sek69

Most midcard or lower ex WWE guys have stated how while the annual figure you hear sounds impressive, after you take out for taxes and travel expenses the actual take home pay is far less. That's the reason a lot of the top guys buy their own buses, it's cheaper than shelling out travel costs in the long term. As far as contracts go, didn't Savage get WCW to sign Lanny as well? He never actually worked a match for them as far as I know, so that might be the winner here. *edit: upon further review, it looks like Lanny was officially working for WCW from 1995-1999 and never worked once for them. Talk about living the gimmick, he really is a genius.

That's awesome, Johnny! My three-year old watched tonight's Smackdown! with me (poor kid). During the casket match he kept pointing at Kane and saying "He's big like you, Daddy." I'm nowhere near as big as Kane lol. My son's almost three, and one thing I've learned is how keeping your arms at your side and slightly raised is the best way to take a big splash with minimal damage. I used to wonder when I would see guys take splashes like that "how does just putting your arms like that do anything?", well now I know.

My understanding is that the show will be Smackdown but what takes place will be what they had planned for Monday's Raw.

Yes, I've been watching all the 95 and 96 Raws and it's amazing how much of it seems new to me since I spent so much time channel flipping in those days.

I doubt they were an issue either, but a million subscribers is something they should be announcing from the rooftops and it's such a kneejerk thing to do announcing it the one week guaranteed no one will be paying attention.

Am I being to cynical doubting this claim of 1 million right after #CancelWWEnetwork being the top trend? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you would announce during Super Bowl week, especially when you have an investor conference coming up in a couple of weeks.

Holy shit, that WWE 24 episode with the WM 30 behind the scenes stuff is amazing. Ironically you come out of it wanting Daniel Bryan to be champion forever and he comes off as the nicest guy ever.

They mentioned how Philadelphia is known for unique reactions, which is kind of calling it bizarro land without saying it.

If Brock/Roman ends up a huge moneymaker, Vince should just sign all the profits over directly to Heyman after that interview.

It's more like "Don't book the Rumble in Philly." I still think either Vince wanted to get revenge on the state for last year by using Rock to manipulate everyone or he honestly thought that last year was about the crowd being behind Reigns, not about it being "Anyone but Batista since he's not Bryan." To me, that sums up the arrogance of WWE right there. They knew this was going to happen and did it anyway because they know better than those idiot fans. If we just throw their precious Bryan out early they'll cheer for our guy.

I wonder if the last two years have created a mindset in WWE where guys are going to start being afraid if fans cheer them without being pushed.

Everyone seems to expect them to edit the boos, but considering pretty much every media outlet has run a "WWE botches #2 PPV" story there's no point.

They wanted Bryan to get revenge on the 18 second loss, and since that was the Original Plan, it must be furiously stuck to no matter how much the crowd rejects it.

It got understandably lost with all the Bryan backlash, but if you noticed every guy the fans wanted to get behind (Bryan, Ziggler, Ambrose, hell even Mizdow) got tossed out like a sack of potatoes by the "real stars" last night. The whole match was basically one hour long fuck you to anyone who still has the nerve to cheer for non WWE Approved Guys.

The main issue people have with Cena these days are his horrible punches and his weird style of moving/bumping that is only getting more pronounced as the injuries pile up.

Dave mentioned in the WO show tonight that WWE indeed had Bryan go out early since they thought it would let the crowd get the booing out of their system. Also they expected there to be a backlash but not as vociferous as what happened. So despite what happened last year, they apparently were completely shocked at their handpicked choice being soundly rejected by the crowd again. Also Rock was pretty pissed off at changes that were made and his annoyed reaction to the crowd booing was pretty much a shoot.

I agree with Loss, this seemed like a concerted attempt to devalue Bryan. Now kayfabe wise they can say "see, we gave your favorite a chance and he blew it without anyone screwing him over". This seems to have the chance to be even worse than last year's backlash since they don't seem to have any way to redeem themselves like before. So they've basically set up their biggest show to have the main event get booed out of the building and their most popular guy by far in a go no where mid card match no one wants to see.

Man they were pulling out all the stops to keep Roman from getting booed and it only made things worse. If the Rock can't help you get a pop there's no saving it.

Not to say Dave isn't a huge NJPW fan, but could part of the reason they won so many awards is that between iPPV and NJPW World they're now more accessible to audiences outside Japan than ever before? On the flip side, CMLL went from having a million shows on TV in my area to one on 52MX that tends to only show the undercards/B-shows. If it wasn't for cubsfan doing God's work capturing footage from the various Terra streams there'd be nearly zero footage of any top matches available. I personally thought Atlantis-Ultimo was the best match of the year in terms of overall emotion, but I'm not sure anyone would even be able to watch it unless you happened to be watching the stream when it happened.

I'll cop to not paying attention to his promo, but when he first came out i thought he was wearing one of Punk's hoodies.

At least they had plans for the Shield. Well, two out of three at least. The Wyatts seemed like a case of "they've been together a while so lets break them up" and all three are a lower positions than they were before.

The Hillbilly Jim one was especially noticeable when he came back to manage the Godwinns in the 90s and they used his theme. The generic plinky plink banjo theme stuck out like a sore thumb.

Cena turning heel and ending the streak could have been a moment on par with Hulk Hogan joining the nWo if done right. Of course we all know WWE is highly allergic to anything that even suggests turning Cena, no matter how big the payoff could be.

Wow who didn't see this one coming Okay he is just trolling now Was that the cage match that ended Jameson's son blocking the cage door. That was bad but come on probably not the worst match on that PPV This is my favorite category for all the wrong reasons. In order to be a 'promotional tactic' it has to be something deliberate by the person. I have a hard time believe that Dixie knew about the typhoon when she made the tweet Dixie's tweet included a photoshop of James Storm's face over a weather radar photo of the typhoon.

A lot of the Vince/KD quirks will hopefully go away when they leave, so while 3 hour Raws would just be as boring with HHH in charge at least we wouldn't have banned words/overly wordy promos/shaky cam nonsense anymore.