Matt D

There's a question of what we thought would happen and what we wanted to happen too. I think a good amount of us thought Punk would be back on Raw the night after the PPV.

I have more holes than you could imagine, but you can absolutely follow along with Mid-South (about midway through 84) and 1979 Memphis on Justin.tv right now. I think he's going to run Memphis TV all the way through the 80s all in a row with 5-6 hours a week. It's not the most ideal way to watch it but the convenience is nice.

Wasn't the plan for him not to get the belt in the first place? I think when they're too far out into unfamiliar territory they have a tendency not to want to stay there for long. I harped on it on DVDVR but yeah, this has just become Cena's Summer Feud. Just like how Nexus did last year. I imagine Punk's smart enough to realize that too and will leverage it for as much as it's worth while he still can (see Colt, Claudio, Hero, theme) before they devour his heat, ... And please note, John, this isn't me thinking the angle is real, just commenting on Punk capitalizing on his current heat/momentum to position himself in the best place possible when it comes to those murky backstage politics! All of that said, can you IMAGINE what vince'll be like if this doesn't pop a rating (and in some ways it shouldn't, because if you weren't watching the show at the beginning/middle of the night you wouldn't know Rey/Cena was going to happen) In general, it sort of makes the longform Christian/Orton storytelling all the more impressive (even if I swear to you Christian even getting the rematch on PPV let alone the long program was an audible after the outcry).

My other two favorite WWF Piper matches are Piper vs Hennig 12/90 MSG and Piper/Orton vs Orndorff/Andre 8/10/85 MSG. I'm not sure either are better than Piper/Hart (and admittedly one is not a singles match), but I wouldn't mind someone else chiming in on that.

The most frustrating thing about the Tito/Dibiase feud is that one of the few matches taped from that is a MANAGER CAM MATCH with Sherri, where she says "Teddy Bears" 3000 times. On the other hand she has a great moment where she goes.. "I ALWAYS LIKED YOU TITO" when he's threatening her or something. Edit: Oh what the hell: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2lyl9_te...sensation_sport

This is one of the most memorable angles of my life. Freaking Dark Patriot and his double mask

The hype on the internet stayed on the internet is the most succinct way of putting it Ive seen. Did Rock showing up before Mania pop a rating?

So why didn't the rating go up more?

I feel like we didn't get a huge swath of Post-Mania releases this year? Am I wrong to think that.

I was thinking about pre-04 WWE Regal lately. Now I haven't seen these matches in a long time, but I remember him having ultimately bad feuds with Jericho, Edge, and RVD. At the same time, I think everything he's done for the last three years or so has been great. Was there a point where he just clicked with the WWE style?

I wish someone had gone to Russo and said "Look, let's just give Arquette the TV title. It'll still get the same amount of media attention."

I am SO GLAD this made the tape. It's something that everyone needs to see. It's just so out there.

To me, the most amazing thing about Christian is how he can wrestle someone five times in a row and each successive match will feel 1) different 2) consciously built on the matches leading up to it and 3) not in the least artificial. I didn't get that feeling in the first half of the Orton match from MITB. It felt a little too choreographed with the counters, which isn't like a Christian match at all. Re: Hennig. I think my favorite WWF Hennig match isn't one of the Bret series (though I love the Summerslam match and when I went back to watch it recently, I thought I wouldn't like it much at all having seen a lot of WWF hennig just before that and I loved it) but the Piper MSG match from 12/90: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaejk9_ro...-ic-title_sport http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaek3g_ro...-ic-title_sport (I think that's the one I'm thinking of at least).

Wait, wait, wait... Isn't the WHOLE start/stop push for debuting guys entirely to PREVENT them from leaving? I thought it was reaction to Brock, making sure that new guys didn't get a big head and to see how they did with being in the doghouse before they were trusted with a real push. The idea is that if they have the sort of attitude that makes them think they're bigger than the WWE, they won't get that repush.

My thought would be to pop in that Mania again. Compare the crowd reaction to Hogan-Rock and Trip-Jericho. Close? A "huge" comeback doesn't fizzle out in two months if it truly is huge. Jericho cleaning up after Steph's dog. I don't know what point I'm trying to make with that. I'm just raising it.

Obviously Trips needs to cut his hair.

