Alright. I'm just saying let's stop acting like they have a master plan. It is very clear that they do not have control of their audience right now. Rumble was a complete disaster. If they get control again, it will be because they regained it with some damage control and not because of any sort of plan. They fucked up. Badly. Which is fine. But to deny that they fucked up badly is just kind of ignoring the problem at this point. Smarks can be right sometimes.

This is what I'm thinking.

I don't know if the WWE staff understands the psychology of the fans, but it seems like the idea of it being a set-up to some extent shouldn't be absolutely dismissed. Either way, I don't see Batista winning at Mania. I also doubt that he would have been facing Orton in the main-event. Fuck, Orton has to lose the title at Chamber just to set up a decent match at Mania.

Here's what I think would have happened, assuming DB wasn't supposed to happen and really was getting depushed.

Batista wins Rumble, turns heel, Orton drops title to (popular face who is not DB). Batista loses at Mania for a happy ending.

If DB wasn't meant for a depush, then it makes sense for Cena, the only other top face to get involved with a non-title feud directly after the Orton deal.

Does anyone really think Batista was meant to be a face when he main-evented Mania?

You can't keep the same guy on top forever though, even Cena got taken out of the title scene for a while, like Fignuts said it wasn't like he was feuding with El Torito.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all here. I just think Punk should have handled it better.

How can you even compare Cena and Punks runs? Cena has been at the very top of the company for ten years and has essentially main evented every Wrestlemania since his rise. Punk hasn't main evented one.

Yeah, but this came out of the end of the Monday Night Wars and was a natural conclusion of it. They hadn't been 'gone', they'd still been at the helm of professional wrestling. Also, Hogan, Nash and Hall were a package deal as the nWo so you can't separate their value.

Well. Then you're not paying attention. It was a disaster. The poll on WWE facebook page was more than a fair sample size and there was 4.5k thumbs up votes and I think 18k thumbs down votes. It was a disaster. Plainly and simply. You're just wrong this time, I'm sorry. There were far more people dissatisfied with this than just Pittsburgh.

Punk should have main evented against John Cena against the Miz. I'll give him that. But that's the only year it makes sense, since Punk vs anyone isn't getting top billing over Cena vs Rock, or even against a Bryan vs Batista/Orton match this year.

guys......you can't have a work when neither of the 2 parties are commenting. if punk Is laying low and wwe isn't acknowledging shit then its not a work.

and besides its pg era and app friendly now the demographic that's catered to does not know what a work is

I like how TNA isn't a viable option to alternate to, even for me, an ex-spoken TNA advocate

Pretty much what Fignuts said. Cena is their Hogan, he'll be pushed ahead of pretty much everyone. Punk has only been a main event level guy for a handful of years, and a few of those featured matches that were guaranteed top billing no matter what. Punk getting dropped out the title picture keeps him fresh, he's still featured prominently though.

You are being really ridiculous. how many people do you know that don't use the internet? Because I know very few. And this wasn't a pwinsider poll. It was a WWE poll. People from all walks of life like the official WWE facebook page. It isn't even close to all smarks. And the margin of people that didn't like it is so vast compared to those that did. Man. I'm sorry. I really like you, but you are just wrong here. It was a complete and utter failure. The guy that is supposed to main event WM as a babyface got viciously booed. A guy that just made his return like a week prior. It was not a good look whatsoever.

Yes, but is is it "best for business?"

Oh. So you can see first hand how many of them aren't smarks, then?

I am bit sad since I came to know about the situation in the early morning. I truly believe that maintaining two separate brands with two heavyweight champions, if done right, would be very beneficial.

I know I was the one who brought up the poll on the podcast, and I try to do better than this, so I apologize. A poll like that is always going to have a greater proportion of negative responses than is actually present in the target population.

The real victim here is Juan, he picked Punk for the Pool.

Narc's right, come on CSL, just because you're "going against the grain" doesn't mean you're seeing the big picture, some things are just obvious.

