Sean Liska

So it's been repeatedly established on this board that the last 11 years of post-Attitude WWE has not been good. It's also been decided that the Attitude era was not actually good either. The 80s were a terrible time from an in-ring perspective. So I think the only consistent quality output from WWE in the last 30 years was the Austin-Hart Foundation feud and the first few months of 1998. It's amazing that a few good months 15 years ago has been enough to keep everyone at least keeping up with the product.

Look at the financial state of American pro wrestling in 93-95, and look at WWE now. It gave WWE a level of stability and security never before seen by a wrestling company. The wrestlers are making tons of money. If you want to say that it was bad because it caused WCW to go out of business, then that's fair. But 2000 was one of WWE's best ever years from a quality standpoint, coming right at the end of the Attitude run, so it's not like the era made it impossible to do good wrestling.

I see this all the time, but it's not really true. Every PPV this year except for Elimination Chamber has been up. There have been several months where house show business was up over the previous year. TV ratings were very healthy over the summer before they added the killer third hour. We're six months removed from, by far, the most successful wrestling show of all time. Next year's Mania will again shatter gate records. Saturday Morning Slam and The Main Event have been successes for their networks. Yes, we can sit and worry about USA cancelling them, but it's USA that wanted another hour of prime time WWE content. I think there's a lot that's good about the current product, but when you're producing 6 hours of important TV each week, it's impossible to keep people excited and wanting more. Early 90s AJPW would have struggled. But you could make a 20-hour Best of WWE 2012 comp that would be pretty great.

Love seeing Lawler back with his Diet Coke. What a remarkable recovery. Amazing.

Zeus was the main focus of the build for that match. The two big SNME angles were centered on him - not letting Hogan into the cage before the Bossman match, and no selling Hogan's chair shots after the Beefcake-Savage match and then doing a staredown.

Dave did a history of SummerSlam in the new issue and has these numbers - 88 - About 400,000 89 - 625,000 90 - Estimated 507,000 91 - 405,000 92 - About 280,000 93 - About 250,000 98- 700,000 99 - 600,000 2001 - 570,000 2002 - 540,000 2004 - 320,000 2005 - 640,000

I was at the show. The problem was that Undertaker could not get his jacket off. I don't know if his gloves got caught on the sleeves, but he literally went to the side of the ring and had several people working to rip the thing off of him.

The company dies without TV, and cable TV is more competitive than ever. I don't see how going public ties in.

Punk had a twenty minute opening segment on RAW last week and then was the focus of the overrun segment. His segment was the focus of the overrun two weeks ago. He's doing all right. The crowd would have been dead for Bryan-Punk after having already seen Cena win MITB, that got by far the biggest response of anything on the show.

Hack Myers?!

Meltzer said that she was about to return to beat a Bella for the title in April, but they changed it because he reported it. So is this all his fault?

As jdw mentioned, there are no managers anymore. So someone like Johnny Ace isn't really playing a role on the show that far removed from Bobby Heenan, he just has the power to book matches and stack the deck. But the whole idea of building up heat on him and then putting him in a match with the lead babyface isn't that different from the old days. Same with him being forced into tag matches teaming with his henchmen.

They had big plans for Studd as a face feuding with Andre, and then he left for some reason and Vince was furious. I was flipping through the WWE's Andre the Giant book and there were quotes from Vince burying Studd - 15 years after he died.

The last Taker match was built around the idea that Michaels was going insane because he lost to Taker the previous year, and that he would do anything to get one more shot at him and prove he could end the streak. He was willing to put his career on the line because he cared that much about knowing he had it in himself. It was one of the best builds they've done in recent memory.

Yeah, this was when Angle seemed to change his style. People loved those matches with their crazy amounts of german suplexes and ankle locks, and he never went away from it afterwards.

The speech didn't make sense, but I don't see how it was happy-go-lucky. He sounded exhausted and talked about how he was banged up and couldn't lift his arm, which a lot of people thought was a shoot injury due to how well he sold it.

There's also a difference between guys working stiff and potatoing people on Friday nights in Rochester and two guys agreeing to work stiff for the semi-main event of the biggest money show ever. There's no question that RVD brought a lot of heat on himself by busting open several guys during a short span, unfortunately.

There's never been any explanation regarding what the hell Cena was talking about at the end of that show. Why was he cutting a promo about leaving for a while and being happy to go out in Chicago? Seriously, the only explanation I have is that those elbows that split his head open also knocked him half-out and he didn't know what he was doing. Or I guess that Vince was screwing with Lesnar for some reason. There's a lot from that night that doesn't make sense. Meltzer has reported that Lesnar was legitimately pissed off after the show and was tearing things up, but he also hinted that it was partly a work to fool the boys into thinking Cena winning was a good idea. So what was it? That whole night was like a flashback to 1997 WWF where you didn't know what was what.

Tony isn't Lance or Vince, but he was great at getting the NWO storyline over. He legitimately sounded scared for his job every week. There were Nitros where the NWO laid everyone out and you felt like Tony was about to go jump off of a bridge. He was also great at conveying excitement during WCW's rare moments of victory, like when Luger beat Hogan or Goldberg won the title. "Hulk Hogan, you can go to hell" is one of the all-time great calls. He wasn't very good when working with Crockett - for years, he sounded like he'd never seen wrestling before. But he started to hit his stride around 1988 and had a solid ten years. I remember him doing a nice job with Flair-Vader. I don't remember him failing to get many stories over during that time.

At this point, even if HHH is keeping Foley out of the ring due to some misguided spite, I think he's doing him a favor. Foley can't put on his own socks anymore. He has well documented concussion issues, and could probably easily get one at this point just from taking a normal bump. He was willing to fall off a stage onto concrete just to get a pop at the Impact Zone for a show that did a 1.2. God only knows what he would be willing to do to himself on a big WWE PPV where he's trying to prove himself.

It sounds like Vince has gotten a lot more aggressive over the years. When you listen to JR's commentary in his last few years in WWE, he sounds a lot more tentative and cautious than during the peak of the Austin-McMahon run, and it's because Vince is all over him. Watch something like Austin-Foley from Over the Edge 98 and compare it to Ross calling a match from 2008, it sounds like a different person. You can't really compare modern WWE announcers to announcers from other era or promotions, because you never hear stories elsewhere like you hear with today's Vince. It's an odd quirk he's developed.

It all comes from Vince. Last week Cole spent the entire legends segment gushing over Vader, talking about what a legend he was and how he looked as good as ever. Those were his instructions. My question is why Vince directed him to do that tonight. Did he get self-conscious about having several older performers out there?

The TV rights fees make it a good thing. They can afford the drop in PPV buys. I don't think a TV show full of squash matches would survive in today's entertainment world where everyone demands instant gratification.

That's why ECW developed such a big buzz. The American hardcore fan had his home promotion taken away and needed a replacement.

To be fair - Dave was on this, I just can't remember the issue.