Stiva

Lots of jabs at people complaining about things on Twitter. I guess HHH promos about social media are the new "Vince promos about politics"

Hahaha, the only match people want to see postponed! Maybe Ambrose costs Rollins a MITB cash-in later on?

I love when you can tell Lawler is being genuine when completely losing his shit.

I love when you can tell Lawler is being genuine when completely losing his shit.

I guess Cesaro wins the battle royal and there's a Sheamus/Cesaro match to unify the two belts? Who the hell knows though?

Yeah, as someone that budgets from month to month, the network's pricing structure is just right. Maybe the option to pay all up front will come along in the future but I think we all have to remember that we're still in the teething stages of this thing. That doesn't excuse their reported awful customer service though.

Fuck, I just watched that show and I think you're selling it short. That battle royal was as if you gave someone the instruction to make everyone look as shitty as possible. It shouldn't be difficult to make crazy, athletic offense get over but TNA succeed at it all the time.

I'd like to hear someone go to bat for Hardcore Holly as an underrated guy. I'm not going to sit here and say he could have been a top guy or anything but from The Big Shot onwards, he was always, at least, entertaining and by the time, WWECW rolled around, he had perfected the WWE TV style to the point where you knew you were going to get something fun from him. He was a great foil to Crash, had a fun little run opposite Lesnar (though the outcome was never in doubt, of course) and wasn't afraid to lay it in.

I dug Hollywood Miz' entrance attire but the term 'Money-Maker' has lost all meaning

Ambrose's wifebeater and jeans look is absolutely perfect.

One that always stands out for me for whatever reason is an Ace Steel blade-job in the undercard of an ROH show. Collyer hits him with a chair and I don't know if Ace cut too deep or he cut in the wrong place but it's pretty sickening. Like the Gowen one, his face is just lying in a pool of blood.

This is the most ill informed post I've read on here. It's actually not. Look at amateur wrestling as an example. We've pulled resources and money away from our amateur program for years now, to the point where it's now one of the least funded programs out there. Yet, because of the size of the nation and the talent pool that naturally produces America is still able to produce world class amateur wrestlers who can compete with anyone and win on the big stage. And again, I'm not even putting forth my own opinion, but the opinion put forth by analysts, which basically means it can't be ill informed as I'm speaking about something they've informed me on. Either way, I'm not a huge football fan, probably won't even watch one World Cup game, so it's doesn't matter to me in the end whether the analysts were right, wrong, or completely crazy. Yeah, dude, the major mistake here is trusting football analysts. They're constantly the most ill-informed, knee-jerking people paid to talk about sport. The US throwing money at a sport doesn't stop other nations from producing the players and coaching methods they have for decades now. If talent pool was an issue, The Soviet Union would have won the World Cup. Instead, the last World Cup final was Spain vs. Holland who have a combined population of around 60 million. I don't doubt the US COULD put together a pretty great international set-up but it involves an insanely well-structured system that involves extensive youth coaching, the quality of your national league, the number of coaches produced and their methods. Throwing money at something isn't the answer in a sport where the biggest leagues in Europe already have more money than you can possibly spend.

Sucks about Bourne since I was holding out hope that he'd return and have some great matches with the current crop of guys. I guess Jarrett's talent pool just got a little deeper.

Oh man, Bryan. Just take the time off, dude.

I missed this. I'd love to sit in on one of the meetings where they're discussing shit like this. I bet they last twice as long as the booking meetings do.

If Bryan is pretty banged up, they should keep him off tv and build to a huge return with him winning the Rumble and challenging Lesnar at Mania. Which means we'll probably get the complete opposite of that.

So, I think we can all agree that the post-Mania stuff has been...poor to say the least. It's kind of crazy to me that everything seemed so exciting and full of potential and it's just fizzled out into compete nonsense. The Shield have been split way too early, Bryan can't wrestle, Cesaro has lost all his momentum with Heyman, RVD is still hanging around, Sheamus is getting staler every week as a babyface, it's like they're using everybody incorrectly. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if this Rollins turn is a double swerve and he costs Orton MITB and joins back up with Reigns and Ambrose.

