Promoter

The William Shakespeare thing was hilarious. I bet it was Vince Mcmahon who wrote that under an anonymous moniker. That's where the half-assed justification comes from most likely. They got that good stuff up at Titan Towers I'm sure.

Yep, a fatal four-way unification match. Cena(wwe champ)vs. Angle(world champ) vs.Brock(new japan champ) vs. hhh. The battle to see who the king of kings is!

Damn, that explains a lot of the crazy storylines and trademarking ideas running through that company. They all have a superiority complex Seriously, from hbk to Hogan to even Angle thinking he's superman with that neck of his. They must got some good stuff at the headquarters that government officials and doctors don't know about yet.

Well, John Cena went over the self proclaimed "Wrestling god" at last year's Mania and they brought him over to RAW. The whole Edge thing was a distraction and I bet CENA going the whole year as champ against the King of Kings was the real long term plan. It makes sense, but Cena's heat as a babyface really took a big hit against Kurt Angle. The fans have sided with the wrestling establishment over the common man in some ways. Austin would have done tremondously well with this storyline if it was 1997.

I think Vince is going to try and end the Montreal saga with hbk vs. Vince at Mania though. With HBK taking time off and going back to part time and the rumours of them writing the storyline with Bret in mind it could mean an end to it. I bet HHH goes over clean on RVD.

Actually, he would just react in the same stubborn manner as the John Cena situation.

Why? I thought we had Triple H posting here

This is what I was saying about the "OMG EDGE IS THE GREATEST AND RATINGS BONANZA" threads.

