The Chief

I actually thought Del Rio looked good and vicious in that match. They need to end this Batista experiment. This is getting embarrassing now.

Damn, that was a war!

I remember reading stories saying that he was 6'6" and over 350 lbs in middle school, seemed like he was gonna be a huge dude no matter what.

I think he will. The death (probably) wasn't drug related so I don't see why they would shy away from it. Dude was on the roster almost fifteen years with a few gaps here and there.

Damn. I know he wasn't the most popular guy, but for whatever reason I always liked him. Possibly my favorite guilty pleasure wrestler. RIP Big Vis

if I'm remembering correctly, tonight in addition to some great wrestling, there was: no divas match no long drawn out authority segment no Vickie Guerrero no Stephanie barely any mention of Batista no Miz no evisceration of babyfaces by the announcers this was by far the best Raw since the jump to three hours.

Man, everything about that Cena/ Cesaro match was beautiful,I think I'm gonna cry. Even Cole was great on commentary hitting all the right points. Just perfect.

I've got a feeling Raw is gonna be a good time tonight. That Christian/Bryan match was fun, would love to see more from those two. Christian working subtle heel was cool.

They really should have kept Buff around for at least a month just so we can have more Buff stories.

confused interns? I've wondered the same thing about their music sometimes

Lita even being considered as a Hall Of Famer makes me feel so damn old.

It's most likely JBL being fed lines by Vince. I've learned to tune it out but it still annoys me that this kind of counterproductive crap makes it on screen just to entertain one guy backstage. And yeah Christian ain't young Elvis, but I wouldn't consider him a freak. He's just a regular dude.

So do we now have the pleasure of looking forward to commentators ragging on how hideously ugly and deformed Christian is every time he's on screen? Way to put your babyfaces over.

looks a million times better on my phone! thanks guys

That actually makes a lot of sense because I specifically remember No Way Out 2003 was the last PPV I could "watch" in scramble-vision.

I'm hoping that when this launches, if they have to edit entrance music, that there is some consistency. I'm watching the Cage Match DVD (the 2011 one), and during the Flair/Orton cage match from Taboo Tuesday 04 Flair's music is dubbed over with his original 1991 theme. Now on the WrestleMania Anthology DVD's, for Flair/Savage from WrestleMania VIII (1992) they dub Flair's music with the theme he was using during his comeback run (2001 - present). Makes no sense, why do they do this? The only I can think of is maybe they send a memo to an intern who doesn't know much about the product that says "EDIT OVER RIC FLAIR THEME." Not knowing what to do, they just edit over everything at random. There's other instances of this too, the Demolition Rick Derringer theme was dubbed over (understandable due to rights), but then the generic theme they used after turning heel in 1990 was dubbed over. Why would that need to be dubbed? Even if you don't care about entrance music, this is still annoying because the audio is often terrible and completely drowns out the crowd and commentary. Since most of the old PPV's have already been edited for DVD release, 24/7, WWE.com, etc. with no consistency whatsoever, I'm wondering if they will take the effort to re-do them, or even better, air the originals.

I really think there's an obvious patriotic Kurt-Angle-In-Summer/Fall 2001 babyface run in him too. The only problem is who he's paired up with. Cesaro is eventually going to be a babyface just based on the giant swing alone. Do they flip them both? Turn on Zeb?

Punk came out of the first HHH program worse off then where he was before, I can't blame him for not wanting to work with him.