The biggest problem from all of this is the fact that WWE needs more main event guys and fast. The fact that they have to bring in "part timers" really only demonstrates their lack of confidence in the guys they have on the cusp. See Kofi, Ziggler, Barrett, Cesaro.

I think of all those guys, only Ziggler has been in a main event program more than once. Hell this is Cesaro's first ever main event title match is it not?

If he's off the road, I wonder how long it takes for him and AJ to break up and then for him to start dating Ronda Rousey.

I give it 17 days.

that'd be so awesome if he started dating rowdy ronda.

Come on CSL, Ryan Clark has just states on the front page that this is NOT a work. What more proof do we need?

Also this is an amazing thread, blew up over night.

But did it make money? And is the buzz helping it make more money? At the end of the day, I think the PPV was successful because it created such a visceral and emotional reaction.


*Rog, those are fair points, but I still think the comparison is apt. It's not as if I was comparing the return of someone like Maven to the epic(ly disappointing) return of the nWo. Batista was a multiple-time former Champion, had memorable feuds with Cena and Mysterio, had Hollywood exposure that the WWE has ALWAYS been keen on and he still looks like a badass. I imagine a lot of fans were pretty excited about his return and it would make sense for the character to play an important role at both the Rumble and Mania.

I will say that when the nWo returned, I think it was far too late. If not for them running out their contracts it would have been so much easier to capitalize earlier. If not for my love of Scott Hall and my hopes for a nWo return that would recreate the circumstances of the original angle I probably would have panned it altogether. The best thing that came from it, was the return of baby-face Hogan and The Rock's heel turn (their match as well) and I detest Hogan.

So if Batista's initially well-received return isn't as momentous as the return of the nWo I concede the point, but it's sure does bring back memories.

Batista's Hollywood exposure doesn't exist yet. The marketing drive hasn't really started for GotG yet, never mind it's not out until August and it's not like people are anticipating it like The Avengers. At present he's got no Hollywood appeal - are they so desperate to have him there when the time comes that they'll send him to the top spot 7 months in advance to keep him happy when he generates a bit of interest for playing third billing in a summer blockbuster. That also assumes that the audience likes him.

The nWo returning wasn't great, but it was still a once in a lifetime opportunity that people had actively dreamed about at one point. That is not Batista in the WM main event by any stretch of the imagination. Also, nWo was quite a unique thing, and came into a product that was pretty diverse and full of new sights- Chris Jericho was main eventing wrestlemania . This is a shit retread of the Rock's return which happened an exhausting two times in a row. Something not great happens twice and then you follow it up with the same thing for a third time, only even worse?

Now is the time for some revolutionary tweener like stable to come in and shake things up. All the guys who feel held back by the machine waging gorilla warfare. It won't happen but it'd be frigging sweet.

I think so. Yeah, pretty much all of this.

Batista in my view is honestly a hell of a talent, but I don't think anyone was clamoring for his return. If they kept it as more of a surprise it would have been somewhat special, but it was more like "Cool! Batista's back! Anyways, moving on"

CM Punk Quits WWE!!
 

Title explains itself....

Whoa shit dude! Where did you hear this breaking news story? I'm impressed!

I'm with those saying that Punk is justified in his decision to leave the WWE at this juncture. It may not be what I would do if I were him, but then again, I have no idea how much money he has saved up, and it doesn't really seem like he values putting on a match with Triple H at Mania, if that were in fact the actual plan.

