Bix

No trollin', but do you hate Meltzer from a competitive aspect or simply because you hate him? I don't want to get in a stupid argument, but Dave is a nice guy who has been seemingly exploiting ridiculously vague headlines as well as never labelling members only posts as such and assigning the status at random (all of which he even did for stuff like Joe Higuchi's death) to get more page views/ad impressions for the last year+. And, as was noted in...maybe this thread, he's been suffering as a wrestling reporter (especially with regards to WWE) over the last couple years especially compared to someone I personally dislike in Mike Johnson. Dave has always been nice to me except for a very odd misunderstanding a couple years ago that we've gotten over. Bryan...who the hell knows.

That seems like a pretty clear delineation between the storyline and real life to me. The headline 'Vince fired, HHH takes over' was a tease to get clicks, but in the article itself Dave made explicit the difference between kayfabe and shoot. "Which to at least an extent mirrored real life" sounded to me (and many others I was talking to/following online) like "obviously the board didn't actually fire Vince," not "this isn't signalling a big move in the real transition."

That's not really what he said. He said it was a storyline, but that it mirrors real-life in that HHH is being groomed to take over for Vince. We already knew that, though. It's been public for a long time. And Dave treated it as a developing story which he wouldn't for just the angle. As far as the Waltman thing goes, it could be legit and still affect the stock price. From the WWE 10-K filing: If Dave didn't mean to imply it meant the transition was underway he should've been less vague and dropped the tease.

If Dave ends up being wrong about the Vince/HHH thing signaling the real transition then he will pretty much lose all remaining credibility, right?

We've Herd Enough Cara?

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.

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.

Straight edge means Punk's better than him

They were up against the Home Run Derby and both of the Punk segments did strong numbers.

"I'm right here. You're in my kitchen." Awesome.

"There was no sound system, no bell to ring. In honor of the Macho Man, Puglia held marginally observed moments of silence, repeating 'ding' into the microphone."

Yeah, but I'm still surprised by how much Punk has gotten away with. On Monday he mentioned WWE's falling stock price and the fact that they only get mainstream press when someone dies. How is Vince OK with that? I think JDW owes me an apology.

I think so, but I had thought the show ended on a cliffhanger with Jake behind the curtain holding the chair before Liz and Savage came through.

Yeah, there totally needs to be a Best At House Shows award:

WHAT YOU DID WAS BOGUS

0_0

I was messing around in Windows Movie Maker tonight with a certain something and this is the best video I've come up with so far (the others are also on YouTube, and I'd probably rate the one with Mark Henry as second best):

That sounds impossible.

One of the forgotten old WON/smark conventional wisdoms was how awesome Jack Victory was. When Shawn Michaels first showed up, the debate was whether or not he was as awesome a rookie prodigy as Jack Victory.

Wasn't there also a Real American Hero Slaughter figure?

Fredo Esparza and Kurt Brown's (usually) biweekly podcast. On most shows Dan Farren, Ryan Doyle, and myself call in.

We'll try to get it done but I'm guessing that specifically will be covered on Slammin' Stan tonight as well.

I'd love to know more about the Saba Simba debut and why they didn't re-record the commentary. Was it just a really weird way of establishing the "discovering his roots" aspect of the gimmick?

We had recorded one that became an editing nightmare and we should get things straightened out soon.

Yes, there does.