Loss

Not really.

I guess I see that as a booking flaw that hurts the matches, more than "Oh, there goes their chance to make Ziggler a draw". I see what you're saying to an extent. I guess there was a time when these things weren't just isolated or there for people who were paying attention. Matches were worked in a certain way with certain themes/points being hit hard bell-to-bell because it was good for business. That's not wrestling now. And yes, it is maddening.

It is a kayfabe consequence. To me, it doesn't make sense for a midcarder to be on even footing with a headliner because the headliners are supposed to be better.

Coming back to this, yeah, a big part of watching wrestling for me is being in the moment as much as possible, which probably seems hypocritical considering that I'm always behind other people on what I'm watching and rarely watch anything current. But I do try to watch lead-ins as much as possible so that I'm seeing things in the order that they were intended to be seen. As much as I'm sure I'll love, say, Jumbo/Tenryu from 6/5/89 when I re-watch it for the first time in several years, I don't know that I'd love if it if I just put in the DVD and watched it right at this moment. Context isn't going to make something that's bad good most of the time, but it can make decent good, good great, and great classic. As far as explaining why you like what you like, it's nice to be able to do so, but I don't know that it's absolutely necessary. If you don't want to be a critic, don't beat yourself up over it. I'm a pretty firm believer that everything is explainable, but I know sometimes it's difficult. For example, HHH/Taker wasn't my thing this year because there wasn't much wrestling. Even as a "story", some things like Shawn getting caught in the gogoplata weren't as clearly defined as they could have been, since some interpreted it as Undertaker doing it accidentally because he thought Shawn was Hunter, and some interpreted it as Undertaker attacking him on purpose to make sure he didn't prematurely stop the match. To me, in a match like that, there isn't room for ambiguity and that a key spot like that gets debated shows that the audience didn't get something. There were also other issues (All of the "End it or I will" talk felt like a pointless time killer because I don't think anyone in the building really thought Shawn was going to stop the match.) And Shawn sitting in the corner and crying? At the same time, some may not care so much about all of that because to them, it worked. It's perfectly possible to admit something worked and still not like it, or even to admit that something didn't work but still enjoy it. This was the former for me. Maybe this is wrong, but I also have a standard for what all wrestling should be and hold everything to it, instead of saying "Well, WWE doesn't care about and it's not something that has really been important in the style in a long time, so I'm not going to complain about that is missing it." The perfect example there is a Cena/Ziggler match from Raw that Dylan recommended to me a while back when I was bitching about WWE. The context was the difference in liking the match, because it has a direct relationship with how protected titles are. It was a world champ vs IC champ match. What does the IC title mean in December 2010? If it's a main event-level title for one of the key guys the company is building around, the match was really good because Cena gave Ziggler so much of the match and sold a lot for him. If the IC title is a midcard title that's more about keeping people away from main events than a springboard, Cena is the top guy that's several rungs ahead of Ziggler and sold way too much for him. I like wrestling to have consequences. Did Ziggler getting all that offense lead to a big main event climb for him? If not, did Cena benefit from overcoming the odds when faced with a formidable challenger in a way that people remembered for weeks or months (or even days) after? Watching cold left me with all of those questions. Because that stuff matters to me personally, I think it's one reason I'll always have a bias to non-current stuff -- there's more time to look at those things. It's also why the yearbook project is perfect for me at this stage, as I probably wouldn't be watching or caring about wrestling at all if not for that.

Anyway, I don't want to be the guy raining on the parade of Lesnar fans, so I'll bow out here and go talk about wrestling I enjoy.

Great performances by Rey and Benoit with a guy who could do some athletically impressive things, but couldn't really work a match. That was my impression at the time. The Ironman with Angle is what stands out more than anything, because it was a match that was more of a mutual effort, and ... yeah.

