Sean Liska

I miss Heyman selling me pro wrestling shows.

How is the size queen stuff an issue when Bryan, Rollins, and Ambrose are 3 of the top 5 faces in the company? And the biggest push they've given to a guy out of development is years went to Bray Wyatt, a somewhat unspectacular looking overweight dude? There was a time when you could say WWE thought they knew better, but I don't see how it's a big issue right now. They're giving us Daniel Bryan and the Shield as the top two babyface acts right now, they're positioning Cesaro for big things long-term, they've given the Wyatts a big push, Zayn and Neville are the top pushed faces in NXT. It took them some time to recognize how badly the crowd wanted Bryan to have his Mania moment, but when they did they booked him as strongly as you possibly could - kicking HHH, Orton, and Batista's asses on the go-home RAW, kicking out of the pedigree and beating HHH clean with the knee at Mania, thwarting HHH's interference and laying him out with his own sledgehammer, surviving a powerbomb/neckbreaker through a table and stretcher job, and making Batista tap clean in the middle of the ring. And then he went on last at Extreme Rules, above a big HHH match, and won clean. And the plan was for him to then beat Batista the next month.

I just don't think they have plans for a Batista/Reigns match, and honestly, it wouldn't exactly give Reigns a lot of momentum as a single. Reigns-HHH has been discussed as a big match, and that's been protected. Cena and Bryan haven't wrestled since SummerSlam. Cena and the Wyatts were kept apart until their program. They did an awesome job keeping the Shield and Wyatts separate and then making it a big deal when they crossed paths. Bryan and Wyatt was a first-time match at the Rumble.

I like where Bix is coming from with the geek culture thing. Going to Mania is a very different experience than any other wrestling show - it's an impressive collection of young guys with a lot of disposable income who are so passionate about the product. A very different demo.

My theory is the thing that really killed wrestling to normal people for a long time is one thing that old-school fans hold in high regard - kayfabe. When you tell people you watch wrestling, do they say - "How can you watch that stuff with the poorly written characters and bad comedy?" No, they always say, "You know that stuff is fake, right?" I really believe that pro wrestlers going in public for so many years and steadfastly maintaining that wrestling was real, when anyone with half a brain could tell otherwise, was so absurd and insulting to the average person that we're still dealing with the effects. If what you guys suggest were really the issue, then Mid-South wrestling would have had a white collar audience with a bunch of disposable income. Or 1992 WCW. Anecdotes and footage suggest that was not the case. There's something inherent about two dudes in tights pretending to fight each other that draws in a certain demographic and has for most of the last 40 years. Heels in the old territories didn't have to worry about getting their tires slashed because a bunch of doctors and lawyers were out back at midnight still emotional about an absurd scripted show.

I really don't think they would get a big rights increase even if they had Bill Watts and Jim Ross breaking down every match like it was a college football game. It's wrestling. Two dudes pretending to fight. You can look at 80s territories that had a more sports-like approach and they generally didn't have a fancy white-collar audience with prestigious advertisers. From what I saw on TV, the Crockett and Mid-South audiences weren't always the best and brightest of society.

I wonder how history would have changed if the Batista return had not leaked. The actual Rumble win probably would have gone over better, but I'm guessing the fans still would have turned on him within a few weeks.

They've cut down on crazy dives too. Last year's MITB matches were safer than usual. The TLC PPV only had one big gimmick match, Orton-Cena, and it was safely worked.

May is always flat compared to Mania season. Check back in around mid-June when they start picking things up heading into SummerSlam and we're debating potential Bryan-Lesnar and HHH-Reigns and Sting matches. Also, check out the Sheamus-Ambrose match from Smackdown last week, that will restore some faith.

WWE always seems to hit a wall in May. The Mania momentum is gone and they haven't started the summer push yet. You can even look at great years like 97 and 2000 and see May was mostly a holding pattern. Hopefully they still put something quality together for Payback because it would be a shame to waste a Chicago crowd with this fun roster.

You're not going to get two massive draws coming up from two different areas meeting in the same company with only one company mattering in Japan and the US. So I'll go Wyatts-Shield.

