sek69

Oh man, Lana is so amazing in this segment. Biggest heat in a while and Swagger/Zeb didn't even have to say a thing.

I dunno, I'm all for living the gimmick but I'd kind of feel like an asshole having to carry that around in public.

Ric was punching directly on Bray's eyebrow which is a time tested way to get accidentally-on-purpose hardway bleeding.

I know MLB At Bat doesn't have any kind of contract subscription like the Network has, you pay a lump sum at the beginning of baseball season to get the whole year. In fact, they used to allow you to split the cost over the cost of up to 4 months of your cable service but they stopped that last year. So MLB AM would not have had any gating in place in terms of keeping people from canceling after X amount of time.

Which is why there's a backlash brewing, there was an implication to the hardcores that there would be way more historical stuff available than there ended up being, so now the one segment of the audience they had locked in is now considering not renewing when their six months is up.

Yeah, that's my point. They already had the hardcores, yet the advertising seemed to be aimed at them instead of the folks they need to target to make it work at the level they wanted.

It's weird since it was almost like they were targeting the hardcores (who would likely already know how to stream things to their TV), but delivered the content casual fans would expect instead.

The use of "It's Way Over the Top" as a slogan when no one outside the industry knows what the term "over the top" means shouldn't be slept on either. Between that and not being clear it could be viewed on a TV with a streaming device probably caused a lot of potential subs to shy away since they had no way of knowing these things.

He'll probably be fine on Monday, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear a "Flair being Flair" story within a month if he becomes any sort of regular character on TV. Also, anyone think it was a bit odd they did the deal with announcing KENTA's signing with Hogan and Jimmy Hart? I get sending Hulk over there since it's been a while since he was in Japan in a WWF/E capacity, but there seemed to be something a bit tone deaf having relics from a bygone era there to sign someone supposed to be a future star.

He did, but Silva was clowning around and got caught with a KO shot. Then Weidman happened to be in the cage when Silva's leg exploded in the rematch. A win's a win, but it's not like he pounded him into submission either time. He may well be legit, but I wouldn't base it on the Silva matches. Also it's funny he would include any UFC fighters in a poll like that one when 75% of the MMA discussion on his site is involving dropping interest in UFC.

JBL had a line on Smackdown while plugging the Network that he watched himself and Zeb when he was Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw. I always assumed the current character was named as an inside joke on the 90s one, but I guess they're the same person in WWE canon now.

They would put Raws and Nitros up every two weeks when they were doing the Monday Night War on VOD. I'm sure once they start rolling out they'll do something similar. The biggest issue to me seems like they are unorganized rather than overwhelmed, unless the only have literally one person doing all the work, it should just be a matter of uploading the video files.

I was also a subscriber to Classics On Demand, so I would have got the Network if it was just old stuff and not PPVs. I agree that the main point of frustration among us hardcore fans is that we know they have a lot more stuff already in the can digitized and ready to go, but there doesn't seem to be any clear plan to add content other than "throw a bunch of shit up when subs start to cycle".

All I hear when someone says that is Billy Batts telling Tommy to go get his fucking shine box.

I never could put my finger on why I never cared for the diva label, but that summed it up nicely. That along with the championship belt looking like a bedazzled vagina just makes it look like they're openly mocking the women who work for them.

Well at least TNA beat them to the punch for once and put the title on the freakishly giant guy who dabbled in MMA before WWE (probably) does at SummerSlam.

I don't like Sports Entertainment, but I can live with it. Sports Entertainer instead of Wrestler is worse than nails on a chalkboard to me and is one of the more off-putting "no one in the real world uses language like that" terms in current WWE Speak.

Re: Dave's dislike of the word "smark".....I recall him telling a story about an old school promoter (I want to say it was either Paul Boesch or Sam Muchnick) who would get really upset if he heard anyone in his promotion using the term "mark" since those people were the ones spending money on the show so everyone could get paid. Dave seemed to really take it to heart and ever since then I always got the sense that he sees the word "mark" and any derivative of it as kind of like the n-word for wrestling fans.

Watching the first SNME now, funny how they edited out Windham/Rotunda/Steamboat coming out to Real American, and the song they replaced it with had the line "I'm proud to be American made".

I was thinking of his idea of having a 20 minute WWE Main Event Style match with Scott Steiner when there's no one else on the planet but him that thought that would be a good idea. It seemed to me he thought it would prove he was a super worker like his hero Ric to get a decent long match out of the big lug.

Well wether intentional or not, he got a rep for going out of his way to make his opponents look bad. In hindsight, it probably was him thinking he was better at carrying guys than he really was, and trying to get guys to do more than they were capable of. I will say he has been much much better business-wise as an executive. Building the Performance Center alone will go down as one of the most positive things in recent history.

Pretty sure if Rusev and Lana got melded together into one person in some bizarre Star Trek type accident, it would be Rhonda Rousey.

This is pretty much what we'd get years later with The Rock I'd say.

I thought it was interesting the plan for Cena is to be a "champion emeritus" role like Bruno had before his fallout with the company. I'm not sure the guy who's gimmick is that he's hated by 60% or more of the fanbase is the best fit to be the beloved legendary former champion. Not to sound like I don't approve of the idea, mind you. Beyond my own boredom of the character, they can only ride the Cena horse for so long until he completely crumbles to dust. I do find it amusing they are so clearly positioning Reigns as the next top guy, but Ambrose has all the trappings to actually be that guy. It would be something if the Shield ended up being the next generation versions of Rock/Austin/Taker as the tentpole stars.

Somewhat off topic but still Meltzer related, I wonder if Dave will still keep up his feud with Deadspin now that all their articles calling out his boo Chael's bullshit have pretty much been vindicated.