sek69

They will either have a bonus 8 man match or be on the NXT taping after Takeover is over. Unless they are going to be debuting on the main roster on Raw, this seems like a huge missed opportunity. Blake and Murphy are a black hole of blandness who's act is only saved by Alexa Bliss being way better as a heel than anyone suspected, and the Vaudevillians went from being afterthoughts to suddenly #1 contenders. It's like what was even the point of the gimmick if you aren't going to put Enzo and Cass on a big show in Brooklyn?

I wonder if WWE knows they're using a song about an illicit lesbian fling ("Cool for the Summer") as an Official Song of Summerslam.

It's really kind of undersold how amazing it is that WWE has managed 3 straight sellouts for what amounts of 10 hours of programming. They're taping an episode of TV after Takeover so there's 3 hours there, 4 at Summerslam, and 3 at Raw. This is probably the closest we'll ever get to that 10 hour marathon Japan show Dave will periodically mention he sat through once.

Shortest answer I can come up with: it would be a Torch Passing match from one guy they tired of seeing in main events to a guy they didn't want to see in main events. WM crowds are tricky to predict but I would have to agree this would have all the signs of at worst being totally shit on or at least being met with indifference.

From what I can tell no one was actually announced as champion so I can see them being able to give themselves wiggle room in editing/post.

That's the weird thing, it's not clear what the point of all this is. Cena doesn't need the belt, and keeping him out of the world title hunt has quelled a lot of the "same old shit" bitching about him since he hasn't been the main focus. It's also too soon to take the title off Rollins, and I'm not sure they want to do the bit where the MITB winner comes in to make it a three way since they just did that at Mania.

I still don't get why they're doing the Cena-Rollins match as title vs title. After all the time they spent rehabbing the US belt with Cena, they'll either end up (if someone wins both belts) either doing a tournament likely won by some midcard guy doing nothing or have the winner of the match do the Jay Lethal double champion gimmick where they'll probably forget about the US belt in a couple of months. If they don't have a clean finish (and they probably won't) then they'll have Cena chasing Rollins and the US title still gets forgotten.

Is there anything as consistently reliable as WWE being taken by surprise when their fans don't accept someone they feel should be a top guy? They really truly feel they know what their fans want yet never seem to actually listen to them.

What about Vince? Starts off promoting shows in bumfuck Maine to prove his worth to his father, becomes on air announcer/foil for heel color guys, has a test run as a heel in the USWA, reveals being the owner of the WWF while becoming increasingly paranoid during the Monday Night Wars, plays his top stars against each other until the situation boils over and he feels he needs to double cross one of them on PPV. Turns all that into becoming the biggest heel in the history of wrestling and creates the Heel Authority Figure trope that the business is still married to today.

The NHL also made a deal recently for MLBAM to handle their out of market games, I think there's a question there to be asked how to they allocate bandwidth, do the companies they do business with buy it like a giant sized version of a smart phone data plan or are there hard ceilings?

I really don't understand why people want to see a guy who A: has multiple concussions on record and most likely several more off the record and B: shows no sign of being willing/able to tone his style down return to the ring. Yes it sucks if we never see him wrestle again but that should be preferable to him becoming a Junior Seau or worse a Chris Benoit one day.

So the SuperLuchas story on TripleMania here seems to suggest Villano III had a heart attack of some sort during the match (if my Spanish is correct). If so, that's pretty disturbing. Of course if it's some kind of kayfabe to explain why the match sucked so bad, that's almost worse in a way.

The idea of not having Heyman on shows when Brock isn't there is mind boggling. No one else in the company can sell a PPV like him, and if you want to make SummerSlam the clear #2 show after Mania why would you not want him out there every week? They'd rather have the announcers out there insulting people who pay full price for the PPV. It's like this company hates money sometimes.

Funny enough, I was reading the 1997 WONs leading up to Montreal and apparently the skit where Shawn was showing his bare ass while Chyna and HHH were trying-but-not-really to cover it with signs was the straw that broke the camel's back and made Bret decide to sign with WCW.

I usually don't bother with the PPV hype stuff on the network, but the one from tonight hyping Taker/Brock is really good.

It was rough when III took his mask off post match and you can see the effects the stroke had on his face.

I'm no Striker fan, but I give him credit for doing what he could as everything was blowing up around him.

It is amusing to see HHH go from blue blood rich snob to crotch chopping adolescent making dick jokes almost literally overnight.

No one's under the impression there aren't all sorts of horrible people in wrestling, but most have the professionalism to not display it on worldwide TV.

I DVR the 3 hour version, start watching about an hour or so in, and just FF through all the dead spots. Raw's usually not to bad that way.

It's not just the reluctance to lose titles, it's throwing in ring tantrums and (legit?) stomping Vader just because he wasn't in correct position for a move. It's continually going into business for yourself on promos just to egg on Bret Hart, then having a hissy fit and claiming unsafe working environment when he has enough and goes at him in the locker room. It's trying to get fired so you can go play with your friends in WCW to the point of showing up in no condition to perform.

It's actually quite amazing that Shawn is held in any regard what so ever considering at least 75% of his career he was a completely unprofessional shithead. The only reason he never got thrown out on his ass and given the Warrior treatment was the fact the Monday Night War was going on and Vince was super paranoid to let anyone go. I was just reading an old WON from September 1997 how they had to edit most of a promo he did off a pre taped Raw because he was calling out the Undertaker (who wasn't at the building and was just shown on the Titan Tron in a pretape) to make him look like a coward to the live crowd. Hell, forget getting fired, how he avoided getting his ass beat by most of the locker room was a mystery to me.

With the Full Sail crowds, it's a case of the chickens coming home to roost. They built up NXT as the cool kids club, and now that they want to expand past that they are getting a backlash of sorts. I never got annoyed at the LU crowd, but then I guess I just kind of accepted that wrestling crowds in 2015 are going to do what they do and there's no point getting mad about it/

It's been funny watching the Full Sail crowd shit over every mention of the next Takeover show because they have to mention it being in Brooklyn every time. It's like a clash of everything mentioned in the "what's wrong with current WWE thread", with annoying entitled smart fans vs a company with a giant boner to troll their fans.

There's a chance a lot are just being trolls, but there's a ton of people on the WO forums who hate watch. I don't wade into the live show threads very much anymore because it's full of people who only post on how bad they think the show is and that shit gets tiring real fast.