SirSmUgly

I think the face divas are just fine in NXT. Bayley for young female fans is the equivalent of John Cena for young male fans. That gimmick is meant to appeal to girls in the crowd. I don't see how that is creepy in any way. I suspect that since HHH has young daughters, this affects the sort of gimmicks that some of the women in NXT - Bayley and Alexa Bliss specifically - have right now. To be totally fair, Becky Lynch is a face and is working a Lita tribute gimmick, which isn't focused on younger girls necessarily. I like the idea of wrestling as a big tent affair that has something for everyone, so I'm encouraged that NXT is actually acknowledging that young girls might have interests that they should represent through their characters. I think it's weird that Vince has this idea of WWE as a variety show, but there's very little variety really in terms of trying to attract different demographics.

Re: Punk, actually now that I think about it for a sec, I'm sure that part of what he's using this free time for is to try and figure out how to alter his IP address to get around his banning from DVDVR as FSW. Re: Bayley, I have a lot of dumb ideas, so this may well be one of them, but I am convinced they can make some good money with her on the main roster if they just run her as the really nice, slightly naive girl who gets bullied by the mean girls of the locker. Maybe Nikki Bella and Charlotte form a clique that tortures her, and then they have a hair-vs-hair match that Bayley loses through hijinks. The rage of crying pre-teen girls in the crowd that would occur when Charlotte and Nikki forcibly hold Bayley down and shave her head would create a giant vortex of anger in the arena. Plus, Paige could go back to being the Anti-Diva again and take Bayley under her wing and help her regain her confidence and vanquish her enemies. I'm pretty sure this angle would be a massive success, but I'm probably wrong.

I still have Punk fatigue. I never thought he was that good in the first place, and now that's he's gone, I'm enjoying the break from him even more than he's enjoying the break from us. I guess Jericho thought they were buds, but they weren't really. Meh, whatever. I can't think of a person that would probably be less fun to hang out with than Punk anyway, dude. Make more friends. In the meantime, Punk is probably watching hockey games and playing PS4 all day. Wish I could do that for a month or two. I'd get bored at some point, but until then...yeah.

True. They are showcasing the old school grappler-style guys now like Thatcher and Busick, right? Poor example on my part, though my point about why that sort of deathmatch wrestling has an audience still stands.

One of the things that I'm watching right now the Clash in January of 1996, and Brian Pillman grabbing an irate Bobby Heenan, who drops a "THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" as he tries to protect his surgically-repaired neck, was pretty great television. Poor Heenan. That one moment, where you could see Heenan was utterly pissed, actually convinced me in the moment that Pillman might do just about anything. Then, Schiavone goes on to say that Benoit, the other new member of the Horsemen, would never do anything as crazy as Pillman. Harsh in hindsight indeed. I had to stop watching after that, but I do note that Pillman came down to the ring with a pimp cane for his match with Eddie Guerrero, and he hid it under the ring apron before wrestling Guerrero and scaring the crap out of Heenan. I was waiting for it to be used for the finish, but that didn't happen, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it gets used as a Chekhov's Gun later in the show.

That's what deathmatch wrestling is like for me now. We all know it's a con. We know all the spots are contrived. So when I sit here and watch these guys put needles through their cheeks or Takeda take that ridiculous over the top rope power bomb through glass onto the floor it's like... why? Because there's a market for torture porn, which explains something like CZW still existing.

Yeah, Bo Dallas getting confused and looping back around in a circle right to where the guards already were was some great physical comedy. I wrongfully forgot about that one.