This is pessimistic. I feel like I know Hunter. Obviously I don't, but from things people have said in interviews and books and shoots and what I've seen over the years and years, I feel like I know the guy who got his way onto the writing team in 97 and never really looked back. Part of me really does think that he's presenting this as the birth of the character that's going to carry the WWE for the next 5 years, Mr. H (or whatever), as Vince has for years, and in order to properly birth the character, he is going to claim that there needs to be a sacrificial lamb in the same way that Bret had been for the Mr. McMahon character, and that is going to be Punk here and now. He devours Punk's heat and then moves on to his "real" feud next year vs Cena or Orton or whoever. So yes, if we're talking the Inside Baseball HARDCORE FAN sort of appeal this angle has as opposed to the wider WWE UNIVERSE appeal it might have had a few days ago, I'm buying into it. They weren't working me before but hey, maybe they are now. Good for them except for I don't think it's going to draw them much. Hell I feel like it's all more "real" now and I'm a lot less excited than when I didn't feel that at all. Anyway, I agree with the post above. It's just gotten a lot shootier.

re: the title thing. I think part of the point is that the new champ isn't supposed to be legit.

My Montreal manifesto may have been taking things a tad bit too far, I will admit. I sort of ran with that.

I think you can't disregard just how disastrously booked the Bret/Vince match WAS. I think the Bret/Shawn in ring moment was pretty effective and got a good response.

Two points. 1. I'm not entirely sure I care about what the WWE fans think? I don't know. I mean would I LIKE something that I think is well done and compelling to draw? Sure. Then I'll get more of it, right. But if we get a few months of compelling, well done television and some great pro wrestling, then I'm probably going to be happy whether the angle lives or whether it dies in the grand scheme of things. I don't have WWE stock after all. There are a thousand things I thought were great that didn't catch on. I get that we're looking at this from a distanced "let's look at the industry" way too, because that's part of what we do around here, but I'm not sure a lot of people right now, are ready to do that yet, because we're all too into the angle, and I hope you don't think me maudlin for me to say that there's something special about that. 2. Does Montreal really not matter anymore? We've seen a lot of Bret just a year ago with Bret vs Vince one of the big angles at Mania (even if it fell flat). Shawn just went into the HOF and was on Raw a few weeks ago. I think it stopped mattering at one point after Russo did his stuff in WCW and Owen died and what not, but I think it's grown into something that's more than just history and now bordering on mythos. I don't talk to a lot of kids that watch, but I know when I was a kid, having gotten into wrestling between Wrestlemania VI and VII, Hogan/Andre was still a huge deal and so was Steamboat/Savage. I was a kid with limited access to the videos of this stuff but it was still a big deal. On the other hand Bruno/Larry wasn't. I didn't learn about that until later. I don't know. I guess we'll see on some of this stuff, right? For now, I'm sorry you're not as into this as the rest of us, because I do think we're having a pretty fun 24 hours here. You make a compelling and well-argued Cassandra though. Don't get me wrong.

I'm the first guy that's going to agree with you that WWE has a TERRIBLE history of following through with angles, especially angles where there's not a huge level of creative influence from the people involved (like the things Jericho and Michaels were doing over the last four or five years). The first. I mentioned it in my last post. That said, I think everyone was almost as excited about the start of the Nexus angle last year, all the way up until Summerslam (and then maybe once again when Barrett won the match forcing Cena into Nexus), and that didn't have one superworker Internet Darling in the bunch (y'know after Bryan got "fired" a week in). The excitement level was still there. People WANT things to be good. They want the WWE to give them a product they enjoy. I know I want that. I don't want to find something to complain about every week. I want good wrestling. I don't think it's "about Punk" like you're saying. Not so cut and dry. I remember us going through all of this last year (yes, even after Danielson disappeared from the mix). As for follow-through? Well, first off, one of the main guys in this angle IS one of those creative, outspoken guys like Jericho who, while maybe not about to get his own way on this, will have much more say and much more leverage than Wade Barrett and Michael Tarver. And more important than that, I don't think any of us really felt like Punk was going to go over and keep the belt at the end of the night. Maybe you did, and if you did you're either more hopeful or more jaded than I am, because you'd have to be one or the other to feel that way. This angle has already gone past the point where we thought WWE would screw it up. Hunter returning in 2002 was Punk doing his first speech. Then he did his second speech with Vince and by that point we were already at Danielson being fired and Mark Henry outpacing some of the nexus guys in the chase, I think. And then came Sunday night, and not just everything done picture perfect, but it done in the midst of one of the best all around PPVs they've ever put on, ever. We're past the point WWE usually blows an angle so hot that they have no idea what to do with it and we're still going. So people are excited, Punk or no. That it's Punk just makes it all sweeter and all the more surreal. I think, however, you're off base on the people around here (and on DVDVR) thinking that there are any shoot elements of this. By the time we saw the results from the taped Raw, I think that mentality was completely out the door.

