Sean Liska

That's not really what he said. He said it was a storyline, but that it mirrors real-life in that HHH is being groomed to take over for Vince. Wade Keller says that HHH is being groomed just in case something happens to Vince, which is what I would rather believe, because I don't have the faith in HHH that others do. And Vince is still capable of giving us stuff like last night, or the Taker-HBK rematch build up and payoff. Tonight was mostly flat, but I haven't lost faith in the Punk angle. He spent the night at Wrigley tweeting photos of himself screwing around with the WWE title and posing with players. That's awesome enough to keep me interested.

Yeah, but I'm still surprised by how much Punk has gotten away with. On Monday he mentioned WWE's falling stock price and the fact that they only get mainstream press when someone dies. How is Vince OK with that?

The new Observer makes it sound like Colt Cabana is heading to WWE, since he hasn't signed an ROH contract and told indie promoters he's only taking dates for another month. This would seem to suggest that Punk won't be gone for too long. I figured the interview Colt did with Alex Marvez for the Miami Herald was mostly in character, which makes this one of the most detailed and insider type of deals I can remember WWE doing. How did Punk talk Vince into all of this? It's amazing.

I don't want to make it seem like I'm a big WWF 80s guy. I was a Crockett fan back then, and I'd much rather watch old episodes of Worldwide, Mid-South, or Memphis. It's just that when it comes to sheer effectiveness of booking, I don't know that Vince and Patterson have been topped very often.

Can-Am Connection vs Bob Orton & Don Muraco : filler Billy Jack Haynes vs Hercules : hot feud, really ? Hillbilly Jim & two midget vs King Kong GBundy & two midget : filler with midgets Harley Race vs Junkyard Dog : hot feud, really ? Dream Team vs Rougeau Brothers : filler to the point even the announcer don't pay attention to the match Roddy Piper vs Adrian Adonis : hot feud Hart Foundation & Danny Davis vs British Bulldogs & Tito Santana : semi hot feud, the focus was clearly on Santana vs Davis which kinda suck for the tag belts Butch Reed vs Koko B. Ware : filler Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage : hot feud Honky Tonk Man vs Jake Roberts : hot feud Iron Sheik & Nikolai Volkoff vs Killer Bees : filler Hulk Hogan vs Andre : hot feud That's 40% of hot feuds and 60% of fillers. You caught me exaggerating, but still: The main event is one of the biggest matches ever. The IC title match had a classic six month build. The Piper-Adonis feud also had several entertaining months of angles. Danny Davis was hot as a heel and that was a fun angle. The Honky-Jake match had a memorable angle behind it. How many wrestling shows have peaked so many programs that were over like that Mania did? It goes back to my point of WWF having great booking back then.

I think you're underselling the effectiveness of the Zeus angle. SummerSlam 89 did a big buyrate. They did a great job building him up as a monster. 80s WWF can be brutal to watch from an in-ring perspective , but I don't know how anyone can knock the booking. It was excellent, as effective as any company has ever been. Look at a show like Mania 3, the whole card is stacked with hot programs that people were into. The year-long Hogan-Savage angle is an obvious classic. How about all of the great angles leading into the first Mania, like Piper knocking out Albano and getting physical with Lauper? Or the Slaughter-Shiek and Snuka-Piper feuds from that era. Don't forget Hogan-Orndorff. Even Hogan-Earthquake was well done and did a big buyrate. How many companies have had that many successes during a run? The Saturday Night Main Event shows were tremendously written programs in terms of getting over characters and issues.

James Caldwell watched this angle and somehow saw the end of WWE coming. http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/caldwel...cle_51227.shtml "-- McMahon has to prove to himself (because no one else cares) that he was the driving force behind Hogan, Austin, Rock, and Michaels, who have all been referenced the last two weeks on Raw. As a result, McMahon is trying to re-create another McMahon vs. Austin feud in the form of McMahon vs. Cena. It's not going to work, but, as McMahon said on Bloomberg last week, he will "die in his chair" trying. And he'll take the business with him. " Remember when the Torch had Mitchell and jdw and Zavisa and even Madden? Why does no one good write about wrestling anymore?

Wow, that type of audience interaction is one thing that's missing in wrestling today. Loved it (minus the homo comment, he should be smarter than that).

I thought Tony was great at selling the NWO angle. He came across as a guy genuinely worried about losing his job, and seemed legitimately overjoyed whenever WCW had any sort of victory like Luger beating Hogan or Flair's team beating the NWO in Charlotte.

It's a good promo. Can you think of a better promo on WWE or TNA TV in the last five years? I suppose Jericho may have had a few contenders, but aside from that I can't think of anything. The Rock's first promo back? Everyone was calling that one the best moments in RAW history.

