Matt D

Turn Cesaro now. Toss Rybaxel into The Real Americans. Turn Swagger next year. Give him another year to stay clean and out of trouble and then push him at a key point when there's some patriotic groundswell for some reason.

I feel like this can't be stated enough: People think WWE are dropping the ball with Bryan instead of this all being some part of a plan to piss off the online base to make Bryan bigger or whatever, because there's a history of this happening, over and over again, especially over the last few years. Every summer, like clockwork. Basically, and given how thoroughly Meltzer is pushing this as WWE manipulating their fans or what not, I'm going to shrug and just accept that it's all, at least at this point, a direction and not a continual stream of screw ups... WWE is leveraging their past creative failures into a storyline. That's pretty crazy, especially for a company that's always been so careful to control history and how their past has been presented.

I really think there's an obvious patriotic Kurt-Angle-In-Summer/Fall 2001 babyface run in him too.

I need to rewatch Hogan vs HHH, Hogan vs Taker, HHH vs Taker from 02. An example Will didn't mention along the lines of the Masters one. I'm also with Will that the Angle feud is heinous enough that it really needs to be mentioned at the top of the litany Dylan starts with. It's probably something people could hack away at but to me, the end of the boom is Summerslam 00 where they went exactly the wrong way with a storyline that a lot of casuals were really into, for all the wrong reasons.

The whole "Does this draw money?" question.

Most interesting thing I heard tonight that I didn't already realize was that it was a fairly recent change to have Extreme Rules in Seattle, as in definitely after the last Raw there.

Obviously they need to have Daniel Bryan come out on Monday (since he's really the only voice the WWE fans would trust at this point. It's not like they have Jim Ross to do it) and say that unfortunately, CM Punk is deathly afraid of Kane. Obviously the real winner here is Sting.

Part of me is kind of sickly looking forward to see if there'll be a burial.

Honestly, I think Punk can also find ways to make money doing things he's interested in. I'm not entirely sure what that is, but I bet Marvel wouldn't mind him writing a comic if he wanted to. I could see him writing some columns for a major website about MMA or god knows what. I think it's probably easier for CM Punk to monetize his celebrity than someone like Jericho who's done a pretty smash up job of it.

They obviously need to have HHH, Steph, Kane, Maddox, and the Shield all in the ring doing the hand things and shouting Yes.

I'm not sure how I feel about him defending against HHH relative to beating HHH for it. HHH as a challenger brings up bad memories of the build for HHH challenging Cena.

On the other hand, they could just sub Bill Dundee into the match instead and we would probably have a MOTYC.

We never really got Bryan vs Punk with heel Punk but it was probably too soon to turn him again unless they did it through resentment of Bryan. Had they done heel Orton vs face Punk much in the last few years? Heel Sheamus vs Punk. There were things but yeah, unless they had Punk vs Austin in the roster, it was nothing that would move the needle. EDIT: I like Punk, and I even like his current face run because there was something corny about it that made me think he was having SOME level of fun, especially on the apron waiting for hot tags, but I am increasingly happy if we don't get HHH vs Punk now. Both the promos leading up to it and the match itself...

Johnny's become a company stooge! He's like Lewis at the beginning of Revenge of the Nerds III.

Looking at the Mania card, it really feels unimportant to lose Punk, doesn't it? It's not like they're losing Punk/Taker 2 or Punk/Austin. Bryan honestly works better vs HHH than Punk did and losing Bryan vs Sheamus isn't a big deal at all. If they keep Sheamus face, I could see them doing Sheamus vs Kane or something, which could have a fairly good TV build, even if it wouldn't be nearly as good of a match. I think it's almost as MARKETABLE a piece of the puzzle as Sheamus vs Bryan was in some ways, which was really a testament of how bad a use of Bryan that pairing was. I can't imagine they do Sheamus/ADR again but if they were going to move ADR more into the Authority, that might work. If they turn Sheamus heel anyway, I'm not sure what to do with him now. Christian? Show? Rey? Cody? Henry?

BTW, Dave, who admits he hadn't spoken to him, led with "burnt out" and tempered it with "saved his money," with a "didn't need them (in his mind)" and a "outspoken because he had no fear of being fired, since he'd just have more time to himself and to rest his injuries," and ended with the company being baffled that this former indy jerk who was headlining rec centers and high school wasn't happy with his amazing spot. He ultimately said it was a lot of things and he's not sure what was the final straw but stressed mainly that "he didn't need it."

Evan Bourne was right there.

I think it would be interesting if someone (Bix? Bix would be good; John works too. Eric? Chris? someone) broke down a lot of the best top babyface elevation pushes in history and how and why they worked from a booking/promotion standpoint and if any commonalities can be found and whether or not the Bryan push over the last six months or so check those boxes. Try to classify some of this.

There's been a lot flying around but I think the WON side of things is pointing towards the revenue change for PPVs due to the birth of the network.

I am back to wanting Bryan/Brie vs HHH/Steph now then, both to see Steph get comeuppance since she's the better heel and to see how Strummer would react.

I kind of love the leg slapping when throwing a kick. I also like Bret Hart stomping when punching though.

Miz was sort of the poster child of a guy they made to be exactly what they wanted him to be. That's sort of why the Miz/Bryan NXT pairing was put together.

I can see Brock taking out Christian to get into the chamber. I pretty much love it right now though.

I think that's true of any two guys in any situation though. How do you ever judge two different wrestlers when their situations are never the same? Is it all just futile and ... I don't know if I can seriously finish that. Can we just go back to where Dylan said we were both right and cut it off there before he comes back with some sort of Marxist Structure/Agency argument?