OldStingberg

Did you guys know that Orton easily has the best win/loss record in the WWE this year? I find that interesting because of the narrative that has developed regarding how Orton has been putting over so many guys. Don't get me wrong, Orton's certainly not burying guys, but the typical pattern has been for every one cheap win a heel gets, Orton gets two or three clean wins. That's not exactly ideal for Orton's opponents.

If the players' psyches are so fragile that they'll lose a game a week later because of a missed two-point conversion in a meaningless game, that team wouldn't have won the Super Bowl no matter the outcome of that play. Anyway, the Vikings managed to hold onto the number three spot in the draft. I really, really hope they draft Robert Griffin III. Let Ponder play out 2012, take their time bringing AP back, stockpile another top 10 pick, and then go all out behind RG3 in 2013. If by some minor miracle Ponder pulls a Drew Brees and turns things around next year, great. In a world where Carson Palmer is traded for a 1st and 2nd, it shouldn't too hard to get reasonable value back for RG3.

I don't think that's the case at all. I just don't think Brock's heart was in the fight.

Orton, Christian, Henry, Del Rio, Mysterio, and Sin Cara are all injured right now. It's probably good news for Sheamus, though. I imagine he'll feud with Barrett now, which is certainly better than repeatedly squashing Jinder Mahal and doing bits with Hornswoggle.

I'd rather see anyone else. HHH vs. Taker just feels so pointless. Obviously HHH isn't going to win that match, there won't be much of a feud there, there last match wasn't all that great and now they'll both be a year older with almost a year's worth of ring rust, and the crowd dynamics will be wrong. Fans want to root for Taker's streak at this point. I would hope HHH got the whole "glomming onto a popular babyface's heat" thing out of his system when he inserted himself into the Summer of Punk. I've said before I want a new, young heel to feud with Taker and beat him at WM, but to do it in a way that honors Taker. I still think that's the best thing for the WWE. But if they want Taker's streak to continue, at least have him feud with a young heel and let that feud and the WM match help establish that heel at the top of the card. Say Taker shows up as number 30 in the Rumble, eliminates Ziggler, but Ziggler gets back in and causes Taker to get eliminated. They feud for the next couple months, maybe with Ziggler eliminating Taker from the Elimination Chamber. Then Taker beats Ziggler in what would undoubtedly be an insane match at WM. Taker keeps his streak, WM gets a high-profile match guaranteed to deliver, there's an interesting non-title feud for the road to WM, and a young promising star gets elevated. HHH vs. Taker, though, just seems like one of HHH's ego trips.

Gonna bump this back up since I saw someone asking about a generic render pack, and this one is great. I just snagged a couple new announcers from it.

I'm not saying the Vikings should intentionally lose the final two games in hopes of getting the number one pick, but maybe it's time to shut Adrian Peterson down. And Percy Harvin. And Jared Allen and Kevin Williams.

I remember a time a couple months ago on Smackdown when Cole was criticizing Bryan saying he's not even great at submissions, he only has two of them. Bryan happened to put on a submission at that moment, so Josh Matthews and Booker T jumped in and literally said something to the effect of, "See! That's three!" Not only was Cole cutting Bryan's legs out from under him, the other two managed to make the situation even worse. It's almost incredible how bad the WWE announcing situation is right now. I will say, though, that I thought Cole did a much better job on Raw this week. His stunned silence while Lawler taunted him was great, and I loved his "why are you doing this to me?!?" stuff. That's the way a heel commentator puts over a talent. He didn't shine light on his weaknesses or undercut his strengths. Cole just took his own miserable personality and made some harmless comments against Bryan.

His fake cash-in happened in Pennsylvania, which is a haven for hardcore fans, especially fans of ROH. And his reaction in the cage match was certainly solid. I'd say that that's much more the result of a month of reasonable booking along with Bryan improving on the mic, though, and much less anything to do with Cole. Again, and this point still stands, if Cole was effectively putting over Bryan, he wouldn't have spent most of the year as one of the least over legitimate superstars. It wasn't until the WWE started booking Bryan as part of the title picture that the more casual fans started (very slowly) coming on board. A month or two of average booking did more to put over Bryan than Cole was able to do in a year.

But the casual fans haven't bought Bryan! That's the point. Relative to his position on the card, he gets the most tepid reaction. Until about a month or two ago when they put Bryan back into the title picture, he barely got any reaction at all. If Bryan was over with the casual fans, Cole would have something to do with that. But he's not. That should tell you how well Cole has been "putting over" Bryan.

That's an odd thing to say. You seem to be replying to me as if I said Bryan's indy fan base has gotten him over with the more common fans. Except I didn't make that argument. Bryan is not very over right now. In terms of active faces, he's certainly behind Cena, Orton, Punk, Ryder, and Sheamus. If you add in injured/semi-active guys, he's also certainly behind Triple H, Taker, Rey Mysterio, and Sin Cara. My point is that the people Bryan is actually over with, the people that have made the WWE semi-comfortable with putting the title on Bryan, have absolutely nothing to do with Michael Cole. In other words, Michael Cole has done very little to nothing to get Bryan new, casual fans.

Daniel Bryan would not be World Heavyweight champ if it wasn't for the vocal, passionate fan base he built up over years of high-quality work on the independent wrestling scene. And just so it's noted, I'm not really a Daniel Bryan fan, so I'm not saying that to try and indirectly credit myself for his title. Cole has been harping on Bryan for a year, and Bryan still doesn't have many more fans than he originally had. CM Punk and the WWE creative team probably did more in the past week to put over Bryan than Cole has ever done.

