The Chief

Since there's a parental control filter, some of that stuff could possibly stay in. Should be interesting to see once this goes live. A friend and I already took the launch date off from work :-)

Sorry if this has been addressed already, been offline the past couple days: Unedited theme music and Jesse commentary is pretty awesome and that sells me on the network alone. I see they're hyping this as "unedited" content, and that's awesome. But I do have some questions on how far they can go with "unedited" Do they blur out old 900 numbers? They do on DVD's. Ted DiBiase shills the USA movie of the week on a 1994 Raw, does that stay in? Do the Burger King, 1-800-COLLECT, etc ads they run stay in? (you know what I mean, those quick ads the announcers run down when they do a wide shot of the inside of the arena in between ring entrances) Those are minor and I could care less if the edit them out, but these are the kinds of things I think about. And what about ECW music? You are paying for this service, so is Metallica going to want a cut for Sandman entrances? I'm fairly knowledgable about DVD royalties but I don't know if streaming services are different. This has me very interested.

So what's Wednesday's EARTH SHATTERING announcement going to be? I'm guessing it's something network-related judging by who they have lined up for it.

Does Batista come back where he left off as a heel, or do we forget that happened?

To post here more. I thought wrestling on the internet was nothing but brainless Scott Keith types bitching about everything and making bad jokes. I found this place on accident by looking up information on Rocky Mountain Thunder of all people and was blown away by how intelligent everybody is. I can spend hours reading threads here and I don't have to put up with all the crap you see elsewhere.

No interest. For the sole reason I don't want to read a million message board posts about how he's "wasted in developmental" and "too good for developmental." For the record, I do believe there's quite a few quirks he would need to work in developmental before getting on TV.

No offense, but why would you have Henry sign a yearbook from 89? "Well all I had was this samurai sword, and I'm not gonna NOT get Mark Henry's autograph"

I don't know about that. The deep voice, the way he intimidates the camera, the short and sweet matter-of-fact no B.S. way he delivers his lines, I absolutely think Roman Reigns is believable. I really don't see how anybody could say otherwise.

That was a fascinating read from Meltzer, and what a sad story. On a somewhat related topic, I remember reading somewhere that Pillman's daughter died in a car accident shortly after the DVD was released. Just checked Wikipedia: says Alexis Reed, Pillman's stepdaughter, died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident on 11/26/09. Apparently, she dabbled in Wrestling. I can't imagine her being much older than 20, what a terrible loss.

The quick answer is that most "smarks" think that if you are not a supermodel, that somehow means you must be a good worker. And vice versa.

The Brian Knobbs episode is HILARIOUS

Could that be the first instance of NWA/WCW merchandising their wrestlers?

This is something that really should be a straight up match. Feels wrong having a gimmick overshadow it, I mean, this should be a REALLY big deal.

I honestly think they should just put one of the belts on HHH. He's the most over heel on the roster. Have him defend it once every two months like nWo Hogan. Then when they do unify it will mean something.

That was probably the loudest pop I've heard for a secondary title change in a long time. They might have something with Big E.

WCW wrestlers in general talked to the camera as part of their act (those long Harlem Heat rants come to mind) but Bagwell did it non-stop. Watch the 1997 War Games for a good example. I can see how he would be lost in WWE.

Now I have about a million questions about VHS tapes in the 80s in general...

I'm no Santino fan, but I didn't list him for that reason. There's always a spot for niche guys like that. I was thinking more along the lines of guys who have been around a long time and just don't really have much else to give, through their own fault or bookings. We usually have one of these "cull" years every four years or so, I was thinking 2014 might be one of those years. If we could get four or five decent call-ups that could be considered a successful replacement. I will say this, they've gotten a lot better with debuting new guys over the past year. Thank god we're past the sink or swim stuff like the "New Talent Initiative."

My thoughts on Swagger are that yes, he's been rehabilitated somewhat, but that team is ALL Cesaro. You could put anyone else in that spot and have the same effect. Cesaro is getting super over and you can tell management realizes that, eventually he's going singles. Swagger will go right back to where he was before. When they put Swagger with Dutch, there was interest for about three weeks then he was back to being the same old un-over Swagger. He's just cursed to be not over.

Challenge accepted!

