sek69

I'm hoping Dolph and Cody are in there to do the "holy shit" bumps (maybe Harper too), so Bryan won't have to hold up that end of the bargain. I am wondering how far they're gonna go with the "lawdy, i'z afraaaaid to climb this here ladder" stuff with Truth.

I think the length of shows in the 80s was determined more by the capacity of VHS tape than anything else. Most of the JCP shows that went three hours got butchered to hell on home video, perhaps Vince was just thinking ahead since I'm sure that was a big revenue stream at the time.

So what happened to Bo Dallas? Injury of some sort? I realize he wasn't setting the world on fire but it's like he fell off the face of the Earth.

I feel the backlash against Cena has cooled off because this is the first feud he's been in a while where he's actually shown getting upset at losing a match.

Yup and he ended up getting pretty badly burned because of it, like 40-50% of his body.

Even before the unfortunate Smackdown ending, it seemed like they were planting seeds for a turn with the whole "I tried my best and gosh darn it, it just wasn't enough" deal they were doing already. Hell, turning heel would be the best thing for him since he's clearly never going to be the #1 babyface and they badly need heels.

I doubt it. I'm sure them making "Superkick Party" videos for .com and trying to trademark the too sweet hand gesture nearly twenty years after it was introduced to wrestling are just coincidences. I mean I don't think anyone's losing sleep over it but it's clearly another example of the petty behavior WWE is known to indulge in when they don't get what they want.

TV was changing to a national syndication format instead of local TV stations individually paying for content. You can argue Vince made things hard for other promotions to get syndication coverage like he did, but the TV business changed on a larger scale than just what impacted the wrestling business.

I'm guessing had Vince decided to get into fights we'd end up with the WBF version of MMA.

Dave's write up in the new WON seems to indicate Ivelisse Valez is one of the divas who was released, I guess her "attitude issues" were not wanting to put up with Bill's bullshit.

I remember reading somewhere that Jim Johnson is extremely reluctant to do anything on camera, some kind of stage fright/camera shy thing so I would think he'd be uncomfortable getting an award like that. I agree it's well deserved though. So many classic themes that really set the stage for a lot of guys. Something like theme music doesn't seem important at first but the right theme is like the icing on the cake to a great gimmick.

HHH likes the internet when it's telling him how great NXT is, and hates it when they tell him WWE has been a pile of shit for the last year or so. One could argue he's doing a one man good-cop/bad-cop routine to make sure Vince thinks he's on his side about those Damn Millennials.

Just noticed they skipped Raw #178 (9/30/96) on the recent batch of uploads. Looking at the results there doesn't seem to be any content related reasons why they would bypass it.

"Vince killed the territories" is really one of the biggest myths in wrestling. Well, OK he probably had a direct hand in killing the AWA by raiding all their talent, but the rest were killed off by the local TV business changing from stations paying for content to demanding *to* be paid. Vince got out ahead of the curve by setting up his own syndication network so when the landscape changed he was on much better footing that anyone else.

I know on my Roku streaming stick I wasn't getting any new content until I checked for an update to the system software, I guess it was blocking the app from updating until that was done.

The Young Bucks vs WWE might be my favorite feud in wrestling right now. Vince/HHH must be so mad they turned their offer down.

I'm not exactly clamoring for his return (I enjoy his matches but the angles he ends up in usually are terrible), but it's odd they keep running those Sheamus hype videos without any mention of when it's going to happen.

So on the latest WO show, Dave mentioned he asked what the deal was with the Sting promo being done in a voice that didn't sound like Sting. Turns out it was Sting and they wanted him to sound like the Black Scorpion. So either someone's fucking with Dave or neither the writers or alleged NWA mark Triple H don't remember Sting was feuding with the Black Scorpion.

I don't think anyone really bought Brock would win going into the match last year, and then the match itself wasn't very good.

I do wonder, for the last couple years all we've heard is how Bryan can't be the next top star because he doesn't move the required metrics. Has Reigns been doing any better in that aspect? I wonder if a side by side comparison would show any difference between the two, I don't think house show attendance is up when Roman's on the card. Merch sales shouldn't be much different since he still has the same problem of 95% of the stuff for sale at live events being Cena stuff. When it all comes down to it, the only metric he seems to move is Vince's big man boner.

I think the WM crowd will probably just watch in silence (spun as being in awe by the announcers no doubt), and once it becomes apparent Reigns is winning then all bets are off. There should be a prop bet on the the post match "crowning of the next top guy" is met with just booing or full out nWo-era-shit-being-thrown. I guess the advantage at WM is the ring will probably be out of throwing range for most of the crowd.

Then quite franky, you're an asshole. I know that it's all PR on their part but being cynical about honoring kids who died of cancer is a bridge to far for me.

Surely this would be the one thing WWE can do that avoids getting snarked at, no?

Title belts are considered intellectual property of the promotion, that was established when Flair showed up with the NWA title, and was the cornerstone of the WWF-WCW lawsuit that originally started with Medusa throwing the women's belt in the trash.

Also I wonder if all this being revealed how sexual harassment was being covered up was the real reason AJ blasted Stephanie on Twitter. All that talk of female empowerment while your husband enables a serial abuser and removes the only person willing to go to bat for female wrestlers.