Guys, I stole this from another website's forum, but damn if it wasn't interesting. ------------------------------------------------------------- The sledgehammer So here's the thing, really. I don't much care how much money the WWE makes. If anything, it seems McMahon is good enough at crunching numbers that it should never really matter to the average fan how profitable things are in the industry. The concern should just be that it stays in business, and like I said, it seems he's good enough at the number crunching that this would never be a problem. Hell, when the dude starts making too much money, he just tends to blow it on football franchises, bodybuilding pay-per-views, b-grade action movies, and maybe a tanning session or two anyway. Point being I don't like to cheer for the money. It's not my job. I'm not a shareholder. Right, so I just felt the need to get that out of the way because for some reason, it seems like too many conversations about wrestling devolve into the money thing and I could ultimately care less. I've been watching since I was 12. That was when the first Mania happened and all the kids at school were running around doing high knees, body slams, and leg drops to each other in the halls for fun. Everybody knew it was fake. The old fuddy duddy pre-baby boom teachers would grumble that "it's all fake" and we'd be like, yeah, so... what's your point. I remember the first time I really got met with the whole "why do you watch this shit" question. My best friend was over a few years back, 2002, and he hit me with it. I said, "watch this," because the Triple H-Steph renewal of the vows thing was being staged at that moment. He watched the whole thing. "Pedigree" I laughed, a few seconds before he drove his wife's face into the floor to a roar of approval from the crowd. He kept turning his head from the screen, laughing, looking back, laughing some more. "I've never seen anything like that," he laughed afterward. Now he knew why I watched this shit. OK... ranting around in circles here but I have a point. I don't give a shit about the money, first of all. As long as the show is on. There really is nothing else like this. Also, I've started to question how much McMahon himself cares about the money. I mean... there's the myth among fans that if we cheer or boo a certain way McMahon will have to listen because we're the ones that pay him to stay in business. This is true to a certain extent, but for the most part, he's always just kind of done what he wanted to do anyway and turned his mental power toward finding a way to make whatever he was doing marketable enough to keep going. That's the grapefruits thing. The fact it's turned his little family business into a publicly traded mini media empire is fucking astounding, and more than enough reason to give the dude his due. I guess what I'm saying is I don't understand the mass amounts of criticism that get heaved at him. That's the main point of this whole post, but I'm trying to work my way to a lucid state with the thought. See, I'm gonna say something so outlandish here most of you will feel compelled to throw insults my way. That's fine. My hope is one or two people will want to have a good conversation about the subject and we can just ignore the sophomores. Here it is... Vince McMahon is our era's William Shakespeare. Now to set the stage, I've slept in gutters, roomed with psychopaths, got drunk with ceo's, jumped off cliffs, lived in churches, had sex with angels, and along the way I've managed to study a bit of academic intelligence also. One of the things I've learned is that there was once a dude named Shakespeare who ran a little theater company in England. He specialized in churning out lowest common denominator plays that the majority of his culture considered crass, low brow, colloquial shit. Mainstream critics of his day wouldn't give him much thought. He was for the common man. Some hack who stole his material from working class mythology of the time. Make matters worse, turns out there wasn't even one guy doing the whole thing. All those plays written by William Shakespeare were nothing more than plays written under the cooperation of William Shakespeare's little working class theater company. Hell, some of the actors probably even came up with their own shit to say. It was a whole lot of 15th century British slang, which is why uppities get scholarships to study the man's genius these days. Imagine it'll be the same thing in a few hundred years when they start trying to figure out what guys like Guerro and Flair and Cena, much less Warrior and Triple H and Hogan were saying in their promos. A whole forgotten language immortalized in the theatrics of this century's crass, low brow, colloquial shit for the common man that gets snubbed by mainstream critics if considered at all in the first place. Fuck 'em, I say. They get paid to watch TV and talk about it, and they think they're better than anybody else? Fuck 'em because I work for a living and wrestling speaks to me, speaks my language, tells my stories, and entertains the shit out of me. I've been in fights, gotten fired from jobs, watched friends fall, had chicks slap me across the face, and while it's thankfully not a daily practice of mine to get hit in the head with a steel chair, anybody who's been in that office with corporate america the day they tell you your services are no longer needed knows exactly what it must feel like to get hit in the head with a steel chair, thrown off the top of a cage through a table, or pummeled by some evil rich fuck with a sledgehammer. That's my point, basically. Wrestling might be fake as a sport, over the top as entertainment, but it's the most real thing I've found on TV, not that I watch a lot of TV, but comparing it to yuppified melodramatic crap like Lost or Invasion or ER... you get the point. Hopefully. Right, so one more thing to illustrate my point and then I'm out... the current story that's got smarky smarks all bunching up in the panties is this John Cena vs. Triple H match on a crash course with inevitability this Mania. Think about it... just for a second... this isn't the NWA, or AWA, or even TNA, or ECW. There's no pretense in the WWE that this is a real sport. Vince has always called what he did theater, his wrestlers characters, and his ring a stage. It happens to be a show about a fight, but that's the hook. It's the metaphor we dig. We understand what it's like to be in a fight in life, or we wouldn't bother watching. Wrestling gives us what the old Greek Aristotle talked about when he philosophized on theater and talked about the purging of intense emotions leading to catharsis. Gooey ten cent words and shit. Point is, John Cena is this character, this everyday thug who fights for the people, and now those people have turned on him. OMGZ BUSINESS IS GOING INTO THE SHITTER! Heh. K... Ratings are up. Anyway. They spent the last year feuding him with the two most popular tweeners on the roster in Jericho and Angle. They had to know... I'm just saying they had to know what was going to happen, and where they are now has to be the destination they were going for. Why? Because his name is John Cena for fuck's sake. Hasn't clicked for you yet? Just shorten it up to the initials. Then throw in his hip hop catchphrases like "Word Life" and "The Time is Now" and hopefully you'll see the point of all this without having to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer. I'll point out this. Kids love him. Anyway... the guy they're setting him up for is Triple H. King of Kings. Master manipulator. Plays the Game. Do a little research on what his name means in occult sciences and you'll see how we as fans have been under his evil control for almost a decade now. He's the motherfucking antichrist. The genius of the story is in how they've turned the fans just in time for the climax. At Mania in Chicago, the antichrist will step in the ring with an everyday jabroni, initials JC, loved by kids but turned on by those he's the most like, and the thing is gonna be riotous. The antichrist will probably be heavily cheered, and will probably win the match, and will probably show up on TV the next night with that awesome evil smile on his face and the belt slung over his shoulder while he growls "Look what you just cheered for." Will it make money? Probably, but I don't give a shit. I'm just here to enjoy the ride. That's my point. Not sure what I'm expecting in response... like I said... expecting lame insults clever to the beholder, and hoping for some decent conversation. I've typed more than enough, though. Sorry bout the wind.

You called eh?

Wow. Jesus Christ. Yes, he may be awful, but damnit people, just fucking boo him. Please. Its not going to stop until you do. HILARIOUS!!! AND TRUE!!!!! What can we expect from ol' Randy. He's been messing around dead people since Mania last year Lame I know, but so is this angle.

I hate it when people ruin perfectly good joke threads with serious discussion. Hey, why quote me? I didn't start it. I was making fun of all the people making fun of John Cena when at one time some people were saying he was the "next Rock and Austin" for the company. The joke in that quote is the fickleness of wrestling fans who take themselves seriously and don't see the joke in all of this. Look at Cena's first impression as Vanilla Ice to becoming WWE Champion. He isn't claiming to be Eminem or a street thug, but that joke always comes up.

