SirSmUgly

And I think very much of Reigns's in-ring, but Bryan was on another level in 2014 when he had that miracle match with HHH at WM. I don't think Reigns is in the place to do that, and I don't believe that HHH has changed his ideas about working long, bloated matches because the Bryan match where he effectively targeted a body part in interesting ways was an outlier and he was back to his old tricks in the match with Sting.

I see where you're coming from, Matt. I don't believe Hunter's excuse for not putting Chyna in the HoF, though. It's a smokescreen. First, he doesn't want Chyna up there giving a speech about her time in the company, which ended with HHH cheating on her with Stephanie. He doesn't want to risk being put on blast in a speech on their prestigious HoF show. I'm sure Stephanie doesn't, either. He's also a petty dude, the type of dude that said fifteen or so years after it happened that he wouldn't be as stupid as Bret was in not seeing the screwjob coming, so I'm sure he's also sticking the knives in a bit as well because that's what he does, much like Vince.

I backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and it looks like it's coming together nicely from a graphical/art direction standpoint! This is one of the better Kickstarters I've seen for staying in constant contact with backers and sharing updates of the work. I just bought SotN for my Vita on the latest Sony sale, and I'll make my way through it again (never got close to the 209.3% or whatever total completion is in this game), but it will be nice to eventually have a modern spiritual successor to that game from Igarashi himself.

Papa Shango ruled so hard, Wright should get in. I am mostly serious about that. Actually, between Shango, NOD Kama, and Godfather (I was 16, so forgive me for enjoying that gimmick), he had three gimmicks that from my narrow viewpoint I find particularly notable in WWE history. I would be fine with his inclusion. Also, he made the Warrior drip with voodoo blood once. VOODOO BLOOD!

I still have The Witcher 2 on my 360 hard drive from when it was free. I know that I should play it, but I always end up playing something else instead when I sit down to play it. I boot up the 360 and then get distracted by another playthrough of New Vegas or Red Dead Redemption or another All-Pro Football 2K8 season. I think the fantasy setting is probably what turns me off, but I got through Shadow of Mordor, so I'm going to steel myself and get through TW2 at some point this year.

I don't believe in "go away heat." When the crowd wants you to go away, they just sit there in relative silence.

I'm a huge fan of Crews. He absolutely connects with me. Good bumper, smooth in the ring.

Re: Tammy Sytch Ew. She doesn't seem healthy enough psychologically for that type of profession. Re: X-Pac I'd be kinda excited. I like X-Pac. Unfortunately, I don't like the possibility of X-Pac bleeding on someone accidentally, so alas, your daydream remains a dream.

They really didn't play that up on the NXT weeklies until recently, though, and the idea is that Carmella is getting the shot against Bayley so they can run a "friend vs. friend" angle. And honestly, I really have zero interest in Carmella as a worker or a character. I read somewhere that some people were surmising that Breeze got called up partly to give progression to his story on BG that he was still down in NXT, but the time was coming for him to leave. I don't know if that's true, though if it is, he's being wasted up on the main roster for a BG narrative. I stopped watching BG after about five episodes because I didn't want it to ruin my suspension of disbelief with NXT, so I'd prefer that they don't bring BG narratives over to NXT to build storylines from them, or if they do, to at least better develop those stories simultaneously on NXT so that they make narrative sense even if I don't watch BG. Even though I don't want to see Carmella on my screen, I could more easily accept this if they did a better job of setting it up starting back in October or so to coincide with their real-life friendship being highlighted on BG.

I agree with pretty much all of this. Emma and Asuka might be the two best workers on the NXT roster right now full stop, not just in terms of the women. In fact, Emma and Asuka might be top six workers in the company overall right now. They are really wasting Emma by having her be the gatekeeper for ascending faces in NXT. Re: Stro's post, I am hoping that NXT weekly goes to ninety minutes for that reason. I think it's still short enough to not overexpose all the talent by having them working each week, but long enough to alleviate some of the problems of a stacked roster.

Biff Busick's on the way to NXT. Now, they just need to sign Timothy Thatcher and ZSJ and let Bryan come back only on condition that he stops doing stupid dives and headdrops and does limbwork and random small packages instead and we can see it revived in the mainstream. Viva la revolucion! My favorite spots in wrestling today all involve limb/joint manipulation, especially guys working over the fingers of their opponents. I think my childhood love for Bret Hart and the Regal/Flair series where they worked it like WoS-rounds style except with judges scoring the bouts primed me for that sort of thing.

And in comparison to ECW, which was just as trashy, ECW didn't feel try-hard like WWF Attitude storylines oftentimes do. They felt genuine - less cringey for me even if some of the tropes that they use are problematic. The wrestling itself in '99 ECW, while not as good to me as '95-'97, is also worlds better than in '99 WWF.

Just do yourself a favor and stop watching old school wrestling. Clearly people might say things that were acceptable then that aren't acceptable now that will really upset you. The further back you go, the more outraged you may get. 1988 Memphis would probably give you a heart attack. And you'll give up on 1999 RAW not because it's offensive, but because it's fucking horrible. At least until Russo and Ferrara leave. But yeah, holy shit. Austin/HBK v Bulldog/Owen might be the pinnacle of 1997 RAW. Weird thing to say, frankly, and I think that's because you misread me. I'm not upset so much as embarrassed for both the people who wrote/thought up that stuff and thought it was anything but ridiculous and for myself as a wrestling fan because this is what Vince McMahon thinks of as mature storytelling. I love goofy pro wrestling stories and don't really have problems with stuff that would be socially hated on now (like a ton of things from southern promotions in the '80s), but this episode had extremely goofy writing/promoing that I sense was meant to be more than that. I believe that they thought that this was mature and compelling on a level beyond pro wrestling, and nope, it was just laughably terrible (unlike the Pillman/Austin gun angle, which was thoroughly entertaining in its trashiness). This is IIRC the way it goes for RAW over the next few years, which other than Austin vs. McMahon is the hallmark of the Attitude Era. I dug Austin/HBK vs. Bulldog/Owen as a match, but as a whole show, 4/21/97 is still the pinnacle of 1997 RAW from my POV on re-watch.

