S.L.L.

In what has to be considered incredibly shocking news, WWE announced at a press conference in Los Angeles today a major rebranding of WWE Studios as "WWE Hollywood", shifting it's focus from the producing and distribution of feature film properties, to the production and distribution of a weekly professional wrestling show to be filmed on the studio lot. WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon explained that WWE Hollywood would distinguish itself from WWE's main brand and it's developmental branch NXT by focusing on a roster of celebrities from outside the world of wrestling. "For years, WWE has been synonymous with the same kind of glitz and glamour and excitement and action as Hollywood itself, and we thought, wouldn't it be great if we had a show with an entire roster with that kind of star power? I mean, we try to give the fans a taste of that at WrestleMania, but the other 364 days of the week...seriously, it's like pulling teeth, people. These millennials, I tell you. I mean, what you want me to do? Promote them? What am I, some kind of 'wrestling promoter'?! FUCK YOU! YOU THINK YOU KNOW HOW TO DO MY MY JOB BETTER THAN ME, GRIMMAS?! WELL I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU, YOU'RE FIIIIIIIIRRRRRRREEED!!!!!!!" He then produced a bottle of Johnny Walker from under the podium and stumbled off through the crowd while "No Chance In Hell" blared over the PA system. It was further explained by WWE's EVP of Talent, Live Events, & Creative Paul Levesque - who will be overseeing the project - that the idea stemmed from the popularity of writer/director Max Landis' YouTube video "Wrestling Isn't Wrestling", as well as the positive reception of Jon Stewart's appearances on WWE television in recent months. "The concept is simple," explained Landis, who will be Head of Creative* for WWE Hollwood, and will also have an on-screen role as an authority figure. "Wrestlers aren't wrestlers, just like wrestling isn't wrestling and Triple H is The Honky Tonk Man." Landis went on to explain that the first cycle of WWE Hollywood episodes would be built around an eight-man tournament to crown the inaugural WWE Hollywood Champion, with future former Daily Show host Jon Stewart being the first announced entrant. Levesque closed the press conference by reassuring everyone that while he was overseeing the project, he would be taking a "hands-off" approach to WWE Hollywood. "The beauty of the system is that one man has final say-so on everything...but if you actually like it, remember it's my project, and I should totally get all the credit." *Rumors that this job is actually being farmed out to some dope on a message board are, at press time, unsubstantiated.

Kana get a what what! It's SLL's All-Request Friday Night! http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2015/03/slls-all-request-friday-night-3272015.html

I think they should've reunited the Shield at the Rumble to get the title off of Brock there so they wouldn't have had to do this. The definition of insanity is signing Brock Lesnar over and over and expecting a different result.

All the stuff about him being painfully insecure - you don't think that would/should bother him? No, it's about the character, not the performer. I think things like the Triple H squashes everyone video last year show that they're pretty good at making fun of the difference. Landis' interpretation of the character as the world's highest-profile Honky Tonk Man/Planet Jarrett-Era Jeff Jarrett is literally the exact opposite of how how he's always been presented on TV. It's interesting, because all the pieces are there, and if the company wasn't telling you what you were supposed to think, that's probably the conclusion you would come to. Landis coming to that conclusion himself, and people in the company getting mad because HHH "fan" Landis "misinterpreting" his "glorious" "awesome" "badass" character might be a thing that would upset "emotionally secure" HHH seems like a thing that could realistically happen, though whether or not it actually did, I don't know

Good times! Bad times! Maritimes! SLL's All-Request Friday Night is back! http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2015/03/slls-all-request-friday-night-3202015.html

OK, this took a bit longer than I had hoped, to say the least, but SLL's All-Request Friday Night will return for real next Friday. I had to undergo a bit of a wrestling writer vision quest to get my head right on this, and it's undergone a bit of a format change as a result. Most obviously, instead of reviewing five matches every week, it'll be a non-fixed number of matches. But yeah, there's still gonna be plenty of fun times with me talking about the pro graps YOU want me to talk about, so start sending in those requests today! Segunda Caida: Every Day We Write The Book

Man, my lapsed-fan brother loved the Funkasaurus. He was heartbroken when they basically just gave up on him. Hell, one of the most consistently hot acts in the company in the last decade was Santino Marella. Comedy is a tool just like any other tool in wrestling, and it can be used well or used poorly depending on the user and/or the situation. Why not give a shot to those who can do it well? I'm not saying The Vaudevillains need to be headlining PPVs. I'm not even saying they're necessarily ready to be brought up to the main show now. But the idea that their gimmick inherently disqualifies them from consideration, and that we should only be focused on more serious wrestlers like Finn Balor, strikes me as sillier than the Vaudevillians' gimmick itself is. After all, it's not like there's anything silly about Finn Balor.

