I'm not saying Ryback should be any higher on the card but I see his point too. Look at someone like Sandow who constantly gets reactions yet is probably on the lowest tier pay. WWE rebranding BNB into King Barrett probably cost him some money too. Both these guys are losing out on potential merch money. I don't know what the solution is but it's not a great situation.

Has anyone noticed that all of the big men seem to be gone now with Ryback, Wyatts, Kane, Big Show all seemingly banished and Lesnar gone? Not like I had a particular affinity for most of them, but I always thought keeping a few of them around added to the believably of certain things sometimes. I never really minded bigger guys who maybe didn't work so well but were just an intimidation factor.

I think I heard somewhere that new guy Big Cass is like 7 foot tall or something.

i also heard you can't teach that

Baron Corbin and Gallows are huge too. It does seem like Vince had some epiphany to get all the big veterans that have been in WWE forever off TV though. Maybe he is suddenly blaming them for his inability to get the new bigs over.

I forgot Cass, but I would consider Corbin and Baron more real life big than WWE big. Corbin's about the size of Roman, no? And those are basically the biggest guys left after all the vets got jettisoned and they are trying to bill this as a new era.

Would be interesting to see a Baron/Brock thing when he comes back if they keep building him to be a monster like they......oh, nevermind.

Corbin is listed as 6'8, over 300 pounds, Roman 6'3 265.

Guess I'd have to see them next to each other. For some reason I keep thinking Roman is bigger than he usually is. Thought they were both around 6'6 270. Does Corbin really have 40 pounds on him?

Corbin is definitely much taller than Roman; look at Corbin next to Ziggler then Roman next to Ziggler. Corbin does look pretty slender these days though. He used to be an offensive lineman in the NFL and was well over 300 then legit.

While the WWE is famous for giving exaggerated height and weight, the NFL combine isn't.

Here are his combine measurements: 6'6" and 300 pounds. 40 yard dash in 5.02 seconds.

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings...2009&genpos=og

Corbin is a long way off form facing Lesnar in any type of meaningful match. As for him losing, I'm glad they got that out of the way early. Do you really want him racking up any type of unbeaten streak? When has that ever worked out for anyone in the long run?

Worked quite well for Goldberg.

The whole "undefeated streak" thing is only a thing if they talk about it. Have him take one or more losses at house shows, never discuss the losses, never talk about him being unbeaten because he technically isn't. Easy game. Losing on a pre-show to a guy who only ever beats jobbers is not a positive no matter how it's spun.

Being booked strong has undoubtedly worked out in the long run far more often than losing on pre-shows to jobbers to the stars.

That's what gets me about Sasha Banks. I realized that she had never been pinned. But since it was never mentioned, it's not a big deal.

But they started mentioning it in the WM hype. She even beat Charlotte in a non-title match. Now, Sasha still hasn't been pinned. (She lost, but she's lost before, in tag matches where a BAD teammate eats the pin). But instead of catapulting off of the hype and the fact that she has still never been pinned, she's off TV entirely. I get that they are saving the big moment for one of the Big 4 PPVs (probably SummerSlam, because NY is where she stole the show last year). But it still sucks.

Sometimes it seems as if they are intentionally trying to make wins and losses not matter. A good example is that Nattie is a jobber and gets a title shot, and Sasha Banks has never been pinned, but gets no program at all.

I was pretty surprised when I noticed on Raw that the Usos and Reigns are the same size, would have been sure that Reigns is easily taller than them.

Big show appeared on smackdown didn't he ?

Nevermind that was big cass

How well did it work out for Goldberg after he lost?

Also, if they turn around and start building Corbin back up, and he goes on to a nice spot at Wrestlemania 33, is anyone going to care about him losing to Ziggler at Payback? The answer to that is no.

Don't really remember re: Goldberg, but he was a mega-star by then. Is there really an argument that he was worse off for having gotten the long-term undefeated push that took him straight to the top?

To the second point, the fact that something can be overcome shouldn't be conflated with it being a "glad it happened" positive event. It hurts in the short-term and speaks badly of the company's current view of him.

Something I learned listening to TLF this week. It seems that Adam Bomb had an undefeated streak gimmick going in WCW in 98, and he was getting over until big sexy squashed him in 4 minutes Wat?

Yeah..Wrath, Glacier. Excellent writing.

Bryan Clark (Adam Bomb) was a pretty good wrestler at that point. His match against Sid when he was super green at a Clash of Champions in 1990 is one of the worst matches I've ever seen though.

The Ryback arguments are pretty interesting. I've been chewing on it and while my initial reaction was that he was crazy, I don't really think he's that crazy anymore. I think up to a certain point it makes sense. I just can't figure out exactly where that threshold gets crossed. With merchandising giving big perks to the booked winners as well as bonuses to main events of ppvs (do they still do those?), there's already a monetary increase for that.

Ziggler for instance is a jtts. But his ability to give credibility to new people and people ready to move up on the card is valuable. Is AJ jobbing to make Roman look better really that different?

eta: I use the term jobbing loosely. I'm asking how much more valuable is what AJ doing for Roman than what Ziggler is doing for Corbin.

There's certainly a high luck factor when spots are being determined at the whim of an out-of-touch old man, but "wrong guy gets promoted to greater money and prosperity by an idiot boss" is a feature of every industry, not just wrestling. It would be nice if things were less arbitrary, but I don't really think anyone is about to lead a revolution, least of all Ryback.