Russellmania

People were clearly chanting for Ryder, you nitwit.

really late to this discussion, but this a pretty great illustration of how awful Dave's opinions are on match quality. How the hell are neither of the Cena/HBK matches among Cena's top rated matches?

Lol this is such an asinine statement. First of all it implies that somehow Orton's premature push in 2004 (8 years ago!) has anything to do with how wrestling works now. Second of all it's not like it has been totally uncommon throughout pro wrestling history for young guys with all the tools and talent to get pushed too much too soon. It certainly isn't something that only just started recently (or even in 2004 which I wouldn't really call recent). As for the quality of Orton's matches, he's probably one of my favorite workers of this generation. The guy is just so consistently good and can work with plenty of different guys. I can't remember off the top of my head which of his matches are great and I'm sure I missed a lot of the better ones, but one that I've always loved is his last man standing match with HHH. Orton's career trajectory has always reminded me a lot of Jun Akiyama's. Two guys with so much natural talent that they were inevitably pushed to the moon before they really knew how to handle it. Neither guy ever really lived up to expectations, but both guys ended up carving out really good careers and are arguably became better workers after their peak pushes. I know Orton has the 2 wellness strikes holding them back from really letting him run with the ball, but work-wise I think he is as good as he's ever been. He's also reached that rare point where he's so loved by the fans that he could basically work as a heel and still get cheered. His persona changed very little from his last heel run to his current face run and he's really the only anti-hero face that they have (since they seem insistent on making all their faces act like big smiling goofs).

didn't see the show, but am really disappointed that they did a screwjob finish in the main. I was telling a buddy the other day that I really thought they should have Punk win clean in a flash finish. They could have done something like the Bret/Diesel match where Bret won with an inside cradle after getting dominated. If I'd been booking this I'd have had Ryback just totally decimate Punk and then get a little over-confident and have punk counter the Shell Shock with a small package or something. I don't think it would have really hurt Ryback since they could sell it as the less experienced guy made 1 mistake and the "Best in the World" capitalized on it. If they really plan on Punk/Rock at the Rumble I feel like a legit win for Punk here would have gone a long way without any real downside.

HHH when the McMahon/Helmsley era was in full swing. Remember the false finish where Jericho won the title from him on RAW only to have HHH force Hebner to reverse the decision? I also can't imagine anyone in recent WWE history getting 'ASSHOOOLE' chants like clockwork every time they touch a mic.

It bothers people because it's a second gen member of the Hart family, who worked and trained for years to be a serious female wrestler. If they gave the gimmick to one of the untrained models it would still be dumb, but nobody would really care. LOL so it's ok to demean women who are shitty wrestlers, just not ones that are good wrestlers?

And I guess what I'm saying is there's a big difference between watching Stone Cold Steve Austin when you're 16-years-old and then watching John Cena when you're 30. EDIT: I guess I'm not growing out of wrestling as a whole though, because I can still enjoy CMLL or NJPW for modern wrestling. I even thought SMASH was decent enough. I liked Kana quite a bit. I guess I just want different things from my shows. WWE does not provide me with what I am seeking and neither does ROH. But I can go back and watch shit that is new to me from the 70's or 80's & still be thoroughly entertained. If you can't see that the biggest difference is about 14 years of growing up then I don't know what to tell you.

We shouldn't have to. Mostly because it's also easier than ever to just find something else completely that doesn't insult our intelligence or requiring fast-forwarding through the whole show to skip the parts that are shit. I guess what I'm saying is that if you're growing out of wrestling don't pretend it's because it suddenly sucks. It has always been incredibly hit or miss.

My point is that it's easier than ever to just skip the bad stuff and watch only the good stuff.

I think Orton is at the point now where he's over not matter what and is such a good worker that he can really help elevate other guys, or at least get good matches out of them. I can't wait for them to eventually run with an Orton/Bryan feud because i really enjoyed Orton as the house-of-fire babyface extracting his revenge on the stooging Bryan from Smackdown last week.

I don't get the righteous indignation about things like the fart gimmick. Wrestling has always been full of stupid stuff. If you're not watching RAW and Smackdown on DVR and fast forwarding through like 60-70% of it then you're doing it wrong. Smackdown has 2-3 legit good TV matches every week so I just skip to the matches, watch them, and then will occasionally stop fast forwarding through the other stuff if something looks interesting.

so are they not doing Money In the Bank anymore? Or are they going to make that its own event like the Elimination Chamber now?

yeah because wrestling was soooo much more sophisticated back whenever it was you liked it.

Rock is scheduled to appear in-person at 4 RAWs heading into Mania, so it will be interesting to see how they build the match. The hard sell hasn't started yet. Exactly. A part of me really wishes they'd just turn Cena heel and get it over with. They could have him go the Bret route of coming out every week and bitching about how he's been wronged over and over (in Cena's case he's being wronged by the fans who boo him while cheering a guy who left), and the fans would just totally tear him apart in spite of the thread of truth to what he's saying.

regarding Rock vs. Cena, I checked out their twitter war last night and I was surprised to find that a lot of Cena's shots at the Rock were in regards to him leaving and Cena never leaving. I think that's exactly the angle that Cena needs to come at Rock from if he's going to avoid being completely shit on in this match, but I really think they need to get to the point where he's saying these things on TV to the Rock's face. This match needs a little hate behind it to really put it over the top. With that said, I think things will pick up in this feud once they're done with this stupid Kane program and the Rock shows up on RAW a few times to build up to Mania.

Not really. Outside of Japan and North America, the NES was actually outsold by the Sega Master System. But the SMS only moved 13 million units worldwide, so even in areas where it was big, it wasn't that big. In other words, if the product is good, it'll export well. If it isn't, it won't. It's not about culture. You're ignoring the bold part as he def emphasised that them having a large crop of big name US/foreign talent played a big part in them being able to succede outside Japan. I don't see how this undermines my point. If The Rock signed with New Japan tomorrow, they'd have no trouble breaking into foreign markets. An aside: given the current situation in Japan, why don't more Japanese wrestlers try to break into the US? At the very least, a solid run with the WWE would increase their bankability when they return to Japan. The biggest issue is probably the language barrier, but that's what Rosetta Stone is for. Honestly the biggest issue is probably not the language barrier, it's probably racism. WWE doesn't have the greatest track record of treating Japanese dudes as anything other than comedy wrestlers.