Sean Liska

Not getting paid PPV money they were owed (as goes the story), not from failing on PPV.

They're not going to do anything, this isn't like the Glenn Beck thing. They were trying to get some positive pub out of being welcoming and congratulatory towards his achievements and coming across as tolerant.

Yes and no. That seems like more of an NYC crowd thing to me. In Philly you could bring in guys who had never performed on a big American stage before like Mysterio and Psicosis, or Malenko and Gurrero, or later years an Antifaz del Norte and Mosco de Merced, and the crowd would be respectful and more passionate than any other American audience.

I'm not going to try to win you guys over on the quality of ECW. But you've got to remember the context of the time to see why ECW appealed so much to people. The territories had all been put out of business. WCW had been the last bastion of hope for the American smart fan and then Bischoff came in and totally sold out the promotion's soul, Hogan retired our hero Ric Flair after treating him as a whipping boy for several months, and Starrcade was headlined by Hogan and his buddy Brutus Beefcake. The WWF had always been the enemy, but it had become worse and more irrelevant than ever, bottoming out with a catastrophic KOTR 95 and a SummerSlam headlined by Diesel and Mabel. As pessimistic as people feel about today's wrestling scene, it was much much worse then because business was in the toilet and their views of talent were quite a bit more out of date than now. So yeah, this company comes along that treats Terry Funk with the reverence due to a hardcore fan God, and Sabu is blowing people's minds, and they're bringing in guys like Benoit and Guerrero that the Big 2 wouldn't touch because they're so out of touch, and they're using current music and producing videos that look like stuff from MTV, and you've got great angles like the Sandman pretending to be blinded, and Heyman and Douglas are preaching to the choir about everything wrong with American wrestling, and the Raven character fit the time perfectly, and they're ahead of the curve in tapping into UFC with Taz, and the Pulp Fiction montages were so much more hip than anything else we were getting, and they're bringing in the AAA guys and Joey Styles is saying everything we think about Eric Bischoff. You can look back at parts of the ECW or the Attitude Era and say, "This sucked, why do people look back on this fondly, how was this successful". But there was a reason it connected with people, it's not that easy to fool people into becoming passionate about pro wrestling.

Fair. I'm just not sure what types of big changes they can make to their presentation. They're not devoting the first hour to having Jim Ross and a co-host break down the show like it's an MMA pre-game as so many people have recommended.

I see people complaining about the same format a lot, but how many companies have ever really radically changed the way they do TV outside of WCW and WWF in the mid 90s? An NJPW TV shoot in Osaka looks and is presented the same as 30 years ago. Memphis looked the same and had the same format for 25 years. CMLL is pretty similar except for a tron opposite the hard cam. I'm not sure how many different ways you can shoot a big arena, or how much a new graphics package would change anything. They've shown the format can still deliver big when the creative is good. They have greatly cut down on the number of skits shot backstage, which is a big plus. And they've cut down a lot on the bad comedy. The current product feels like Mid-South compared to 2006-ish with the horrible DX comedy every week and Shelton's mom and May 19th. Staleness within the roster is a big issue that killed them for a while. They've gotten better. It's kind of tricky. You can't bring in a lot of new guys without eliminating a lot of other guys from TV, but those poor other guys don't have anywhere to work anymore.

I think they are going to use this time to build Rollins, Ambrose, and Reigns. Ambrose returning for a blood feud with Rollins culminating at HITC will be great. It's the rest of the show I'm worried about.

What company could really sustain that year after year while producing this much content? They've been in the 2-hour RAW format for 17 years now. What company sustained a hot consistent year-round run for that long? There's a reason TV shows have repeats for 3 months.I think it's just the nature of the beast. I was watching 1985 Worldwide and it's on fire for a few months heading into the Bash with great angles every week, but by August-Ocrober, it's lots of squashes and interviews with not much happening. I'm working my way through 1980 Memphis (a down year, I know) and they'll shoot a really hot angle like the Valiant-Ellering double turn or whatever and it's great for a while, but then you'll get a month where nothing really noteworthy happens.

