TMC1982

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.

Not necessarily in terms of overall popularity, but from the standpoint of being a key figure in the expansion and development of ECW from a regional NWA affiliate (Eastern Championship Wrestling), to innovative, cutting edge, hardcore revolution that we know today. With Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon saw him (along with his charisma, physique, and appearance in "Rocky III") as the I guess, figurehead in the WWF's push to a national, mainstream, "sports entertainment" product during the 1980s. With Shane Douglas, Paul Heyman and Tod Gordon saw "The Franchise's" abrasive, loud mouth, quasi shoot promo style as the perfect fit for the counter-culture, anti-establishment image that ECW wanted to put across. If you've followed Shane's history, than you would be aware of the heat between him and Ric Flair (a long time NWA champion, for which ECW was trying to break away from). This along with, Paul Heyman's admitted grudge against WCW, for whom Ric Flair and the NWA had long been intertwined. Paul E. said on "The Rise and Fall of ECW" DVD that Shane Douglas, who was their main singles wrestler at the time, was a very key element in breaking away from the "tradition and old school mentality" of the NWA. I am aware however, that Shane only agreed to throw down the NWA belt because the president of the National Wrestling Alliance at the time, Dennis Coraluzzo, buried Shane on Mike Tenay's radio show.

Kind of like how WrestleMania 17 (from 2001 in Houston) is generally preceived to be the end of the "Attidude Era". I think that it's safe to say that WrestleMania III (from 1987 from the Pontiac Silverdome) was the peak of the '80s wrestling boom. I would argue that WrestleMania VI in 1990 was the end of the boom because several things happend: *Hulk Hogan cleanly dropped the World Title to the Ultimate Warrior in what could be seen as a "passing of the torch" deal (i.e. "The Guy" in the WWF). *By 1990, WrestleMania had gotten so big, that they were doing it outside of the United States (in Toronto, Canada at the SkyDome). *Andre the Giant went back to being a face (he initially went heel for his match with Hogan at WrestleMania III, and to put as many guys over as possible during the twilight of his career) after dumping Bobby Heenan as his manager. *It was the last WrestleMania to be called by Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura. After that, I would suggest that the WWF slowly went into a transitional period up until WrestleMania X in 1994 (which I consider, the birth of the "New Generation" era). Although, for a time, they went back to Hogan as their "bread and butter" after things with Warrior didn't really pan out as originally planned.

In other words, what particular moment in wrestling sticks out the most for being ready made for major success only to be totally botched in the end (due to politics, stupidity, etc.). Examples (at least in my estimation): *Verne Gagne not fully capitalizing on Hulk Hogan's popularity in the AWA. *No Ric Flair-Hulk Hogan match at WrestleMania. *Kerry Von Erich's NWA Title reign. When I say this, I mean that Kerry messed things up for himself by getting himself doped up all the time to the point of being too unreliable. *Bret Hart being misused in WCW. After Sting beat Hogan, WCW should've immediately had Bret Hart challenge Sting for the World Title. This would've been (just like with Flair and Hogan back in 1991-1992) a perfect opportunity to promote a WCW Champion vs. WWF Champion (since it could be argued that Bret never actually lost the title to Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series) match down the road. *The Invasion *Jim Crockett burying the UWF after Crockett Promotions purchased the UWF (foreshadowing what Vince McMahon would do to WCW nearly 15 years later). *Sting not beating Hogan cleanly at Starrcade '97. *WCW under Jim Herd letting Ric Flair go to WWF/E with the NWA belt. *Rob Van Damn snorking up his World Title push (being the WWE Champion and the ECW Champion at about the same time) due to his love for Mary Jane. *Pro Wrestling USA and the subsequent Super Clash III PPV. *WCW not keeping a hold of Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, etc. Another classic "drop the ball moment" if you ask me concerning WCW, was not having the Horsemen be a more formidable threat to the nWo. The Horsemen were perhaps, the original "bad boys of wrestling". They were the elite group that everybody feared during the old, Crockett/NWA era days of WCW. So basically, a Horsemen/nwo feud, if done properly, would've been a classic "old school WCW" vs. "new school WCW". Instead, the Horseman were seemingly, frequently jobbed out or humiliated (a la the infamous skit on "Nitro" poking fun of Arn Anderson's retirement speech) with little retribution.

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."

What would everyone say was the worst year for prestling and why? Out of the big promotions which year was just thumbs down all year and for what reasons? Which year has sucked most overall throughout history?

In terms of the negative perception in the eyes of the media in other words. For example: *Benoit - By this point, I don't think that I have to go any further than just referencing the man's last name. You don't have to be a major wrestling fan, and you're aware of murder-suicide incident in 2007. *Over the Edge '99 *Vince McMahon being indited on steroid distribution in 1992. Since WWF/E was and is to this day, the biggest promotion in America if not the world, this gave the media enough ammunition to stereotype pro wrestlers nothing more than a bunch of muscle bound freaks (not accounting for the technical and overall athletic aspect of the sport). *WCW and ECW going out of business in 2001. Pro wrestling is always the most interesting when everybody is in competition with one another. This instantly gives the promotions a bigger incentive to work harder and be better than the other guy. But with WWF/E as the only viable option, it's very easy to get lazy and bored with the product. *David Arquette wins the World Title. I'll give David Arquette credit when he was reluctant to go through with that angle (which Vince Russo pushed him into doing). But WCW was so desperate for mainstream media attention, that they decided to give their top belt to an actor. All that this served as make WCW an even bigger laughing stock. By the year 2000, the credibility of the belt was already getting more and more devalued (the "Fingerpoke of Doom" is a perfect example), and this all but killed it off for good. *WCW breaks away from the NWA. For all intensive purposes, the "old NWA" died soon after WCW officially broke away in 1993. The National Wrestling Alliance name was all but a generic, umbrella kind of body anyway in the aftermath of Turner Broadcasting taking over Jim Crockett Promotions in 1988. Since Jim Crockett Promotions was so entrenched with the NWA (I'm pretty sure that a lot of people thought that what became World Championship Wrestling and the National Wrestling Alliance were the exact same entity) by the late '80s, the NWA's lineage immediately carried over to WCW. Shane Douglas throwing down the NWA belt (and igniting the birth of Extreme Championship Wrestling) didn't help the NWA credibility and relevancy-wise in the post-WCW era. *The Mass Transit Incident. It perhaps gave people the impression that pro wrestlers were senseless, barbaric savages (not the Macho Man) and that ECW was a shoot organization. ECW couldn't get on pay-per-view for quite some time due to this incident. *The trials and tribulations of World Championship Wrestling (1988-2001). This to me, serves as a blueprint of how not to run a major wrestling promotion. *The Attitude Era. Some of the more racy, outrageous stuff in all honestly, makes me embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. And WWF/E were risking in the long term, advertisers pulling out because they were getting to out of control (although, I kind of see the Attitude Era as a more streamlined, "PG-13" version of ECW).

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"!