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The boiler room brawl is a fucking HALF HOUR match where two dudes aimlessly brawl and find things to hit each other with while making wrestler noises in a boiler room with no lighting. Without commentary. It's horrendous. "Making sense" doesn't mean it's good. It's for sure in the top 10 worst WWE PPV matches of all time. Actually, probably 7 of the 10 involve Undertaker now that I think about it. And two involve Bray.

Interesting you'd use the boiler room brawl for reference, as it is also one of the most horrendous things they've ever produced.

I didn't mean to imply Misawa vs Kawada was stoic or emotionless, but more that Kawada's reputation as the bad ass who hits people hard stopped appealing to me a couple years ago for whatever reason.

I would have agreed with everything you said up until like...2-3 years ago. One day I just felt like Kawada wasn't as good as I had originally thought. And now I find myself enjoying him as the spunky second who has next but still gets the shit knocked out of him when he oversteps as opposed to stoic king bad ass dude. That craziest thing about the Misawa vs Jumbo feud is that by the time they had their rematch, Jumbo/Misawa stuff wasn't even the hottest part of the feud any more. Crowds were more into seeing Kawada/Kobashi/Kikuchi maybe score the next big upset, or the seething hatred between Taue and Kawada, or random matches where Taue and Misawa seemingly were trying to kill each other, or Fuchi randomly stomping Kobashi's face in, etc etc. It's why you could have 3000 tag matches in 2 years and about 70% of them didn't feel like they were just running the same match. The seconds and thirds changing roles based on teammates (Kobashi in particular depending if the other guy was Kikuchi or Kawada), random turns where the Misawa side are the complete dicks. It's some wonderful booking. Maybe the single best 2 years of booking in any promotion.

Sure, but using the "they're the only guy they sell merch for" argument in this case particularly is off base, as there are multiple people they sell MORE merch for that don't sell as well. If the theory is that the person with the most merch will sell the most merch, then it would stand to reason that all those people that have more merch to be sold would be selling more merch than Roman, right?

It's totally normal for people to go to the merch stand wanting to buy New Day or AJ or Ambrose gear only to see Roman gear and shrug and pay $25 for a Roman shirt they didn't want. Talent who have more merch for sale than Roman Reigns: Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, John Cena, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose. AJ Styles Talent who don't sell as much merch as Roman Reigns: Seth Rollins, New Day, Enzo/Cass, Sasha Banks, Dean Ambrose, AJ Styles

Braun will eventually turn face and replace Big Show as the new Andre/friendly giant who can get mad and kill you, because that's his real personality and will absolutely work. But there's no need for that for a long time. Like, years.

Literally a month ago he completely dominated John Cena for 95% of a WM match.

Miz is presented as someone to take seriously in the ring, but someone to roll your eyes at outside of the ring.

This plus expanding and running a lot more international shows. WWE reached the saturation point in the US a long time ago which is why they've been constantly breaking into new markets every year for the past decade as opposed to doing a few Euro tours, Canada, and a Japanese tour. I don't know that turning Cena would or wouldn't have made more or less money. I'm not arguing for it either direction. What I am saying is that WWE not going with "wrestling 101" booking when it came to Cena sure worked out pretty well for them, and there's no reason to think it won't work out with Roman as well. Actually, isn't what you're saying that they found ways to deal with the dwindling returns of not picking up new US fans? You can't say this is the saturation point when we've seen booms before. And they had to find ways to deal with the dwindling returns because Cena WASN'T bringing in the same amount of fans as stars of previous generations, right? So obviously, while they've managed that shortfall by tapping new markets and finding new revenue streams, maybe it didn't work all that well for them because they had to do so in the first place? That's not really what I'm saying, but I guess you could look at it that way. WWE peaked in the US and was on the decline before Cena was even in the equation, but became a more global product under him, increasing TV rights fees under him, going back to yearly stadium shows for WM under him, all while he's sold the most merch of any talent ever and become the only even halfway mainstream star since Rock and Austin. It's hard to say he hasn't worked out well for them. Out of the top 10 most profitable years in WWE, 5 are in the Cena era. With some wacky financial fuckery, 2016 was actually the most profitable year in company history. By most metrics, Cena is the GOAT. His reign on top is really kind of unprecedented. I did the math a few years back. Cena had more televised matches in one year than Hogan had his entire Hulkamania run. But you know...for 10 fucking years straight. Insanity.

This plus expanding and running a lot more international shows. WWE reached the saturation point in the US a long time ago which is why they've been constantly breaking into new markets every year for the past decade as opposed to doing a few Euro tours, Canada, and a Japanese tour. I don't know that turning Cena would or wouldn't have made more or less money. I'm not arguing for it either direction. What I am saying is that WWE not going with "wrestling 101" booking when it came to Cena sure worked out pretty well for them, and there's no reason to think it won't work out with Roman as well.

Which is not at all how WWE has operated for years, so I don't know why anyone would expect them to suddenly start back up. Wrestling 101 says you turn John Cena when crowds were booing him 3 months into his title reign. Instead, the hate got worse and worse and worse and yet Cena became the biggest star the industry had produced since Rock and Austin, and he's ended up making the company more money than anyone. Has he? Yes. He hit that point a few years back, too. He's sold more merch than any talent in history. Also headlined like 7 of the top 10 biggest grossing WWE events in history.

Which is not at all how WWE has operated for years, so I don't know why anyone would expect them to suddenly start back up. Wrestling 101 says you turn John Cena when crowds were booing him 3 months into his title reign. Instead, the hate got worse and worse and worse and yet Cena became the biggest star the industry had produced since Rock and Austin, and he's ended up making the company more money than anyone.

