Hollinger.

That's what I thought. In that case, you can't possibly use the first try at PPV as a comparison. This is a live show being carried by more providers. I don't think it's going to be a big success or anything, but there were a lot of people ordering what were almost always awful quality iPPVs for not a lot less money. With these being HD and carried by so many providers, it would seem that Sinclair is putting at least a little bit of muscle behind the idea.

I think it has more of a chance to be successful now. While they were much hotter in 2007, they were also only running house shows and then selling them on DVD. Now, they have actual television to try to advertise and sell PPV with. It also wasn't carried by DirecTV and a number of large cable providers. Were the ppvs even live? I can't remember.

Legends of Wrestling tags have been updated on Apple TV as well. Now they just need to fix Old School and things should be perfect.

Good call.

Is that Punk between Swagger and Truth?

I watched a couple matches again last night before RAW so I could see them sober and without a house full of people. Taker/Lesnar clearly falls apart after the single leg on the floor, and Taker is shaken up badly for a few minutes, and never does really clear up. There are a numbers of spots that he has to audibly ask Brock what's next, or that he blanks on completely. The Hell's Gate spot he totally misses, and Brock ends up looking like a doofus standing over him waiting for Taker to grab him. He was very definitely concussed, and I'm sure that hurt the match more than anything.

I can see Brock heading into 2015 as champ, with Cesaro winning the Rumble. Heyman wants Cesaro to dutifully stand down, Cesaro decides it's his time, becomes super ultra mega babyface in time for the Mania main event vs. Lesnar.

HD is perfect on Apple TV. Never had any VQ issues before.

I'm watching on Apple TV but plan to order on DTV if it's having problems.

Still having issues with missing years for Old School and Legends of Wrestling sections on Apple TV. Wish there was a way to refresh apps on there.

The commentary point is the biggest part, in my opinion. Think about how mid 90s Vince McMahon, or Paul Heyman, or Tony Schiavone would be driving home the story of the Sheamus/Christian stuff. Instead it's Michael Cole attempting to do 20 different jobs at the same time, an uninterested Lawler who likely has no idea that the story exists, and JBL tossing out jokes, appeasing Vince, and sometimes even making up backstory that the wrestlers don't know about and aren't trying to sell. I can't blame Cole, because he's just doing what the company wants their lead announcer to do at this point, but there is absolutely no reason to be playing hype man for anything other than the match in the ring. You can still constantly hype the main event between matches, but you wouldn't have to be so desperate to remind the crowd to stick around if you gave them a reason to want to watch the show as it's happening.

I think it's less about pacing than it is that they tend to place them after really long, hot matches. It's an extra 10 minutes for the crowd to piss or grab a drink, since it's a safe bet that the majority of them weren't going anywhere for the last 40 minutes.

I forgot about this until I saw this mornings Jarrett announcement. At the last Dreamwave show, Jarrett sent in a video promo because he's scheduled for the anniversary show next month. In it, he said that he and Jim Cornette will be there scouting talent. Don't know that it means anything, but it sounds like Corny may be involved in Jarrett's new project.

There isn't any obligation beyond trying to get a good reference from that employer for your next job. No one is bound to their job. Employment is at will.

He's definitely talking about Sabin vs Jerry Lynn from TNA. Funny they never mention it was a different company...

Nope.

Everything seems to be working perfectly now on Apple TV. Just checked about a dozen different shows from all three companies in different years. Everything is loading smoothly, chapter breaks are functional, can skip ahead without buffering/dying. Though it is the typical ATV chapter breaks, that aren't actually marked at anything, just skipping ahead ~5 minutes at a time. At least helps you get to where you want to go faster. A lot of people don't seem to know ATV does chapter breaks. When the time bar is on the screen, press the down arrow on the remote. Then one press of the forward button moves you ahead a chapter.

Mero always struck me as a guy that was more than capable of having a good match when he was in there with someone who could lead. When he was the worker in the match, it tended to feel samey. Granted, this is 20 years out, and I haven't revisited a ton of his stuff in probably 15. Definitely a guy I'll keep my eye on when I get around to working through 90s WCW PPVs on the Network.

That seems like a weird miscalculation on their part. Not that I really care, because I expected it to be a week or two before things were running smoothly. But I would have bet that the content that hasn't been as readily accessible would be the stuff getting hit immediately.

This was, by a huge margin, the most fun I've ever had at a wrestling show. The crowd was way hotter in person than it came across watching on tv, especially during the six man. And to the complaints about it being worked too much as a straight wrestling match, part of that was the camera work. Everyone on the apron was doing a lot of work, and made it feel a lot more chaotic live than it did with the frenetic editing work on tv.

Doesn't really fit with the heel turns/swerves angle, but if you want to talk booking decisions as surprises, Luger going over Hogan clean for the title on Nitro is one of the biggest "holy shit" surprises I can remember.

I don't really bring it up around normal folks, but being heavily involved with indie wrestling in the area, anyone that's friends with me on Facebook, or follows my Twitter or Instagram or Tumblr, are well aware of it. So I'll occasionally have people ask me questions about it, and for the most part it's met with a "Huh. That's pretty cool. I didn't realize that was a thing people did. Did you bring your lunch today?"

I haven't read all the way through this, but for the people saying they like Bryan & Cesaro's indy stuff better than what they are doing in the WWE, I say this: if they went back out on the indies or to Japan now? They'd would kill it compared to the stuff they were doing before. You may not enjoy the style they are working right now, but as workers, the things they have learned working WWE would improve their indie matches a ton.

That was mostly gibberish, reading it back, but I think you know what I meant.

Just some nonsense fantasy booking, especially after this week, but you could build to something pretty unique at Wrestlemania. Restart a little Paul Heyman/CM Punk thing for a couple weeks, then have Paul run him down as a hack, stealing all of his stuff from a Japanese star who made it on his own, while Punk to borrow someone elses schtick to get to where he is. Could even play it as Paul was the one who turned Punk on this Japanese star, and now that Punk has pissed him off, Kenta wants revenge, and Paul is facilitating that. The kind of booking WWE would never do, but it would make for a cool spectacle at Mania, and if you're going to get a dude like that over, that's the crowd to do it in front of.