Ask 411 Wrestling 08.15.12: The Next 10 Years, Having Till 5, Death of #3, More!

Hello there, welcome to something that I probably shouldn’t be doing right now, Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your usual know-it-all, Mathew Sforcina, and I’m almost fully recovered from a back injury which left me unable to spend the required time to do this column justice the past two weeks. I’d like to thank Gavin ‘Hot Stuff’ Napier and Ryan ‘Too Cool’ Byers for filling in for me while I was totally unable to get down to business here.

However, I think I may be back a week too soon given that I’m not so much in pain as exhausted as I just had a hell of a first day back at boring day job. So to that end, this is very much a Total Opinion Week, as much to get back into the groove as it is to get this done ASAP. Although, as always, some facts do sneak their way in. The reactions from the question on if I should continue delineating questions was… Mixed, so we’re sticking with the current system. I do appreciate your patronage in reading my work, so since the current system does work pretty much, we’ll stick to it. I can handle some weeks with slightly lower readerships if it means I don’t piss people off unfairly.

While waiting for me, go listen to
Just Another God Damned Rasslin’ Show where you can hear me asking actually important people questions, as well as making jokes about promiscuous women as well as thinking up brilliant tag team names (Chavo Guerrero and Hernandez = The Golf Of Mexico). And also listen to 411mania’s podcasts that are better for not having me, and also go listen to Wrestling PodClash! which this week had a very special guest, Mr. AJ Styles. You may have heard of him.

And I know you’ve seen this BANNER!

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Backtalking

I got nothing, since I wasn’t here last week, or the week before. So instead, here’s the Dancing Fools’ theme music that, for a brief moment, I thought we might hear again…

Your Turn, Smart Guy…

Here is the question Ryan posed to you good people.

I am originally from the Pacific Northwest, and I am known for my mighty beard and a distinctive piece of attire that I wear during my entrance. One of my finishers that I used during my career (though I don’t use it anymore) was a submission hold that involved trapping my opponents’ arms over their heads. For a period of time, I wrestled under a mask, though I am better known without it. I had a Wrestlemania match with a disappointing finish, and I have also talked publicly about having Hepatitis C. Who am I?

Some Jerk was right on the money… I think.

I am originally from the Pacific Northwest, and I am known for my mighty beard and a distinctive piece of attire that I wear during my entrance. – wrestled in Portland and wore a kick ass hat.

One of my finishers that I used during my career (though I don’t use it anymore) was a submission hold that involved trapping my opponents’ arms over their heads. – The full nelson.

For a period of time, I wrestled under a mask, though I am better known without it. -in WCW as Black Blood

I had a Wrestlemania match with a disappointing finish, – double countout vs Hercules at Wrestlemania 3.

and I have also talked publicly about having Hepatitis C.

Who am I?- You are Billy Jack Haynes

Who am I? I currently run a wrestling school that has (partly) trained at least one man on the current TNA roster, and one on the WWE roster. I was once Great, and have worked for AWA, NWA, WWF, and WCW. My last ever world title shot (on TV) ended in a double count out, and my last appearance for my last regular employer was as a ring announcer. Mick Foley said he owed me something in his books. I managed two world champions in my career (one of whom turned heel to join me). A former Royal, I am Who?

Questions, Questions, Who’s Got The Questions?/My Damn Opinion

Eddie starts us off with a handshake.

Always wanted to know what was up with the limp handshake you see with some wrestlers? Heard a LOT of reasons.

Some people just have limp handshakes. However, there are two main reasons for most wrestlers having handshakes that are limp, one that I was taught, the other that I have observed.

(Man, in the increasingly unlikely even I ever make it anywhere in this business, I know it’ll be this sort of stuff I’ll get ribbed for…)

The ‘official’ reason is one of respect. The stiffness of a handshake is directly related to how stiff you are in the ring. Thus a soft handshake indicates that you will not take liberties in the ring, that you will protect your opponent and not stiff them. A stiff handshake means you don’t care about your opponent, and thus invite them to take their best shot and so forth. So you have a soft handshake out of respect.

However, in my time, I’ve worked out another explanation. I’m sure the above is the rationalisation, but given that in any one day a wrestler has to shake hands with all the talent at a show and possibly hundreds of fans at signings, appearances and so forth, a good firm handshake for every single one of them is both time consuming and painful at the end. Given the frequency of handshakes that you have to give as a wrestler, you’d conserve your energy and have a very simple one.

