The Man in Blak

I was surprised to see Rusev show up to challenge Adrian Neville for the NXT Championship last night. It ended up being a mostly one-sided squash for Rusev that ended in a DQ win for Neville when Tyler Breeze interfered, but it still seemed odd to see a guy that's been given such a steady push on the main roster pop up in NXT again. (Also, why would they book and lay out such a damaging match for Neville?)

The creative team has definitely grown massively over the last 15 years. It used to be just Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara directly pitching ideas at Vince McMahon's home. They wrote the whole scripts for Monday Night Raw (and Smackdown briefly) on their own. Now, you have a whole team of writers for each show, some of whom work mainly from home and others who are always on the road (enough to fill a corporate jet!). There's also a hierarchy that makes it very difficult for new voices to be heard. It's hard to see there being fundamental change in WWE until Vince McMahon steps down, Triple H gets complete control, removes Vince's old guard (like Kevin Dunn and Michael Hayes) and brings fresh blood in. Of course, many of the same problems will still be there in the long run. Let me clarify a bit: I'm not saying that the bureaucracy isn't there - we have enough anecdotes from various people throughout the business that makes it seem clear. The issue that I'm questioning is how long those layers have been there and if they're really the root cause. Has the WWE bureaucracy grown so dramatically that the WWE of 2008-2010, which was one of the most successful periods in the company's history, operated that differently from the WWE of today?

They became a publically traded company back in 1999, right in the middle of one of the most successful periods in the history of the company. It's certainly possible that they've steadily accumulated that bureaucracy over time, but I think it's also just as likely that all that bureaucracy was there once Russo left back in '99 and they were too flush with talent to suffer from their mistakes. Also, in terms of playing it safe, this is the same company that turned Rollins heel and broke up their biggest faction to mix things up. I'm still not convinced they made the right call, but it was hardly a safe one, regardless of the outcome. I think the real problem is that, despite being the far and away leader in the industry, their current talent roster is thin and over-exposed. Even with an heir apparent in Reigns (who's probably closer to Sting than the Rock), turning Cena would only be a bandaid for stagnancy thrroughout the entire card.

But, at the same time, this match isn't working in a vacuum -- it still carries a context of other conventional matches and, specifically, the impacts of moves made within those matches. I understand that it's desirable to distinguish this Iron Man match from standard matches by playing up the gimmick with multiple falls...but this match seems to use that as an excuse to work in an alternate universe where the typical impacts of moves can be abided by or discarded arbitrarily, whenever the narrative sees fit. If Steamboat gets shined up for eight minutes in a conventional match and eats a desperation knee in the corner, he kicks out of the pin attempt because it's the first real dose of punishment he's taken the whole match. The next conventional match that ends that way for anyone, let alone Ricky Steamboat, will be the first one, I think. When Steamboat eats that knee in this Iron Man match, though, he gets pinned because...why? To establish that any move can take a fall, even if that move is established as a desperation move at best in other matches? If that's the case, why is Steamboat kicking out of a piledriver over halfway through the match after Rude has been methodically working on his head and neck? To contrast Steamboat's toughness against Rude, who gives up a fall seconds later to a tombstone piledriver reversal? Ventura reads the situation perfectly and tries to sell Steamboat's execution as being the difference, but it still feels contrived to me. Having said all of that, the actual ringwork in this match is tremendous. I'm not sure there's a match where Rude, in particular, looks better, especially during the final, panicked sprint. The intentional DQ spot is clever, if a bit silly -- if you're going to get DQ'd, why not waffle the guy with a chair (a la HHH/Rock years later)? -- and it miraculously lends some credence to Watts' ridiculous top-rope rule. The last ten minutes are an ideal way to end a long, drawn-out war; Steamboat gets a ray of hope from a backslide, which actually works and earns a fall because Rude is exhausted at this point, then launches into a sprint of pinning combinations to try and capitalize further. Rude cuts him off and tries to slow things down, eventually bringing the match to its most memorable moment: one of the best sleeper hold sequences I've ever seen, ending in a perfect callback to the work on Rude's ribs earlier on the match. And, finally, Rude's last run of desperate pin attempts Ultimately, though, I just can't look past the layout of the match. Yes, it's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the Hart/Michaels WM12 Iron Man match, but both matches feel equally contrived to me (albeit for totally different reasons). The numerous falls, shorter time limit, and considerably better commentary makes Steamboat/Rude a much easier watch but, structurally, I think I actually appreciate Hart/Michaels more because the overarching narrative that emerges from its contrivance -- a zero-sum stalemate that pushes into an unthinkable overtime -- seems more consonant with the face/face dynamic where both guys are just too resilient to give in. Hart/Michaels may seem slow compared to this, but it never seems dissonant to me like the first and (to a lesser extent) third falls for Rude, where the babyface with a heart of a champion coughs up falls to a flying knee drop and Rude's first move of the match.