Punk, and a handful of WWE superstars, deserve so much better than what they're dished out. WrestleMania is the Superbowl of professional wrestling - it's what every wrestler dreams about. Punk took the backseat to The Rock two years in a row - one of those years he was the WWE Champion, and the year after that he was the hottest thing in the company. The year before those two (Mania 27), he got bumped down for The Miz, of all fucking people. Punk should have been in the main event at Mania 27. He deserved better at Mania 28, but the foresight conclusion was to put Rock versus Cena in the main event spot and Jericho versus Punk in an upper card spot - I would have done the exact same thing. Had I known that Cena versus Rock was going to be so uncompelling, I would have probably changed things up a bit and put the Hell in a Cell on last. But that's just me. Punk deserved a spot in the main event last year. Ending his record setting title run to The Rock made sense, but was done purely to put The Rock over heading into Mania. With all of the heat that Punk had coming out of that feud, a triple threat made more sense than Cena versus Rock 2, and certainly would have been a much better main event than that with which we ended up. Yes, Punk got a match against Undertaker, and yes it was the best match of the night, but the ending was a foregone conclusion, the build wasn't that great, and Punk's skills would have been much better utilized in a main event triple threat match with Cena and Rock. He would've added that extra bit of flair which that main event sorely lacked. He didn't even need to win the thing. They could have made it an elimination triple threat match and still had the "epic show down" between Rock and Cena that the company wanted.

Fast forward a year and Punk has been pretty much underutilized. He feuded with Curtis Axel and Ryback, both of which went absolutely nowhere and served very little purpose at all. He jobbed to Lesnar at Summerslam (another part-timer) and never got any retribution for his loss. He was downgraded to a tag team feud against the Wyatts and the Shield with Daniel Bryan, and now he was being set up to wrestle Triple H at Mania while another part-timer, Batista, shows up and gets the top spot at Mania after being gone for four years. I would be a little pissed off, too.

Punk probably doesn't need the big pay-off that a Mania match would give him. He seems to be a guy who lives below his means and he's had enough main events, enough big matches, enough merchandise sales, and enough appearances to make him a significant nest egg for the forseeable future. He has no wife or kids to look after, and from the sound of things, he doesn't even have an immediate family that needs his support. It's not about the money for Punk anymore. It's about the principle.

And the principle of the thing is that CM Punk and Daniel Bryan and the rest of them deserve more than to be pushed down the card for part-timers like Brock Lesnar, The Rock, Batista and to a lesser extent, the Undertaker. They're working all year around for the company, bleeding and killing themselves for fans that will never be truly satiated, and all they want is the spotlight on the biggest night of the year, but that is taken away from them over and over again.

CM Punk in a main event match against anyone, be it someone who can "go" like Daniel Bryan or Chris Jericho or John Cena or Randy Orton, is always going to be a better main event than Batista vs anyone or Randy Orton vs anyone. It's just the way of it. The guy can put on a show with anyone. The guy can talk and sell any angle. To keep him from the main event for a fourth year in a row is disgusting.

The WWE is just continuing to make the same mistakes they've always made. They've learned absolutely nothing. The voice of the voiceless let his opinions ring out, and for awhile it looked like things were changing, but the fact is that after three years, very little has actually really truly changed. Guys like Daniel Bryan and CM Punk are consistently given the short end of the stick, while part-timers and guys who look like Roman Reigns and Randy Orton get the pushes.

I don't hate on Punk for leaving. I equate it to Mick Foley walking out after the Montreal screwjob. He's standing up for what he believes is right, and if nobody takes a stand, then the WWE will believe they can continue to do whatever they please and they'll get away with it because the fans will keep shilling out their hard earned cash and the superstars will continue to take whatever shit hand is dealt out to them.

Gonna stick this.

in all fairness Batista is back as a full timer.

right up your bum.

:naughty:

:naughty: ........ :o

Just for the record:

I don't really dislike the New Age Outlaws winning the tag belts. The Brotherhood had ran out of steam - despite having a thriving tag team division, a lot of the attention had turned to hybrid dynamic three man tag matches. The bizarro novelty of the NAO allows them to lose the belts without having to break up the team or make them seem too weak. Still, clean loss, man. Not entirely relevant, just saying that bringing old people back isn't necessarily evil. 30 is just another number, I mean the factor of 5 wrestlemanias are more bad than good, but... Batista? He comes back for (supposedly) two years, and you give him nowhere to go but down, and risk exposing him straight away?