Since you brought up Montreal, I babbled about this on the DVDVR Board, but it's worth saying here too, I think. This is ALL about Montreal, but not in a spoof sort of way. It's more of a "What If," or something that would only resonate so sharply with us because we and the modern WWE (and the character of Mr. McMahon) were all so shaped by Montreal. It's an actualization of Montreal, but all playing out within a fictional backdrop. We're now in a world where we can potentially see what would happen if Bret left with the belt. The specter of Montreal shaped Vince's decisions leading up to last night. The legacy of it allowed Cena to act in the most amazing babyface manner I have ever seen last night where he basically lost the match just so he wouldn't win it on a Chicago Screwjob. Past winning the NWA title for your dead brother's memory that's about the most babyface notion I've ever come across in my life. They can't deal with this cheaply or quickly, because if they do they lesson the value of one of their most iconic and shaping moments. Look at how they speak of the Attitude Era with reverence. If they shortchange this, they make it seem that Montreal didn't matter at all and Vince actually wasn't all that justified in what he did. That there's so much storyline horror right now is because we've been conditioned (partly through the actual "truth" of what happened, but only partly), to realize the weight of all of this. They've got the DVD upcoming later this year and damn it if the timing doesn't seem a little too good to be true right now. People were throwing around Montreal here and there over the last few weeks, but it amazes me a little that I don't think I realized (or many others did either) how much this was an actualization of Montreal. And that says a lot about the build and about Punk's ability to create a story that was so focused on him and his concerns. We were all staring at the trees so closely because they were so compelling. Some of it was simply that none of us thought he'd actually win. The threat of Montreal is a whole lot different than the actualization of it. Montreal was the Old Testament, ending with the promise of what could have happened, with what might one day happen. This is the storyline version of the New Testament, the situation actually playing out.

Wait, I wasn't going to say anything, but now that someone's seconded it and all... How is that well said? This is a hugely effective angle, but it's still wrestling. No one in the world thinks that Punk is really gone with the belt. Everyone's just thinking.. "Are they really going to do this amazing wrestling angle?" because it's SO outlandish for WWE. It's so different from what we've been conditioned to expect from them. It's the diametric opposite of what we've been given for YEARS. Most of the time, hopes don't even get raised, and when they are, they are QUICKLY dashed. Everything's become so formulaic and repetitive with them neither calling upon new, original ideas OR the traditional stuff that worked effectively over the years in other territories. WWE's doing this effectively now, though, and they're creating buzz and excitement and emotion and entertainment, and that they're smart enough to get awesome camera shots to help put forward the storyline doesn't make it seem any less real than it would otherwise to me. I think it helps the execution, not hurts it. I hadn't given it a second though until John brought it up and I'm still not giving it one now. The roar of the crowd made it feel chaotic. WWE getting a great camera shot isn't going to affect that much. This is working because it's it's not a "Shoot Angle" like Hogan not wanting to lay down and DO THE JOB for Jarrett. It's an angle that plays on real feelings while staying completely within the rules of the fictional world of the WWE. I don't think anyone around here is trying to present it as anything else. I don't think Meltzer is. I can't speak for the PWI guys because I don't go there, but around here and DVDVR we're discussing is like it's a really unique angle where WWE is doing things that we have been trained to expect them not to do, and I'd only hope that WWE would plan to get awesome camera shots to help support the angle. Or maybe I'm just completely misunderstanding what's being said here and this is all a knock on some part of the wrestling media that I'm luckily blind to, in which case, I'm sorry for going on.

This is my WCW Match of the Year for what it's worth. I'm not sure if people just haven't gotten to it yet or what, but I really love this match.