Generally better to reach back a little farther than 2000.

I don't hate HHH/Steph on camera, I'm talking about hating on them for how they control the creative development of the wrestlers. Whatever their vision is, it sucks. They wanted to make Batista the RR winner and champ at Mania rather than Bryan. It was only the fans hijacking RAW that forced them to switch gears.

and yeah why not have Ambrose get a little rough with Steph? It would create some much needed drama. I remember when they used to have Kane forcably kissing Lita and more. Maybe the "rape" angle was too far, what about just Ambrose forcing himself on her with kissing and Steph slaps him but she was also turned on and even cheats on HHH but claims she was raped to save face.

Now HHH is furious and that creates a ton of juice for their match.

Let's not forget that NXT is HHH's "territory" and that is generally better received than RAW by people who watch both. HHH was also behind bringing in the great indy talents (Generico/Steen/Neville/more) + KENTA and Devitt.

Yeah, I've always gotten the impression that HHH was a pretty good creative mind and I tend to give him credit when they do good stuff. Of course, that's all conjecture and who really knows, but I'm hopeful for the post-Vince era even though I'm not hopeful that the era kicks off anytime at all soon.

the divas matches were great on NXT. Paige was really good. What happened to her since reaching the "majors"?? Her character has gone to **** and the competition sucks. I've noticed her moveset change because they probably force her to wrestle a more generic "WWE" style for the main audience.
They don't let wrestlers be themselves, everything has to be done their way. They even made Dean Ambrose change his Dirty Deeds finisher to a straight DDT because Miz complained the move was too similar to his skull crushing finale and he had it first. So much F'n politics backstage.

The matches like Sami Zayn vs Cesaro on NXT were brilliant. That will NEVER happen on Raw even after Zayn gets called to the main roster because they cant let midcard talent steal the show from their main event players. Enjoy the NXT because that is real wresting. The main roster will always be garbage with Steph/HHH in charge. HHH makes these roster moves that seem good (Kenta, Sin Cara) and mark my words he will never follow through on giving the talent an opportunity for sustained success. He'd rather give those spots to his buddies with superior WWE looks aka 6'4 and built like steel.

I'm very interested to see if Wyatt can make it to the top level. They already buried his first push.

Source for this?

Even if this is true, his new finisher > his old finisher.

Adam Rose's finisher really invalidates that troll attempt.

I think it got changed because it looked like crap (more the fault of people taking it than Dean) the last few big spots he hit it.

I was just thinking.

We grew up in a world where the term "crotch chop" was invented before our eyes. And we were ok with it

Stone Cold has commentary on his legendary match vs. Bret Hart at WM 13 (similar to the commentary he did for his match vs the Rock awhile back):

http://podcastone.com/Steve-Austin-Show-Clean

Meh, perfectly reasonable for them to strap kishi there. Dude was hyper mega over and was a big giant guy that had some decent ability for a guy that size (i mean he was doing the Bryan-clotheslined-inside-out-with-a-backflip back then and he's huge. It looked great. Dude could move pretty well).

This was also like 3 months before they turned him into a heel with a main event level program with the Rock and then the short title chase.They clearly had a high opinion of him at this point, and using the IC title to transition him from a goofy midcarder that dances around to a more serious and credible wrestler en route to the main even feuds makes plenty of sense.

It of course didn't work out at all because the entire reason he was over was the whole "fat dude dancing and sticking his ass in peoples face is funny!" thing, but I can't hate them for trying to play off someone being over and turn them into a credible main eventer.

edit: and of course they also botched the entire aspect of him actually being strapped as he gave it away like 2 weeks later to lolvalvenis. Not defending how it actually played out at all, just the idea of strapping him in general at that point.

Your justification makes a pretty good defense for it if it had gone differently, but he held the belt for all of two weeks. You really think that their idea was "let's give him the belt for two weeks and he'll look like serious business when we de-strap him two weeks later"? Between the length of his reign and the places where the belt went right after they took it off him, I'm having a very hard time buying that they had almost any of the thought process that you laid out here.

Me on attributing decisions to long term thought process instead of whats more likely: Vince just giving the IC title to whoever tells the best joke backstage that week

Yeah, I mean I think the fact that they had the belt change hands nine times that year pretty much says everything about their treatment of it by that point. It's all but impossible for that many title changes in a year to be correct.