Anyway, the Rumble wasn't just the Rumble, it was the culmination of the last 6 months. My faith in the product was wavering, and CM Punk hasn't sunk in yet but it feels like the coup de grace. When you come back to wrestling, as I did with nearly 10 years away, you need to find your way back in and CM Punk was the guy that I could connect with, that guy I had never seen before and could belive in. I think he's had a pretty bad year, except when he's had the best matches of the year, but with him gone, it's that original tether that's gone.

I'm not threatening to stop watching, but I lived without wrestling for 10 years, it could easily happen again. Never mind that it was Cena, Orton, Batista, HHH standing at the top when I started to switch off, and unbelievably they're filling up 25 minutes of leaden talking at the start of every show.

and I ALWAYS get what I want.

Emmott, you geek.

Didn't think that a thread about not being at live events constitutes it as a thread about quitting WWE..... my bad.

http://www.tpww.net/2014/01/major-up...m-punk-to-lie/

Front page stuff... not sure what this is supposed to mean, this seems to be indicating that WWE wanted to take a cautious road with a possible concussion and he flipped out over that?

FROM THE FRONT FUCKING PAGE.

Bye. Go be a baby in the indies.

He'll be held up as the Messiah in the indies and every promo will be about how WWE sucks. The two are related.

There's no way Punk thinks there are better options for him out there, unless he's really just done with wrestling.

I think Punk is in the wrong here. However..

I can respect the fact that he walked out . That's much more respectable then just complaining about not liking the direction of the company in interviews and on twitter., which he has probably done enough of already.

CM Punk will return as a commentator.

Way to merge and ruein the other thread ABT.

MY DIET SODA!

I really don't think Punk is done. He'll probably be back either towards the end of the year or the beginning of next year. If this was retirement related, no way would he have just walked out without addressing the fans that helped make him what he was. So, any retirement idea is out. I don't think it's a work either, but you never know. I suppose that he'll take time away from wrestling, maintain minor training to keep in shape, but I really don't think he'll be wrestling for any other company. He may make guest appearances or something, but wrestling no. I'm thinking a lot of this extends from last year when he was suppose to have several months off to rest but was pretty much forced back into things after only a month. Punk always seemed dead straight on needing a chance to unwind. I really believe the tiresome schedule and the recent Rumble fiasco contributed to him just exploding. But I really feel he'll be back at some point down the road. It just sucks that it won't be before Mania.

I would be totally behind this.

I really don't want a Wrestlemania 30 without CM Punk. :(

You cannot discount 22 thousand people. Fine have it your way. Take 10k votes off of the thumbs down column to account for what you're saying. People would've still not liked it to about a 2/1 margin. You are being pretty silly though. The poll isn't the only thing we have to go off of, it is just a fairly solid representation of people not enjoying it. The entire arena shit all over the final 2 main events, there is the poll, there is a multitude of examples within social media, there are former WWE guys wondering what the fuck is going on. Where have you heard positive feedback? There is enough evidence to go off to to say that the event was probably most likely not enjoyed by the majority. If you have any evidence to the contrary, feel free to send it my way. But you doing the "prove 100% that what you're saying is true" schtick is a cop out. You know i can't do that, but just because I don't have the statistics for every single person who watched the rumble doesn't mean there isn't enough information to infer. Everything I've heard and seen the past couple days has been negative and there is evidence that points to people responding to it negatively in large numbers. If you want to ignore it, then go ahead, butt hat doesn't mean it isn't valid.

Everytime somebody quits or dies people think it's a work.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>The BRAND NEW <a href="https://twitter.com/CMPunk">@CMPunk</a> &quot;Best Since Day One&quot; Hat has arrived on <a href="https://twitter.com/WWEShop">@WWEShop</a>! <a href="http://t.co/CtlHSherE6">http://t.co/CtlHSherE6</a> <a href="http://t.co/JIo4e7gF1N">http://t.co/JIo4e7gF1N</a></p>&mdash; WWEShop.com (@WWEShop) <a href="https://twitter.com/WWEShop/statuses/428569698356457472">January 29, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Eddie is returning at WMXXX

"Guess what? I lllllliiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeddddddd!"

I hear Chris Hero is looking for a tag team partner.

