SirSmUgly

Road expenses are tax deductible so you get it back at the end of the year EN090. Look, insult my family or punch me in the dick, but call me EN090, and we're going to have to duel in the streets. Business expenses are tax-deductible, but every time I've ever read or heard a wrestler talking about salary, they always point out the road expenses that end up eating up their contracts. They could all be bad at taxes or just super-cheap like Mick Foley, though.

Maybe. I wonder how much the top NXT guys do get paid. They don't have to really leave home, which definitely helps offset road expenses. Neville's already in this year's video game too, so he'll get a little something from that (as well as whatever merch he's pushing now). I'm not so sure that what he's making now really is chicken scratch compared to what he might make as a lower-card guy on the roster. I guess the argument is that he has wider merch opportunities + the Big Four PPVs to make $$$ off of if he's on the main roster, but then again, those numbers will go down as more people move to streaming, and as CM Punk pointed out, Vince hasn't even discussed residuals from the Network with the talent. I strongly question the assumption that Neville would be so much more financially better off that it would be worth it to be on the main roster as a lower-card guy with a shitty gimmick over biding his time in NXT and waiting for someone with at least some lucidity to book him in a halfway-decent position.

Rather than being snarky anymore, I'm just going to say that their six-figure guarantee is probably really not much after expenses on the road. I can't imagine that your lower-card guys are making tons of money. Not to mention that IIRC, some of those payoff checks were in the very low five figures.

Yes, I'm sure he'll be crying all the way to the bank. Considering how lower-card guys were complaining about their WM payoffs in the past couple years, it's more like he'll be laughing all the way to the check cashing place that also gives out high-interest short-term loans.

Eh, the WWEN has backlogs of awesome wrestling AND NXT. Plus, streaming is the way of the future. I'm glad to support them on that part of their business. As soon as people with Nielsens stop watching RAW, maybe they'll fix things over there. As for me, I don't watch anything RAW related that gets put on the Network that is post-2000, so with their analytics, they know at least one first-day subscriber has little interest in RAW as it is currently. Maybe I should stop watching their PPVs as well.

Honestly, if they're going to pull stuff down that I want to be able to access, I am tempted to cancel. The only thing is that NXT and those NXT supershows are so good, and I'm pretty sure you can only see the supershows on the network.

The state of high-speed internet coverage in this country is fucking shameful, which probably mostly explains the 100K+ buys on traditional PPV. We haven't had a great national project since the Hoover Dam and the national highway system, but if we were going to do one, a national broadband project would be the ticket. It's easy as an urban warrior to forget just how many small towns and sparsely populated areas have no access to even DSL.

Show/Mayweather is probably the best example of a non-wrestling athlete being awesome in the ring. That match is awesome. I've seen clipped versions of Lawler/Kaufman and the surrounding matches as well as versions of Kaufman's Intergender Challenge, and both of those are examples of a guy who just knew how to be a slimy, infuriating piece of shit in the ring as well as on the mic.

My personal GOTY is probably Mordor, inFamous: SS, DKC: Tropical Freeze, or Child of Light. I'd have Civilization: Beyond Earth in the mix too, even though whenever I play it, I realize that I'd rather be playing Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire, so I boot that up instead eventually. This was a weak year for video games. I guess that's why I'm playing so much N64 lately. Speaking of the N64, I'm revisiting Super Mario 64 right now, and it aged so poorly, probably more so than any other game I can think of from that era...and it's still fun despite the somewhat broken camera system and controls. I don't think Mario ever got exploration exactly right in the way that Super Mario 64 gets it. Even back in the day when it came out...nearly twenty years ago? Man, I'm old. Anyway, even back in the day, I really thought that it was overrated because of the camera issues and some control issues, but playing now, I can see the charm and why this game is so enduring. I think these N64 3D platformers are the perfect example of why 2D platformers are just intrinsically better games, though.