I've really got to pick that up soon. Maybe once England have beaten them in their first group game

Against all my better judgment, I like the proposed idea for MITB as long as it doesn't involve the Shield getting mixed up in another break-up angle. I'd actually like to see Batista win the title ladder match, just for the reaction. He's gonna lean into the heel stuff as much as possible and I think that'd get a perfect response. I'd like to see Lesnar take the belt off him and then Bryan take the belt off him but I don't know who I'd give the MITB case too. A Shield guy is probably the safest bet but I just want those guys to run trios matches from now until the end of the decade.

I think a lot of 2002 depends on how welll you think the Smackdown Six matches have aged. I haven't rewatched them on the Network yet but I've seen a lot of talk on here about those, and specifically, Angle's matches and there's differing opinion. The more I think about it, I think 2009 might be the answer for this. It was right in the middle of the awful guest host era on Raw but Smackdown and ECW had excellent rosters and when it came to PPVs, Raw had the great Cena/Orton series, the Jerishow matches and that shockingly good DX vs Legacy HITC. Each PPV usually had a long Christian match in a time period where he was great. Punk's series with Jeff Hardy made for some good PPV main events and the undercards were usually filled with Rey Mysterio matches. I think 2010 might be better than that in-ring (though the booking was at a low ebb) but yeah, 2009 is a really strong shout.

I think some of it is that there's an obvious disconnect between the guys booking the main shows and the guys booking NXT. Emma's gimmick in NXT had a natural progression into what she is now but they just threw her onto Raw as a ditzy girl who dances funny and has bubbles in her entrance and assumed that would do. Saddling her with Santino in shitty comedy doesn't help but it seems like they aren't even taking the time to bridge the gap between NXT and the main shows with regards to treating their gimmicks right. You just have to look at how lazy the Paige debut was to see that the care that goes into NXT just isn't there on the main shows, possibly due to Vince's crazy reactionary tendencies, the rewrites or just plain incompetence. Xavier Woods was promoted and just put with the free black guy they had on the roster. Maybe some of it is a factor of them not letting guys talk unless they're in the main angles but I think if these characters and gimmicks can get over in NXT, they could on the main shows if they gave them time to get their gimmicks over and took the time to put any effort at all into their programs. Maybe they don't have the faith in them to cut decent promos but that's not possible with the awful writing they have anyway. Langston is a naturally witty, smooth guy and I don't think he's ever said a word on the main roster and it's no wonder that any initial interest fans have in them soon diminishes. I worry for Bo Dallas because if they don't let him speak with his silly motivational stuff, that's literally the entire gimmick harpooned.

I don't think pro wrestling is something that appeals to solely uneducated people. I mean, you've just got to look at places like this for really insightful, intelligent discussion and you realise pretty quickly that this is something you can approach from a ton of different ways, incorporating a ton of cultural influences along the way. I think the point about awful comedy is important because, for better or worse, pro wrestling in North America and, to an extent, Europe/UK is WWE and, as much as their in-ring product can be brilliant, their general booking, presentation and writing is fairly embarrassing. Too many comedy characters and, indeed, too many serious characters played for laughs to fill up a 4 minute segment on Raw. I think wrestling will always have the reputation it has but, for those who enjoy it on the level that we here do, there'll always be places to discuss it in depth. I look at it like any other fringe interest; it may not be a conversation starter among friends but if you look hard enough, you'll find a community that you can sink your teeth into. Obviously, WWE being a multi-million dollar "Entertainment" company means it's in the public eye more than others but we all know that there's a whole other world, or worlds, of wrestling out there to love.

I think, if Bryan is up to it, they do an angle where Kane chokeslams him off the stage (or something similar) on Raw and they run with Shield vs. Evolution as your Payback main event with Wyatt/Cena LMS as your semi main. A good, long Usos title defense would be perfect too.

All Jeff has to do is hire a bunch of guys with a bunch of stats over B+ and we've got ourselves a fine promotion.

http://globalforcewrestling.com/seminar/ Jarrett and D'Amore running their first con already!