theFRANCHISE

Dusty Rhodes = top 5 greatest talkers in wrestling history. But he's also not the most astute football-watcher in professional wrestling.

LOL @ Dusty Rhodes' anti-Ravens tweets. He's still mad the Ravens knocked off the Texans.

I would like the dark horse picks of Cody Rhodes or Dolph Ziggler to win the Rumble. Some may argue that it's too soon to give them this push. I think I'm ready to push them both to the moon since they've proven to me that they respond well to pressure. Rhodes and Ziggler could conceivably be this next era's Cena-Orton or Rock-Austin generational pairing.

Matches are fairly good on a consistent enough basis, but the storylines are head-scratchers. They use either some sort of warped logic that only makes sense in Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo's minds, or they go the less-obvious route just for cheap swerves. Rarely do they ever take the obvious, desired, and logical route to the finish of a storyline. For example, Kurt Angle was slated to drop the TNA World Title to Bobby Roode at a PPV. Roode had been groomed in the weeks leading to the match as the next young star to rise to the top. Well, after building Roode up, they decided at the last-minute to have Angle win the match and retain the title. HOWEVER (and this is where it gets laughable), the very next show, James Storm (Roode's tag-team partner in Beer Money) inexplicably faces Angle for the belt, and WINS the TNA World Title for the first time ever, despite having done nothing story-wise to earn his shot compared to the tournament that Roode had to endure. Weeks later, Roode gets his shot against Storm and turns heel after cheating to win the title from his former partner. So basically, it took over a month for TNA to get to a roundabout conclusion, ending with Bobby Roode winning the TNA World Title anyway, when they could've made that the outcome only two weeks prior to that result. TNA's logic was that it was necessary for Roode to have a reason to turn heel -- but they devalued their title in the process by allowing a non-contender like Storm to suddenly win the title in a match that had ZERO advance promotion, on free TV, with no real storyline to back it up, and Storm ended up holding the strap for only two weeks.

The current trend of programming seems to resemble the New Generation era of the WWF in the mid-'90s when WCW was dominating the ratings while the WWF was developing new stars out of necessity. While WWE is still relatively inconsistent in making new stars in this current generation, there's still more than a handful of promising young talent who've been given recent pushes: Cody Rhodes, Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger, Zack Ryder, Daniel Bryan (though technically a veteran), etc. They give me a little optimism that there'll be a nice transition into the next era of WWE, with veteran names like Randy Orton and CM Punk providing the starpower as side attractions and occasional main eventers. The only significant obstacle has been the mind-boggling flip-flop booking of Super Cena, but they've done a much better job recently in handling Cena than their attempts over the past two years of taking him out of the main event only to insert him back in.

I like that scenario, where HHH returns and knocks out Johnny Ace to count the pinfall in favor of Punk. HHH is due to hog the main event spotlight again, anyway. Just being real...

I hated that storyline so, so much. When they took his mask off, they originally went with the idea of him wearing make-up or prosthetics to resemble burns, but the make-up idea didn't last long because it was easily smeared and smudged. I liked how they explained that away by saying the burns were all part of his twisted psyche, but the execution of it was just extremely poor. I would've preferred to have him unmask, then put a new, more grotesque mask back on a month later and have him be even more vicious.

See, now this makes me backtrack a little on whether Air Boom dropped the titles because of this. Then again, they wouldn't have debuted new merchandise for Air Boom last night if they knew they were suspending him or they were planning on releasing him. Either this is part of a planned work shoot to give Bourne a new edge to his character (hopefully), or Bourne is just an idiot.

Cena's heel face came out and I loved it! I just didn't like how they chose Jack Swagger to be the sacrificial lamb. He lost all the heat he got from winning the U.S. Title, not that it was much heat since it was a fluke victory anyway. Now they'll have to rebuild Swagger all over again, after he was doing so well in this program with Ziggler and Vickie Guerrero. Cena's performance was tremendous. This aggression is all I've wanted out of him, though a heel turn to match would be nice.

It's just a sign of the times in addition to age. Back in the day, he used to be bigger because he was trying to get that "main event look" that was the mold for a heavyweight champion. Now that times have changed and champions can be smaller, he's allowed himself to be leaner and less defined. Big Show has lost a substantial amount of weight for both health and appearance reasons. As a result, he's had better matches, given his size.

You're starting to watch during what might be a good period in the company. There's a little more action than the past few years, and the storylines are getting a little bit smarter. The only downside is that, when you have to deal with stuff that you know is tailor-made for the kids, it's usually really bad. I would probably roll on the floor, dying of laughter if Jericho does that! It MUST happen now!!!! I know the casual fans hate it, but Jericho's stuff is getting to be must-see TV for me because I know what he's intending to do yet I still don't know exactly what he'll do to get to that point.