They're already almost halfway there on this -- Rusev actually took his first (?) loss via DQ in a rematch against Jack Swagger on Main Event last night, after hitting Swagger with the flag on the outside to try and break out of the ankle lock. (Yes, they did book a PPV rematch on Main Event, just days after the PPV.) After the match, Rusev ended up looking surprisingly weak, with Swagger standing tall in the ring with the American flag to foreshadow the inevitable flag match at SummerSlam. Really weird match too, with Rusev selectively selling the ankle injury from Battleground. I think it was Dylan on the P2BN Battleground Podcast that brought up Rusev's struggles to work on top and this match only reinforced that idea, with Rusev struggling to find any offense and then cartoonishly selling his ankle throughout. (Example: stomping Swagger with the bad foot, grabbing said foot in anguish, then proceeding like nothing really happened.)

Keller's constant shilling of VIP content during the Torch podcasts is far more tolerable to me than Alvarez, who is one of the most obnoxious people that I've ever heard on any podcast, wrestling or otherwise.

I think Bray winning the title at MITB would have made a ton of sense, if only because it would have provided a more direct path to what we're already staring at -- Bray wins the title, Cena challenges Bray for the title at Battleground, Cena wins and goes onto face Lesnar at SummerSlam. It makes so much sense that it may have almost felt too predictable, especially because the Cena/Wyatt title would have basically been a foregone conclusion. (It also would have taken away the opportunity to cram Reigns into the main event scene, which is clearly a priority.) If Cena had dropped the first match, though... I'll have to give Jericho/Bray another watch with a more critical eye but, while I was watching it the first time, it just felt unrelentingly slow. It could have been picture-perfect from a structural standpoint, but they took too long getting from point to point and the transitions between those points weren't especially memorable. (Other than the botched spot that Bray immediately re-did, of course.) I don't expect Bray Wyatt to work an arm like Arn Anderson or anything, but slow-paced brawling back and forth only works for me when both guys are throwing bombs...and neither Wyatt nor Jericho brought anything on that level.

The crucial mistake with Bray Wyatt was having him lose the match with Cena at Wrestlemania 30. Once they did that -- once they teased the "Cena has to become a monster to beat Bray" storyline in that match and then crushed it -- they cut his legs out from under him. The cage match at Payback introduced something that the Jericho feud has continued to drive home -- that Wyatt has to have Harper & Rowan to accomplish anything meaningful. And then they damaged the Family as a whole by having Cena (and the Usos) win the Last Man Standing match, even with the Family interfering the whole way. The Battleground matches didn't really help either. They've strongly established a narrative where the Usos aren't losing the belts to Harper & Rowan, no matter how dangerous they may be. And the Jericho/Bray match was a sloppy disaster that sorely needed a narrative beyond the referee banishing the Family from ringside. (Seriously? It's that easy?) The ending, in particular, made Wyatt look like a loser, no matter how desperately JBL wanted to sell it as an upset. WWE is treating them like they're bulletproof but, as the BO-RING chants from a week ago proved, they're not quite there yet, no matter how cool their ring entrances may be. It's going to be hard for Jericho to erase the stink off of that first match, if they're really intending to use him to boost/rebuild Bray. And who knows where Harper & Rowan go -- the only other established face tag team for them to work with is Goldust & Stardust, so perhaps they could be the catalyst in the Goldust/Stardust split?

On the PS3, those episodes are incorrectly numbered, but at least they're shown in the right order with the other correctly-numbered episodes. It's weird to see the listing of episodes go 13, 14, 37, 15...weird, but functional. Another thing that's weird: hearing Jake Roberts' theme as the background music to Hogan's training montage before the fight with Andre. Is that another instance of music editing gone wrong or did they actually use Jake's theme in the original?

This article seems to imply that ad revenue isn't that great for wrestling anyway - is it really that big of a chunk of WWE's revenue? Does WWE even get a piece of that ad revenue or does it go to NBC Universal?

I'm curious - did you watch Austin/McMahon at the time in '98 and still feel this way, even back then? At the time, Austin/McMahon was red-hot because the roles that both characters played -- unpredictable anti-hero and evil authority figure -- felt incredibly fresh for WWF at the time and made every show feel like anything could happen. Of course, this also means that it's going to age incredibly poorly because, now that we're years removed from that time, we know how everything turned out and, unfortunately, the roles that Austin and McMahon played in '98 have been driven into the ground by less engaging performers.

