Andrew Goldstein on Daniel Bryan, Vince McMahon and the Road to WrestleMania 31

Fred: What the hell has happened to WWE over the last six months?

Andrew Goldstein: Where do you start? I’ll start with the positive. We’ve seen lots of evidence of long-term booking actually playing out. You’ve had the Sting storyline, and you got your second little nibble of excitement with Sting last night, so that’s a long-term plan they’ve been playing out. They long-term booked the ousting of The Authority and actually sacrificed a month’s worth of shows to have the anonymous general manager and guest general managers crap up the place until The Authority was reinstated. That’s clear evidence they had a plan, and so is the firing storyline with Dolph Ziggler and company. I think they have a plan. I just don’t think it’s a plan that meshes with what the fans want, which always seems to be the divide with that company. I think they out-booked themselves trying to pull one over on the fans, when the easiest, most sensible thing to do is have Daniel Bryan win the Royal Rumble, face Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania and get that shot at redemption, to have the title run he was supposed to have last year before his injury. But as we saw last night, it doesn’t look like that’s where they’re going.

Fred: Not at all. Daniel Bryan lost to Bray Wyatt by pinfall, and I almost consider that a clean finish, given that we barely get finishes anymore outside of DQs and count-outs. If Bryan doesn’t win the Royal Rumble, where do you see them going from here?

Andrew Goldstein: I’m without answers, because Daniel Bryan wasn’t even in the main event picture last night. He was in a midcard match, and he didn’t even win it. Going off last night’s Raw, I’ve got to believe Seth Rollins walks out of the Royal Rumble as world champion, and I don’t know what you do with Brock or with Cena. I’m in a quandary. I did sports radio in Philadelphia last night, and I just don’t have answers. To me, the most money they could make is Bryan versus Brock. Second, I think you put the title on Rollins and somehow build a Shield three-way for the title at WrestleMania. They brought Daniel Bryan back with all this fire, and then they beat him last night. One loss isn’t a big deal, but he wasn’t even around to sniff the main event picture in that last segment on the go-home show for your second-biggest pay-per-view of the year. They might also be a little worried about Bryan’s physical well-being in a match with a guy like Brock Lesnar. The F-5 is such a touchy finisher, and the way Brock works is so stiff. They might just be watching his neck and booking around putting him in the ring with Lesnar.

Fred: That’s true, but when he’s technically your top guy, and it’s his first match back on Raw in almost a year, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. A few weeks ago, Cesaro cut a promo, and you thought, finally. Then they bring out Wade Barrett to beat him, and the next week Barrett loses to Sin Cara. There are so many weird booking decisions week after week that just make you scratch your head. Past the main event, the booking is so 50-50 that nobody means anything. You’re still pretty well connected in the industry. Is there an explanation people watching can relate to at all?

Andrew Goldstein: I really think it’s all of those power players in a room out-booking themselves. Creative is thinking, “OK, here’s what the internet wants us to do, so whether it makes sense or not, we’re going in the completely opposite direction.” A big pet peeve of mine is this: When I was there in 2006, which is like eight years ago at this point, there were many times when something would be pitched and it was a categorical no, because of some ironclad wrestling law you never break in booking. Those things were set in stone. You had to learn them on your feet, they were second nature to Vince, and he would not budge on those philosophical booking strategies. Flash forward eight years, and week after week I see things that boggle my mind. The Vince I knew never would have OK’d something like that. It leads me to believe they have a group mindset that they need to beat the internet.

Fred: I hate to ask you this, but is Vince McMahon out of touch in 2015?

Andrew Goldstein: I don’t think he’s forgotten everything he’s ever learned. I still think he’s just as sharp and with it. But you watch that Steve Austin podcast where he talks about millennials not having ambition, which has some validity, and you hear him talk about Cesaro, and there’s just no way a man closer to 70 can really tap into what his young fan base wants, as genius as Vince McMahon is. He’s right more often than he’s wrong. But if he’s truly the one making the decisions day in and day out, then either he’s out of touch, which I don’t necessarily believe, or they’ve made a company-wide, booking-committee decision that they need to surprise the fans at every turn. Most of the time surprises are good in wrestling, but in this case they’re just head-scratching.

Fred: There are also a lot of writers on staff. They might be suffering from too many cooks in the kitchen.

Andrew Goldstein: Too many cooks in the kitchen, and too much material to produce. You can do the math on how many hours of wrestling they need each week. Bottom line, why is NXT the hottest product in wrestling right now? Because there’s only an hour of it a week. If you don’t have the WWE Network, all you have is the recaps, so there’s intrigue and mystique: “Oh man, I need to see this Finn Balor guy.” Because of three hours on Monday, two hours on Thursday, an hour of Superstars, an hour of Main Event and all the backlogged hours on the network, there’s nobody on the WWE roster you feel you need to see, even Daniel Bryan. The only one is Brock, and that’s because they book him like they used to book attractions in the ’80s, where he comes in once a month.