So it is meant to be the respect thing, but I wager it is more the second.

Efrain continues on from this, actually.

Hi, first time writer here. Love this column and I’m wondering
something and hoping you can shed some light into it.

I’ve read about backstage happenings for years just because it’s fun
but I’ve never really considered myself one of those cynical “smarks”,
I’m more of an “aware” type you could say. Thing is in the last few
months I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about the “hellos”
backstage first something with Morrison if I recall, then the whole
complaining about the Rock, then something on Art of Wrestling and I
read literally like 5 minutes ago that apparetly the reason Sean
O’Haire got released was because he didn’t say “hello” to Triple H one
time (had never heard that before but Triple H is like the universal
scapegoat in WWE).

Now my question is, could you elaborate on what the whole “hello”
thing encompasses? Are the wrestlers seriously expected to go around
the venue and just go out of their way to greet everyone? And when it
became such a big deal? Is it a universal thing (like have you
encountered this as a wrestler?) or just a WWE thing?

Many thanks, keep up the great job.

I think you mean Mike Sanders, not Sean O’Haire there. Sean got fired because they had this big, talented, high flying young kid and they then stuck him in developmental for so long that he ended up as just another generic big guy in the ring, and then had the misfortune of getting AWESOME video packages…

That he was simply unable to match live.

The story with Mike Sanders is one of not saying ‘Hello’ to HHH, according to Raven at least. You should probably hear Raven telling the story yourself at one point (it’s in ‘Secrets Of The Ring Vol 3′ with him I know. The very basic version is that Sanders was helping Raven book the developmental territory, and so was in something of a good position to have a job if he kept his nose clean. And then Triple H arrived on crutches, for a meet and greet, and then Sanders blew him off in some way (the actual series of events is somewhat cloudy). He was gone from the company in short order.

Anyway, yes, as a wrestler you are supposed to go out of your way and say hi and shake the hand of every worker in the building. Anyone directly related to the company, any other wrestler, announcer, ring crew, trainees, if they are employed by the wrestling company, you are supposed to say hello. However, the lower down the card you are, the more the impetus there is on you to do it. So a trainee has to come up to the main event guy, find him out and say hello, if the main event guy isn’t busy, while the main event guy can just say hello in passing and/or take his time. The lower down the card, the quicker and more urgently you should be saying hello.

(Although it gets fuzzier when you take one step away from the company. Fellow workers are covered. Photographers and people who work in the building… It’s less clear cut.)

As for why this is done, it is again a measure of respect. You respect each and every person who steps between the ropes or helps ensure those ropes are there for you to step between. The absolute minimum you do is say hello and shake their hand. Now, there is more to it than that (how you say hello/introduce yourself if you’re new, and how you approach a vet that you’re working with and so forth) but it is basically repsect for your fellow workers, you respect them, they respect you, no-one gets dropped on their heads.

Ryan wants to ask about Mr. Kennedy.

Wait for it…

My question is about Ken Kennedy (or Mr. Anderson as he is called now).I remember that during 2008 to 2009 he was used as a near-main eventer and it seemed that it was just a matter of time for him becoming world champion. What was the reason of his WWE release? A bad reputation? Not being buddy-buddy with Mr. Company Man, John Cena?

Thank you, keep doing your incredible work.

Kennedy did get a bad reputation, multiple ones, for four main things. Being careless in the ring, being injury prone, being caught with chemicals in his body that shouldn’t have been there and, worst of all, having horrible timing with all of the above.

He gets injured soon after his debut, then injured again briefly upon his return. He wins Money In The Bank, then suffers an injury right when they need him to cash in, which then turns out to not be as serious as first thought, thus screwing himself out of a World Title. He then eventually goes to Raw, is about to get the big push as Vince McMahon’s kid and… He gets suspended for steroids. He eventually returns after filming a movie that didn’t do well, and in his first match back nearly injures Randy Orton AND injures himself.

He is thus fired.

Now, while some of it isn’t his fault by any means (the Money In The Bank thing was HORRIBLE timing out of his control) they all added up, and his recklessness in the ring and his loud mouth outside of it (getting caught with steroids, bad. Getting caught with steroids after going on several TV shows claiming WWE has got you clean, worse) WWE just got fed up with him and chucked him out.

Mudslide McGhee has a few questions.

Thanks in advance for your responses, which are always entertaining and well-crafted.

