Matt D

Moreover, for someone who is so focused on his own body and at one point was so focused on Lex, for him to end up like this: or worse, you sort of have to wonder what Vince feels. My guess is that he's not in the HOF for the same reason a lot of guys are not in: he's not in a physical condition that WWE wants to show off to the world on a stage like that. Someone like Hillbilly Jim, on the other hand, is neither dead nor crippled nor sporting a big criminal record. A guy like that is exactly who they want to focus on on a corporate level. When you add in the loyalty of working for the company for years and years and the fact he was in the cartoon, you have to wonder why he's not already in.

I think if Reigns is the guy who wins at Mania, Rollins could cash in there. Or if Cena somehow won the title at Mania. Either of those could work. Anything else, though?

Any excuse to post this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsMQKOxrJx8

One thing which is a little odd to me is how deeply they've had the on screen characters of Steph and Triple H get behind Rollins, who is not the sort of guy the WWE would traditionally get behind. He's not physically Randy Orton or John Cena or Batista or Austin or Rocky or Angle. He has that indy background. Not only have they gotten behind him but they've given a lot of in-story reasons for them to get behind him. It's sort of warranted. Yes, he's been presented as highly vulnerable but he's also had more of a hand in the big plans than, let's say, Corporate Rock. They more or less present him as the heir to the Cerebral Assassin title, which is no small thing in corporate WWE's mind, I'm sure.

Time to bring back Tuesday Night Titans.

I don't think we've gone through the numbers here somewhat but they're interesting. title changes: 1980: 2 1981: 2 1982: 0 1983: 1 1984: 2 1985: 1 1986: 1 1987: 2 1988: 1 1989: 2 1990: 3 (vacated once) 1991: 1 1992: 5 1993: 3 (vacated once) 1994: 2 1995: 6 (vacated once, held up once) 1996: 5 (vacated twice) 1997: 6 (vacated twice) 1998: 2 (vacated once) 1999: 11 2000: 12 (two of those being Jericho/chyna weirdness) 2001: 12

Bryan beating the hell out of Kane was about a thousand times better than he was booked in mid April 2014, that's for sure.

Vince is just screwing with us with these Reigns promos now, right? I can't remember the last time I heard a crowd deflate for someone they wanted to cheer for like that.

Hogan has to induct him right? Was there any B+ level celebrity he was close to? I could see Choice #1: Hogan, Choice #2: Seth Green.

I want to see this match.

It's hard not to be focused on conspiracy theories all the time. My itch in that regard is that they kept him off of Raw in order to make sure that any ratings gain from the previous week could be attributed to the Authority.

To be honest, I'm sure there's a jaded part of the fanbase that thinks this is all just a swerve and they're going to get screwed out of Bryan at the Rumble, so actually seeing him wrestle would dissuade that a bit.

You wonder if they'll roll over and try to use the show to set up Smackdown's move to Thursday (which they're already promoting with Bryan's return to the ring) or if Vince will do something ridiculous to try to counter it.

I think it comes down to Vince's insecurities about rasslin'. I suppose it matters more with PBP than Color to him?

Reigns' delivery on smackdown's opening segment was good. I don't think his lines were great, but they got him in and out quickly and he basically only talked for a minute before punching Seth in the face which was absolutely the way to go. They spend so long having guys who supposedly hate each other talk to each other for fifteen minutes that it was refreshing to see.

Christian is right there too. I guess after all the "ugly" talk over the years Vince doesn't want him as an outward face though.

Out of context (past reading Misawa's obit from Meltzer a few months ago), I thought this was a very good match. I mainly only watched it at this juncture because I want to see the match between them later in the year and I thought it'd be silly not to see this one too as it was so famous. I didn't really mind the ebb/flow style for most of the match because I thought it told the story of Jumbo recovering using his savvy and Misawa recovering using his grittiness and most of the transitions were pretty good and organic. I liked how both wrestlers paid for going back to the well (I don't think anyone successfully hit anything twice) and how some moves were foreshadowed and paid off later. I think my favorite moment of the whole thing was Misawa's body language after he slapped Jumbo back. You could just sort of see the energy seething off of him. Is this the match where the lore says that Jumbo kept trying to convince Baba not to do the pin job and Baba was cold and unyielding to the extreme? It really was a way to make yourself look good in making the person who is going to beat you look good too. I've seen a few matches where a veteran was going to give up a pinfall so they do everything possible to cut the nuts off of their opponent so it doesn't actually mean anything. This was anything but that. That said, the finish was a little underwhelming. I thought the stretch was good, especially the German attempt into the roll up segment. I really liked that. The problem was that I don't think Misawa really had Jumbo down for the one count of the finish. At first watch, I thought it was only a two until I heard the bell. I went back and looked at it again and he was still scrambling for position as the ref was counting. I see that no one else had a problem with that but it sort of took me out of the moment. My only other criticism and this is both a pro and a con is that the two counters at the end, the kick off on the backdrop driver and the reverse headbutt to counter the clothesline and hurt Jumbo were a little cute. I like that Misawa was able to build in relatively complex spots like that (though I know now that the headbutt was one of his normal spots in this period; I just learned that) but I wonder if they just had one or the other, things might have been a little more straightforward and primal. It wasn't the moment for both bits of cutesyness, maybe? (I think this bit is unfair actually, nevermind). I liked the match quite a bit though.

Is there a pairing for Bryan more exciting than Harper in ring?

Probably best not to generalize on that. I'm glad people have something they can enjoy and identify with, especially after the week WWE and TNA had.

I bet CMLL is happy to have a few week vacation from Niebla.

I'm pretty unenthused by these cards too. We might get some wacky CMLL cards with the roster away though, right?

I feel like they taped ahead pretty far for Prime most of the time. I vaguely remember an episode post Uncensored with a Dustin squash and some awkward announcing.

Dylan would help him write it. Let's make it happen.

I think a Starr book would be interesting, if only because he worked so many territories, but is really an unknown name to a lot of the fanbase. Some of that is because the territories he worked were sort of the under the radar ones to modern US fans, PR and Portland and Maritimes. He played wildly different roles too so it'd be fairly interesting.

I kind of want to see Rollins bump around for Brock, I guess.