Wrestling 101 doesn't mean dick in 2017 when 5 year olds can read spoilers while their mom looks at Facebook, the Young Bucks are the most popular act outside of WWE, and one of the most enjoyed things last year was the absurd Broken Hardys saga. The idea of "this is what you're supposed to do because that's how you did it 20-30-40 years ago" is dead. The only part of WWE that functions on wrestling 101 logic is NXT, which was intentionally set up to be like an old school territory to set it apart from mainline WWE. WWE does not function on that logic, so seeing something and thinking xyz should happen because that's wrestling/booking 101 and then getting frustrated when it doesn't is an exercise in futility. Turning Roman doesn't make sense under modern WWE logic, because he keeps crowds engaged and sells the most merch anyway. I really doubt the 30 year old dudes in the audience are going to buy his gauntlets and vests because he turned heel, but the kids do now and it's making them a lot of money. Risking sure money for possibly better storylines is certainly not something WWE is willing to do.

By "decent" do you mean biggest merch mover on the active roster? Because that's what Roman is, second only to Cena. The only guys to have made a meaningful impact on ratings in the past few years are Sting and Goldberg. Besides that, the WWE brand is the draw, not individual guys, and that's been something they've been transitioning to for many years now. So "he's not helping ratings" or "he's not selling tickets" isn't a valid measurement of a guy's worth to WWE anymore. WWE moved on from that model, yet fans are still stuck on it, much like fans are still stuck on the "the top face getting booed means he's a failure" after the paradigm for what a top face in WWE is changed over a decade ago.

Seth again doing the IF I SLAP MY KNEE BEFORE OR AFTER A SUPER HIGH SPOT IT'S TOTALLY GREAT SELLING horseshit.

Because at this point, it's both caving to a smaller part of the audience that infected the rest of the audience, plus pointless since he's already getting booed more than he would be as a heel. He's currently the top merch mover of full timers (Cena is still #1 overall), and since most of his stuff is being sold to kids, there's always a serious risk of damaging that revenue stream with a turn. Imagine if Roman got turned and Braun spent the last few months stuck with Seth Rollins instead.

They're mad all of the women have fake hair. They think it's some corporate mandate to make them all color coded and they aren't allowed to change their hair even though they all have and do on a regular basis. Others are just offended at the idea of long extensions making their hair look longer. There's another subset that are mad all the women in NXT do something on the ropes during their entrance.

All of them. But Sasha gets it worse than anyone else.

Something I've noticed at basically any message board you can find, there are two topics that weirdos are obsessed with. One is Roman Reigns and how EVERYTHING is about him, even on shows he's not on. You go on most boards and they aren't even happy Roman lost, because he was hurt and Strowman "barely" won, and it doesn't matter anyway since Roman will eventually go over at WM anyway. Somehow, everything is a company wide conspiracy to make Roman look strong. The other thing I see frequently is dudes being angry that almost all of the women have colored hair or extensions. For some reason, they think it's super sexist/creepy/or just flat out annoying, and seem to think the women are not allowed to have natural hair as opposed to wanting to have unique looks. Both are fucking bizarre to me, but the hair thing seems to be the weirder of the two.

He won the Rumble match but that angle was clearly dropped prematurely, so it's hard to say he "won". Technically, Bray just won the feud with Orton, but it's hard to say anyone won that feud.

This. Crying about "those idiots WWE fans" and "indy darlings" and "Meltz and his NJ fetish" is the new MOVEZ !! annoying niche meme today. Boring and repetitive as fuck by this point. I may wanna watch that Reigns vs Strauman stuff, the women and tag match (no, not Enzo & Cass, the other one). House of Horrors sounds "so bad it's good", then again, with Orton & Wyatt involved it's probably so bad it's awful, so I'll probably pass. I do love the fact that Indian guy is getting a push, only for heck of me (and other people) saying so on the board. House Of Horrors was definitely so bad it's very very bad. I mean, if you liked the graveyard matches in WCW, give it a shot. Otherwise I'd avoid it.

That's another thing I don't get. Roman has been booked and presented to be FAR more vulnerable and giving than any of the other top faces. Unlike 10 years of Cena cutting joke promos that tell the audience how much his opponent sucks and kills their gimmick before smashing them 3 months straight usually ending in beating them at their own signature match, Roman puts over his opponents during promos even if they're jokey, and he usually puts them over again the Raw after a PPV saying how tough it was. And he actually eats clean falls. Roman spent the past 3 months getting demolished by Braun every week and just lost clean to a fucking powerslam in 2017.

I don't think it is at this point in WWE. AJ Styles has been a heel for about a year now and gets 90% cheers despite not doing anything to garner face cheers beyond being a good wrestler. He's been a good heel, too. He just happens to get cheered. Roman is a good face, putting on great face performances whether the crowd treats it as such or not. Unless you'd also argue that John Cena hasn't actually been a face for the past 12 years as well, which seems a bit absurd. Roman's role has been more flexible at times in comparison to Cena, though.

I had a hot take and said I think Roman is the best main event face WWE has had since Bret Hart. Not in terms of character or promos, but in terms of consistently high quality matches with vastly different opponents where he adapts a different role depending on who he is facing, excellent selling, and generally making his opponents look great regardless if he wins or loses. The only guy I'd put above him at all in WWE right now is AJ, and AJ is going to be a midcard faceish champ, not main event face. Nakamura certainly COULD be better, but he hasn't been in his WWE run. It's certainly no coincidence that everyone's best (WWE) match for the past 2 years has been with Roman. From AJ to Braun to arguably Big Show before these Braun matches to Brock to Bray to Rusev to Balor to Sheamus to Cesaro and so on. Dude is a better workrate king than all of the indie dudes on the roster besides AJ.