Hagan

The Cena interview was really good, guys. He gets a little corporate-speaky at times but, for where he is, that's probably just second nature at this point. Great talk about the crowd reactions, especially the way Cena sees it as being worse for his opponent when the entire crowd is cheering/booing him and not really paying attention to the other guy in the ring. The usual spiel about guys need to not be afraid to confront McMahon with their pitches. This one of those weird talking points that so many ex-WWE guys, and even current guys, swear by, and others say it's a great way to fuck up your career. I think it just depends. I read somewhere that Titus went to Vince directly about the heel turn and apparently the company is on board with it, so I guess it has some merit sometimes. Interesting talk about promos. Austin praised him for getting the crux of the angles/issues over and speaking well. Cena claimed that he's not scripted, and that Arn (who is his main producer) lets him lay out his own matches. Cena's material varies so wildy from the awful comedy to pretty good money promos that I would imagine if he's not scripted he is told to go out and pander to his primary audience a lot of the times. Either that or he knows that the bulk of the people buying his merch are children so he adjusts accordingly. I didn't take the Edge thing as a contradiction as Cena just said that everyone told him that day to refuse to drop the belt to Edge and he went ahead with it. He didn't claim that he was behind the idea or anything. They didn't address the Nexus thing specifically so no idea what Cena would say about that. On the whole, though, as far as number 1 guys go Cena has always seemed to be like the most easy-going and most willing to work with different guys. Bret might be the only other guy, but we all now the stories about how difficult guys like Hogan, Shawn, Austin, Hunter etc. were with who they worked with, and who got over on them. Cena also claimed to not really be interested in creative or booking, which is interesting. Austin says he was the same way, and I guess your life is easier if you don't get tangled up in that stuff. But yeah, I really enjoyed the interview. Cena, like a lot of the guys at the very top of his profession in any sport/medium, isn't going to go too off-message on an interview but it was a pretty good glimpse at his mindset.

Oh man...concur on The Shield match. I wasn't blown away by it only because everything those guys do is excellent. I was wondering how often Bryan has worked with The Shield guys on TV since they debuted. It has to be around two dozen at least. Eight man was fun. Usos winning the belts are going to get a huge pop. Four way was an excellent trainwreck. And Cesaro and Orton was just a blast. Cesaro hits a fucking incredible spinning uppercut to lead to the Neutralizer. Orton is really good as well as he's finally hitting his stride again. Too bad his title reign is a dumpster fire though. Love that Orton's using the WM point as a heel move every week. But seriously, Randy deserves way better than to stick him with Batista in a singles match that's going to die a peasant's death, at best, or lead to a mass revolt. They gotta do the fucking three-way. Shit...do a fourway with Hunter in there as well. I'll take that too.

What's the over/under before the crowds start cheering for Orton again? After a bit of a rocky start, his matches have picked up to last year's level and the fact that he's essentially a fighting babyface champion facing outnumbered odds and going after his challengers one by one each week as punishment from his megalomaniacal bosses leads me to thinking that the night after 'Mania he should be ready to turn. Honestly, I don't know why they don't just run an extended Orton/Hunter feud? Aside from the WM snoozer (which was a smark crowd burnt out and crawling up its own ass to show how cool they were for rejecting "overpushed" guys), they've always had good matches, and there's a built-in story there that'll can get you pretty far. You can even bring in Flair I'd be all-in for an extended Cena/Wyatt grudge feud that goes until the Summer before Cena finally prevails, Hunter/Orton/Batista in a "who evolved the best" feud, and then have Bryan with the belt doing the Bret Hart-fighting champion route. I really think the worst booking device in WWE is the idea that programs have to run two-or-three PPVS in a row. I hope that the Network changes that because now we don't have to worry about month-to-month buyrates. I think you can get to SummerSlam with Bryan defending against, like, Kane one month, members of The Shield, maybe Batista, a one-off with Cesaro, Sheamus and I'm running out of credible guys because they've done a terrible job with their roster. But the point remains... I dunno...they really need to JBL a guy and completely re-package a perenial mid-carder and push him to the main event. Which mid-carder would work? I mean, I dig the Bad News Barrett gimmick but they could certainly tweak it into a little more of a dangerous thing and I think he'd be quickly credible.

Those last two matches were man-sized from Night 2. Okada's giant dinosaur was...unexpected.

Yeah, I think there's more value in them all turning babyface, with Ambrose still being a squirrely fuck who eventually knifes them in the back to join the Authority or something then in any other scenario.' Actually, there's nothing to indicate that Rollins would stay heel in this scenario. He clearly has Reigns' back. He's his partner. They both know Ambrose is insufferable. I neither buy Roman turning babyface by spearing them both, nor do I buy Rollins joining Ambrose in a sneak attack. But, since WWE's babyfaces suck I assume that Reigns will just randomly spear them both to a massive babyface pop and that'll be the end of it.

