DMJ

- I think things went south with Wardlow when TK started booking him immediately as a super-over, crowd-pleasing babyface instead of letting him be a "tweener" for longer after the feud with MJF. The feud with MJF was personal and it worked because his motivation was to get out of a contract he had. He wasn't fighting for a greater good, he was fighting to free himself from MJF's rule. But then, IIRC, he went into a program with QT Marshall and a bunch of goons and it felt really forced. They skipped a few steps, IMO, to get him over as a post-Evolution Batista when, really, they needed to almost rewind on him after the MJF feud, have him steamroll folks (heel and face), and stay silent, maybe even teasing that he was still a selfish heel. - With Hobbs, what sucks is that he clearly has "it" but always ends up in some stable where either other guys are getting pushed harder (Takeshita and Ospreay now) or the stable itself is a lower midcard act. Hobbs should be even easier to book than Wardlow, in my opinion, because I do think he is generally more interesting in-ring and has a more intimidating heel look. Hobbs should've come off beating Jericho with a bunch more fairly big victories and they just didn't do it. I know you can't push everyone at the same time, but he's gotta be a bigger priority and should have more than just one signature win by now.

^ I don't necessarily think we will because Cody volunteered to step aside, which makes him just look like a total dork. I know my own "fandom" for Cody just took a massive hit. Why should I or anyone cheer this dude? I thought with Vince gone we wouldn't be getting cuckold angles anymore... I hope Roman beats The Rock clean, but I doubt The Rock's ego would allow that. Roman's promo was great. I loved him burying Seth and now he's going to get to drag Cody too for not stepping up to him. Reigns being Forever Champion sounds good to me at this point. They just assassinated Cody's character, Rollins is a try-hard, company shill who couldn't get it done and wears a consolation prize around his waist, The Rock is an egomaniac who is going to tear a whole bunch of muscles at WrestleMania, and CM Punk is a massive hypocrite who has gotten injured in like 3 out of 5 of his last matches. Roman Reigns is the only one out of the whole bunch that's cool.

- Re: whether this is a "downgrade" similar to when they left USA for Spike, I don't remember that being considered a real downgrade at the time. My memory - which very much could've been shaded by the WWE's PR spin of things - was that, yes, WWE had landed on Spike (actually TNN at the time), which had less reach than USA, but the bigger deal was that they now were working with Viacom's slate of cable channels, which meant huge exposure on MTV, VH1, and potentially Nickelodeon, as well as - if I'm not mistaken - a big publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. Plus, you had the opportunity for WWE to do late night shows on Saturdays on CBS just like they had done on NBC in the 80s and 90s. TNN's re-branding as Spike was practically built around Raw being the network's new flagship. But then the WWE's ratings and mainstream appeal dipped and kept dipping and the company dug their heels in and continued to promote a hyper-masculine, ultra-violent product. Perfectly fine for Spike - the "Network for Men" - but not necessarily a great way to build a bigger audience. And because the WWE double-downed on a hyper-masculine, ultra-aggressive style, they became a bit of an albatross on MTV. The comparisons to bands like Limp Bizkit, Korn, and their ilk is particularly apt. Huge in 2000 and essentially the spiritual soundtrack to the later years of the Attitude Era/Ruthless Aggression years, within a few years, they were the opposite of cool. Mudvayne was out, 50 Cent was in. MTV dropped Sunday Night Heat from its line-up in 2003, kicking the show over to Spike. And also because the WWE had got even more sexist, even more violent, and even more bloody over this time, as far as I remember, they never did air any specials on CBS, let alone get exposure on Nickelodeon. Ultimately, the failure of the WWE/Viacom deal, to me, comes down to the fact that Viacom "bought high" on a product that was actually peaking creatively and in terms of mainstream appeal at the time of the purchase, only neither side really knew it (or could admit it). And then when it began to fall within 2 years of the deal, Viacom pushed it all into the SpikeTV corner and just hoped the "wrestling stink" wouldn't rub off on any of their other properties.

