sek69

New NWA World Championship Wrestling episodes are going up, seems to be picking up where they left off and going into 1989.

Calling him the worst seems wrong, but Verne Gagne booked the AWA around him and his friends for 20+ years and ran it into the ground by not changing with the times. The only time they didn't seem like a second tier promotion is when they were lucky enough to have Hogan around when Rocky III came out.

I would think Ryback's stiffness and apparent knack for injuring people would be a better criticism than his steroid use/RVD tights/Goldberg clone status.

The Midnights were a pretty big draw everywhere they went in the 80s.

Am I alone in not liking Mauro Ranallo? I mean, sure, he's more lively than the sea of WWE Announcerbot clones but his run on SD has not been impressive IMO. He seems better on the CWC shows so maybe it's just him being overproduced but he comes off as forced and/or a guy who did a ton of redbull and espresso shots before the show.

...this is against the grain? Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia, but Raven from 1996-1999 and his brief resurgence in 2002-2004 was absolutely great. Seconding the love for Disco Inferno and the calls of overrated for Misawa. Disco knew his role as a comedic dipshit midcarder and reveled in it, Misawa's all offense and is terrible (IMO) at selling. Masato Tanaka has been the most consistently good Japanese talent for nearly 20 years. I haven't seen every single match he's ever worked, but I also haven't ever seen a bad match with him in it. In Misawa's defense, was it really selling when he spent most of his career getting legit dropped on his head? Also my probably-not-that-hot-take after watching years of 80s Memphis TV is that a lot of it sucked if Dundee or Dutch wasn't around.

So Smackdown was on the TV in the cafeteria at work and the Cena segement was on. A woman walking through stopped, looked at the TV, and said "John Cena! I know him because he's on the Today show a lot". So I guess that bit of cross branding is working for WWE.

Now that Evolve seems to be set up as a co-feeder system with NXT, there's probably a good chance if/when someone coming from there ends up being a fixture on WWE TV.

Something about Bob Backlund in the intro video of Raw in 2016 makes me disproportionately happy.

It is kind of jarring to see how hard they were pushing the angle with Vince blowing up in his limo and the subsequent investigation prior to everything happening. Obviously, they had to do it, but it sucks to watch the build up knowing what is going to happen.

It's the international version that was the best of ppv matches that year or something.

Has it ever been established what connection there is between CMLL and Elite? Konnan when he was working for AAA seemed to be under the belief that that CMLL was secret owners of them or at least enough of a stake to keep them afloat. Plus it seems against everything anyone's ever known about CMLL's business model to let anyone run their buildings and/or use their guys without having control over either.

Of course it would be best, but you just know there's OCD completionist types who would be upset about them skipping it. Not because they actually wanted to watch it, but because it means it's not a 100% upload of that year.

They're moving on to 2007 and it's like they forgot about what happened since everything was going up in order until mid June.

You could argue that all of the cost-cutting done in 2014 in the wake of the failure of the WWE Network to meet expectations was "answering to shareholders". You could also counter that argument by pointing out that the McMahon family owns the stock that holds the most weight so in essence they are the shareholders who get answered to the most.

Wouldn't crowds start cheering Reigns the moment he turns heel? Well that's what Vince has wanted from the start, so at this point I'm sure he'd be willing to take what he can get.

It almost seems like they finally realized their best bet with him is a heel turn. From a business standpoint it makes the most sense since he's been the defacto top heel for over a year and a half anyway.

If you're not judging Ambrose as a full time top act (and you're in your rights to do so, I suppose), then what other full time top acts does the company even have? Ambrose is only a top act by default because he has the belt, considering he spent his time prior losing feuds and getting ragdolled by Brock. As far as other full time top acts you have Seth, Roman, Enzo & Cass (they're already seen as top guys by the fans), Balor (seen as top by the company it appears), and Jericho is full time at the moment even though we know that won't be for long. Plus they have guys like Owens and Zayn who are clearly going to be more focused on now. Right now SD has Ambrose, Cena for PPVs and TVs, the desiccated corpse of Kane, the Miz and everyone else is pretty much the C Show All Stars. How are they supposed to draw anyone to houseshows with their current roster?

You say that, yet Orton is the only full time top act they put on Smackdown (Cena's not doing houseshows for the rest of the year).

At this point I'm thinking the big guns from NXT have to be going to Smackdown. If not, it makes no sense for them to do the whole draft/brand split with the supposed intention of Making Smackdown Great Again only to kneecap them with this roster.

Del Rio is apparently already in burysville and counting the days until his contract expires.

Correction -- all gone. Really odd. Clicked on 1981 & 82 and saw a ton of files, went back and now its all empty. I'm still seeing everything. Maybe it's frequency capped? This must be it, everything's still showing for me.

There wasn't anything particularly bad about Smackdown, but starting off with a battle royale that exposed how thin the roster is was a really bad idea.

Of all the baffling choices WWE has made recently, this has been by far the most puzzling. Of all people to put in with Lesnar, why the guy who's shoulder collapsed under the weight of taking the garbage out?

Well his point is that the business he knew is dead. Which would be a good thing, of course.