Latest PPV and weekly show discussion thread

@williamhenry: Bryan won matches with roll-ups for most of his ROH career. It's pretty much his finishing move. So, as much as I would love to see Cena tap out, Mr. Small Package winning the WWE Championship with a small package would be very fitting.

WWE.com is claiming Jericho is done with the WWE, for now at least, sourcing his Twitter. Ryback was going-over regardless.

They could always have Cena 'pass out', saving Cena's credibility by not actually tapping, but allowing Bryan to beat him via submission anyway. Then again, that's probably too perfect for them.

I'm not the guy who says "ZMG TURN CENA HEEL" because it wouldn't fix him at all. He'd remain the same stale, five moves guy except the kids would be booing him now while the smarks will probably start cheering him. Turning him for the sake of turning him and to please the people who don't like him anyway would be an incredibly stupid move that would both serve no purpose and ultimately be damaging to everyone involved.

HOWEVER;

His insistence to staying face (...or whatever he is) is detrimental to the product. If on monday, he'd chose Daniel Bryan, had that weird stand-off with him, and then FU'd D-Bry, that would have been pretty great. It would add some intensity to their upcoming rivalry and create probably the biggest heel (and most successful in a long time) for the summer in Cena; Bryan has the entire crowd behind him and positioning Cena against him in a more antagonistic role would have been intense as fuuuuuuu. He's too selfish though; he chooses to remain as he is so he can be cheered by the kids and do his Make A Wish stuff, even if it's at the cost of the storyline and it's quality.

This is all how I see it anyway. Let me know your thoughts or if I've overlooked anything.

@gunslingerpanda: I'm just curious why people always think it's his (Cena's) decision whether to turn heel or win matches. He's not the boss, but he does generate a lot of money and goodwill for the boss. They are also a publicly traded company. And he's tied up in sponsorship deals for clothing lines and cereals and does a ton of work with Make A Wish, and I'm sure those companies would be plenty pissed if their poster boy were suddenly hated by the kids they were marketing to, or in MAW's case, trying to help. What logical reason would anyone running that company have for wanting to turn him?

When was the last time Cena tapped? I can't think of one post winning the title at Wrestlemania 21.

@mildmolasses: Yeah, I phrased it quite badly. Imagine I said "His/The WWE's insistence on staying face..." instead, haha.

Do the WWE maybe need to stop doing that shit then? It's getting in the way of decent storytelling in this case.

@gunslingerpanda: Most of my answer still stands. Ultimately their revenue streams matter more than storytelling, and until that well dries up, there isn't much reason to change. And things could be a lot worse. At least Cena can put on good matches. In TNA you have Hogan (who does legitimately control his own destiny) taking up story and spotlight time putting himself over when he can't do shit in the ring. Hell, at least when Vince was the doing that he would get in the ring and do crazy shit for our amusement.

One. Hour. Mark. Henry. Interview.

WWE isn't ROH though.

According to WWE, he has never tapped. In reality, its like you said. I don't know exactly when it was, but it was before he became SuperCena.

He has at least tapped to Jericho, Angle, and Benoit but those were all early career.

Angle might have been the last one but Angle made everyone tap.

If you want the Mark Henry news without the whole interview: He signed a 3 year deal with WWE.

TNA's going to introduce a new version of the X Division Title tonight:

@drx25: so they took the last IC title and put an X on it? I think I like the one they have now more.

@papercut: The NXT title had a baby with the old IC title and this horrible abomination is the result.

Yeah it evokes the Intercontinental title for sure, on closer inspection that blue-globe is exactly the same.

God lord, that belt.

Cena already is a heel, everybody hates him.

Destination X chat, come laugh at the new X Division Championship and hopefully watch some good matches:

http://tinychat.com/140fu

EDIT: We'll be watch this week's NXT here:

cytu.be/r/Giantbomb

10,000th POST!!

I wouldn't post anywhere else but in here for my 10,000th post! Wrestling thread represent!

Wow, that X-Division belt is garbage. It's weird that they would change it to something that makes you automatically think of their competitor. If they want to change all of their branding from red to blue they would have been better off just making a variation of their current title.

im just happy that the new x division belt does not have Jeff hardy s face on it, my standards on tna belts are fairly low

Just watched this week's NXT. Jesus Christ, that Triple Threat #1 Contenders Match was good, real good. I wouldn't expect anything less from Cesaro, Generico and co. European Uppercuts = great wrestling matches.

