sek69

Am I the only one who finds JBL absolutely unbearable these days?

TNA is reaching the point WCW was at where I subconsciously block out large periods of their history because it causes my brain to weep uncontrollably.

People point to the "What" chants as the worst thing to ever get over since it ruined other people's promos for over a decade, but I have to think Vince getting the evil boss gimmick over so well has been worse because every other promotion in the US has been copying it nonstop ever since. What makes it worse is 95% of the time the evil authority figure is someone who can be overruled by someone else, so what the hell is the point?

How is the size queen stuff an issue when Bryan, Rollins, and Ambrose are 3 of the top 5 faces in the company? And the biggest push they've given to a guy out of development is years went to Bray Wyatt, a somewhat unspectacular looking overweight dude? There was a time when you could say WWE thought they knew better, but I don't see how it's a big issue right now. They're giving us Daniel Bryan and the Shield as the top two babyface acts right now, they're positioning Cesaro for big things long-term, they've given the Wyatts a big push, Zayn and Neville are the top pushed faces in NXT. It took them some time to recognize how badly the crowd wanted Bryan to have his Mania moment, but when they did they booked him as strongly as you possibly could - kicking HHH, Orton, and Batista's asses on the go-home RAW, kicking out of the pedigree and beating HHH clean with the knee at Mania, thwarting HHH's interference and laying him out with his own sledgehammer, surviving a powerbomb/neckbreaker through a table and stretcher job, and making Batista tap clean in the middle of the ring. And then he went on last at Extreme Rules, above a big HHH match, and won clean. And the plan was for him to then beat Batista the next month. The Shield is a top act, but Reigns is the one they see as the next Top Level Guy. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into pushing Bryan, and they seemed baffled by the crowd shitting on Batista's return. To be fair, since NXT is Hunter's baby they seem to be focusing less on big guys, but then you have reports of guys not getting developmental deals because the feeling in the company is they have enough small guys who can wrestle.

One thing that I never see get brought up too much is how many of their creative issues stem from the "we know better than you" mindset. It's pretty irritating when one side of their mouth talks about how the fans have the power to make stars, while the other side kneecaps most of the guys who get themselves over. Not saying Zack Ryder was going to change the face of wrestling, but the level they went to bury the guy just to prove the fans were wrong for liking him was beyond petty to me. I mean, ffs they were so bent on doing things they way they want instead of what their audience was asking for their #2 show of the year got hijacked. I'm not sure if it's their preconceived notions of what a star is, or just Vince being a size queen as usual, but it's clear we're not going to see any significant changes until that mindset is replaced.

I figure the angle from RAW leads to Bryan coming back and telling Steph he's not surrendering the title, Hunter takes exception, and off we go. Seems odd though considering the rumor mill was saying Hunter vs Roman was on the books for SummerSlam.

Honestly, I only DVR Raw to skip commercials. If you start watching about 30-45 after it begins, you can FF all the commercials for the whole show. Sometimes I do skip ahead if someone is doing a promo that goes on too long or there's an especially bad comedy skit, but for the most part I watch the whole show. I don't get how someone is able to assess the quality of the show if you watch less than a quarter of it. To me it's like skimming a few pages of a book and declaring it sucks. It might, but how can you know for sure?

Ever since Loss mentioned it on Twitter, I can't unsee Nattie as the Meg Griffin of WWE now.

I may have been reading it wrong, but I took it as most of the panic coming from only getting 50% when Vince stated on at least a couple different conference calls the expectation was to triple, double at least.

It might have been worse if they realized WWE's core business was bullshitting people.

Not only that, now there's a second law firm investigating them for potential securities fraud. It's becoming apparent that Vince either doesn't understand how the stock game operates or he's been a carny so long he thinks he can pull a work on Wall Street.

How did no one in WWE see that launching the Network would negatively impact their TV deal? Clearly their ideal goal is to have Raw and Smackdown on the Network as soon as they can, and there's no way NBCU would go for that. Why would they want to give WWE more money to cushion the loss of PPV revenue when NBCU is owned by a major cable provider (Comcast)? Clearly the company is undervalued due to the wrestling stigma, but if Vince actually honest-to-goodness thought tripling the rights fees was possible he's way more out of touch than anyone suspected.

A few years back Bob Carter was worth an estimated $4 billion, I can't imagine someone would be in his line of work for as long as he has and not be that rich at least. That's why TNA has been around as long as it has, them losing millions is a drop in the bucket for the family. In fact, Bob probably considers it the cost of doing business just to keep Dixie occupied so she won't get any ideas of trying to run the company.

Well at least if Cena won it, that would end the run of IC champions jobbing constantly after winning the title.

I agree no one's come close since him. One thing that helped was being so small made ref bumps look like something more than just a booking tool. Plus I still mark out for the time on Nitro a fan ran in and Mark took him down in a second.

The Shield was a WWE gimmick.

For all the love NXT gets, the debut of Adam Rose and pending debut of Bo Dallas made me wonder if NXT is really preparing guys for the main roster. In terms of in-ring they seem to be doing a solid job, but it seems like they do a better job of creating gimmicks to get over with the NXT crowd instead of the WWE one. With the notable exception of the Wyatts, everyone so far called up with their NXT gimmick seems to have not gotten over in the big leagues. WWE already seems to see Adam Rose as a flop after only 2 weeks, and as great as the promos have been for Bo Dallas, I see him being the next guy to get a start-and-stop push before being condemned to midcard hell.

Of course, since half his gimmick now is being a IRL internet troll.

It would have been a good way to cap off the story of him turning face because he respected Magnum for one. Plus it always seemed that since JCP had such a thing for heel champs, it kind of made the babyface challengers look like chumps to me when even if they did win the belt, it was only for a couple of weeks (or less) before they lost it back.

Meltzer mentioned in one of last week's shows that from what he's been able to gather from speaking to folks in the company, very few people in TNA are making decent money.

From how Dave was talking, it seems like Barrios is going to fall on his sword for this. They arranged all the TV rights and Network deals to specifically protect anyone in the family from any blowback. Probably going to see a Game of Thrones style slaughter of anyone not named McMahon come Monday.

Maybe they can do a Pitbull #2 deal and have Bryan come out in a halo that Kane can throw him around by.

WWE is in an unusual place in that obviously they aren't a real sports product, but at the same time they aren't the usual TV drama/comedy/soap opera either. I guess in a sense they are portraying the matches as athletic contests, but invoking kayfabe in 2014 just seems wrong. What I don't get is advertisers see wrestling fans as all inbred morons who don't spend money, but WWE is a billion dollar company. Where do they think that money comes from? Even if its parents buying stuff for kids, someone's still spending actual dollars in the process.

Kind of hard to blame the world when you can turn on RAW and see bad horror movie rehashes and evil Russian angles straight out of 1985.

cubsfan's site has all the goings-on in lucha, along with uploads of most of the TV shows/important matches.