Fred: Even with him, last night he came out to kick ass and stood there for 20 minutes while everybody else cut promos. And it was weird that he was painted as the big babyface at the end of Raw. If all the rumors are true that he’s not re-signing after WrestleMania, why would you ever make him a babyface on his way out? He’s really the only strong heel they have. I can’t see Seth Rollins believably beating Brock without help, and maybe Rusev, if they want to put him over huge and not sacrifice him to John Cena.

Andrew Goldstein: Look, I said it last night: Putting Rollins in that triple threat is just an angle alert. Any observant fan should know that something screwy is going to happen at the end. I think Seth Rollins is going to touch that briefcase and walk out with the title. Brock might hit a third F-5 on Cena, and then here comes Rollins to knock Brock out with the case and score the pin off Brock’s offense. Then where do you go? Brock and Rollins at WrestleMania, with Brock as the babyface? I don’t know how much sense that makes. WrestleMania is your biggest show of the year, and you’ve got to put your biggest money match in the main event. All these different incarnations they’re teasing aren’t as lucrative as Daniel Bryan versus Brock. You can split hairs any way you want, but with who’s on the WWE roster right now, no match makes more sense than Daniel Bryan versus Brock Lesnar.

Fred: Let’s assume Roman Reigns does win the Royal Rumble and they try to make him the next guy, even though I don’t think he’s ready, and the material they’re giving him is absolutely, positively horrendous. One thing I liked about The Shield guys, based on interviews, is that they seemed pretty vocal about the direction of their characters. If you’re Reigns and you have a clue WWE wants to make you the heir apparent, isn’t it up to you to go to Vince or Triple H and say, “This isn’t for me. Let me do it this way”?

Andrew Goldstein: You’d hope so. But Roman Reigns’ strengths are not his promos, and if Vince McMahon, the chairman, the star maker, is dictating promos to him face-to-face, there’s not much a guy can say. Steve Austin said no to Vince, and look what happened. I’m not saying Roman is Stone Cold. A lot of the greats did step in and take charge of their characters’ direction, but it’s a tough time to be an up-and-coming superstar. To use a “Seinfeld” reference, Roman Reigns has no hand in the situation. He’s at the mercy of Vince, because where else can you go to ply your trade?

When I was there, there was a lot of competition inside the company. The first thing that comes to mind is the roster. We all used to get roster sheets of everybody SmackDown had access to, everybody Raw had access to, everybody ECW had access to and everybody in developmental, and there used to be flat-out arguments over who gets who. The SmackDown team I was part of definitely saw ourselves as the redheaded stepchild. All we wanted to do was beat Raw, put on a better show and outrate Raw. If you can produce competition, it’s better for the business. Before my time, the SmackDown Six era happened because of competition between the SmackDown crew and the Raw crew, and the guy overseeing SmackDown creative at the time was Paul Heyman.

Fred: I listened to Paul on Austin’s podcast talk about how all he wanted to do was beat Raw. He wanted SmackDown to be a completely different show, with a new director and promos cut differently. He was in the edits, and he approached it like he was WCW and they were WWF. I always supported the brand split. It started off a little precarious, but once it got going with the SmackDown Six, SmackDown at times outdrew Raw. That might have been a down time in the business, but if you were a wrestling fan watching SmackDown, it was a good time to be a fan.

Andrew Goldstein: The problem is that Vince never bought in. Vince still only cared about Raw. SmackDown-only pay-per-views didn’t draw so well, and all of a sudden Vince was putting Cena in our main event just to pop a number. The attention wasn’t given to us. We were getting Raw’s scraps, and we weren’t getting the guys from developmental that we wanted. And ECW was really getting the shaft. Raw is the jewel of Vince’s crown, and that’s mostly what he cares about. That’s another argument for why his eye is off the prize: The network is pulling him in so many directions and putting such a demanding bottom line on his shoulders to get those subscriptions up that his eye is off Raw and off SmackDown. I don’t know what to think. If you believe everything you read, Triple H is doing such a good job with NXT. Then you watch Raw and SmackDown, and obviously they’re longer shows with network guidelines, content guidelines and advertisers to answer to, so it’s a completely different animal. But you certainly could make those shows more entertaining and more legitimate, with less of the shtick with the bunny and Mizdow, as entertaining as it is.

Fred: We talked at length back in August about how WWE could further promote NXT. NXT is by far the best show on the network right now, and if you’re not subscribed, you should subscribe solely for NXT. But some of these call-ups are mind-boggling as hell: Bo Dallas, Adam Rose, and Emma, who was pretty good, but they did nothing with her. Most recently, it’s the Ascension, while guys like Hideo Itami, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn and Adrian Neville are still in developmental. Last night, the Ascension got absolutely demolished by the APA, the nWo and the New Age Outlaws. I’m just confused.

