Sean Liska

Stephanie on twitter just invited Dusty to appear on RAW Monday. This is too great. A Rhodes family angle getting plenty of WWE TV time in 2013, supporting a Daniel Bryan headline face angle (who's headlined recent RAWs against Ambrose and Rollins) - if someone on the internet fantasy-booked this they would be mocked.

I'm OK with people not considering Vince a genius, but I don't see how anyone else in the history of the industry could be one then. I hate the argument that Vince stumbled into Austin and the Attitude success. They set up Austin as Bret's opponent for his big first match back at SS96, they booked and executed a brilliant double turn at Mania - one of the great angles of all-time, with weeks of TV leading to that moment, they came up with the idea of the Harts being lead heels in America and lead faces in Canada and stuck Austin in the middle of this explosive dynamic, they had him stun Vince at MSG on RAW in a huge moment, they made a $3 million gamble on Tyson when money was much tighter and booked the whole scenario to perfection with DX playing great heels, Vince himself stepped up and became one of the greatest heels of all-time and Austin's perfect adversary, the Foley feud after Mania was perfect, the Highway to Hell with Undertaker for SummerSlam 98 was booked brilliantly and did huge business, they elevated Rock and turned him into a perfect heel foil for Austin. That's like two full years of perfect booking for Austin. How do people still see that as something that was stumbled into?

Agreed, and I also just really, really, really don't like that MITB has become a WWE institution. It's a way for WWE to half-invest in midcarders who they aren't willing to build around as champion or give a victory in a real match, where they can hide behind the "We gave them an opportunity" excuse when the push inevitably fails. That's a bit of a harsh critique. Punk, Bryan, and Edge all broke through this way. It sent Miz on his way to a Mania main event until that went wrong, but they went all-in with Miz for a while.

My brother edits the Famous Monsters magazine, and due to relentless badgering from me, he's finally broken down and done a lucha issue. This is really cool for me because I helped him with the idea and served as a wrestling resource for him. I figured this is a board that would hopefully appreciate this sort of thing. It's got El Santo on the cover and focuses on the great lucha monster movies, collectibles, and comics. The issue also covers Tiger Mask and the Japanese TV show Azteckaiser - this link is pretty cool if you've never seen it ( ). Dan Madigan contributed a column as well. Here's a link to the cover in their store, which I think came out pretty well - El Santo fighting off a wolfman. http://www.captainco.com/collections/famou...s-270-newsstand

I wouldn't say they're screwed, they would just have to scale back costs. A Randy Orton-level performer doesn't need to be making $300,000 a month in order for the wrestling industry to still attract talent. Any company that puts on an $80 million show should be able to pay it's bills.

There's no agenda here. This has nothing to do with Dave Meltzer or message board wars, and I wish Dave hadn't even been brought into the conversation. I wasn't sure if I would like the other New Japan, so I picked something that based on the description sounded right up my alley, because I was actually looking to be positive. I didn't care for it, but I'm not going to indict all of New Japan as awful based on watching one match that was praised that I didn't like either. People are silly. I think people don't get to watch my favorite NJPW stuff because they're going off of matches pimped by Meltzer, which aren't often the smartest worked matches. Here's a quick match I remember enjoying - Toru Yano vs. Okada in a tourney match for an IWGP title shot. Yano is a cult undercard heel, known for his cheating and brawling. Okada is one of the top two guys in the company and a huge favorite in the match. Yano uses his heelish tactics to try to steal a win, and the crowd eats it up. It's not a MOTY, just a fun match with two established characters. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyg3uh_ka...=2#.UdrfevnFV1k And if you want a better Shibata match, this tag was pretty great. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xytmiw_yu...=2#.UdriwPnFV1k

NJPW is just a lot of fun. I have my issues with some of their epic-style main events and don't go as crazy for them as someone like Meltzer might, but they still have a remarkably deep and diverse roster featuring varied in-ring styles. There's almost never anything bad. The title matches have big-match feels. The booking is really good, they build great feuds and stories, and the crowds are usually hot. I've gotten back to being a big fan over the past 2.5 years after thinking for a while that the fandom over modern NJPW was just a bunch of western Europeans that didn't see puro when it was really good. And now's a good time to jump in with the 7/20 PPV looking stacked and the G-1 Climax looking epic this year.