I think it absolutely is, it happens every year. It's become very patterned, they probably have learned how to pace themselves when producing 250 hours of primetime cable TV annually. They kick off Mania season in late December or early January and heat things up. Sometimes the excitement lasts in Extreme Rules season like the Cena-Lesnar year, sometimes not. The last two years have gotten really predictable to where both years even had great shows the nights after the June and July PPVs and the summer always has a lot going on. They do a really good job of filling SummerSlam with matches that are well-promoted on TV, and then in September and October we wonder how they lost that skill. And then typically they start doing things in December to get things going again and give us a pretty good TLC show. Here's a spoiler - in October everyone will be complaining about how stale WWE is and we'll be wondering why we're getting Bo Dallas-Kofi on PPV, we'll be seeing headlines on the WO site about them doing their worst ratings in 17 years like they always do against football, etc. By January, everyone will be all-in again debating who Lesnar should face at Mania, we may be discussing a backlash against Reigns with people wanting Bryan or Ambrose to get the shot, we'll be arguing about how they should use Sting and then arguing about if he's being used correctly, we'll be arguing about whether Taker has another match left in him, and it should be a lot of fun. Our one hope for the fall with Lesnar and Bryan likely not being around is that Ambrose is given the opportunity to really make things interesting. It's not that different from modern NJPW. September is always boring coming off of the G-1 and falling before Invasion Attack, and this year is no different with us getting yet another PPV headlined by Nakamura and Fale. July usually isn't too hot sitting between Dominion and the G-1. No one ever really cares about the tag tourney in December, it's just killing time before 1/4.

The fall of 98 did have a ton of good stuff because the company was so damn hot. But would you put it at the same level as the summer with the Highway to Hell-Austin/Taker/Kane/Mankind stuff and the DX/Nation feud? Or the WrestleMania build with the Tyson stuff? Or the spring season with the beginning of the Austin/McMahon feud and the Austin/Dude Love program? I guess it's close. Overall, the non Vince-Austin stuff was less effective and focused than the rest of the year. Even 97 is a decent example. The summer of 97 through SS with the peak of the USA-Canada stuff is about as good as wrestling TV gets. In the fall Bret's feuding with Vader and the Patriot and it's a definite step down outside of the Taker-HBK feud. Survivor Series still felt like a big deal back then, but by December we're getting a Shamrock-HBK program that no one really cared about.

You can go back to 98 and see the patterns. SummerSlam 98 was full of well-built up matches, and the next month Breakdown was packed with filler like Job Squad-Too Cool, Mero-Droz, Owen-Edge, and D-Lo-Gangrel. The PPVs from September-December were rough. SummerSlam 99 was the best PPV of the year, but the next few months were pretty cold with HHH not being over but getting pushed a ton, Big Show as champ feuding with Bossman and no one caring, etc. Then things picked back up in January with the Foley-HHH feud. Dipped again in the spring with the retread Rock-Vince feud. The summer of 2000 was one of the hottest periods ever. The fall kinda fell off with Austin's return being flat and the Rikishi and HHH driver reveals not getting over, Rock didn't have much to do and was just in a random 4-way in the September PPV, the undercards for the last few PPVs of the year weren't too inspiring. Forgettable feuds like Jericho-Kane, Billy Gunn-Benoit, Jericho-XPac, Rock-Rikishi, etc and the coldest stretch of PPVs of the year. RAW's summer of 2002 was pretty good, built around the fun HBK-HHH feud, Bookdust going after the tag titles, Flair-Jericho etc. The fall, god, you had the Katie Vick feud and HHH's lame feud with RVD. There are exceptions (Unforgiven 2006, No Mercy 2008, No Mercy 2001, No Mercy 2002), but the September-December PPVs just always seem to have a lot more filler than the rest of the year, which spills over into the quality of the TV because there's less to build to.

If you're not big on modern WWE, this is a very good time to take a break. I would recommend DVRing the show and checking in to see if Ambrose did anything, if Heyman cut a promo, anything good out of Goldust or Henry, etc. The first RAW in January is where they always kick off Mania season and have momentum through either Mania or Extreme Rules, depending on the year.

