blueminister

A single great year? Equating Sting transcending WCW's chronic dysfunction through charisma and hard work to cultivate a loyal fanbase and leveraging that modest gain to become the centerpiece of a feud that exploded wrestling's audience at a national level to, say, a nice PPV run as part of a working promotional machine run or popping crowds in some shithouse territory probably isn't as instructive as you believe it to be.

I would probably be more in the anti-Sting camp if not for the clumsy "Sting was never a draw, except in 1997 as one of the hugest angles ever which had absolutely nothing to do with his building a successful rapport with his audience" bit. To discount his major role in an era where part of the implicit, if not explicit, appeal of the product was seeing him interfere in main events because it falls outside of how wrestling "should" work seems myopic and petty -- the suggestion that people did not care about Sting until the nWo made them equally so.

Between The Shield and Aces & Eights I want to know the reason why Kurt Sutter dramas on FX have become the root concepts for new wrestling heel stables.

Considering the body of work, latent insanity, and the way he took his exit, Joe Meek is way stronger of a Benoit analogue. I mean it's not like Benoit used wrestling as cover for his child-killing and suicide habit. Everybody watch Telstar, it's a very cool movie.

The Shockmaster clip is internet famous whereas Ryback is barely famous to wrestling fans.

You aren't undermining any arbitrary stuffed-shirt rules, you're committing a fundamental usage error by substituting words that are, at best, kinda homonyms (but not really.)

I'm not sure that was the plan from the outset but I think establishing Cena as The Choice of the New Generation in the build went so badly they felt they didn't have a choice and Cena jobbing probably kept him on the right side of the fine "resented by the audience so much by the audience they start not paying to see him" line.

Emily Dickinson invariably spelled "upon" as "opon" even though she was well-educated, now that's weird.

I do kind of wonder if it's a really dumb attempt at personal branding. I don't really consider myself a critic of FLIK for his unrepentant unwillingness/inability to adhere to traditional spelling of common adverbs any more than I'd consider myself a critic of people who use quotation marks for emphasis or the guy who drops his pants in front of Sam's Club.

I always thought the problem with the Starrcade finish is that the announcers and production team sold it as a fast count (which didnt happen) when, more specifically, they should have been selling Patrick ignoring Sting kicking out before the three (which did.) There seemed to be two parallel ideas about what the match-rocking shenanigans would be. I think the understanding, at least among the performers in the ring, was that Patrick would ignore Sting's kickout leading to Bretervention and that all the stuff about Hogan paying off Patrick for a fast count is fan hogwash. Its sort of overblown as a world-shattering screw-up, though -- the follow-through was the problem.

Vince worked to cover up what he at least suspected to be a murder and I'm gonna go ahead and say that he probably raped a girl.

Kanyon being thrown off the cage was the best because it was really a sickening memorable spot and then Russo had him swerve heel to help Awesome on his return just because. (On the other hand, Positively Kanyon owned.)

I'm not even sure what point you're making any more but in terms of athletic credibility an anachronistic evil main event ref would have probably been a lateral move from "gets squashed entire match and gets flash pin off of an opponent who thinks match is over."

Inasmuch as he didn't play an incompetent but there were a lot of avoidance, throes of death and begging off spots.

CM Punk is basically Gorgeous George except with Internet Fighting Spirit posturing instead of generalized pansiness. (Also sans the imagination of the public and great ratings share.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgeous_George

Punk shows ass to Vince McMahon and gets punched out by Bret Hart. If you don't see "looking like a bitch" in service to a larger goal as consistent with his status-obsessed character as it has been promoted post Rock-lariat, then you don't get CM Punk the wrestling character, are actively ignoring what's best for CM Punk the guy who gets paid to wrestle, and your ideas of what benefits him are irrelevant.

I don't see what it has to do with you and I'm fascinated by your "vague phrasing actually isn't vague, because Vince McMahon hates pronouns" theory but I assume when I'm talking about Savage as one of the top faces of the roster agreeing to an absurd finish to put over a heel and he replies with Savage being kept strong in that instance it is perhaps not 100% crazy bonkers to infer that he's making a correlation between Savage and Ryback. At any rate me failing to give Victator posts a close reading is definitely the most absurd thing in a thread in which it is suggested that CM Punk should pick a fight with booking over a finish that already benefits him because of the sterling example set by two wrestlers who in their time agreed to worse finishes.

I was not talking about Ryback, I was talking about how Punk was treated. How could you have missed that? Sorry, your phrasing was vague and I thought you were responding to my point instead of going on with your "cowardly heel ill-served by cowardly screwjob finish should revolt against his employers" thing.

Ryback wasn't dominated the entire match and the announcers' messaging heavily implied that he was about to finish Punk and win the title. It may be instructive to watch Shamrock get treated like garbage by DX at the main event of IYH:D-Generation X just to be reminded what the needless devaluation of someone with tons of superstar potential for the benefit of an overindulged heel actually looks like. Surprisingly, it looks nothing like a hot new face scaling the cage to slam the top heel and beating his chest like King Kong.

Outside of a handful of notable exceptions, I don't think talent disagreeing with finishes is an issue with WWE booking -- and at any rate the idea of Randy Savage, the guy who agreed to lose a Royal Rumble by being press slammed over the top rope out of a pin attempt calling shenanigans over a flash screwjob finish that keeps the face comparatively strong is hilarious.

Yeah, it's hard for me to go for any changes that'll supposedly turn the business around when those solutions involve competent follow-through. Frankly I think they've hit a good rhythm with Punk and any possibility of Ryback staying over is contingent on him not being the center of creative's attention, so this is good for everybody.

Considering how often since he's been a top-tier guy that Punk has been booked ineffectively I'm not convinced he's reached whatever Peak Overness Level you guys keep talking about, or that a guy with what even casual fans acknowledge is a warmed over Goldberg gimmick is the cure for what ails WWE. Cena, Punk, Sheamus etc.'s problem isn't that they're expired assets ready to be sent to the glue factory, it's that they're undermined by booking at crucial junctures -- and there's no reason to believe this would change with however many new faces you put on top. Acting like the dullness of the product is something that would be cured by hotshotting any new kid when it's endemic to WWE's creative approach is absurd. You're advocating a non-solution that would last for however many weeks it takes Stephanie and Vince to break the toys.

They should have booked Ryback against Punk in Hell In the Cell because it was a fresh matchup with great hype and it allowed them to feed the undefeated gimmick to one of the few wrestlers on the roster for who it wouldn't be wasted in a situation that still allows them to preserve Ryback's air of physical indestructibility.

Sorry, I thought we were arguing about long-term booking and not you feeling gypped because you overpaid for a wrestling show and they didn't do what you were thinking.