I agree with IRM. But I'll let him show his work first before I put in the effort.

I hope she doesn't wash it. The shirts are such ****ty quality and my CM Punk shirt feels like a burlap sack that is already losing it's logos after like 6 wear/washed.

Most of Phill's post was talking past me and I hope he was just playing devil's advocate. I will wait until you and IRM post and probably just throw up a few thumbs ups since I am allegedly a jaded, hating member of the IWC and don't know how to make my point better about there being zero clue from creative and a hot mess of champions. I also missed the part about Ziggler. how on earth is "he was never supposed to go over" an excuse for bailing on a HUGE MAIN EVENT for Indiana Eve and the Temple of Tire Irons? Also that is them bailing on like the 6th match in 2 weeks and leaving the fans hanging. Sure the live audience gets the finisher parade at the very end but they do the send-home for every house show and it isn't canon anyway. (Although Dylan seemed partially fooled by it as if he didn't realize they have been doing that as an off-camera finale for like 10 years.)

what is the difference between punk right now and punk this day 1 year ago?

i mean, you can argue he's regressed at this point. he was comically over/awesome as a commentator, and it was interesting when he was the head of nexus. now? he's an emasculated guy holding a meaningless belt while having the same status with regards to the rest of the show (not the headliner, and likely will never be).

is what punk is right now REALLY what you wanted? cuz it's not what i wanted. what i wanted was the anarchist raising hell, what i got is a crybaby who's picking fights with johnny ace seemingly over nothing. he's still as good as he ever was in the ring, but he's taken masssssssssive steps back in everything else to conform to the PG ideal of what a headlining face should be

and this isn't me complaining for the sake of complaining. punk isn't the same punk he was before h & friends. his programs with cena, hhh and even that 2 week period with nash were really really really good. his promos were awesome. pretty much from the end of night of champions onward he turned into cena lite and i cant stand it

you counter to this would be "well, stop watching then," and yea, i guess i'm getting pretty close to that point again. it took the shoot and the walkout to bring me back, i doubt they have another one of those in them. i do wanna see where they go with jericho, ziggler and bryan before making that decision though

"big show is over." can you seriously say that with a straight face without shaking your head in disgust? big show is ****ing horrible. i mean, yea, he's over, but so is santino, so is ryder, so is the racist midget, and so is hole on a mint playa. there is no program that is better for it because the big show is part of it.

i imagine the full turn is coming at the rumble, so i'll reserve judgement til i see it. but there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about turning bryan, and turning him into a cowardly heel that makes christian look like goldberg is the wrong way. hopefully that's not the longterm plan they have for him and the spoiler re: AJ is a way to have bryan just randomly snap postmatch.

already given my thoughts, not gonna rehash

ryder will get stale in a hurry, and him getting almost raped, him not knowing how to change a tire, and him getting chokeslammed onto foam by kane (not to mention cena talking ad nauseum about how he created ryder and is responsible for ryder) is not helping him

i prefer he's future endeavoured than part of anything at this point

this in a nutshell is what's wrong with the IWC and why creative has no problem jamming it up their ass. this is such an overwhelming copout. you'll sit through an hour+ of kane/ryder/cena storyline to get 10 minutes of swagger v punk? rock on

this i actually agree with

again my complaint was that they made Bryan look weak as **** and he had no good title defenses. yes he didn't win zero matches but (again) squashing Cody with no build when Champion vs Champion stuff could main event episodes or PPVs clearly doesn't do either of them any favors. and I said Cody was awesome ffs. but he is wasting his time feuding with Booker T who kayfabe and non-kayfabe said he was not that excited about wrestling again and would not defend the title even if he won. surely they could do better things with someone as talented as Cody. it isn't only that he jobbed to Booker once. nice cherry picking but whatever IRM addressed all of it.

I agree infinity with IRM's post. Well said sir thank you.

The cop-outs of "just stop watching then" and "at least we get a little sprinkling of non-aids" are fairly tilting and I will just keep chalking them up to people trying to be contrarian because they are just the worst points imaginable.

I don't think they're so much trying to be contrarian as that they're looking within themselves for coping mechanisms to deal with so much of the **** that we watch.

Ive not read any spoilers, but my working theory is that Ryder is going to take on Kane at WM and that is why he is being inserted into the Kane and Cena feud. He is kayfabe injured right now because of the backstage spot but i figure there is like 3 weeks left of the happy go lucky Ryder before they start tweaking his gimmick to fit the storyline.

The Kane, Cena and Ryder show was more like 20-30 minutes of a 90 minute show. Sure, its too much imo and im not defending that story, but i seem to be the only guy who has come to a zen understanding

Big Show is weirdly underrated by smarks. Like ridiculously underrated. Though he is also pretty grossly overrated my marks for reasons i dont understand.

But ignoring that, what have you missed about wrestling if we arent going to have veterans who are over with the crowd helping along the careers of up and comers like Danielson?

Not only do i want Bryan in a story with Big Show to get over heel off the back of him being over but i want him to be in a story where he puts Teddy in a dragon sleeper and punts Hornswoggle in the face for banging AJ last year (like, that is literally a real thing that happened fwiw).

Time will tell on this point. However its worth restating he isnt a cowardly heel, not really. He is the guy who is challenging Kofi to a match, he is the guy in promos telling Big Show to go **** himself and not touch him, he is the guy trolling Mark ****ing Henry with the fake out handshake to hair brush move.

His gimmick is almost identical to Mark Henry. Seriously, his match against Big Show was almost a mirror image of one of the earlier Henry matches against Show and when he isnt facing Big Show he is proving he is that damn good against everyone else.

And when he finally turns if they tweak him into any archetype its seemingly to become the new ultimate opportunist like Edge was and not the cowardly heel that Miz was.

