WWE's position is that wins and losses matter, and that much is reflected in how the top of the top get booked (Cena, Lesnar, probably Bryan, and of all people Roman Reigns).

Then there's a group of wrestlers that the company clearly values, but isn't nearly as concerned with protecting in their booking. Ambrose is in this group. To be fair to the company, under their current model they can't just have like 12 invincible guys; people do need to take losses.

It's the model that's broken. If changing the model is a non-starter then people like Ambrose probably do need to lose sometimes if there's no chance of them being a world champion anytime soon if ever.

In conclusion, they obviously need to slowly transition the wrestling on their weekly programming to being 75% squash matches.

There's the WWE hierarchy in terms of who is a contender for the belt, and then one in terms of overness/importance/profile. Roman's obviously closer to the belt than Dean, but in terms of every other way you'd place people, to me they're pretty much in the same spot.

Dean's a guy you don't need a strap to build stories around, Roman probably is.

just watched a promo involving stephanie mcmahon and john cena from june/july 2014

it's so funny how stephanie says that the world heavyweight champion should compete and thus daniel bryan should forfit his title.

the funny part is that now we have brock lesnar as champion and he did less with it than bryan (even though he's injured -_-)

I guess it depends on what you mean by "booked"- but if I was going to judge that by how I interpret that word- I wouldn't look at W/L. I'd look at how the WWE is using that person as a resource.

This is mostly fair, and the last point is a good one...part of the disconnect in the conversation, I think, is that many have already resigned themselves to a reality where the rocket strapped to Roman's back gets lit, and where 3-4 months from now you couldn't possibly argue that he's on the same plane as Dean. I will firmly disagree that a person who has the world title is in the same stratosphere as the guy who gets multiple segments and is very over, but admittedly we still haven't seen if this Reigns thing is definitely going to happen.

I mean, the damn title has to go on last except in the most extreme circumstances (Rock vs. Hogan, something like that). Bryan winning the title in the middle of the card is worse to me than Reigns winning it in the final match. They've actually done reasonably well in terms of slowing down the number of title changes with the big belt, so I would be absolutely crestfallen if we get more bull**** like we got before with CM Punk holding the world title and having him go on in the middle of the card on most PPVs (with Bryan playing the Punk role obviously).

WWE clearly doesn't allow guys they consider their top stars to pile up the losses. Just look at the way they've built Reigns and Russev. If we go by the kind of pop a guy gets, then Ryder was on par with Cena for a while there too. He was getting a huge pop and in all his segments.

EDIT: Dean Ambrose is a nice little B player, maybe B+. I put him right there with Kane.

Man. It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

The Ryder over-push was one of the goofiest things ever. Ryder getting pushed off the stage at full speed while in a wheelchair remains awesome though.

I realize now that LKJ is right and my "idk how you can view them on the same level" is using the tinted lenses of expectation. Dids, you're correct that they are using Ambrose a ton and that it's a good thing. My thoughts were more about how Dean is being used as enhancement* for other heels (piggybacking off of his popularity similar to how they did it with Bryan-joins-the-family-then-breaks-away last year) while they view Reigns as top level, but that was basing it off of the expectation of them pushing Reigns to the moon etc.

*Not that this is even bad like I said earlier. It's a perfectly fine approach to using his popularity for the better of the company and get more heels in feuds that the crowd cares about.

Agree 100% with all of this of course. I probably didn't articulate myself well enough on that post. I just know they've shown no problems with doing that in the past so wouldn't put it past them in that circumstance as I can see them convincing themselves "Bryan/Rollins isn't a WM main event" (which obviously means they shouldn't do it in the first place but I digress). It's also possible adding Rollins was just because they wanted to change it up a bit and now have the same Main Event 3 times in 6 months and this seemed like a fine wrinkle or something.

Vince when he reads internet comments:

FWIW, I fully realized that you weren't really endorsing it, just projecting it as a possibility.

To me, if they want to do the Reigns thing, fine, but if you're going to do it, DO IT. Put the belt on him and have him close out all or almost all PPVs. I predict that the crowd absolutely rejects it, but if they don't then at least I'll have to tip my cap to them for pulling off what looks like a pretty big longshot right now (Reigns as an immediate main eventer that the crowd fully accepts).

Yeah, no half measures.

Mother of God, according to a reddit post, Meltzer is reporting WWE is going to TV-14. I want to believe.

Nvm, appears to be fake. Was an exciting few minutes though

I suppose going to TV-14 would symbolize a change of direction, but NXT is PG and great and Raw could keep doing basically everything they are doing that makes the product suck with a TV-14 rating.

^ yep.

The PG content level is very little of the issue.

Well damn. I was so looking forward to Booker yelling about puppies

Master just wants pornographic levels of blood back in the mix.

I'd also like skirts to be brought back. Skirted Mickie James is my favorite Mickie James

Not gonna lie, I don't think that adding a skirt to Nikki Bella's repertoire would ramp things up to TV-14.

I guess it depends where she's wearing it

According to dirtsheets Cena/Rusev is happening at WM. I hope the match will be for the title, because Cena wrestling for the U.S. Championship would go a long way in elevating it.

No, it really won't, because Cena won't defend it with any sort of regularity. Also, I highly doubt WWE creative will make the championship the focus of the build to WM. It will be patriotic drivel.

If Cena is fighting Rusev, Rusev won't have lost prior, so unless he just gives the belt away it's going to be for the belt, even if it's not about the belt.

I kinda like it because I think Cena's cartoon ass works better in a Lana/Rusev world (although the bad jokes and photoshops, ugh) than elsewhere.

I find the idea of the match to be decent enough...my problem with it is that Cena would almost certainly win it, and that's pretty much a waste of the rub they've built up by not having Rusev lose to anyone for such a long time.