I didn't ruin anything, dingleberry.

I'll ruin your dingleberry.

Gonna wrestle Benoit.

In a casket match

I was wondering why Punk didn't run out in the opening of Raw. John Cena ran out and I thought it should of been Punk. Maybe it was always suppossed to be Cena but I thought that was odd since he's more at odds with the Authority with Kane in there

Shit. Are they trying to kill interest in the WWE network? Shooting themselves in the foot by not keeping Punk and the fans happy.

I'm sorry, I'm not really seeing the correlation between CM Punk and interest in the WWE Network.

It's as clear as day.

I kind of marked out when I saw that he quit. But also, after watching his interview with Ariel Helwani and hearing more and more of his increasing frustrations I was not all that surprised, but more intrigued. I hope this wakes them up just a bit. The WWE will be fine without punk, but he's a major player and he flat out told them to fuck themselves here.

No it is not.

Anyway, this isn't Punk, but this frickin' guy:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>keep voicing your opinions <a href="https://twitter.com/WWEUniverse">@WWEUniverse</a> but please stop asking me if im going to quit, its annoying i still have a year left</p>&mdash; Dolph Ziggler (@HEELZiggler) <a href="https://twitter.com/HEELZiggler/statuses/428719585190105088">January 30, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Dude, the correlation is right there.

Why the hell should they drop trou and take it every time Punk throws a fit that he's not the top shit in the company? If they bend over and give him everything he wants now it's just going to be back to the same point in a few months.

Fucking LOL at the replies to this.

http://imageshack.com/a/img132/6870/keyx.jpg

Hitler sees the connection.

Because he's the only one keeping them honest and telling them how we want the show to be. You're bitching about the booking and Punk is the guy that calls them out on it.

They should bow down to his demands because they are our demands too.

So are we really not going to discuss this correlation? Or are you realizing now that there isn't one?

I bet Colt's podcast downloads tomorrow will be a lot bigger, people looking for a scoop

If this is indeed true, then the only silver lining in this dark, dark cloud is that Bryan's place on the card goes up one notch. Same for Sheamus.

TBQH, I was thinking about it more, and I logged on to post this pretty much:


When Rock came back and fought Cena, that had the allure of "a match we thought we'd never see, two eras" thing. And it went on to do the best numbers in history for that event. When Punk is given the longest reign in the modern era, only for it to be ended by a guy who is a mega star, and who made him look like a million bucks in the process I wasn't mad. Also, transitional champ to put the belt on Cena without us having to get Cena/Punk yet again. So now you get a repeat of the same main event from the previous year, face vs face, no one can be hurt by a loss, and your top guy gets the belt back to start the year off right.

Having Brock come and say "oh im the number one contender" and THEN have Batista show up on Raw after 4 years, then have him walk in at the end of the Rumble and win it, to main event against Orton, when you have a guy like Daniel Bryan who is so white hot right now...that's what I'm not getting. I get the business part of everything, but Batista vs Orton for the main event of Mania is not major for Wrestlemania XXX, and if Punk is fed up with the direction of creative as well as the booking of some of the part time guys, I completely understand.

CM Punk's new storyline:
<iframe width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0PWaJ6URRU0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Give him time, he's touting his response.

That's the only acceptable thing after this waiting period.

You can't have the inmates running the asylum. It'd turn into HBK/Bret all over again. You can't run a business like that.

Maybe there isn't. It just seems weird to shit on the fans when they are trying to get people to sign on to 6 months of a WWE Network that could make or break them.

The people who chant Yes! Yes! Yes! are the core WWE audience that they need to have a base audience for the Network to succeed.

I was a wrestling fan before I knew who CM Punk was. I'm still a fan now. Sucks to see him go, but I'm still getting the Network.

PROGNOSIS: No correlation.

I was going to start doing Yes version of different theme songs. Maybe later I think I might have a cold or something.

The Network is going to make or break them?

I'm sure that will catch on. Use your virus to go viral.

I want to hear STD's 'Yes!' version of This Fire Burns.