MORELOCK

And why doesn't the current WWE stuff come off as organic? Do you really not think it's because of the creative team? The fact that you had to reach back over 2 years to wrestlers that no longer work for the company to find half your examples of recent wrestlers that have gotten over is pretty damning evidence. There's a reason there aren't many larger-than-life moments now as compared to the boom period: the fans no longer have any incentive to care about the wrestlers and their manufactured moments because the booking has sucked for years. If anything the two you mentioned that are still with the company got to the point they are at in spite of the creative process. Mid-90's WCW was light years ahead of current WWE in regards to getting their wrestlers over and making fans care - the reason that people kept tuning in throughout 1997 was to see if the heels would get their comeuppance. When they didn't, people started tuning out.

The inability to pull this off is directly related to the stagnant creative process that you insist is just as strong as the boom period's. You are wrong.

Miz has none of those. I don't think he has enough to be a World champion, but he certainly seems to have more than Sabin.

I want to be told a story, and much of the Batman stuff I checked out as well as Final Crisis require the reader to basically fill in the story so Morrison can squeeze in a bunch of cool stuff. Morrison seems to come across as a writer like he is above the material - he's telling his masterpiece with these stupid little superheroes, and why should he have to play in anyone else's sandbox, etc. The direction Morrison and Johns were taking essentially chased me away from DC well before the Reboot.

No, because Sabin is a guy who dedicated his life to Wrestling, and didn't let people telling him he was too small stop him, didn't let career threatening injuries stop him, overcame the odds at every turn, et cetera. Miz is a guy who was a geek on the Real World, and made it to WWE because Vince marks out for mainstream exposure. The only advantage he has over Sabin is height. And look and charisma and mic skills. This is like Evan Bourne coming back all of the sudden and winning the WHC - yeah, he's decent enough, but he's been gone so long all his momentum is gone, and shouldn't World Champions be in a class of their own? The reasons the titles meant more 20 years ago is they didn't pass them around to every worker who might have had a couple of good matches. Sabin's "dedicated life to wrestling" story is the rule, not the exception - the same story could be told with nearly everyone on the roster. Nothing stands out about Sabin at all.

Also funny...........from different guys I've known who had tryouts or dark matches, etc, WWE has AMAZING catering......just tons of great food. But when portrayed on TV, it's a small table with a loaf of bread and some mayo and cold cuts. Yeah, the company that handles WWE's catering is how I've managed to get backstage for a couple of events, and I got a good laugh out of this. They have to be ribbing Ryback. Does everything he is involved in have to revolve around food?

All of these seconded. Great stuff.

Yeah but those kids at the Be A Star get togethers seem to understand that the guys there talking seriously about bullying being a bad thing are just play acting on TV far more than grown men on the internet do. And that is an enormous problem - kayfabe being broken right in the middle of a segment on Raw. Why should we invest ourselves in something they constantly tell us is fake? Suspension of disbelief is gone. Yeah. Is that really the answer to the question being asked? People who aren't watching can't have complaints about what they aren't watching. Yes? When they stopped watching for those reasons? I took 4 years off from watching from 07-11 for these specific reasons: they weren't making me care anymore. And they're still terrible at it - the only ones that can get you to care do so in spite of the writing, not because of it. Looking at what draws and what doesn't, on TV in general, I don't think ratings have a lot to do with quality. Which is a trite, worn out criticism usually made by non-fans who wouldn't enjoy it either way, whether there was more talk than wrestling (which there isn't) or whether WWE was some kind of promo-less environment and all programming was just entrances and matches. Fantastic way of sidestepping both points and saying nothing at all.

I don't think anyone really cares that the faces are bullies (it's an old problem), it's more that the entire anti-bullying Be A Star campaign is thrown onto WWE TV when professional wrestling at its core is essentially a bunch of grown men bullying each other.

Eddie was great, but thinking he'd come anywhere near doing Legend stuff on WWE TV is grossly overstating his importance to the modern WWE audience.

