Smelly McUgly

If they change Braun's name to Tig Notaro, I want him to get the house mic during matches where the crowd is booing to ask them to please stay seated over and over until the joke is killed and it gets annoying, but he continues on so long with it that it comes back around to being funny again.

The pre-show is pre-taped. They're running the NXT tapings right now in the arena.

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I have a working theory about Bryan and why he connects with the 18-34 male that watches the show that goes beyond "fans revolting against typical WWE booking," though I do appreciate Strand Peanut's theory. I think just as Steve Austin was an expy for the prevailing male attitude of the late '90s (working man against the boss, wanting to use violence to solve issues, unemotional, doing things based on the desires of the id), Bryan is an expy for the prevailing male attitude of a large chunk of the male audience in 2015. The current male audience is smaller and more niche, and Bryan ticks off a number of boxes for that audience: 1. He is smaller and all-natural (theoretically), which would be a plus in the era where millennials mistrust Big Pharma and there are a surprising amount of Anti-Vaxxers (one example here) for such a pro-science generation 2. He is clearly not a corporate or social climber, which is a plus where many of his fans would be anti-corporate folks. Running that Occupy RAW angle was actually really clever and seemed like WWE had a finger on the pulse of the country (except that I'm sure Vince McMahon, being a Baby Boomer that seems confused by Millennial culture and belief structure AND the head of a corporation, probably did it in a sort of cheeky way and probably thought it portrayed Bryan somewhat goofily in his mind.) 3. He does some of the "manly man" type stuff that makes characters like Ron Swanson (and that makes guys like Nick Offerman, who is a woodworker in real life) popular with the crowd. The log-chopping stuff that was from Total Divas or whatever. The dude beat up a burglar, too! That sort of throwback stuff to an idealized version of traditional manhood is really popular with this particular audience. What they have on their hands is the perfect babyface for the time and for a large part of their audience. The difference is that I don't believe that Bryan's "new millennial man" gimmick really has the ability to draw in the pre-teen crowd that Austin did, so there's definitely a ceiling. On the other hand, I actually think Bryan has more short-term money-making potential right now than anyone in the company, and that includes John Cena. He taps in to something that I think the core male hardcore audience really identifies with, and I think kids can get into him too in the same way they got into Bret Hart (smaller fighting champion that never gives up). I could be clouded by the fact that Bryan and I are from the same area and probably share a number of the same cultural values as a result, but I feel like Bryan legitimately is so liked by the 18-34 male because he embodies what type of person they idealize/would like to be. It just seems weird and totally different when you put him up as an idealization next to Hogan, Austin, and Rock because he's so different from those guys in terms of the culture that he taps into.

"To steal the show" and "to entertain the WWE Universe," which are pushed as secondary (and in some cases, primary) reasons for fighting within the logic of the WWE's shows.

EDIT: Wrong site.

Regarding Owen Hart, I think it was a mistake not to capitalize on his immediate popularity right after Survivor Series '97, when he was the "sole surviving Hart" and cut a promo about wanting to beat up Shawn Michaels not because of that "stupid piece of tin" Michaels had, but just to avenge his family, and hey, if he ruined Michaels's life by taking his gold too, that was the cherry on top. The crowd really reacted to it and Owen seemed revitalized as a character after having been a heel for the past four-plus years. I don't have a problem with him being shunted down to work against Jeff Jarrett and Triple H in the new year, but really, he should have had a two-week WWF Championship reign where he took the title off Michaels on a RAW and dropped it back to him at IYH: D-Generation X to take full advantage of what they momentarily had with him. In terms of his work, he really was excellent up until his passing. Particularly, the Lion's Den Match he had with Ken Shamrock at Summerslam '98 was wonderfully paced with a nice "claustrophibic cage match" sort of thing going on as I recall, and though I might have to watch it again because I have not seen it in quite awhile, I think that it certainly was one of the three or four best WWF matches of that year (which I think is high praise because typically, the only really strong matches from that year in WWF are typically the mains on PPV, and so a mid-card PPVmatch being so very good stood out quite strongly to me). However, Owen Hart was, for the most part, a career upper-midcarder in a major company, and I think that's about where he fits in terms of his talent level. I wouldn't call the whole of his career particularly disappointing. If he was going to go any higher, he would have had to be in a different time and place. It's a shame that he wasn't around when the WHC was a thing in the mid-to-late '00s. I think he could have done Edge's "transitional champion/opportunistic heel" gimmick MUCH better and with a better output in the ring than Edge did, in particular.

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What does Bobby Heenan's cancer have to do with the wrestling industry? I hate articles like this. I don't believe that the author was directly tying Heenan's cancer to the wrestling industry. I believe that he was using Heenan as a metaphor for the wrestlers: Someone that used his voice to ask for dignity, literally rendered voiceless, has much in common with the wrestlers, who need to ask for dignity from promoters, but whom are figuratively rendered voiceless.