Laz

The issue with it being Cesaro is that the audience clearly wants him higher on the card. I don't see him as a ME tier guy, but definitely an upper card gatekeeper (like Timbo said). For a good mechanic role, I think you need somebody who the fans will react to but isn't at risk of overshadowing higher card talent. Cesaro definitely doesn't fit that since he gets louder reactions, as face or heel, than some of those pushed over him (Sheamus, ADR, Roman in certain cities). In my opinion, the best currently signed talent they have that would be a great midcard mechanic would be Swagger. He's not in danger of getting more over than people he'd be working with, has enough talent to carry himself, and his credentials both amateur and pro make it so that a win over him could still matter for those at lower or equal card positions.

The evil authority figure hating the top babyface worked for Steve Austin because he was a beer-swilling foul mouthed redneck who wouldn't play by the rules. It made sense that a professional like Vince McMahon wouldn't want that guy as champion and do everything in his power to get him away from the title. It kinda worked for John Cena. Sure, he was a happy company man, but he was starting to become bigger than the company. That's not good for corporate morale, so a lesson must be taught. It definitely worked for CM Punk. Here's this tattooed wise-ass that is every bit as good as he says he is (and he says it all the time), so good he openly ripped the company a new one and knew he'd get away with it, even taking the title and going home because he could. It worked for Daniel Bryan since he didn't look like a champion, embodied everything that HHH wished he did himself (a case of "your favorite wrestler's favorite wrestler"), but the world is image conscious and this hippie looking fellow who won't back down is about to do the impossible so the company needs to stop him. BROCK made sense. He literally has no cares in the world beyond making money and kicking ass. That kind of beast can't be trusted on any tier, especially when he's already proven he can kick the boss's ass a couple times over, so stack the odds. So...why do they hate Roman? Because he wasn't Seth Rollins (who they ended up not being too high on anyway)? Because he's a nice guy?

Or, and this may just be a preposterous notion supported primarily by anecdotal evidence, but most people have internet access on these devices that fit in the palms of their hands. They enjoy wrestling and, now and then, look up wrestling news. They see a tweet about some guy they've never heard of signing to WWE, look up some of stuff on YouTube, enjoy it, and get excited when he shows up at one of the biggest shows of the year presented by the biggest company the industry has ever seen. Wrestling fans like to go to wrestling events. Even the dark days of 1995 had good attendance for the big shows, despite how lousy the product was. You go hoping it will be a fun experience and try to enjoy yourself. I get the distaste for the self-congratulatory audiences that seem to exist only to kiss their own taints, but AJ getting a pop when he was one of the biggest stars for a company with 1/3 the WWE audience in size, a company that ran for years a few towns away, is not that. re: Roman You can absolutely get him over with everybody. Make him a rounded character that isn't afraid of a fight, which is the direction they started taking him last year. He got huge pops at WM just for standing back up after BROCK SMASH and for ending the awful Sheamus run. Why couldn't he have stayed on the stretcher so his return was a bigger deal? Why couldn't he have actually fought back when he was eliminated because he was screwed? Why is he being handed title shots that the on-air villains, who every fan over 8/9 years old know actually run the show, say he doesn't deserve? Every issue that we can bring up can be solved by decent booking/writing. Every single one of them. Vince would rather have a direct-to-video Steven Seagal movie with no suspense than a Die Hard because he likes unbeatable übermensch instead of legitimate struggle, completely ignoring that the majority of people want the latter.

Jericho is also known to wear lifts.

It probably didn't help that she was paired with people who couldn't really do much. The Godwinns? Bodydonnas? Closest to decent was the Road Warriors and that was just a terrible pairing. I'll be checking it out. I've already checked out Chyna's stuff. I am a man of little shame.

Not harsh, necessarily, but I think much of the context for the Joe/Styles matches is being missed since you're watching the matches in a bubble and not as part of the story being told. Styles in '05 was very spot-focused but he still used those spots to tell a story, and in the Joe series it was "guy who conquered every monster thrown his way but can't conquer this one." He'd beaten Abyss numerous times, he'd already been World champion (twice, IIRC), and here's this hugely hyped monster that's almost as fast as he is and knows the ring even better than he does and he, as the TNA Golden Boy, has the best chance of anybody on the roster to take him out. We also weren't getting matches like that on a big level in 2005 US companies. Not outside ROH, anyway. I can maybe liken it to people who found the Matrix so profound and mind-blowingly original in 1999 so they always have that impression of it, but others having already seen that kind of movie and/or its elements done better prior don't care for it too much.

