TMC1982

That's I kicked your leg out of your leg!

Also Hulk Hogan choking out Richard Belzer.

Get a grip! I'm not necessarily thinking strickly on the mainstream media, but rather in general or as a whole.

Does anybody know exactly why there's so much animosity between the two parties now a days? I know that Flair said on his WWE DVD that his fall out with Ole really began when he returned to WCW after spending about two and a half years in WWF/E. Ole, who at the time, was doing the booking (and I think, had taken over for Bill Watts after he left WCW) said the Flair's face, that he didn't believed that he no longer had much value to WCW (having just jobbed to Curt Hening on "Monday Night RAW"). Flair took great offense to that since ever since he abruptly left WCW (without ever really dropping the World Title in the ring), crowds at every show were chanting "We want Flair!" And then, I stumbled across this clip from a shoot interview with Ole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZX0PE0RqE Ole essentially, considers the idea of Flair taking the NWA title with him to WWF's TV shows a joke since by 1991, the NWA was pretty much, an "in-name only" type of organization. Honestly, I think that a large portion of Ole's bitterness stems from his hatred of Vince McMahon's successful national expansion. This pretty much made the regional wrestling promotion model (and the NWA by extension of this) obsolute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swVxYHUsQ5g

I was reading some "FAQ" references to the National Wrestling Alliance, and how is gradually self-imploded and became a shell of itself: The NWA up until the late 1980s, was (along with the WWF and AWA) one of the most prominent wrestling organizations in America if not the entire world. I to would argue that the "real" NWA died when Jim Crockett sold his super territory to Ted Turner. Turner Broadcasting had the TV time, the money, the talent (e.g. Ric Flair, Sting, Lex Luger, Road Warriors, etc.), that the other NWA promotions didn't remotely come close to obtaining. Paul Heyman and Shane Douglas pissing all over the NWA belt, and giving rise to ECW didn't help matters from a credibility standpoint. By the late '90s, the NWA was all but forgotten with WWF, WCW, and ECW as the top promotions in America. The NWA is now simply a group of indy guys that walk around and beat their chest proclaiming "We're from the NWA!" The National Wrestling Alliance seems so, out of touch with the times that all that they have to so for themselves, is their past glory (which unfortunately, was intercepted and fused with World Championship Wrestling). The NWA for one thing, needs to figure out a way to get on TV. And that CoLours TV network or whatever the hell it's called doesn't count. It has to be on an outlet that most of the public has remotely heard of.

I wish that someday, Vince and company will bring this theme ("The Grand Spectacle") back. It has a very timeless, but still epic appeal to it. It kind of reminds me of the from the early 1990s (around the tail end of them covering the NFC package) in it's simple, yet extremely catchy and powerful in its appeal. The first WrestleMania used "Easy Lover" (by Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey) as it's time. While that song (along with Aretha Franklin's "Who's Zoomin' Who?" from WrestleMania III) is great in its own right, it's still for the most part, carrying "'80s centric" vibe behind its appeal. Even the "Wrestlemania Rap" (which would become Linda McMahon's theme) from 1993-1998 feels a bit dated, due to its Michael Jackson, "Black or White" sound. Now a days, WWE's formula seems to be to randomly get some hard rock band (like Limp Bizkit for example) to do the theme regardless of whether or not it feels relevant to WrestleMania.

It's awfully unusual if you ask me for WWE to have their biggest show of the year take place at the same location two years in row. The only logical answer that I could find was to sell the whole Hogan-Savage angle (i.e. returning to the "scene of the crime" so to speak). I wouldn't necessarily consider Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, NJ to be the worst WrestleMania site ever (it was however, a considerable step down from the Pontiac Silverdome or the Toronto SkyDome in-between). The Hartford Civic Center (WrestleMania XI), Caeser's Palace (WrestleMania IX), and the three location set up for WrestleMania 2 ought to rank up there on the list of "Worst WrestleMania Venues Ever".

