CM Punk: Greatest Promo Ever

[Matt D]

Agreed. The fact that this is based in reality is coincidental. I hope you don't see this as more Russo/Bischoff type stuff spoofing Montreal, because there's nothing about this that's that.

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.

[jdw]

What Matt said.

 

The only question close to shoot vs work was exactly what lines may or may not have been cleared in advance of the initial promo, and even then, that's not shoot vs work.

All of the lines were cleared in advance. They always had the right camera angle to highlight/underline/bold the "OMG!!! DID HE SAY THAT!?!?" lines, right down to the que of when to cut him off.

 

That's been my points:

 

* The whole thing was laid out from the start, and obviously at that

 

* he never was Leaving the WWE

 

* he no doubt already had an extension agreed to when they started the angle

 

* he only was (and now is) "leaving" the WWE as part of the angle

 

On this:

 

they're creating buzz and excitement and emotion and entertainment

That's what Russo and Eric and Vince have spent the last 10+ years attempting to do.

 

But other than us hardcores circle jerking over it because It's Punk, exactly how batshit are WWE Fans going over this?

 

Does it really have the buzz/excitement/emotion/entertainment to them that say Taker-Shawn did... or Hogan-Rock?

 

Or is it closer to say Triple H coming back from the injury in 2002? Which lead... where?

 

Go back and read through the thread. Folks worked themselves up into believe this was real on some level. Then worked themselves up into "well, maybe it's no all real... but it's sorta real". Then worked themselves up into, "Well... okay... maybe none of it's real, but since I love Punk and he's saying mean things about Vince it's the greatest thing since the last greatest thing." Now we know not a damn bit of it was real, that we're going to see a month or several months of attempts to pretend it's real (like that belt in the frig shot), but it's still great.

 

I'm getting a Ogawa-Hash vibe here were people so much wanted NJPW to get "real-ish" and got so lost in the "reality" of the angle that they lost sight on whether it was going to lead to anything positive for the promotion (in the long run it hurt the promotion tremendously) and whether it would be a positive for the wrestlers involve (it destroyed Hash as NJPW's generational anchor and frankly in the long run didn't help Ogawa because it fucked up his head). Not saying Punk-Shootfabe is going to have a negative impact on him or the WWE, just that people are getting lost in the weeds of an angle playing specifically to their hardcore desires rather than whether this long term is going to be turned into a positive for the WWE. These are Vince and WWE Creative. Are you really holding out hope for that?

 

John

[Matt D]

But other than us hardcores circle jerking over it because It's Punk, exactly how batshit are WWE Fans going over this?

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.

[smkelly]

So Dave is reporting that Sin Cara has failed a wellness test, that he failed the test over a month ago, and that he may not be brought back. What?

Is that guy purposely screwing up his career?

[jdw]

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.

We're not.

 

There is no WCW now.

 

Punk isn't Leaving with the belt to a WCW.

 

Christ... Bret wasn't Leaving with the belt to WCW: he always was going to drop it.

 

This is something so Inside Politics that only means something to hardcores and doesn't mean dick to the majority of current WWE Fans. For fuck's sake... Montreal was 14 years ago. How many of the WWE's *current* fans were even WWE Fans in 1997?

 

Think I'm full of shit? Someone should track how many DVD's the "Shawn-Bret Montreal" set sells when it comes out, and then do the math on what % of WWE Fans dropped a dime on it. You'll find it's a low %.

 

Montreal meant something to a generation of fans... but even within that generation it's wildly overblown. More people watched "Rock: This Is Your Life" and the freaking Beer Truck than Montreal, and Rock & Stone Cold are more iconic to that generation than Bret & Shawn and something like Montreal.

 

I'll give you a real sports equiv: The 1975 World Series, Game 6, Fisk hitting the dinger. It was an iconic moment. Huge in that era.

 

Now?

 

It means dick except to baseball hardcores and fans like me who were fans in 1975 and lived that great moment live.

 

"But jdw... that was 36 years ago. Montreal was only 14 years ago. They're no analogous."

 

Okay.

 

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1993/B10230TOR1993.htm

 

Four years prior to Montreal. Massive baseball moment. 25-30M people watched it live in this country, which is saying something since one of the teams involved was a non-US market.

 

How big is that dinger to current baseball fans? Do we hear people talk about it like they did Maz's HR when we were kids in the 70s?

 

Now also recall that Baseball Fans tend to be an older fanbase than Wrestling Fans, and that Baseball tends to have less "drift" among fans than Wrestling where fans grow up and away from it similar to a lot of forms of Entertainment.

 

The non-actualization of Montreal means something to a group of pavlovian hardcores like ourselves (well... other than those who go tired of hearing/talking about Montreal back in 1998-2001), but means little to the mass of WWE Fans.