I hate to say it because I know he's proven to be a total dweeb...but Disco Inferno was a terrific comedy wrestler for a time there. He took a really silly gimmick and played it for laughs, but most importantly to me, he incorporated that comedy and gimmick into his in-ring style and let those quirks cost him matches. He wasn't a guy who just loved disco dancing but was a serious competitor. He was so in love with disco dancing that he forgot he was wrestling a match at times. This is why I still think Seth Rollins has no gimmick. Yes, he dresses wild. He wears garish sunglasses. He struts around. But when the bell rings, he instantly turns into serious competitor Seth Rollins, workrate machine. Yes, he'll pause to let the crowd sing his music and "conduct," but there's nothing original to any of it. Kevin Nash said he was "doing Macho" at one point and that's just such an insult to Randy Savage, whose promos, ring gear, motivations, fighting style, mannerisms, etc. blended so seamlessly to create a multi-faceted, larger-than-life character that has stood the test of time. Seth is just nowhere even close. Turning back to comedy, I think one would have to mention The Bushwhackers (WWE run specifically) as being in the top 10 for WWE. They may have been legit tough guys elsewhere, but for many of us who grew up only seeing their WWE careers, Luke and Butch were outrageous Aussies that did wacky, disgusting things and they were great at it and had a very long run in that role.

- Punk's big return singles match will be at Mania. The Rumble seems like the safest way to have Punk compete without having to have him actually wrestle a match as all he really has to do in there is stomp and kick and maybe hit a GTS. Like with Roman, I think they'd have CM Punk clothed in bubble wrap and moving blankets to protect him until April if they could. They absolutely believe they can milk Rollins/Punk for the next 3 months and I don't see why they can't. - Cody vs. Roman has got to be set in stone by now. I still think they should've had Cody win the belt(s) last year, but if the intention was to see whether Cody Rhodes could stay hot for a year even after losing, that he was the "real deal," then he passed the test in 2023. After Mania last year, I believed Cody would end up like just another guy - another Kevin Owens, another Drew McIntyre, another Sami Zayn, another Seth Rollins - just another guy who couldn't get it done and would always be one rung below Roman. But, based on crowd reactions, certainly seems like Cody is as popular as he ever was and is still the guy who should be getting the rub.

My memory of the post-WCW cable world, specifically TBS and TNT, was that those channels were 90% reruns (most notably Seinfeld starting in 2002), old movies, and NBA and MLB games (I think they still aired a ton of Braves games). A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that TNT and TBS didn't even really bother developing their own series until the mid-to-late 2000s and really didn't kick it into high gear until the 2010s. And while us wrestling fans love to shit on Jamie Kellner for being an idiot, one could also play devil's advocate and say that, ultimately, he was right. Pro-wrestling had a few more years (months?) of truly being in the zeitgeist of mainstream culture before the downfall began. Not long after, WWE left the USA Network and then basically flopped when they moved to TNN/Spike/MTV. The expectation was that WWE, which was peaking in popularity at the time, was now going to benefit from Viacom's corporate synergy and its dual "young, hip" cable channels - MTV still being the "youth culture" channel and TNN/Spike being 100% marketed towards a male demographic - but, lo and behold, the MTV youth culture audience got bored with wrestling (because that's precisely what happens to things that are trendy) and the company failed to bring in new viewers as they slipped deeper into lowest common denominator booking filled with envelope-pushing nonsense like necrophilia jokes that even the dumbest tribal tattoo-covered proto-bro knew were lame.

EDIT: I misread the original post and thought the SmackDown rating was for highest-rated show of the weekend and not the week. I'm going to edit what my post was and admit I was wrong about all the qualifiers. This is a huge win for the WWE to be able to say they had the highest-rated show of all TV over the week. But not necessarily as much for the Bloodline saga specifically as it is for what the company has accomplished. In the Hogan era, and I could be wrong here, the WWE's only network show was Saturday Night's Main Event, which ran during the SNL slot (11:30 PM). At that time slot, it could've never achieved what SmackDown did. In the Austin/Attitude Era, the WWE's flagship show was on cable on Mondays and SmackDown was on the weakest of the networks. This ratings victory here shows just how far the WWE has come along even since its 90s peak, though, I still think there are some caveats to consider: everything else on network TV is in summer reruns (with some summer shows having their production curtailed by the writers strike), the NBA season is over, MLB coverage is spread over so many different channels and platforms that it splinters the audience, there's no pre-season NFL yet, no Olympics, and we're still a few weeks/months away from the next election cycle really heating up in terms of TV coverage. Still, a win is a win.

