Papacita

5'10", 125

IIRC he defended the belt in against DDP and Jarrett in the triple cage match. DDP was on his side and tried to get him to stay out of the way, but in the end Arquette ended up turning on him and helping Jarrett win the belt.

I've gotta say Austin/Hart was the best WWF feud I've ever seen. It was just so well done with the double turn and everything, plus it was really easy to buy into. To this day it kinda bugs me out to hear them say nice things about each other because at the time the heat between those two seemed so real. Also, while I'm not too sure how well it'd match up on an all-time list, I was a big fan of the Nation/DX feud from 98.

What the fuck is going on???

You know, if TNA must stick to the current formula they've got now with the monthly PPV builds and what not, I think their shows would benefit a lot if they just added a PPV control center segment or even something like the old ECW Pulp Fiction segments just to get you caught up on everything. I think the biggest problem I've had with TNA since I've been watching is that a lot of times it's hard to keep track of just why everybody is fighting. I'll cite the Sabu/Abyss feud as an example, as I can understand the thing with Abyss fearing barbwire, but I'm not 100% sure why they're even fighting. I think that a simple control center thing would go a long way to resolving this, and it may even help the overall quality of the shows as they probably wouldn't have to try and cram everybody into the shows every week.

The night after No Mercy 99, the Hardys and E&C were in the ring to put over the ladder match from the PPV, when suddenly Gangrel comes out with Terri Runnels and says something like, "I'm the only one of us who scored last night." Then both teams just beat the hell outta him and Terri ends up leaving with them. I don't think the connection between Terri and Gangrel was ever touched on again. Just an odd, odd segment.

Not line of the year, but Jadakiss' "They have to call him 40 Cent since he dropped that dime" was pretty good.

They actually built to Ahmed's turn pretty well, IMO. There was a match prior to KOTR (I think a #1 contendership match, but I'm not sure) between he and Faarooq where Taker comes out to save Ahmed from the Nation, but accidentally ends up knocking him into the stairs, causing him to be counted out. There was another Raw where McMahon asked Ahmed whether or not he felt there was racism in the WWF, and Ahmed replied that while he doesn't agree with Faarooq and thinks he's racist, he thinks that he was right on the money about black wrestlers not getting the opportunities they deserved as far as the WWF Title. Finally, at KOTR, Paul Bearer kept ordering Taker to chokeslam Faarooq (this was during the period where Bearer was holding the "secret" over Taker's head) when Ahmed came down to stop him. When Taker didn't listen, Ahmed laid him out with the Pearl River Plunge. They had also been hinting at it a lot in WWF Magazine. While I think Ahmed's joining the Nation actually made a lot of sense, their turn against him was kinda random. Ahmed injured his knee the first Raw after his heel turn and made his return after Summerslam 97. After he wins the match, they all go to do the salute, and suddenly the Nation just starts attacking him out of the blue. They tried turning him face again, but that was basically it for his career in WWF.

Any of the Flair/Steamboat matches, particularly Chi-Town Rumble, which was my favorite.

I just got an odd visual of zombie Eddie dancing in the Thriller video. There you go.

That was the night of the first draft, wasn't it?

On the crying issue, I agree that some people are going overboard with the "mourning" (I swear if I see one more post about Eddie and Owen wrestling in heaven, I'm gonna cut somebody), but really people have a right to react however they want to. I think we need to take into account that a lot of people have real issues going on in their lives and use wrestling as a way of escaping, and thus it's real easy to get caught up in the lives of people they don't know. When you've got people saying "first mom, now Eddie," I don't think it's so much a case of them placing a wrestler on the same level as a loved one as it's them saying, "hey, Eddie's one of the guys whose performances helped put mom's death behind me, and now that he's gone too, it hurts." You could probably argue that that type of response isn't the healthiest in the world, but to the people that are genuine with their feelings (and I'd say most are in this case, because Eddie was pretty damn popular), flaming them and what not isn't gonna make them stop feeling the way they do. That's my 1 cent anyway.

Yeah, I agree. Whether he was using something or not, you'd think if he had a bad heart it would've been caught ahead of time and dealt with. I can't understand why no one knew of this before now.

Any word on what he had to say from the people who saw it?

I think they had a 3-way with AJ, but as far as I know no 1-on-1. Then again, I've only been watching since the Spike debut so don't take my word for it.

I guess my problem isn't so much a heel turn for Joe since you're right in that he wasn't face, but more the fact that they were trying to build sympathy for Daniels. Again, the lead in to the match had Daniels acting in a way where you'd really WANT Joe to beat him up, but when it happens we're supposed to sympathize with him. That aspect of the attack really wasn't working for me.

If that's what they were shooting for, it should've been reflected in the commentary. Instead of stressing how wrong Joe was for attacking Daniels, they should have been reacting as if they were in awe of it all. As is, it came off as if they were trying to force a heel turn on him, which really didn't work in the context of the storyline.

The Joe turn didn't make sense to me at all. I mean, the last couple of shows they've been playing Daniels as a sort of egomaniac with the whole "I should be captain" thing, and we're supposed to sympathize with him in the end when Joe gets fed up and beats his ass? Anyway, I was kinda tuning in and out on this show and there are a couple of matches that I've gotta watch again (AJ and Petey being one of them), but for the most part I enjoyed this show. The Christian stuff was good, although I wish that rather than turning him face off the bat, they'd played him in a role similar to Steve Austin's during his run in ECW. Elimination X was fun (they've gotta do more with Shelly. His gimmick--whatever it's supposed to be--really jumps out at me), Monty/Jeff and Abyss/Sabu were solid, and I thought the ME tag match was pretty good.

Christian Cage

Yeah, what really makes it hard is that in the past year or so we've gotten to see his close family members and everything on TV. I mean, you always hear stories about how so and so left X amount of family behind, but for you to actually be able to put a face to it...it's really fucked up to think about it.

I'll probably remember Eddie most as being the one wrestler who could ALWAYS make me laugh. Honestly, whether it was in the ring, in backstage segments or whatever, he just had so many little elements to his character that would always crack me up. My favorite moment from him (as far as non-wrestling stuff goes, anyway) would probably be the night he broke up with Chyna after being caught in the shower with the Godfather's ho's. My description of this has never really been able to do the segment justice, but I love it because afterwards they go through this dramatic break up scene in the back, Chyna leaves, and suddenly Billy Gunn shows up. Now I should note right now that Billy is-from a mark standpoint--probably my all-time LEAST favorite wrestler, which is probably why I loved this so much. But he cuts this strong promo against Eddie, saying something like "pick up that cheap ass ring of yours and get outta here, because I'm gonna make sure that you never go near her again. COMPRENDES?! ESS-AAYYYY?!" Then the second Billy turns to leave, Eddie randomly picks up a bottle and bashes him in the head with it. Again, it probably doesn't sound like much from my description but I was literally in tears from laughing so hard. Another great moment was the backstage promo with Benoit that Rudo mentioned, his win over Brock for the title, and of course the Mania moment with Benoit.

Shit. I just woke up a little while ago and saw this...I just can't believe this. Part of me is thinking this is some kinda joke. Of all the people to go... At least he got to see his run with the belt. I'm thankful for that much. RIP Eddie

Damn, Michael Cole is gangsta. Honestly, it seems like a work to me, if only for the fact that they were able to speak for so long without any kind of interruption from producers.

Bischoff sent him over to fight Batista as punishment for walking out at Taboo Tuesday.

I actually almost kinda sorta laughed at that segment. Does the Boogeyman serve any purpose at all on the show? Like, has he wrestled or anything?