 

To them, this angle lives and dies on whether they give a shit about:

 

Punk

Cena

Vince

 

I suspect the Cena aspect means little since the "Cena Is Fired" gimmick not only was crippled by being recently run, but by Punk specifically pointing out it was meaningless.

 

So it comes down to Vince, who means a hell of a lot less now than when he was going around in circles with Stone Cold, and Punk... a wrestler they're trying to elevate up.

 

Basically comes down to whether they give a shit about Punk being the latest in a long line of wrestlers who have had issues with Vince.

 

Not hardcores giving a shit about Punk, but WWE Fans.

 

John

[Matt D]

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.

[Coffey]

To be completely honest, I never once cared about if any of it was real or not. It was entertaining, and that is something I have been wanting from WWE. It doesn't really matter to me how they get there, compelling TV is compelling TV. It create some buzz on-line, and although that might not mean anything to the 12-year-old Cena marks and their parents, it at least means it caught the attention of someone. That has to be a good thing, right?

 

Frankly, I just want WWE to put on good shows. I'm interested in tuning in tonight because the PPV last night was good. I was interested in ordering the PPV last night because the main event build-up was good. It's that simple.

[BBscout]

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.

We're not.

 

There is no WCW now.

 

Punk isn't Leaving with the belt to a WCW.

 

Christ... Bret wasn't Leaving with the belt to WCW: he always was going to drop it.

 

This is something so Inside Politics that only means something to hardcores and doesn't mean dick to the majority of current WWE Fans. For fuck's sake... Montreal was 14 years ago. How many of the WWE's *current* fans were even WWE Fans in 1997?

 

Think I'm full of shit? Someone should track how many DVD's the "Shawn-Bret Montreal" set sells when it comes out, and then do the math on what % of WWE Fans dropped a dime on it. You'll find it's a low %.

 

Montreal meant something to a generation of fans... but even within that generation it's wildly overblown. More people watched "Rock: This Is Your Life" and the freaking Beer Truck than Montreal, and Rock & Stone Cold are more iconic to that generation than Bret & Shawn and something like Montreal.

 

I'll give you a real sports equiv: The 1975 World Series, Game 6, Fisk hitting the dinger. It was an iconic moment. Huge in that era.

 

Now?

 

It means dick except to baseball hardcores and fans like me who were fans in 1975 and lived that great moment live.

 

"But jdw... that was 36 years ago. Montreal was only 14 years ago. They're no analogous."

 

Okay.

 

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1993/B10230TOR1993.htm

 

Four years prior to Montreal. Massive baseball moment. 25-30M people watched it live in this country, which is saying something since one of the teams involved was a non-US market.

 

How big is that dinger to current baseball fans? Do we hear people talk about it like they did Maz's HR when we were kids in the 70s?

 

Now also recall that Baseball Fans tend to be an older fanbase than Wrestling Fans, and that Baseball tends to have less "drift" among fans than Wrestling where fans grow up and away from it similar to a lot of forms of Entertainment.

 

The non-actualization of Montreal means something to a group of pavlovian hardcores like ourselves (well... other than those who go tired of hearing/talking about Montreal back in 1998-2001), but means little to the mass of WWE Fans.

 

To them, this angle lives and dies on whether they give a shit about:

 

Punk

Cena

Vince

 

I suspect the Cena aspect means little since the "Cena Is Fired" gimmick not only was crippled by being recently run, but by Punk specifically pointing out it was meaningless.

 

So it comes down to Vince, who means a hell of a lot less now than when he was going around in circles with Stone Cold, and Punk... a wrestler they're trying to elevate up.

 

Basically comes down to whether they give a shit about Punk being the latest in a long line of wrestlers who have had issues with Vince.

 

Not hardcores giving a shit about Punk, but WWE Fans.

 

John

 

Amen. Jury's out on the reactions at the upcoming venues that aren't Boston and Chicago-level reliable atmospheres. Not taking anything away from Punk because the work has been spot on, but Boston wasn't blowing the doors off for him as much as they were for Vince IMO. Definitely great buildings to build the necessary steam in though.

 

The taped show between the live Vegas and live Boston shows hurt them with getting a chance to pick up anything they could off the mainstream mentions from ESPN, etc. This will be the second round of that attention and let's see what they do.

 

I do think you're jaded on Vince's value to the angle. He's a fresh character again after being off TV for a while, and the last few times he's been there as a face.

[Ditch]

I think in the back of a lot of people's minds, be it smarks, marks, or inside WWE, was that Nexus would struggle as a long-term angle because of how green the Nexus members were. That led to a lot of counter-productive booking, but the bottom line is that the Nexus crew simply wasn't going to produce a bunch of superstars. It did a passable, profitable Summerslam buyrate. Who knows what they could have cobbled together to replace it with?