1. Please see the attached images of a Jack Swagger figure I discovered at suburban Washington DC toy store. I don’t recall Swagger having any stories specifically with the laptop or the anonymous GM at that time, beyond the general idea that he did reach the title scene with his MiTB win and cash-in coming in that area (albeit on Smackdown). Is there a reason he would be given this particular prop?

The image in question is quite large, so here is a link.

Suffice to say that there is indeed a ‘breaking laptop’ included with Mr. Swagger. However, I believe this is a case of expecting slightly too much from Jakks Pacific, in that if you look at others in the series, there is a finite amount of ‘action accessories’ they have that do things. So it’s more a pick and mix, as they just have a few different items that they can include, and they include one per guy, depending on what they have available. They don’t normally tailor the accessory. MVP and Kofi Kingston for instance both have tables with them. Neither is really known for breaking tables, are they? Shad has a briefcase that shoots out contracts, that’s got nothing to do with him, while JTG has the same thing as Swagger, they aren’t related, and what’s JTG done online recently?

So yeah, they just stick one accessory per guy, and Swagger got the laptop. Nothing more.

2. I realize that many wrestling moves, particularly finishers, require some suspension of disbelief in terms of the physical position of the opponent, how they end up in the ring location required for the move, and their inability to avoid something predictable and highly telegraphed.

Recently, one common finisher or near-match-end move has thrown me off: the spear. I’d really like to know from both a Kayfabe and non-kayfabe perspective why it is necessary to wait for your opponent to turn around. It seems spearing someone in the back would also do quite a bit of damage and would be more difficult to avoid or counter. Why should an audience believe it’s best for a competitor to give his opponent more recovery time and a line of vision instead of going for the more immediate impact?

The non-kayfabe and kayfabe reasons are actually similar, with just slight differences in logic.

The non-kayfabe reason is that you’re actually trying to, you know, not hurt your opponent, and put on a good show. It is far easier, and a hell of a lot more safer, to take a spear/tackle from the front, rather than to the back or side. You can throw your hands and arms up, you look like you just got cut in half, while being safe and in control. You can see when he hits, so you can time accordingly your movements. If you get speared in the back, you don’t know for sure when you’re gonna get hit, and so you can get thrown about in an unnatural way and that leads to injuries, plus it doesn’t look great.

But what joins the two is that you can get hurt by giving a spear. You are tossing your shoulder very hard, very fast, into another body. If you give it to the side or back, the person taking it won’t bend properly, and so the impact on your shoulder is that much harder, and you might end up breaking or dislocating something if you hit a rib or the spine or something.

So, in kayfabe, by waiting till they turn around, you land your blow in a nice soft location, the gut. Your shoulder is thusly in good nick, while the opponent gets a massive blow to the stomach, sucking the wind out of him and making it hard for him to move around. Ever belly flopped into water? Remember how that stung? A spear is like that but much worse. However, there is little lasting damage, it won’t kill you, just take you out of the game for a bit. If you go around injuring people eventually you get fired, beat up backstage or worse, people will gang up and injure you right back. Some people don’t mind, sure, but there is some respect for your fellow wrestler in kayfabe land. It’s why hardly anyone does piledrivers nowadays, for instance.

So basically you’re protecting yourself and hurting the other guy in a controller way in kayfabe, while you’re protecting both of you and making it look as good as possible in non-kayfabe.

3. Please do not consider this a request to do this, but more a general comment you can weigh in on. Is the Hornswoggle reveal as the Anonymous GM such an utter throwaway/disappointment that no one is going to take the time to go back and find if there are logical inconsistencies in the continuity with Hornswoggle in that role? He surely wasn’t “Clark Kent”-ing each time the GM needed to make a statement.

Someone has dared me to see if there is a logical inconsistency with that reveal, for the record, which I will take on next week. Suffice to say for now, as much as I dislike that reveal, I do see the logic in it. Really I do.

See, the problem is, the thing got built up for SO long, the payoff would be either a huge, company changing revelation, or would be a massive let down. For the first to happen, you have to have someone in place to be the guy, and who’s revelation would have long lasting implications and storylines running off of it. So you need either a big name who can stick around for a while after the reveal (say, Mick Foley) or a truly HUGE name who can then be revealed and then leave (say, Donald Trump).

But that takes time and effort, and ties up storylines for a while. So the other option is to do a reveal that is a big letdown, that is some name that you quickly more on from. The writers supposedly wanted to do it when Johnny Ace took over as a throwaway backstage, a comment that he wouldn’t need a laptop any more or some such, reveal that it was Johnny Ace. That would be a letdown, but they could move on.

