Matt D

I think the Doc thing is interesting actually. There was a certain level of familiarity there, or camaraderie. I'm not explaining it well but it came off to me odd that he kept referring to him that way.

Sounds like a job for Bix. EDIT: I do find it pretty unlikely though.

Am I crazy to think that Vince should lean hard into this. I know it's not 97 and WWE is publicly traded now but if they went all out and presented this as Pro Wrestling bullshit and he came at Austin in full Mr. McMahon mode, even with Austin calling him on it, and they announced in the days of the lead up that he'd be commenting heavily on this... would it give them the sort of buzz for the network they were looking for? I have a feeling, like they have time and time again, they could sweep this under the rug as "pro wrestling is fake and so is this," and get a lot of people to sign up for the network for at least a month at the same time.

I was there too. It had Warrior in the rafters and drunk Scott Hall antics too.

The poor bastard.

Just finished it. I listened to it off and on today. My take away, based on years of reading this stuff, is that WWE is a pretty fucked up place, Punk was pretty much reasonable for leaving how he did, though he had lost all perspective with the main eventing Wrestlemania thing, especially when he was so together on so many other things. I actually feel sort of bad for being so excited to be going the Rumble as my first live show in ten years, but I'm a jerk and I'll have shaken that within a month or so. I'm glad the guy is happier. My two dream jobs as a kid were doing something with wrestling and writing for Marvel so good on him. Hopefully he's got the chops there. I do kind of wonder if he's gotten the lucha set from Will. Someone should ask him that or if he's so against wrestling he doesn't want to watch awesome 80s lucha. OR maybe not since we know the WWE lawyers will be listening.

Savage = paranoid narcissistic

He's the new Randy Savage?

I thought he had something lingering that he decided to take care of.

It's thanksgiving. I'll listen to this this weekend.

By saying 9.99 over and over again?

That's Bo Dallas pretty much.

Apparently the rating was the best since August off of the PPV. For that Raw.

NWA babyfaces were men of the people and WWF babyfaces are out for themselves?

Hell, I'm me and outside of the Jeff Hardy match I hadn't seen any of his TNA run at all until I saw the Christian tag two or three weeks ago. Not any promos, not any matches.

How will Creative structure the shows without an authority figure?

You should tweet that question to Austin.

For what they were trying to do, get attention from people who don't necessarily follow the product or don't care enough to normally buy the network but might check it out for free, many of them lapsed fans, what would work better? A logical payoff they could do with Randy Orton or unveiling Sting in a key moment? This doesn't feel like a hugely stupid moment to me. Maybe if it was Bryan or even Reigns they had waiting in the wings. Or someone with a different crossover appeal like Mysterio on a last run, but we're talking about Randy Orton here.

They've already made the content and there's no cost to putting it on? I think the youtube stuff is generally pretty well done, to be honest.

He had a schedule he liked in TNA. He was comfortable being there. I think it's very telling that they've been negotiating for months and months. Whatever deal he ended up getting from WWE was one that he had to be very satisfied with.

I think he would have been better of debuting closer to the Rumble and being done with anything active by Mania. He's going to get inserted into the pantheon though and that's more than worth it for him to do this. WWE controls history.

They're going to market him like they did Warrior earlier this year. So long as they do that, he'll be relevant. Unless Vince wants to be really petty, they'll market him as something really special and weave him into their brand of wrestling history, which, for people under the age of 25, is basically the only brand.

He becomes relevant to an entire new generation? I promise you that them making such a big deal about him being in the video game has made him matter more to people under 20 than he could have managed in any other way. I point to the pop Vader got a year or two ago almost solely because he had been in the video game. It's not something to be underestimated and Sting is going to be presented as a much bigger legend, including put into the Hall of Fame.

I don't think he knew he was turning. It was a decision made in the moment. I really lived Hunter's grinch smile as he shook his hand.

If they do this well, they won't play this as a normal turn but will somehow build on the Steph promo. Or if they don't do this well we'll have a Show vs Cena tables match at TLC.