C.S.

It means a lot. I'm not saying otherwise. It means nothing to what I'm watching now. Joe hasn't had a classic match in WWE, period. The greatest hits are there to enjoy, but they don't make Backlash a better show. Who are you even talking to? Is there someone here insinuating any of those points you just brought up? My bad. I thought you were responding to my post about not giving shit what Joe and Low Ki did 15 years ago because it has no bearing on the Joe that showed up tonight. If not, my apologies for the confusion.

I don't watch TV, so I can only comment on this Joe-Reigns match, which sucked. You liked the Finn-Joe series more than I did, but we're both in agreement on Finn at least. I praised the Lesnar stuff, but that's it. It's something because Lesnar has been a shithouse for years now. Joe frustrates me. He shows bursts of something awesome, but that's all it ever is.

It means a lot. I'm not saying otherwise. It means nothing to what I'm watching now. Joe hasn't had a classic match in WWE, period. The greatest hits are there to enjoy, but they don't make Backlash a better show.

Have you seen a lot of his pre WWE matches? His RoH match with Low Ki is on YouTube. This is what's so frustrating about Joe's fans. No one gives a fuck what he did 15 years ago, especially against a never-was like Low Ki. (Low Ki is someone who has pissed away opportunity after opportunity to the point where you'd have to be psychotic to get excited about anything he does, because it never lasts. Joe, at least, has been popular and successful everywhere he's gone. I can respect that, even if he's not my cup of tea.) What has Joe done in WWE though? I'm struggling to name one classic match. Sorry, his "epic series of matches" with Finn and Nak in NXT bored the shit out of me - for which they get equal blame, believe me. Joe overachieved against a lazy Brock Lesnar, so there's that, I guess.

Now, this is the Joe I know and hate - slow, sloppy, and boring as shit.

I hate Joe, but this has been awesome. Credit where credit is due.

Until they don't... Until they don't.

Nut shots really do make a match better.

This show has been a total slog. I don't care if Miz vs. Seth was a five-star match or whatever - I'm sick of seeing them wrestle each other and had no investment in the inevitable outcome of Seth's victory. Bryan vs. Cass sucked in every possible way. Cass is useless.

Bryan's lips look like he just swallowed a shit.

Uh oh, they're giving Rusev terrible Vince lines.

Bryan vs. Miz is official? When did that happen? Tonight? (Forgive me, I've basically zoned out the putrid commentary and endless video packages.)

If they're building toward Miz vs. Bryan, this is a weird way to do it. Maybe Cass does win tonight? :|

Nakamura has been a crippling disappointment since his NXT debut against Sami Zayn. I'd say this is probably his last chance to prove he can have a really good match, but who am I kidding? He'll probably win the World Title tonight, regardless. I don't see Big Cass winning. I think this sets up Miz somehow.

Conrad's approach sounds to me like Gordon Ramsay. By that I mean he's playing a character version of himself and adjusts the dial tone up or down depending on the show.

I have nothing to add to this situation, but finding out that this place used to be called New Millennium Blues puts a smile on my face for some reason.

I think he'd be just as successful, because the Dave stuff is already old to me, and I've only seen the three Network shows. It's the other stuff - the great stories, the "insider look" into how the WWE was run and Vince's mindset, etc. - that, for me, make the show worthwhile to listen to. I think all of the Dave bashing on the show is a side-effect of Conrad mentioning him every other sentence. "Dave thought this, reported that, gave this match x amount of stars."

I have no idea what Dave (or Bruce) thought, but I hated it. I think people in this thread are responding to me, not Dave.

True, but outside of the names and some of the 1980s WWF silliness that applied to many things there, Akeem and Virgil were still presented as legitimate competitors/presences for the most part. Even Polka Dot Dusty, while he was never going to be the world-beater he was in the NWA no matter what he wore, was still positioned as a strong upper-midcard babyface and given a WrestleMania match against Randy Savage. "Macho King" may not have been a main event gimmick, but Randy Savage was still a fairly big deal.

Did either of you read the full thread? My original point was that gimmicks often live or die based on what the wrestlers do with them. - Red Rooster could have been good. It wasn't because of Terry Taylor. - Undertaker could have been bad. It wasn't because of Mark Callaway. - Polka Dot Dusty could have sucked, and it certainly wasn't at the level of NWA Dusty, but he still made it work. - Fake Undertaker is an example of the gimmick being bad in the wrong hands. Yes, OBVIOUSLY, it was always intended for "holes" to eventually appear. Not sure why that was even mentioned. But at first, everyone* thought it was the real Undertaker - and yet it somehow sucked. *Everyone meaning "mark" child/teen fans, not Observer readers. - With Fake Diesel - not the best example, I concede - it demonstrates what Kevin Nash did with a pretty pedestrian bodyguard/muscle type vs. what Glenn Jacobs did. - While an evil dentist gimmick has delicious horror movie potential, I'm not sure anyone could have made Isaac Yankem, D.D.S. work. Maybe Matt Borne? (The original Doink - another gimmick that was proven to be a slow death in the wrong hands but great when Bourne had it.)

I thought he was great in tag teams with Daniel Bryan and X-Pac, and that's not solely down to the other guy. Corporate Kane was also good fun. I can't agree that he never made anything better because he's been involved in so much ridiculous crap that shoudn't have worked at all, including the Kane gimmick itself, and he elevated it with his personality and presence.

I was poking fun at the other poster for calling "undead monster" and "fire demon" great gimmicks with a straight face. Yes, they're considered great because Mark Callaway and Glenn Jacobs made them great. But let's not pretend they were good on paper. Imagine literally anyone else in those gimmicks. It takes a very special performer to make them work. With Taker, we actually have an example of someone else doing it: same costume, same music, same presentation - and it stunk. Remember, for weeks, the Brian Lee Taker was presented as the real deal, with camera angles and other magic tricks obscuring his actual identity, but it somehow wasn't good all of a sudden. The missing, magic ingredient was Mark Callaway.

What?! The Killer Bees were very popular and cool as hell. Who didn't love the switcheroo mask gimmick? Brian Lee sure did an incredible job as The Undertaker. Kane himself, Glenn Jacobs, lit the world on fire as Diesel. Great gimmicks, so what was the problem?

I believe the Rooster story. Prichard has a point: Why would Vince hire a wrestler and invest money, promotion, and TV time just for the sake of a rib? Okay, there was the Dusty polka dot look that was supposedly a rib, but I could just as easily see Vince thinking something that gaudy was actually fashionable - after all, look at the outfits Vince himself wore back then. Either way, Dusty earned Vince's respect by getting that over. Anyway, it's easy to look at the Rooster now, laugh at it, and mock it for being such a terrible idea. But tons of WWE gimmicks are atrocious on paper - Undertaker and Kane, anyone? - and they got over like gangbusters because of the talent involved. I believe someone like a, say, Michael Hayes could have gotten the Red Rooster gimmick over with his cocky moonwalk strut, charisma, etc. Taylor never embraced the character and probably didn't have the personality to put it over the top. Ironically, I thought he displayed both charisma and personality with the WWE-like "Taylor Made Man" in WCW a few years later. Maybe he learned his lessons from the failed Rooster stint? I don't know. I wonder if the real rib on Taylor was when he returned to the WWF in '93 or '94 as "Terrific" Terry Taylor - a bland gimmick for what Vince probably saw as a bland performer who didn't know how to sports-entertain.

Ryan Ward? That's the one. Thanks. Whatever happened to him..? Come to think of it, I have no idea. Does anybody know? We still don't.