SirSmUgly

Bayley/Lynch was solid stuff. Great arm work from Lynch. Man, I want Corbin to beat Joe in Brooklyn and then beat Bálor at Full Sail for the gold in December. I want to see the crowd meltdowns.

You could have done Cena/Reigns at SummerSlam for the U.S. Championship, which I think would be a fitting end to Cena's run, and run the rematch any time you want and it would be just as big. Just up the stakes and have it for the WWE Championship. Not a waste at all, IMO.

Come on, man, my posts are only "Todd Pettengill segment on a random 1994 RAW episode" level. I can't do much more than that.

They should be putting the gold on Reigns at Summerslam. Just go with it and have Lesnar win the Rumble, then have Reigns win at WM in the rematch. If they want to push the dude, push him already. No need to get cute about it. It's not like anyone gives a shit about Rollins anyway. Actually, what I'd do is have Ambrose beat Rollins and have Reigns beat Cena. You can build to Ambrose/Reigns at WM or let Lesnar destroy Ambrose (who would look stronger after a loss to Lesnar with his ability to sell a beating) at the Rumble and do Champ vs. Champ at WM. I think Reigns beating Cena and then beating Lesnar will get Reigns cemented as an elite-level talent the way they want him to be perceived as. /fantasy booking

Why does wrestlers taking lazy potshots instead of actually saying something compelling in the past excuse wrestlers still doing that in the present? Doesn't this company have writers? They can do better than lame fat jokes, right? Maybe at least some decent fat jokes to start. If people want to watch something where the vast majority of promos are bland "I respect my opponent" bullshit, go watch MMA. Wrestling promos have always, will always and SHOULD always include talking trash about your opponent. "Have you gained weight recently?" isn't the best fat joke I ever heard but you'd think Kevin Owens could muster up something better than "no" if he really had an issue with it. I mean, 1) I really don't give that much of a shit, but 2) your assertion that "oh, it's tradition" doesn't mean that fans are particularly going to take to it now or that it's any good just because it's some shit people did in the past. Also, I never even insinuated a "no trash talking" preference. But elevate your trash talk, fuck guys. I love The Rock, but he also made fun of people for being hermies, and it was unfunny then and would be unfunny now no matter how much people in the past talked shit about someone's sex organs or sexuality. If you're going such a lazy route, better elevate that shit like Dr. D yelling I WANTED AH WOH-MANNNN! Actually, the Rock got away with a lot of shit (popcorn fart, strudel, etc.) face turn on because he's so magnetic as a personality, though that's another story.

Why does wrestlers taking lazy potshots instead of actually saying something compelling in the past excuse wrestlers still doing that in the present? Doesn't this company have writers? They can do better than lame fat jokes, right? Maybe at least some decent fat jokes to start.

Short little roly-poly cannonball dudes are cool, too. Exhibit A: Koko B. Ware. Exhibit B: Carl Ouelette.

Kofi's brief Vince McMahon impression actually was the funniest thing about the New Day podcast, followed by them talking about how bummed Vince was that the happy black preacher thing didn't somehow catch on.

Wrestling needs more fat dudes with farmer's tans, IMO. Also more slobs like Ballz Mahoney. Also more goofy-looking skinny dudes like Greg Gagne. Also more people in facepaint, and the Ascension does not count, either. Sick of the roid-monster build being the only build acceptable.

The first one was legitimately great as a game. It had an awesome co-op mode, and the mix between exploration and combat was nicely handled. I think that the game itself is sort of like inFamous: SS in that it mechanically feels JUST like a superhero game should feel re: traversal of the world. Once you get up to being able to collect three- and four-star agility orbs, you feel like a Superman game should feel IMO. In fact, Crackdown and Second Son would be the two games that I would target as the best superhero games ever in terms of their mechanics. They are the only games where I can just traverse the world for hours, seeing how far I can jump, how long I can stay in the air, how few times I need to land to get across the city, or stuff like that. The second one had the same mechanics, but threw in a random zombie storyline and a day/night mechanic that bogged down gameplay, didn't improve on anything from the first game on top of that, and essentially ended up as a less fun game than the first one. Oh, and it never paid off the ending of the first Crackdown, .

I have to say that what's going on in WWF by late 1996 at the top of the card is genuinely more intriguing than the same stuff over in WCW. First of all, the finish and aftermath of the IYH: It's Time PPV was hot, and second, the shifting alliances and bunch of guys acting like tweeners actually works. I'm watching it side by side with Nitro, and the Piper stuff is terrible and sort of cancels out the Sting intrigue. EDIT rather than double-posting: I am really glad to see that Rey Mysterio was the first WCW guy to finally figure out that Crow Sting was a good dude and just sick of (and reacting to) WCW's shit. Sting as '80s babyface is great, but I really do love Crow and Joker Sting just because Steve Borden plays "annoyed with the idiots" so well.

Man, gotta talk to the wife about that one. I might wait until Black Friday/Cyber Monday for a similar deal anyway since I've already been cleared for upgrading our TV then. But an XB1 for essentially about eighty bucks! Damn. I got Crackdown when I bought my 360 (along with Smackdown vs. Raw, of course) because I thought the game looked fun and wanted into the Halo 3 beta, and it turned into one of my favorite games of that whole generation...which is why what happened to Realtime Worlds (made APB, which sucked, and then broke up) and Crackdown 2 (utter garbage) so sad. Did they ever pay off the twist at the end of the first game, or are they continuing that for the reboot at all?

So they sold out an NXT show, Summerslam, and the Raw the next night in the same damned building? Good gravy.