Tyson Kidd is my worker of the year, but honestly, I don't think I'd put any of his matches in my top ten. That Zayn/Kidd match Gregg just mentioned that I don't remember the date of is really quite good and would probably be the best Kidd match I've seen in 2014. Kidd was just consistently awesome in every way and has come into his own as a overconfident heel. Plus, his celebration after winning a tag match by pushing Zayn into Nattie followed by his abrupt switch to a totally bullshit concerned face was maybe the funniest thing I've seen on WWE television this year. That and him leaving the Fatal Fourway interview before Takeover II by saying that he was going to check on his cats and then telling everyone "God Bless" angrily as they tried to fire back at him were the best. RE: That lumberjack match, I really hated it on the first viewing. I might watch it again at some point, but as someone who believes that the point of a lumberjack match is sullied when half the match takes place outside of the ring, I'll probably not be too big a fan of it. I know, the point was that not even lumberjacks could contain Ambrose's special brand of combined hatred and craziness, but it didn't work at all for me.

I agree in principle, but I think they might be moving that way on NXT, where it doesn't hurt to see how she works as a face. She comes off as naturally snotty, though, so she definitely makes a better tweener or heel. I guess since we're talking about the women coming up through NXT and wrestling on the main shows right now, I'll ask as a side question which women's matches of the year, if any, would make all y'alls top tens for WWE matches in 2014

People should get off Nikki Bella's case too, though that has nothing to do with whether or not Nattie is good. Nikki actually does some pretty hurty-looking offense. I wouldn't mind seeing Nikki trying to put her forearm through Charlotte's face for fifteen minutes. They should find a way to run that match on NXT after Charlotte completes a full face turn.

It's really hard to tell how good the women are on the main show. They usually get no time. Nattie having a good match in NXT with a still-learning Charlotte over 15+ minutes means a lot more to me than her half-assing a bunch of three-minute specials on RAW and Superstars. I agree with Bill on this one.

The legwork has a reason - she wants to get her opponent on their knees to hit Natural Selection.

Nash and Bam Bam actually have a really solid match on episode 108, I want to say, of RAW. But then they turn Bam Bam, too, who is immediately lost in the shuffle behind Razor, HBK, Kid, Bret, 'Taker, etc. We talked last month about Razor not ever being WWF Champion, and I thought that Razor should have turned heel and got the belt at some point in 1994. To me, that's even more interesting than turning Nash. I also think they should have turned Luger and pushed him as a heel instead of sticking him in a tag team with Bulldog. I think Luger/HBK and Luger/Bret are things I would like to watch develop, and as a bonus, heel Luger against Bret Hart would have given both those guys something to do beyond what they were shunted into because there were too many faces being pushed at the same time. Vince's booking decisions at that point sort of mystify me.

Hey now, Luger is awesome. Not as All-American Lex, to be sure, but it's also pretty telling that the only time Luger wasn't even remotely interesting was as the All-American. Luger was best used with a petulant, grating, coddled premier athlete gimmick, or at least something like the Narcissist where Luger's natural douchebagginess could take over. On another note, trudging through 1995 WWF and Bret is stuck in so many crappy midcard feuds, and the Lawler feud is doing nothing for Bret because, as a fan that didn't really know much of Lawler at that pre-internet point, it just looked like Bret somehow couldn't beat a pudgy color commentator, which is how I'm guessing most twelve-year-old kids around the country also saw that feud. I enjoy Lawler and Backlund and Carl Ouellet quite a bit, but those are Bret's feuds as he's shunted down the card while Diesel, HBK, and even Razor and Kid all have more interesting things to do at this point. He was pretty misused for that year between SurSer 1994 and SurSer 1995. All that is off the exact topic that y'all are talking about, but...yeah. As soon as he gets the gold on Nash, Vince is mostly running a bunch of hoss feuds and matches against Sid and Mabel. He clearly has an idea of what type of champion he wants, size-wise. He gave Nash's first (and only) reign a whole year to be awful; he gave Bret's first reign about five months before going back to bigger guys in Hogan and Yokozuna.

Nattie is awkward in the ring, but Charlotte/Nattie was quite good, actually. I think Charlotte is close to being VERY good. She had a couple of good matches with Bayley and a couple of solid ones with Becky Lynch. Looking forward to Charlotte/Sasha Banks as that is surely coming up soon.

