Matt D

To the Producers

Again, I don't disagree to the general concept. But I'd also say that the WON allowed for elite ideas to spread on an on an exponentially larger degree that had been previously possible when fans like Yohe and Front Row Section D operated in either isolation (if they didn't have a few Smart Hardcore Fan bus like themselves), or in small circles (such as FRSD). Suddenly you go from a group of 1 or 10 to being in a group of 3K. In turn, the growth in the early web days were expanding the circle from perhaps 6K (lets say WON+Torch+RSP-W+Prodigy+AOLGSW with there being a decent amount of overlap between one of more of those) to say 60K in 1998/99. Pad the number up higher if you want, but it's possible the 6K number is low as well. That 60K has grown over time. It's far higher now, though I look at the number of different posters on this board and it really doesn't look like a higher number than the elite boards had in the 1999-2001 range. Is DVDVR at peak numbers now, and is that peak number insanely more than say 2005? The Interweb Websites were a Key Point in the evolution of hardcore wrestling fandom in this country. There have been a number of them, and the evolution from say 1983 (the dawn of the WON) to the present is one of a new continual evolution. That's generally a point I, and others, have been trying to get across. It's not a 0:1 binary flip the switch moment. More that the switch was already on, there was a fair amount of juice going through it, and then a brand new bigger electric plant got built that cranked up the juice to a higher level. It still was electricity, and it still was the same type of electricity as before. There was more of it. And I don't disagree with a lot of this. I think it's an evolution. I'm personally not arguing otherwise. What I am arguing is that the internet coming along is the most important moment of it. Otherwise, you'd still have that small group with their newsletter, that if the WON coming along allowed this relatively tiny group of people to find each other and develop their views, the internet coming along allowed this mindset to spread to the masses (over time), and that was the most important part of all of this, the thing that would have never happened otherwise.

I feel like them working with Dustin for a while will help things.

In NXT, she really didn't sell much. She was cast as a warrior.

Hopefully he destroys a Cena midget.

At least they can sneeze again though.

I could totally see her ribs on her shirt!

The SHOOTs answer is that he was easy to control and that's what Vince Sr wanted after Bruno/Superstar.

Cena went way up for Kane's chokeslam.

At least the World title is still a thing.

i think the rest of you might be in the wrong thread?

I watched a pretty fun Big Josh/Bobby Eaton vs Ric Flair/Arn match while putting the baby down.

Wait, is the moral here that Del Ray can put matches together better than Finlay or that Emma is better than AJ?

I'm way too annoyed that AJ didn't just pin Paige's legs when they were all toppled over like that. Why push them back and then do it? Come on now. Don't screw up a good visual.

To me, the parallel on the first two falls sort of redeemed it. I can see how you'd feel otherwise, but I liked it in a bubble. I was also thinking about all of those long AJPW tag matches I've seen lately where I felt like a two/three fall structure could have helped it a lot and I think it actually did help break things up here without really taking away from the story they were trying to tell. It felt a lot like one of those long finishing stretches but it felt more fitting to me somehow due to those two falls having already happened, if that makes sense.

I wonder if this is a way to get people's mind off Rollins so he can cash in at the end of the show (especially after Reigns wins?). Part of me half thinks that they should run Cena vs Brock and a Shield Three Way for the title at Summerslam now.

I didn't mind the short first two falls, and I thought it was interesting how they came so abruptly after the hot tags to make it so that the Wyatts kept the advantage until the Usos could really start to fight back. They built a pretty damn good sense of escalation too.

I don't get how anyone wins but Cesaro with all the losses he's had lately.

To me the issue is a lack of stakes. With Cena there was some sense of the soul of the WWE being at stake. Bryan obviously had the whole joining thing. With Jericho, it doesn't really matter. You need stakes with a character like Wyatt.

They've been trying to push Main Event as a network draw.

What I am arguing is that the Internet allowed for certain "elite" ideas to spread on an exponentially larger degree than would've been possible otherwise. It was still ultimately a minority Albeit a loud one, but it was a huge shift that thanks to the growth of social media creating sort of a second wave Led to The booking at the start of this year. It was a KeyPoint if not the key point of change. Edit: I should try this again when I have a keyboard again.

I was going off of the WIFA conventions or whatever when I used the term. Do you really feel like the ease of access to information previously harder to get changed nothing at all? No one is saying that everyone was stupid until suddenly they weren't. No one is saying that no one talked about this stuff with their brother. Dave came from a pre-existing tradition. Still things changed because of a new generation of people who were able to access this information not by sending away for it or even trying but because it was really easy to find for free. If you can just admit that point we can talk about the how and the why.

Which brings us back to the issue of ratio, which is where this argument really needs to be. When the "secret society" stopped being secret and opens up, for free, to any kid on the net.

Calling spots wasn't real mystery to me as a kid. I had no idea how they could possibly have rehearsed an ENTIRE match. I knew they had to have managed it somehow but it seemed so difficult.