Mailbox Roundup Part 2

The deluge of e-mails continues…

Hey, another question for you.   Was Bart Gunn put up against Butterbean to punish him for winning Brawl for All? If Steve Williams had won as planned, would they have done the same thing to him? 

No, the plan for Williams was to program him with Steve Austin when he won.  Bart was put with Butterbean basically as a rib on him because he was walking around bragging about how tough he was backstage. 

Hey Scott,
     Just in case you are getting sick of Daniel Bryan/Batista questions in you mailbox I thought I would go with two old school what if questions. I have two one involving The Hitman and one with Jake the Snake.
1. We all know that Bret was sick/injured/contract was coming up so he had to drop the IC title to the Mountie. This led to the wonderful Rumble moment of Piper winning the belt and then we got the fantastic Hart/Piper match at Wrestlemania. My question is this: what if Hart never drops the title. Do we still get the Hart/Piper Mania match or is Bret in a totally different feud, (or still battling The Mountie) by then.
2. What if Jake the Snake had, as Vince was expecting, been booed when he DDT'd Hogan on The Snake Pit. What happens next? I can't see anything replacing Hogan/Andre at Wrestlemania but a Hogan/Jake program seems too good to waste just on the house show circuit.

Who could be sick of Daniel Bryan and Dave Batista?  They both have the same initials!

1.  Well, Bret dropping the title was kind of the whole plan, so that he could win it back from Piper and have his big moment at Wrestlemania.  It’s not like they changed plans due to him threatening to leave like Honky Tonk Man did. 

2.  Man, if they had 12 PPVs a year in that time, they could have done 2 or 3 at least off that feud.  But I think Jake probably would have been the latest Hogan casualty and then turned babyface as scheduled.  Man, they would have drawn some money, though. 

Hey Scott,

I've been a fan of your stuff going back to high school ten years ago. I love with the addition of the BOD Daily Update, I can basically get all the big, relevant wrestling news of the day. It cuts back on having to go to another website for news. I love this and was wondering if you ever thought about expanding it to a MMA daily update? There's obviously a huge crossover of wrestling and MMA fans. So people can not only get your rants and witty banter, their wrestling news, but also their MMA news. One stop shop my friend, eh?

Question : I've decided to cut loose of my huge cell phone contract and go to the highly-recommended and cheap Republic Wireless. It offers one of the best smartphones on the market for $10 a month, unlimited talk and text. The data for that plan is WiFi only.

That's fine for me because I never surf the web or anything outside of my Home WiFi. I'm just not one of those people constantly with their faces down in their phone. However, I do sometimes use GPS which requires data. Scott, do you and your blog members know of a good GPS app that doesn't require it? I've tried NavFree which is suppose to be the best, but I typed in an address two miles away, and it didn't work.

This certainly isn't a dealbreaker for me because I do own a Garmin GPS unit, but those units are kinda outdated now, aren't they? Do people still use them?

If anyone is interested in the $10 smartphone plan, here's a link to join to get a $19 credit, nearly two months of free service.

http://referrals.republicwireless.com/a/clk/25WSbv

Thanks Scott!

MMA talk on the blog seems to only center on big PPVs and there’s no real interest other than that.  Even I’m pretty burned out on UFC with all the Fox and FS1 shows and UFC Network and stuff. 

As for the second question, I’ve never heard of a GPS program that doesn’t need data, or doesn’t need a physical GPS built into the phone for that matter. 

Hi Scott,
Huge fan of the blog since finding it a few months ago. Love your bluntness over issues that some of us just can't get our heads around or just choose to be too stubborn over!
I know we're just a day away from the Royal Rumble, but it seems unanimous that the returning Batista is a certainty to win it. So that got me thinking "what happens at Elimination Chamber?"...

Let's say for argument's sake Batista does win the Royal Rumble. He is then a fix to main event Wrestlemania and challenge the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Therefore, at Elimination Chamber I would have thought a throwaway, make-the-animal-look-strong match will be on offer - maybe Batista vs Del Rio (as a result of all the big talk Del Rio has had for Batista in the lead-up to his return).
What then for the WWE World Championship and the Elimination Chamber?
I know it's not set in stone, but Brock Lesnar laid claim to being the number one contender a few weeks ago. He, along with mouthpiece Paul Heyman, stated that whoever won the Orton/Cena match would face him at Elimination Chamber... therefore what is the point of the Elimination Chamber match this year?

If WWE are going with Batista to win the Rumble then surely his number one contendership for Wrestlemania isn't in doubt. If Brock is the number one contender for Elimination Chamber then that leaves nothing to play for in an Elimination Chamber match.
What do you think will happen at Elimination Chamber? Has there been any talk of what might happen?
Keep up the good work,

Chamber seems set already, with Batista v. Del Rio and then a six-way for the title with Orton/Cena/Lesnar/Show and maybe Bryan and now maybe Sheamus?  Undertaker can screw Lesnar out of the belt there and set up their match, I’d imagine. 

Hey Scott,

I was watching the Austin vs. Rock match from WrestleMania X-Seven and it made think of several questions about blood in wrestling.

