Karc

Scaia gets off on bashing the internet on a weekly basis. This was expected.

Wow, WWE being crass. Big surprise. Seriously, how gutless is is when the company that fires you makes you do an interview for their website that puts over the company. Jackie (or the article writer impersonating her) further burying the women's division doesn't help Trish or Victoria (which is why I think they are next), Charlie THANKING the WWE for not firing them until after the wedding? What the hell? But they will survive because they are a family and the WWE made them tough, right? I'm glad to be constantly given reasons as to why I stopped watching this bullshit.

I'm guessing two out of the following three will be next: Ivory, Victoria, Trish. They won't pose for Playboy, and they don't look like Stacy. I had a whole rant on why this mass release is more stupid and petty than economics, but I'll reserve judgment, since it's obvious that the WWE isn't done cutting people whose time they wasted.

The guy owned up to killing WCW, that's good enough for me.

On the far right. It actually got a better buyrate than ONS. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> By a hair, which should be a sign to certain people that the Wrestlemania buyrate was due to certain factors un-related to the brands.

I haven't seen a sell-out heel turn this bad since Austin's after WM X-7.

Problem is, they aren't in the main event. They are in the midcard. I actually fear they might be curtain-jerking. Not one segment since Cena has been on Raw has been in the main event. Or past 10:15. Jericho and Christian have been nowhere near the top of any show for months. Given the build, the WWE title is nothing more than the IC title. Cena came off a bloodbath with JBL in the main event, and now all of a sudden, he's second-rate with jobbers? How many matches has Christian won in the last year? When was the last time Jericho was a credible main eventer? It's the number three match on the show (behind HBK/Angle and HHH/Batista, which both have taken up the main event time). We've seen Batista vs. HHH on the top of a PPV card for two months in a row, and on every Raw. And the buzz has been dead. Not buying the fued for a second. Seriously, if they wanted to outshine the ECW shows (which is the entire reason this thing is happening the way it is), they needed fresh feuds, with good promos, where the matches didn't really matter but were decent and the buildup meant everything. That's a basic rule of pro wrestling. Good matches with no heat don't sell nearly as well as good buildups to a decent blow-off. There's a reason many people here are less than enthused about what looked like a good card.

Um, it did work. They got the big buyrate for the Invasion PPV, and then they got to completely bury WCW to the point where it will never be credible in any capacity ever again. Same thing will happen with the ECW show.

"You wouldn't understand" has to be one of the worst taglines I've ever seen. How are they supposed to get marks (because they've lost a lot of the ECW fans with the burial on RAW) to pay for something that they wouldn't understand? Seriously, pay for something that you don't get? It's like taxes, and everybody hates taxes.

UPN is long overdue for an overhaul. But for a first move, moving your two highest rated shows to Friday nights isn't very smart. Enterprise was there, and is now cancelled. Few would be surprised if Smackdown was next in 2006. What's going to carry them during the transition? A reality show and a bunch of critically-acclaimed dramas that no one watches? Nice knowing you UPN. Ah, Vince, the media really does hate you.

That just shows how much Benoit was "elevated." And it also shows how much Triple H has seemingly gotten over with the smarks. Which is weird.

Why are people surprised? This is what WWE does. They don't want Matt back, but they won't just let all of that great heel heat vanish if it means fooling the marks into buying an angle. So this was the best way to do it. Put all of the "We want Matt" stuff into Kane. If it stick, great. If not, par for the course for Kane in his annual "bad angle" scenario. The way Lita's been making out with heels the last two weeks, they clearly want the "slut" chant to return, because it is a generic heel chant and thus Mat Hardy can be completely forgotten.

If Flair had a say, this whole joke of a title reign would not be happening. But he has none. Has he really done anything useful other than tell people how great Triple H is in the last six months? I have a question. Wasn't this "beat Flair's record" thing started by Meltzer? And if so, is there really any truth to it? Seems a lot of people are accepting this as though it will happen no matter what.

WWE was going to make an angle out of this from the start. But their arrogance and general lack of a backbone (i.e. stupidity in firing Matt) superceded the potential (e.g. huge money making feud by moving Matt to Smackdown to cool down and thus forcing the eventual confrontation to happen at next year's WM).

WWE is still hiring writers who don't know anything about wrestling. How is this news? Is Gewirtz the comic book fanboy who always tries to make the wrestlers like superheroes? Like Rock parallelling Superman and the Hurricane, and so forth.

WWE made the fans in New York pay for knowing about this with an awful show last night, and believe me, that's only the beginning. The one thing that really irks me is that the WWE fired Matt over this, they knew MSG would crap on both Lita and Edge like they did Brock and Goldberg, and yet they allowed it to happen. They couldn't can the heat so the viewers at home wouldn't catch on? They couldn't keep Lita and Edge away from TV for one night so that the MSG crowd wouldn't jeer them? They couldn't fire them considering Lita started the whole thing by confirming the relationship? The whole reason I thought it was a work was because I find no reason to cheer for Lita (long story), and they were really trying to get Edge over. Now that's pretty much going to happen because WWE wants it to, and then they can claim to look like a genius, without having to admit to anything. Disgusting.

