Russellmania

When Cena goes full southern baptist minister in his promos he's the best around.

what made Brie's involvement in the Orton/Bryan feud a debacle? I didn't really see it...did she botch something?

I actually expected this to be asking which are the best buffer matches in history, rather than arguing the merits of them. So then...what are some of the best buffer matches? I'm talking about matches that were positioned to just be "filler" between main events on paper as the OP described the concept, but ended up being really good matches or even stealing the show?

But they developed the whole Wyatt family gimmick in NXT, so it's not a big deal to say something like 'they couquered NXT before moving on to WWE'. Acknowleding that Bray was Husky Harris before that kind of hurts the whole vibe, but at some point you just have to draw the line re: suspension of disbelief i guess. As for why they're in WWE...I think with this type of gimmick you can sort of just assume that they're in WWE because they're crazy and wrestling is a business in which they can be as crazy as they want to be, hurt people, and make a living doing it.

the thought occurred to me that Bryan might lose through some nefarious means and then later be inserted into the main event anyway by Vince.

And, Titus/Darren Young is a perfect example of how they don't give a shit about midcard feuds any more. They gave them a program to work with actual heat between them, let them do a PPV match and then just kind of dropped it. As for somewhat recent examples of successful midcard feuds (ie, at least one of the guys involved was elevated by it), the Bryan/Kane Team Hell No/Anger management stuff counts I guess.

part of the problem is that so few guys have the balls to go off-script. On Austin's podcast with Cena, Cena talked about how he thinks one problem with the business today is that all the top few guys are in fear for their jobs because there's no where else for them to go work so they just take whatever is handed to them and try not to rock the boat, but he (Cena) wants to see some of these guys just take some chances once in a while, be it in a match or during a promo or whatever.

The sad thing about it is that Bryan can be really great on the mic when he is allowed to just do his thing. In ROH I always thought he was one of the best promo guys and his heel stuff in WWE was tremendous. Granted most of his best work is as a heel, but I think he's a pretty witty guy and would have no problem giving good face promos if they just let him go out there and riff.

i've mentioned this here recently and it's a huge problem with modern WWE. Think about a lot of the biggest stars they've produced over the years and how many of those guys got over from having awesome mid-card feuds. Austin, Rock, Michaels, HHH and probably many more that I can't think of off the top of my head. They never really seem willing to commit to anything for a lot of the midcard guys...they'll often give them a gimmick or a push and then abandon it within a month, and even during that few weeks of pushing them they don't really pair them up with anyone so they're stuck trying to get over on their own without any real direction or heat. I mean think about how much depth they have up and down the roster and how many guys they're doing absolutely nothing with when they could at the very least pair some of them up and let them build a feud out of it.

am I the only one who thinks that HHH's late 90's/early 2000's style and persona were really heavily influenced by Douglas? I remember Shane rocking the track pants, black wrestling t-shirt, and pony tail look before HHH started doing it during his big singles heel run. Even HHH's promo style seemed to be similar to Shane's. Maybe it was just simply the style of the time (the track pants were pretty popular with wrestlers), but I definitely remember thinking that when HHH broke off from DX and started his run as the hardass heel that I had already seen his whole schtick from Shane Douglas in ECW. One of those things you can't prove and HHH would never admit to, but I always saw a connection there.

yeah if there's a criticism of 90's All Japan it's that, while they were extremely good at what they did, they did kind of the same shit for the longest time.

Before this whole thing runs its course I really hope we get an angle where Bryan drives out to the ring in a tanker truck ala Austin and Angle and sprays down the Authority, Batista, and Orton with a kale smoothie.

this match needs blood badly, but that was still the most violent thing they've done in years.

man golddust got fucked up in that match

her family seems like a typical Catholic family where they make a big deal out of all these traditions but don't actually live by any of them. "Did you get confirmed before you got married?" Lol are you fucking kidding me? also there's no way that marriage is gonna last but props to that dude for trying to lock that ass down while he can.

Judging by her personality and looks and the way her family was coddling her I assumed she was in her early 20's and they were just trying to protect her from making dumb decisions in her youth. Come to find out she's 29, so yeah it's time for her family to just shut the fuck up and let her live her life. Also her brothers seem like major dumb shits.

A couple months ago when WWE was hyping the Cena/Orton title match on RAW and putting over both guys as 2 of the greatest ever, Meltzer made a comment on twitter basically saying it's a joke to call Orton one of the best ever. Shortly after that he conceded that HHH *is* one of the best ever and it got me thinking that I really disagree with Dave on this and think that by every imaginable metric except for title wins and mic skills, Orton is better than HHH. Like, even from a business/drawing standpoint I think Orton might be better than HHH when you consider that Orton has been a top (full time) guy for longer and didn't have the luxury of riding the wave of the biggest boom period ever.

regarding Cena at MSG, I think the New York crowd is a bunch of closet Cena fans anyway. I'll never forget the reaction he got at the 2008 Rumble when he was a legit surprise at #30. the crowd just totally marked out for about 10 seconds and then remembered that they're not supposed to like him and started with the boos. But, IMO that initial reaction really betrayed how much the smarks actually love him.

they should do the bit where Bryan beats HHH in 18 seconds but then have HHH order the match to be re-started and THEN have the real match with Bryan eventually winning. The heat would be off the charts after HHH has the match re-started.

any idea if they plan to add DVD releases to the network? for some reason I thought I read that they were going to have all dvd's on-demand at launch and that's obviously not true. Having all the PPV's is great, but there are a lot of WWE produced compilations of certain guys that include matches from TV, other promotions, etc. that I'd love to have on demand.

On that note, I'll never understand how Delirious never got a shot in WWE.

yeah seriously if you can't see that without Bret Hart's contribution the Attitude Era maybe doesn't even happen, then I don't know what to tell you.

I think the idea of a "boom period", as most wrestling fans think of it, is kind of obsolete anyway.

more like the fans worked themselves

lololololololol