Thanks FedEx! Trying this again, sorry for my lack of proper punctuation but I'm not re-typing this: I can see Punks point of view on a lot of things and I can appreciate that the guy is secure enough in himself to make his own decisions. I wish more wrestlers had that kind of leverage the business would be in much better shape if that were the case. The Undertaker stuff really rubbed me the wrong way. Dont get me wrong it was a good match. I just had a lot of other problems with it and not just the lazy booking heading in. Heres my thoughts and this will probably be long: Flashback to 2012 Punk is the second most over babyface besides Cena maybe even just as over. But definitely not "the guy." Fair enough thats still a great spot. Now we have a problem Rock is coming back to face Cena next Mania and they will both be faces so we need to get Punk out of the picture. So they hastily turn Punk heel on the first three hour Raw. It really came out of nowhere and the fans werent really sure what to make of it since they really loved Punk. Punks motivation for turning heel was that he felt overlooked since he was busting his ass as champion yet all the attention was going towards Rock vs. Cena II. That did make sense and I think there were some good ideas in there that they could have played off of. Unfortunately subtly is not something WWE has done well in over a decade. Punks problem was with Rock not Cena or the fans. This goes all the way back to his initial "pipe bomb" where he specifically stated he didnt have a problem with Cena the person he just felt disrespected. Instead of playing off that they just turned him into a full-blown fan hating generic heel because we need to keep Rock and Cena as top babyfaces to get that "WrestleMania Moment." Punk still acting like the same babyface but hating Rock would have been much more interesting than what we got. I think that would have benefited Cenas character as well theres a lot of interesting directions you could have went with that angle. Unfortunately I think the main reason they didnt do it is because WWE is so afraid to try something new and they could have risked fan backlash against Rocky. Punks character would absolutely have a problem with some Hollywood guy coming in once a year and basically getting a Hogan parade. They had such a good opportunity to play up shades of grey with Punk/Cena/Rock and they didnt do it. That actually could have been a damn good Mania three way main event because all three guys represent very different fanbases. Punk the hardcores Cena the merchandise buying current target demographic and Rock the lapsed Attitude era fans. I dont think theyve ever come close to hitting that dynamic before. So we fast forward to taking the title off Punk and putting it on Rock. The promos going into their match were much better than anything Cena did with Rock. You really felt like Punk hated Rock and real visceral hate is my favorite type of wrestling angle. Rock beats Punk for the title in a sub par match which was no fault of Punks. It really didnt feel like a proper way to end the longest title reign of the modern era. So Punk is now out of the picture but a couple weeks later he has that BITCHIN TV match with Cena which I saw as a big "Fuck You" to the companies WrestleMania plans. I think Punk may be Cenas best opponent and I would have loved to see that match on the grandest stage of all. So now we need to fit Punk into Mania somehow and we get a lazy multi man match to challenge Undertakers streak straight out of a video game storyline. To me this didnt feel like a reward to one of the hardest workers of 2012. My problem with Taker streak matches is that theyre often great but you cant really run an angle all you have is the match itself. It exists in a vacuum. Its very much a "here in the moment" type of thing there is nowhere to go after that. One of Punks strengths is putting over feuds with great mic work and he cant do that with Taker. Taker matches remind me of the Wade Keller episode of Steve Austins podcast where they were talking about "putting smiles on faces" instead of running actual wrestling angles about titles wins and losses. I kind of feel like the matches exist just to be good matches and theres nothing else surrounding them. Theyre there to give fans that WrestleMania moment and that alone. We know Punk wont end the streak and after the match is over theres nothing else you can do. And if I remember correctly Punk kind of fell off a cliff after that Mania match. He meandered around in a meaningless Jericho program took some time off and was turned face again. I can totally see why he would be frustrated. In WWEs eyes losing to Taker at Mania is a reward. Yes it does create memories in the fans eyes but it did nothing to improve Punks spot on the card. Its just WWE constantly reminding us that their history is more important than their current product and current stars. I didnt really care if it was a great match or not (and it was great). I personally did not see it as a reward for having an excellent title reign and busting his ass for a year. It will be interesting to see what happens with him from here and if WWE will make any attempts to keep him.

I had something long that I was gonna post, and I'm getting IPS Driver errors. I think I read somewhere before about problems with cutting and pasting from word docs but I don't remember which thread. Um, help?

I must have missed it, what happened to the PrimeTime Players?

Christian is coming back! Curious where he fits into things. Hopefully he can get a Mania spot, I feel like he's missed the past three or four due to always being injured in the spring. Is Evan Bourne due back yet? They showed an Evan Bourne shooting star press in one of those network commercials, I found that odd since he's been off tv since January 2012. I read a while back that he did a couple NXT matches, but havent heard anything in a long time.

Just got back from a big party with a Rumble pool, and had a blast, ending aside. My thoughts: I don't hate the idea of taking the belts off of Goldust/Cody and here's way. I believe it was Will who mentioned that while all the Rhodes' tags were phenominal matches, they were lacking heat. The crowd was reacting to the fact that they were seeing great matches, but there was nothing visceral behind it. Their current tag division can get more mileage from heel champs, there's a few solid face teams that could chase the belts. Plus, Rhodes-Dust had a great run, I don't see it as getting their run cut short, it lasted it's natural lifespan. That Lesnar/Big Show match was certainly odd, wasn't it? I'm not sure if that was intentionally what they were going for, neither Brock or Show has an unprofessional reputation in ring. Big Show looked visibly annoyed during a couple of those camera shots where he should have been selling. He had this look on his face like "are you F'in kidding me?" And he said a couple things that were bleep-worthy. Are they trying to portray Brock as a guy who's so REAL he goes against the script? Was it a worked shoot? I respect you.... Lesnar man? Nothing I will add to what's already been said about Orton vs. Cena, however I found it unintentionally hilarious that Orton's "modified" STF incorporated a chinlock. That Rumble ending, my god. I need to add, Batista had horrible ring attire. Something about him I can't quite put my finger on, he doesn't look like the same guy. Not the obvious physique difference, even his face is different. I think it's a little unfair to Reigns to say the only reason people were cheering for him was because they didn't want Batista. I'm of the opinion that they could have made Reigns tonight. The guy eliminated nearly half the Rumble. If this was anytime before 2008-ish, I think they would have risked it with Reigns. He worked hard all year, he's over, he's not stale, and he is believable. Winning the Rumble would have been a great holy shit moment. I would have liked to see Rusev dominate a little bit more, but I like debuting monsters in the Rumble. They need to do this more instead of using the Rumble for comedy spots. I don't watch much NXT, is this guy the real deal? Brodus Clay is newly turned heel and doesn't even get a spot? Might not want to answer your phone around spring cleaning time Brodus... That Curt Hawkins sign got more screen time tonight than Curt Hawkins himself has had in the past four years. WWE is trolling us. There's no way anybody in that company could have expected anything except that reaction to Batista winning. They HAVE to acknowledge this on Raw. No way Batista comes out and gives a "thank you for still believing in me promo" on Raw.

This doesn't even feel like the same promotion I was really enjoying over the summer. I don't hate it, it's just everything is so... same. Too bad because this is usually my favorite time of the wrestling year. Maybe I need to take a long vacation...

Every wrestling podcast needs to end with Slayer. Great show guys!