So remind me again what a board of directors does? And why should I care?

Totally on Storm's side here, since JBL and Holly, as usual, made complete asses of themselves to prove Lance right.

Victoria had an injury, but decided to wear a knee brace and avoid missing ring time rather than have surgery and miss six months. Didn't matter, they used her so sparingly that she should have gotten the surgery. Hard to see Victoria fired, though. She's the second most useful woman on either Smackdown or Raw.

Anyone not see Backlash 2002? And how HHH vs. HHH was pushed? And how the buyrates were terrible? And how Hogan couldn't walk after a simple boot at WM 21? And he's supposed to tag with Micheals, who went from a good match with Angle to THIS? Am I missing something? Is Hogan really going to suck the heat out of Hassan? Is Micheals really going to job again? Is the Sheik going to show up in a last-ditch effort to pitch the 24/7 network? Just the realization that these questions popped in my head right away is a bad sign. A real bad sign, that this PPV could stink.

She won't be going to fire people, she'll be going to sign them up. I think this also happened last year after the mass firings.

The only top guy HHH hasn't buried yet is Benjamin. He's next.

I am in total support of Molly getting canned. The WWE is finally starting to realize that it will never be a legitimate wrestling show for women, cruiserweights, or anyone else under 250 lbs. They need people who can be gawked at (either through steroids or breast implants) so that things that hardcore fans want (wrestling, good angles, etc.) are so unimportant that they don't matter. Trish is the best example of this, and pretty much the embodiment of all that is wrong (in my view) of WWE training and booking. I say "in my view" because WWE thinks that they are getting great success from it, so much so that they would put on another Diva Search. Trish started as most of these current divas did. Not knowing anything about being a good wrestler, but was just eye candy. She hurts herself, and all of a sudden, she wants to wrestle. And she works her ass off to be half-decent in the ring and good on the mic. And it works, she's over, big, all because she learned the WWE style without any "negative" influence from any other wrestling company. Victoria is the same to a lesser extent, and why I think she may still have a job. Now WWE thinks that they can do that with any woman they pick up of the street, knowing that if it doesn't work, and if the women subject themselves to enough physical augmentation (or look so good that they don't need it), then they can be eye candy. Nidia was good potential for a wrestling character, but her apparent ugliness got her canned. A better example is Jazz, and now Molly (and Molly looked way better). Shaniqua had an attitude, but you can see that WWE was reluctant to let her go with the fetish gear and the boob job. Torrie and Stacy are still around, and exactly what do they bring to the table besides a Playboy spread and 40 inch legs? Don't even get me started on Lita. And hey, we can argue against it, but it won't change their minds. It never has, and it never will. Anyone watch Viva Las Divas? Notice how many diva losers were on that thing? I was told at least three, and Christy, and the Smackdown Divas, but no Molly. They were so much in need of eye candy that they had to get Lilian Garcia to do a photoshoot. But that's the point. That's where WWE makes the money. Selling bikini shoots on DVD and bikini magazines. That's it. Nothing else. Am I mad that Molly quit? Nope. She can go on and do things much more enjoyable than getting her head shaved at the "biggest Wrestlemania of all time" or putting over someone nowhere near her league, or having to be reduced to playing a prude because she won't get naked for 3.99 a copy. Trish I can understand. She worked her way up and became a star, with a lot of help from the WWE. Molly didn't need the WWE after 2001, so instead of doing the right thing and firing her then, they did the same thing they did to everyone they haven't liked since the Invasion, they buried her. Hard. If she really did quit, then good for her.

Oh my god. That might be the most nonsensical post ever. The Rock was jobbing to everyone because he was half black? He went THREE YEARS without a clean loss. He was more protected than anyone since Hulk Hogan. If Rocky was a jobber, I'd hate to see what it takes to be a real main event star. Getting pinned by Al Snow and Big Boss Man after being in the the title picture doesn't make any sense, either, but it happened. And he also went three years without a clean win, either. And yes, I think Rock was just a jobber, but not to the stars. To the up-and-coming stars. Who did WWE always go to first when it came time to job out to the next star that they want to matter? Jericho, Brock, Angle, even Triple H and Austin. Their really big pushes came after they beat Rock. He just happened to be half-black. It would have happened if he was all white, too.

The hype killed the show for me. Probably would have given it a thumbs down anyway. So as easy it would be for me to map out how every match was flawed and uninspired to the point where this Wrestlemania sucked, I won't. Did they really think LA would actually care? And they will have to do more shows in LA. It's one of the few places left on the map where the WWE can have a legitmate sell-out every time they go there.