Brilliant post, Alan. That's how you reasonably debate something.

THIS is pro wrestling, people. THIS.

Haha! I know. I almost put a disclaimer that I was ashamed of using it, but AJ does fit the trope. She could totally play like Zooey Deschanel's personal trainer on New Girl or something.

Yeah, I kind of wonder if AJ could cross-over. She's got the "adorkable" appeal, good talker, has a nice cross-over of young female fans and dudes that dig her, and has a look that isn't Torrie Wilson or Stacy Keibler-stye bombshell that kind of limits the stuff you can do. Like, AJ could show up on Community and not look like she beamed in from Supermodel Land (though a show with Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs may kind of disprove my example there).

Thanks, man. Writing that allowed me take a break from grading Comp 1 papers, so it was time well-spent. Owen's death was a real thing that affected the an industry, changed safety features in wrestling, and had an impact on a wide variety of important characters in the history of the sport. By this logic, OTE should be released uncut because of its historic, albeit, tragic nature. Seriously, the only one that's shitting on Owen's death is you, not the WWE, dude.

I imagine the gimmick sticks around. One thing all three need is just an angle to really develop. I mean, The Shield's main angle has been "kicking ass all day, every day" but with the exception of them being portrayed as paid muscle every now and then, they haven't had a lot of storyline based stuff. I mean, this Wyatt stuff is great, of course. It'll be just shy of a year and a half since they formed when Mania rolls around so...yeah...it's okay. Although, if Reigns gets programmed as HHH (which is the best idea for Hunter yet) then that may be held off. But it took Helmsley exactly one year to turn on his incarnation of DX and join the Corporation so there's some relevant historical precedence. I would dig if the Shield became de-facto babyfaces for a few months and THEN Ambrose or Rollins turn on him or whatever. But regardless, I imagine in some way these three are gonna be married to each other for years. I would imagine that the gimmick sticks around, though. There's too much value (and too much TV time needed to fill) in not having some incarnation The Shield take up 30 to 40 minutes of TV every week.

I like the idea that arguing this makes one a WWE apologist. If there's one thing wrestling fans on the Internet are known for it's defending the McMahon family and their corporate practices. The fact that the Internet hasn't exploded with outrage kind of shows how much of a non-issue it is. Not that it doesn't suck, or that people can't see the other side, but it's just not a big issue assuming they handle it correctly.

Who had five pages? In the immortal words of Slickster, "turn out the liiiiiights, this thread is ovahhhhhh."

And no one this board has "praised" the decision. We've all just analyzed it from enough different angles to attempt to see the rationale behind, or at least what the rationale could be

Okay. 1) Why do you think that they're putting it up then? And I don't think anyone is arguing that there's a moral imperative for the event to be up. What everyone is arguing is, because it is featured, that the probable reason is that the Network is supposed to be a complete archive. That's not a fact that can be argued. If Nascar announces that they'll be offering on-demand videos of every Daytona 500 would anyone criticize them if the one featuring Dale Senior was apart of it, or would you insist that that one be scrubbed from memory?

But how is it a disgusting corporate move? Seriously, give us a reason why you think the WWE is releasing this event? There's no winnable answer for them, so the fact that they're releasing is, in and of itself, an exoneration that they don't have ulterior motives. If they've decided that, for better or worse no matter what happens in the future, the WWE archive will function as a complete archive of the ENTIRE WRESTLING INDUSTRY then whatever the fuck happened at this PPV or any other PPV is irrelevant. I swear to God, if Vince McMahon dropped dead at Gorilla during WM XXX, not only would the show not be stopped but they'd be rolling out that event for years as Vince's Last Stand. The whole thing really boils down to that there's no good reason to broadcast this show except for the fact that the Network's mission statement is to function as a complete archive. Thus, that is a just, acceptable answer. Everything else is just noise. And let me rephrase to hit this point better. WWE: We intend to have a Network that shows 100% of our owned PPVs Me: so does that 100% includes ones you selectively decide not to include because they'll paint your company in a bad light, featured a tragedy/accident of some kind, highlighted a murderer, steroid user, many alleged rapists, pedophiles, drug pushers, guys that died directly due to your lax drug uses or that were actively encouraged by the owner to do drugs himself. WWE: Well, you bring a good point but 100% actually means 100&. All that will certainly make us look like fucking assholes but the mission of the Network is be a complete archive for our wonderful WWE Universe. Me: Do you want to have a moral debate about the justness of this? WWE: No, we can certainly see the moral issues of this, unfortunately our wonderful WWE Universe has long demanded and sought complete, unfiltered access to our wonderful Sports Entertainment library not only from the WWE, but also from our other wonderful libraries. Thus, for better or worse, it'll be 100%, though, of course, an event like Over the Edge will be edited to avoid mentions or references to the unfortunate off-camera tragedy that happened. Me: Oh, so someone that clicks on it will just have to watch a shitty PPV that avoids any reference to the event that made it infamous WWE: hey, we're putting GAB '91 uncut on there too. December to Dismember as well. Some people are into watching terrible wrestling PPVs.

