sek69

The opening 20 minute promo of doom seems to be a vestigial holdover from the Monday Night Wars when they would be afraid people would change over to Nitro. Now it just seems like they're stuck in This Is How We Do Things mode, despite no one outside of the writers' room being a fan of it.

NXT is great largely because it's a one hour show like you had in the territory days with modern production. Like others have stated, it's one thing to only have to worry about 4 hours of TV a month plus a two hour special 3 or 4 times a year. WWE has 7 hours of TV a week (Raw/SD/Superstars/Main Event) plus a PPV every month. I agree the thing that will determine how the HHH Era ends up will be who he surrounds himself with. One of Vince's most glaring weaknesses is being surrounded with yes men who only end up further cementing him in his bubble. Unfortunately being the guy in charge usually means not too many people are willing to tell you things you may not want to hear.

I understand why they did it, and it was actually pulled off pretty well with the post match angle, but man there's nothing that creates a visceral feeling of "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck this company" quite like a Dusty Finish. To be fair, it could be due to PTSD from growing up a Crockett fan, but there's something about a finish that gives the crowd what they are clamoring for only to pull the rug out from them just seem like a slap in the face. It just seems like a bad business move to even suggest to your customers they might get screwed over.

Regal just announced on NXT the July 4th Tokyo show will air live on the WWE Network and Brock will be there.

Dave basically said that as well, that if it was on Austin's show it could just be them fucking around but they aren't going to start running their own angle on the WWE Network with Vince in earshot.

LU is basically everything great about pro wrestling. It reminds me of a comic book alternate universe where what we know as Memphis wrestling was teleported to Mexico (I know they're based in LA but you know what I mean). I don't know how they can pay off the monster angle either, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since honestly they've earned it.

Yeah, when Billy shuts the fuck up and makes an album, it's usually still pretty good. In retrospect he should have gone the Trent Reznor route and done it all himself and just had touring musicians to play on stage.

I like how at first it seemed like they just snapped a finger and suddenly it was Stone Cold and Brock's smarmy advocate cutting promos, but if you think about it they set that up the entire podcast. Heyman told the story about ending a WCW show by cutting a wacky promo only to be admonished by Dusty for forgetting the money by not mentioning the show, and that's exactly what they did at the end. If nothing else, that should be shown to all the people in NXT on how to do a money promo for an event that probably isn't even going to happen.

Not to be "that guy" but Austin beating Lesnar would be like Andre beating Hogan at WM3. It makes zero sense.

The IC title match was so weird, the Sheamus stuff seemed like a planned spot but everyone in the ring was acting like it wasn't. It was like time froze until Dolph of all people started calling out spots to everyone so loud I'd bet even John Cena was like "dude, that was a bit much". I wonder if maybe it somehow got legit stuck and it threw everyone's timing off. I'm not usually part of the crowd that complains about PG, but when you bill a match on all the pain and agony it causes (when you can't really deliver on that in the current era) it's going to come off as lame. At least the tag chamber had the novelty of being something no one had seen before.

Looks like Rusev is officially out of the IC match now.

Everyone seems to be dancing around the elephant in the room that no matter if you think WWE should/shouldn't/can/can't attempt to make the Divas division something other than the piss break match, the truth is they just WON'T until a different mindset is making the final call. I'm 100% positive if Vince woke up tomorrow and said "Goddamn, we're gonna make the Divas the focus of Raw!" that they could get the wider WWE Universe to accept them like the NXT crowd does. It's hard to do that when the man in charge has a view of women that makes the Duggar family look like a bastion of liberal feminism. I mean, if you guys are just sparring to sharpen your debate skills by all means carry on. I just noticed things were getting kind of heated for a topic that won't pass beyond hypothetical for the foreseeable future.

Not sure why people think adding ROH refutes the idea that DA was upset at the lack of ad revenue in TNA. They're just buying the rights to ROH's already syndicated show.

Is it just me, or is it to the point Dixie is worse than Russo? At least he had success at some point, she's just been one embarrassing episode after another.

DA needs to put Mark Briscoe on every one of their ghost shows ASAP.

Seems like a win-win for all parties (except TNA). ROH gets national exposure, DA gets cheaper content and the bonus of not having to deal with the one woman clown show that is Dixie.

So I wonder if ROH and WWE have some kind of deal like ECW had. First there was Joe being pushed heavy on NXT with merch and everything while still being able to work ROH TV tapings, and now ROH announced Kevin Steen is part of their initial action figure line. It would make sense for WWE to want to partner with them as almost an unofficial developmental group since they've got so many talented guys from there,

So.....just had an older gentleman (and self described WWE fanatic) call in to say they just signed up for the Network to watch the show on Sunday but was perplexed no where in the process did it say where to watch on their cable box. I broke the news that they'd need some kind of streaming device, and he wasn't upset but disappointed, He didn't understand why they didn't mention that you needed some other device. Now I'm not relaying this to be all "lol dumb wwe fan", but it's not the first time I ran into this and it's a key thing being missed by WWE. They are so bent on hammering NAHN NAHNTY NAHN, MAGGLE and making fun of people who buy PPV, they forget to tell people what they actually need to own to watch the thing. They had the flight attendant Bellas commercial that did a good job of explaining that exact thing and they've never done anything similar since.

It was definitely something that was mentioned often, that the World Champion shouldn't be having competitive matches with jobbers. Well maybe competitive is too strong a word, but it did seem they'd get more offense in against him than they would most weeks.

Everyone here makes good points, but again as long as Vince/Dunn are in charge nothing will change. NXT could do an all women show where every match is 4 stars and above, and Vince will still think the women's division are all interchangeable catty bitches to have 2 minute matches with.

It was apparently the head of Discovery Communications not just the head of DA, which makes it even more amazing.

Seems like the most likely outcome would be Rock/Hunter with Ronda/Steph in the corners. That way WWE gets their mainstream buzz, and UFC doesn't have to worry about injury if they just do a spot where Steph gets ragdolled by the monster.

Watched the Raw in Germany where they crowned the first European champion, and I forgot just how good the Bulldog could be. The match was great of course, but it wasn't just due to Owen, Davey held up his end of the deal.

I never saw the "put him down, pick him up" stuff as annoying, I figure (in a kayfabe sense) the guy on offense knows one move isn't going to put the guy away so he picks them up to deliver more punishment. I'll grant it's not the most creative way to do it, but it makes sense in a "if this was real" way.