WWE

[Kimmel]

Douglas came in right after the Dynamic Dudes, he was winning in dark matches and was getting a push on Superstars winning squash matches, Vince envisioned him becoming a new heart throb/rock star babyface character, which some say later evolved into the Heartbreak Kid character Shawn later got, the story has been repeated enough the last 25 years I am pretty sure it's true. Anyway, the Royal Rumble was kinda the tip of what was to become a big push, but Douglas told Vince he wanted to quit wrestling, go to med school and take care of his sick dad. Vince gave Shane what he wanted and released him from his contract, only Shane never went to Med School and instead showed up as Ricky Steamboat's partner in WCW.

Allot of people think that had Shane stayed he would have been right in the middle of things with Bret, Shawn, Razor, Diesel in the mid 90's, other think he would have sabotaged himself as Shane would seem to always do. The feeling is also Dean Douglas was a direct result of Vince feeling lied to by Shane back in 91 when he was planning to give him his big push, and that is also why it was so easy for the Kliq to screw Douglas over.

[bigraj]

Didn't know that. Thanks for the info. Would have been interesting had he stuck around. I'd have loved to see a motivated Shane take on HBK and Bret, etc. His WCW tag run with Steamboat was outstanding, but then they were working with Austin and Pillman a lot of the time and it's hard not to have great matches with 3 of the all-time greats.

[bigraj]

"Old School" Raw was entertaining enough to keep me away from BCS title game until Raw went off the air. Loved the Flair promo and all the stuff featuring the Legends. Not sure what's with teasing tension with the extended Wyatt family. Seems a bit early, unless a Bryan-'Taker WM match is a go. Nice to see Cody playing the Ricky Morton role in their tag match, but Dustin is just better in that role. Another crazy bump by Lesnar off what looked to be a botched hip toss that he and Show just continued to roll with. Thought the Punk-Reigns main event was very good, although I wish wouldn't have started all the dissention with The Shield for at least another year. I suppose they still can have a "slow burn" disintegration of the team as they "compete" with one another, but I doubt they'll do that. Seeing Jake Roberts out there and looking healthy was a phenomenal moment and a great way to close the show. Thank you for that, DDP.

[darthfoley]

So long, Kaitlyn. I guess that kinda explains why you've been randomly put on the heel diva teams lately.

[bigraj]

Today at Walmart I noticed a WWE display in the DVD section. Lots of DVD sets on sale for 5 bucks, so I grabbed a few. Pretty good stuff for the most part, if you've got some holes to fill. The Hart Family Anthology, the "Definitive" Flair set (the 2nd set), Best of King of the Ring, the Pillman set, the most recent Rock and Austin sets, Falls Count Anywhere, Best Cage Matches (WWE, WCW, WCCW, etc.), and quite a bit more. Not sure how much it'll vary store-to-store, but it might be worth checking out.

[darthfoley]

Nice, I'll have to take a look.

KMart has all WWE toy stuff at buy one get one 50% off til 1/11, I believe. Picked up elite Rollins and Ambrose today.

[darthfoley]

I'm SO in for the Network.

[bigraj]

Sounds exciting. 24/7/365 streaming service for 10 bucks/month for the library, programming and all the PPVs (including WrestleMania!) that I can watch on my TV through the PS3? OH HELL YEAH! Hopefully they have figured out the formula for live streaming events, considering this year's WM is the first PPV that's gonna be live streamed. The 6-month at a time commitment kinda sucks, but it's not gonna be a deterrent for me.

[darthfoley]

[Captain Charisma]

I knew I wasn't imagining Ambrose smiling his ass off while Jake was doing his thing. The crowd almost took away from the moment, but following a great match, with a guy who in a totally un-Jake Roberts way is obviously trying to separate himself from the pack verbally like Jake Roberts was able to do back in the day was cool. Ambrose, love or hate his delivery, is obviously attempting to be unique. And being an original served Jake Roberts well throughout his career. He was a whisper in a world of screaming in the 80's, and combine that with the Python, and he is as well remembered as anyone not named Hulk Hogan that was part of the 80's wrestling boom.

And yea the Network kicks ass. I will give it a couple of months, to see how fresh they keep the rotation. Like will the same classic wrestling show air in the 5 pm timeslot every day for a month before changing to a new show, or will 5 pm be the classic wrestling timeslot with a fresh show daily? Will Legends House be weekly with 3 replays a day? NXT is going to start airing live on whatever day of the week, will it's timeslot on the other days be the back log of episodes airing in order starting with Season 1 Episode 1? There is a lot of little details I want answered before agreeing to the $60 bucks at least, but shit, that is the price of one PPV. It will be harder to find a reason not to subscribe. Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, and Summerslam are worth $100 bucks a year. So would I spend the additional $20 bucks on every other PPV and occasional classic footage that I don't already own? LOL, obviously it will end up happening.

[Captain Charisma]

Jan 8, 2014 21:19:12 GMT bigraj said:

Today at Walmart I noticed a WWE display in the DVD section. Lots of DVD sets on sale for 5 bucks, so I grabbed a few. Pretty good stuff for the most part, if you've got some holes to fill. The Hart Family Anthology, the "Definitive" Flair set (the 2nd set), Best of King of the Ring, the Pillman set, the most recent Rock and Austin sets, Falls Count Anywhere, Best Cage Matches (WWE, WCW, WCCW, etc.), and quite a bit more. Not sure how much it'll vary store-to-store, but it might be worth checking out.

Is it weird that I went digging through this bin at 2 different Walmarts and couldn't find a single DVD that I didn't already own? There was at least 20 different releases in the two $5 bins I went digging through, and the only thing I could buy was the re-release of Mania VII. There were a couple of non-big 4 PPV's from 2011 and 2012, but the match listings didn't look worth the $5 bucks, or I already owned the best match from that show in some form or fashion, smfh.

