Stiva

The current programs with The Rhodes Family and Bryan have been carefully engineered so HHH and Steph need not look foolish in any final outcome. It's kind of brilliant in the sense that there's been more attention paid to avoiding any heel humiliation for them than there has been in the booking of anyone since around 2008. WWE's attention can be channeled, it's just always in the wrong place.

How much time is dedicated to his heel run on Raw from 02-04? And if time is dedicated, how is it spun?

Dude, the fact a wrestling company can do that in 2013 is the most awesome pro wrestling move imaginable and I hope it happens. And this is someone who enjoys Chikara's approach to storyline continuity and would hate to see it die out. Sometimes, things are just so ingrained into the fibre of professional wrestling, that you just have to applaud this beautiful, crazy sideshow.

So, am I going crazy or is Miz really nailing the babyface fire right now? I enjoy this infinitely more than whatever his last year has been.

When rewatching 2007 WWE, Burke is definitely a guy who stands out in the first 6 months of the year. He's featured heavily with The New Breed stuff but as you say, his stuff looked good, he had a decent helping of charisma but got lost in the shuffle once they broke up The New Breed and John Morrison became the top heel on the show. I have a theory that they wanted to run with a Burke/Cor Von team on Smackdown when the talent exchange thing started up but Cor Von leaving put a stop to it. I can't remember a single thing Burke did after his Unforgiven match with Punk.

As long as it isn't something like the "B+ Knee" Wikipedia has/had it as "The Move That Beat John Cena" and that should be its name forever.

Just seeing Dustin back for this brief night is making me want a 6-12 month run where he teams with Santino and wrestles Cesaro every week on Main Event.

If this is true, WWE is in a really really good place right now. That SS crowd rivals any Crockett crowd I've seen to date, which would be the benchmark "hot" crowds for me. Although I guess WWE do probably do a better job on acoustics now than JCP did back in the 80s. I try and watch most WWE PPVs and I'm with you on this tbh, I thought the Summerslam crowd, especially for the main, was hotter than I'd heard in a while but, like I said in the thread, I was streaming it through crappy laptop speakers so I think it's hard to judge. I remember the Payback (I think it was Payback) crowd was hot for the Del Rio/Ziggler double turn angle so they have guys people want to invest in, they just need to give them a reason.

I think Survivor Series (or whatever the new PPV is called) is a logical point for them to build to him winning it back. How convoluted it gets on the way is another matter all together.

That John Cena can be a transcendental motherfucker when he wants to be. If they actually build on this and it goes to a Bryan redemption victory over HHH and Orton, it'll stand up as a good angle but man, I have no faith in them at ALL. That crowd was the loudest it's been for years for the main and the final angle, or at least it sounded that way through my crappy laptop speakers.

Lesnar/Punk: On first watch, I think I like this more than Brock/Cena. I thought they struck a good balance between Brock being this ridiculous monster and Punk picking his spots because he's the "best". I love how spots like the 3 Amigos look so much more vicious when it's Lesnar doling them out since he's so strong and powerful. I thought Heyman was fantastic, being the difference whenever Punk started using the chair and really liked the tug of war spot on the apron. The Punk near falls felt deserved as it really felt that he was landing match-winning shots whenever he had the chance and had it not been for Heyman, he could have pulled off the upset. I really enjoyed this.

The opening exchange being worked like Liu Kang vs. Shao Khan was also great.

I applaud this Ryback bully angle as it appears they've been reading DEAN's old Smackdown Workrate Reports where he mentions that Michael Cole can't call anyone a bully without it sounding really forced so I like to think it's a giant rib somehow.

I know they were at a soccer match last night so that makes sense. What? I'm genuinely curious about what circumstances would result in this fight at a football match. I think Christian/Del Rio will be the front runner for MOTN depending on how bogged down in overbooking Cena/Bryan is. Christian is a guy who has been a tremendous babyface since he returned in 2009 but when he's been given the chance, he's proven he can translate it to main event matches. It's just a shame he's not in a company that cares.

I'm sure HHH will graciously step up and fill his role.

Ah, that's awesome. When he came back in 2008, he looked a lot better for having lost all the weight he did. Hope this keeps him around, injuries permitting, for a few more years.

Having a good imagination mostly and, as Jerry says, setting your own little targets as you go as the game offers you nothing in reward. The things that kept me going were saves where I had a guy I wanted to get over (though it's very easy on EWR if they have good stats) or booking something like The Invasion. TEW is definitely more in-depth but requires a bigger time commitment than EWR.

Speaking of EWR, that random feature where Pinky and the Brain start up a Global competitor to WWE could be infuriating if they started taking your main event guys from you but could be hilarious if you managed to fend them off and they had to main event PPVs with Rene Dupree and fell out of business in 6 months.

Showed this game to my buddy at work (from UK, has been here since '99 and his wife won't let him buy the "Soccer TV Package" or whatever it is, and he really misses his EPL). He bought the game a week later and IMMEDIATELY took 3 weeks of vacation in order to play it. A year later, he's still totally hooked. I realised the other day that I've been playing CM/FM now for well over a decade and that's crazy. I've assembled some great teams though... And, JVK, I believe the DOTT type mods originate at Extreme Warfare Battleground as that's the place I've seen most mods put together. As you say though, a lot of the real world mods require some tweaking before you begin but I guess everyone has their biases. I always have to boost Big Show's stats a bit.

HCTP also had the great CAW wrestler mode which came right at the time I was finding sites like CAW.ws so I could max out my memory card with different versions of Sting.

Plus, it was always easy to just sign Danielson and AJ Styles, make them work each other on every show for 2 months and have their overness jump to 100 when the matches were awesome in game. I may buy TEW 13 when it's on sale but TEW 05 has some bizarre 90s design choices when it comes to its interface that it makes it a time consuming ordeal to book shows, especially if you play as WWE. I always loved Smackdown 2 for the ridiculous story mode and the fact I must have been crazy to sit through the 15 minutes needed to sim through each show. I have the backstage skits committed to memory. "I was told I would have a match tonight. Well...I am here, who is my opponent?"

EDIT: double post

As soon as they realised Cena/Bryan was a hot program, I was waiting for HHH to latch on to it. I hope they manage to keep any silliness with the finish confined on Sunday as they're teasing a big clusterfuck of an ending.

In the article above, it mentions that ITV Studios produces content for other channels so it wouldn't surprise me to see this turn up on BT Sport in some form.

The only thing stopping me from getting too excited about this is that it's ITV so, wrestling aside, it'll almost certainly be a terrible production, probably presented by Davina McCall.