However, if you can’t do that, you’re left trying to find someone who won’t get their career tanked by a flat, letdown reveal. And Hornswoggle is, for better or worse, somewhat bulletproof as a character. I mean, look at the crap he’s done, there’s very little you could do to him that won’t ‘ruin’ his appeal. So as a letdown, reveal and move on choice, I totally see the logic. Plus, only the IWC would truly hate it, all the other fans would just shake their heads and move on, and so yeah, I can sort of see your point.

But overall I still think it was a bad move. Yes, the reveal would have led to a lot of hard work and effort. So? You’re the creative team, you’re supposed to be creative! I mean, how awesome would it have been if there was no reveal and then after the Brock contract got torn up, Heyman revealed he was the Anon GM and since he, as Anon GM, was never fired, he still has power… Or Foley, or hell, Dusty, Arn, you have options…

4. As someone involved in wrestling, you clearly are a “student of the game”, and most interviews I read on this site with the wrestlers from most of the promotions seem to suggest just about everyone has knowledge of the history, the personalities, and the matches that came before them. I’m not so sure that’s the case in all the major sports–for example, I remember years ago the surprise people had that a handful of Major League Baseball players did not know who Jackie Robinson was. Is it true that most in-ring performers have a deep knowledge, and if so, is that something emphasized during training or is there another reason?

… Hey, any excuse for this vid.

(And if anyone is really late to the party, yes, this is where the center of my banner comes from).

Anyway, this is both true and not true to some extent.

See, pro wrestling is not something you can sort of fall into as a kid. Any ‘regular’ sport, baseball, football, basketball, you can play it in the little league as just part of your childhood, and then slowly get better and better and keep going until you end up as a pro. But pro wrestling, there is no direct transition where you fall into it via participation. You have to be a fan growing up, and then you decide to become one later on. So you have to have some working knowledge of the business’ history as a background, even if it’s just that you loved that Hulk Hogan guy, or that Ric Flair was totally rad or whatever.

But the flip side is that while it’s not always the case, most of time guys who do succeed, those who do make it to a point where they are in a position to be interviewed, tend to have worked very hard at their craft. And that does involve watching tapes and learning about the history of the business, unlike regular sports. In baseball, not knowing who Jackie Robinson is slightly disappointing, but it won’t help you throw the ball faster, hit it harder, or catch it more often. You probably should know the first black Major League Baseball player in history, but you can be an excellent baseball player without that knowledge.

While in wrestling, you need to know just not the physical side, but how to work a crowd, how to know what works and what doesn’t, what to do, what not to do, what’s been done, there’s so much mental and charisma aspects that most of the truly successful have learnt from the past and thus know about it.

But again, there are plenty of guys who don’t know much. For every 2 or 3 guys I’ve met who could write this column in the business, there’s 1 or 2 who don’t know who Tully Blanchard is or why Dusty Finishes are to be used sparingly. But generally, those higher up the card tend to know more, since they’ve studied their craft.

Although, to be clear, I don’t expect an encyclopaedic knowledge of the business from anyone. I’ve worked guys who know all about the sport and who suck, and vice versa. But most of the time the more you study, the better you are, and so you end up knowing a lot. Learning from the past is something you are told, you are told to watch tapes and such, but you are not told, nor expected, to become a wrestling historian like me.

(Well, someone did call me that so nyaa-nyaa).

There’s timing, and then there’s timing. I come back just in time for ThrillMurray to return…

AND New Botchamania! It’s all coming up Sforcina!

Patrick asks about counting.

What is with the 10 count for things like the 10 punch and when Sheamus does his wailing on his opponent’s body in the ropes? Is there some old explanation to it?

Depends on whose counting you are talking about. If you mean the fans then it is a simple way to get a reaction, a way to get the crowd chanting along with you, and any crowd reaction is a good crowd reaction. Getting the fans to count punches in the corner or head blasts into the turnbuckle or chair shots or whatever, a chant is good.

If you mean from the ref, then he or she is normally giving a 5 count because those moves are technically illegal. When your opponent is in the ropes, you are supposed to let go of holds and not attack them, so when one person begins to punch/strike, they tell them to stop, then threaten a DQ, then begin to count, and at 4 or so, they will break the hold, hopefully after the fans have counted to 10. Telling the ref you have until 5 is optional.

Roberto asks about finishers and kayfabe.

