Rasslin is CHA CHA LA..LA,LA,LA,LA,LA

[Ultra Peanut]

RAW. IS. FANDANGO!
#AJALL

[chiefs1111]

wow I really thought the whole Bob Barker thing was joke but he's really there

[Reaper16]

I turn on RAW for the first time in MONTHS and I am rewarded with a 10 minute commercial for the Best of Smackdown DVD.

[TrickyNicky]

I turn on Raw for the first time in years and see Bob Barker shooting on Jericho. Entertaining at least.

[Jerm]

God I wish they'd put Jericho on Smackdown.

He's being wasted on this clownshow.
Posted via Mobile Device

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by chuxtrux

Mecca, can you post the stuff about the wwe creative team. It would make sense as to why they always put out below average content.

I haven't listened to it yet, but figure 4 had a show in april with 3 former creative guys, and they apparently talked about how they'd been pushing a CM Punk straight edge heel turn forever and Vince shot it down over and over and over.

[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Jerm

God I wish they'd put Jericho on Smackdown.

He's being wasted on this clownshow.
Posted via Mobile Device

He's actually on Smackdown's roster I believe. He does both shows as the 'unified tag champ'.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by chuxtrux

Mecca, can you post the stuff about the wwe creative team. It would make sense as to why they always put out below average content.

Yea I'll put it up sorry about that I had to go do a fantasy draft.

[Reaper16]

Where DX and Legacy are brawling right now? I've walked through there; I saw Iron Maiden last year at that arena.

[chiefs1111]

ouch

[Mecca]

I acutally got the powerslam magazine this article was in, and I've found the text of it online, and thought some of it was worth posting. It's by Matthew Randazzo and it answers a lot of the criticism the creative gets and why you can't really blame them for the stale product.

Quote:
New writers learn that a creative team survivor is a writer who understands that the McMahon family's faith in their employees is fickle, and impossible to restore when lost. The key to survival is simple: caution, caution, caution. Always agree with the McMahon’s and their favourites, relentlessly curry their approval, never draw attention to yourself, never complain and never take a bold or risky step because a single stumble can be fatal.



Quote:
"Wrestlers are very paranoid by nature and feel like, if you haven't paid your dues in the ring then you're not a part of the family," said Hollywood writer/producer Chad Damiani, who worked as a WCW Magazine and website writer and backstage fix-it man for WCW in the last few years of its existence under Time Warner ownership.

"I just assumed that wrestling would be like any other business - but there's a cliquish high school social structure,".
The test starts on the first day at work, when wrestling's age old etiquette requires a new employee to personally approach and introduce himself to every wrestler in the company with a limp handshake. To newcomers, unaware that this is compulsory in every wrestling promotion, it feels like an exercise in humiliation, whereby a nervous tryout is compelled to approach clearly uninterested icons like The Undertaker and make small talk, or interrupt the eerily intense pre-match rituals of obsessive professionals, or endure the put-downs and snubs of the openly hostile John Bradshaw Layfield and Hardcore Holly. As he runs this unremitting gauntlet, an outsider with real world accomplishments must be careful at all times to appear meek, lest he be branded forever as a "snob" by wrestlers. Someone with actual wrestling knowledge, meanwhile, has toi surpress the career-killing reaction of "marking out" and "clamming up" when he meets his idols.



Quote:

Dr Ranjan Chhibber a life-long fan hired to the writing team in 2004 based on his award winning academic career, risked being tarnished with both stigma. Chhibber remembers Pat Patterson, cutting off his introduction the first time they met with a scowling "You ain't one of those Hollywood guys who want to ruin wrestling?". When Chhibber took a differnt tack and tried to offset his outsider status by informing flattered Senior Vince President of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis that he was a fan of his All Japan matches, Stephanie McMahon reprimanded him for "acting like a mark",

Chhibber also said "Wrestlers feel like anyone who wishes to belong to their club is too lame to be accepted."