I prefer to think of it as a zen like acceptance that this isnt being written for me.

We are the 20 somethings who are watching iCarly wondering why she doesnt monetise her web show better as she is literally leaving huge bundles of money on the table. I dont care if you believe i had to look up what that show was about or not, lol.

I think if most of the people here just stuck to Smackdown and watched a few highlights of Raw instead (or DVRed and fast forwarded or whatever) then they would get more out of our weird out of touch enjoyment of family TV. Cos lets face it, it IS family TV written by failed soap opera writers.

Even then it sucks though. It would be like telling someone to stop watching ESPN and stop following sports because they are annoyed their favorite team sucks balls and they want to vent about how ****ty ownership is. That isn't really how anything "works" and it is almost a non sequitur as a point to be taken seriously.

Of course it does. I was just positing a different motive.

Shouldn't the very quality of Smackdown be proof that we shouldn't be so accepting of the perpetual failures of Raw? The Smackdown people deal with most of the same framework constraints (except for things like guest hosts) and they do a really good job of it. This makes it even less acceptable for Raw to do all of the **** it does so badly.

duly noted and i am jealous of your zen.

i believe you fwiw

if this is supposed to be family TV it makes even less sense then it already does. Kane is talking to adults who hate their work and spouses. most of the characters curse and make (lame) dick/vagina jokes. racial stereotyping is good fun for everyone? not disagreeing with you that they see it i as "PG" but hahaha oh wow @ them. and failed soap opera writers you have nailed dead to rights. seriously **** Stephanie and her team of failures.


great point. although again to be fair Raw has Vince's direct input more than any other piece of programming so maybe it literally is all his fault. my source for this is F4W/WON though so maybe they are wrong but it sure seems like Vince is trying to change his last name from McMahon to Russo if he is the one in charge of final scripts.

I have to say that I'm on the Phill side of this argument. We need to realize that wrestling isn't the same as it used to be, and it probably isn't ever going to be again. The WWE CAN'T do what we think would be better because the writing is brutal and they're so tied down. Yes, yes, we get that with better writers will come better scripts, better utilization of talent, and less tilt for us, but until that happens we have to dig out the good points of a show and forget/bitch about the bad.

The product is aimed at kids, and even then it's nowhere near raging over at this point. There is just too much good going on the do this 100% "**** THIS COMPANY" attitude. At times it seems warranted, but eventually in hindsight we realize it isn't. If we have to deal with 30 minutes of Kane/Cena (which fwiw is close to the Ministry/McMahon thing going on, albeit with about 4% of the talent and writing) to see Ziggler/Punk for 15, then we just have to deal with it.

I kinda like the idea of Ryder facing Kane at Wrestlemania, Kane would have no problem putting Ryder over. As for the Royal Rumble goes, there might not even be a Cena/Kane match on the card. WWE is being extremely careful with Cena right now. They do not want him to get hurt before Wrestlemania. That's why all his matches have been really short as of late. I half expect them to just have Cena and Kane go at it during the Royal Rumble match. If not I would expect Kane/Cena to be after Big Show/D-Bry but before Punk/Ziggler and the Royal Rumble match.

I suspect, but im too lazy to look anything up, that Smackdown is specifically written to cater to a different audience demographic. Or maybe its just as simple as Smackdown wins out because it receives less attention so the writers get more freedom.

My guesstimate is that we will see Kane Cena match at the RR, but it will not go off as planned for some reason, then in Feb Cena will probably take part in the Elimination Chamber or in some other way close the chapter against Kane whilst passing the baton to Ryder.

Cena cant really do the Rumble itself because he is already facing the Rock, i mean they could write around it but they almost certainly wont.

I also for some reason am going to predict that Brodus Clay faces Mark Henry at Wrestlemania. They can build Brodus the same way they built Henry, but with Brodus being a funny face. Then have the two face off at Mania.

I really can't comprehend the problem with how Zig was booked vs Cena the other night. He dominated Cena during most of the match and embarrassed him while doing so. That is a hellova lot better than him cheating and getting a cheap pinfall win or whatever you guys realistically wanted instead. If you wanted him to go over clean, well I don't know what to say really. That would just be dumb imo. That would be like Flyin' Brian going over clean on Ric Flair back in the day.

That headstand rear headlock he did in the middle of the match was epic and needs to go into his titantron. I really liked the bridge he did the first time that im 99% sure he botched but then just went with it, reset the move after a couple seconds then hit the spot again. Pure class.

Does anyone know if there are more kids watching WWE now than during the attitude era? Might be a stupid question but I have no idea. I'd have thought kids liked face Rock as much as they like Cena but I'm not living in the US and kids over here don't watch wrestling anyway.

I sense anger.

Wrestling is srs business?

Smoke a bone of OG, chill the **** out and get your funkasaurus on imo.

I think a lot of the problem is watching Raw in real time. It's just too much to sit through. If I had to watch smackdown in real time Ted DiBiase would bug the **** out of me but I just FF his ass and it's all good.

But Raw in real time is a forum tradition so what are you gonna do.

Where did anyone complain about Ziggler not winning the match? I can only speak for myself, and I already said this four times, but my complaint is with the match ending in absurd backstage antics involving Eve and Ryder and not really ending at all. The match was a distraction and didn't matter. Cena winning with an FU/STF would have been just fine and was frankly what I expected, but almost anything is better than it ending with Kane doing more evil/hate garbage which makes not a lick of sense. I can't comprehend why you can't comprehend this.

Amp I am definitely not angry but it is certainly becoming frustrating reading posts like this one that are talking past people and seem to not be based on the discussion ITT or anything at all.

I wish Canada wasn't 15 minutes behind so I could partake.

You all need to embrace hate, but stop saying cena sucks, cuz that means you suck, so hate away


Thanks for the promos Kane!