sek69

It's sad my first thought was "how can they do champion vs champion when both are on the same brand" before remembering Roman is US champ.

I thought Rusev/Reigns was the best, mainly because it was the only one that felt like it had the hatred built in to justify a cell rather than the other two being built on "Daddy Hunter likes me best" or "We're making history".

I hope when it's all said and done and TNA is gone, like for-real for-real gone, the narrative doesn't become that it was always shit. There were many times, even recently, where the in ring stuff was decent to good, sometimes even great.

Gran Metallik will eventually be finishing up with CMLL soon, and Tozawa and Gallagher should be coming in as well. Hopefully you're right and they need an extra show to keep everyone busy. Still, it's going to be odd if the Raw Exclusive Division has it's show taped at Smackdown every week.

To me this comes off as WWE not knowing what to do with them on Raw and figuring having their own show worked before.

The fans really want a Shield reunion, it gets a pop every time they tease it. Since they want both guys to be more popular than they currently are, it's not the worst idea in the world. Plus I could see them being cute and have Roman/Seth and Dean do the DX/nWo deal and not-so-secretly acknowledge each other on "opposing" shows.

...and their Sony Six deal requires them to tour India (and they haven't, and don't look like they can/will anytime soon) so right now Anthem just won control of a company that has a grand total of one income source that could get axed at any moment.

Dave's value of crowd investment is probably why he's such a big fan of Tokyo Dome matches. Not that they're always the best technically, but Dome matches tend to be the blow off to big feuds and that's right up his alley as a fan.

Challenge in the UK just announced they're parting ways with them in January 2017. So they just lost half of the only two sources of income they had left.

The thing to me about the finish is that it was a combination of WWE's bizarre hard on for beating people in their hometown and WCW's habit of ruining good matches with shit finishes to make sure the crowd goes home deflated. I mean, it wasn't even that the crowd was upset that Sasha lost, it was more confusion and "what the fuck was that", which I can't believe was the desired reaction. It's hard to not get all armchair psychologist on why this company seems to enjoy never giving the fans what they want. I get that you can't do it every time, but you can't *not* do it every time either or you end up with what they have now where heels are the top babyfaces since the actual babyfaces are losers who never win when it counts (except Roman, but everyone hates him).

The pre shows are the most pointless programming I've ever seen. It's just an hour or more of Renee and crew trying to stretch 15 minutes of actual content as much as humanly possible. The only things of any value are the videos recapping the feuds and those get shown during the event itself.

I don't think it's right to look at someone not going in the HOF as "punishment". Lots of guys didn't have the careers they should have for reasons outside their control. They aren't HOFers because the HOF is based on the career they had, not the circumstances that prevented the career they could have had from happening. I'm looking at disqualifying someone from consideration for something completely out of their control as the punishment. Just like it seems like non Vince promoters have it held against them that in the end they went out of business. If ring announcers are such a non essential part of the business, why even have them on the list? Limit it to in ring performers and territory owners/bookers if that's the line we're going to draw. Dave opened the door by putting them on the ballot in the first place, it seems disingenuous to now try to say they're not important enough to warrant inclusion.

But they're obsessed with social media numbers too, which you aren't going to get if you train everyone to watch it later because it's too goddamn long to watch live.

The preshows on the 4 hour shows have been 2 hours, so it's more like a 5.5 or 6 hour show from first match to last match. I don't get why they feel turning PPVs into a death march for the audience is anything good. Like, I get three hours of Raw, I don't like it but at least they get paid for it. I also get making Wrestlemania an all day event since it's your Super Bowl and that has a million hours of pregame stuff. Why make a random B show last 4 hours plus the preshow? That's like you're punishing the fans at that point. All you're doing is tiring your crowd and potentially killing your main event, since the crowd is out of gas by then.

Match order will be interesting. I know there's a big push to have the women go on last, and with it being in Sasha's hometown it wouldn't be the worst idea to do it here. You can argue that the world title match should always go on last, but I have a bad feeling they're going to do something silly that's going to kill the heat for the show early on.

So basically Dave's argument against Finkel comes down to something he had no control over and had nothing to do with his actual job performance. It seems unfair to punish a guy because Vince has a weird phobia of people he perceives as "too old" on his TV. By that argument, Jim Ross isn't a Hall of Fame announcer because Vince did the same thing to him and pushed him out the door for Michael Cole. When they put Howard in the WWE HOF (I know, but bear with me here) they had interviews with a bunch of guys saying how when they were kids a title change wasn't official until they heard the "and NEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW". It comes off to me as the WON HOF version of the NFL HOF's reluctance to put punters and kickers in. It's not the most important position of course, but it seems like Dave doesn't think like any announcer is worthy except Jimmy Lennon Sr.

It's not like it's the #1 problem they're facing, but the PPV bloat hitting their major shows is not doing them any favors. It's one thing if they use all this extra time for matches, but you just know it's for more wacky skits and Steph browbeating segments.

It's really impossible for you to believe Vince would think Brock would be booed because Goldberg was so popular the week before? The whole angle has been set up to make Brock the heel so far, and Vince expects all crowds to respond the way he wants them to. Perhaps "blowing a gasket" was an exaggeration but I have zero problem believing he fully expected the crowd to react the way he wanted and got pissed when they didn't.

If I recall correctly he was doing that for a while before Flair acknowledged it, so I can see how at some point you're wondering if it's a rib of some sort, but yes to say nothing ever came of it is silly.

Well it seems like either this will end with Billy winning and getting the company, or Dixie winning but in the process revealing what a black hole of a money pit the company is which really should give the Fight Network people pause for concern.

Not to defend Sasha, but it seems odd her sloppiness gets called out and it seems Charlotte largely gets a pass. She's a much better promo normally, and her current Queen gimmick has been a standout in a division where they all seem like interchangeable parts, but her matches tend to be more clunky than not. Part of it is her being so much taller than everyone else it looks like her opponents are trying to wrestle a daddy long-legs.

Another great moment in TNA history, they thought it would be a good move to bury Billy in paperwork to get him to give up his lawsuit. Instead, he used it to find proof that TNA lied to their employees when they denied talking to WWE about selling.

Wow that HHH fig looks to be in desperate need of some extra fiber.

I may or may not have had a whole company booked with He-Man figures and AWA Remco figures. I don't know if it was on purpose that they were the same size, but it worked perfectly.

Billy's experience in the music business prepared him well for dealing with carny ass wrasslin promoters.