Slasher

That assumes Vince even watches NXT which I would seriously question. I know the idea is he is such a control freak that he manages everything from top to bottom but the fact is not too long ago either Triple H has said or Vince admitted himself that he hadn't even seen the Performance Center for himself which makes me think he doesn't really bother to attend anything to do with NXT unless its an important Takeover event right before a WWE event, MAYBE. I think Vince has really just allowed Triple H to take complete ownership of NXT either to show him what he can do as a showrunner and boss or just to keep him busy so he doesn't get too grubby about control over WWE shows and keeps him preoccupied so Vince can resume his position on top unchallenged.

If this issue is real, I have to imagine it was never really about Dunn vs Hunter. It is simply that Dunn understands what Vince believes in and whatever Triple H is doing to get his NXT talents over, it doesn't align with what Vince believes makes stars stars. Dunn wouldn't be able to bury all those people if Vince didn't actually agree with him from the get go when he first sees those talents. I don't necessarily buy that Vince sees Shane as a legitimate alternative to Stephanie and Hunter, especially if he has no intentions to step aside, but I can believe Vince has serious reservations about Hunter's judgment about who should be the stars of the WWE of tomorrow. I don't think Triple H is the godsend that other people think he is but I do think Vince at this point is more harmful to the development of WWE at this point than anything positive and he really should think about maybe stepping aside soon if not already.

If they came to him with those ideas a month ago who's to say he would have known he wouldn't be up for it? He could have been swept up in all those emotions of gratitude for what the crowd showed him and thought he'd be up for it but the reality of it showed up in the month that followed and he's no longer swept up by those emotions but rather different emotions he doesn't want to face any longer. I mean really, it isn't impossible to imagine time does change things.

Could be they made the decision to book him around the time he was retiring and the further into his retirement he gets the less inclined he is to want to go back to it especially if he can't actually wrestle? Retirement does do funny things to people, especially one who is only 34 years old and needs to develop new income streams to support his lifestyle regardless of how well he'd saved all those years. You're still looking at at least 30 years of healthy living you need to support not just yourself but a wife and future kids if that is in their plans.

Yeah it's not so simple as wanting time off when he hasn't really wrestled for more than 5 months in two years. It is likely a mental thing and I don't fault him for not wanting to come back so soon after really having had to wrap his head around retiring and no longer doing what he'd done for 18 years.

Yeah I imagine it is just him not being ready to be around wrestling again so soon after what would obviously have been a very emotional retirement a month ago.

Double turn only works if Shane wins his match otherwise people are not gonna play along with celebrating with the Authority at all.

Is it really a heel turn if he is already getting booed? Is it really a heel turn if that act is consistent with what he's been up to lately, feuding with the Authority? I don't think attacking the Taker in the name of removing the Authority is much of a heel's action unless it is revealed he is the golden boy of a new authority Shane McMahon who himself is turning heel to be just a new devil replacing the old.

That only works if this was in fact gonna be the last time Taker ever wrestled. I can't see his last match not being at Wrestlemania and I can't imagine Shane being the guy Taker picks as his very final opponent. I very strongly believe either the Authority wins or that if Shane somehow won it would be with Taker throwing the match and the stipulation isn't honored.

The funny thing is I don't think even if Shane won, Taker not wrestling is a stipulation that logically can be enforced. Vince is imposing this stipulation but suppose Taker throws the match away, why would Shane adhere to a stipulation his father set, when it is his authority that Shane is challenging in the first place? I am sure they will think of stupid things but when you look at it logically, that stipulation has no bite to it unless Shane himself acknowledged an agreement to needing that.

Vince adding his two cents to what happened really felt scummy at the time, because it read to me as him still being upset with Luger over what happened in '95. Eh Vince always took an opportunity to tell people how WCW didn't know how to book people properly like he would. He said that the Big Show wasn't booked properly like a special attraction like he did with Andre. We saw what Vince really ended up doing with Paul Wight and it wasn't any better. He said that WCW would never know what to do with Bret Hart which was true after all. He always had that mindset that he knew best and seeing characters he created or cultivated get turned completely around in WCW, of course he would criticize all of it.

Dunno. Too bad the fans probably don't trust the WWE to honor any stipulations involving the Authority but I think Taker not wrestling again at Mania is a pill the fans would be ready to swallow. He has nothing going for himself now. The streak is over. He is 50 and not gonna put on the instant classics he was with Shawn or Hunter or etc anymore. Ending the Authority at Taker's expense I think is an outcome the fans would accept as a necessary loss.

It's a match about control of the company. One thinks it gets priority over any other match even one that decides who gets to wear a piece of tin around their waist.

If I was participating, I think Bryan has maybe one of the strongest cases for the #1 spot and will no doubt have finished at worst #2 on my ballot.

Yeah the more I thought about it the more 25+ sounded right. When I watched the match again a few months ago on the Network it definitely ate up a decent chunk of the meter you see at the bottom of the screen where you paused the show. So yeah I guess I was wrong about that.

Not that I am actually suggesting Alex Wright could take care of Haku or anything like that but it's not totally unheard of for a guy with less of street cred but with an understated wealth of wrestling knowledge to get one over on a tough blowhard. Erik Watts/Rick Rude comes to mind here.

