The Teacher's Lounge: If all Summer Slams had Twitter

As almost every single pair of eyes who reads this knows, I, The Teacher, have been pretty addicted to Twitter since the birth of #2Contenders.  One thing I’ve been fascinated with is how the social media age allows everyone to share their feeling right as things happen.  This gives us a primal sense of how people are feeling, since from the looks of it, most people don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about their tweets before sending them into the Inter-ether.

Which got me thinking. . . With Summer Slam around the corner, what would the history of this huge WWE event look like if Twitter had existed since its inception. . . Quite the thought experiment. . . I humbly submit some of what I believe we’d have seen in the last 20 years.

8/29/88

MegaPowersRule:  Can’t believe we’re getting a 4th #WWF PPV!  Can’t wait to see MegaPowers SLAM MegaBucks!  #Hulkamania  #OhYeah

MillionDollarBaby:  @MegaPowersRule - No way! Everybody has a price, and Dibiase and Andre can’t be stopped!  #MoneyMoneyMoney

The Teacher's Lounge: Why do we hate John Cena?

Why do we hate John Cena?

Why is it that the majority of adults who watch
professional wrestling groan every time they hear his music?  Why do we despise the jean shorts (Austin wore them), the multi-colored t-shirts with bumper sticker phrasing (The Rock was a slogan machine) and his incessant way of reminding us all exactly where he is?  (In case you had forgotten, the champ is here.)

Do we detest the man himself?  Hardly.  We admire his tenacity to accomplish what he has done in the world of wrestling and we applaud his dedication to charitable work.  Yet why are the WWE fans that frequent social media so rabidly against him?

There is another wrestler who shared a similar fate as John Cena; idol of children, irritant to everyone else.  Like it or not, John Cena is this century’s Hulk Hogan, and by identifying the two biggest similarities between the two, we can discover why Cena finds himself in his current predicament.

1.  John Cena and Hulk Hogan have / had stale characters.

Lessons from the Network: No Way Out 2003

Historical Context

When WWE acquired both ECW and WCW in the early 2000’s, they were flush with talent from all 3 of the major companies, though in some cases, “talent” is a word I use relatively loosely.  As time went on, the invasion angle faded away and only a handful of stars from Atlanta or Philadelphia remained, having been fully incorporated into WWE storylines.
No Way Out 2003 was the table-setter leading up to Wrestlemania XIX, famous for McMahon vs. Hogan and infamous for the botched shooting star press from Brock Lesnar.

Rather than give you the traditional 5 lessons today, we will instead focus on a single one from this era, using No Way Out 2003 as an example.

Lesson: The Post-Invasion WWE had the greatest collection of wrestling talent ever.