I can't see them willingly cancelling Smackdown or throttling down the PPV schedule, not when Wall Street is flinching over projected WWE Network subscriber numbers. The brand split comment is interesting because, in a way, they already have a brand split that would work for splitting PPVs: WWE and NXT. NXT's deliberately set up as the "developmental" organization, but that hasn't stopped people from being enthusiastic about it -- to me, it seems more viable as a second brand than an arbitrary split of the "big league" roster, especially since the current WWE is so thin that they're already re-running matches in the undercard constantly. If they ramped up the roster in NXT so that they could handle a longer PPV-level card (rather than the two-hour specials that they're doing now), they'd be doing themselves two separate favors -- they'd not only buy themselves from breathing room from a storyline standpoint in WWE, but they'd also theoretically be building a strong developmental roster that could ascend and eventually excel in WWE. Here's a potential schedule, with WWE PPVs in bold: Late January - Royal Rumble Late February - NXT PPV1 Late March - Wrestlemania Late April - NXT PPV2 Mid May - WWE PPV3: Payback, Backlash Late June - Money in the Bank Mid July - NXT PPV3 Mid-August - Summer Slam Early September - NXT PPV4 Mid-October - WWE PPV6: Fall Brawl, Halloween Havoc Late November - Survivor Series (with Elimination Chamber match?) Mid December - NXT PPV5 (most important NXT PPV of the year - think Starrcade) This gives PPVs in both brands some time between major events to build up storylines. Plus, NXT talent that are ready to make the jump to WWE could seamlessly transition from a big blowoff in NXT PPV5 into the Royal Rumble. EDIT: Another option with this plan, though it would probably require re-negotiation of the TV deal - use a replay of NXT from the previous Thursday to replace the first or third hour of Raw. That gives NXT exposure on TV (though Network subscribers would still get the incentive of seeing it live), plus it brings Raw back to a more compact two-hour timeslot.

Three minutes into part one of the Russo interview and he's already talking about how hard it is to get wrestlers with a strong "southern" accent over. No wonder Cornette dreams about murdering this guy. EDIT: And yeah, the "Gund Arena" incident where Austin vetoed a program was related to Jeff Jarrett. If I remember right, the story was that Austin had already refused to work with him for supsected personal reasons (Jarrett called out Austin 3:16 as a shoot in his first promo upon his return to the WWF, bad history with payoffs in USWA) and, despite that, they had scripted a sequence where Austin was going to run-in on Jarrett during some sketch with Ben Stiller and give Jarrett a stunner. Austin knew that doing that would plant the seeds for a match with Jarrett, so he vetoed it (with an extra dose of foul language for WWE Creative in the process).

They are, but they usually only have a couple of matches in that hour, with interviews and recaps taking up the rest of the time. Main Event has actually had some great matches. The Brotherhood/Real Americans tag from March was one of the best tag matches of the year.

Don't worry, Miz stalled enough in both matches that they might as well have been half-matches in terms of effort. (Plus, they're in the battle royale on Sunday, so they'll have 18 other competitors to draw attention and give them a chance to breathe if they need it.) Unless you're worried about over-exposure...if that's the case, then yeah, welcome to WWE.

To try and stay as "PWO" as possible: I already said that the political aspects of Rusev and Lana's act were awful and regressive a few pages back, but it's worth re-iterating: the pro-Putin crap is awful, regressive, and needlessly risky, specifically because of situations like this. The cheap heat isn't worth having the M80 blow up in the palm of your hand. I didn't bring up the sanctions to try and declare some false equivalence with MH17 (which, yes, is obviously tragic and on a whole other level). I brought them up to illustrate that there have already been events in direct proximity to Rusev's push and that they've sent Rusev and Lana out there anyway. Maybe I should have just said to search for "kiev" and "february 20" instead, since that was a little over a month before Rusev's debut match on Raw. The point wasn't that they should rethink or repackage Rusev NOW; the point was that they should have done it in the first place, long before MH17 became a question.

Rusev dedicated a match to Putin less than a week after the US and EU ramped up economic sanctions on Russia over the ongoing Ukraine conflict in April/May -- why stop now? I mean, yes, tapping the brakes would probably be thd sensible thing to do, but so would taking a pass on a deliberately-political foreign heel character to begin with. In for a penny, in for a pound, even though it will probably end up being a pound of flesh when it's all said and done.

