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If you told me 30 years ago that Ric Flair would be doing hummus commercials on the Super Bowl, I'd have some questions. Mainly, "what's hummus?"

To me, their biggest issue is that there are just too many people having a say backstage. When there is an entire team of writers they are all going to want to get there stuff on TV, crowd reactions and natural progression be damned. Look at the points on something as simple as Cesaro with Heyman. - Cesaro turns his back on Swagger/Dutch because he sees what Heyman has done for Brock and believes he should be at that level. - We get Swagger v Cesaro for a month or two before Swagger gets some back up. - Brock returns (at Heyman's request) and we get Cesaro/Lesnar v Swagger/xxx - Natural progression would have Cesaro outshining Brock in their appearances together before Brock finally snaps and beats him down. - Now we are setup for Cesaro v Lesnar. - Even if Lesnar goes over, you have still built up a credible upper midcard/main event option for future events. It's these "missed chances" that really get under people's skin. How does Rusev Day not get a decent run with the tag titles? Why split them up? What has either party done since that was better than keeping them all together? Zack Ryder gets the "outta nowhere" IC title win at Mania what was the point other than a "WrestleMania Moment" which ultimately looks stupid in hindsight. I'm more then happy catching TV highlights on YouTube and watching PPVs on the Network.

Vince should create XBA, XHL, XLB. Then XWE.

Honestly, that's ultimately the real problem for why people keep coming back- especially with wrestling right now. Real sports works because in real sports, hope springs eternal. Just a few years ago, the Chiefs looked like a sad-sack team just good enough to make the playoffs but not good enough to win a game, and the 49ers were a team that fell from a rising star to the biggest joke in the NFC in a couple years. Today, they're in the Super Bowl. THAT is why sports fans will keep coming back- if you walk away from an inferior product, you'll never know if THIS is the year it all comes together. The worst part about wrestling right now isn't just that it's bad- but that we know for a fact WWE could be SO GOOD if they just tried to. The quality of wrestler, top to bottom, may be the best it's been ever (somehow even including the post-InVasion era when WWE had everyone). You can't really say there's anyone truly BAD in the WWE right now- and even the worst wrestler in the company is at least "pretty good." That has put WWE into the same problem as real sports. It's become a promise of hope springing eternal of "Yeah, we know. We suck. But you know how good these workers are. We're SO CLOSE to being good. It's right in front of you. Why, next week could be the week we turn the corner and finally become awesome again, and if we do the show will be SOOO GOOD and you'll be SOOOOOOOO SORRY you stopped watching and missed out. I bet you'll cry and cry and be miserable forever because you put so much time in bad wrestling and missed out when it finally became good. You don't want to miss when we're good again, do you? DO YOU?"

Bill Murray doing a GroundHog Day commercial on Groundhog Day (or maybe that was yesterday) is just perfect

So if you are wondering what Joey Janela's incredible Super Bowl Halftime Spring Break announcement: ??

And momentum usually works in reverse anyway. The more momentum you have going in to your PPV title shot, the lower the chance that you win the belt. If the champ already put you over in the build, he gets his heat back once the stakes are highest.

Watching that Naomi/Flair clip again, I feel like they'd make a great team. Not going to happen, since they're both already at the top of their division, but the pairing has a great 70s action heroine look.

https://sports.theonion.com/victorious-patrick-mahomes-thanks-bears-for-drafting-mi-1841420779?utm_source

on the second 3 and out Mostert got 6 yards on first down and then they threw it twice in a row when they needed to eat clock in addition to running being their strength and I'm going to be Unhappy about that for a long, long, time.

maybe someday Tevin Coleman will kick his leg out of his leg while shouting all you had to do was tag me hand me the ball

Damn right. Fuck Shanahan. Fuck him, Fuck him, FUCK HIM. Ok I'm better now.

Jennifer Lopez could tell me to crawl on the floor and bark like a dog because it would entertain her and I'd bark so loud the neighbours would have to call the police.

Umm...J.Lo has the vocal range of a tone deaf doberman...but that booty tho.

Harley Race vs Haku

100 times this. This is why I stopped watching the WWE cuz it seems you have to be retired for at least 5 years or the WWE does t push you past a certain point.

