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It's been stated by Dave several times before he was put with Heyman that Vince recognizes Cesaro is a good wrestler but felt he was boring and thus was slapped with the "he won't ever draw money" label. It seems like he's been booked ever since then in a manner to justify that viewpoint. I don't get how putting him with a manager (Heyman is awesome, but this is one guy in the mid card who didn't need a mouthpiece) who only put over another guy and taking away his most over move was supposed to help the guy.

Vince thinks he's boring, and apparently it's Cesaro's fault that it didn't get him over to pair him with Heyman while he cut promos about his other client beating the Undertaker.

As a wrestling fan, I should be upset that they are basically taking what was pointed out to them (ie "maybe you guys should promote the Network more now that you hung your future on it") and turned it into another Triple H troll point. Instead I just kept laughing at how it went from funny, to unfunny, then such a running gag it went back to being funny again. Anyone else start noticing how Total Divas as a show seems to exist in a Schroedinger's Cat dimension? Some things happening there are part of WWE kayfabe like recognizing Tyson/Nattie and Brie/Bryan as together, but not Nikki/Cena? They pimp the show so much it's starting to become awkward, especially since he hasn't once attempted to help his girlfriend. All I could think about with the Steph/Brie segment is how big an asshole Cena is in storyline that he can watch Nikki get laid out and not even run out to help.

That Brock video was awesome, I want to spend money on SummerSlam now and I already pay for the network.

Troll Hunter is so great.

That had to have been an old page accidentally being reactivated, since 60 days is the penalty for a second strike.

To be fair, Orton does retweet a lot of fans and did a few tweets in support of kids fighting illness with some heartfelt words of support. I'm kind of turning a corner on him, he seems to be more of a human Grumpy Cat type of person than someone who's just a dick for the sake of it. If I recall, he fought against turning his character babyface at one point because his natural personality is more heelish.

Speaking of pre taped tv, I don't know if it's more noticeable because of HD or I just never paid attention back then, but it was pretty funny to see the obvious green screened crowd behind Vince and Lawler doing "live" intros to the taped Raws in 1995.

People also tend to have an attachment for TV shows that were around when they came of age. It's the same thing you see with shows that have been around forever like Saturday Night Live, the era you watched growing up was the best and the current era is crap. In both cases, most of the time when you try to pin someone down to describe why the current show is not good you don't get much better answers than "it's not what I grew up with".

I've been watching all the Raws in order on the Network, and there's nothing that better encapsulates 1995 WWF like watching Waylon Mercy make his debut squashing a young jobber named Jeff Hardy.

So has it ever been determined how much of the match was bad due to Taker being concussed rather than just old and broken down?

The Vince McMahon and Scotch at 3 AM Show sounds like the greatest idea anyone's ever had ever. Speaking of Network stuff, I tried using the Xbox 360 app since I was doing some work on it earlier. My god is that a heap of shit. I have 105mb internet hardwired to my system and the front page takes forever to load. I ended up going back to my PS3 that has a wifi connection and everything worked without a hitch. Anyone who uses their 360 as their sole streaming device probably should not even consider the Network (or probably already canceled if they did).

I agree. This was great stuff. This was my first time listening to the podcast and now I feel like an idiot for not listening to these shows before. He'd probably go crazy from trying to instill logic in an illogical company, but I'd love to see Chris get a job with WWE and help them straighten their shit out. Also it must be a Texas thing, but I wasn't expecting Will to sound like Sam Elliot.

What's funny is in the back issues of the WON going up from 1997, Dave stated there was a feeling that Bret was accidentally-on-purpose going long on his promos to short HBK on his promo time. The one that closed Raw when Shawn kicked him out of his wheelchair had to be aired the following week because Bret went too long.

I'd love to see that too, but it would probably get awkward with the episode where they basically accuse Lex Luger of killing Elizabeth.

Watching Raws from 1995 on the Network, I never realized that Bertha Faye actually debuted in her Monster Ripper gimmick (not mentioned by name of course) when she first showed up to attack Medusa.

The Verge has a story here on the WWE Network, one thing mentioned in the comments I never thought of as being a deterrent: current episodes of Raw/Smackdown being delayed a month before they go up. I know it's because of contracts and what have you, but today's binge-watching consumers expect to be able to watch current episodes of shows within a few days max. The rest of the TV industry has trained viewers to expect quick turnaround, and WWE is stuck in a bad spot.

Tyson Kidd has been awesome on NXT, his asshole babyface gimmick has legit been the best thing WWE is doing for months now.

AJ in particular seems like just a naturally tiny person, but she did seem to lose a lot of weight when she came back. Maybe it's just more noticeable on someone that small. I can't even imagine the pressure the women must be under in a company where they run angles treating you like a fat cow if you aren't sporting a six pack at all times.

Funny thing about Steph, my wife was watching RAW on Monday (which usually doesn't happen) and when they were replaying the arrest angle her only comment was "wow, she works out too much. it looks like she has a buff dude's chest with boobs attached".

Vince Russo was burying Impact tonight for having too much wrestling on it. So many jokes came at the same time that my brain locked up.

Honestly at this point, 90% of people's technical problems were on the user end. If you have good internet but a POS router for example, your WWE Network experience will suffer. That's not to say there hasn't been a stutter or two on the live feed, but it seems that the people who have problems every month are the ones still rocking the 2005 era Netgear routers. Also it shouldn't be undersold how boned WWE's Canadian fans are. They might as well just released an announcement telling everyone up north to just use a proxy to get the US version.

Dave said on the Breaking News audio that the plan was cutting $10 million this year and $30 million next year.

The latter could also suggest your customers are so poor they have to use gift cards and/or low balance debit cards. That would be a sore point for a company that just fell short of expected TV revenues because the consensus your audience are all poor dullards.

So I wonder what the spin will be for the large number of cancels. I'm betting either A: people only signed up to get Wrestlemania for $10 or B: lapsed Attitude Era fans signed up only to cancel when nothing from that time frame was being added.