Poor IC title. From the hey day of Randy Savage in 1986 to being whored out to possibly Dick in 2006

2000 is the financial peak, but is it a fair comparison to other years? I don't know myself, but it's like comparing the buy-rate of WM III to the buy-rate of WM X-7. Prices, merchandising, and ad revenues were probably at its highest in those years too. Business wise you have to consider those things and if it was at its highest then it was because of the resurgence in 1998 and 1999. I mean you can't compare 1995 to 2005 systematically for obvious reasons. Today they charge the normal ppv cost what Mania use to sell for, while having IYH shows that cost about $20. They really started overload from the start of smackdown in 1999 and overdid it in terms of pricing the hell out of things. It's also not fair to compare USA to TNN either, but in the grand scheme of things 2000 has to get the nod. Creatively I loved it myself. Austin's character in 2001 was a nice change of pace, but I kind of have to say the Invasion angle kind of ruined it. When that happened Austin became a de-facto face and then they turned him into a comedy piece. I liked the paranoid Austin who was doing anything to keep his spot as champion. The feud with Angle was good up until SummerSlam and after that it stunk up the joint imo because of "Stone Cold" Angle. The only thing that can touch Austin of 1996-98 is Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, and The Rock in their primes.

Guys, I hope you know what your asking for here When things get really ridiculous this thread is to blame

Guys, he's sucking up to Vince for a job Bash Styles and probably get on Vince's good side where he gets rid of him and brings in Cruise.

In fairness, I think the world title scene on smackdown was a bit thrown off with Batista's injury although it could be argued they are doing the same gameplan by just throwing in Kurt Angle in his spot. On RAW, we know what the problem is there in the title scene too. Sometimes the best laid plans by mice and men go awry. However, there is no damn excuse for the IC and tag situations on either brands. At least Booker is doing something construcitive.

Oh, I'm being sarcastic about the Russo thing. He does talk a lot of crap. I remember The Rock saying he came up with his own material and not Russo on OTR one time.

I guess you don't buy him single handedly bringing the wwe back to the #1 position then in 1998 and 1999 NoCalMike huh?

Well, that's what he claims in his book. That eventually he just saw the writing on the wall and started doing things to amuse himself like becoming champion.

I do. Wrestlecrap > Bland, run of the mill crap I concur with this. If WWE can't make good wrestling television, they better either do it terribly or just not do it at all, because bland television where you can't even say "This is total Wrestlecrap" is just boring. This is true somewhat, but I think that was Russo's intention after being red taped so much and we know how that turned out for wcw.

Funny you brought that up because I remember the rumour that the crowd that night won them WrestleMania for 2001. It was in Texas somewhere I think. That was a crazy crowd and perhaps the best in history on television. However, I think the Calgary crowd has it beat from Canadian Stampede.

Yeah, but the buy-rate was higher for Mania 15. WM X-7 reached more homes because of availability. Remember things were dropping off before Austin even returned in 2000 and he didn't help ratings like they thought he would. It was a big reason why they went with turning Austin heel in Houston(which was gutsy and I did like that). WM 17 also had a much more appealing card from top to bottom, but I'm not really talking about that though(also consider the whole hype of wcw being bought by Vince and teasing wcw vs. wwf at the show*it wasn't straight wwf related as wm 15). It's really about the frenzy of the average guy on the street just going batshit for anything wrestling related which I thought Mania 15 had. You aren't wrong though with the numbers. I'm just going off more how people reacted to wrestling in regular settings, bars, and on the street around WM 15 compared to WM 17. Some of that magic was gone at least here anyways.

Could it be that Shelton's real mama was a horrible mom and Thea became his mom by default. I think we are in store for Mama Benjamin vs. Mama Benjamin at Mania 22.

I know about that and its true that the attitude era really did end at WM X-7(Mania 15 still did a bigger buy-rate according to numbers by Scott Kieth's book). However, imo the "mania" over wrestling reached its peak with WM 15 with the split crowd of Rock and Austin for the wwf title match. Austin and Rock carried the wwf to new levels and the Austin/Mcmahon storyline reached its apex. Stuff that came after could be viewed as wcw just screwing up and their fans tuning into the wwf with the jump of the Radicalz in 2000. Remember Jericho and Big Show both appearing in 1999. It was just icing on the cake, but the main stars really hit sky high before. The wwf got more balanced with the influx. I'm saying this because HHH was not that hot as champion in 1999 and did everything from HIAC to making him go over 4 men at Mania 16 to get heat. They didn't have to do that prior to Mania 15 when they played things out over time and had long reigning champions like Rock as IC champ and NAO as long running champs. The Austin up against authority fit the storyline with his title run cut short due to Vince Mcmahon. After the End of An Era match the company started to really hotshot and blow its wad with smackdown and changing the title a million times to keep viewers which is why I think today things seem kind of tame.