Also, I had this funny notion that the lifeblood of Pro Wrestling Only was pro wrestling, only. Certainly, that includes old-school wrestling, but it also includes every other form of pro wrestling that people wish to discuss, not prizing any one as more worthy of discussion than the other. If one were trying to shut down discussion of old-school wrestling on this board, that would be awful, and very much against this board's spirit, but that's not what's happening.

This, but...this year's Rumble match was the closest I came to seeing something in wrestling so bad that even watching it while partying with a group of friends couldn't make it fun for me. That said, I'm not sure Mania can top that. After the shit they pulled at the Rumble (and to a lesser degree, Fast Lane), all of WWE's cards are on the table with regards to their intentions towards their audience. They are only pretending on the most microscopically superficial level that they care about entertaining people, so why should anyone but the most deeply in denial go into this show expecting that they are going to be entertained by a quality WrestleMania? So, freed of such an expectation, I'm instead expecting to hang out with my friends, eat, get drunk, and have fun pointing and laughing at the Great American Bash '91 of WrestleManias. And hey, if there's even a margin of competence on the show, they've set the bar so low at this point, we'll probably be blown away by it. Honestly, I think I'm kinda done yelling at WWE's stupidity. I'd much rather laugh at it.

Triple H has become wrestling's answer to Jimmy from I Accuse My Parents. "Denigrate others while attracting others". For extra hilarity, this is also the strategy Vince Russo has been employing for most of his career.

Well, then they fucked up, because not one smart fan seems to care about this match.

That. If they could co-opt it well, that would be one thing. They couldn't, and they were better off not bothering.

Way to diffuse the situation, Vince. You made your daughter - and by extension, your company - look so ridiculously bad, that people assumed the most logical explanation for what she did was that she was running an angle for Wrestlemania, because no one other than a wrestling heel would have that little self-awareness. God, this guy sucks. I know a lot of people just lose their touch as they get older, but when you look at the gulf between Vince then and Vince now, are we sure he wasn't abducted by aliens? I'd like to think real Vince is still out there working as some kind of cool space outlaw, and this sad old man is just a pod person.

Subsequently, WWE has no medical records documenting this alleged condition. To be fair, I believe this much. I mean, they didn't have records of Chris Benoit's nine billion concussions. Why bother keeping records of anything else?

Blue Demon. A boatload of luchadors, really, but the one who springs to mind above all others for me is Blue Demon.

Define "good".

No just no. If Shawn comes back it needs to be for the right reasons alough hes had a great career and doesnt need to return. He had his retirement match. If he did come back to wrestle the one guy id pick is Rock. If you think those are the right reasons, I'd say you are The Master, or possibly Davros.

Specifically, he said "it created controversy, and that was really good for us." So now, not only is Vince McMahon 1986 Verne Gagne, he is also 2006 Eric Bischoff. Any guesses as to which out of touch, failing wrestling promoter he's going to try to emulate next? Russo would seem like the obvious one, but it's almost too obvious. Dixie Carter? Herb Abrams, maybe?

If that's the case, that is probably the biggest reason to be optimistic for HHH taking over that I've heard thusfar. There's a lot of stuff weighing against it, but I'd consider that a clear positive for him.