The six-month commitment is a really awkward bit of fine print that I can definitely see costing them some sales. Why not: - one larger (but discounted) sum for one long-term commitment ($50 for six months) - an easy per-month price that can be cancelled at any time - sell gift cards for both options, so that people that don't like entering their credit cards online have one less excuse That puts them in step with most gaming services (to invoke one demographic with a lot of potential overlap) like Xbox Live and Playstation Plus. If the dollar figures come in shallow, they could offer a premium tier of the service that upsells the live feed at a higher per-month price. The price isn't the problem. Spotify is $9.99/month and Amazon just announced Kindle Unlimited for $9.99/month; that's the going rate for an online subscription service to a content library. The forced commitment, in my view, is what's scaring customers away from what could otherwise be an easy impulse purchase.

Main Event thoughts: - Kofi, Big E, and Rybaxel deliver a solid, if somewhat unspectacular tag match. It's odd to see Big E play FIP, but Rybaxel were able to build up enough heat to get a little "We Want Ko-Fi" chant running for the hot tag anyway. Big E definitely seems like he could be the Jim Neidhart to Kofi's Owen Hart, if they want to keep rolling with this team. (Though drawing any comparison between Kofi and Owen makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.) - Some more promo work for Miz, who's giving Bo Dallas some competition for the most delusional heel in the company. He even went for the same countout victory here vs. Sheamus as Bo did vs. Khali! The quiet, smug (but not over-the-top) hollywood act actually suits Miz pretty well; the Zbyszko routine that shaves off 2-3 minutes from the main with Sheamus, however, isn't quite as effective. Of course, once you see Miz attempt to mount an offense and control, the need to stall becomes clear. Sheamus wins with a re-run of the Raw finish; a rollup after Miz bails out from a Brogue Kick. If Sheamus doesn't send Miz flying out of the ring with a Brogue Kick to "the moneymaker" on Sunday, it will be a tragedy.

Another fake was Finlay at No Mercy 2007, although WWE blew the swerve themselves by having a close up of Finlay taking a perfectly protected bump on the way down, and also showing him quickly looking around and then feigning unconciousness. Just for the sake of reference, the "X" sign for Finley was above the head. (And wow, what a spectacular goof-up. I think that one's more on Finlay than the camera crew.) Also, while we're talking about No Mercy 2007, there was a PPV with three Triple H matches on it? And there's still any debate at all to whether he was over-exposed during this time period? EDIT: The "you can pretend to be invincible" line for Goldberg in that Triple H conquest video still stings. Hilarious.

- Flair in MITB at WM22 (Fake): Way above the head - Trish Stratus at Backlash '06 (Real): In front of face - Seth Rollins on Raw (Fake?): Just above the chest Back and to the left, back and to the left...

No, because stretcher jobs are a well-established trope in the business and one that is very explicitly and deliberately shown to the audience. I get what you're aiming for -- we're talking about an "injury" in either case -- but the "X" signal has been established as the exact opposite; when it's used, it's meant to indicate a real, non-kayfabe injury has happened, and it's usually not meant to be outwardly advertised to the crowd, so to speak.

I didn't realize that about MITB but, having watched it this morning, I can say that I'm not especially fond of it there either for whatever it's worth. Especially since it was 50-year-old Flair, who looked like he was one bad bump from a trip to the nursing home or worse. They're certainly allowed to change their signals, so to speak, but I tend to agree with sek that this starts to cross into "everything is fake but this TOTALLY-FOR-REAL SHOOT you're watching" territory. Let Rollins do his job and sell - there's no need to break the fourth wall to deliver the storyline that they wanted.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/pro-wrestling/ring-posts-blog/bal-did-raw-end-with-an-injury-to-seth-rollins-20140715,0,2143883.story It was the spot before the one in the GIF where the "injury" seemed to occur, as Rollins came off the top rope and Reigns sidestepped it. Rollins landed on his feet, which is a typical spot for him, but he landed somewhat awkwardly. He was visibly hobbling on his left (keeping weight off his right) for a second, right before Reigns sent him over the top with the clothesline in the GIF. The real reason that I thought he was legitimately hurt, though, is that Charles Robinson gave the "X" sign for an injury shortly after the landing outside. If it's a work, then yeah, I fell for it (and so did the Baltimore Sun, Bleacher Report, etc.) and I have no problem admitting that. But that also means that either Robinson got worked too or that it was a pre-meditated work...and I feel like the latter potentially has more problematic implications for WWE.

I'm probably just being dense, but I feel like I'm missing something. If it was a pre-meditated work (to clear the deck for the fatal-four-way participants), then why was Robinson giving the cross-arms to signal a legitimate injury for Rollins last night? Has the meta-booking reached a level that we're faking "real" injuries now?