Hopefully it was just a one-week detour to get Swagger-Bo going since Henry was in the main event. Usually the midcard falls apart during this time of the year, but they'll have my interest if we get Goldust as a heel and a Henry-Rusev program.

There are 8 Thursday games on network TV. It's absolutely worth taking the hit for two months to get off one of the worst nights of the week back to the most prestigious.

Lance Russell just announced that he and Dave Brown will be ringside for a Memphis show on 9/18 that's going to be a tribute to Lawler. I don't know how many more times this is going to happen with Lance being 88, so I'm planning on getting down there from Chicago somehow.

As a Memphis guy that started watching in 81, if you can watch anything before that, especially when Jarrett took over in 77. But like Steenalized stated , it's just not out there. You really start seeing consistent stuff around 1980. You've got to start with the TV that's available in the summer of 79 because that covers the Dundee/Lawler-Farris/Latham feud and the Tupelo Concession Brawl, one of the more famous programs in the history of the territory. You also get Hogan coming in to defend Brutus (14 years before they built a WM off that), an awesome Gilberts-Waynes family feud, the Freebirds randomly coming in and having a 20 minute TV match with Lawler and Dundee, and then Lawler as a heel having TV matches with Ricky Morton and Steve Regal and torturing Jerry Jarrett. It's fantastic. Don't skip that stuff, especially since 1980 is kind of a down year with Lawler out.

Dave went **** on Reigns-Orton. It seems crazy, but I think it explains the disconnect between him and a lot of us regarding NJPW. Reigns-Orton didn't have much of a body of the match, but it peaked with some really cool finisher reversals and kick-outs, and the crowd was hot for the last few minutes. Every somewhat big NJPW match ends with finisher reversals and kick-outs and the crowd responding well. This is how you get him saying the Osaka and Korakuen G-1 shows were 2 of the best 5 wrestling shows of all-time.

I love Gorilla and think he's actually underrated. At his best, he wasn't just an entertaining guy who had fun banter with his fellow announcers. In the 80's he could do a hell of a job making a main event feel like a big deal. You couldn't do a better job of selling the epic nature of Hogan-Andre than he and Jesse did. One of the great calls of all time. And a pretty damn good call on the same show of Savage-Steamboat too. Or his disgust at Piper breaking the record over Albano's head and kicking Lauper. Or his call of Slaughter-Shiek. I love that stuff so much. Judging him on 1994 WWF is like judging Lance Russell on 1997 USWA.

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/18073-current-wwe/page-39 Last year at this time. WWE has followed a predictable yearly cycle for like 17 years now but people always get surprised by it. TV will be very hot from late December through April, and June through August. It will cool off during football season. You can even see it in everyone's favorite year - 2000. The fall of 99 was boring with HHH not being over and Rock treading water feuding with Davey Boy Smith and Al Snow. Things picked up in late December with the Foley-HHH feud, a great Mania season, then a dull post-Mania season revolving around a Rock-Vince feud that felt like a retread, then a red-hot summer with the HHH-Angle-Stephanie thing and Foley as commish and a bunch of other good stuff. By the fall, we had the HHH-Angle thing pissed away, Austin returning to feud with Rikishi, and HHH's heel turn. This year we had the same great Mania and summer seasons and now it'll cool off. The October PPV will probably have a main event without much juice in it and undercard matches like Bo-Kofi and we'll be wondering what happened. But you'll also get good stuff sprinkled in like the Rhodes-Authority feud last year or that stretch where Bryan was having long main events against Shield members every week. Whatever they do with Ambrose will be this year's version of that.

Yeah, I don't get the hype for this one. Last 8 minutes or so was a lot of fun but nothing of relevance seemed to happen in the first 13. Much preferred other stuff I watched last night like Nagata-Ishii and Honma-Shibata. NJPW matches seem to click better with me when they're under 15 minutes.

I feel like this is the one place on the internet where I can find some other people legit excited about seeing Jarrett working against the NJPW guys.