The Gaffer

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Surely the days of tuning it out of curiosity for a segment like that are long dead? 

Yeah I'd go so far as to say if they see a slight increase or decrease for the show it'll probably be completely arbitrary rather than circumstantial, despite how people will analyse it. 

There'd need to be a significant jump for any of this to have meant anything, I think. 

47 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

If you watched this and still like CM Punk that's depressing. 

Well that was a bizarre bit of television. I didn't think we'd actually get footage so I didn't have a reference point to sort of project how it might look or feel which it made it all the more strange. That live crowd footage is something though. WrestleCrap and "This would be in The Death Of..." are such outdated reference points, but they've genuinely created a monster one there. Historic and noteworthy from the perspective of a company's history, albeit for all the wrong reasons. 

Incredibly I don't feel like taking on the responsibility of any negative emotions myself for it as a stunt. I'll leave that to the dickheads who thought it was a good decision. 

14 minutes ago, Tim Healys Chutney Spoon said:

But how do you spin Christian into the mix for that? 

It's wrestling. No matter how far down the dark path you go, you just have the good guy from the tag team take enough of a beating that the bad guy - struggling with his conscience halfway up the ramp - eventually says "Fuck it", pelts it back down to the ring, and helps his road brother out. Fans will always eat it up. 

Yeah it's because they couldn't get Austin but the conscience angle makes about as perfect a wrestling sense as you need there, I think.

He's the on and off screen locker room morality guy, seeing the new authority figure come in and throw his weight around abusing his power.

There was a promo baked in a few weeks back which foreshadowed the whole whacky Avengers ending too, where Seth was going on about Roman having a vice grip on the title in comic book terms like it was this cosmic grip that needed to be vanquished. 

Batshit, but that's what they're going for I guess. It's classic WWE-catches-up-on-culture. They're probably currently working on the technology to keep all their top stars on ice so that they can do shock entrances and spam finisher all over the place at WrestleMania 50 too. 

All Khan said was that it's definitely backstage footage. The graphic doesn't mention Punk, a brawl or an altercation of any kind either. I think the most likely scenario is that they do one of those "No lies were told" bait-and-switches where footage from around the brawl - but never explicitly showing it or Punk - are shown and it's used as a prop/lead in to a worked angle. 

This banal surge of Arsenal gloatposting is giving me a rash. 

I saw it as Cody weighing up the situation and thinking "Sure, what's the worst that can happen, but let me take your one as collateral when you do it." Basically just gives them some good visuals to stick into the vignettes whenever Rock returns and they decide to build to the match. 

They've pretty much already come out the losing end no matter what they do. It's pretty spectacular. Somebody said it on another page as well - and even though I didn't mind the promo in isolation - especially coming a week after Copeland's "We're the positive wrestling guys!" schtick it's just horrendous, completely hilarious decision making.

6 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Sorry, why are we all talking about The Rock and The Shield, when this exists.

Is this from Raw????? 

Think you might be pulling yourself back in, chief. 

10 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Fucking hell, we're talking about millionaires here who could have easily quit if they actually really hated it so much. It's not like their families were being held at gunpoint. Don't have too much pity for poor little ol' Michael Cole.

He's a lifer at a place where he's probably surrounded by a hundred people a week he considers family and loves it. You go on suffering sometimes. 

In fact, I hope Samantha Irvin is the one to narrate The Passion of the Cole on Peacock next month. 

Crying Era has got me again. 

8 minutes ago, Cannibal Man said:

The difference in commentary in modern WWE is mad, too.  Me and a mate watched a lot of mid 2000s WWE a few weeks ago and the first thing thats impossible to ignore and not be constantly assaulted by is the commentary reading like a script rehearsal where Wikipedia is the dialogue and you get an electric shock to the balls if you stop talking. Nothing breathes and none of it sounds human. Like a human version of those WWE documentaries where they can't let a single conversation happen without loud fucking heavy metal. Commendable that they've turned it around into genuinely quite good that fast and I can only assume it's because they haven't got a sex criminal yelling at them any more.

No comparison, even McAfee was tolerable. Good work.

I tried watching Punk/'Taker back last week because they chucked it up on YouTube and I was shocked at how awful the commentary was. 

It's like a reversal of that "You don't know how much of a good thing you have until it's gone" mentality.

I knew it was bad at the time. It was a pubic domain opinion on WWE. We all agreed it was bad. But watching it back now - with it finally, officially being a bygone era - it's crazy how much it dragged its arse across the carpet of one of the matches I thought was a high point of those years. And I realised with a genuine pang of pity for the guy that my fixed image of Cole for all those years involved no movement because he wasn't permitted any. Hunched shoulders, focussed voice, taking a constant bollocking on the cans. He was like one of those greyscale, plugged-into-the-system slave people you see depicted for dramatic effect on conspiracy videos. JBL to the right delivering the big "We hate our audience" lines. King to the left doing his passionless face thing. 

Can you blame any of them for emoting? Of course it's all real. Anyone within shouting distance of gorilla's going to need talk therapy until at least WrestleMania 50. They probably have a dart board with Satan's face on it on the way out the curtain. People have probably been sneezing as a joke in booking meetings for months now. 

I think it's just an easy assumption from an outside perspective that the big hook of WrestleMania writes itself every year and that it's in a position to pretty much automatically sell itself with the company on autopilot. In reality you aren't banking your billions on that, and you're not going back to your board and investors with an "It'll be fine, it's WrestleMania." 

It's like those finishers in the old Smackdown games. You only get a limited number of them. They carved out another year of monster business without having to use their Cody finisher. It's a conservative move from a business perspective, for sure, but that's WWE. We just have the good fortune of having them do that now with programs that are actually gratifying to watch.

I'd get used to it. From a longevity perspective, stretching your top level program to two WrestleManias is probably the way this stuff's going to be done for the foreseeable. 

5 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Because what did another year of Reigns as champ give us?

I probably shouldn't feel bad because he's a millionaire who goes to bed with Becky Lynch  - and I've spent months joining in the slagging on his characterisation - but I did spare a thought for Seth losing the title then having to shower, don his Bossmans and put the hair dye in just to get immediately sparked out as essentially set dressing in the main event with all the proper big stars. 

Nailed it. If they made me feel like a 10 year old, life must have been pretty sweet as a 10 year old watching that. That's where it starts and ends, lads. 

All out of sync for me this morning as well. Panic bought the Network last night and ended up watching wrestling instead because this best-in-class media empire can't get their own platform right. 

41 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Nah. Nothing could do that for me. Unless she came out with the Chili Peppers obviously. 

Mami California. The Eradibip-bop-badicator.

Brilliant. I'm more excited for it than anything tonight. 

Long live chaos. 

Hopefully Michael Cole buttons up tonight and stops mentioning the temperature every other minute. 

Thread is getting dangerously close to that shit, overused "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, Jeremy" meme. 

It does feel like there's a lot of rush jobs/dead matches on the undercards both nights. I guess even X-Seven had a hokey Jericho/Regal feud, thrown together Right to Censor tag and anonymous European Title match, though. 

I suppose some stuff will always pale in comparison to the mega hyped stuff. Some of the build for this stuff seems to have just happened in the unconscious though. Granted I've mostly had it on in the background but it feels like the Uso match hasn't had any build to speak of. It just turned up announced one day. Jey's easy to keep hot but poor Jimmy's just the bloke who points up at the sky for Roman to me, nowadays. 

Don't they broadcast the Hall of Fame in the U.S. straight after Smackdown? I'm pretty sure getting to go first pretty much is the headline slot.