I'm honestly a bit surprised by how divisive the main event was. I stayed away from reading any reviews/spoilers and just finished the show this morning and thought the main event was excellent. I would absolutely hate if every match the WWE did relied so much on outright acting - facial expressions, Roman or the Usos or Paul Heyman practically delivering a promo mid-match - just like I would absolutely hate if every match featured wrestlers getting distracted by the crowd doing football chants and singing songs, but the Bloodline (and Roman's matches specifically) are unique because of those things. I can understand people not liking how slow Roman's matches start, how much he milks things, but its ridiculous to deny that the live crowds are bored by a single second of it. Saying that what Roman is doing is not working is absurd and willfully ignoring the crowd responses. In the match I saw, based on the crowd I heard, he got reactions for everything he did. I've not been in love with every single match or every single segment the Bloodline have done, but I think they nailed it here and finally delivered a pay-off that they didn't do with Sami or Cody, after a match that had me engaged from beginning to end.

Just goes to show that in the crazy world of pro-wrestling, the good, the bad, and the ugly can all blur together and leave a lasting impression on countless fans. "Droz" was just getting started as a pro-wrestler really, which is why the accident was so tragic and should continue to be a reminder of just how dangerous pro-wrestling really is. In my last year or so in college, this was in 2005/2006, a couple of us had our wrestling fandom re-emerge after not really watching for awhile. Among a bunch of us, it was like we all just kinda turned to each other one night and said, "Wait, you were obsessed with wrestling growing up too???" And so our little crew started watching Raw again and going to the local bW3's to watch the pay-per-views and, because some of our friends/roommates were not wrestling fans at all, we also screened Beyond the Mat so that the non-fans could get a better feel for what us longtime/secret fans understood about wrestling having been avid viewers through the 90s (we also screened Wrestling With Shadows, 'natch). It was really amazing watching a bunch of art students/hipsters come around to enjoy wrestling - mostly for its campiness and ridiculousness appeal - even if, obviously, most were just hanging around for the beer and laughs rather than a love for the sport. Of course, the Vince McMahon-Meets-Darren Drozdov scene from Beyond the Mat was, from that night on, quoted regularly by every one of us (male and female), multiple times a night, for the rest of the year and even to this day, though we're all now nearing 40 and most of us live hundreds of miles apart. Still, like clockwork, whenever a few of us are fortunate enough to be in the same town again and we attempt to drink like we did two decades ago and, inevitably, one of us doesn't look too good, you can count on hearing someone belt out "He's gonna...He's gonna...He's gonna...He's gonna puuuke!" Like I wrote earlier - that's sort of the weird beauty of pro-wrestling. I'm not sure if that scene highlights something good (the joy a single moment captured on film can bring to fans for years and years), something bad (Vince exploiting what was probably a legit medical issue Droz had/reducing his entire personality to a disgusting party trick), or the ugly (we're talking about vomit after all), but for me, thinking of Droz brings a smile on my face regardless and I hope he'd be happy that that is the lasting memory I have of im way more than the tragedy that ended his career. RIP Darren Drozdov