Andrew Goldstein: The other side is that the Ascension got a rub from all three of those teams. For me, it’s evidence of long-term booking, and last night was proof of why they’ve had JBL shoot so hard on these guys week in and week out. I’ve been an outspoken critic of how the Ascension was brought up and presented: their promos, their vignettes, their work and their look. The whole presentation falls completely flat for me. It just doesn’t play in 2015. But I’m not as upset about last night as a lot of people, because it’s leading to a match with the New Age Outlaws on the pre-show. When you bring young guys up, you want them working with guys who are better and more experienced than they are. It’s kind of like the Spirit Squad, who came up and spent a year getting squashed by D-Generation X. In the long run, I think it’s good for those guys. What concerns me more is the whole package: the look, the presentation and the promos. I have no problem with squash matches, and I don’t mind them doing jobs to a gaggle of legends. I just think it’s so tough these days for fans to accept new guys.

Fred: Because we see so many start-and-stop pushes and so much even-Steven booking, fans don’t know who to get behind. One week Wade Barrett is getting momentum, and the next week he loses. Isn’t Triple H supposed to be the next guy up after Vince McMahon? Is he doing the best he can to protect his NXT prospects, or could he do more?

Andrew Goldstein: It’s a tough question to answer because I’m not there. I don’t know their long-term plan, and I don’t see the interactions, so I don’t know what fraction is Vince’s booking and what’s Hunter’s. But every guy they’ve brought up has had his shot. Bray Wyatt was a main event player for a month or two, and now he’s back in the midcard and not really a meaningful guy on the roster anymore, which is crazy to me. I’m not upset that Sami Zayn, Finn Balor and those guys aren’t on the roster yet, because it’s so crowded now. You should wait until there’s something really meaningful for them to do.

Fred: You mentioned SmackDown being the redheaded stepchild. Do you feel that, maybe not to Vince McMahon but to longtime people around him, NXT is the redheaded stepchild of WWE?

Andrew Goldstein: I don’t know, because it seems to be Hunter’s pet project. I think there are so many guys on the main roster now that they don’t want to bring guys up just to put them on TV when there’s no role for them. The other thing is that WrestleMania is kind of the restart. It’s really hard to debut someone in the months leading up to WrestleMania. You have to wait until after April, and the summer is when new guys come up and guys go away. It’s kind of like WWE’s one-day offseason, if you will.

Fred: There’s a guy who was involved with NXT for a little while on the commentary side and the talent recruiting side. Now he’s doing a little bit of everything: writing for Fox Sports, calling boxing on Fox Sports 1, calling New Japan for Global Force Wrestling and hosting a very successful podcast on PodcastOne. He has a special one-man show on Royal Rumble weekend in Philadelphia, your hometown, and you’re going to be the host.

Andrew Goldstein: I saw the very first show J.R. did in New York, and it was fantastic. The guy has been part of every major promotion and every major angle, on the booking side or the announcing side, besides probably ECW. He’s got stories to tell, he rode with every big name you could think of, and he’s got the best wrestling mind, and it’s not shot. He gets up there and tells a handful of hilarious, unbelievable wrestling stories, and then he opens the floor to Q&A, and it’s no holds barred. You can ask him anything you want. He’s not shy, and he’ll answer honestly. If you’re a passionate wrestling fan, a fan of J.R. or you just like to hear really good wrestling talk and the history of the business, there’s no better guy to spend a little money on a ticket to see. I’m honored to be the host in my hometown. It’s Sunday at 3 p.m. at a place called Underground Arts, and tickets are still available. If anybody watching or listening is in the area, come down and pregame for the Rumble with us. I guarantee you’ll have a good time.

Fred: Lucha Underground doesn’t have a lot of viewers on the El Rey Network, but they’re tearing it up in the ring. As a guy who worked in wrestling and now works in TV, always looking for new ways to present a product, how impressed are you with Lucha Underground’s presentation?

Andrew Goldstein: Shout-out to my boy Chris DeJoseph, who I worked with in WWE and who’s now a co-executive producer over there. I’m slow on it, but the in-ring action is fun. I like that the first season is built around a monetary prize and not a title belt. That’s old-school and fun to me. The backstage stuff is a little melodramatic for my tastes. It looks great, but it doesn’t really work for me. The rest of the product is great. I love the open-door policy: One week Alberto Del Rio could walk in the door, and the next week Bully Ray could. I love the episodic nature of it and that it has seasons. I think they’re reinventing the wheel in a good way.

Fred: And Del Rio has totally reinvented himself as a Mexican hero. WWE tried to book him that way, and it came off so contrived. Then a real-life incident happens, he gets fired, and he’s had the most momentum since he first came on the scene in WWE in 2010.