Don't tar wrestling fans unfairly, football fans apply the same principle to OJ Simpson and his achievements. Chris Brown still sells millions of records despite his despicable crimes. People still love Phil Spector and praise his music despite the fact he was a murderer. Actors who have committed awful crimes still get praised. It isn't wrestling fans who do this, it is a good proportion of society. Find me the people on the anniversary of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman's murders that are tweeting #Remember2000yards. Find me the people who take the anniversary of Lana Clarkson's murder to look back fondly on the Wall of Sound. No? OK. Well, it's a little unique because it's also the day he died. Isn't that the point? He slaughters his family and all certain people want to remember about the day is "the world lost a great wrestler"? I'm just saying that if OJ had also died on the day that he committed the murders, you could very well see some sick people from those communities commemorating the day as well. I agree with the general premise that fans in many areas of entertainment will show similar misplaced priorities. If an important college football player rapes a girl and has to miss a big game because he's in jail, a decent percentage of that team's fanbase is going to be pissed at the girl for costing them the game. We want to be entertained ahead of everything else.

Don't tar wrestling fans unfairly, football fans apply the same principle to OJ Simpson and his achievements. Chris Brown still sells millions of records despite his despicable crimes. People still love Phil Spector and praise his music despite the fact he was a murderer. Actors who have committed awful crimes still get praised. It isn't wrestling fans who do this, it is a good proportion of society. Find me the people on the anniversary of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman's murders that are tweeting #Remember2000yards. Find me the people who take the anniversary of Lana Clarkson's murder to look back fondly on the Wall of Sound. No? OK. Well, it's a little unique because it's also the day he died.

Wha? Where did this news come from? That's a crazy dream team!

They've gone 7 months without getting the depush or losing momentum, and have had 1 DQ loss in that whole time. With CM Punk gone, they took over a major role on the show over the last 6 weeks. They just won the US and tag titles. They're not going to stay undefeated forever and internet fans always have unrealistic expectations about this stuff, but I think Ambrose is a lock to be a main event guy for a long time and Reigns has a chance. Not sure about Rollins.

Interesting that he would specifically place it above the WWE-produced DVD by saying it tells the story of "The Rise and Fall of ECW".

My main argument is to not confuse Heyman not turning a profit with Heyman not being able to generate interest in his product. He got far more people to pay money to watch ECW than could have been expected given his resources. Since the death of the territories, no one besides Vince and Turner have been able to generate so much interest, not even TNA with all of their money. He started with a random indy running in bars, grew it to where it could do 100,000 PPV buys nationally, and did it on a shoe-string budget with an inability to keep any of his created stars. I think that's a really impressive booking achievement. Unfortunately, the business model of paying for syndicated TV doesn't work, and he was having to pay guys like Taz 6-figures because WCW and WWE were stealing everybody decent in the company, and he didn't have that type of money. He's not necessarily a worse booker than others because he wasn't running a monopoly with free weekly TV, rotating territorial talent, and the ability to blackball anyone who complained too much about payoffs. I think it's a mistake when people just dismiss ECW as a failure. As a business model? Sure. As a product? No, they grew way too much with way too little behind them, they should be very proud of what they accomplished.

What was his most successful angle? Who was the biggest star he created? I get where you're going with that, but I think Heyman's detractors brush over the significance of what he did accomplish. He took a random Northeastern indy that mostly ran bar shows in front of a few hundred people, and turned it into a national PPV entity that could get 100,000 buys at it's peak. Nothing close to that has been accomplished since the territories died. It can be argued that it took greater booking prowess to do that than it took to run a successful territory where the booker had a monopoly, free weekly TV. and a rotating cast of major-league stars to cycle in and out of the area. I'm not totally sure I would make that argument, but I think it's more compelling that some give it credit for. But Vince still runs away with it. He built a global giant of a business with Vince Russo as his right hand man. With the benefit of hindsight, that's probably the most impressive booking feat we've ever seen.

If it's "greatest" according to personal taste, than I think the vote is fine. If it's according to success, then Vince Jr. is the only choice and no one on the list is close. You guys should be more upset about Gedo and Jado ahead of Choshu.