1. When was the last, officially-approved WWE bladejob?

2. The intensity of bladejobs is ranked by "the Muta Scale" for a reason, but Eddie Guerrero's bloodbath against JBL at Judgment Day 2004 is far sicker (fans in the front row were actually given towels to clean off Eddie's blood!). Where would that rank on the Muta Scale? What about Undertaker in his Hell in a Cell match against Brock?

3. Who would you rate as the "best" five bleeders of all-time -- the guys who consistently delivered a "crimson mask" instead of a papercut when it came time to swipe that blade across their foreheads?

1.  Undertaker and HHH got color at Wrestlemania two years ago, didn’t they?  Am I imagining that?

2. I’d give Eddie-JBL around 1.1 Muta and UT-Brock 0.8.  Both are right around the legal limit.

3. I dunno, it’s really not my thing and I’m kind of glad it’s gone.  I like blood as a kicker for a really intense match where called for, but as a spectacle like ECW used to do it’s just kind of gross.  Guys like Abby were really good but look what happened to him as a result. 

Here's a hypothetical I've been thinking about recently.  Hogan remained a draw of sorts in WCW, and then the Hollywood character was a major force behind wrestling's late 90s resurgence.

Let's say Cena has a falling out with McMahon over contract negotiations, merchandise or whatever and leaves.  He'd never go to TNA because why the hell would you?  Instead he and a business partner manage to get a new promotion up off the ground with a one-hour show on a cable network that is open to extending it to two.  He brings a few of the mid-card guys who he's good chums with (Ryder, Langston) but no other former world champs/headliners.

Would a brand new promotion with John Cena at the top be any kind of a draw or would he find himself in half-full high school gymnasiums by the end of 2014?

WWE is the draw, not Cena.  Cena boosts numbers when he’s on top, but it’s not like he’s talking 10,000 people into an arena like Hogan or Flair used to do.  That’s the beauty of the new system from Vince’s standpoint, in that guys are no longer bigger than the machine.

Scott,
I'd like to preface by saying I like Bryan. I think he's a great technical wrestler in a time when we are starved for one. However. I personally don't think the guy is championship material. I wonder if the current upswell of support for Bryan is because we are so starved for a new face.
He's good. Very good. But as the main man? Dude looks like a homeless guy. Can't cut a decent promo. His in ring work is great...but that's about it. Consider this if this were 99, 2000, 01...would this guy be given a second look? MAYBE Shotgun Saturday Night. I think this is us just sick of the status quo. Which is why ratings bombed when he was in the main event. Keep him in the top tier, he deserves it. But as champ, its a recipe for failure. So what do you think? Is Bryan's rise indicative of how sick we are with the current product or is there something more? Thanks, loved your book.

You know, the ratings bombing is starting to look less than Bryan and a lot more like the other guy who was supposedly bulletproof on top. 

Greetings, Scott!
I kind of have a random thought for you. I was watching ECW's November to Remember '99 the other day and I always shake my head at the Rob Van Dam vs. Taz match. You'd figure that would have been such a big deal, ECW's main man vs. the most over guy on the roster ECW's supposed biggest card of the year, but I feel it's the biggest missed oppertunity and pretty much told the world that ECW wasn't going to survivor much longer. That should have been for the world title and have seen RVD beating Taz to finally become ECW Champion, but instead the match had no heat since it was for RVD's TV Title, plus Taz had already jobbed the world title away and was practically out the door to the WWF so everyone knew he wasn't winning. And as a result RVD held the TV belt far longer than he should have and never got the chance to be world champion (yeah, I know Paul E. was building to a match with Mike Awesome for the belt which got scuttled by a freak accident, but that's beside the point)
I'd like to know your thoughts on this, if you're willing. Thanks for your time regardless.

Paul was constantly chasing the chase, ya know?  He was awesome at building up anticipation and putting off the payoff, but the payoffs either never came or were terrible.  The Lawler feud, the Douglas-Taz feud, the Douglas-Pitbull feud, the RVD title chase, the Dreamer-Raven feud, you name it.  So many decisions from that period made so little sense. 

Scott, hopefully you can give me a decent answer to this, as I'm stumped.

Sting is currently drawing crowds in the hundreds at live events, TNA has had to cut down the number of PPVs because depite him headlining they are brining in buys in the thousands. The tv show which he is a "star" of is bringing in lower ratings than Total Diva's which star the Bellas. He hasn't been relevant in the mainstream media for over 10 years. The vast majority of current fans either weren't around when he was in WCW or were WWF fans.

Wrestlemania is WWE's biggest show which brings in nearly a million buys every year. They have brought in Brock lesnar & Batista, as well as brining back Hulk Hogan, etc for nostalgic purposes.

Why would the WWE want to bring Sting in for Wrestlemania? What could he possibly bring to the table that is unique compared to the other options they have?

Because no one gives a shit about TNA or anything that’s happened in it, so bringing Sting in for one or two shots is like bringing in a guy who hasn’t been around for 13 years but gets featured in the WCW retrospective DVDs and talked about like a legend all the time.  It doesn’t MATTER what his true worth is, it’s what they can convince the paying fans that his worth is.