Hey Matt,

Great column, best on 411mainia, I read it all the time, thank you, blah blah blah.

My question is about finishers, and specifically CM Punk’s finisher, the GTS. It seems like every time he does it, the producers/directors go to wide shots on the setup and the finish, but they switch to a close up during its actual execution. This is because (I think) to be done convincingly, Punk really should be taller and/or stronger…and the close up kind of disguises this. I’ve always thought it was a move that may have worked for him in the indies (with generally smaller guys) but one he should have ditched in the WWE. Do you agree? Have you ever heard of wrestling promotion management objecting to a finisher on kayfabe grounds?

Thanks again,

First of all, I don’t think you can say that WWE does that only for Punk. They tend to change camera angles for EVERY big impact move, to ensure that if it’s slightly off you won’t notice.

Try it, watch a WWE show and pay attention to how often they switch camera angles on high impact moves.

But to move onto your question, I’m not sure about if Punk should or shouldn’t have ditched it. As I always fall back on, a good finisher is one that can be done to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The Stone Cold Stunner is the textbook example of a move that he could do all day long, on anyone and everyone, no matter where he is. Likewise with the Rock Bottom, Sweet Chin Music, and even the AA, given that if Cena can do it to Khali, Show or Big Daddy V, he can do it to anyone.

Now, with Punk, he has in the past had some issues doing it with big guys. Kane on SD springs to mind.

However, WWE clearly thinks he’s OK with it, since he uses it, and if they didn’t like it, he’d have changed. I’m… torn, I would focus more on the Vice than the GTS, but that’s just me. I can see the logic in focusing on the impact/pinfall move, I see why you’d favour that one. I don’t think he should have dropped it just because he’s not as big as he was relative to his opponents, if he can do it on most people, that’s acceptable. Not ideal, but acceptable.

As for companies DQing finishers on Kayfabe grounds, it has happened, albeit rarely to our knowledge, since a finisher that isn’t used is very rarely heard about. The one I think of earliest off the bat is the Mandible Claw which Foley had for years before he got to WWF, but which was shot down by Bill Watts on the ‘Why wouldn’t I bite your damn fingers off?’ question.

But most of the time finishers will be taken away because, rather than not making sense physically, it’s because in kayfabe someone else already uses it, or it no longer fits in with a gimmick. I mean, Chris Hero has dropped the Hangman’s Clutch variations as finishers since he’s now all about knock outs as Kassius Ohno. It’s rare that they DQ a finisher just because it doesn’t make sense. Apart from Foley, I can’t think of any. Readers?

Mark has two questions about the Macho Man.

Hello Matt.

Two quick questions! 1. Why isn’t Randy Savage in the hall of fame? Before his passing it seemed as if he was doing all the right things for setting that up (WWE commercials, appearances). He is a TRUE hall of famer no matter how you slice it!

There’s a couple reasons, depending on whom you ask. See, you can’t be forcibly entered into the HOF, you, or your next of kin, has to agree. So while Savage was alive, he had to agree to it, and now his brother and/or wife would need to agree. And his brother, Lanny ‘The Genius’ Poffo, has maintained that his brother would only agree to be inducted if it was as a group lot, him, his father AND his brother. So WWE is at an impasse, do they induct a family with 2/3 already gone in one go or wait it out?

I agree he belongs in there, but WWE clearly has to space out inductions, and as I said, they can’t just put in whomever they like…

2. Macho man was on that game show Win Lose or Draw. One of the funniest moments on that show. I cant seem to find footage of that appearance. Can you ?

Hmm. Well, I found one with WWF guys…

And one with female wrestlers, but not the Savage one, alas.

Speaking of Savage, Brian asks about why he got the title.

First time, long time and all that jazz. Keep up the great work and all that too.

My question is simple: why did they take the belt off Hogan in the 80s? Considering his popularity, why did he go without the title for well over a year, even though he was still the #1 guy at a time when he seemed like the top guy always had the title. Savage’s feuds always seemed to tied to Hogan during his reign. Was it simply a long plot for their Wrestlemania V bout? Thanks, was just curious.

It was both a long build and a way to get more shows happening. The moment Savage won the Title at WMIV, his loss to Hogan at V was pretty much set in stone. And for that to do a monster amount of business, they’d have to be friends for a while, so they ran with the Megapowers for several months.

