Matt D

I've tried to spell this out elsewhere, but I haven't worded it right yet, so I'll try again. There was a period after Bryan was gone where there were guys in the ring hitting each other, and the crowd just wasn't buying into it as being "real." It wasn't part of a movie anymore. It was just a script. I've never seen wrestling look quite so fake before, and that had nothing to do with the guys in the ring who were incredibly competent for the most part. The spell was just completely and utterly broken.

Bryan, to me, seems far more confident in interviews in online publications and what not than he did after he actually won the title. Stuff like "owning smackdown"

I will say that there's no worry of killing Philadelphia off. That crowd will want to come back to boo next time.

It's more like "Don't book the Rumble in Philly." I still think either Vince wanted to get revenge on the state for last year by using Rock to manipulate everyone or he honestly thought that last year was about the crowd being behind Reigns, not about it being "Anyone but Batista since he's not Bryan."

Wait, they're doing Cena vs Rusev at Fast Lane? Is there any good way that could end?

I still need to listen to this (and wish it had dropped a few hours earlier when I was on the bus back to MD and could have used it), and I may write up a road report for P2BN if I can get my head out of my ass and find a balance between anecdotal experience and talking about the actual show since I'm not DEAN or a Phil or Tom and can't make that sort of thing flow well, BUT... One thing I'll mention is just how thoroughly Mizdow hurts the tag team title matches. I don't think I saw one spot that entire match because we were all just staring at Mizdow the whole time. The entire crowd was. No one was watching the rest of the action and we were all trying to figure out what was going on just by watching MIzdow on the fear that if we looked away from him we'd miss something hilarious. I enjoyed watching it thoroughly but I didn't watch a tag team title match at all. At points in the last three years, the tag titles were actually a fairly big deal and here Mizdow was a fairly big deal and they were just a distraction from 10K plus all cheering wildly for him.

I could see them going three way with Wyatt vs Bryan vs Taker maybe?

Live NXT from the performance center?

The selling of one suplex is different than ten too.

So much fun. So much angst. There was a point In the rumble where the suspension of disbelief was gone. We weren't even watching a match anymore. It was so surreal.

Voice hurts.

Sitting in this crowd it's hugely pro Rollins amd massively anti-Reigns.

They ran a skit where Dean stole Fandango's great number

I'm taking the liberty (I get one every now and again) to bump this because I think it's a timely and interesting read one year later.

Brock didn't turn face. He just acted like Brock.

I only feel a little bad for Steph because she seemed so honestly happy about her Slammy in 2013.

There are plenty of people who will never give Stephanie credit because of her previous performance and things like her slotted in to the ECW owner role, not to mention notions of her on the storywriting team.

It feels like a risk to have Bryan at 1. I know he says he feels healthy but it just seems like a bad move. It increases the chances that something can happen. Look at Punk, randomly stricken down by Kofi Kingston entering the ring last year. You want Bryan healthy through Mania at least at this point.

Despite what I said above, I ENJOY CMLL. I watch it on my terms. If there's a match I want to see, I watch it. I can understand how it'd be rougher on someone who watches everything. I've come to enjoy the ebb and flow of their trios structure for the sake of it, not just for awesome matwork or great dives or whatever. There's a ritual nature to CMLL matches and maybe it's actually just detritus and laziness, a pale shadow of the mastery of decades past, but since it's how I came into lucha, I actually kind of love it. Which isn't the same necessarily as liking it. It's less rational maybe. When I have 20 mins I have to kill, a great way to do that is to see if Cubs has posted anything new and to watch a match. On the other hand, I'm not really engaged by them in a way I was last year really in my ignorance, when I actually thought that, let's say, they might bring Del Rio in as the perfect tecnico to give Rush his comeuppance. The timing just seemed absolutely perfect. I just didn't GET it then, just a few months ago, the level of complacency and bare minimum mentality. (Parka randomly appearing is another great example of this). That said, I kind of want to see, let's say an Ingobernables vs Ultimo Guerrero/Olimpico/Rey Bucanero match (or hell, a relevos increíbles with Atlantis in the Olimpico role) because I think there'd be a novelty in that. So maybe my standards are just lower, or maybe I'm looking for something a little different than longer time fans. It'd nice to be more emotionally engaged which would come with better (see: "some") booking and a few even minor risks taken, but I enjoy it, how I enjoy it, for what it is, and frankly, I have no desire in the least to watch NJPW, so there you go.

Ross certainly wouldn't shut up about the football thing.

Why can't Taker just be in Bryan's corner when he faces Brock? Taker teaches Bryan how to rule at Mania and keeps his eye on Heyman. Bryan wins, Taker gets some sort of revenge for the streak being defeated, everyone is happy. Did they really not do a vignette of Big Show in the desert with Undertaker? All I found of it was a promo where Y2J interrupted them.

I have a hard time faulting Dave for being Dave. He's not some sort of omnipotent, unbiased, body. He's a wrestling fan who was so into being a wrestling fan that he created this monolithic force of opinion and reporting. At the end of the day, the WON is, was, and will always be, a well made fanzine, basically. It's one where he does good research and is somewhat tapped into the industry but it's still ultimately fan-driven. If he was unbiased, he probably would have never started to write the Observer in the first place. He made it into his livelihood. It's just that we don't have anything better given the nature of the industry we follow so we hold him to higher standards than we probably should.

I think it cost you a year or two off your life.

I didn't watch one NJPW match last year and saw well over a hundred 2014 CMLL matches and probably enjoyed every single one I watched to some degree but CMLL seems to succeed in spite of itself when it succeeds at all.

It could just be the case that Benoit asked him not to? They talked right?