2013 Pro Wrestling Thread

Ford and his brother look like they could have been a heel tag team in some regional promotion in the 70s.

Some Deadspin commenter posted a video of the JR treatment (from the Undertaker/Foley cage match) over the guy falling out of the upper deck at the Bills game Sunday. "Oh my gawd, they've broken him in half!"

 

RIP Mad Dog Vachon.

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2013/11/21/21283811.html

One of the toughest guys to lace up a pair of wrestling boots.

 

Sad news, a Canuckistani wrestling legend, loved watching the Vachons on Grand Prix Wrestling out of Montreal. Had no idea about his amateur background.

 

He was before I started watching wrestling, but I'd read and heard a lot of stories about how great he was. And he wasn't even that tall, something like 5-8 or 5-9, which shows that you don't have to be a monster to be a great performer. RIP

Here's an infamous match where Mad Dog gets majorly cut up, and, supposedly, nearly died.

 

One of the big four shows is Sunday, and I'm not at all impressed with the card. Am I at fault for having too high of expectations after a strong summer?

 

http://youtu.be/aCRZteu1H4w

http://youtu.be/bFHXHu5vkfc

Yeah, Jim Ross YouTube videos never get old.

 

No. The WWE is. Instead of giving us the six-man tag match on Sunday's show, they give it away for free on Raw.

And the "reset," or whatever the fuck they're calling it, was stupid. I love the fact that Bryan and Punk are a tag team now, but couldn't they have at least waited for that to happen -- or, at the very least, put someone besides Big Show in the title picture?

 

On the Grantland wrestling podcast, David Shoemaker was talking about the WWE investors' call, and said that McMahon basically pinned SummerSlam's lower buy rate this year on Daniel Bryan. As a result, I think he's going to be relegated to that "second tier" with Punk for a bit, even though I doubt Orton vs. Big Show is putting any asses in the seats.

They've done a horrible job building up Survivor Series, but that's to be expected, since it's their third PPV in, what, 2.5 months? Even by the compressed build schedule for today's TV product vs. days past, it feels like everything has been especially thrown together for this. I think that could be an advantage if booked well - i.e. put emphasis on the in-ring product - but instead, we're supposed to care about feuds that started over meh stuff a few weeks ago.

 

WWE would benefit from reducing its PPV schedule -- and I think we've talked about this some on here before. The way I look at it, and the way WWE games have played over the years, you can break the WWE world down into a season spanning April to April.

After Mania, don't have a PPV until late May or early June -- depending on when Mania falls on the calendar each year. In May, you could have Extreme Rules, using it as a chance to reset the story lines and giving fans something fresh -- or at least try to.

In late June/early July, you'd have Money In the Bank, which I believe has earned its spot in the rotation. August is SummerSlam followed by NOC in mid-October to bridge the gap to Survivor Series in November. I think I would scrap the TLC show and combine it with NOC.

No PPV in December, which would give you time to build for the Rumble in January. February is Elimination Chamber, which could benefit from being renamed and have the matches as part of the show as opposed to the title (if that makes any sense).

Then, the rest of February, March and however many days in April leading up to Mania could be used to build those story lines up, which I think will make Mania mean that much more.

Current setup calls for two shows in October -- HIAC and Battleground -- but that's stupid. Do away with those two shows, and I think fans will care more about the product.

 

Blaming the SummerSlam buy rate on Bryan is absurd. The rate has declined every year except for last year, only because it was Brock's second match back. SS 2012 did no worse than the Cena/Punk champion versus champion match in 2011. McMahon is full of shit. The days of the 500K buy rate aren't coming back unless they kill a few shows and allow the big four shows a chance to be special again. It's hard to get excited for PPVs when they happen every three or four weeks.

 

I love how Vince blames the guy that they've been pushing for the low ratings, instead of the people doing the pushing, i.e., his daughter and son-in-law.

It's like Walmart blaming a store cashier for bad sales.

 

It's more like if Wal-Mart has a huge sale on a TV and they don't meet their sales goal, is it because people don't want the TV, or because the marketing people got it wrong.

I like Bryan but you can't cut him out of the equation when it comes to the buys. He's much more than a cashier.