Andrew Goldstein: Sometimes WWE isn’t able to see the money that’s right in its lap. Look at Randy Orton and the “RKO outta nowhere” phenomenon. They kind of tried, but they didn’t push it enough. Zack Ryder, Punk’s pipe bomb. There are tons of examples of organic, cool things happening in WWE that they’ve just turned their nose up at.

Fred: Randy Orton has been gone for a couple of months filming a movie, through the injury angle with The Authority. Assuming he doesn’t win the Royal Rumble, which I think would be a terrible move, where do you see him going at WrestleMania?

Andrew Goldstein: You probably won’t agree with this, but in my column, I wrote a pretty cool plan for bringing Randy back as an anti-Authority, ass-kicking babyface like Austin, because when we last saw him, The Authority was turning on him and beating him down. It’s a way to bring him back and make him the biggest babyface in the company. I don’t think they’ll do it, but what I wrote was that you could get to Orton versus Brock at WrestleMania, which would be an amazing match, and finally reinvent Randy Orton after 10 years of watching him do this boring heel act.

Fred: I remember you wrote that before Daniel Bryan was set to come back. You could still do Brock versus Randy. That would still be one hell of a match, and you give Randy his big win and build a title contender after WrestleMania.

Andrew Goldstein: I love that idea. Again, it’s fantasy booking, but there’s a real opportunity to reinvent Randy Orton right now. Do I think they’ll do it? Probably not. They’ll probably bring him back as the same Viper character he’s been for the last 10 years, and it’s a shame, because before he got hurt, he was doing some of the best work of his career.

Fred: We have a couple of fan questions. First, from George: Assuming there were multiple writers on your team with wrestling backgrounds, what was the biggest philosophical difference between you and your colleagues and Vince McMahon?

Andrew Goldstein: The one I dealt with the most personally was the use of nostalgia. 2006 was the time of Survivor Series with Flair and Dusty on the same team. We put so many fun stories around Steamboat, Dusty and Flair, and Vince just turned his nose up at it. He didn’t think the fans cared or knew who those guys were. That’s one of the things I give Triple H credit for anytime I can. He’s refocused attention on the legends. You saw him do it with Bruno, Savage and the Ultimate Warrior, and last night you saw all the people who came back. There was definitely a philosophical divide between all of us who were fans and Vince on how and when to use the legends.

Fred: Who’s the superstar you feel WWE missed the boat on the most when you were there in 2006 and 2007?

Andrew Goldstein: There are so many. Mr. Kennedy could have been huge. Elijah Burke could have been huge. I’m naming guys I was working with, but MVP could have been bigger than he was. London and Kendrick could have been huge. Elijah Burke, big-time. Obviously there’s got to be something with him, because he went to TNA, got pushed for a little bit and now has kind of disappeared, so perhaps there’s more to that story. But in terms of look, ability and promo ability, he had it all. I wanted to make him SmackDown’s John Cena.

Fred: One more: Who has the best chance to rehab their career in 2015? This fan cites examples like Dolph Ziggler and Wade Barrett, guys who had a push before and faltered.

Andrew Goldstein: Go read my column. I lay out a fun plan for Randy Orton. And 2015 really should be the year of Dolph Ziggler. It’s time already. He’s so close to the main event right now. It’s sort of a Jeff Hardy run. Jeff Hardy’s run to the world title was every week watching him get his ass kicked and keep getting up, and it made him a bigger superstar and a believable main event babyface, which led to a pretty fun title reign before he went to TNA. They’ve already been doing it with Ziggler these past few months, having him get destroyed week after week and keep coming back for more. The fans are ready. They just have to pull the trigger.

Fred: You could almost say the same for Dean Ambrose, with the wacky skits they’re doing with him. He keeps coming back and still gets stronger reactions. He hasn’t been around as long as Ziggler, but he’s got that weird Jeff Hardy thing going for him, where fans are just attracted to him.

Andrew Goldstein: He’s a good one. But in terms of whose time it is, it’s about time Dolph Ziggler gets that push. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take one of the main event players getting injured or leaving the roster to make a spot for Ziggler in the main event, and that’s more of an indictment of how WWE is run nowadays than of his ability.

Fred: I know it hurts that the Eagles aren’t in the mix, but who do you have in the Super Bowl between the two No. 1 seeds, the Patriots or the Seahawks?

Andrew Goldstein: It’s tough to go against Seattle, because they’ve proven they’re clutch. But I think we’re going to see Brady win a Super Bowl here and really solidify his legend. I think he’s already passed Peyton Manning on the greatest-of-all-time list, and this puts him in the clear seat as the greatest quarterback of the 2000s.

Fred: Andrew, thank you so much for your time. Enjoy yourself this Royal Rumble weekend.

Andrew Goldstein: Thank you. It should be interesting to see what happens.