Hooker

So there's no way Cena drops the title clean if he's in the world title picture, right? Meaning that they took their biggest star and used him for the past three months to build up a title and then they're just going to shenanigans it off him, undoing all that work. They should just transfer it to Cesaro, Cesaro holds the Antonio Cesaro US Open Challenge, nobody comes out, and then the belt immediately turns to dust in his hands and is never mentioned again.

Are you kidding? "Here's how I would have done it."

So, just watched the show. Fuck Cena/Cesaro and Lesnar destroying a car. Titus taking every drop of piss out of Layfield was the best thing on this show by far.

Anyone that goes near Brock Lesnar is reckless.

That Terminator trailer is a perfect example of how Reigns will never get to be number one without them just booking him to be regardless of how the audience reacts. Even if you think he's the best raw talent in wrestling right now (and he ain't), Vince is just massively out of touch. Ultimately, it's a testament to what an awful state professional wrestling is in that the WWE can continue to put on a show that is so totally impossible to become invested in and yet nobody is capable of putting on a better one. [insert your favourite TV show] is [30-60] minutes long and provides engaging characters, drama, and setpieces every episode. RAW is [6, 3] times a long and provides less than half.

Oh, I don't know. We have Shaw instead of Rogers in western Canada because of the totally-not-anti-trust-collusion agreement between Shaw and Rogers. Maybe I do have access to the full online network, but my understanding was that the only thing available is the full-priced reruns and PPVs channel.

yes. So how do you guys feel when every month is being given away for free to people who aren't you? I would be incensed. (full disclosure: I live in Canada, so neither have access to free months or the actual Network in its proper capacity)

Do already-subscribed customers have to pay for the "free" months that seem to be every second month now?

Well, they'd have to find psychic Bigfoot first, but for some reason, he's never in the place they look.

I live inside the hockey bubble as well as the wrestling bubble (again, I have a friend that also lives in the wrestling bubble and didn't know who Rousey was), and in the hockey bubble people know very loosely who Triple H is, namely because of stuff like this: Triple H very effectively sums up all the low opinions people have of the WWE and professional wrestling and was around when it was popular and was usually on the TV when people would flick past it on their TV. I'd say he's easily more well known than Stephanie God damn McMahon. Honestly, not to say any of them could recognize Triple H, but who here could talk to their mom / dad / sister / relative that has never watched professional wrestling and could have any confidence that they'd know who Stephanie is? EDIT: Triple H does return 302 million search results in Google compared to Rousey's 20 million, for what it's worth.

Or you're just ignoring / lying to yourself about the real reasons people boo Cena. Who knows? Everyone's opinion is valid. Like, my opinion is that Cena got booed at Wrestlemania and booed the following night on RAW, so your "Cena's getting really good reactions again" part is quantifiably, demonstrably wrong. But that's just my opinion.

Has Cena been booed out of every Wrestlemania? I can't remember one that he wasn't at this point. If pro-wrestling ever becomes popular again (and it increasingly seems like it won't), people are going to wonder why this thing wasn't always so great and they're gonna take a trip down Wrestlemania's memory lane and see the biggest company's top guy getting shit on for over a decade. Those people are going to be absolutely bewildered.

To the degree that Miz's title push worked, it worked because of Alex Riley.

So, podcast shoot with Kaitlyn in nine months, three minute video of her butt released by the WWE in 14 months?

Man, I said I don't like Bray Wyatt in both posts and you're honestly trying to play the I'm-upset-because-my-favourite-guys-didn't-win angle on this?

What crocodile tears? I said, in the part you quoted, that I don't care about him. But while you may need Undertaker to draw next year, you need Wyatt to draw every night. HHH, Cena, Big Show, Taker, and then a MitB main event were all bullshit. I don't care about any of them for a number of reasons, but it makes no sense for those matches to end that way.

It's amazing to me that people are outraged that Cena, their top guy who works house shows and publicity and is on every RAW and every PPV, won his match against a newer guy but are fine with Undertaker, a guy who wrestles once a year and whose mystique is now gone, winning his match despite the fact that the story that he is unbeatable is now finished and, as a result, now beating or not beating him is a barometer as to whether someone is worth a damn or not. Imagine a long-standing record getting broken at the Olympics, and then four years later everyone's really talking up some hotshot who could break it again and then not only does he not break it but he fails to break the previous record as well. Imagine how profoundly the public would forget about that person? I don't care for Bray Wyatt at all, but if there is a bullshit finish at the "greatest wrestling show of all time," and there were many, it was Taker/Bray.

Michaels vs Angle is one of my absolute favourite matches.

Putting LT in the top 15 of athletes for the last 40 years? Dude be trolling. We can nitpick over who outranks who or just concede that he's at least in the conversation. And he is. Dude was a freak. Fuck why is this still a thing? Josh is one of the few people with any goddamn sense here. Also, I didn't way he was one of the TOP athletes, I said he was one of the most well known. No, he wasn't Bo Jackson, Joe Montana or Larry Bird, but everyone knew who the hell he was. This discussion is making me hate the show by proxy. It's still a thing because your claim is ridiculous, and you won't back down. I was 21 when Wrestlemania XI happened, and I had never heard of Lawrence Taylor before the Royal Rumble. Nobody in my circle of friends had. I'm sure he was well-known to football fans, but he had zero name recognition outside of that fandom. Zero. Contrast with Ronda Rousey, whom I've at least heard of, despite having no interest in MMA. Personal anecdotes are not a good way to win an argument. My dad doesn't know who LeBron James is but he can tell you who Gangrel is. Lawrence Taylor is one of the most important players of the Superbowl era in the by-far biggest sports league in North America. You not having heard of him doesn't mean anything. EDIT: But if we're going to be throwing out analogies, I watched Wrestlemania with a friend of mine. We've watched close to if not outright every PPV and RAW since late 2009. He didn't know who Ronda Rousey was.

Look, I don't buy into the Rusev hype, but every one of his opponents has been playing up the USA! USA! shit and lost. Every single one.

I can't speak for the other people that hated that segment, but I don't care that Rousey was there. What I care about is how WWE mistold a 5-10 minute segment over 40 minutes. It's literally heel woman slaps people => heel woman winds up getting slapped. Yes it popped the crowd. Yes it was an entertaining thing. Yes it got social media reaction and will probably get traditional media reaction. Imagine how much better it would be if the WWE could just tell it right and pay it off.

Also, I should clarify my stance: I don't disagree with running a stupid filler segment with Rock and Rousey. What I disagree with is it taking an hour and it teasing Stephanie getting slapped and then it doesn't happen. Those two issues multiply with each other to make it even worse, too.

They don't care if you do or not. You're already watching the WWE shows. I know they don't. That the WWE doesn't care what their fans want is the defining issue of the company right now. It's why they had to chicken out on the main event of their biggest show.

Why am I supposed to give a shit about the WWE getting coverage in ESPN?

Boy did I have a different opinion of this show than you guys. See if you can follow the story thread in this: Two heels come out and build up some (cheap) heat. Special attraction comes out to interrupt. Special attraction wastes an ungodly amount of time. Heel slaps special attraction. Special attraction wastes another ungodly period of time teasing a retaliation. Special attraction introduces section special attraction that can fight back. Heel begs off. More ungodly time wasting. Heel slaps second special attraction. Second special attraction tugs on heel's arm for ten seconds. Heel runs off having never been slapped back.