NintendoLogic

My guess is that we'll get the HHH special where he goes over at Wrestlemania and does the return job at Extreme Rules where it means nothing.

Perhaps not hardcore by PWO standards. But there is nothing casual about a fan who regularly goes to wrestling news sites. I considered myself among the most hardcore until I started posting here. Now I consider myself a padawan at best. Join the club.

Dude, relax. I'm not pissed off at all (which would have been clearer if you had heard me say the words rather than just reading the text). I just think it's funny how you put soccer in quotation marks like it's a made-up word or something. The truth is, it's short for "association football." It's a perfectly legitimate term. Hell, it was coined in England.

Oh, fuck off.

They just showed a Radio Shack commercial during the Super Bowl featuring various 80s icons like ALF, Dee Snider, and Chucky from Child's Play. Hulk Hogan was one of the characters included. Molly Ringwald was not.

Even if what HHH said didn't hurt Bryan, why risk it? What good could come from calling him a B+ player who isn't world champion material? Why not just say that he doesn't fit their vision of a corporate champion and leave it at that? For me, the first sign that the Bryan saga wasn't going to have the happy ending everyone wanted was the opening segment of the first post-Summerslam Raw when Stephanie kicked him out of the building and he left without incident. Can you imagine someone WWE was serious about pushing doing that?

Kept showing up drunk implies they allow you to show up drunk a few times, but once you show up drunk too many times, they fire you Well, this is Japan we're talking about.

I also totally bought it when Undertaker and Paul Bearer locked the Ultimate Warrior in the casket. Mind you, I was 9 at the time.

I thought the dumpster incident with the New Age Outlaws was real until Foley and Funk came back at the end of the show.

Ishii having a "top 3 apron spots" list is so PWO it needed to be posted. Gotta say mine would look different, and probably be topped by the big Nowada Taue finally hits on Kobashi in 6/9/95 that fully sets them on the path to victory. Taue hit the nodowa on Misawa in that match.

Dolph has clearly been studying at the John Cena school of speaking calmly to show how serious you are and then YELLING REALLY LOUD TO SHOW HOW INTENSE YOU ARE.

As I recall, Vince saw Morishima's tryout match and said he looked like a fat Japanese schoolgirl.

I also don't think it's a given that WWE won't say no to free money. Look at Rey Mysterio. Based on how they've treated him, it's almost as if they resent the fact that he got over and drew money despite having so many red flags (small, weak promo, WCW guy). As for heel promos, I think the best way to look at it is a two-step test: 1. Could it be perceived as true? 2. If true, would it be damaging to the babyface? If the answer to both questions is yes, the heel shouldn't be saying it.

I'll throw out something our old friend Victator said on DVDVR a while back: WWE doesn't want to create superstars. They want to create an army of midcarders who are financially dependent on them. As we're seeing with Punk, a financially secure wrestler has leverage, and they hate that. I think it's also why they're hesitant to do anything with Bryan. They're afraid of creating something they can't control.

Yes, I am aware of your gimmick OK, dude.

I don't think they're trolling. I think they are completely tone deaf and lack self awareness. They wouldn't intentionally sabotage Sheamus, Langston, Batista, and Mysterio. They thought that match layout would work. And they likely won't concede that it didn't. They'll likely blame a rebel crowd. The old "vocal minority". We'll see tomorrow night if it's a vocal minority. My guess is that it is and Batista gets a very good response on RAW. Bwa ha ha.

There is a morsel of an argument worth responding to there, but I have no real desire to reward such childish vitriol with a substantive response.

In this era of diverse revenue streams, I don't really know that there's anything fans can do to make WWE change course once they're dead-set on a certain direction. They'll push who they want and work their way backwards to come up with justifications.

If that was Dylan's best shot, consider me unimpressed.

Regarding ad-libbing in reaction to the crowd, I agree that there's not much that can be done if the crowd actively refuses to buy what you're selling. But Sheamus should've realized that they were going to shit all over the Wrestlemania sign point and axed it.

I was just thinking about whether the Rumble impacts Rey's standing as an all-time great babyface. I never heard Ricky Steamboat get booed out of the building the way Rey was last night. Replies to anticipated responses: -Yes, there were the "Steamboat sucks" chants at the Chi-Town Rumble. But he won that crowd over in the end. -The crowd wasn't just pissed that Bryan wasn't there. Rey was booed pretty heavily during his appearance in the pre-match video package.

When has Orton ever been box office?

If this board had likes, I would register a million socko accounts so I could like this a million times. It's the self-fulfilling prophecy at work. They've decided that they want Reigns to be a top guy, so he's pushed and protected until he's over enough to justify the push.

The amusing thing to me was how hot the crowd was for Reigns at the end. It's like they were desperate for something positive they could grasp onto.

I'm kind of in the same boat as OJ when it comes to Portland. There's way too much sitting in holds (or working of holds, to put it more charitably) for my liking. The 11/8 (I think?) tag is no exception. Buddy Rose tried to keep things interesting, but when Rip Oliver was in there, it was chinlock city.