My point is more that I don't understand all of those things being said by someone who still thinks signing him was a good move. It doesn't make sense to me. Not that I believe it all (I probably do believe some of it, but that's not my point in bringing it up.) I've seen plenty of Brock. 10 years ago I didn't get it. He just felt like an Ultimate Warrior/Sid type, but one who was being hyped as a great worker because he had great athletic accomplishments outside of wrestling. And I like Warrior and Sid just fine at times, but most people don't look at them as workhorses. I admit that some of my negative reaction to Brock has nothing to do with Brock. Part of it is a guy getting so much hype when I can't point to much he did in 2002-2003 that interested me. Seeing his name in the WON for the past several years I understood because he was in UFC, yet I didn't need to hear about his football exploits and Dave seemingly ordaining everything else in his life as newsworthy. Do we get ongoing updates on what Mohammad Hassan is doing outside of wrestling? Do we get coverage on Batista every week, who is a much bigger pro wrestling star who had way more success? I liked Rock/Brock at Summerslam, which was built pretty much entirely on WWE production putting together great video packages and Rock carrying the big match. I liked his matches with Undertaker and Eddy, but again, more because of who he was working with. Hopefully he surprises me and I end up liking this run.

I have no problem with Brock's sole motivation being money. But it's interesting how Dave can point out that he may not make it through the year, point out that he probably won't work as hard in the ring as he did the last time he was in WWE and point out that he hopes they use him wisely on promos because he's not really a great WWE-style promo, and still be excited about his return and still be a fan. What's to like in all of that?

That match is hardly anything to hang a HOF career on. But if that's Lesnar's case, Goldberg -- who has other positives that Brock doesn't -- is a much stronger candidate.

I hope not, but he'll probably get in for his accomplishments that have nothing to do with wrestling. Did Brock draw the first time around in WWE?

I really hope that the crowd reaction wasn't something unique to Miami and that this is the beginning of something. I know Dave has talked about it, but has Mike Johnson reported anything about the internal reaction to him being so over right now?

You're not speaking gibberish. Context is important in wrestling watching for many people, myself included. It's hard for me to watch anything cold, so I get it. That said, let's split this off so this topic can remain about 2012. I'll reply more in detail later.

Brock Lesnar is Kurt Angle, but taller. I don't get it. LEGIT ATHLETIC CREDENTIALS and Dave Meltzer enjoys covering his every move. I guess that's enough. Still, great show (genuinely great) with Punk/Henry being outstanding. I think John Cena has turned heel, and it's brilliant in some ways. He's going to get a far more visceral, hate-filled reaction by continuing to be the same guy than he would with an actual turn. I hope the Daniel Bryan chants continue and aren't just a Miami thing.

I loved Tensai, Punk/Henry and the post-match angle, just so it's known I'm not a complete grouch.

Boo.

I think there's an argument that Sheamus squashing Bryan in 18 seconds works better than just giving them 6-12 minutes to have a basic back and forth match that wouldn't be memorable after the monster epics that followed it. I mean this was closer to Diesel vs. Backlund than Bruno vs. Rogers or Warrior vs. Honky Tonk Man, but putting over the new champion quickly over the hated heel champion is a tried and true WWE booking formula, and most fans in the arena did pop big for it. That's when you'd need someone like Vince putting his foot down with HHH and Undertaker saying this is an important show for Bryan and Sheamus to get over and they need time, but we all know that won't happen. If you look at some of the hottest angles during that time, the guys on top weren't so much just beaten in the middle or sidelined with an injury as they were humiliated. Hawk had his mohawk shaved, which never would have happened 10 years earlier. Same for Piper having his hip attacked with a chair and spray painted, Savage having a yellow streak painted down his back or Davey Boy being beaten in his home country while the top heel teases making out with his wife. I think that's the kind of heat seeking stuff that's needed to make things interesting again. Putting belts on guys means nothing, as we've seen, because they just push the title down the card under the guise of giving the champion a push.

I guess if Vince was on the bones of his ass he'd have to take risks. Sure. But he took more risks during the middle of the boom period than he does now. If Sheamus didn't do jobs for six months, shaved Undertaker's head, they had him shaving other guys heads who would take a payoff to let him do it and he was about to do the same to -- say -- Michelle McCool when Undertaker finally had enough and made the save, yes, I think Sheamus would be red hot and that match would deliver. Sure. I'm not a fan of that type of match, but it has a place. The point is that Undertaker probably isn't capable of doing this too many more times. Neither is HHH. So who's going to start delivering that match each year? And I understand why they do it. But any value that match had is effectively gone now that the match is over. WWE can't really do anything to build off of it. It was a one-shot deal. There would still be plenty of options that could carry week-to-week stuff for a while if they were genuinely trying to get a guy to that level (and by that level, I don't mean going the route of someone like Alberto Del Rio or Daniel Bryan winning the title in a fluke MITB match).