...Who is Chris Sabin? I've only missed about a month of TNA.

That was a good episode. I was hoping that would roll into a good episode of Impact, but aside from Aries/Roode, it was pretty dull. The X division matches were spotfests, which in itself isn't so bad, but when they do nothing but contrived spots for 4 minutes, it really sucks. And the title match was pretty bad. Sabin looked like he had no business being in the ring with Bully, and now he's the champion. Having him actually putting up a great fight and losing would have been much more compelling, especially with the way they were presenting him in those video packages. Instead, he got the shit beaten out of him and then cheated to win

I only ever knew Sabin from the Motor City Machine Guns. That team and Beer Money Inc. had some fantastic matches. I am glad that most of those guys have found success in singles competition, but I sort of miss the bigger tag team line-ups. TNA has a couple good ones, but not enough to make up a solid division.

I did a double take because I only had Impact on in the background when I saw Jigsaw wrestling Trent Baretta

@gunslingerpanda: He's the "other one" from the Motor City Machine Guns.

what

Drumrolls please....

The cause of death for Doink The Clown was...

Drug Overdose!

*disappointment music*

@turboman: I've more or less given up on the idea of wrestlers dying of of natural cause.

The Charlotte Flair vs Bayley match on NXT was pretty good. Bayley does a lot of little things like seemingly apologising to Ric Flair who is ringside before she starts to go on the offence, and trying to force that wrestling to the side of the ring where Ric is standing. Charlotte seems tall as fuck, and he uses my second favourite Ric Flair thing in the "get knocked over the turnbuckle and land on the apron" thing, my favourite Ric Flair thing being the Flair Flop.

The only thing I didn't like about NXT was Sheamus turning up, and there being no Renee Young.

Yes. Just... yes.

Also I totally ran into that Powdered Toast Man at a con in Niagara Falls last month haha.

So now the miz has been announced as host of summerslam and not wrestling now...what exactly is he. He has been a none entity for a while now mainly doing those dumb miz TV bits, he's not being buried because there still shoving him in our faces. Do they think he's not good enough to wrestle for the mid card belts but worth keeping on TV?

I honestly thought I lost the ability to comprehend text when reading this sentence.

You clearly don't find yourself in incredibly odd situations nearly enough. Everyone should have the chance to talk about physically meeting Powdered Toast Man.

Listening to this right now. It's really good. Closest thing we'll probably ever get to a Mark Henry AOW

Stone Cold is going to be on AOW

Colt Cabana is going to be on Stone Cold's podcast.

I saw this on Twitter. I'm full of glee.

I appreciate how The Miz's career has gone. From the "official host" of SmackDown to WWE Champion to "official host" of SummerSlam. Sweet poetic justice.

You guys might enjoy this

@lumley: That was fantastic.

@lumley: The finished sketch is truly a thing of beauty :D

Mick Foley announced that he's going to be the writer for a WWE comic series.

This excites me.

What if WWE sold Daniel Bryan bandanas that when you tied them around your face cowboy/gangsta style you had Daniel Bryan's beard?

@drx25: This is a really good interview. Thanks for posting it.

With this most recent TNA house show news there is mounting evidence that TNA is on the verge of sinking because of financial woes:

At tonight's TNA house show in Cape Girardeau, MO, road agent Pat Kenney came out at the start of the show and announced that around half the wrestlers who were scheduled would not be allowed to work due to commission licensing issues.

The company offered refunds, and for those who don't take refunds, a free fan interaction with all the wrestlers.

Being on the road is costing them too much and they can't go back to Florida either because their impact building has already been leased to someone else. Hopefully this time WWE will do a better job with Invasion 2.0 storyline.

TNA isn't an important enough name for that. I doubt they would even buy them unless it got really really cheap.

WWE would much rather let them rot and cherry pick 3 or 4 guys they would actually want

@k9: Just glancing at that doesn't say financial woes, just means that half of the roster didn't know about the state licensing stuff (most of the people who competed that night was former WWE wrestlers, so I guess that that stuff was already covered with them).

But yeah, more bonehead mistakes by TNA.

Pretty much this, TNA forgot to get licenses for parts of the roster in the state of Missouri either because Bruce Prichard is an idiot or because his departure created a void and that fell under the cracks.

On the flip side, if TNA doesn't change their structure soon, they could actually be getting problems down the road.