I brought this up in another thread and some thought this would make a good topic, so here we go. Every now and then you have a transition year on the WWE roster where you look at January and December and it's like a completely different company. 1996 is a good example. TONS of new talent brought in at the beginning of the year and a lot of the "New Generation" stalwarts were phased out. 1997 probably would have been really weird if you still had Tatanka, Bigelow, Hakushi, Mabel, etc still around. A more recent example is in 2010 when you got rid of a lot of the mid-2000's guys like Shelton, Mickie James, Carlito, even Batista to make way for all the NXT kids. I was watching Raw the other night and started thinking about how insanely long characters are on TV these days. Example, Kofi Kingston has been on WWE television non-stop for almost six years! In the exact same role! Not that babyface JTTS is a bad role, but couldn't it be time to put somebody else in that role? Especially if they're not going to do anything with Kingston. So what I'm asking is do we need a midcard purge right now? I don't want this to turn into "Khali sucks, he needs to go" or anything like that because yes he does suck, but I'm sure he's useful to the company in promotional ways like reaching out to the Indian market. I'm thinking of guys who whether you think they're good or not, you just don't see them ever being in any different position that they're in right now. And yeah, it sucks that options are limited as to where else you can go to learn these days, but I don't want that topic to overtake this one. Here's a handful of guys I thought of: Kofi Kingston - The first one to come to mind, he's in the exact same spot as Shelton Benjamin or John Morrison, very athletic guy who shows up to do cutesy high spots in multi-man settings once a year and does nothing of note the rest of the year. Every five or six months throw him a secondary title and an uneventful reign. I could see TNA being all over someone like Kofi and that's probably the worst place somebody of his "style" should go if they ever wanted to get better, but I think it's time to cut Kofi. I would actually like even more if they got rid of this "rotating secondary champ" role in general, see also: Dolph Ziggler - Never saw the love for him, tries to put his bumps over more than his match and has horrible offense. What's his character even supposed to be anyway? He's supposed to be a show-off, but that never really comes off in his interviews, or even his ringwork. I don't care for RVD much, but he certainly plays a "show off" much better. Dolph will occasionally throw some sit-ups into his matches. I honestly think in his mind he thinks his goofy bumps are what makes his "show-off" character. I honestly think they've done all they can with him at this point. Jack Swagger - I think he's been hurt by half-assed World Title reigns and half-assed World Title pushes more than anyone in recent memory. I was glad that Sandow didn't win with his cash-in for this very reason. If they didn't shoot him to the top with zero plans he might not have the loser stigma he carries now. And does anyone even remember he was in the Mania "Main Event" earlier this year? Wade Barrett - For similar reasons as Swagger. They brought him back as a legit tough guy then proceeded to job him for 20 straight matches. That's not how a tough guy is booked. It may be possible to rehabilitate him, but I think too much damage has been done and he's never been much more than vanilla in the ring or on the mic. Sin Cara - There HAS to be some sort of contractual reason why he's still around since such a big deal was made of his signing. I'm actually surprised that more people didn't make memes of him breaking his hand on a dive and immediately calling for the ref to stop the match. I actually thought that was worse than the Kevin Nash incident. Use Hunico in a similar gimmick if you need Rey to groom a replacement. Hunico is GOOD. Drew McIntyre - He's young enough to where he can come back someday. And he's good enough to where he can transcend the gimmick that he's in, but right now he's toxic. WWE booking has killed him dead and he could really benefit from staying out of sight for a year or two. Layla - She's the most tenured Diva on the roster. Think about that. I'm honestly surprised she's been around as long as she has after LayCool split, but she's still here, doing nothing. You can't even use the "she's on the reality show" excuse for keeping her around. Get rid of Alicia Fox for the same reasons. JTG - I enjoyed the later Cryme Tyme stuff. And I think he's very charismatic. But he's now a Scotty 2 Hotty who isn't even on TV. And isn't the point of a Scotty 2 Hotty to job him to your guys? On TV? Don't see why he's still around. Is Evan Bourne still alive? He's not on my list, just honestly curious... So what do you guys think?

I'm probably a little higher on the current product than most, but I'm watching Raw tonight and I can't stop thinking about how much they need a good midcard purge. They could really stand to cut like ten or twelve contracts right now. Guys just seen to stick around for so much longer now. Jesus Christ, Kofi Kingston has been on WWE television almost six years...

Hunico and Camacho are back? Seems like they've been off TV for years. I really enjoy Hunico. Haven't seen enough of Camacho to form an opinion yet.

Always found it odd that he was allowed to take a shot at Ahmed like that. He was still on the active roster! That seemed especially cruel and racist.

I remember there was a Mr. Perfect/Stone Cold Steve Austin confrontation on Superstars from around this time that makes me really, really wish we could have gotten a grizzled veteran Curt teaching young punk Austin type of match. They were just laying into each other on the mic.