Albums I've loved this year: Smith Westerns - Soft Will: Retro-ish band drops most of earlier garage sound to make a more classic sounding album influenced by Pink Floyd and The Kinks. Queens Of The Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork: Homme sounds bluesy and sinister, and wisely doesn't try to recapture Songs For The Deaf. Wavves - Afraid Of Heights: Catchy slacker-rock that could be right out of the early-mid 90's. California X - California X: Non stop rock possible. Sounds like Dinosaur Jr. circa You're Living All Over Me. Pity Sex - Feast Of Love: Dueling male/female vocals over music somewhere between classic Weezer and late-era Jawbreaker. The National - Trouble Will Find Me: Sad, slow affair after Boxer and High Violet seemed more upbeat, but just as good as either of those albums. FIDLAR - FIDLAR: Drug and alcohol fueled energetic punk-rock. Some songs I've dug outside of those records: Caitlin Rose - "Waitin'" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHdsJAGBscE Toro Y Moi - "So Many Details" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDntT7SFKmg Austra - "Forgive Me" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lop5rTEzm9E Empire Of The Sun - "Alive" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc The Strokes - "One Way Trigger" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9JWDd3Kp8

Will be back in with my picks, but IMO Jimmy Eat World seems to have tried writing Bleed American over since 2001, and Damage is their worst effort yet. ETA: I do love 2005's Stay On My Side Tonight EP, which was a little different.

Watching old ECW stuff on Netflix and I am stunned at how irritating Joey Styles is.

If I were to predict that Raw is going to end with somebody's music playing as they stand on the ramp staring down someone in the ring for an incredibly long and awkward amount of time, how likely is it that I'll be wrong? The writing is awful. It's shocking that the ratings are still as high as they are.

Everything has been stagnant and boring for years and it is entirely the fault of the creative team. Promos should not be scripted and that is probably the biggest problem. There is a place in wrestling for comedy, but it should be the exception, not the rule. The only full-time worker that I can think of that they haven't cut off at the knees by making them a joke is Mark Henry (and of course, he started out doing the comedy stuff). Constant "nudge nudge wink wink we know you know wrestling is fake" bullshit undermines the entire product. I don't blame former fans for not watching - they aren't masochists. Every time I've gotten a former "casual" fan to sit and watch anything with me, I have to go into defensive mode because of Vickie Guerrero still being on television despite literally nobody being interested in watching her, face Del Rio dumping paint on Big Show and face Del Rio in general, Zeb Colter, Big Show having a yearly personality transplant because they don't know what else to do with him, everything involving the Divas, constant turns that make little sense (for what reason am I supposed to be cheering Cody Rhodes now and just what the fuck have they been thinking with Ryback?), a decade of start-stop pushes that kill the heat of every worker, MizTV and talk show segments in general, general overexposure of everyone because they won't use half the roster (6 hours of prime time TV a week and no brand split), etc etc etc etc The people that are interested in watching wrestling for the ring work are already watching. They could run a year long Bryan-Cesaro feud and not a single new viewer would be gained, because the fans that stopped watching didn't stop watching because the ring work sucked - they don't care. They stopped watching because WWE stopped making them care about the wrestlers. If everyone is a start-stop push away from being replaced by new generic male model, why should anyone watch?

That Blue Bloods vignette is GOLD, Jerry.

I started lurkng a bit before the green/yellow board went bye-bye.

Miz would be perfectly fine as a JTTS chickenshit heel. Sabin looks like he should have been jobbing to Johnny Attitude on Worldwide in 1998.

Miz is awful, but still much more credible than Sabin.

Great episode, Sandow was gold. I did wonder where the hell Brodus went during the Wyatt promo, since he barely took any offense at all.

A simple, great spot from this match that I loved is right at the beginning, when Gordy bounces the elder O'Day off the ropes to try to get out of a side headlock, and O'Day ACTUALLY HANGS ONTO IT, then Gordy has to kidney punch and try again. So simple and subtle, but does so much.

Kaitlyn has the upper body definition to pull off looking like she's actually tackling all of the divas. The reason Hardy was one of the only ones the spear ever looked good on is because that was the only person Edge looked like he could actually take down in such a way. Looking good once or twice doesn't make it a good spot - think of how many stupid and contrived times Rey has hit the 619 or Orton has hit the draping DDT and everyone was thinking "Why did he just land there awkwardly in perfect position for his opponent's signature spot despite the opponent making no real effort to put him there?"

I didn't! Just their song and general style. Also back to my usual hung over self.

To me it always looked like someone was falling backward on purpose because Edge tried to hug them. Edge didn't have the right body to make a move like that look convincing like so many others have - and not just Goldberg. Roman Reigns spears men larger than him and it doesn't take me out of the match.