Sean Liska

I see the top 3 matches are up - I'll definitely be watching after work tonight. Great to see Arena Mexico pretty full with what looks like a hot crowd.

It was 8 years ago man. Modern HHH hasn't done too much to anger people. Not only did he do a clean job to Bryan at Mania in a great match, he did a run-in during the main event to get his ass kicked *again* and get the crowd back into the match for the peak run after they died following Taker's loss. Then he did totally clean jobs two months in a row to the Shield. And his association with Rollins has been a success, as he did more of the talking at first become Seth turned into the passable promo he is now. And Seth still gets "you sold out" chants 8 months later, so the angle was a success in getting Rollins heel heat. Most recently, HHH's heel work had a 2015 RAW crowd going nuts and chanting "We want Sting". My hatred of HHH was so much back in the day that I watched very little RAW from late 2002-late 2004. But now I'm feeling like he'll be able to at least steer the ship for a while if something happens to Vince. American wrestling isn't totally screwed.

God I hope the Negro Casas-Fuerza Guerrera match from Arena Mexico tonight shows up somewhere.

His match with Bryan was praised for not being the usual bloated HHH epic.

I more got the impression that Dave has no idea where they're going.

Bryan had a 20 main event on SD. A near 20 minute main event on RAW. And is headlining the next PPV in a key spot due to the free month gimmick. Maybe they don't see him as the next Cena but it's not like he's Ziggler.

I didn't get that impression. I thought it was reassuring that HHH understood that Roman gets booed because fans perceive him as being unfairly pushed and they think Bryan is being held down. They seem to get it. He may indeed understand it better, but we really didn't get a feel for how he would manage the situation better if he had complete control. Basically, Triple H threw Vince under the bus during the interview for the decision, whilst giving absolutely no indication what he would do differently. Well, he can't come out and say he'd turn Reigns heel for a year and hold off his title win for WM32 or whatever. That wouldn't look good.

I didn't get that impression. I thought it was reassuring that HHH understood that Roman gets booed because fans perceive him as being unfairly pushed and they think Bryan is being held down. They seem to get it.

Wow, you're not going to get a better house show than that. Enjoy.

I don't get too mad about it because they just exist to put people over. They both did clean jobs on SD. They don't want to sacrifice guys like Rusev and Wyatt now, so they build up Kane and Show to make Bryan and Reigns look good. That said, it didn't help Reigns. It just made everything even more painful for the Philly fans.

Lance Russell and Dave Brown will be ringside calling a Jerry Lawler match in front of 18,000 people in Memphis Saturday night. In 2015! Lance put this on his FB page - "Good Morning, this is one of those special days that really got started yesterday, when "The King" gave me an unexpected call and asked, "How'd you like to come back home this weekend to enjoy seeing lots of old friends, some great basketball and best of all, a bit of that special "Memphis Wrestling?" I'm excited to announce that Dave Brown and I will be participating in "Memphis Wrestling Night", at the Grizzlies game, Saturday Jan. 31st at the FedEx Forum. We will be rooting for the Grizzlies when they take on the OK Thunder. At halftime, Dave and I will be ringside, calling the action in a match that Jerry Lawler will be participating in. Rumor has it, that "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair will be making an appearance."

How exactly can one call Survivor Series a hit when it was free? Couldn't the free month have been the thing that was the draw? The amount of PPV buys was also surprisingly high.

Um, yeah. But it's true. WWE had a big hit in November with Survivor Series (surprisingly high PPV numbers and a very successful hook for the free Network month), but the general feeling is still going to be that the fall was a miserable time for WWE creatively. The Royal Rumble build was apparently very effective, I thought the Sting appearance and Lesnar destroying everyone was a great go-home segment, but I haven't seen one comment giving them credit for doing a good job. It's just all about how terrible the booking of the Rumble match was.

One thing about modern internet fans, it seems, is that when WWE has clear creative hits like the Survivor Series main event stip or the build for the Rumble this year (calling them hits based off Network increases), no one really acknowledges it. It's just dismissed as fans being dumb or the brand being a draw.

There has to be an empty TV studio somewhere in the Northeast where they can grab 50 fans and do a Memphis-style TV show. Just kidding but the thought of it amuses me.

WWE's TV rights deal is going to escalate to over $200 million in a few years. NJPW's annual revenue is about $25 million now. Do t worry about WWE. Worry about your own enjoyment.

Just watched the 1/10 NOAH show and enjoyed the hell out of it. I actually liked it more than a lot of the pimped NJPW shows, fun stuff up and down the card. The Suzuki-Gun angle at the end opens up months of possibilities of cool stuff. Between that and AJPW, seems like it's time for people to be paying attention to the wider puro scene.

It's 1984 again.

Maybe a bit but they sold out every Budokan show that decade except a few in 95 and 96 according to Observer numbers while running them much more frequently than the 80s. It was a solid run. But yeah I was exaggerating a bit for comedic effect.

By far the greatest PPV of all-time and the greatest TV show of all-time in the same week. We are literally living in the best time to be a wrestling fan in the history of the business existing.

Yeah but still. We're talking Misawa-Jumbo at Budokan. Set the city on fire for a decade. 200 straight sellouts. One of the greatest matches ever. One of the biggest moments in the history of puro. Two massive legends. Marco Ranaulo doing some great commentary isn't better than that. Throw me a bone with the NJPW love Dave.

Dave now has an episode of the AXS NJPW TV show as being by far the greatest single wrestling TV show of all-time, for those keeping track. These were also 1-hour wrestling TV shows, I'm just saying - 06/24/90 Misawa vs. Tsuruta ***** 06/24/90 Hansen vs. Gordy ***1/2 06/02/91 Tsuruta vs. Kobashi ****3/4 06/02/91 Misawa & Kawada vs. Gordy & Williams ***1/2 11/29/92 Gordy & Williams vs. Taue & Akiyama (Tag League) **** 11/29/92 Misawa & Kawada vs. Kobashi & Baba (Tag League) ****3/4 11/1/90 Benoit vs. Liger 11/1/90 Hase/Sasaki vs. Muto/Chono 11/1/90 Choshu vs. Hashimoto *Old man mode turned off*

Dave said on Twitter that 1/4 was easily the best US PPV of all-time. If it weren't for this place I would feel like I've lost all touch with modern wrestling. I mean, really fun show, but the reactions are something else.

The types of crowd reactions we're talking about only really exist with major PPV crowds and cities like Chicago and NY. Your average RAW crowd in Des Moines isn't going to be rebelling against Reigns or reading the latest internet rumors about Bryan's push.

This is something I want to write more about, but everything in entertainment is more niche than ever. There is no musician as famous as Michael Jackson, no athlete as big as Jordan, no actor as mainstream as Arnold, no talk show host comparable to Carson, no TV show with water cooler buzz like Seinfeld, etc. But the good thing is that because it's so difficult to get eyeballs today, you can get paid a ton of money to produce content that generates decent viewership.