Death From Above

I would like to see someone try and argue that list totally in reverse, just for laughs.

Dave's tech ignorance is well documented so his PC being a relic from another spacetime dimension isn't really surprising, but if what he's mainly doing on it is working... I'm not sure what difference it makes. It's not like word processors have added a meaningful core feature in 15 years.

England were awful in that era. Coaching was definitely a part of it (Ramprakash's stints with England read like a sitcom script), but then again Mike Atherton isn't exactly Brian Lara either.

I seem to recall in that long ago megathread of Meltzer quotes about the death of WCW that Dustin got $750K a year, and they called him in to some Nitro then sent him straight back home because creative had nothing for him to do. That sums up his time there, but probably also why he went.

Falls Count Anywhere often breaks down into "walking around in a headlock with people around you" for long stretches, but now and again it works.

That took longer than I figured.

Proof that he was indeed a tremendous con-artist, if nothing else.

There's got to be a good horrible joke there about how Ace transitioned into a position of power with WWE, but I just can't quite bring myself to connect the dots.

I honestly thought Luger's RF shoot I heard years ago was the most boring of the ones I ever listened to. He basically claimed he was never involved in any of the politics of wrestling ever for every question, which is 99% of the fun.

It seemed to work for a while for Lance Storm.

People going along with some troll saying total insane bullshit because his grammar is solid is pretty standard internet fare, so I'm kind of leaning to "I'll take facts over grammar" offered a choice too. Dave's spelling could use proofing, granted. But it doesn't ruin him for me.

How could anyone not?

Stiff chops in wrestling don't actually hurt. Not in any meaningful way. Wresting IS fake. I really don't know what to say to people that find stuff like that too violent for wrestling. Compared to every contact sport in the world it still looks like a pillow fight.

Hahaha. I am easily amused.

Well that sort of sums the company up doesn't it. Things nobody cares about would somehow play out well. Things people cared about would end up like Starrcade '97. The whole company is a magnificent study in "... what happened?"

Will's set will be better. :-) But hey more Mid-South is more Mid-South. I ain't complainin'.

Didn't Lenny and Lodi actually come out with a portable closet at one point actually labelled "CLOSET" so they could... come out of the closet? That was the worst. And yeah Sid sucked a lot in this whole run. The crowds really didn't give a shit either, they should have aborted the whole thing.

Man, describing Larry Z as "a Second City Foghorn Leghorn" is just about right. And pretty damn funny. WELL I SAY I SAY TONY, YOUNG WRESTLERS THESE DAYS ARE NOT AT ALL LIKE THEY USED TO BE NOW IF YOU STOP TALKING FOR JUST A SECOND SON I COULD TELL YOU ALL ABOUT HOW THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG, BUT FIRST YOU REALLY DO HAVE TO STOP FLAPPIN' YOUR GUMS ABOUT LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO GET A WORD IN

Larry forgot to mention he was the first man on the moon, I think.

I'm not saying it's enough on it's own. What I'm saying is neither is relying too much on the outside of a business that has become increasingly "WWE and those little people" either. It's not an either/or choice. It's a choice about getting as much out of both that you can once you've run your nostalgia acts into the ground, which is coming sooner rather than later. I don't think increasing a commitment to in-house talent production has to correlate to a move away from continuing to search for the next Daniel Bryan or CM Punk. They will *always* have that option regardless of what else they do because they have all the money. WWE has relied on poaching talent for the better part of what, 40 years? The problem is Vince won at wrestling. Which is great for Vince and the 200 people that work for him, but it's been bad for the other tiers of the business. They've had... gaps of finding new talent, but been able to gloss it over with older acts, but the problem will start to exacerbate itself over the next five years barring some large unforseen shift in the business. Relevant to this thread, HHH will see himself as that nostalgia act, once Rock and Undertaker are done as a meaningful way of popping a buyrate. Won't that be swell.

There was that time they had a guy do a dropkick off of a car outside a nightclub, followed by a promo since cameras caught the whole thing. Which ruled.

Perhaps Harley "The King of Wrestling" Race could have teamed with Prince Charles. God, Tournament Edition was the greatest thing.

I do think they made a mistake having the three 20 minute matches right in a row with nothing in between them, and that there is something to that. I process it just fine because I am used to watching like 40 minute All Japan matches, but I'm not exactly your stereotypical wrestling fan. I don't think Brock/HHH was any good and Cena/Rock wasn't really that much either, at the end of the day. But the crowd might have been better with a goofy segment that lets them recharge a bit. It's funny but this seems like at *least* the third Wrestlemania in the last 5 where the talking point of "I would have liked this show better if I re-arranged the match order" has come up.

Perhaps bad phrasing on my part, but my point being I think they need to widen their in-house options going forward. Scanning the indies for the next big thing is proving pretty hard to do these days. Which isn't so say there's nothing to be found out there, of course not, but why limit yourself more than necessary. They might as well take an approach of "if you want it done right do it yourself", even if it hurts the bottom line slightly. Not even Austin walked in and went straight to the main event (I actually thought The Ringmaster was kind of a nothing program in the big picture, really), so I shouldn't imply it's as simple as (1) Train wrestler (2) ??? (3) Profit. Merely that the company needs to do what it can to not be put into the same box 10 years from now that they are in currently: where Wrestlemania has been built around nostalgia acts repeatedly. It's done big business, hell they just drew one of the largest live gates ever for a wrestling card, but once The Rock burns out where do you go from there? You're out of nostalgia acts that mean anything, so they'll have to start shifting probably post Wrestlemania XXX one way or another. And all I'm saying is you might as well give yourself the best possible options going forward when that time comes.

They are signing who is available but I still think the WWE has to do more long-term to try and produce more new talent through expanding in-house training and recruiting. Yes it will cut into your bottom line in general to operate a larger range on the b-promotion developmental side but if you find the next Steve Austin who becomes the new license to print money it pays off big time. More maybe to the point of this thread, I don't get how Brock loses at Mania again and the plan was to then turn around next night and build to Brock/Rock. Is there anyone in the world that thinks Brock wins that match? There couldn't be less drama around that. That's nothing against either guy, but that's just how it seems. Announcing Mania's main event essentially a year in advance is really dumb too, but that's a separate issue.