Damaramu

I'm with diamonddust. I thought we were going to discuss all the things high school rules that get you backstage heat.

Then why does the original King of the Ring poster have a picture of Taker and Ahmed on it?

Quick WWF question. When Ahmed joined the Nation of Domination wasn't he supposed to face the Undertaker at King of the Ring 97 and not Farooq? Then the famous Ahmed injury bug reared it's ugly head didn't it?

This is all very interesting. Shows what I get for not being online over the weekend. Damn you life!

Wait, this board may be closing? Que? Where have I been?

The Austin/Bret street fight RAW has to be one of my favorite RAWs ever. I wish I could have a copy of it to watch over and over again.

Those are the two main reasons I've lost interest in the NBA at the moment (the Lakers and Cavs dominance) combined with the Celtics downswing.

So as I documented earlier in the "comments that don't warrant a thread" thread I just got done with a long long bout with Lost Odyssey where I got to the end, realized I was bored to tears and just playing to complete the game, and quit. BAM. 6 months I could've been playing games gone. So I have a lot of catching up to do. I've been messing around with the Smash Bro's Brawl story mode, but now I'm ready for some serious gaming. But, I don't know what to play next. So here's my X-Box 360 "que": -Gears of War 2 -Prince of Persia -Fable 2 -GTA 4 -RE 5 -Street Fighter 4 -Halo Wars -Fallout 3 What should I play next? Should I get the quickest to complete out of the way? OR just go for the best and the most fun right out of the gate? What should I play next?

I remember to start the year everyone said UNC was the best team and would almost certainly win the title. But, they had some injuries and lost a few and they were no longer a sexy pick. Now tournament time has rolled around and everyone is healthy. So we're back with the team we all thought would be the best at the beginning. I'm willing to bet they do win it all.

Well I knew OU would screw it up at some point. I didn't think they'd actually make it this far.

Yeah I got the RAW 15th Anniversary DVD. When Vader kills Gorilla Monsoon they looked like they were in a bigger version of the Manhattan Center. -Didn't they get to the point where they were filming 4 RAWs at a time? How did marks not become smart when they would say "Next week this match will happen!" or "He'll return in 2 weeks!" and suddenly he's back in two hours or the match is happening in an hour? -I was thrown off by how long the Manhattan Center tapings went on because of the fact that some of those places look like it. But, I noticed that after they moved out of the Manhattan Center they went to some really small arenas, then in 96 they moved into some even smaller "warehouse" arenas. -When did RAW become 2 hours? 97? Because I always wondered why we never got a RAW in OKC until 97. I used to think it was because the Cox Center, which holds 12,000, was too small (the Ford Center which I believe holds close to 20 wasn't built yet, and it hosted a PPV in 05 or 06) but now I realize that it was too big for RAW! They'd have had to have done RAW at the Lloyd Noble Center where OU plays basketball! That'd be more there size for the time. -But seriously, where did they dig up some of these tiny arenas? I mean what are these places used for? They seem too small to even run a college basketball game in, and you know they damn sure weren't used for any pro sports. -They seemed to run in small arenas back then for In Your House. I mean some of the arenas they run RAW in these days are bigger than the arenas they used for PPVs back then aren't they?

He looks like Freddy Krueger with a metal mask.

See maybe I'm weird. 98 was fun and kept me interested. But, after 96(where i was still a hardcore mark, but could tell some of the stuff i was watching was crappy) I think 97 is what really got me going strong. Something about the Hart Foundation/Everyone Else feud just grabbed me.

Well I for one always liked decent length title runs. That ended during the Russo era as did real long TV matches. During 2000 it felt like titles meant more again and it felt like matches on TV were getting longer. It felt like some of the damage Russo had done was being repaired. Then when the Invasion started there were 100 different titles and it felt like they all got passed around like a doobie at a Led Zeppelin concert. And TV matches just got shorter and shorter. And there seemed to be less and less quality angles and things felt slapped together. Then came 2002 post-Invasion and I felt like everything was slapped together and nothing ever had any real build to it. That's when my love started to die before it was killed in 04. Yeah there were shorter matches and title merry-go-round during the Russo era but they did have a lot of the shock TV and shock value to keep people interested. The Invasion and post-Invasion really didn't have any of that for me. Has any of this been repaired in the 5 years since I've watched? I know they have longer TV matches now, but titles still seem to be hotshotted and mean nothing in the long run. A lot of matches and angles still feel slapped together. Like I said. I was a fan for so long that I keep going "What have I missed out on?" And I consider buying PPV DVDs and getting back into it but what I see from the main event level (it's hard to study the midcard after the fact for some reason) scares me away. They need a star or angle that's going to take jaded fans and drag them back in and not scare them off. I feel an angle like that will also bring in new fans as well and recreate the boom.

Well here's the thing. Is wrestling right now creating new fans or are old ones still hanging on? Like ratings and buyrates drop as the old hanger-ons drop off. Or are a lot of those people gone and new fans come and go too quickly? You gotta think they aren't making a ton of new fans. I know I quit watching around June 2004. I don't know why, I just got tired of the same old same old and quit. I have tried to come back and catch up on what I missed every year or so and then I just don't like what I'm watching and I quit again. Like right now I'm getting hardcore into the DVDs and trying to figure out everything I've missed since June 2004, but the more I'm finding out the more I'm not liking. I still like older stuff, but I really started disliking it in 2002 but just stayed on out of habit until 2004. And what has happened over the past 5 years since I stopped watching doesn't exactly grab me nor does what's happening right now. That brings me to another point. Did I finally grow out of wrestling? Are the angles that happened between 2002-2009 really so much different than what happened in the 17 years previous that I watched? Is it really so much different at it's core? Or did I grow out of it? How many fans are growing out of it? And if the thing is that I grew out of it and many other fans have, then is it possible for WWE to grow us back into it? Or do they need to keep going after new fans as much as possible?