Man, I want Cuphead and Crackdown. Not enough to get an XB1 until they are sub $200 or so new and I have more space and time, but those are the first two XB1 exclusives that have me consideing things. Maybe in a Black Friday combo deal with a bigger TV than the one in my living room...

Man, I'm sorry, but I felt that if we are going to go down that road, your sentence needed a slight tweak.

SMW exposed some cultural ugliness in particular, but at the same time, they were the second promotional example that I thought of. Actually, my second-favorite act in all of SMW was Tammy Sytch can getting over by doing a "liberal women's college graduate from the NE" heel gimmick. Try that today in WWE, and a not-unsizeable portion of the WWE audience would be predisposed to like or cheer for her. Though in honesty, I'd love to see Lana basically do that same gimmick: Wellesley College grad with a M.A. in business management and a proclivity for supporting liberal causes. However, it just wouldn't get the heat that it would in another time and place. Too much of the audience would cheer for her fighting back against people who oppose her, even if they tried to make her as self-righteous as possible. I almost certainly would.

Modern fans = 1985 Mid-South fans who turned Jake? That's a comparison that I didn't think of, but yeah, that's a good historical comp for modern fans. Just a hunch, but I think one of the things that helped in the past was that fanbases had clear culturally-driven moral codes that would determine why they booed or cheered a wrestler. JCP is the easiest example; those fans had a very specifically Southern sense of what is right or wrong so that wrestlers could easily violate that moral code if they needed to get booed. Modern fans don't necessarily have this sort of uniform cultural moral code; we're grappling with a re-evaluation of many of the ways that we think and act, and so in this current time, fans are instead interested in just booing or cheering people based on how entertaining they are more than anything else. I think territories made it easier to have heels that violated a specific moral code because territories were based on regions with very particular ways of life. WWE, on the other hand, is a worldwide company catering to a fanbase that has a whole lot of different ideas about what makes a moral act. Sorry if that seems too obvious a thought.

I'm excited for 4/21/97. It was really great. I'm back on 11/25/96, and already these shows have just escalated into really awesome television, with Austin trying to Pillmanize Bret's ankle, Owen trying to help him, and Bulldog coming out to stop it before Austin clobbers Bulldog with the chair out of frustration to the anger of Owen. This is really awesome foreshadowing of the Austin vs. Hart Foundation feud that will be coming in a few months and was captivating television. Sure, they followed up with an Executioner vs. Freddie Joe Floyd match, but hey, they're not quite all the way there yet.

I think TND is starting to get over as faces too, though. To modern fans, charismatic = cheer for them until they become defacto faces.

All fair enough, Twiztor. I did watch the show out of context and years later. What you say makes sense. And yeah, losing Sabu for Hardcore Holly was a total bummer.

Nah, Roman's pretty much over with the crowd as of the last show I watched (Battleground). It helps that Bryan is completely out of the way. They really should have kept Bryan out until after the Rumble. I have no clue why they damaged Reigns like that.

I think they boo her in NXT more for what she represents to them than for anything she actually does. She's pretty much a slightly dopey, inoffensive personality who can't work very smoothly. If the perception wasn't there that she wasn't kept hired pretty much for Total Divas instead of because she really wants to be a great wrestler, no one would care about her. Compare her to Dana Brooke, who was also getting the "fitness model" heat from the crowd at the beginning, but who now gets heat because she's rounding into a solid little heel character.

You're not the topic. The topic is these silly assumptions that people make. You can stop posting attention-starved posts about how much you hate being the topic now. I don't think Roman is good, but he's not terrible. He's just sort of mediocre. The match with Show that everyone loves was passable, but Show is still pretty good anyway (just really overexposed). The Bryan match is probably still his best singles match. However, he's pretty much in the Sheamus/Orton/Neville mold where he's having competent matches that aren't particularly good or bad, just forgettable and somewhat dull. He's definitely a step above his Shield mates, two guys who actively turn me off in ring, for what that's worth, but he's definitely not as good as guys like Rusev or Cesaro or Big E. Honestly, they should run Reigns/Rusev and Reigns/Big E because I bet those matches would be awesome and Reigns might get better by osmosis.

Two guys =/= the whole of DVDVR. If Gregg wants to bait people with that, he should go do it at Wreddit where it wouldn't actually be a strawman. I totally agree. However, saying things like "Disliked because of no indy cred" is just as pretentious. How about if, in general, we don't make claims about why people like or dislike things for them? How about if we wait until they explain their position rather than saying incredibly pretentious garbage about how people underrate Reigns or Charlotte because they didn't spend time in New Japan's dojo or in Shimmer?

Had a weird wrestling dream, which I don't typically have. Flair and Sting were having a heated match when almost the whole crowd looks away from the ring and starts going nuts. Rick Rude, wearing the Big Gold Belt, storms down the stairs in the crowd and makes a beeline for the only person in the crowd not paying attention - a ten or eleven-year-old boy wearing Sting's facepaint and cheering on his hero, the Stinger. Rude comes up to the kid and puts him in a Million Dollar Dream. The kid immediately starts to pass out, but is able to croak a "Sting...help..." out which Sting somehow hears. Sting has Flair down, but he runs over to the ramp to swing at Rude. Flair follows Sting out and then he and Rude beat the piss out of Sting, Flair cracking Sting with the ring bell like fifty times, while the whole front row tries to get at Rude to tear him apart. Then I woke up, and I was groggy enough to be like "Man, fuck Rick Rude" for a few seconds before I got my bearings and realized that I was dreaming. That's what happens when I sleep on my back, I guess. Had vivid dream after vivid dream last night.