Afro Steel

Following Rusev around on social media and other non-WWE-contained environments (i.e. Sheamus' YouTube channel) really drives home how WWE stifles a lot of the naturally charismatic and humorous people they've got on hand just because it doesn't quite jive with Vince's vision of what comedy is.

I'm about three episodes deep. My biggest takeaway so far is remembering how much I dislike Curt Hennig on commentary. Unfunny, pretty weak chemistry with Vince, and his tendency to bury the faces in a way that makes him sound more threatened by them than anything else.

I've found that's typically what makes these PPV episodes worth checking out, though I personally find a lot of the ratings and monetary talking points a bit monotonous after a while. But there's usually some good stuff mixed in when Conrad is covering notes of the month or so leading up to the PPV in question. It's one of the main reasons I don't like how they only seem to do watch-alongs for the older PPVs. Those just come across as less focused and generally uneventful episodes, even though that's the era I'm most interested in hearing about.

And if I'm not mistaken, they actually bumped the Rumble 99 show up a week in place of an older SNME show because of fan demand. I'm sure the demand was enhanced by Bruce saying he really wanted to talk about the show, but I agree that I came away from the episode wondering why Bruce had seemed so eager to discuss it. A takeaway from these AE shows is how much of the stuff just doesn't hold up; even Bruce can't put a positive spin on a lot of it. Business was booming, crowds were molten, and two decades later, this wave of top stars still feel like the last bunch to really be made to look like stars. All that together and I can see why there's this desire among the fan base to revisit the era, yet when broken down, a good chunk of it is so lousy that company man Bruce Prichard has to concede that it's "the drizzling shits." Anyway, they can only revisit this era so many times before the well dries up, so I'm hopeful that we can get more content focusing on the bookends of Bruce's time with the company.

I must value the fact that Bruce was so closely involved with the inner workings of the company more than I realize, because when I stop and think about it, so much about the podcast in general bothers me. Yet, with few exceptions, I listen each week. That's been challenged at periods over the last year, because I've long since had my fill on Attitude Era content. Obviously that's the stuff that gets them the most downloads, and they've got the built-in excuse that the podcast has been concurrent with the 20-year anniversary for a lot of the shows they've covered. As a lot of people have pointed out, though, it's such well-covered ground at this point that it feels like we've already heard most of the anecdotes from Bruce surrounding this time. I can look past a lot of that, though, but what has really challenged my desire to tune in each week is the anti-Meltzer stuff. I'm not even a reader of Meltzer, but the "FUCK DAVE MELTZER" gimmick is so tedious that it's almost gotten me to stop listening mid-show. Bruce's black and white view of Dave, I think, ends up hurting his credibility when it comes to shooting down legitimate complaints about Dave. Why should someone take Bruce's dismissal of something Meltzer wrote at face value when he's shown again and again a near-total unwillingness to concede anything if it means aligning with Dave's opinion? Or, instead of laying out a cohesive rebuttal to something he disagrees with, he just dives into his "Oh if it had been in Japan, he would've given in 11 stars" shtick. Anyway, I'm not even much a fan of the mid-2000s WWF, but I'm glad we're getting a non-AE show this week. It'll be a nice palette cleanser from the seemingly endless Monday Night Wars-related stuff we've gotten so much of.