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Actually a Cage match disc might not be a bad idea because there are some pretty awesome ones you could put on there with Duggan/Dibiase, Gino/Jose, Dibiase & Doc vs Guerreros, Fabs vs. Guerreros and I'm sure there are a few others that I'm just not thinking of first thing this morning.

For sales you'd probably do best with a NWA Championship disc. As much as everyone here has raved about Gino & Jose none of us really knew just how good they were before the service came out and thus it feels like something that would be hard to sell to someone who isn't already a subscriber. For single wrestler sets you'd probably do a lot better with something like a Dusty Rhodes or Ric Flair disc.

Yea I remember SLL pimping him hard when the Texas 80s set came out. I didn't really see it. He had a good act with Sunshine and then bringing in Precious and all that stuff but as far as Jimmy in the ring? He never did much for me.

I didn't like the Dale Valentine stuff I've seen from Southwest mostly for the reasons you mention there. Buddy Roberts is great at bumping and stooging and when he's pretending to be Johnny Valentine's brother he works too "tough."

I feel like someone saw the Political Hit thread and thought the poll looked too close and they just REALLY wanted to make it obvious.

The best random backstage product placement segment was the one with Mark Henry, Torito & JBL for some new burger at Hardee's/Carl's JR.

The HOF is in February? This is the last day of the month, is it coming on after Raw??

I guess you missed the part where I said that didn't last very long. The Vince/Steph stuff is a blip on the radar of the entire brand split. Smackdown wasn't McMahon dominated no matter how much you want to try to stretch it fit your "Oh god everything always sucked and is going to suck forever and ever" narrative. Jimmy Redman I agree with you. Vickie was the best heel authority figure, even better than Bischoff, because she was only involved in her own angles and otherwise didn't dominate the shows.

Sounds awful familiar to the complaints about the brand split being McMahon dominated the first time around which didn't last very long at all.

I thought he performed really well in the feud with Drew McIntyre and did a lot (along with Matt Hardy) to get Drew over as a heel. That was the one great casualty of the Nexus stuff because once Vince was off TV Drew's "Chosen One" push totally died.

Is that why Smackdown had babyface authority figure Teddy Long for the majority of it's run? And even during the period of Vickie Guerrero being GM they mostly kept her confined to one angle at a time instead of being all over the whole show.

All that is true but the majority of the complaints about Smackdown weren't from people that didn't have access to it. It was generally stupid stuff like "Why should I watch a taped show, I can just read spoilers" or "Raw is the A-show why should I watch Smackdown?"

I don't see an argument for this guy as a worker although I did enjoy the team with Blackwell on the AWA set. But I just wanted to say I think the guy is a fucking awesome manager and I don't understand why it feels like in certain places on the internet he gets a bad rap in that department. He was a good promo and a heat magnet. He was a great manager for the Blackwell/Patera team and for guys like Abby and Brody. The Adnan's Army vs. Blackwell feud is one of the last great things AWA did.

Are Japanese Junior style and American cruiserweight style really the same thing? It has similarities but it doesn't feel like it's a total apples to apples thing. I wrote a post about a year ago about the homogenization of wrestling styles around the world that I do think rings true. And I don't even know what American-style cruiserweight wrestling is -- there is no such major league weight division, and most of the smaller guys on the indy scene also work Japan. Well I guess when I think of cruiserweight style I'm thinking of WCW cruiserweight matches which feel like a different beast from the New Japan Juniors matches of the same time period, at least the handful of Juniors matches that I've seen from that period.

Are Japanese Junior style and American cruiserweight style really the same thing? It has similarities but it doesn't feel like it's a total apples to apples thing.

Most people who were crying for the brand split to end were people who were upset that Smackdown was better yet somehow were too stubborn to actually watch it. I don't give a shit about those people and would wholeheartedly welcome the brand split coming back. My interest in WWE took a huge nose dive pretty much as soon as it went away. And even though Smackdown created more stars and was almost always the better show, it still forced them to be more creative on Raw. They had to eventually start building up some new stars like Orton (who they quickly fucked up) and Batista once HHH had killed off everyone. Even one of Raw's worst periods like 2002 gave us the awesome BookDust pairing.

If The Rock was going to wrestle at Mania we would know about it by now.

I'm cool with New Day for League of Nations. As long as it leads to some Big E/Rusev interaction.

No. The visual of him flying off the cage and him going through the table is just way more iconic. Plus J.R.'s call of the first bump is a lot more emotional. The second bump is probably more brutal but it doesn't have the same effect.

Panda hasn't been funding them for at least a year now. They have enough TV money to stay alive and everything I've read isn't that they are trying to sell the company, just find outside investors to pump money into them because they have enough money to stay alive but not grow.

They already did that before. There were a bunch of reports during his awful babyface run that they thought he would be able to get over as their new Latino draw to replace Rey. It didn't work because he's not that level of a star and they had absolutely no idea what they were doing with him as a face.

When we are talking about WWE wanting to make a "new Rey" let's not overthink it. It's not about them wanting to find a guy who WRESTLES like Rey so much as find someone who can almost exclusively sell tickets and merchandise to a Latino audience. During the height of Rey's popularity and especially during the telenovela like feud with Eddie there were reports of whole sections of the audience at house shows leaving after the Eddie/Rey match because that's all they were there for.

I wouldn't say he's looked good in EVERYTHING I've seen of him, but I've seen more good than bad. I feel like the people on message boards who hate on Mascaras the most have probably seen very little actual footage of him.

I'd take him over Shane McMahon.

Yea when it comes to Angle people need to take off their fantasy booker hat and remember this is a guy who got out of his WWE contract by going into Vince's office and (faked?) having a mental breakdown about how he was too fucked up to be on the road and needed to quit wrestling.