Slasher

The Benoit/Taker thing I don't agree with. There are finite amount of gimmicks or characters that would be once in a lifetime character. Let's assume the best presentation of Chris Benoit is that of a ruthless wrestling kill machine who suplexes people out of their boots, wins every match convincingly via tap out, holds the world championship for long reigns while everyone tries to figure out how to finally outwrestle this machine. That guy is still no Undertaker. Fans would appreciate the work Benoit does, but he isn't going to connect with the fans like Undertaker does. Taker has more of a mass appeal- kids see him as something out of comic books or movies and adults would see how strong of character he is. Benoit isn't going to reach that far even with the best presentation. Same thing with Hogan. You probably could plug in Savage or JYD or whatever and be fairly successful in the long run but no one is going to get Hogan's level of overness because it is Hulk Hogan's tools being used to get over. Same thing with Austin. You could have Jeff Jarrett kicking Vince's ass all over the place but he's not going to connect with the fans like Steve does. My point is, while it is true that if they wanted to get someone over, they will but there is something to be said about those specific guys being the right people at the right time. If you took Tom Brady out of New England, no doubt Bill Belichick would find a way to make it work with the backup quarterback (like Matt Cassel) but they won't reach the same heights as if when they have Brady under center. Same thing applies here.

They shouldn't do Lesnar/Reigns again at Wrestlemania. In fact, the very next time they do face each other, it should be with Reigns defending (successfully) against Lesnar. I don't know what they are doing with the Shield thing, but if they aren't reuniting, it really needs to be Rollins that drops the belt to Reigns. Perhap that being at Wrestlemania. Lesnar shouldn't actually be champion anymore unless he decided to be a more featured part of the weekly grind. Let Lesnar be the special attraction that is the last line of defense against heels and the spectre of death against babyfaces.

Pretty sure that was Triple H. I think I saw somewhere that he was outed as a guy who did that stuff with one anecdote that he footed the entire hospital bill for a couple with a severely ailing child. The family went to pay or talk about paying with the hospital telling them it wasn't necessary because Triple H took care of it. This was a stranger family and Triple H didn't think twice of it to do that.

About Brock and the streak, I think it is possible to be uneasy about being the guy to end the streak and then later on growing comfortable with that role knowing he was successful in parlaying it into something bigger for his character. The match happened. The streak ended. There's no turning back so I think it is fair to make the best out of a situation he might have initially opposed. I think it is similar to Bret Hart turning heel in the Attitude era. He didn't want to do it but seeing how well he carried the role he got more and more comfortable with it that he was turning in good performances.

To be fair to Liger, I don't think it was ever his role to be the heavy lifting tv worker that Rey has had to be in the WWE. Maybe I am wrong, but Japan seems to be built around big shows and certain tours rather than weekly TV. Although the WWE has always been about the pay per views/live specials, they rely much more heavily on television as a selling point and Rey as one of the guys to get people interested in the tv product. So in that sense, picking Rey over Liger based on the abundance of good tv work is probably logical but a bit unfair. It is like comparing a starting pitcher who is asked to pitch high volume of innings vs a closer who is asked to pitch a significantly lower volume of innings although having more high stress innings.

Cesaro's promos do not elicit any sense of emotions from the audiences that listen to them. A big part of it is the way they book him and how they write his promos but he doesn't exactly deliver them with great fire either. That'd probably be my guess why Vince feels that way.

To add: Maven was definitely a decent talker but that doesn't mean anything when its the other guys doing the talking. It isnt like Maven is going to step forward in the nWo crowd in the ring delivering their promos. I did like the angle they did at the Rumble though with Taker. That is the best version of Maven, and that guy isn't nWo material.

That is what X-Pac and Show are for. Obviously in the WWE they don't bother protecting Show for whatever reason so he could easily fit the role. Also, I would think throughout the year in 2002 you want to maximize the effect the nWo had. Vince purportedly brought them in to kill his creation. Shouldn't that mean they have to kinda...kill them foe a while before the chosen faces rise up against them? At the very least they should have been booked similar to how the Shield was booked-being adept in gang warfare and using the numbers advantage. The nWo as an entity shouldn't be doing jobs much if at all. I am not saying the WWE should book them as overly dominant for years and years like WCW did, but come on, a few months isn't asking a lot. I think adding "fall guys" for rhe sake of being fall guys helps no one, least of all the fall guys. The fans are smart enough to know they are jobbing if Maven was booked alongside Nash and Hall in a tag match or whatever. You can have a star studded team who takes very few losses all the while keeping thd storyline somewhat compelling. "Another victim fallen to the nWo...please someone stop them!!" should be the narrative for that year.

The larger point I was trying to make is you don't add people to the nWo just for the sake of adding people. A 5 man group of Hogan, Nash, Hall, Show and Xpac would suffice as that was one of the original lineups of the nWo. I wouldn't even have added Shawn Michaels to the group and he is a bigger name than any of those guys mentioned. That was a mistake that WCW made, making what was supposed to be the hip yet dominant force a severely bloated mess where you had Virgil and the worse half of Harlem Heat wearing nWo shirts. People assume that Nash would tear his quad no matter what but I am not too sure. If they were smarter in how they used him, he might not have had the opportunity to injure himself. Of course Hall is always gonna be Hall. But I wouldn't replace him for even that full year in 2002.

Maven? Shawn Stasiak? Albert? In the NWO? So basically you want to repeat the same mistake WCW made the first time around inducting too many and wrong sorts of guys in what is supposed to be a premier stable. This is three of the biggest stars in both the WWF and WCW, and you want Maven? Shawn Stasiak? Albert? LOL.