[bigraj]

Jan 10, 2014 8:38:04 GMT Captain Charisma said:

And yea the Network kicks ass. I will give it a couple of months, to see how fresh they keep the rotation. Like will the same classic wrestling show air in the 5 pm timeslot every day for a month before changing to a new show, or will 5 pm be the classic wrestling timeslot with a fresh show daily? Will Legends House be weekly with 3 replays a day? NXT is going to start airing live on whatever day of the week, will it's timeslot on the other days be the back log of episodes airing in order starting with Season 1 Episode 1? There is a lot of little details I want answered before agreeing to the $60 bucks at least, but shit, that is the price of one PPV. It will be harder to find a reason not to subscribe. Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, and Summerslam are worth $100 bucks a year. So would I spend the additional $20 bucks on every other PPV and occasional classic footage that I don't already own? LOL, obviously it will end up happening.

I'm sure more details are coming (like payment options, exact dates for overseas availability), but it really sounds like a Netflix model, but with all WWE content. You'll have access to everything they make available, for you to watch any time you want. Not sure how it'll work for original content (Legends House, etc.), but for Netflix created shows, they make the entire season available on release date. I'd imagine WWE would do the same.

[bigraj]

Ahh . . . here we go.  The Between The Ropes podcast has the announcement available to listen to.

WWE Network Announcement

[Captain Charisma]

Thanks for the info and link Raj!

[darthfoley]

Three of my five area WM have no WWE DVD bin. Grr. Haven't hit the others yet.

[tlyne]

It's taken me this long to realize that Dean Ambrose is Jon Moxley. In 09 when he was starting out in Les Thatcher's HWA, he wrestled for the Ohio indy that runs in our area. I was there that night. I'm not a wrestling Nostrodamus, but I said, that night, this guy is good and is going somewhrre. I'm not right that often, but I was that time.

edit-It was 2009, I thought it was earlier than that.

[darthfoley]

Jiminy cripes Bryan is over. I don't understand what the last two weeks were all about in the first place, but whatevs.

I predict Warrior blows himself up a minute into his HOF speech.

[bigraj]

Jan 14, 2014 4:28:35 GMT darthfoley said:

I predict Warrior blows himself up a minute into his HOF speech.

C'mon, he won't have that far to run, he should be fine. Unless they set up a set of ring ropes for him to shake.

Well, Daniel Wyatt didn't last long.  Have the odds greatly improved for a Daniel Bryan Rumble win, or is Batista winning no matter what?

[Captain Charisma]

Man I'm not sure about the Rumble at all at this point. I really don't think Batista will win it though, not the way Del Rio has been calling him out, how the announce crew have mentioned Del Rio calling him out every time they mention Batista's name, and the recent twitter war between Batista and Del Rio, looks like those two will hook it up at Mania.

I been wanting Bryan to go the longest in Rumble history, win it, and instead of picking the champ, forcing Hunter to fight him at Mania, and Trips taps out clean in the middle of the ring. But it looks like the Punk vs. Hunter ship has sailed.

The plan SHOULD definitely be to have Bryan overcome all kinds of hellacious obstacles to win the Rumble and then Mania ends with Punk, having tapped Hunter clean, and Bryan having tapped the former champion clean, celebrating all that is right about professional wrestling together in the ring with the confetti falling from the ceiling and tears falling from my eyes.

[Pigman]

That was a really quick storyline. I think the whole point of it was to make a quick distraction to try and get Bryan out of the title picture for a little bit. Also they probably thought a heel turn would get people backing Bryan even more, which I didn't think was possible but apparently I was wrong. I can't remember the last time I've seen the whole entire crowd cheering for the same person.

I don't think Batista is winning the rumble. You gotta remember there's still Elimination Chamber before mania. And think the setup for the chamber match has already begun. Lesnar comes back claiming he's already #1 contender which would put his title shot at elimination Chamber in the chamber match. Now he started his beef with Henry and Big show so I'm guessing that will carry over unti tthen. I'm guessing Batista will come back and he wants the title right away too so they could throw him in the chamber too. And I was questioning who the final person was going to be but I guess if they are starting this feud with del Rio already then he'd be the final participant.
I think they are either going to finally give in and let Bryan win the rumble and let him have his moment at mania or we're going to the the Roman Reigns push we've all been expecting for some time now. I think if Triple H is wrestling at mania it's going to be against punk

[darthfoley]

I think I'm the only person in the world just not impressed with Reigns. Much prefer Ambrose.

[Pigman]

Jan 15, 2014 22:52:32 GMT darthfoley said:

I think I'm the only person in the world just not impressed with Reigns. Much prefer Ambrose.

Nope I agree. I'm not a huge fan of Reigns either. I don't think he has anything special.

[jackknight]

Same here. He could have something eventually, but I feel they're forcing his push way too early because they think he might be the next Rock. And he's not. Definitely prefer Ambrose.

Plus the Spear has always been a lame finisher.

[darthfoley]

Did like his drop kick from the floor to the apron on Monday.

[bigraj]

Jan 16, 2014 1:58:42 GMT darthfoley said:

Did like his drop kick from the floor to the apron on Monday.

Yeah, that was pretty sweet.

I like Reigns just fine. Great intensity, great look. Certainly he's far behind the other two when it comes to the in-ring work and on the mic, but that's never stopped the "E" from forcing guys like (Mason Ryan/Ryback) that down our throats. He's got potential, though, and he's improved quite a bit since the group debuted over a year ago.  I'd rather The Shield stay together for at least another year to help with their seasoning, but you know, the guy's got big muscles.  And a great head of hair.