Was it really 26 minutes from bell to bell? I thought it was clocked in at like 18 minutes but maybe I am misremembering it. All the same, yeah, the way it was put together the time went by quickly and nicely so. I think a big part of it was that I don't think the match allowed for too many moments where both guys were just laying around for minutes after an "epic" spot like HHH/HBK.

Logically a guy they want representing the entire company should be a guy who's talented enough to carry two feuds at the same time. I don't think it would be a good thing to split up the belts back to single branded belts after they made yet another big deal out of the unification with Cena and Orton. They should just stick to that and have one champion. There are ways to extend programs without having to overexpose the champion physically. They could do stuff like two guys feuding over who got the next title shot and they could have the champion do pretaped promos promising to deal with someone the next time he's there or be a chickenshit heel champion like Rollins being given a night off with his opponent having to carry an episode by himself dealing with people who are connected to the champion even on just a peripheral level. If they are splitting the rosters again they have to be comfortable with the reality that certain guys are just not gonna be used on the shows and find ways to have compelling programs without depending on a Cena type ace there all the time.

For god's sake he had Triple H wrestle a Daniel Bryan match than the usual bloated epic Triple H match at Wrestlemania. This isn't to say Bryan carried Triple H because he didn't but just the fact Triple H agreed to being plugged into the Daniel Bryan match formula rather than insist Bryan wrestle a 30 minute Triple H match says it all.

Nah. Taker knows what Bret is doing here. He'll just brush it off as "Bret being Bret". I think that Bret not being such a great sport in matches like against Sting is kinda the point. Ever since his heel turn in the WWE, I think his character, whether it was a conscious thing on his part or not, was someone who was very painfully lacking in self awareness. He always thought he was right, even when he wasn't. Even his babyface runs in WCW followed the same deal. He interfered in Hogan/Sting and made it all about his own horrible experience with the screwjob. Yes the idea was supposed to be Nick Patrick the evil ref on the take trying to screw Sting even when it was botched by the normal count, but Bret still made it about himself in such a selfish manner that it was hard to see how he was supposed to be anything of a babyface. After that he went into a program with Ric Flair as a guy who believed he was that much of a better wrestler...in the promotion that always took pride in their own Ric Flair being the greatest. This is a babyface? It just feels to me that Bret had become a parody of the character he always thought himself to actually being, and it was even more so exacerbated in the Attitude Era/Monday Night Wars. So if you look at him a certain way, he was more fun to digest than if you took it all at face value.

Daniel Bryan has to be the only guy in WWE history to be of a slight stature and still end up being booked as an offensive monster that he was. I don't think guys like Punk or Rey got the respect that Bryan did when putting matches together with the road agents and opponents. People just seemed more willing to get destroyed by this one small guy than they were for just about anyone else.

Eric Young is more versatile and could do a decent job in any of the many roles the WWE could find for him but I think when it comes to selling Vince someone's value I think Roode has a better case. In the very least of least scenarios, Vince has the generational thing to fall back on with Roode and Rick Rude. Young is a guy he has to start completely from scratch with and at that age, maybe not worth it for Vince.

I think that the draft episode is usually one of the highest rated shows of the year so there is no doubt they'd bring that back if they re-split. And if there was anything that the draft would have made sense being utilized for, it's NXT. So no, the NXT guys shouldn't just decide where to show up. Give them more of impact if managers are tripping over each other trying to be the one who got to pick a top prospect, like when they did it for Brock Lesnar in 2002.

I think its something he says to try to keep people motivated to be the best versions of themselves so that he would have a chest full of useful and functioning toys that he can play with. The biggest issue is that in order to grab the brass ring you have to create an indisposable brand for yourself and getting over at a certain level that it's a no brainer you should be pushed a certain way, but doing that runs directly in conflict with their philosophy that the only marketable brand they want is "WWE". So Vince runs around putting out fires where guys are getting too over and then laments that no one is a star.

Well when Ambrose is competing with Dolph Ziggler for weakest looking offense in the WWE that's kind of the only option they have. It's not like he can go out and have a match like Reigns/Lesnar last year where it looked like two dudes really beating the shit out of each other. Everything Ambrose does looks super soft.Then maybe they shouldn't have booked that match to begin with. I know the match is only happening because Brock the character vs Dean the character looks compelling on paper but yeah Ambrose is nowhere close to Lesnar's physicality or true intensity. I wouldn't have had a problem with their approach in building the match if Ambrose ever looked like a dangerous guy when it comes to wielding weapons but that hasn't been the case. So far they had Lesnar destroy Ambrose in the parkibg lot, they have had Ambrose do an Austin type Attitude Era spot where he rides in the arena with a big vehicle only except instead of spraying beer or milk at his opponent or filling his car with cement mix or destroy his tour bus and so on and just had Ambrose crawl back an already beaten man for Lesnar to easily manhandle. The most impressive they have had Ambrose look in a Lesnar segment was swinging a crowbar around and not even hitting Lesnar at all. So to recap, anytime it turns physical Lesnar just owns Ambrose and only when he is talking on the mic or waving crowbars wildly does Ambrose even look mildly dangerous. Hell WCW's psychotic jobber Crowbar has looked more intimidating with the crowbar than Ambrose.