Oh man, that's a great question. Not to get all Quakenbush on wrestling as performance but I'll give my answer a shot. Well, definitely some guys become better "story-tellers" in the WWF than they were in the indies or even WCW. The WWF was always less about flashy movies, and creativity, than in pacing, heavily protected spots and finishers, and matches that told a story. Even in the Hogan-era when the NWA had the stiffer matches, violence, and workers who were a bit more unshackled in what they could do, the WWF still managed to push a narrative in their matches that even the littlest kid in the back row could get. Generally, with few exceptions, wrestlers are performing in front of crowds 4 or 5 times larger in WWF on a weekly basis so it becomes very much more about slowing things down and letting everyone catch up to the ride, rather than the rollercoaster in front of a smaller, but probably more rabid crowd. Would ROH Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan or, before the walk-out, Punk be just as over with WWE crowds if they were working ROH style, or even a more NJPW-pace. My hunch is not because I think the crowd would just get desensitized to it or they wouldn't understand the story because it would too fast or too flashy. It would be a spectacle when the WWE has tried to teach their fans to follow the plot. To be fair, Bryan would probably be fine in any format. I have often thought that the WWE should go that WCW route and just sign some super fast, flippy workers and have them go out for 20 minutes and see what happens. I mean, this is a wrestling audience that nearly shit their pants when John Cena got spiked by Punk with a pile-driver. How would they have reacted to a freed-from-limitation Mistico or a fresh from ROH Davey match? I think it would get over big initially and then just kind of die out. And the bigger issue is that then you follow with the main eventers doing 30 minutes, slower-psychology paced matches and you would get a jarring disconnect. I mean, as has been noted this week, Dolph Ziggler wrestles so fast that it's one of the reasons his act is dying. He's going so fast it's actually causing him to be a poor worker. And Dolph is still only about 80 percent at some of the upper-end indy guys. When the WWE hit that 2000 or so era with Angle and Benoit basically ushering in the King's Road head-dropping era of main event matches, you had some absolutely incredible wrestling but it had the result of shortening a lot of guy's career, at best, killing them at worst, and resulting to the point where finishers were starting to get killed. So, when the slowdown happened around the Cena-era it definitely resulted in a bit of a letdown because guys weren't killing themselves as much, but they managed to retrain the audience to accept, like, a fireman's carry as a finisher, or Orton's chinlock as a viable spot. Whether or not we think that Jericho's 1999 stuff holds up, and it was really rough early and he didn't have a lot to work with, there's no doubt that his best run was that heel run when he was with Shawn and became much more of a character-based wrestler. Say what you will about Kane but Kane's going to be remembered for a lot of great stories, and Jericho really only has the Shawn deal as a great story. Actually, the whole idea that Kane isn't a good worker was always silly because basically everyone that has ever worked with him said he was, and he's been perpetually over since 1997. Okay, so I went all over the map here, but...I think that the WWF has always had an idea of what its main event style should be, and with the exception of the dark reign of Kurt Angle, it's been pretty consistent. As wildly different workers as they were, Hogan matches, Bret matches, Shawn matches, Austin matches, Hunter matches, and Cena matches always had a very particular style, pacing, and story within them. I don't think that really existed in other companies devoid of WWF influence. I mean, Flair had his routine and his psychology, of course, but I'd take Hogan/Savage WM V over the Clash match that day because Hogan/Savage was a fucking epic operatic tragedy. So, I just think that we, as fans, have been conditioned that WWE main event epic style is the right kind of wrestling, especially for a company playing to the millions and not the thousands. Of course, your mileage on this may vary depending on what you thought about the Mania sage of Shawn/Flair, UT/Shawn, UT/Shawn II, Hunter/UT II, and Hunter/UTIII. I loved them all and think they're, basically, everything that story-telling paced wrestling should be, though I admit that the slow-motion epic selling starts to border on parody after a while.