I...really don't understand what the point of this comment is. Like, not at all. We all will, obviously. I'm just saying it's very weird - especially given the general attitudes people have had towards HHH until recently - that people are starting to line up to give him the benefit of the doubt when there's no real evidence that's he's doing anything differently than he ever has. It is also weird that this image seems to be emerging that because he isn't the most powerful figure in the company - and has, in fact, been on the losing end of some power struggles recently - means he wields no power, and we, in fact, have no idea what WWE TV looks like when HHH exerts power on (and that it doesn't have an alarming tendency to suck). Is it really crazy for me to be suspicious of the guy with the long, established track record of being bad at his job because of a demonstrated, consistent failure to understand how pro wrestling works, and to find it strange when people just start having his back out of nowhere? The 1st part is that he was such a selfish worker and only caring about himself. That he'd likely being selfish as CEO and would be screwing people over by embezzling money. It's my sarcastic way of saying judging how someone works is a way he's going to run the company. If Misterio was CEO would he be the most giving boss? The 2nd part I get what you're saying. I'm just at my wits end of creative in the WWE. I know I'm getting bad creative going forward in the WWE. HHH's baby NXT seems to be doing a better job at that. Does that mean it'll translate when he.'s the guy. No we have no idea. It's more of I'm hoping he makes the proper changes. The first part feels like a reach. I'm pointing to things HHH has actually done with his power to illustrate how he's misused it. You trying to negate that by taking it to a theoretical hyperbolic extreme to make it sound silly...well, it sounds silly. The second part...I honestly sympathize with you. I think all of us - Johnny Sorrow excepted - are gobsmacked by how unconscionably stupid and hateful towards their audience WWE brass are, and we all hope deep down that that's gonna change. I just don't see the value in setting HHH up as the great hope for the future when there's really not much reason at this point to believe he's actually going to deliver. Personally, if it's hope you're looking for, I find it much more sensible to set the bar low for him and be pleasantly surprised if he doesn't fuck up, than to set the bar high and be disappointed when HHH ends up running the promotion like HHH. You might be the only person who feels that. At this point, the story seems very clear: Vince McMahon and his toadie Kevin Dunn took a break from sabotaging NXT call-ups to fuck over Daniel Bryan at the Rumble because Roman Reigns must be pushed to the moon now for reasons, and benevolent populist Triple H was forced to watch, powerless to stop them. And I'm not even saying that story is entirely wrong. This was Vince's call above all others, and he deserves the blame above all others. But that is clearly the story being told. Legitimately selfless at the time? Legitimately selfless by HHH standards? I want to give the dude a little bit of credit for that.

OK, serious question time...what does HHH do on NXT? I know it's his pet project, but how much of a hand does he actually have in running the thing. I know he's got a much broader scope of what kind of talent he's willing to bring into the company. That goes back to him hiring Mistico and Amazing Kong, and I'll give him full credit for that, despite how those two panned out. But the actual NXT product that we see...how much of that is actually him? Look, if HHH takes over for Vince, surrounds himself with guys like Ryan Ward, and tells them, "I'm gonna go hit the gym, you guys take care of shit around here, don't screw anything up", I would be perfectly OK with that. And that very well may be the model he aims for when he takes over (whether or not circumstances allow that to happen is another story). But just last year, HHH followed up a legitimately selfless loss to Daniel Bryan at Mania by main eventing a pair of PPVs against one of the hottest acts in the company while Bryan was buried in the midcard against Kane, and then followed that up by splitting up said hot act for no good reason whatsoever so one of it's members could spend the rest of the year palling around with him. Am I really to believe Kevin Dunn held HHH at gunpoint and forced him to put himself in high profile angles at the expense of hotter, better acts? Is that really so unlike HHH? Or do you agree with me that maybe the situation is a bit more complex than people are painting it as?

I...really don't understand what the point of this comment is. Like, not at all. We all will, obviously. I'm just saying it's very weird - especially given the general attitudes people have had towards HHH until recently - that people are starting to line up to give him the benefit of the doubt when there's no real evidence that's he's doing anything differently than he ever has. It is also weird that this image seems to be emerging that because he isn't the most powerful figure in the company - and has, in fact, been on the losing end of some power struggles recently - means he wields no power, and we, in fact, have no idea what WWE TV looks like when HHH exerts power on (and that it doesn't have an alarming tendency to suck). Is it really crazy for me to be suspicious of the guy with the long, established track record of being bad at his job because of a demonstrated, consistent failure to understand how pro wrestling works, and to find it strange when people just start having his back out of nowhere?

This. There have always been things about WWE to enjoy, but their shows haven't been appointment viewing for me in years, and I don't suppose they ever will be again. If they're not gonna try to be important, why should I treat them like they are?

He was able to make those choices as a wrestler because he was a leader. Is one year a long time? That shitburger Brock match happened the Mania prior. I just find it really suspicious how drastically the narrative is changing on HHH just because some of the circumstances around him are changing for the better, when there's not really a ton of evidence that that change is actually coming from him.