW's Hardcore TV and as you mentioned, aside from an early batch of WCCW, nothing else has been added. Granted, it's not to the point where I'd ever consider not resubscribing so I guess it really doesn't matter all that much, but it would be nice to see them upload more of the stuff they already have or start adding stuff that at least was on Classics on Demand (WCW/Saturday Night, Prime Time Wrestling, etc...) However, I will say that I'm happy that at this point, they haven't taken anything down (to my knowledge at least).

I would probably say pre-1996. I'm a month shy of 27 and most of my real time favorite wrestling moments happened post-1997, but I think I actually enjoy re-watching a lot of stuff from the 80's more than the stuff I grew up with. I've also only seen a little bit of Japan but I know how great AJPW was pre-1996 and Japan in general in the 80's.

I love the internet.

WOW. That has potential to be incredible. Legit cannot think of a more appropriate guest off the top of my head. Surprised WWE OK'd that.

Who is Maddox? Brad Maddox? Tommy Maddox?

If only Kip Allen Frey was able to keep going. What was the first major show under Watts, either a Clash or a PPV? Was it Beach Blast?

They'll put just about anybody in a shoot nowadays, won't they

I'll never forget the hype for Frank Gotch/Georg Hackenschmidt II. Comiskey was CRAZY.