Orton was briefly hot again after breaking away from the Authority, so of course they don't have him get revenge on the authority during SurSer in STL, and now they're bringing him back only to feud with the heat-sucking machine known as Kane. Weird decision here. They should just put the belt on Rollins at RR and have him beat Orton in a placeholder feud at the February PPV before going into Mania.

This show had some quality wrestling. Lynch/Bayley was really fun. Lynch went for the knee and Bayley's offense was off of knowing that Lynch would come for the knee and being prepared to counter anything Lynch would do to take out the knee. The match felt like a race to see which strategy would pay off first. That was really fun and every move made total sense. Kevin Owens speaking comes off too much like a badass to cheer against in some ways. He just shows up ready to punch enough faces to win the gold. It's hard to root against a guy with that type of character, especially when his work tends to back up his character. That's why Owens's stalling was such a smart move at the beginning of the match with Neville; we get to see a little chicken shit in him to counter the toughness inherent in his persona. Anyway, this match was awesome, too. Neville did a great job of being a damage sponge and selling those high-impact Owens moves as death (especially that hanging DDT sell). The other match was sufficient for the eventual Cass and Enzo breakup over Carmella that I have zero interest in. Lots of good stuff in promos too from Neville to Owens to Lynch to the Vaudevillains (and Regal's disgust with their batty evil laughter).

At least feeding Rusev to Reigns would help establish Reigns's bonafides as a top-level star. Feeding Rusev to Cena does nothing for anyone. If the kids need to see Cena beat someone threatening, they can just use Show again or something. It'll be new to those guys. EDIT: If it was 1987 and DVDVR were around, we'd all be bitching about Paul Orndorff not getting a run with the belt and wishing that they'd let Savage beat Rusev instead to really establish the former as a main eventer. Maybe I shouldn't speak for DVDVR...*I* would be bitching about that stuff.

Uncensored as a PPV has a terrible rep, but I am enjoying Uncensored 1996 quite a bit. Even that ridiculous two-on-eight cage match, which is terrible, will be easier to watch from the viewpoint that it's so terrible that I can glean some fun out of it. This show makes me realize two things: First, I miss major shows being in mid-size towns like Tupelo, Mississippi. Second, I miss Dusty Rhodes on commentary (who called Eddie Guerrero "my homie" a bunch in that first match. No, it never got old.). Konnan is sloppy, but he and Eddy Guerrero had a really nice back-and-forth match to open. Regal/Finlay was about four minutes too long and got away from the "Finlay wants to clubber, Regal wants to keep it on the mat" dichotomy toward the latter third of the match, but the first eight or so minutes were awesome. Also, Mean Gene wisecracking on Loch Ness's dental work and then becoming less snarky and more unsure of his own safety with each second that Loch Ness glared at him was one of the funnier little skits that I've seen lately.

I don't see a problem with using Ryback to help get/keep Rusev looking unbeatable at all. I do think that it's probably a waste of Ryback to some degree, but it's not such an obvious waste of Ryback that I'm up in arms over it. However, the idea that wins and losses don't matter is just wrong; this is the same philosophy that the company has, which is why they have such a hard time getting or keeping guys over.

That is the issue. No one will remember in a couple months. Sami Zayn lost key matches, but everyone remembers those losses and he stayed over because he was booked extremely well; his losses DID matter a whole lot, and NXT made damn sure everyone knew it. Ryback will lose and look less like a monster, and no one will care that he lost or care about him since he was just beaten by Rusev when he is supposed to be showing that he is a monster who is on a roll. It doesn't matter in the sense that Ryback probably is a marginal talent overall, but it indicates the broken philosophy in how WWE books the pieces of their main roster.