The guy made $35 million last year and is still working Smackdown tapings in places like Little Rock, Hershey, and Sacramento because he loves it so much. He's even sticking around for Extreme Rules. I think it's pretty likely that he didn't make the call. It is fair to point out that Hogan always got knocked if he didn't mention TNA on press tours, though, since it would theoretically be the same situation.

I don't think the fundamentals of the build are particularly bad. There's nothing in the territory of Jericho running over HHH's dog. Heyman goaded HHH into putting his career on the line after his friends (HBK and Flair) both had their careers ended at Mania, Cena needs redemption against Rock, Taker is looking for revenge on Punk, Big Show is throwing aside face-heel alliances to try and stop the Shield, Ryback and Henry are jousting to see who's the baddest guy in the company, it's all pretty simple stuff. I think the 3-hr format is as responsible for sucking the life out of things as anything.

I want people to go watch the backstage promos from the 1980s SNME shows and tell me how writers are a modern invention. Every word of those interviews were clearly scripted. Lots of 80s WWF promos were, Vince has always been a control freak, he just loosened up for a bit when desperate in the late 90s. The Hogan-Orndorff stuff is another example where everything they were saying in their backstage segments and Barbershop appearances were scripted and cheesy but highly effective. Writers can be good and bad. When they were carefully feeding Batista dialogue during his face turn heading into Mania 21, they were great. That 25 minute exchange between Vince, Punk, and Cena the week before MITB 2011 was scripted out and was fantastic. The HBK-HHH-Taker segment in Chicago the week before Mania 27 was scripted out very effectively. I thought the first Rock-Punk face-off on RAW this year was well-scripted.The writers didn't get in the way of Jericho doing fantastic promos during his heel run. Daniel Bryan's heel promos during the first months of his heel turn last year were exceptionally well done. The segment where Vince threatened to first Heyman this year before Brock came out the same, with an epic performance from Heyman. Meanwhile, we've had some good old-fashioned "bookers" in ROH like Pearce and Cornette and the results have been brutal.

The Outsiders-Luger/Giant match at Superbrawl 97 was really good. The 6-man at Slamboree 97 was another one.

I still don't understand the article. They paid off everything they've teased over the last few months. Punk was finally revealed as being connected with Maddox and Shield, which the fans have known but were frustrated because no one was able to prove it, and he lost his title. All of his and Heyman's plotting came undone and Punk was humbled by the big triumphant babyface. What was undone?

If Cena got hit by a bus tomorrow and ratings and attendance don't significantly drop, how much of a draw was he? It is major problem putting someone in a Hall of Fame when they're are still in the top position. We don't know what will happen when he is replaced. It is taken for granted that Cena is a good draw, but his records don't seem to be systematically examined. I don't consider him a great worker, so in a strict Hall of Fame, he would need to be a proven strong draw to balance that out. Just being on top is not enough for Sting, and it is not enough for Cena. The Rock stepped in for Steve Austin and did fantastic numbers in 2000. Austin's still a great draw. Nothing that happens after Cena is gone can erase everything he accomplished. Someone could come along and top his numbers, it doesn't nullify anything that he's done. He just headlined a show that did like $70 million in revenue.

It would be interesting if some of these indy guys go in while people like Edge and Batista sit on the outside looking in, but I don't see it happening. It's hard enough for modern wrestlers to get in.

Massive disappointment is a bit strong, unless you thought he was going to be Steve Austin after cutting that shoot promo, which was dumb on people's part since 90% of the promo went over the audience's heads. Punk just did 150K domestic buys with Ryback, a 50% increase from last year. Night of Champions was up with him and Cena on top. The only PPV this year down from last is Money in the Bank, because of Punk's angle last year. TV ratings were very healthy over the summer during the Punk/AJ/Bryan angle, until they sabatoged themselves by going 3 hours and killed their momentum.

Plus, wrestling in America is as unpopular now as it's ever been. Cena's not the main problem, but he's not completely blameless either. I see this a lot, but there were no $10 million on-sale ticket days happening in 1994. So they've managed to preserve Wrestlemania's value as a special attraction. What about the other 364 days of the year? For that matter, how did the last Rock-less Wrestlemania do? It did a hell of a lot better than anything in the mid-90s.

Plus, wrestling in America is as unpopular now as it's ever been. Cena's not the main problem, but he's not completely blameless either. I see this a lot, but there were no $10 million on-sale ticket days happening in 1994.