I wouldn't call this a "nothingburger." I also don't think its so easy to dismiss the idea that this is now Punk and AEW (and, yes, Kenny and Page and the Bucks) turning this into a program no matter what Meltzer or even ESPN is reporting (which is that the deal is for there to be a relatively hard brand split or, at the very least, a plan to keep Punk separate from the Elite). If this is a work, Punk is now positioning himself as the guy that is willing to reach out and "bury the hatchet" and work with the Elite. The Elite's non-response is basically saying that they think he's toxic and don't want to work with him. To their fans, the Elite are still the babyfaces. Sounds to me like you have the makings for a wrestling feud. If this was a shoot and Punk and the Elite really aren't going to work together, well, its pretty fucked up that Punk is basically just re-stating the same thing he said at the media scrum: that the Elite don't know how to make money, don't know how to run a company, etc. Which, if I'm not mistaken, are the same accusations and lines that got him in hot water with Tony and caused all this drama. I know Tony can't control what Punk says in an interview, but is it not odd that he's still calling the Elite unprofessional and only accepting responsibility for not going about things the "right way"? (Which, in wrestling, is in the ring, brother.) Which is why I'm in the camp that believes they are now building to an eventual storyline showdown. I can also see why they don't want to hotshot it. Right now, they've got Forbidden Door storylines, the BCC/Elite storyline, and seemingly an MJF/Cole storyline already in full swing. They've also got a brand new show to launch built around Punk and a bunch of other talent and I think Tony wants to establish it as a somewhat separate entity not dissimilar to RAW/SD. (I expect MJF to appear on both, by the way.) Then you've also got some question marks around what this new deal with Warner Bros./Discovery is all about. I'm not convinced they got this supposedly massive deal just to add Collision to their network and AEW Access to the Max platform - I think there's going to be a PPV/PLE deal with Max announced by the end of the 2023. Also Wembley. To make this storyline/angle as "real" as possible, you wouldn't want Punk and Page to necessarily go face-to-face the first night Punk comes back anyway. Remember, the (kayfabe) Page & Elite stance is that they want nothing to do with the guy/are busy with BCC and Takeshita & Callis & Ospreay. Meanwhile, Punk is saying that he tried to work it out, but now, he's focused on making Collision the "A" show. I'll certainly and readily eat my hat if they really do never work together (it will be one of those nacho hats from The Simpsons, mind you), but I dunno...seems like Wrestling 101 that if you're doing media and telling fans "It'll never happen!" that that is the first step to promoting a must-see, unpredictable big-time match. And almost exactly 12 years ago, CM Punk did it in the WWE so its hard to say he doesn't at least have *some* experience blending the lines of reality to sell a wrestling match.

So, since the Old School Questions Thread was closed, I wasn't sure where to post this, but... I was watching King of the Ring 96' this week and came to the main event - Shawn Michaels vs. The British Bulldog - for the WWE Championship. I won't go into the storyline, but Mr. Perfect was advertised to be the Special Guest Referee. The drama comes from not knowing whether he'd call it down the middle. But then, before the match starts, Perfect is declared the "outside the ring" referee by President Monsoon. My question is - does anyone know why they changed things around? Was Perfect not cleared to be the referee because Wisconsin was one of those places where the athletic commission was "real"? Did it have to do with his Lloyds of London policy? Obviously there are way worse "bait and switch" things in wrestling history, but this one just didn't seem to have served any purpose at all, especially as Hennig isn't really involved in the match in any major way aside from not counting out Shawn Michaels at one point.

The conservative wrestling fan in me would say that its too soon to run another Last Man Standing match with Brock not just because the last one was less than a year ago, but because the last one was one of the few really memorable ones they've had in a long, long time. But to the WWE's writers/creative/Vince? Nope. The WWE went from having Hell in a Cell matches once a year to multiple times a year to multiple times a night. And with that stipulation in place, Cody doesn't need a finisher as much as he needs a set piece to bury Lesnar under.

I'd say slim-to-none and I'm not even a big fan of Rollins. The Wrestlemania and the Backlash matches from last year weren't my bag, but I'm willing to admit that the crowds ate them up and I'm just not a fan of the type of action and story they told - especially at Mania. When I take a step back and try to be objective, I can absolutely appreciate the workrate, execution, effort, and histrionics of those matches as well as the fact that, while he'll never be one of my favorites, Seth Rollins is a very talented, hard-working, world-class performer. The Hell in a Cell match was terrific and one of the few "must watch" WWE matches of the year. Aside from the dogshit finish, Rhodes vs. Reigns was a stupendous match that pushed every button in terms of main event WWE-style. Yes, when motivated, Lesnar is capable of great, great matches...but it has been a very long time that he's accomplished that without bells-and-whistles (last year's SummerSlam and some of the fun multi-mans he's been in). I'm less curious about how this match ranks up to other Cody matches than I am other Lesnar matches - meaning, will this be as good as Lesnar's matches against Danielson? Against AJ? Against Joe and Finn? I liked all those matches for different reasons. Or will it be like some of the less exciting matches against Reigns? The forgettable matches with Rollins? The matches with Lashley that weren't all that great?