I've heard this before and it drives me nuts. If Cole is so despised that people are muting their TVs or changing the channel, that's not being effective, at least not effective in the sense of "helping people enjoy their entertainment experience" which, presumably (though it's hard to tell at times), is the WWE's main goal. Cole's character would work in very small doses, like Vickie Guerrero. It does not work at all when viewers are exposed to it for the better part of two hours twice a week. That sort of massive over-exposure has killed any chance Cole's character had of building effective heat.

If you think Cole constantly harping on Bryan's very real weaknesses while Bryan never gets a chance to do a damn thing about it is Cole putting over Bryan, I don't know what to say. I think Bryan would be in a much, much better position today if the WWE had an announcer capable of putting over his strengths. Well, they do have an announcer capable of that, but they've decided they'd rather repeatedly humiliate that announcer. C'est la vie.

A few thoughts: -I figured Primo and Epico were going to win the titles. So glad I was wrong. I think they should be at least partially over before they take the belts from a popular team. And frankly, I kinda doubt Primo and Epico get even partially over. -I loved how much the US title means to Zack Ryder. Great job with his reaction and the shots of his dad. -I was kinda surprised that Barrett took the loss, especially because... -They didn't turn Bryan. That seems wrong. Who is he going to feud with? With Henry hurt enough to take the belt off him, Barrett coming off a high-profile loss, Christian still hurt, and Rhodes tied to the IC title, what other credible heels does Smackdown have? There's still time to turn Bryan, or Big Show I suppose, but I think they missed their opportunity to do it well. Oh well, I'm a hell of a lot more interested in a Bryan/whoever feud than Big Show/Henry.

Yeah, I hated the attire. It looked hokey. I liked the mask, though.

My big 4 for Mania: Cena def. The Rock Jericho def. Punk to win the WWE Championship. In my mind, Jericho wins the Rumble, starts going heel on everyone, and after he beats Punk for the belt Del Rio comes out and reveals that he hired Jericho and they complete their contract by Del Rio paying Jericho for the belt. That leads to a Punk/Del Rio feud, gives Jericho a reason to ride off into the sunset, and sets up another great Punk/Jericho feud for sometime down the line. Orton def. Bryan to win the World Heavyweight Championship. Again, in my mind, Bryan turns heel by cashing in on whatever babyface takes the belt from Henry. In theory there's a few faces he could feud with until WM, but Orton is just so over that I'd pick him. Ziggler def. Taker In a less pie-in-the-sky scenario, I'd like to see Ziggler beat Punk for the WWE Championship at Mania. They could have Ziggler start calling his shots, re-enforcing his show-off gimmick. Talking about winning the Rumble, then doing it. Talking about beating Cena or something, then doing it. Stuff like that, including talking about taking the belt from Punk, then doing it. There's gonna be a gazillion people watching WM because, well, it's WM and The Rock will be wrestling Cena, so in one way or another I'd really like to see the WWE give Ziggler an important role on that huge stage to catapult him into the main event permanently.

Plus, I don't think Punk/Austin makes any sense with Punk as a face. It's a great idea with Punk doing his straight edge heel stuff, but as a face their fan bases are just too similar to really make it work well.

I just think it'd be such a wasted opportunity to build a new, young superstar. And considering Taker owes a lot of his career to being put over by guys like Dusty Rhodes, Jimmy Snuka, The Ultimate Warrior, and Hulk Hogan, it'd be good for him to pay it forward in a big way. And I think the WWE can do it in a way that still honors Taker and what he's done. Maybe have Dolph put Taker to sleep with the sleeper Dolph uses so the announcers can really sell how Taker was unwilling to give up. Then Dolph could leave the ring, Taker could eventually get back to his feet and soak in the thunderous ovation, and maybe have some of the superstars in the back come out and applaud him. Something like that, still giving Taker his due, but also putting over a new superstar ready to main event.

That makes sense. Clearly the UFC should only have HWs and maybe LHWs. I can't see anything wrong with that.

We'd certainly talk about a Taker/Barrett match at WM for years to come if Barrett won. I really, really hope the WWE uses Taker's WM streak to put over a younger guy.

I think that's odd. The best organization in terms of fight quality these last five years has undoubtedly been the WEC, and there wasn't a single guy above 155 pounds there. The little guys with their incredible speed and seemingly unlimited cardio almost always deliver. The more little guys the UFC has the better. Especially considering that since there's not many sports for smaller guys to compete in professionally, that means the UFC can really get top-tier athletes, and not simply the guys who weren't good enough to play football.

I don't think any fighter have ever had more people play amateur psychologist on him than Jones has. It's crazy. Even Rogan last night was trying to sell how tentative Jones was in the second, even while Jones was throwing head kicks and spinning back kicks.

Pretty brutal job by the refs in the Vikings/Lions game to miss an obvious facemasking call on the final play of the game. That would have given the Vikings an untimed down on the one-yard line while down by 6. Instead, game over. Don't get me wrong, as a Vikings fan, I'm relieved. I'd much rather have draft position than a meaningless late-season win. But that really sucks for the other teams in the NFC wild card picture.

I take massive exception to this. In fact, I think it's one of the major things wrong with the WWE right now: chasing short-term payoff (a SummerSlam main event) at the expense of a properly executed long-term story. Because the WWE did that, they essentially killed the Summer of Punk. And for what? Tens of thousands of buys for SummerSlam? Was that worth it? Of course not. SummerSlam pretty much completely and immediately killed the mainstream interest Punk had managed to generate in the prior two months. And don't even get me started on the idea that Punk getting a comically tainted win over Cena at SummerSlam before being cashed in on by ADR with the help of Nash texting himself, and then Punk and Cena going off in different directions was somehow a proper end to that feud.