 

That's even MORE the case this year, with how short the bench is in terms of headliners. Without having an angle with momentum among PPV-buyers, this year's Summerslam could have been a disaster. Last night's ladder matches were well-received, but they don't immediately make you want to see what happens at SSlam. Cena/Punk does.

 

And, in contrast with Nexus, Punk comes across as a Big Deal who can be a threat to the Cenas of the world. Previously, Punk had gotten a couple title wins thanks to MitB wins, and his big feud was against Jeff Hardy, who was good at the box office but is someone that's "easy" to be competitive with. Hardy/Punk was profitable thanks to Hardy much more than Punk. This angle breaks Punk away from the upper-midcard pack. Even if it doesn't make that big an impact with the average mark, I think this could make *the office* have confidence in Punk long-term. If the WWE promotional machine really gets behind Punk in the way it didn't get behind most failed main eventers, he can absolutely become a draw.

[jdw]

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.

Again, that's something of the Inside Politics comment I made above. It's something that plays to us: it's an angle almost specifically designed to play to hardcore fans. Which isn't new: we've had this shoot stuff a lot through the years.

 

I said early on: it was an entertaining promo he cut. But I wanted to carve it out and away from the title of the thread:

 

Greatest Promo Ever

 

It kind of needs to do great business, and sustained business, and have some sustained impact to be that. Rather than simply be something that gets us hardcores all fired up.

 

I'm all for the concept of wrestling promotions booked and writing and working matches that are specifically designed to appeal to ol' jdw. But I'm also realistic enough to want to see promotions that I give a slight shit about do good business so that they can keep giving me good product, and for the good business to justify what I see as good product. The WWF putting on Misawa vs Kawada infront of 200 fans... that really can't be sustained.

 

 

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 think that Bret-Vince fell flat as an angle and as a draw is an indication that Montreal as a signature moment for current WWE Fans has passed.

 

John

[Matt D]

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.

[JazeUSA]

this is the spark the companies needed for some time now, Punk is truly amazing to me, both in the ring as well as on the mic.

I'm thinking of putting together a comprehensive set in the future..

[jdw]

I do think you're jaded on Vince's value to the angle. He's a fresh character again after being off TV for a while, and the last few times he's been there as a face.

This has been thought about Vince's "comebacks" for what... 6-7+ years? I probably liked Vince as a character back in the 90s and early 00s more than most. But as short attention span as WWE fans are, it's only been a year since he was heel with Bret. There was the Cena stuff. He was all over the place in 2009. It's not like Rock where he's been gone for years. It's also generally the same old Vince character here too, and while it might be fresh for a week or two, after a while it's the same old Vince character that every fan has seen countless times over the years.

 

That's why I thought elsewhere that Cena going heel with Vince to screw over Punk would be moderately fresh: Cena going heel is "new", and the dynamic of a heel corporate champ Cena playing off The Boss against a Punk.

 

John

[jdw]

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.

The match was horrible. Totally agree, and clearly some of the dumbest work ever.

 

But it came after the show had been sold. It didn't have any impact on whether the angle worked or didn't.

 

John

[smkelly]

For current fans, yes, I would agree. As you mentioned John, Montreal happened fourteen years ago. How much of the WWE fanbase is 1) over the age of fourteen and 2) have been fans for at least that long of a time or 3) have since become a fan and actively searched and found key moments of the past? Had they ran that angle/feud in 2000, obviously the results would have been better. But having down it in 2010 where Bret was clearly not Bret anymore and hadn't been for nearly a decade and then combined with Vince being hit-and-miss on TV and not the #1 heel or even in the top five anymore...no wonder it didn't work.

 

I said early on: it was an entertaining promo he cut. But I wanted to carve it out and away from the title of the thread:

 

Greatest Promo Ever

 

It kind of needs to do great business, and sustained business, and have some sustained impact to be that. Rather than simply be something that gets us hardcores all fired up.

Do you draw the same distinctions when it comes to matches, though? And what length of time do you quantify as 'sustained'? I might be alone with this, but if something entertains me like the Punk's promos have, then it entertains me with or without it impacting business or having a prolonged impact on the wrestling world as a whole.

[sek69]

Why do jdw's posts read like he thinks everyone believes the Punk angle is a shoot, because I know he knows that's not the case. Of course we know WWE is not really going to let someone hold a belt with an expiring contract (except Jeff Jarrett, I guess), the whole point is WWE is doing something completely opposite of how we as fans have all been trained to expect things to go, and everyone's shocked in a good way about it.

[goodhelmet]

Agreed. Being a hardcore fan like Alvarez, I love the way it has been going, and the cities the events have been held in (Chicago and Boston) have reacted positively. If the casual fans don't like the path this has taken then they can go back to boring land.