I know that WrestleMania XI from 1995 is typically considered one of the more forgettable WrestleManias (although number 2 and number 9 from 1986 and 1993 respectively, are the only ones so far to be inducted to WrestleCrap). But I took a look at the WWF's intro on YouTube the other day, and I just couldn't help but think how tacky and lazily put together this piece was. Gone are the days of Vince McMahon's growling, intense, amped up voice overs ("It's WrestleManiaaaaaaa!") that set up the storylines for the main events, the epic theme music, "The Grand Spectacle", and creative (for their time) visuals (such as the slot machine intro from WrestleMania IV or "The Mega Powers Explode" intro from a year later). Instead for WrestleMania XI, we get a tired reprise of the first ten WrestleManias (didn't we already get that from the previous WrestleMania, since it was the tenth anniversary of the event), over the cheesy "WrestleMania Rap" (a.k.a. Linda McMahon's theme music), with the stuffy announcer listing off the stars in attendance (i.e. Lawrence Taylor, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Nicholas Turturro, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, etc.) ahead of the matches on the card. It almost seemed like one of those cheesy '70s variety TV show intros. What I'm trying to say is that there was seemingly no imagination or incentive to try hard this time around. It was as if Vince and company were thinking, "Let's just get this thing in the can as quickly as possible."

This angle always bugged the hell out of me. Outside of Ric Flair, Sting was the virtual embodiment of WCW. It seemed like they put Sting (who was still mega over by this point) in a nWo kind of fraction (babyface or heel) in order to sell some extra t-shirts. WCW just never had a clue how to properly resolve the nWo angle. Instead, they went to the well one too often (since the nWo was their golden goose beginning in 1996 and onward), and it wound up biting them in the end. The whole nWo thing just cannibalized WCW (which is awfully ironic, since that was pretty much the main intent of the angle in the first place) and fans wound up getting burned out.

I was at Barnes & Noble a while back, and read some of Bret Hart's autobiography "Hitman". I didn't buy it, but I did manage to catch a glimpses of Bret's basic opinion on the Ultimate Warrior. Basically, Bret called Warrior a "bum", who did the same shtick (a bunch of closelines and standing around looking for "answers" from the gods). He added that it was a joke for Vince McMahon to be pushing Warrior, but Bret figured that Vince was afraid that Hulk Hogan was "losing his shine". As I said at the jump, I haven't had a chance to read all of Bret Hart's book. So I don't have any idea, what else he has to say about Warrior. But what I immediately got from reading bits and pieces of it, is that Bret was jealous of the attention that Jim Hellwig received (over "real wrestlers" like himself). Bret also said that Warrior once blew off a sick kid (while everybody else was being nice to him), who was "blocking" his entrance. I hope that story about Warrior and the sick kid isn't true. That to me would be a legitimate reason to hate Warrior. I find the other stuff that people like to dog Jim Hellwig over like his nonsensical promos, his overall lack of technical or scientific wrestling ability, and his tendency to get blown up in a match to be ridiculously petty. Maybe I'm in the minority of those who don't fully "get" the hate over Warrior. I mean, whether you like it or not, the guy made himself and the WWF/E a lot of money. The people responded to him (was Warrior ever truly forced down people's throats from the jump despite having minimal charisma like say, Bobby Lashley), so the most logical why was to simply push him up the ladder. I don't know if Bret is aware of what Warrior said about him in his shoot interview from a few years back. If I remember correctly, Warrior said that he didn't like the way that Bret handled himself during the fallout from the Montreal incident. Warrior added that maybe Bret should've taken legal action against WWF, if he truly had issues with them. Warrior also hinted that he believed that the whole screwjob in Montreal could've been a work (since the cameras from "Wrestling in Shadows" were conveniently present during the entire proceedings).

