Matt D

Life is just way too busy right now. Plus, it's crazy to watch everything. The Blacklist is a much higher priority than Raw on Monday, for instance, since I can watch it with my wife. I'll catch any great six man matches on youtube later. For the most part I only half watch PPVs live, even with the network, since we have too much we watch together Sunday nights. One of my biggest rule of wrestling is that it doesn't get in the way of the rest of my life.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/28/news/cheerleader-wage-lawsuits/?iid=EL This is pro wrestling mostly but it doesn't deserve its own note. They have their own independent contractor issues.

I, for one, resent that school teachers aren't getting paid that sort of money! Though I get why they don't get paid like that in Texas.

Stupid question but what % of the wrestlers have agents?

This is one of those metrics where I might give someone points but would be less likely to take points away. If someone understands human nature and the psychology of wrestling enough to find a way to reach that crowd while still accomplishing the other, longer-term goals that he had to in his match, then I would give him credit for that, because I think that deserves credit. Back in the 19th century when oration was a passtime of sorts, you would get people who could manage it, while getting forward their views, to the most and least educated of crowds. Wrestling is sort of the same thing. It's all about utilizing the tools of the medium for storytelling and crowd control. That said, if you asked me if a match in front of a bunch of spot-happy misfits that was worked in a way that was hugely pleasing to them was a good wrestling match, I'd probably say no, but if they engaged that crowd while still hitting the marks that I cared about, I'd give them points for it. So, to sum up, now that I've stumbled through it, it's a second-level quality to me. If I had two matches that I thought were just about as good, it might be a tie-breaker. Likewise, it might fit into the "versatility" category for how I judge a wrestler. Can he work a different sort of match in front of different crowds, etc. I don't know. That all still seems sort of scattered, which is one reason I haven't said much until now.

They could have been forced to do a whole "face of the WWE" thing with banners and what not.

It's not surprising when you figure how many people under 20 are probably voting.

I thought it was pretty weird that Punk was #3 on the Best Villains Countdown (ahead of Triple H, amongst others). I know those were made a while ago but they've obviously done interviews with wrestlers at different times. We're at a period now that they're knocking him out of any bit of promotional material possible and he was all over that, even if it maybe wasn't the most positive portrayal.

One good thing about Meltzer in 2014 as opposed to similar people in other such walks is that there's almost never a sense from Dave that he GOT someone. Sometimes he gets frustrated, but you get the sense he's doing what he perceives to be his job and it's rarely, if ever, personal anymore. Unless he's saying that it was Hunico who was the dirt sheet hero? He's kind of all over the place there, especially after tweeting earlier that nothing happened.

I think the more interesting question is this: Would have Billy Gunn gotten that pop? More or less of one?

I was watching the last Clash the other night. It was from Nashville and Jarrett was getting booed all over the place vs Mongo and for some reason, I just couldn't imagine that now. I think the 2014 crowd would have been heavily pro-Jarrett, no matter what he did, save for maybe some really cheap heat generation device.

I said it before but I LOVE 10 count corner punches. In this day and age, it's so much more important to get the fans involved in some sort of interactive way in the match than it is to make them think it's real. Wrestling is symbolic, but in a lot of ways, the crowd wants to be part of the show more than ever and so few guys call out to them in any meaningful manner.

The rumor is that they want Flair to helm the second season. That seems like a terrible idea.

It's funny because on this week's countdown, one of the first things anyone says is Barrett saying "To be a great villain you have to go out and make sure that not one person in the arena is cheering for you."

What's been typical on it? Dave said: "Since Foley publicly said what he did, we got notes from three major names (these are not the Cena tier, but pretty close to it), and their video game checks were in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, and two years ago they were $70,000 to more than $100,000. The general rule of thumb is that if you are in the video game, you get a royalty check for about $75,000 in the first quarter of the year."

I'm watching the last Clash and there were sleeper/reversal spots in both the Mongo/Jarrett match and the Wright/Dragon match. I'm curious: Who were the road agents in 1997?

It's nuts how much the video game money has traditionally been.

Has anyone mentioned Goldberg vs Brock yet? Ah, yep. Hm. Was there a good Steiners vs Hall/Nash match?

We've gone around with Kane before. Usually as far as I'll go is that he does have a number of good matches scattered across his career, and he's certainly capable of that in the right situations. I fight hyperbole when it comes to Kane, generally, though I did posit that Kane had a better 1999 than Chris Jericho (which is relevant since Kane was one of the people they pointed to so Jericho could learn how to work which made the people very angry). I would be more curious to hear Bix' defense. I'd suspect, it is in part that all of his fellow wrestlers/management think Kane is very good or how consistently over he is, neither of which are metrics we usually use much in this sort of an argument.

I think Demos vs LOD/Warrior is a lot of fun but in general, yeah, the feud didn't live up to what it should have been.

I think they should move him on to be involved in the Rhodes' brothers' break up after this. I'm not sure that makes booking sense but I kind of want to see it.

I do that at work sometimes. It's really best for syndi shows though, none of which are on yet.

Man,if they did a three way Wyatts/Shield/Evolution feud.

I read this as Jim Mitchell at first which would be a lot more interesting a conversation.

JBL is kind of great.