I respectfully disagree with the bold. This is true in some (limited) cases: Heel finally getting comeuppance at the end of a long feud with a face, legend, comedy character or underdog character. However, you don't typically build guys up by having them lose. If the idea is to build Ryback as a monster, he loses his aura the second he starts losing with regularity. You can't just stay over while losing if you're being built up...you have to get to the point where you've been built before losing hurts less. And if you're going to lose, it needs to be a loss that gets you more over instead of a standard loss. I doubt WWE is serious about pushing Ryback, so he'll be the fall guy for this feud, but this idea that wins and losses don't matter to the crowd is both pervasive and confusing to me. At some point they have to lose. If they are a strong character then they can keep their heat. Ryback does not need a huge buildup because we know him already. We know what he is capable of. As for wins and losses, does anyone actually keep records in terms of wins and losses including house shows? Beating up jobbers, but getting wiped out by CM Punk and then losing a bunch of tag matches? If what we know about him as of now is what's important, why should anyone believe he can beat Rusev? Of course, the point is that Ryback is theoretically supposed to be better than that, but this re-push to make him better than that doesn't work if he's losing a feud basically out of the gate. You're right that at some point, every wrestler must lose. For Ryback, this isn't that point, ideally. Most fans don't keep numerical records, but crowds notice when guys win a ton or lose a ton in general, obviously.

I respectfully disagree with the bold. This is true in some (limited) cases: Heel finally getting comeuppance at the end of a long feud with a face, legend, comedy character or underdog character. However, you don't typically build guys up by having them lose. If the idea is to build Ryback as a monster, he loses his aura the second he starts losing with regularity. You can't just stay over while losing if you're being built up...you have to get to the point where you've been built before losing hurts less. And if you're going to lose, it needs to be a loss that gets you more over instead of a standard loss. I doubt WWE is serious about pushing Ryback, so he'll be the fall guy for this feud, but this idea that wins and losses don't matter to the crowd is both pervasive and confusing to me.

Fuck it, I think they should put the big belt on Rusev. Just have him kill All-American farmboy Brock Lesnar at the Rumble. Have him beat Cena at WM. Have him kill dudes all year leading up to next year's WM, when Reigns finally beats him. I know it's too long-term for WWE to make it work, and I'm not even saying that it would be a lock for being financially successful, but it would be entertaining.

Reigns should be fine in the short term. He's still quite over even with his deficiencies on the mic and in ring. I'm ambivalent about Reigns, but I'm pretty ambivalent about all the ex-Shield guys right now. They were all better as a group than individually, even Ambrose, whose neo-Brian Pillman impression/gimmick/tribute is wearing thin to me right now.

They should just replace Smackdown with NXT and let HHH and whomever else run it. I doubt that Vince would stay hands off if it was on network television, though.

Poor Reigns. He was way over, but I'm pretty sure he totally forgot his lines on that promo afterward.

There is an inherent problem with this PPV. I remember a series of cool spots (Ziggler rushing in the ring while bleeding to save the title, Ambrose caning Wyatt in the head after a brief standoff, Wyatt's LARIAT-OOOOOO), but all these matches with plunder run together in the end, so no one match stands out. I think that besides the dumb ending, Wyatt/Ambrose suffered from both too many garbage matches on one show and Ziggler/Harper seeming even more violent and even having blood. That first match kinda shot the whole wad for the show. I think Ryback should have won more quickly, and the overbooked mess that was Cena/Rollins did nothing for me. I'm really tired of these overbooked mains and semi-mains.

No one forgets this. Stop making up a narrative in your head that doesn't actually exist. I enjoy it to some degree when you bitch about things that are actually, you know, part of reality. This, on the other hand, is tiresome WAH PEOPLE LIKE DANIEL BRYAN AND I WANT TO RUIN THAT FOR THEM bullshit.

Nobody actually made this argument, but Ebbie sure did a great job of beating this tired strawman agrument to death!

Zayn and Bryan are alike: The likable everyman, regular dudes that seem at least something like us. They fit the idea of NWA top babyfaces more than WWF/E top babyfaces, who are larger-than-life superheroes. I like both of those types of face, but since WWE is the only game in town and thus heavily favors superhero types, a few more likable everymen at the top to break things up a bit wouldn't hurt.