WCW seemed to be at its cheesiest when it tried to emulate (I'm probably going to answer my own question) WWF's "sports entertainment". I suppose with Turner Broadcasting backing you, you're going to be given carte blanche to do a lot of stupid excretory matter. The heart of WCW (and what set it apart from WWF) was mainly, that it focused on athleticism (i.e. subtance over style, like what Vince McMahon was for the most part, offering). The old "NWA World Championship Wrestling" show had a more grounded in reality, PG-13 (a la, Ric Flair coming on TV to talk about his many encounters with the opposite sex), "good ole boy" feel to it. Part of what killed WCW in my estimation, was it not fully embracing itself as an alternative to WWF's product. I know that when Jim Herd (a.k.a. the regional Pizza Hut manager in St. Louis, who managed to piss off and scare away WCW's biggest draw, Ric Flair) was running the day-to-day operations, the cartoon-like content seemed to be seeping in. There was for instance, the Black Scorpion angle, RoboCop coming to the aid of Sting, Big Josh (a lumberjack with two dancing bears), a tag team called the Ding Dongs, etc. That was pointed out on Ric Flair's DVD from WWE, when Flair was talking about how Ted Turner had friends, who ran to him and told him that they wanted to run a wrestling company. The end result was people being put in charge despite having having no real clue about what the hell they were doing. It's no surprise then, that WCW (despite being backed by a powerful media mogul like Ted Turner) was so poorly managed from say 1988 through at least, late 1993. Even after Herd was kicked to the curb, the cartoonish crap continued. Right around the time that Ric Flair came back after spending about 2 and half years in the WWF, we get the Shockmaster incident on "A Flair for the Gold" (Ric Flair's talk show at the time). There was also the "mini movies" like "Catcus Jack: Lost in Cleveland" and the Beach Blast movie involving Sting, Davey Boy Smith, Vader, Sid Vicious, and Cheetum, the evil midget. By Hulk Hogan's second year in WCW (1995), the main angle was that goofy as hell fued that he had involving the Dungeon of Doom ("It's not hot!!!"). Even when the nWo angle was kicking into high gear, a lot of the main people in WCW were people who initally gained most of their notority in the WWF (i.e. Hogan, Randy Savage, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Roddy Piper, etc.). By the time Vince Russo showed up, WCW was foolishly trying to emulate or reinact WWF's "Attitude" product. WWF seemed to get even more cartoonish around 1992-1995. It seemed like virtually everybody had to have a far out there gimmick (e.g. Doink and Papa Shango) or a "non-wrestling job" as part of their gimmick (e.g. Bob Holly's race car driver persona, Issac Yankem, the dentist, etc.). It seemed like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels for the most part, were the only guys on the roster during that era who were essentially being themselves.

Lets say hypothetically, World Championship Wrestling, like WWE does today, did a brand extension (i.e. wrestlers would be exclusive to only one TV program). "Nitro" would naturally be in place of "RAW", "Thunder" would be in place of "SmackDown", and "Saturday Night" would be in place of ECW. The World Title belt would be the top strap on "Nitro", the U.S. Title would be the top strap on "Thunder", and the TV Title would be the top strap on "Saturday Night".

WTF? Between this and XM ditching Mark Patrick on Home Plate in the mornings...ugh.. Petros & Money is actually not bad, but I am beyond pissed that they nuked Maller's show...now I'm forced to listen to goddamn George Noory and the Foil Hat brigade. My affiliate, KNBR 1050 out of San Francisco, dumped FSN in favor of ESPN Radio quite a while back.

FOX should've kicked Jeanne Zelasko the curb after she disrespected Ernie Harwell at the All-Star Game several years back!

If the Gooker Awards existed before the year 2000, which would be your list of dubious winners? Naturally, the award for 1990 would be out of the question since that was the very year that the Gooker itself was born! Otherwise, I would've picked the Team Challenge Series (also known as the "final nail in the coffin for the AWA) or the Black Scorpion angle. I've complied my own pre-2000 Gooker list in the mean time: 1991: Turncoat Sargent Slaughter - The best way to gain heel heat for a wrestler is to exploit the real life Persian Gulf War (good one, Vince)! 1992: The Papa Shango-Ultimate Warrior feud complete with Jim Hellwig puking on national television. 1993: I'm torn between WrestleMania IX (it has to get some consideration since it's WWF/E's biggest show of the year, traditionally), the Shockmaster, and WCW's mini-movies (the so called "Unholy Trinity"). 1994: The Undertaker's "resurrection" at the Royal Rumble and the Undertaker vs. Underfaker match at SummerSlam. 1995: The Dunegon of Doom-Hulk Hogan feud (it's not hot) 1996: A toss up between the Brian Pillman-Steve Austin gun incident and the Fake Diesal and Razor Ramon angle. 1997: Even though it hasn't been inducted yet, I'll add the screwy finish at Starrcade involving Sting, Hogan and Bret Hart. 1998: Ultimate Warrior, the WCW Years 1999: The Fingerpoke of Doom

I'm glad that Ralph Macchio recently said that he's not confident that this movie is going to be any good.

I thought that "Never Back Down" already beat this to the punch with the whole "Karate Kid" remake/rip-off bit.

VH1 has unfortuntately travelled down the the same path as its sister channel MTV, with too many sleezy reality shows. VH1 used to serve as a more "grown up" version of MTV, in the sense that they would so more adult contempary stuff. Even through the '90s, VH1 was still remotely watchable with stuff like "Behind the Music", "Legends", "Storytellers", "Pop Up Video", "Where Are They Now", "The List", etc. It's awfully ironic that not to long ago, they had the slogan of "Music First"!