RAW on May 26th, 1997 has Vince McMahon say to Faarooq: "About your use of the race card, aren't you just patronizing the blacks?" Yep. He said "the blacks" like Donald Trump would say. I totally forgot about this. Then Lawler cut that promo on Goldust where he infamously called him a "flaming fag." I was so embarrassed even though I was alone in the room that I thought about crawling under the couch in humiliation. I look forward to this sort of stuff getting worse! (I don't actually look forward to it and wonder how I'll be able to get through '99 RAW without giving up.)

Best parts were Dana's steady stream of shit-talking on the outside during the tag match and Joe slapping the shit out of Gargano, maybe literally because man that was a hard slap.

If the rumors of making Fastlane important are true, there is a decent chance that either the Rumble ends in a no contest somehow or someone different from Reigns/Lesnar/HHH wins and then drops it at Fastlane.

Stro just has strong opinions, but he doesn't shit on things just to shit on them. His desire for Reigns/HHH makes me wonder, though... (...not really. But ugh, I personally find it hard to think of a big-time match I'd rather see less than Reigns/HHH.)

"...and now, Cialis presents WWE Extend Rules 2012!" **crowd cheers**

That sounds awesome, actually.

I have almost all the Civ stuff, but none of the XCOM stuff. I bought it for XCOM and (finally!) Starships for cheap. Maybe Starships will make Beyond Earth fun to play. Fresh, you should play Civ. Civ V is easier, so start with that, and then go backward to Civ IV, as weird as it sounds. Everyone should play Civ, though, IMO. You can play a game across many sessions, too, if you want, though I get sucked down a well and lose most of a Sunday or whatever when I play. I'm trying to stay away from a Civ IV game I have started for the week at the moment.

I think the Royal Rumble match is a bad idea unless he wins it. He's choked in high-profile matches for the gold up to that RAW match with Sheamus. He should win this. He needs it badly. He needs to come in at one and toss Lesnar as the last guy and cement himself as champ, though then again, I wouldn't have Lesnar in this because I'd have Lesnar ready to job to Reigns at WM.

And where is Roman now? Getting lukewarm responses again. Vince got a title change on a free TV show over, but Reigns's long-term outlook is still shitty. Vince on TV is also giving rapidly diminishing returns with dead crowds back as the norm. It was an extremely short-term fix.

Not in my house, bud. In my house, he just looks really old. It's sad. If he looked like he did in 1999, maybe. I am fine with admitting that it might work for other fans, but for me, nope. That character has run it's course because Vince is just a bit too aged for that role. HHH should be the one out there taking those asswhoopings (though I'm assuming they're still playing up the beatdown after TLC and keeping HHH off-screen for the most part right now). As for the lame Daniel Bryan shit which has been rehashed to death, fuck that noise. If they really wanted to get Reigns over, they should have pushed him in a way that would not have put the heat on him for their de-push of Bryan. Anyone who complains about the fans' complaining is deluded. It's not my job to cheer for whatever Vince presents. He's the creative talent. He needs to figure out how to frame his guys so that they are successful. This is the big problem with the main roster shows. Vince doesn't protect anyone. He can't even protect Reigns right. The only guy who has come off as special lately is Brock because he beat the Undertaker and destroyed John Cena, and before then he was doing jobs to Triple fucking H, so it's not like that's consistent either. EDIT: I am sick and tired of talking about Daniel Bryan at this point, so unless he comes back or gets released and goes to another company, I'm over it. It's like I live shitty 2015 WWE over and over again just via this board sometimes.

MNM was fucking awesome. Morrison's simply a tag team specialist. MNM and Miz/Morrison both had too high a volume of good matches for that to be a fluke.

Punk's reign was booked fine, Big Show's first reign and Swagger's reign were simply stopgaps, Rey's is the only one on the level of Reigns and could be argued fairly. The rest of those don't even register. What makes Reigns's reign worse is that he's supposed to be their next Cena and they had him lose the title the first time via cash-in and then enter a feud with a seventy-year-old man and his heat-killing daughter. You might argue that Diesel's reign was booked as poorly except that they actually have talent that they could build up and slot in against Reigns that would make things work. People acted like that pop Reigns got for winning was anything but a "holy shit, the title changed hands on a RAW and that never happens" pop because on RAW and at PPV, no one gives a fuck about Reigns. How do you fuck up a guy that everyone was sure was a star two years ago this badly? It's egregious. Rollins was booked like a doofus, but he's a cocky heel who was in over his head, so that's a bit easier to swallow. Reigns is supposed to be your hero unstoppable babyface and he's out here getting threatened by fuckin' Sheamus and the corpse of Bray Wyatt. Bringing Lesnar in is a good idea because Reigns/Lesnar, while obvious as the route to go, is the most logical option available, but not in a Rumble where the go-home show ends with an ice-cold-as-a-heel Wyatt Family beating the shit out of both these guys. It needs to be one-on-one at WM if they really want to get Reigns over and fuck what the live audience might think or do.