Loss

Seems like Orton is too old for a mentor now, but that would have worked 10 years ago.

The Taue match is a notch in his belt, but I'm glad he didn't work like that all the time. The match was good, but it wasn't very interesting to me in that it felt like a Doc-Gordy tag where everything you'd want on paper is there, but the match is just boring in spite of that. That Hansen was capable of that type of performance but it's atypical for him I consider a huge positive for him -- it shows he had a deep toolkit but made choices that made matches more fun and exciting to actually watch as opposed to something that's entirely an academic experience. That match felt like too much head and not enough heart for my tastes.

I think points like this are good, but often get conflated with someone like Hogan not being considered an elite worker. I think there's a difference between manipulating a crowd that's inclined to either not be excited or react differently than desired into coming on board and going into a match where the crowd already loves/hates the right people and sustaining that. There's nothing wrong (in fact, there's a lot right) with matches that fall into the latter category, but when I care about heat when comparing workers, I care about how the heat is manipulated and sustained in challenging situations, not just that it's there. Hey, crowds were predisposed to care about Flair too, but to me, factoring crowd reaction into a match rating isn't about how loud the crowd is, but how much that reaction was generated through specific actions of the wrestlers during the match itself.

That was more spycam stuff, but this would be something a little bit different, although I still think it would be fresh since the unwritten laws of wrestling state ideas can be recycled after seven years have passed.

The more I think about it, the more I love the idea of an Anonymous-style release of documents against key personnel in WWE that completely realigns the Creative. Why has HHH been paying Dean Ambrose bonuses every quarter for the past year? Plant seeds of doubt between him and Roman. You could probably come up with 5-6 fresh things out of something like that.

While the TV landscape has changed, most of the talk of the changing nature of television, even if there is truth in it, strikes me as apologist and lets WWE off the hook more than they deserve. The current decline is the result of their inability to create new stars and produce consistently exciting television. I still believe that better television shows with fresh faces would lure people back in. Even if they aren't delivering Attitude Era numbers (which is a high mark that I don't think is a fair comparison), it would be better than this.

Hacking The Authority's emails and personal files to reveal their top secret evil plans wouldn't be the worst way to debut a new babyface, but I'm not sure where it goes after that. I think it would have to be a character more about uncovering truth, with hacking as a means to an end.

I'm about as far left as it gets too. When I can't dissociate my personal politics from what I'm watching, I find joy in viewing it as an over-the-top parody of right-wing America. Soooo much wrestling works in that sense, even if that's not at all the intent of the creators. Edit: And yeah, I love Bill Watts as a wrestling figure. Absolutely love him. When he talks about anything that isn't wrestling philosophy, he frightens me. This is a guy who stockpiled food in the 1980s to prepare for war with the Russians and kept a gun on his office desk when wrestlers came into talk to him. He pushed his wrestlers to start fights in bars and fuck women in broom closets. He's awful. But he sure could produce a wrestling show.

To tell you the truth, I don't know. He messaged me a few days before his last post that he was about to leave the board because of personal issues, so he wouldn't have time to post anymore. So now there's no way to reach him, but yes, I do hope he's ok.

Lots of booking tricks to make it happen, but the crowd has absolutely been with Reigns tonight. I like Reigns and want him to succeed in his role, so I hope it works over the long haul.

Finishes matter to me, but I'm more interested in whether it fits the tone and layout of the match than I am someone that thinks we always have to have clean and decisive finishes. Shawn-Mankind didn't bug me one bit because the whole match was a powder keg just barely being kept under control anyway. It didn't feel out of place.

Russo bagging on Owens' physique was a great troll job, as it managed to piss me off. The idea that Kevin Owens is out-of-shape is laughable considering the style he works. Is there something he should be able to do in the ring that he's not able to do because he can't keep up?

What Matt means is: - Bockwinkel didn't like the way Hansen and Brody came roaring out of the gate, and specifically thought Brody was a top notch athlete but didn't like his in-ring choices at all - Bockwinkel felt too many great workers were too focused on having a great match when that wasn't always what mattered most. Bockwinkel felt like he didn't need to carry Crusher to great matches, he needed to sell in a way that made him look like a million bucks - Bockwinkel hated the idea of card placement representing mastery of psychology and talent, and thought that line of thinking was bullshit. People will always react more to the main event because it's the main event, not because the workers involved are geniuses

Dave didn't say this literally, but I got the impression from how he worded it that the reason he's sticking with Reigns is in large part philosophical. They have got to maintain their ability to manipulate the audience, because if they can't, they're fucked. So a lot of this is Vince trying to prove that it can still be done because it has to be able to still be done. EDIT TO ADD: What he actually said was that there is a game right now in WWE where they have to prove they can still manipulate the public.

That's true of post-1984, Hogan-era wrestling, but I'm not sure it rings true before that. That was the first time wrestling really made a specific effort to market to children.

So that Roman can step in as the conquering hero that saved everyone from something they didn't want to see. Or at least that's the explanation, that it got Daniel Bryan over so why can't it get Roman Reigns over?

They need to build a time machine and not have him win the last Royal Rumble.

According to Dave, the mentality behind Sheamus as champion last night is that people will boo him where they would cheer Ambrose if he turned, and they don't want to put the title on Roman until the people are with him all the way.

Cena held the title last summer.

I don't think it was appreciably better or worse, although I haven't watched this much of a show since Summerslam.

I wasn't crazy about the ringwork on the show overall. Move, nearfall, move, nearfall, move, nearfall. The in-ring highlight of the evening for me was New Day briefly working to highlight Xavier Woods' immaculate hairstyle.

Vince apparently thinks excited announcers is dated.

I think that's going a bit far. If Reigns goes over definitively to win the title back then it's fine. Perhaps Brock should trade wins with Sheamus too since it's fine.

If they're setting up Reigns for a rematch with Lesnar, I don't think doing jobs to Sheamus, no matter the circumstances, is a good way to get there.

Rollins was supposed to lose to Reigns tonight and face HHH at Wrestlemania.