It's got me looking at the list and it looks like 1999 was when the **** hit the fan with it.

The people that held it in 1997: HHH, Rock, Owen, Austin, Owen, Austin, Rock

1998: Rock, HHH, Shamrock

And then 1999 went nuts: Shamrock, Val Venis , Road Dogg, Goldust, Godfather, Jarrett, Edge, Jarrett, D'Lo, Jarrett, Chyna, Jericho


Looks like they tried to grab it back in 2000 with a run of Jericho -> Angle -> Benoit -> Jericho -> Benoit but those changes were all in the first half of the year so they still changed hands way too much. Then they lost it again ... possibly forever with finishing the year off with Kishi -> Venis -> Chyna -> Eddie -> Billy Gunn.


Nice to have a time pinpointed now instead of just thinking sometime around 2000.

And to be clear, if they wanted to have that three-way rivalry and have those guys trade the belts around a bit, I think that's fine, so I probably shouldn't phrase it in terms of number of title changes. My objection is more to crowning eight unique champions in the same year. It shows that the entire focus was "let's do a title change because that will give us a little ratings spike" or whatever, not in any sort of long-term idea or reason for the title reigns.

I think it was fine, for instance, that back in 1994 the Steiner Brothers and Money Inc. had a feud over the tag belts where they kept winning them off each other. Makes sense for evenly-matched competitors to trade wins like that.

It was a slow increase in number of changes over time though. 15 title changes over 12 years, then 15 more in under 5, then 15 more in under 3...And after 2002 the title has changed hands significantly less often than it did from 99-2001, it just isn't treated seriously or importantly.

I honestly don't even fully understand what current mindset the booking team has toward the belts, unless it's just "this is an easy reason to give to have two guys wrestle, and it allows us to do absolutely nothing else to build this match."

The HHH/Rock ladder match at SS 98 was the last time I remember the IC belt really meaning something. It's been officially meaningless since Chyna won it.

Sadly Chyna was more over than half of the guys that have held the IC title over the last decade. Still a terrible move to throw that title on her of course.

They do absolutely nothing to build most matches, which I find incredibly odd since they have so many people working in creative. It really isn't that hard to have a simple system to make the titles worthwhile and give them the feeling of being meaningful, but it would require actually taking the matches seriously and engaging in some light long term planning, and we can't have that.

They just did a women's edition of Monday night wars. I was curious how they'd deal with Chyna given her acrimonious departure and subsequent soiled mattress fire of a life. WWE found a happy medium; acknowledging her role but paying the most attention to Trish and Lita.

Giving the belt to Val Venis when they did was just such a bizarre move. Up to that point there were very few missteps in terms of strapping people with the IC Title who were either future main eventers or had some reasonable likelihood of making it up to the main event. Like I have no issue with Shamrock getting a run even though he never really made it as a main eventer afterward.

Val was just nothing but a midcard comedy character, and after giving him the belt they didn't try to shift his character into anything else. From there the dam just basically broke and they decided that they weren't going to be selective anymore about who got it.

Haven't watched this episode yet as I didn't follow women's wrestling at all until recently but might check it out given the positive review.

The IC title officially became meaningless when Eddie G. dropped the belt to "The One" Billy Gunn. Pound for pound Billy Gunn was the best pure athlete in WWE at the time but his character wasn't respected and he later turned into a homosexual.

Team Creative at WWE have mostly nothing to do with the program that makes TV. Former staff members often talk about how their ideas are rarely considered and that they are burned out by over saturation of WWE programming. Does RAW really need to be THREE hours long when you also have Smackdown? Good Grief.

WWE also needs to stop rejecting fun ideas. Somebody at Creative wanted to do a cryogenically unfrozen Nazi Character called "Baron Von Bava" who wants to create a stable of Aryan Superiors. McMahon didn't even consider the idea, apparently he didn't even verbaly respond, just put on his coat and walked out of the meeting.

There is so much unprofessionalism in that creative team, mostly caused by the McMahons. Stephanie had a nervous breakdown and started writhing and crying on the floor when HHH got injured back in 2007.


http://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/4/...m-wwe-creative

Whatever happened to Bo Dallas? Injury?

Wiki says foot injury, out 6-8 weeks