Quote:
"Vince is absolutely, incredibly intimidating, " said former WWE producer Domenic Cotter. "He's tremendously close to his on-screen character: he's just this big, tall guy with this big booming voice, with huge balls"



Quote:
Dominick Pagliaro, who worked as a WWE writer and Stephanie's assistant for more than a year in 2003-2004 said: "I remember I once asked (Vince) how he made it so big, and he just told me: "I've eaten s*** from everybody, every day of my life. That's all I do: I eat s***.". Flabbergasted, Paglairo had no idea how to respond.



Quote:
Madigan said he was with WWE on the European tour when his wife had a miscarriage and his father in law died so he had to come home. While at the funeral, he says, he got a call from WWE asking Stephanie asking him to come back to Europe for a meeting on Tough Enough. She was actually yelling at him over the phone while he was standing by his father in law's graveside.




Quote:
After the initial trial period, the writer's main interaction with Vince and Stephanie comes during the weekly Thursday/Friday writing team meetings in which the plans for the next week are thrashed out. According to more than one former WWE writer, these meetings added digestive discomfort to the usual brew of social and professional discomfort, since only the McMahon's were allowed to eat during the marathon sessions.
"It was just brutal. There was never any food provided in the writers' room - but it wasn't their place to feed us said one former WWE writer. "You did get hungry after three hours, especially when Vince and Stephanie would have their respective assistants bring them lunch and they would eat in front of us".
Vince always ate in the meetings. . . He had some sort of beef wrap with ketchup," added Domenic Cotter. "The meetings usually ran the entire day (without food)."
To this day, no refreshments are provided to WWE writing staff.

There's a lot of other things that are bad as well, if I remember correctly.

- Brian Gerwtiz and Michael Hayes are constantly trying to sabotage new writers, because they feel threatened by their spot.
- One of the initiations for new writers is to go on a limo ride with the McMahons...which is every bit as awkward as it sounds.
-one time Vince called the entire creative team down to Florida for a meeting. Once they got there, Vince decided he didn't want a meeting after all, and they'd spent all that time travelling there for nothing (this was in the observer)
-one writer recently brought up a John Cena heel turn,...and Vince called him an idiot in front of everyone (even if he didn't think it was a good idea...jeez, man)

Also, Stephanie is crazy. Like, really crazy. And it's worse than Vince because Stephanie kind of knows she's not as smart as him, so she does everything possible to compensate for it including trying to be a drill seargent. I remember in f4w one writer said he felt a bit sorry for her, because she was competely brainwashed, and there's nothing left of her that isn't artifice.

My favorite irrational Steph story from an ex-WWE Writer was Stephanie apparently screaming and crying out "Why?!!!" backstage, movie-style when HHH tore his quad the 2nd time. He said everyone was just standing there looking at her all awkward and everyone's impulse was to say "you know he's not dead, right?". Luckily, they kept their mouths shut.

Here's another writer's account from another issue of powerslam. This was from a CURRENT writer, so things must be bad if he's willing to risk spilling his/her guts to a magazine. This is from an issue in late 2008.

Quote:
“When I first started working as a writer in the WWE, this is the creative format that was used: we all pitched ideas to our respective show’s head writer and then they would e-mail a draft of the show to the full writing staff, Vince and Stephanie on Friday night. This would allow all of us to read the shows before the marathon Saturday conference calls that would begin at 9am and continue, on some days as late as 5am. But there was one additional person, who would receive the shows: HHH. His position as a member of WWE creative was never established, yet he had to get a copy of the show, lest we incur both his and Stephanie’s wrath. Curiously enough, HHH would never participate in any of the conference calls. His changes would be passed on to Stephanie. She would declare in a firm voice on the Saturday conference calls, ‘Hunter doesn’t like that idea, and this is what he wants to change it to.’ Then Vince would always say in a nice, soft tone, which was unusual for him: ‘Hmmmmm. What do you all think of that?” Brian Gewirtz, the notorious Stephanie and HHH lackey, would always be the first to reply, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘I think that’s a brilliant idea, Steph!’ in his Eddie Munster voice. Then every other writer, with the exception of one or two, would chime in saying variants of ‘I agree’ and ‘good idea’, etc. Then Vince would say, ‘Well, if there’s no disagreement, make the changes, Brian.’ Same routine, over and over, whenever it involved a change suggested by HHH. It seemed like a work to me: Stephanie firmly declares HHH’s idea, Vince acts neutral towards it and asks for our opinions, and then Gewirtz quickly kisses Stephanie’s ass, prompting everyone else to agree.