RAW wasn't delayed last night, or we would have heard about that promo early, and we had live spoilers for the second show. They cut to the shot of the camera next to him right before he looked at it and said he was breaking the fourth wall, and right before he turned to it and said hello to Colt. It would also make sense that the line about Stephanie and HHH was the go-home line, since you can't really follow that. So I'm pretty skeptical of the PWI thing about Punk just winging it.

I've never seen the match, but it's supposed to be a disaster, like 40 minutes of botched spots. It's funny that it's the match he thought of off the top of his head.

“@JoshD360: @CMPunk I'm on a major ROH kick. If you had to recommend 1 match I MUST watch, what would it be?” Scramble from 1st anniversary" The man is my hero.

August 13 in Chicago.

It seems like they always do a lot of gimmick shows during the summer because that's when USA wants the three-hour shows. I don't think they're really panicking, probably more of a case of the writers relying on some gimmicks to get through all of the TV that they're producing now.

People online have figured out that Punk's tweets last night were pretty much exactly the same as his Livejournal from the ROH Summer of Punk Angle. Lasr Night's Tweet: "I knew I was gone at the beginning of the year. I just woke up one day and I knew. That's the way I work a lot of the time. I think it's creepy too, but it's really helpful. I knew I'd be history by July. Come say goodbye on July 17th. I promise to go out with a bang. Trust me. XxX"" 6 Years Ago: "I knew I was gone at the beggining of the year. I just woke up one day and knew. That's the way I work a lot of the time. I think it's creepy too, but it's really helpful. I honestly knew i'd be history by June. Come say goodbye on Saturday, I promise to go out with a bang. Trust me. XxX"" So yeah, Punk's a genius and he's screwing with our heads again. Good times.

Yeah, Rory has a connection with Shane's company. We will probably be seeing Shane a lot on Sundays in the next few years, nicely done on their part.

Truth was so great in the early days of TNA. I don't know why it took 9 years to get back to that role.

It would have been a little weird to have Shane out there doing the intro for WM23, and then come back and play main event heel during the Umaga-Lashley hair match later on the show. The way they handled it was pretty cool. Everyone assumes it's the HHH/Steph deal that drove him out, but no one really knows anything. Meltzer said that Vince and Shane have spoken to no one about it. And Shane's point about Vince not stepping down is interesting. I could see Vince still running the show when Shane is 50. That doesn't leave him a lot of time to carve out his own legacy.

The Masked Man's pieces on Deadspin have been as well-written as any wrestling writing you can find. I'm really looking forward to his work on Grantland.

TNA has gotten to the point where they can't even decide what they name of their company is. Some people are pushing for Impact Wrestling, so are still loyal to TNA, so you hear both. You can't even make this stuff up. I've accepted that TNA exists to bring us great comedy, and that's it. Reading Meltzer's TV recaps and listening to his post-PPV audios make the company's existence worthwhile.

Like most people on the internet, I loved Japanese wrestling in the 90s, grew disenchanted with the deterioration of the All Japan style in the late 90's, New Japan's self-destructive booking, and the overall collapse of the industry in the early 2000s. I paid attention to NOAH during Kobashi's title reign and enjoyed parts of it, but haven't watched much over the past few years. I hated the strike exchanges, no-selling, and guys needing to stiff the hell out of each other to get reactions. It seemed to me like the Puro-style had devolved to being like a bad ECW show where guys needed to kill each other to get a pop. I've been reading about how New Japan is having a solid business year and is improving, and decided to check it out. And I have been shocked by how much I've enjoyed a lot of what I've watched. They have a roster of diverse characters. They do a good job of mixing the 90s guys with the newer talent. And what I'm most surprised about is that the structure of a lot of these matches are really solid. They have heels that really heel it up when they wrestle, even more so than most modern WWE guys. Now, some of the longer high-profile singles matches fall into the bad habits that I was turned off by, but most seem to be pretty good. I've even enjoyed watching MVP wrestle as a heel for them, and I expected to hate him. I made a trip to a Japanese supermarket to pick up recent TV for the first time in years. Here's a match from YouTube that is the type of thing I'm talking about - Tenzan/Nagata/Tanahashi vs. Yano/Izuka/Naito. It has a heel/face structure, good heat at Korakuen, and smart wrestling. Am I crazy or is this pretty good? Not the greatest thing ever, but worth watching. Who is booking now? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czawa6EoLko (part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sE-74O7GGs...feature=related (part 2)

I feel like the Stephanie stories surfaced after it was already apparent that Vince didn't want to work with Savage, and not the other way around. Like it was just something that someone said on a message board to explain the heat, and it's taken on a life of its own. I could be wrong since we're going back like 8 years on this.

Hey, the guy seemed to be getting decent heat in the Duggan match and had kids trying to hit him. I respected the stalling. Would definitely suggest hitting the gym a bit, though.