However, while they would run that on TV, at house shows, WWF had a very busy year that year as they had A shows, B shows and C shows, all running the same night. Take… August 28th, 1988, night before Summerslam. WWF had three shows. One in Montreal with Savage defending the WWF title against Dino Bravo, as well as Demoliton defending the tag titles. You also had a show in Toronto, where Hogan battled Bad News Brown while Ultimate Warrior took on Honky Tonk Man. And they had a tiny show in Sharpsville Indiana with Sherri defending the Women’s title and a midget tag match.

Thanks to Savage being champ, they could run two big shows and had enough talent left over for a smaller one. The end result was always going to be Hogan with the belt back, but this way they built Savage up where he could draw on his own, and did so.

Darrel has two questions to end us off.

what going on fam! 2 quick hittas for you if you dont mind…

1)lets get the serious one out the way, and this may be the most serious question you’ve faced in your tenure here. This has caused many drunken debates so, we turn to you to settle it. Simple and plain: Nikita and the Sickle vs Barry and the Lariat. LOL!!!

Hmm. The Sickle…

Or the Lariat…

Hmm. I’d prefer to take the Lariat, but the Sickle I think looks better. But we all know who had the best one.

2)As for the real question, in your opinion (and this is based on the fact that we’re all probably the same age), we’ve all seen where wrestling has come from. the emergence of the anti-hero (austin, punk), the devaluing of the tag-team division, everyone being popped for some type of drug violation, you name it. All has altered the days of hogan, road warrirs, just the older staple we came up on. My question to you is, where do you see it all headed in the next 10 years? Will it all go full circle and go back to the more traditional ways or have we gotten so far into the “entertainment” portion of it all that basically, what you see now (storylines that make no sense but are good for a laugh, i guess) is what we’re gonna get, only worse?

I think it all rests on one simple question.

When does Vince McMahon die?

I’m not trying to be morbid, nor do I wish for his death, it’s just that he is such an important figure in professional wrestling that the future of the business depends pretty much on what he does. And since he’s not the type to retire and go play golf or whatever, he’ll be in control of the WWE until he dies. And so to predict the future of the WWE, you need to specify what happens to Vince. And you need to predict the WWE to predict wrestling’s future.

That said, outside the WWE I foresee the MMA influence coming in and having two equal and opposite reactions. You’re going to see an influx of guys who work aggressive, hard hitting, MMA style matches, guys who just kick butt and basically act like MMA guys without the actual MMA. But that will be countered by a whole lot of people who are he exact opposite, as you’ll get a bunch of people who go way off the other way, away from serious workrate and into high flying, comedy, outrageousness, the business will see people who either embrace or reject the MMA influence, and there will be a problem of a gap between styles. Some guys will be able to work with both, and they will become very successful, but there will be a rise in both MMA and Anti-MMA styles.

In terms of the actual companies, I think that there will be some movements and changes, but not too many. WWE will not fall, TNA will remain #2, although if they continue on their path it will be a much stronger #2, a #2 that is legitimate and no longer ‘indy’. ROH will, I hate to say it, not last. I expect that sooner or later, WWE buys out ROH solely for the tape library, although a few guys will get contracts.

In it’s place will be an unlikely duo, as both CZW and CHIKARA become the defacto #3’s, with CZW completing it’s transition into a ‘normal’ wrestling company that flirts with deathmatches as opposed to a deathmatch wrestling company that flirts with normality. CHIKARA will remain CHIKARA, doing its own thing, slowly building, possibly ending up with a TV show somewhere, but moving slowly but surely.

As for WWE… If Vince sticks around, then we focus more and more on social media and kids, and we get more of the same as we’ve been getting, since UFC will still be around. WWE will aim towards kids and families, the IWC will complain but still watch as they have the occasional good talent and match to keep them around.

But if Vince leaves for whatever reason, and HHH/Steph takes over… Then that’s when things get interesting. Who takes over? Who dictates the path? Because they both have wildly different ideas about wrestling, given their upbringing. Hunter came in with old school NWA, Steph with mid-90’s WWF. So if Steph wins, it would seem to be business as usual. But if Hunter takes over… Then we might see some change.

However, there are plenty of outside factors that would change things. If UFC cools, then WWE might go back to a more edgy style and go for the adults again. Some sort of disaster could kill a company. The NWA might rise again, who knows? I can only call them how I see them and hope for the best.

But hey readers, give your predictions below! Think I’m way off base? Tell me! We can discuss it next week. And on that comment seeking participation offer, I bid you goodnight for now, and good wrestling!

*heads back to Minecraft*

….

KENNEDY!