Do NXT matches count here? I'd have to think about it, but something like this might be my top five in order: Bray Wyatt vs. Daniel Bryan (Royal Rumble 2014) Usos vs. Harper/Rowan (2/3 falls, Battleground 2014) Wyatts vs. Shield (Elimination Chamber) Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn (NXT Arrival) Paige vs. Emma (NXT Arrival) Big E vs. Rusev (Payback 2014), Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H (WrestleMania 30), John Cena vs. Cesaro (RAW, 2/27), Sami Zayn vs. Tyler Breeze (NXT Takeover) are my immediate honorable mentions, though I could come up with five or six more of those if I thought about it for awhile.

I loved that running vertical counter in the Lucha Dragons match. Someone should use that as a sometimes-signature spot that gets nearfalls in big matches on the big show. I kinda get why Enzo and Cass might be grating to some people, but maaaaan I love them. Also I love Renee for her "This girl looks like Kitty Pryde!" comment when Blue Pants was on her way to the ring. Also also, Tyson Kidd saying that he'd be ready for a match with Zayn, but first he had to make some calls and check on his cats was the best. Even the crowd chanting "Oui!" when the Legionnaires exploded made me chuckle. This show actually has funny comedy. Also, that short segment with the Becky Lynch heel turn tease was fantastic and got my hopes up. Mojo Rawley needs a refreshing, so I'm glad to see that they're going to do that.

Re: DLC, since the base price of a game is still sixty dollars and has been for about twenty years even with inflation, it stands to reason that game companies are going to try to make enough money to cover for the fact that people by and large don't want to pay more than sixty bucks for a new game even though the prices of everything else they consume has gone up. Frankly, I like DLC because it gives me more options than if they just put all that content in to the base game and charged ninety bucks or whatever. This way, I can pick and choose what I want if I so desire, or I can buy it all, or I can buy none of it and just get the base game new for a really low price. For those companies that do crappy DLC (I'm looking at you, Capcom), I can ignore that shit, but for stuff like Fallout, the awesome DLC lets me extend a game that I really love so that now I can waste a hundred and fifty hours of my life running around in it using a jerry-rigged electric sword to lop off the heads of Super Mutants instead of just a hundred hours doing that.

Whoops, I think I sent a ballot with Civ V on it. I meant to just save draft, but that's my fault. I'll revise that list and bump it, then. Thanks for the swift reply.

Question: I know you give eligible consoles, so does that lock out PC-only games from the generation? I wanted to give Civ 4 or 5 a shout-out if possible.

In his own book, he recalls injuring Randy Savage's heel. On another Randy Savage note, how does he hold up as a draw? I remember that he is credited for having a good run on top vs. DiBiase around the country in 88-89, and that he gets credit for turning WCW house show business around with Ric Flair. In the pantheon of draws, he's obviously not Hogan/Austin/Rock level, but is he in the tier right below that? Who would some of his peers as a draw be, historically speaking?

I know he's an easy target, but maaaaaaaaaan FUCK Vince Russo. Him running down the masked cruisers as nameless and faceless and then not getting that the WCW crowd was still very wrestling-oriented without needing the big characters that made WWF crowds happy is infuriating. This is the first time I've seen a MNW special - I just jumped into this one mid-stream - and I'm already irritated.

I am glad that this got extended; I just saw it. This gives me a chance to give Alpha Protocol the recognition it deserves in at least one tiny arena, damn it!

Didn't even know there was a new port. I have the one on the Sonic Gems Collection for GameCube. Is the new port any better? I still watch SatAM occasionally on Netflix.

I guess I'll get the $25 dollar Season Pass (not a digital guy unless the game itself is on deep discount) because in the end, I want to play the Henry and Warrior DLC, and there was no way that I would not get the WCW and NXT stuff. It's too bad that they didn't just throw the WCW and NXT stuff into the Season Pass - would have been a really great deal.