The crowds going into Mania hated Batista a lot more than Orton. It made for a bigger moment.

Foley went on Twitter and asked if WWE hates their fans after the Rumble. That's not going to be appreciated from someone you're paying.

I don't see where JR said anything too controversial. NJPW has more heels that work a classic American-heel style than WWE does. Not just cheating, but general stooging, in terms of heels being outsmarted and embarassed. I don't know that it's a bad thing, though. WWE in-ring is pretty damn good and people are invested in the stories. It's just a different time. 1991 AJPW didn't have classic heels and they did good business. There's an old-school philisophy that a truly effective heel has to be really despised. But WWE business has never been hotter than it was in the build-up to WM15, and the Rock was a top heel that the crowd desparately wanted to love and chant catchphrases with. The NWO lit WCW's business on fire for a few years while being cheered. The Horsemen had plenty of fans in the Carolinas but drew a lot of money. Cool heels can draw and they don't have to kill the faces if the faces are strong. People talk about how the NWO was too cool and undercut the faces, but Goldberg did just fine. Sting did fine. Heels don't always have to be universally loathed like the Shiek.

Then why did they turn Batista heel a month into his run and position Daniel Bryan as the top face of the company during Mania season? People are really dramatic.

They can't top the match they had on RAW in 2012. Look that up if you haven't seen it, it's surreal, probably Vince's last match ever too. Vince walking tall and caning Punk while the crowd goes nuts is an all-time great RAW moment.

What's the last example of this happening? I remember people freaking out after each bad RAW number that CM Punk's push was going to be killed, and he only got pushed stronger. MITB 2011 really didn't do that crazy of a number, and SummerSlam 2011 did a bad number, and ratings didn't jump much, and they still pushed him big.

If they were really basing the booking off of the SummerSlam number, Bryan would be in the midcard and Vince wouldn't be upset about Punk leaving. It's a relief that they've stuck with Bryan so much and that they don't tend to overreact to individual PPV buys or TV ratings like the internet thinks they do.

Even WM23 made a lot of sense for him to be at, in Detroit 20 years after the Andre match, and it didn't happen. So this is pretty cool.

I prefer to remember classic young, snarky and mulleted Dave. This version of Dave has been re-emerging on Twitter. It's been fun to see. Recent Dave quotes on Twitter - "Wait a minute when you follow a match like that, aren't you supposed to not be able to get the crowd into it.Or is that only for HHH bouts." "If Jessica Eye is Hogan, that makes Ariel Helwani Arsenio, and that means a drunk girl is about to walk in and smash a banana in my face." - that one's great for the Eyada listeners "Oh my god, white belt Nagata almost submitted a Gracie with the rolling your eyeballs into your skull armlock." About HHH - "He's absolutely great at knowing when to do what. Except if he's facing Bill Goldberg."

I don't think an NY-area audience is apt to cheer Batista and HHH and not get behind Bryan. I think they would be the opposite, although an NJ crowd is typically a lot less fun than an MSG or Barclays crowd.

WWE posted an article about ROH on WWE.com today with several references to CM Punk. A few hours later all of the mentions of Punk are removed. They have to know this is just going to incite people, right? It feels like a genius work but I know it's not. edit: they may have just removed the references to him as a trainer, never mind.

I just got a ticket bought for me to the March Raw in Chicago for the sole purpose of "WE SHOULD GO AND CHANT CM PUNK! TAKE OVER THE SHOW" Not even kidding. I'm in Chicago and I've heard several instances of this! Crazy times we live in now.

I think fans chanting CM Punk during a Daniel Bryan match goes to what Dylan said after the Rumble. People enjoy paying money to come to shows and try to disrupt them now - it's part of the experience. They're getting a 25 minute Daniel Bryan main event? Time to find something else to be upset about. It's quite the interesting change. Austin had much better reasoning for walking out in 2002, was much more popular than Punk, and no one chanted for him.

The Del Rio PPV matches when he actually got pushed were way too good to say he's just Billy Gunn. Hell of a double turn they pulled off on Payback, it just didn't go anywhere.