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Even worse was that she misspoke something while intro'ing him and he felt the proper way to address the issue would be to mimic humping her face on live TV.

It was interesting to see how the overall theme of the show seemed to be one era ending and another beginning. This was the first time it really felt like something different was taking place (even before the streak ended), and it had more "Wrestlemania moments" in one show than there's been in the last few Manias. Looking back, it kind of seems like they did the Hulk/Austin/Rock open to establish they respect the legends before they ran a show full of almost every long time star putting a new guy over. I agree there's no way Cena was winning his match if Taker was losing his.

I loved that for all the times he promised the streak would end, Heyman looked like the most shocked guy in the building when it happened.

I'm watching it now, I think he was trying to link his family at WM to his daughter in NXT. As soon as Flair mentioned Reid you could kind of see the other three get a "oh fuck..." look on their faces.

They let the trademark expire in the mid 90s and some indy promoter picked it up. If they don't blur it, they'd have to pay.

MLB.tv has a habit of getting off to a rough start every year it seems, I wouldn't automatically assume that means doom and gloom for Wrestlemania. WWE has been doing load tests during their live streams of Main Event and whatnot, and since they have a pretty good idea how many people will be ordering, it probably won't be a disaster.

So with the recent changes, is Bix basically writing the Figure 4 newsletter now (minus the TV reviews Vinny does)? When Bryan made the announcement a few issues ago, it seemed somewhat vague who does what. If so, it's a welcome change since Bryan seems to have shifted nearly all his focus to his growing radio empire these days.

The NFL also aired games on TNT during the Attitude Era, so ESPN wouldn't want to risk pissing off the NFL by targeting another Turner company.

The worst part is if he ever did get to WWE he'd probably creep everyone out because he looks so much like his father.

I watched it too. Road Dogg is an underrated panelist and he was an underrated "hardcore wrestler." Patterson was funny. I thought Michael P.S. Hayes came across as an arrogant, ignorant idiot. He kept spouting off about ECW when he clearly knew very little about the subject. His reasons for why ECW died were barely accurate. I wonder how he and Paul E. got along behind the scenes. Probably not very well, if I had to guess. I'm surprised Bruiser Brody was only mentioned in passing when he was one of the main wrestlers who was "hardcore" before hardcore was really a thing. I don't understand why this panel didn't have guests that were more relevant to the subject - maybe Mick Foley or Paul E - but it was a decent, middle of the road episode. I'd wager Brody's still a sensitive subject considering Carlos Colon is the local promoter for WWE in PR and Invader I still works for him.

I hate to even sound like I'm defending people who think like that, but I think in JR's case you just have to chalk things like that up to the time and place he was raised in. At least you can say it's a sign of improvement in society that hearing someone say that offends most people in 2014.

Dave mentioned in the latest newsletter that buying the WWC tapes was in fact part of the deal with Carlos going in the HOF. He made a comment on how that should tell you the shape of the company since they were at death's door a few years back and didn't sell. Seemed like an odd statement considering crowds looked to be way up from when I started watching regularly a few years ago, which should have meant increased profits for them.

My working theory is it was a combination of them bringing in a lot of former TV writers (who probably see heavy scripting as job security) and them going hard on wanting guys with the same body type regardless of athletic/speaking ability. It seems hard to stop something in WWE once it gets rolling, so writers looking to secure their place + guys hired for looks who can't talk for shit = word for word scripting.

I followed the steps WWE mailed out for people having xbox issues, and other than some occasional buffering it worked fine as I had it playing all last night. They were showing the Raw after KOR 1993 when Yokozuna won the title, and I lol'd at Vince saying that Hogan would be back challenging for the title soon. I wonder if the plan was for him to come back in a few months before WCW made their offer.

Watching Starrcade 86 on the network last night, and I realized how much I miss the old JCP style cable ropes that made that snapping sound when someone was whipped into them. I have a feeling they probably sucked to work with, but it's one of the things that make me wax nostalgic since that's the wrestling I first started watching.

I could see them using footage in a "here's some guys working in a place you probably never saw them in" type of deal, but a lot of the best WWC stuff isn't exactly WWE 2014 PG Rated Friendly.

So now they seem to be doing a heel gimmick now for the ref with the ponytail. This week's TV featured Ray Gonzales winning the title back from TNT, complete with both guys bleeding from forks, heel ref ignoring cheating, babyface ref dropkicking the heel, both refs getting in a brawl, and an angle afterward where TNT seemingly broke the face ref's hand. It was like Memphis and TNA had a weird baby.

I think Dave was more referring to the comments when Damien Sandow refused to go to the ring for his match during the Occupy RAW segment. He did his usual cryptic comments about something more to what she said, and then the next day on the B&V show Bryan said what Dave was talking about that what she was yelling to Sandow were more or less her shoot comments on CM Punk.

I'm a little baffled why anyone who would be a member of a site like this wouldn't be all over something like the network. Yeah, they might not add content fast enough for our liking at this stage but by all accounts there's tons of stuff coming pretty quickly. Plus it wouldn't have made sense for them to put everything up on day one since they knew there would be bugs to work out first. We're already seeing it now, more content appearing now that a lot of the launch issues are getting ironed out. The only way I can understand someone canceling is if your only means of access to it is the Xbox 360 since their app is still busted. Even if you have no interest in any of the vault stuff, every PPV for $9.95 is a ridiculous deal.

Fucking spot on, that pic is my mental image of 98% of the bitching threads at places like the WO forums.

I think the overall problem is that the audience WWE wants to reach the most (kids) have the shortest attention spans. It took over a year of almosts before the crowds started seeing Lex Luger as a guy who couldn't get the job done, but now after a 2-3 month period people were already giving up on Bryan ever getting the title. I can almost get why WWE seemed so bullheaded to change plans, it used to be that screwing the babyface would get the fans all irate at the heel and get them amped to see the rematch. Now, if a guy can't win within a match or two fans seem ready to just resign themselves to thinking it's never going to happen.

The Rumble wasn't unique in the sense that they weren't the first to do it, but the first several ones were definitely a big deal. The one that started with Ax and Smash as #1 and #2 made it clear this was such a big deal even tag partners will fight for the chance to win one. I think giving the winner a Mania title shot took a lot of steam off the Rumble in the sense that now there's only a handful of guys you can reasonably expect in that position every year. You won't see any winners like Jim Duggan as long as that's in place.

To be fair, for a while now Bryan would be asking him if it's going to be a three way for a while now (especially since Batista turned heel again). Dave would only give his "they could do that" or "it's a possible" in that cheshire cat voice he tends to get when he knows something has a good chance of happening but for whatever reason can't say it.

Yeah, they would probably like to move Smackdown to a better network/timeslot but I don't see Raw moving from USA unless some other network backs a truck full of money into Vince's driveway.

This. Made several good matches on the Texas project nearly unwatchable. I remember watching a pull-apart brawl in an early WCCW match and thinking a fan ran in the ring as part of the schmoz to break it up. Nope it was David Manning running around like a loon in the middle of a heated brawl.