I think one of the biggest mistakes was not going with Roman winning at Wrestlemania 31. The one long term plan they had they abandon at the last second. Relying on older stars to promote shows in lieu of younger guys. No one is special. Hell, not numbering Wrestlemania reportedly because Vince feels it makes it sound old. Meanwhile other sports stake their prestige on the history behind everything.

Not even just wrestling, either. Movies, sitcoms, the news...

Austin never pinned Bret and in that case clearly he didn't need to. The double turn at WM13 felt like and more importantly was correctly framed by the WWF as Austin having defeated Bret metaphysically. Of course you often can't rely on WWE to properly construct that frame so normally its best to pass the torch with a clean fall and not undercut it. (Undertaker should've stayed gone after Brock broke the streak, for intsance)

There’s no consequences or stakes in WWE. Say Samoa Joe went on a losing streak, what does it matter? He could very well be put into a US title shot or whatever the very next week. Dynamite’s ranking system, while flawed, at least is a device they use to explain why a title match is happening, MLW is great at booking blood feuds, NWA uses their studio set up to escalate feuds. WWE has momentum. “Joe might have lost 36 weeks in a row, but he’s won the last 2 matches and that momentum has gotten him this Championship Opportunity”.

Just wanted to apologize for coming off as such a prick, Sundays are usually my beer drinking days and I'm definitely more likely to shoot off with a controversial opinion. I don't necessarily have a changed mind on the man's life but I realize that I offended a lot of the people here and for that I am sorry.

I just think the "they'll complain and keep watching" gets under people's skin here because we are the exact fans that *do* complain and keep watching.

I often find myself watching things, wishing that WALTER had came in and chopped the ever living shit out of everyone involved.

Watched this a couple days before RR, also wished Walter had came in and chopped the ever living shit out of Brock and everyone.

Oh grandpa

"Passed when he should've run" will be his legacy forever. He can hold a dick. Not for being a terrible play caller when it matters, but for his refusal to own his part of the Falcon's collapse in that game...

As a Falcons fan, my pettiness level is off the charts right now. Kyle Shanahan's tears give me life. And Nick Bosa crying over not getting to meet his hero in the White House is just gravy...

Them thinking Seth could be one of the biggest stars is one of their problems. Especially when they had Dean Ambrose under contract. The selection process for "top guy" is completely flawed. They've got Big E doing comedy for the fifth year in a row when he might be the most charismatic guy in the company. The New Day is great, but every one of those guys could be doing more. Someone mentioned Ziggler. That guy should be a HUGE star, instead of going through the motions whenever a top heel needs a lackey. Zack Ryder was never gonna be Hulk Hogan, but there's no reason he couldn't be prime Tito Santana. Rusev Day is another GREAT example. Sure, they got Daniel Bryan right, but only after their shows were hijacked by fans for six months. There's no reason to expect different. They're gonna put the Smackdown belt on Roman, and it's gonna get a better reaction than any other time he's won the title, and Vince is gonna interpret that as "goddamn, pal, I told you." And they're gonna start sending him out there doing his "Samoan Cena" act he was doing that the fans weren't buying. The problem now is that they can't reform the Shield to take the heat off of Roman. That whole angle was as egregious an act of "fuck our customers and what they think" as I've ever seen. Strowman is getting huge reactions, but instead of taking advantage of the hottest babyface they'd had in a couple years, they go out of their way to cool off Ambrose and Rollins, and kill off Strowman, derail McIntyre, and, well, Ziggler didn't have anything going, so he was fine, but you're ostensibly killing off four top guys so the fans feel conflicted about booing Reigns. It's fucking brutal. And I think the over-reliance on Lesnar may finally be what deals a serious, undeniable blow to their profits. Just about everyone I know that watched before the Lesnar return has stopped, due to it being "the same shit." My one complaint about the tv show "The Office" is that it feels like sometimes the writers punish you for caring about the characters. "Oh, you want Andy to have a redeemable character arc? Fuck you, here's a boat." Nobody makes you feel like an idiot for investing in characters emotionally than WWE.

Shan was mad because it looked like the Chiefs jumped offsides with no whistle.

It's like when Katy Perry played, and accidentally made it really obvious that she's only got one and a half good songs.