[Bix]

Nobody here has said the original promo was the greatest ever. Will was winking at the YouTube uploader.

 

Nobody has said they thought the angle was a shoot. As for how ad-libbed the content of the original promo was, in last week's show enders Punk started to bring up the bullying stuff again before Vince mouthed "no" and the subject was changed quickly in a non-showy way, which makes me think the original promo was as off the cuff as possible given production concerns. And even if he went over every point in depth with Vince et al, it doesn't matter. It was just Internet speculation that's not relevant to the angle itself, which nobody at any board you frequent has said they thought was a shoot at any point.

 

Last week's Raw only gained viewers during Punk's segments. Punk's merchandise has been selling out. The crowds have been incredibly hot. Both hardcore (wrestling site traffic) and casual (Twitter) internet trending stats have been through the roof. Every indicator we have so far has shown this to be a success.

 

Also, knowledge of the insider references weren't needed to understand the promos, where anything insiderish was explained or given strong context clues. Knowledge of Montreal isn't required for any of this to work, even the finish last night. It all just adds to it.

[khawk20]

All I know is that I tuned into the main event last night because I was interested in what would happen. First time I've been interested in "the current product" in years.

 

I found the match, atmosphere, and everything else about it extremely entertaining. I'm watching Raw tonight..haven't done that on purpose in years.

 

WWE built a great angle, and executed it on PPV extremely well. I'm well past the point of offering anyting else on that subject except to say "Well Done, WWE."

 

I hope they can keep it going, but if not I'm glad that there was a recent blow-away moment that reminded me of what a huge fan I was "back in the day". It's the same reason I'll be a fan of some sort until I die, I think.

 

THIS sort of stuff can still happen sometimes, and it hits home.

[Loss]

I don't agree with Matt that this is all about Montreal. I suppose there are elements in common with Montreal, but like Bix said, I don't think knowledge of Survivor Series '97 is integral to getting this angle.

 

I think jdw's point is being missed. It seems to be that the very topic of contract negotiations itself is too inside-y as subject matter to get WWE fans excited. It's a valid point, but I will just point out that contract negotiations have been part of wrestling forever. How many times did the territories say they were "in negotiations" to bring in an exciting new star? How about the Freebirds in '86 getting signed to multi-million dollar contracts in the UWF after making demands? In itself, it's not new. In fact, it's in some ways a return to old school booking. That doesn't even get into contracts being used as part of wrestler/manager relationships and contract signings as angles forever.

 

Bottom line: Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo suck for scaring everyone in wrestling away from doing anything that might mimic reality. Those two did it poorly, and as a result, we got a decade of overcompensation -- failure to make anything seem too tied to reality for fear people wouldn't get it and would tune out.

 

I should also point out that this is in no way a fake shoot angle. This is an angle that is coincidentally playing off of/exaggerating real-life issues, but still exists in the confines of the WWE universe (Not to be confused with the WWE Universe ...). That its playing on another level to the hardcores is gravy, but this would be just as appealing without it. Think Jerry Jarrett building a feud with Lawler and Dundee based on real life heat more than Bill Goldberg abandoning the script at New Blood Rising, leaving Nash to be the "professional".

[Loss]

I would also like to add that even if this does not light the box office on fire, it could be valuable as failed proof of concept if the social media aspects of this work. Dave and others in the wrestling bubble really underestimate that -- the ROI of using Twitter in wrestling angles is not a 0.5 ratings increase or even an immediate PPV turnaround. Rather, it's an increased daily presence in the lives of your fans, which breeds long-term loyalty. Social media is still in its infancy, but WWE trying to get in front of the trend is smart and worth trying. On that level, this angle is also very interesting, to see how they take advantage of technology.

 

Put this in perspective. Over 1,000,000 people "like" Little Debbie on Facebook. I don't think those are people that go to baking conventions, collect memorabilia or would ever subscribe to a mailing list. They're not hardcores. But they are hearing/thinking about Oatmeal Cream Pies regularly at times when they may not otherwise think about it because it's in their Facebook feed with everything else. If WWE can use this angle to experiment with what will and won't work, it will be incredibly valuable in the future.

 

So even if the point was conceded subject matter like contract negotiations is too catered toward a devoted fan base, part of what WWE is trying to do is develop a more devoted fan base. The world is not what it was during the late 90s boom. There are too many platforms available to get things over to put all the eggs in the TV basket.

[Matt D]

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

[sek69]

Minor league announcer gets tired of not getting paid by poorly run team and quits by giving a speech inspired by CM Punk:

 

http://deadspin.com/5822402/goodnight-and-...er-quits-on-air

 

 

(he even mentions he's going to watch Money in the Bank with his friends on Sunday)

[Matt D]

re: the title thing.

 

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

[KrisZ]

RAW rating was a 3.2

 

 

Ouch Babe