My god...you just made me appreciate this angle even more! I literally LOL'ed when he walked out (as I predicted he would) but it's getting hard for me to hate him like he wants me to, now that we're all starting to piece together the brilliance of his gimmick more and more. If Johnny Ace had shown that much intensity earlier in his career, maybe he would've actually had a decent run and we would remember his time as an active wrestler. For a retired wrestler, though, that punch was horrible. He's not even an old guy. He should've thrown a better strike than that on Foley.

I'm stocking up on AA-batteries for when I get one of those light-up jackets. Jericho and I are bringing them back in style!

Thanks, y'all. If it happens, you three (other than my family) will be the first to know! I'll be happy just to be relegated to their Free-For-All preview shows and international programming. I'm serious.

Not only did you say it much more succinctly than I did, I thank you for not buying into the dirtsheet hype.

I asked someone if they actually believed everything they read in dirt sheets. I'm not sure if this response is sarcastic or serious, but it scares me: "why wouldn't I believe the dirt sheets? When are they wrong?" I died a little inside. I don't believe this title change is a direct result of Evan Bourne's suspension; after all, they could've just had Bourne drop the titles before his suspension or vacated them outright. I also don't think Bourne has nearly the level of backstage heat that the dirtsheets are reporting. Rather, this title change is a throwback to the days when midcard and lower-tier belts changed hands at house shows on a more frequent basis. It adds to the air of unpredictability and gives people incentive to pay to see house shows, especially with the recently-debuted house show sets. This is a financial move, not a political move. Vince listens more to his wallet than his ego; just look at how many times he's allowed wrestlers to return who burned their bridges.

Guys...I'm gonna apply to work as an On-Air Announcer for WWE. I'm really, really nervous for my video submission due Wednesday, but I'm taking the plunge!

I think Flair will show up whether or not TNA allows him. If TNA attempts to fine him, Vince will likely pick up the bill. TNA has to know that Flair and the McMahon family have too good of a relationship to prevent Flair from doing whatever he wants, just short of wrestling a match for WWE while still under contract. TNA might as well support it since there'll be backlash from wrestling fans if they prevent Flair from being honored with some of his fellow Horsemen.

Jim Ross may have confirmed Chris Jericho's planned heel turn with this tweet: (LINK) For those of you who follow J.R., you know that he usually tows the company line and will tweet vaguely or in kayfabe regarding events on the show. However, this tweet contradicts J.R.'s previous kayfabe responses about Y2J where he believed that Jericho was "genuinely" overcome with emotion, etc. So yes, for those of you who with me on my theory about the silence being a part of Y2J's heel turn, we may have been validated.

Rock will likely make more appearances after the Royal Rumble, but most definitely after Elimination Chamber next month. I'll get to see him live in Philly on March 19th -- and I got floor seats this time!

There's talk within dirtsheet circles that WWE is planning on having Jericho remain silent until after the Royal Rumble. If he wins the Rumble, at which point he would go full-heel and gloat about his victory and then call out CM Punk. There's still talk that Randy Orton may be healthy enough to return and win the Rumble as a "surprise entrant" as well, so they might abort the victory speech and instead have Y2J throw a fit about losing. Either way, Jericho's postmodernist heel turn will likely continue over the next couple of weeks.

Looking back, I liked this week's RAW. It wasn't groundbreaking television but it was a fun and breezy 2 hours.

That Cena-Kane feud draws direct inspiration from The Dark Knight -- think Joker's mission to corrupt Batman. Kane wants Cena to embrace the hate just like Joker wanted Batman to break his one rule since Joker believed that they're both the same. Kane wants Cena to become an even better version of himself by letting go of his "weakness" (the fans' adoration) so that he can fulfill his destructive potential.

I, too, was a little disappointed and confused by his silence last week until I watched the segment again and put it all together. Basically, long story short, if you keep in mind that he's doing all of this to get the crowd to boo him, his silence is much more entertaining. I literally LOL'ed when he started crying and hamming it up.

This is part of Jericho's heel turn. He's turning back into the egomaniac gimmick he had in WCW but on a much larger scale, with a little bit of the "Best in the World at What I Do" gimmick during his most recent run. You're supposed to be irritated with him. That's the point. He knows that people will cheer everything he does, so he has to do as much as he can to annoy the crowd to get them to hate him. This is setting up his match with Punk later.