So, all in all, it took about 3 weeks for the "Cody Should've Won" people to proved right. Whether it was Vince or Triple H or whoever made the call, the WWE's booking since Mania has been like that scene from The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob keeps walking into rakes. Had they just given the fans what they wanted and given Cody the win, they wouldn't need to create a *third* World Championship. They could've still done the exact same Brock heel turn the next night on RAW (only, in this instance, it would've been Roman wanting a rematch and Cody saying, "Sure, but to get it, you and Solo have to beat me and a partner of my choosing and I know someone who really, really hates you.") There a myriad of ways of they could've split Cody's titles that wouldn't have felt cheap. For example, they could've had Cody come out and say that he was a fighting champion and wasn't going to duck challengers...which would've led to one RAW heel (Finn?) and one SD guy (GUNTHER?) demanding title shots on the same night at an upcoming pay-per-view. Cody, being the fighting champion he is, says he'll fight them both. He could then lose to one or even beat both and, if they had held off until this summer, lose one of the titles to whoever wins the Briefcase in July. I know that, in the future, this title - if it lasts long enough - will feel credible and "real" just like the World Heavyweight Championship eventually did despite being rewarded to Triple H. By the time Batista won it, it felt legitimate. I expect the same will one day be true for this title. But, right now, it feels like a championship being fought over by guys that couldn't beat the real capital-C Champion, Roman Reigns. A consolation prize for Seth and Cody and Drew and Lashley and Owens and all the other guys who got beat by the Tribal Chief. A silver medal in a sport where only gold matters.

On the face/heel conversation... There's no way he's getting booed in Chicago. There's no way he's getting booed in most cities. I've brought it up before but, years ago, maybe in 04' or 05', I went to a local show featuring Buff Bagwell. At the time, me and my fellow "smark" friends went there essentially to heckle Bagwell (we were young, entitled, spoiled 22 year-olds who thought asking him repeatedly "Where's Judy?" was the height of wrestling comedy). Anyway, long story short, Bagwell came out and we all popped huge. He worked babyface and all the wrestling nerds in the audience adored him as he "played the hits" (including doing his N64 WCW vs. nWo Revenge taunt, which may or may not have caused my buddy to shed a single tear). I don't remember him getting heckled but, if he was, Bagwell had us cheering for him so much that we would've turned on the heckler. My point is - when that music hits, the kneejerk Pavlovian reaction is going to be to cheer and even if there are some "Young Buck" chants or "We Want Kenny" chants or whatever...CM Punk will only need one or two snappy comebacks to win back the majority of the crowd. Having him be a heel against Jericho of all people sounds extra absurd and a really bad idea. Even if he were to try to veer into heel territory, Jericho is such a buffoon (on camera and often IRL) that any criticism Punk would lob at him would probably lead to cheers. Against Kenny and the Bucks, I think it may end up looking like what we're seeing against the BCC. The matches - like their work against the Lucha Bros - are probably going to be terrific. But I don't get the feeling that the audience is particularly passionate about this build-up. Part of that is because the BCC, especially Mox, are too well-liked. I mean, a couple months ago, Danielson was defending the honor of pro-wrestling against MJF. Now we don't like him because he's going after the Elite...who were heels not too long ago and, even before the Brawl In incident, were somewhat polarizing figures. So, there may be cities where the Elite gets cheered over Punk, there may be cities where the opposite is true, and there may be cities where the fans end up cheering both sides (which kinda seems like what's happening with the current Elite/BCC feud). Ultimately, though, I think the crowd responses are going to hot and it will create a great atmosphere as long as they don't try to force either side into being a clearly defined heel/face.