“This routine would never change, except those weeks when we had a triple-header work marathon (Sunday PPV, RAW on Monday, Tuesday taping of SmackDown): we would work on the RAW scripts during the day of the Sunday PPV. In those instances we wouldn’t e-mail the scripts to HHH --- we would hand-deliver them to him. Normally, the head writer of the show would give it to him, but occasionally that job fell to me. I remember being nervous the first time I delivered the script to the McMahon dressing room where HHH would dress (he would never use the locker rooms with the rest of the boys). When HHH answered I told him the RAW script was ready for his review. On the first occasion, he grabbed the script, flipped through it but did not read it, and asked me point-blank: ‘Am I f—king going over?’ This first time that I delivered the script to him, he did indeed win his match, so I said yes. Then he politely gave the script back to me without reading it and said, ‘That’s all I needed to know,’ and walked back into the McMahon locker room. A few months later when Gewirtz had another weekend off, I delivered another RAW script to him on a PPV Sunday. And it was the same routine. He nonchalantly flipped through it and said, ‘Am I f—king going over?’ This time, however, he was to lose his match via disqualification. He would keep his title. I said to him, ‘Well, sort of.’ Then HHH froze. He said, ‘What do you f—king mean, sort of?’ I said, ‘You lose the match via DQ, so you still keep the title.’, ‘What page?’ he growled. After I told HHH the page number this occurred on, he ripped that page out, threw the rest of the script to the floor in a rage, and slammed the door in my face. Needless to say, the next day during the agents’ meeting, the script had somehow changed and now HHH won his match – cleanly. This was hardly an isolated incident.

“Ultimately, it’s not HHH’s fault or even Stephanie’s fault, really. WWE is Vince’s company: no one challenges him or what he says must happen. I spent a lot of time with both HHH and Vince together --- in some cases, five hours a day, especially when we had to take Vince’s Challenger Jet from Connecticut to somewhere on the West Coast. And the fact is that Vince has no objectivity when it comes to HHH. When any of us writers come up with an idea, Vince would say things like: ‘That’s great! Why am I even paying these guys?’ and then laugh, while pointing at all of us strikers. In stark contrast, when Shane McMahon would sit in on some agent meetings, his ideas would be shot down by Vince. Vince was at his most human when interacting with Shame, in that he would yell at Shane like any dad yells at his son, but the yelling was always to try and make Shane better. With HHH, though, Vince would never publicly disagree with him. And with Stephanie by his side, he would accept whatever trash HHH spewed. After all, Vince would do anything for his baby girl. She would incessantly whine to him about putting HHH over, so Vince would do that for her . . .”

[keg in kc]

If it was anybody but DX, I might think Legacy was going over Sunday, the way they got beat down and then ran.

Hope you guys are ready for the latest John Cena title reign.

[Boris The Great]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Its by Matthew Randazzo

Havent heard that name in a while.

[Jerm]

Lol and the sad part is...every bit of that sounds completely logical and is more than likely spot on, esp concerning HunTor.

Pretty disturbing and ridiculous at the same time.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Mecca]

LOL yea that guy's amusing but based on what former writers have said I'd believe that stuff.

[dirk digler]

Good stuff mecca. I honestly haven't been watching much wrestling lately but the show tonight was ok. I did like Barker being the guest GM.

Also keg I don't think Cena wins on Sunday I think Orton is going to hold onto the title for quite a while longer