I think the "End of an Era" billing was a really selfish way of promoting this match as one involving key guys from a time period when wrestling didn't suck.

I said that about Rock/Cena, not HHH/Undertaker. HHH/Undertaker was the wrestling version of Twilight. I say that and there were spots that I thought worked when watching live. But when it was all over, all I could think was that these are three guys that need to get over themselves.

Yes, it does. Vince's logic in this show was supposedly that people would buy the show for the older stars, but see something that impressed them on the show with the younger guys, and then that would motivate them to follow WWE again. So Bryan/Sheamus getting 18 seconds seems to work against that goal. So let's say they ran an angle where Sheamus shaved the Undertaker bald and challenged his streak? Even if he lost the match at Mania, if he got in the right amount of offense and the match was worked the right way, it wouldn't matter. The last boom was created by sacrificing a lot of the sacred cows and getting ballsy, which I don't see happening now at all.

I think they can keep anyone apart they want. The idea that they are handicapped by too much TV feels like an excuse. If they decided now that they wanted CM Punk vs Daniel Bryan to be on the next Wrestlemania, they could just keep them from having matches against each other for the next year.

I see people criticizing Punk/Jericho for being dull early on, but the crowd was out of it early on. Not really the wrestlers. They were also trying to strike a balance between the self-indulgent garbage of HHH/Undertaker/Michaels (Jericho's talking spots) and actual wrestling, which I appreciated. I thought it was an excellent match. Which reminds me that they had the ringside area mic'd really well for HIAC and Punk/Jericho. So well in fact, that we were picking up Rock and Cena conversations at times. People are on Dylan about Kane/Orton surpassing his expectations, but it surpassed mine too. It wasn't a good match, but Randy Orton looked excellent in timing his spots. I really wish they'd just turn him heel already. He's much better in that role, and there aren't enough heels at the top level right now. And I just don't buy the quick finish of Bryan/Sheamus as storyline comeuppance. I think it was just some trivia nerd in production wanting to set a unique stat for this show, and doing so however necessary, this match be damned. Had the announcer made a parallel in calling the match between the way Bryan won the title and lost the title, I would have taken it as intentional. As it stands, it felt happenstance, and this was the wrong show to do it. HHH/Taker is getting a lot of love, but I really didn't like the match very much at all. Just a bunch of chairshots and bad facial expressions from Shawn. 50+ minutes of bookingbookingbooking and self indulgence. I wanted to be positive about this show. It's the first WWE PPV I've watched in full in about four years because the lineup intrigued me. Some of the matches delivered on their own, but some of the match results negated that. HHH, Undertaker and Shawn was booked to show a previous era as better than the current one, as was the finish of Rock/Cena. Even though I enjoyed that era more, it was more because of the philosophy and the way people were pushed strongly than it was because of who the people involved were. Until that changes, it's really hard to get into WWE. I just think about something like Undertaker shaving his head, and how that could have kickstarted a money-drawing career for someone who needed a shot in the arm if done as an angle on Raw. Here, it seemed like a waste.

Dave defending Bryan/Sheamus going short because it's not a match people paid to see. It's amazing how different he is than he used to be.

If they do the one-year build for a match yet again, I think they're trapping themselves. I like the idea of them deciding internally what it should be, but why do they have to announce it? What if someone like Dolph Ziggler (just throwing out a random name) catches fire mid-year? I can definitely understand the frustration of the regulars when guys like Rock, Undertaker, Lesnar, etc. who don't work all year take all the top spots on these shows. Maybe it wouldn't draw as well to build around guys who are there every week, but that's a reflection of WWE not building up anyone more than it is a reflection that the current crop of guys is incapable of being successful.

Rock/Cena was a very good match, worked really well for its audience. Cena may have outworked Rock in this one. At first, it felt like modern Hogan/Warrior, but as the match went on, it felt like a Tokyo Dome main event, which was great. I think Rock going over was dumb and I think Cena is hurt by this loss if they don't use it to turn him heel. How can they not? Now, we move to Brock and Rock. Yay. Can't think of much that would interest me less than headlining the next show with that. They just told their audience that the Attitude Era was better than what we get currently. Whether that's true or not, I don't understand promoting that message.