The Tino Standard

Jericho normally breaks out new tights for WrestleMania. Unfortunately, WM is also where HHH first broke out the lavender tights, so God only knows what he comes up with this year.

That's the difference between the traditional WWF formula and what the WWE does today. The WWF had its best runs with face champions (with Hogan and Austin being the most obvious examples), whereas now they've got this idea that all the faces chasing a heel champion draws better (completely ignoring what got them to the top of the industry in the first place). If the mid/late 80s WWF roster was around today, Piper and DiBiase would both enjoy long world title reigns.

Smart and classy move to stop the taping of the show after that injury. You'd think something like that would be automatic, but history has proven otherwise.

So let me get this straight... They are going to change the main event of their most-hyped show ever to give them flexability in booking HOUSE SHOWS for a couple months afterwards? Don't get me wrong, I recognize that the three-way match is the way they're going, but as for this being the reason: BULLSHIT.

I don't like the precedent this sets. NFL doesn't like one of ESPN's shows, so they make ESPN cancel it? That's bullshit. What's next? The NFL takes a liking to a younger, more edgy SportsCenter anchor and tells ESPN that if that if they don't fire Chris Berman and that the young guy isn't the new host of NFL PrimeTime, then they're taking their business elsewhere? Where do you draw the line? The tail is wagging the dog here.

I highly doubt the NCAAs are the reason for the break because of two things: 1. The NCAAs run Thursday-Sunday of three straight weeks, leaving Tuesdays wide open. 2. The NCAAs are on CBS, not Fox. Having said that, I have no idea what they have planned in 24's place instead.

If I believed the WWE could get their wrestlers to incorporate some actual psychology into their matches, I'd be all for it. They keep spewing rhetoric about making each move "mean more," but really, they're not doing anything with that besides making everybody use chinlocks, armbars, bearhugs and sleepers for 90 percent of the match. Finding good psychology in a WWE match these days is as difficult as it gets. It would be nice if all the wearing down of a body part actually led to something in the finish... The angle with Jericho's injured knee on Monday was a good example... What drives me nuts is a situation like that tag match a few weeks ago where the heels spent the whole match wearing down RVD's arm/shoulder. Why? What is the point? It didn't build to the heels' finisher and it didn't take away anything from RVD's offense. Just senseless wastes of time. I can get on board with mat work, even in the cruiserweights, but if somebody doesn't give the talent roster a lesson in psychology in a real hurry, then this is going to get to be brutal to watch.

Wasn't this the same match people were pissing on for being nothing but Punch/Kick/Bleed/Lie around for 2 minutes/rinse/repeat? This sounds more like someone pushing an agenda than someone reporting actual news.

This is another one of the pet peeves I have right now... When did it become sacred law that heel champs draw better? When has the WWE ever had a hot run with a heel champion? The only thing I can thing I can think of would be HHH in 2000, but even there, he was trading the title back and forth with The Rock. Look, NWA historically ran with a heel champion (Flair), while WWE's best runs came with face champions (Hogan and Austin)... So, considering how things turned out for each of those companies, why exactly is it a good idea to have a heel champion again?

I'm so sick and tired of people trying to sound smart with this idiotic "less is more/save high spots so that they'll mean more" argument. Here's the way I look at it: If a guy waits until 20 minutes into a match to bust out a big move and it is so effective, then I'm sitting there saying 'Why did you waste the first 20 minutes doing a chinlock?' That's the inherent problem. They keep saying "slow it down, slow it down..." but in doing so, you are just getting a bunch of restholds that don't really do anything. This is why Randy Orton sucks right now, for example. His whole offense consists of chinlocks and armbars. But what do these moves lead to? Do they in any way factor into the finish? Nope. Basically, you have 15-20 minutes wasted with restholds only to get the same WWE-style finish. Screw that. I want action. ESPECIALLY from cruiserweights.

A well-endowed blonde in Playboy? Well that narrows it down.

Must be nice to be HBK... Don't have any opponent for Mania, so you just get thrown into the main event instead. Wow, rough life.

The Anvil shaved his goatee? Is NOTHING sacred anymore?!

Absolutely, I'm crapping on him for that. He knew full well what time constraints he was going to have to work with in that match (and really, 22-25 minutes is NOT that short of a match), yet still chose to move at the speed of molasses. It's his own damn fault. Much more has been done in a match with much less time.

Well, now that would seem to fly directly in the face of the 'news' reported in the original post.

Considering no other match on the undercard got more than like 8 minutes (including the WWE title match, which went 6:30), they've got a lot of balls for saying 20+ minutes wasn't enough time to work with. Maybe if they shook the cement blocks off and picked up the pace, they could've made better use of their time. WWE style = Slow and Boring.

Nice to hear that he's feeling better and all, but studying tapes of English and Japanese stuff? Why? That's not the "WWE style."

Brad's drunken jail message sounds just like the one my roommate left during my freshman year. Ahh, good times...

If Benoit were to somehow win and retain the Raw title after Backlash, I don't think that would get him out of the clear of having to still deal with HHH. Keep in mind, Goldberg destroyed HHH at Summerslam, but didn't win the title. So then he beat him cleanly at both Unforgiven AND Survivor Series (which was basically back-to-back PPVs, since No Mercy was a SD event). Despite this, You-Know-Whhho won the title back in December. Here's one for you to consider: Outside of his little month-long feud with Michaels (go figure) that culminated at SummerSlam 02 and , HHH has not been in an angle that didn't involve a world title since his quad injury in May 01. (I realize his No. 1 contender match in Feb. 02 wasn't a title match, but for the purposes of this argument, I'm going to say that is tangentially related because it was a small piece of his "Road to WM" storyline in early 02).

I had a hard time hearing the crowd because I was in a bar, but it looked like they cheered for Lesnar beating Holly and F-5'ing Goldberg.

Bingo.

This becomes a point of conversation every year, so let me once again try to set the record straight: No matter what they tell you the set intervals are, the timing between entries is never the same throughout a Rumble. What happened last year has happened every year. They book the Rumble sequence to sequence, like a series of mini-matches. When a sequence finishes, they bring the new guy in. They try to time them up the same (right around the "official interval" time), but some run short and some run long. And one more point about last year: They originally planned on going with 2-minute intervals, but because the undercard ran long, they had to cut it down to 90 seconds. IIRC, Fink wasn't informed, and thus, he still said 2 minutes, while JR was covering by explaining the late change.

One of the problems with the Coach (I'm shooting fish in a barrel here) is that they are grooming him to be a play-by-play guy, but he's also a heel. Any good announce team I can remember always had a "play-it-fair" face-type of play-by-play, while the color commentator was the heel that stirred the pot. I just don't think it works the other way around. And to make matters worse, it's not even like he's a GOOD heel play-by-play guy. I mean, if he could just come in and be like "That's a northern lights suplex... You know, JR, a WRESTLING MOVE that is actually going on in the ring right now," then I think he'd gain a lot more acceptance.

Bring the violence, baby! That episode ruled, though I have no idea how Chase wouldn't be dead or at least passed out from pain after all he endured. Good lord, that was nasty.

Isn't the heart punch outlawed in 38 states?