Hooker

Agreed. Who wants to hear Foley talk about how attracted they are to the divas? It's gross. Oh, wait. Are we talking about something else now?

It's hard to imagine worse storytelling.

This show literally opened with Trips and Stephanie phoning it in.

There will still be plenty of LOL GFW moments, so don't lose all hope. "Plenty" seems very optimistic.

We're talking about the same Big Show that comes out to absolutely zero fan reaction, right?

Did you miss the promo last week where Sting killed the entire crowd for the entire three hour show?

So I can't be the only one that finds Triple H and Stephanie coming out exclusively to run down the PPV card and basically carny the shit out of a good 20 minute block of RAW with zero attempt to advance a storyline or do anything remotely interesting at all, right? I know RAW is basically a glorified series of ads for the PPVs to begin with, but this is way beyond bad taste. Add in fifty slow-motion recaps where they dim out everything but Rollin's knee and Cena's face while Cole screams at you to "WATCH CLOSELY TO SETH'S RIGHT KNEE" when it is literally the only thing happening on screen and it becomes very obvious that the target RAW viewer only watches the show once every month and is a drooling retard. Porn is more sophisticated.

Sure, there were lots of people here talking about how great Reigns is before the Shield broke up, but here and wrestling audiences are two very different things. The past month or so, Paul Heyman has come out and killed the crowds dead, and then DVDVRers came on here and gushed about what a great promo it was (and I say this as someone who fucking loves Heyman). If you're saying that people here were getting very keen on Reigns, I won't disagree with you. But I don't see how much that accounts for. WWE makes very little money on this forum. They need to win over the people who are going to boo the shit out of Reigns at Wrestlemania 32 and possibly whoever wins the Rumble, regardless of if it's Reigns or Lesnar, if they telegraph their plans clearly enough. EDIT: But I totally disagree with you on charisma. Heath Slater has 20 times the charisma of Roman Reigns.

You think the problem is they're not pushing the unstoppable action hero narrative hard enough? It's not being an action hero. It's being a bad ass. There's a difference. It's why everyone got so high on him in The Shield in the first place. I don't think "people," assuming that means the audience, were high on him during The Shield. They were high on The Shield, which was a faction that Rollins did the wrestling in and Ambrose did the talking in. That's like saying people were high on Ryback, and later Tarver, because The Nexus was a hot angle. Besides which, when has "bad ass" ever been a drawing act, outside of Austin (granted that he was the highest drawing act ever) and Goldberg? At least half the roster are badasses, but you go down the list of the greats and bad asses are far and few between. Hart (hard working perfectionist), Cena (squeaky-clean superhero), Hogan (squeaky-clean superhero), Flair (vain cheater), Sting (squeaky-clean superhero / silent mystical figure), Rhodes (everyman), Funk (maybe, although I would sooner call him a cartoon character), CM Punk (angry youth), The Rock (maybe, although arrogant jock fits way better), Mankind (insecure loser), Savage (maybe, but I don't even think you can classify Savage), Undertaker (sort-of, but that's clearly not the thrust of the character). I think you have to go all the way back to Sammartino, and now we're getting into territory drawing vs broad appeal. Even the ones that it does sort-of fit (Rock, Savage, Funk), it was a small aspect of a much better gimmick / character. Meanwhile, wrestling is littered with Diesels and Scott Steiners that audiences hate when they were on top. It's really hard to relate to a "bad ass," and Reigns clearly does not have the charisma to pull it off. Doubling down on it is such a terrible idea.

You think the problem is they're not pushing the unstoppable action hero narrative hard enough?

The crowd has been absolutely dead for Paul Heyman promos for weeks now.

So, to the people loudly championing what a tremendous wrestler Roman Reigns has become, is he one of your favourites now? Do you eagerly look forward to the next Roman Reigns segment? If [insert favourite wrestler of years past] came back in their prime, would Reigns be the first wrestler on the roster you'd want to see a match with? Because I would pick any one of Bryan, Cesaro, Owens, Balor, Rollins, Ambrose, Lesnar, Harper, Rusev, Kidd, KENTA, Zayn, Joe, Rhyno, or Breeze ahead of Reigns to face a Flair or Terry Funk or Randy Savage. And that's just the people I doubt anyone on here would disagree with. I'd also prefer to see wrestlers like Jack Swagger or R-Truth over Reigns - people that are much more accomplished and/or talented than Reigns but are treated like jokes instead of faces-of-the-company-to-bes. Reigns, while dealing with the audience hating him, has never had to deal with having the company cut off his legs the way someone like Zack Ryder has. Let's see if he's still motivated to leap over the top rope head-first or work hard in nothing matches against Wyatt when the promise of everything he could ever dream of isn't there. Let's see how motivated he is when his promise is another RAW match in the already-in-the-ring spot. Audiences have always respected wrestlers who earn what they get. Nobody would have boo'ed CM Punk main eventing Wrestlemania. Reigns has been a professional wrestler for a shorter period of time than Alicia Fox has been on the main roster. Reigns has never captured the audience's imaginations as a singles competitor and has been rewarded for this by being thrust into the main event of the biggest platform imaginable. I cannot for the life of me understand how people fail to grasp this. Wrestling fans go on and on about how there's no good storytelling in the WWE and then seem completely unable to understand the very clear story of why a group of people who have traditionally had to endure social scorn for liking something aren't willing to get behind someone who is being rewarded exclusively for his looks.

It felt like Trips and Stephanie weren't going to start the show until enough fans bought programs in that opening segment. Holy shit that was their worst thing yet.

If Piper really did try to Unionize, this is the first I've ever heard of it. So I did my research and it turns out I was crossing wires with Ventura. Nevermind!

Is Piper the only one that tried to unionize professional wrestling as a top guy? You can talk about how John Cena doesn't politic and visits sick kids and blah blah blah, but Piper tried to improve the condition of his co-workers when he didn't have to at risk to his own privileged. He is a hero beyond the likes of most other wrestlers - maybe even every single one - and if anyone deserved to live a full life, it is him. This is brutally tragic.

Blacks Gays Women Muslims Mexicans Mentally Handicapped 9/11 Firemen/Volunteers Kittens

Well, I would say the star of this is the commentary. Yeah, some of the UWFi gong show stuff is in there, but the best stuff is the actual wrestling set to some really terrific, non-WWE-style English language commentary.

I'm just downloading the raw FLV files with Video Downloader for FireFox. I don't wanna have to go hunting for this shit again.

Dunno how many fans of this there are (or how many people are even aware of it), but some British company back in the 90s took UWF International matches and slapped on complimentary shoot-style commentary, and it's great. The only downside is that, in an attempt to maintain authenticity, they took out a lot of the wrestlers recognizable to the western world (i.e., no Vader) and I think they trimmed down the number of tag matches. If you're looking to test the waters, the Nobohiko Takada vs Gary Albright series is an obvious place to start. However, I could never find it except behind aggravating paywalls, so I'm not the best to ask for solid recommendations. But, really, it's all great. LINK

So Kim Jong-un's best friend is on Hogan's side, at least.

Stone Cold Steve Austin is a stupid mark.