Most notably Chris Jericho after Rock worked so hard in his feud with him the previous fall/winter only to see HHH kill him dead in the Mania build and match.

Would be cool if Zayn eliminates Owens early and then has a star making performance as the ironman who ends up in the final four before Owens comes back out to distract him into getting tossed out.

There is a lot I would have done and I might get around to posting that later but for right now I wanna mention that one thing I would have done was giving Rob Van Dam a chance to be the champion. With Brock being on SD (which if it was me, wouldn't happen), RVD could have been the perfect counterpart for Raw and setting the two champions apart in presentation and style. So basically, what thebrainfollower said.

Rock/Reigns would be good but I think it might be too early to turn Reigns heel (we all know everyone will pick Rock for this match to root for) and I don't think a babyface vs babyface match would really work for this pairing. So if they do this, they are going to have to turn Reigns like... really soon, so he can pick up steam heading into the showdown. And considering the WWE seems to still obviously favor Reigns as their next ace, I don't know if it will happen. The less said about Orton, the better. I also absolutely agree Owens and Cesaro ain't happening. Vince doesn't see them as stars...at all. It is quite a leap to think he would use up one of the handful of Rock's last batch of matches on either guy. I do think Rock vs HHH or even Rock vs Brock are the likeliest outcomes but that doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it. Also for the record, I wasn't singling you out for the chatter. You are not the first to mention it. I have seen the speculation dating back a year or two that talks about the possibility and I never got it.

Whenever Zayn comes back, it needs to be to the main roster. The guy that he has the most to deal with is no longer in NXT. The title has kinda moved on with Balor and at this point you just cut your losses and move on to the next thing. Zayn could very easily get a good reaction if he was a surprise entrant for a team in one of the Survivor Series matches. Especially if one of the foes on the other side of the ring is Kevin Owens. Hell just have the camera catch Owens's reaction when Zayn's music hits. Edit: Hell afterwards you could have easily spun it off into a feud over the IC title with the idea that Zayn is pissed Owens took his NXT title so as a measure of revenge, he's taking Owens's IC title.

There is a major difference between booking part timers back in the day and how they are booked today. Back then, the part timers usually wrestled the full timers in programs to keep things moving and ushering in the next wave of stars who then became part timers when their careers winded down. It was a good method, circle of life and all that shit. Today? We had Brock fighting Triple H and The Undertaker when those guys were already scaled back/nearly retired. Why? Because it pops numbers? That would never be a good excuse. It is the kind of excuse that helped put WCW out of business among other reasons. Why do anyone want to see Brock vs Rock? We already had the uber athlete vs the movie star (kind of) in 2002. We really need it again 13 years later? It is just an annoying attitude that serves no one well for it. In theory one could try to argue that Brock would carry over the momentum from a Rock program to his next program but the thing is...the Rock really does not have any rub left to give a guy like Brock, and Brock is the guy who should be giving rubs to people instead of it being the other way around. Brock was lucky though to have the Taker match at Mania turn out the way it did because it actually helped wipe clean the stain of the Triple H program the year before. But now the game should have changed for him. Now is the time you put two or three upper midcarders/low main eventers in front of Brock, win or lose, and try to get them in good position when Brock finally decides to leave again. It isn't like he cares whether he wins or not, so take advantage of it.

It makes the whole self-inflicted dependency on old stars even worse because in one breath they say there is no one on the roster that is a big enough star to face any of them and in the next, they won't even try to get those guys over to get in position. It only ensures the same old shit continues to the end of time.

I am tired of the chatter about Rock/Brock. I realize Summerslam 2002 was so long ago but they really shouldn't revisit that pairing considering Brock has only gained a reputation as Death Incarnate while the Rock has been trending the other way. There is no reason Brock should want to face him and vice versa. Spread your wealth out in multiple "big time" matches rather than contain all your stars in one.

I think it is more likely just a long term ahead planting of seeds for his Mania match more than anything involving replacing John Cena. The programs that Cena works are not really programs you want the Rock working.

You are not wrong but I think having "updated" references could work if it is actually relevant to what is going on and it doesn't feel shoehorned in for the sake of saying it. The idea behind it is that you kinda want to be sitting next to a guy who knows what's up in the world at the moment...like fostering a sense of presence where you are watching something with someone. Of course the real issue is that as the commentary ages, it inevitably becomes outdated if you watch it again in ten years. So yes, I think it is a better bet to use references that ages well and/or that endures the test of time.

He was talking about a new season of Legends House :-)

Assuming that the footage is ready to be uploaded without any alterations, that is...sure, that is true. I have no idea why it is something that isn't worth it to them but alas so it isn't. *Shrugs*

That is the problem. Fantasy works in sports because it boils down simply to people betting on players being good performers week in and week out. But nobody ever thinks that Bill Belichick is saying to himself, "I gotta get Rob Gronkowski a TD here to get his fantasy owners some points". WWE Fantasy could work if they revamp the whole system so it isn't the same few wrestlers that everyone trusts to get good points that week. And no, giving Ryder an upset win to shake things up doesn't do anything any good.

Because according to their numbers, no one cares about that stuff. Obviously it is self inflicted but of the subscribers they do have, not enough of them are seeking out the footage. They are more content with Total Divas, the podcasts, the network specials and etc. Like I've said before though, the network is not for the old school fans. It is for the Universe fans.

Angle is often cited as one of the guys emblematic of all the problems with wrestling in modern day era. So no, I would imagine it is not something to "aspire" to be. However, in all fairness, in pro wrestling circles, drugs aside, he is considered one of the best successes of legitimate athletes switching over, so I don't blame Gable if Angle is the template he looks to for inspiration.