I've been a fan of Styles since I first saw him on the 4th weekly TNA PPV and this is right on the money. He's incredible and one of the pillars of his generation, but I can even agree that most of his work (which is TNA) is really spotty (which is TNA).

Everything involving Jimmy Havoc in Progress from heel turn to title loss is fantastic. Parts border on hilarity, but not once is Havoc's threat ever in question.

I'm 29 and I had no idea who One Punch Man was until two weeks ago.

DX was not anywhere near as important as the nWo and that WWE has tried to play them up as such is, as previously stated, revisionist history at its worst. However, they absolutely were instrumental to the turning of the tide. The nWo ran its course by the summer of 1998 and was absolutely looking more and more like your dad and his pals trying to be cool, so here comes a few guys under 35 making dick and fart jokes (keep in mind that South Park was still in its lewd-because-why-not phase and Adam Sandler was still a huge deal) and rejecting all sense of authority, add them as supporting characters to Steve Austin, and voila: the WWF looks that much cooler to the targeted demographic than WCW does. They weren't the reason people tuned in but they were a big part of why they stayed.

An MMA fight and a bar fight are two different things. One has rules, the other doesn't. A trained fighter will still likely win a bar fight, but I've also met local MMA fighters that have been dropped in bar fights and tough guy types that barely lasted 10 seconds in a controlled environment.

I was 11 when DX formed, 12 when they hit their peak, 13 when they broke up, and 14 when they reformed as a heel group. You're damn straight I loved DX. I'm also old enough now to realize how stupid and immature they were, but not jaded enough to miss that being the point of the whole thing. They were the edgy, sophomoric, and anti-authority group that a young rabblerousin' Laz could latch onto. Their 2006 "reunion tour" stuff was the drizzling, gaping, most foul shits. It single handedly killed all my interest in the product at the time (at least, it was the last straw) and I didn't come back at all until the Morrison/Punk feud the next year.

Protecting the business was more important. "Look at this fake rassler, I could kick his ass" was pretty common back in the day (still happens today, too), so the best way to keep kayfabe about it was to have the wrestler do whatever it took to win the fight.

Or that he'd be particularly focused on going over during his reign of terror on Raw. I don't think it's 100% true, but given what so many people there at the time have said about morale I'm willing to believe it's more truth than fiction.

Whenever I hear Sullivan rant about how business exposing the Young Bucks, Joey Ryan, or any indy talent are, I think to myself about the DoD. Nothing is more business exposing than that.

Exactly. They hired a bloody brawler who cut great TDK Joker-esque promos and made him into "I put slime in the briefcase lol." That's part of the reason why I'm not enthusiastic about the NJPW signings, since WWE seems adamant on taking away what makes guys special.

This. I got turned onto him right as he was signed and looked up as much Jon Moxley work as I could find, and holy hell was he just the most spastic and crazy promo guy since Piper. He's so toned down in WWE he's almost a different person entirely, but he stil shows that urgency and general craziness as Ambrose. He's the guy you know is going to snap and is barely holding it together.

3/18/01 is Greed. It was probably the best WCW PPV in over a year. The opener of KweeWee/Jett was great fun and I'm actually struggling to think of a match on the card that I don't enjoy on some level.

Yep. Andre Davis. http://camelclutchblog.com/independent-pro-wrestler-tests-positive-for-hiv/

Or Balor, the obvious ace of NXT for the past year, put in a great word for good friends of his. I'm not too high on KA, but he's far from horrible. He actually seems like he's a better fit for WWE than NJPW to me.

Aye to this. There's tasteless angles and then there's scummy behavior. The WWF sex scandals? Scummy. A heel being a complete prick before his comeuppance? Not really.

Trish wouldn't have been able to take it to court. "Actress refuses to do scene" isn't worth litigation without illegal coercion involved.

The Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie/Al Wilson crap. XPW. No matter what people may say about Fritz, racism used to hype an angle, or anything involving Vince McMahon, I will always say XPW. Addendum to XPW: the rumor that Rob Black hired some guys to castrate Messiah after he left the company for CZW/banged his porn star wife/left without saying goodbye.

The HHHate was really sizzling up, but given how good nearly every program he was involved in was until the love triangle ended in August/September and how he had no problem working with job-tier guys and showing ass? It wasn't the raging HHHate on that he received '02-'05.

Attend more local indies. I have no excuse for not catching a Beyond show since they run in my backyard.