Baby Mr. Peanut > Baby Yoda No way in hell Ric Flair is eating hummus. AT least not sober. Although going into Flair RIGHT after that really sad Google commercial ?

God damn, I can't wait for 2020 to be over.

Probably the only that chant has happened in a Miami stadium without someone getting the shit beat out of him Man this Super Bowl is extremely patriotic this year. someone is trying to send a message

The Kanas City fans doing the War Chant has me pulling for the 49ers.

We're not a wrestling company pal. We're putting smiles on people's faces.

Had to imagine any Barbara Crampton segment not being NSFW.

On the subject of the XFL(yeah a few days late lol), has anyone seen this?

Happy to pass on those just like I was happy to pass on The Boys. You don't have to watch every comics related project as some sort of remembrance for how starved we were twenty years ago.

I don't want AEW to succeed because of what that would mean for WWE. I want AEW to succeed because of what that would mean for AEW. It's an odd aspect of wrestling fan mentality, if hypothetically someone in AEW catches fire and becomes the generational wrestling star of this era, Dynamite starts drawing more viewers than Raw and Smackdown combined, they're drawing 50-100,000 sellouts everywhere they go, more kids own Jurassic Express lunch boxes than Peppa Pig ones... and some Wrestling fans would still spend more mental energy wondering how Vince will respond to that, than enjoying the boom and loving that they can say "In 2013, that kid wrestled in front of a crowd of 3 people and a dog. And I bought the dog".

My WWE viewership has dropped 10 fold in the last 3 years. I havent followed NXT on a weekly basis since right before Aleister Black got punked in the parking lot... RAW I haven't watched in well over 2 years. I dont even know what my FOX channel is for Smackdown. The monthly PPV's have no value for me. I check in for the Big 4, that's about it. There's some characters I absolutely dig- Otis & Mandy is a hilarious backstory.... but I only know of that through social media. What turns me off the product? Predictability and the lack of realism. Whether that is storyline or match layout - you just know how everything is going to go. Everybody has to "get their shit in", no matter how out of place it looks in a match. I hate the WWE right now for making me sound like Eric Bischoff.

NJPW Young Lion, Kazuchika Okada with Taichi.

Even if you didn't speak that at the funeral, that is as beautiful a eulogy as I have ever seen.

I don't listen to WOL normally but I saw it was a Jim Valley solo show and he was talking about the lack of fan buy-in with WWE. Brother went off and it was both entertaining and really well done. I don't agree with everything he said but he talked about wrestlers lacking motivation, start-stops, and there being no stakes for anything. He closed by going through the wrestling fan stereotypes. They are fat neckbeards that wear black, smell, virgins, living in mother's basement, etc. But they aren't stupid. And that WWE can't get all that many of them to buy into their product and open up their wallets, really who is stupid at this stage?

Sport of the future

I watched the main event again, and I don't think it can be overstated how wide a margin adam cole is the worst performer in this match. He's surrounded by seven/six carnivores, who are all laying their shit in on a big stage, and he tags in, mounts Barthel, and throws a half dozen of the worst punches I've ever see, not a single one of which gets within four inches of it's alleged target. The rest of the match is more of the same, with cole doing his "homeless man's hbk" schtick while everyone else is bringing the fucking lumber. It also occurred to me that adam cole looks like a slightly less intimidating luke wilson. His head's WAYYY too big for his body, so much so that he looks like an Easter Island statue, and for some reason a small but vocal percentage of fans have just decided this dude is the next top guy. At least he didn't have to cut a promo before the match, because he can't do that either. I don't like any of the other UE guys, but they at least raised their game for this match. I know Cole is supposedly being mentored by Shawn Michaels, but that's about the last thing he needs. If I were him, I'd tell HBK never to speak to me again and beg Fit Finlay to take me under his wing. Having said that, every time I watch this I become even more enamored with the Imperium guys. I did a deep dive of nxt UK at work the last two days, just watching old matches of theirs. Fabian Aichner is extremely my shit, and I love how unlikeable Barthel is. He's like the evil ski instructor in every alpine comedy ever. And I'd seen Alexander Wolfe before, but I'll also say that "the Dresden Hatchet Man" is a top-notch hook. Damn.