Matt D

I'm keeping tabs on the mole men. Someone else can do the twitter thing. I'm still trying to decipher Michael Cole's instructions on how to use this WWE apple on my flip phone. Poor Dean Ambrose.

Matt Hardy is on top of the facebook trending list, whatever the heck that means. I just saw it.

They should just have Graves on the main roster on Monday as if nothing happened.

The Christian thing is so mind boggling. They didn't redebut him at the Rumble even though he was ready but instead they give him a video package and immediately hotshot him into the chamber. It was like how he inexplicably got the title shot vs ADR at Summerslam. I almost wonder if they think he's the sort of guy who would appeal to the Atttidue era fans that they're trying to draw in with the Network launch.

This guy also says that Raw will feature a Rhodes Bros vs NAO cage match for the belts.

That picture made me think that WWE films needs to license the sequel to this:

That could have been a Goldust comeback. The Joe/Dean vs Eddy/Jericho feud that never was.

In Soviet Russia, the WrestleMania PPV payday walks out on you.

Oh, what might have been.

What's really amazing with Bryan and Dave is that Bryan has no idea how to talk to Dave. You can tell just listening to them for twenty minutes. I have people that I'm in meetings with all the time that remind me of Dave. You have to figure out how to present information to them and if you do that, they'll get it immediately and you can have a productive talk. If you don't present it the right way, getting past some of their semantic barriers, you end up going in circles and missing the point entirely. It's one of my best skills a bureaucrat and it's really not rocket science. But Bryan just doesn't do it at all. He keeps pressing forward saying the same thing that Dave is obviously not getting where if he just figured out why Dave wasn't getting it and tweaked his way of saying it by twenty percent or so (and there are patterns. It's basically the same way every time), it would work so much better.

This is literally the only Will Ferrell movie I like. A lot of that is the great supporting cast and the face that he tries to play a human being and not some ridiculous parody of one. Emma Thompson is probably the world's most delightful actress.

I was kind of looking forward to Kane vs Punk. They build it well. Ah well. Apparently this makes Christian an upper midcarder by default.

I think Brock takes out one of the C guys.

It's all about the Network and those Nitro fans.

What's-his-face-chickenhawk-guy is reporting that Sting signed a legends deal, apparently. Some wrestling site with spyware is saying that it's not quite finalized yet. No comment from the mole men.

We're looking at this all wrong. Bryan's not Austin. He's Crow Sting, disrupting the show. He's this: But he's using the fans to do it for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzkrYulGfw The bodyslam to the floor spot in this match is really clever. I hate that Kikuchi doesn't sell it. The transition to tag was pretty memorable but it led to a reset instead of a Malenko kills everyone segment which was a little disappointing. I think Malenko was really good at portraying a sense of struggle. Kikuchi falling off the ropes has maybe the best recovery I've ever seen as Rogers just immediately takes over without even a second's hesitation. Good on him. It's so well done you have to wonder if it was planned. The subsequent kickout after the piledriver on the floor is total bullshit though. It's fine to have that not end the match but have Malenko break up the pin if you're going to do that. Fantastics double second rope dropkick is so cool but leads to another bullshit kick out. Rogers is really good at changing direction on the fly. The head plant at 9:57 is scary. Holy jeez. The subsequent kickout is bullshit. Match didn't have enough Malenko. It's pretty much a surreal beating of Kikuchi with the Fantastics kicking out insane offense and Kikuchi kicking out of all of it. I'm not going to say it wasn't fun candy though. I'm sorry I have nothing else to contribute!

God, Gonzalez is defending me. My head. Look. Bryan just came out as really passive aggressive in that promo. As a character. I don't even know if it was the wrong choice since he's sort of speaking for the smarky fans that make up a bunch of the crowd. Punk was the same way a couple of years ago. It's one reason why I kind of like Punk's heel run with Heyman more than I like his weird quasi shooty face run the year before. I know you can't compare everyone to Austin. It's stupid to, but Austin would have gotten screwed, come out, and just messed people up. There was always that sense of unpredictability to him that anyone talking to him at any moment could get Stunnered. People could get behind that. There was an element of unpredictability to Punk in the beginning but it quickly went away and he was verbally sparring with Grampa Nash instead. I think it shows, more than anything else, the nature of the crowd the WWE has right now. They've been beaten up so much that they're just passive aggressive. They're the smarky hardcores. I don't see a YES Movement except for maybe as an internet petition. He's basically no longer trying to fight the machine and now he's getting people to like his facebook post about how terrible it is instead. Gregg talked a lot a few months ago about how he could relate to Bryan the way they were booking him back in Sept/Oct. That's sort of when he was storming the ring only to get decimated again and again. At least then he was storming the ring. Now he's posting twitter comments. Again, I'm not even sure it's the wrong move. I just don't know about it.

They should have a match in a swamp somewhere.

I think Steph was disappointed that Hunter didn't play along well enough when she started to mock the crowd for being unable to chant.

You know, Bryan's pretty whiny. I guess that appeals to a lot of the current generation though.

For some reason I always read that as Trotamaker.

Step 1: Do a search for Gonzalez.