I'm curious about the Kane/Jericho 1999 debate. Kane had a great year, and, like everything with Jericho, nothing is really aging well. Also, can we stop calling it a "fake sport" or whatever. We're all very aware what pro-wrestling is. Also, you can ask non-wrestling fans anything about the sport and get outrage. Steroids! Death! Racism! Homophobia! It's all there. I mean, it's like asking someone that hates football if they think that morally it's wrong to watch football because of the chance of head trauma? Or asking someone that hates racing whether Nascar is inherently racist. Should the NFL Network edit Junior Seau suffering concussions from big hits in light of what happened? Isn't that a lot more exploitive and uncaring than an edited event that circumvens an off-camera tragedy. Why, of all the terrible things that the wrestling industry has done, is an edited PPV that featured an off-camera an accidental death a deal-breaker, or an unfathomable moral transgression? They'll be plenty of content where they have that pedophile ring announcer on camera? Should he be edited out of sensitivity to his victims? I mean, I can certainly see both sides, but I don't see how it's possible to feel that strongly that one side is right or wrong.

This is such a circular argument. However, I will say that people would only click on it out of morbid curiousity isn't a provable claim. I think we're assuming that every subscriber is going to be hyper-aware of wrestling history. Not the case. I'm sure many will probably remember he died, but probably won't remember the name of the PPV, or even remember that it was on PPV. But besides, saying that people would only watch it out of some sick fetish to watch a show where a guy died is akin to saying people ONLY want to watch Benoit matches because they really dig him becoming a psychopath.

People have divisive opinions of the Al Snow vs Hardcore Holly match, I hear.

Because they said you can watch everything. Seriously, I imagine a huge selling point of this thing is that people are going to want to relive EVERY moment of the Attitude Era. The WWE isn't Clockwork Oranging the audience by making them watch Owen Hart fall to his death on loop for 3 hours. It's all about free will. If you don't want to watch it, don't watch it. But yeah, if one of the selling points is that you're putting up every WWE, WCW, ECW PPV (and they are with the exception of I guess the No Holds Barred cage match with Hogan, and the cross-promoted PPVs with foreign companies) then you kind of have no choice but to put on EVERY PPV. And again, we go on a slippery slope. This archive features a whole lot of guys that died pretty terrible deaths. Considering the way Hawk died, isn't if offensive that they'll be having the angles where they portray him as a drug addict who attempts to commit suicide on air? I loved Owen as much as any wrestling fan could. He was my favorite wrestler from like the turn on Bret and really until his death. Shit, him winning the IC belt was like one of the big reasons I even wanted to see the PPV that night, but his accident doesn't turn Over the Edge into some mythical creature that must be guarded from human consumption. Shit, I mean...if you have a bee in your bonnet to watch every WWF title change post-expansion period (which is something that I would really be into) the show has historical kayfabe value. And as noted, it's heavily edited and it'll have a few shitty matches. At that point, why exclude it other than seeming like the company is trying to hide something or to deflect blame or guilt?

You know, about a year ago I actually watched the Jim Ross announcement of his death and parts of the tribute show. It wasn't out of a sense of wanting to corpse rob or revel over it. It was just thinking about a very sad thing and just wanting to revisit the circumstances because it's been a very long time and at 32 I have a different perspective of it and the industry than I did then. Shit, I think I watched the Eddy tribute videos and like the Randy Savage tribute at the same time. Just getting all the sad. My point is, there are perfectly valid reasons to watch the show that don't involve the person wanking it to a dude's death. It's an important historical event, it changed things for a lot of people. I'm NOT going to watch it, nor do I watch Chris Benoit matches, but I'm not going to accuse guy's of being shady for doing so. And also, if the show had 3 five star matches, then would it be okay for them to put it up? Because if you think that then we're getting into subjective analysis. I mean, the show does blow but what if it didn't?

Got around to listening to Bryan's epic SLOW DOWN rant about Dolph Ziggler. Hilarious. Actually, all their exasperation about all the stupid moves guys are doing (like the Cody moonsault) was pretty funny.

Man, everyone shits on Koko but hey...21 year career, 8 years in the company. A pretty recognizable African-American star in a sport that hasn't always had a good track record with minorities. Had a pretty fun run in Memphis. I mean, I'm not even remotely defending his entry but we all remember Frankie, the theme music, and the dance, right?

Yeah, the thing with Crow Sting is that the second he started wrestling again and cutting promos then it was basically over. Him coming to the WWE as the apocalyptic ass-kicker that took down the nWo was always going to be a dodgy issue because the entire build-up would just be Undertaker and Sting pointing to the WM scene and then pointing to each other with either a bat or a cut-throat hand gesture for 7 weeks. Bringing Sting in as a GM or Legend, or having him do a one-off match or squash a couple of jobbers is fine and what he certainly at the least deserves. It's so weird that he's best remembered as the silent Crow character because that was, in hindsight, such a small part of his career.