Vince focuses way too much on pulling one over on the 'smart' fans, 'internet' fans, whatever he wants to call them, and doesn't focus nearly enough on just making sure the storylines make ****ing sense.

Now I do love surprises but having them for the sake of having them is silly.

Surprises are great, and really I'm not mad that Sheamus won because it's Sheamus or anything. I like Sheamus. I think he could put on a good match with Bryan or Barrett or Henry at WM. I think the angle he's in will work. But you don't need to throw away 2 months of build up because your fans aren't ****ing ******ed and see where you're going with something. Sheamus could have won the SD EC, it would make sense, and everything would be great.

Seriously.

"Our fans are not idiots and figured out where we were going with this two month buildup, lets have Sheamus win instead. Go on out there Sheamus you're up next. Tell Chris when he gets out there you're winning btw".

At the risk of seeming like an apologist for this whole thing...

If they decided on Punk v. Y2J and Bryan v. Sheamus as the world title matches for this year's WrestleMania, does it matter that much that Sheamus won instead? Surely he could use a bigger rub than Jericho could. I understand the criticism of all the build-up for nothing, so all I'm really suggesting with this post is that we need to give it tonight to see what Jericho does.

You do have a valid point. If we were told last year that this years WM title matches would be Punk/Jericho and Bryan/Sheamus I don't think we'd really care how it got there. The frustration on my end is more from how they stupidly threw away two months of buildup just for the sake of doing it. I feel like the time watching/discussing everything about the promos/jericho have now been pointless.

I do like Sheamus a lot like I said though, and think regardless of who he faces (so long he goes after WHC) it'll work out well. And the Jericho/Punk thing should work out well also.

I completely agree we have to wait to see where Jericho goes before completely ****ting on the Rumble ending. I do wish they had given Sheamus some more momentum though. I love the guy and he's been getting a ton of wins but squashing Jinder doesn't do much to give you real momentum. I would've liked to have seen him with a couple a bigger wins leading into the Rumble to really put him over massively.

I just feel sorry for Jericho. I can only imagine the roll of the eyes that took place when a Creative team member who's probably been involved with wrestling 1/5 the time that Jericho has told him "yeah, we were gonna go with you Chris, but we felt that having you say you were gonna do something big and then actually do it would just be too predictable".

Having said that, you can count on him - being the best in the world at what he does - to come out tonight and do his best to make some sense out of it all. I'd watch Jericho no matter what he was doing, and I suppose being able to turn **** into gold is one of the things that makes great wrestlers great in today's era. Back when bookers were smart and wrestling made some kind of sense, it must have been so much easier to get over.

Jericho seems like about the last guy who would be butthurt about an outcome of "Chris, you're not going to win the Rumble but don't worry, you're still going to fight for the biggest belt in the company at WrestleMania."

I'm not saying he'd be butthurt or angry about it, just a kind of "sigh, guess that's my angle gone down the drain, thanks guys" - it's precisely because he's seen it so many times before that it must be so frustrating, in the same way I'm sure Cena gets frustrated when they give him awful insults to throw at people (a frustration he's discretely aired on-camera several times).

at that spot I was sold on Jericho winning due to the fact that there was a high degree of possible botch and Sheamus falling off. Then again there was the same degree of difficulty with Jericho hanging on to the top rope and his feet close to the floor. Thats why they get paid the big bucks I guess

lmao. so awesome.

who hates him? i ****ing love that dude and he seems to be getting a push of sorts on Smackdown. gogogogo. i hope he is in the EC!

what?!?!? how many months do we need to wait? last night was the night and what everything was building towards and it already got **** on.

are you watching raw tpir? jericho/punk just got started..

My perception of belt value remained unchanged.

thats good

there have been a couple of posts suggesting he was a wasteful entrant in the rumble. i think he was a perfect entrant, but used wastefully given the things he can do in the ring.

he is in my fave 5 right now.

Do you think the belt is as valuable today as it was 20 years ago?

Everyone having a meltdown itt after Jericho lost the rumble is hilarious. And for predicting Sheamus as the winner of the rumble I give myself five stars.

The Funkasaurus is still undefeated. Nicely done.

FWIW, I wasn't a part of the thread, but I had a live meltdown while Big Wally just laughed at me for losing the money. He was actually pretty psyched about Sheamus winning and a lot of his logic was presented in this thread later on.

Sheamus is on a huge winning streak, so why not let him win to get him back in the title picture?

Jericho is going to fight Punk anyway, so he didn't need the Rumble win.

D. Bryan (who he isn't a fan of his gimmick but loves his skills) will likely hold through to WM and face either Sheamus or some form of triple threat if ADR can come back.

I love this guy.

If Jericho and Punk go on to have the epic feud and match that they are quite capable of no one will remember Jericho not winning the Rumble as a problem, we will just remember the great feud they had.

Ultimately, Punk/Jericho is what they were building towards, not the Rumble win. The Rumble win was just a means to an end.

The more I think about it the more I'm ok with Sheamus winning the rumble. I have faith in Jericho that he can make all of this make sense. A Punk/Jericho fued doesn't need the WWE title to be awesome let alone Jericho winning the rumble. The fact that it has the two best workers in the company, not counting vegans ldo, plus the two best on the mic, plus being for the WWE title is more than enough for people to get excited about it. Sheamus winning does so much more for him than it would have done for Y2J.

Petition for Big Wally to start posting ITF:

1. Everyone

As much as that would be awesome, I've only recently got him on the concept of sending me emails. I don't want to teach him "the intarwebz" as there just isn't enough time in the day. He's very old school.

He owns a bar in a hunting/fishing town ffs.

he will be back to wrestle cena at wrestlemania.

likely he will be back considerably before that tho to build the program. personally im incredibly disappointed he didnt even bother to make an appearance at the rumble. it seriously would have been a flight over, go in to the ring for 10 minutes, leave.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is already being advertised for Raw tapings on 2/27 (Portland), 3/5 (Boston), 3/12 (Cleveland) and 3/26 (Atlanta).