The Tino Standard

"Remind me never to get on your bad side, Lloyd." "Ari Gold, you never could." Fantastic exchange.

When you have the top two faces squaring off in the main event for both brands, eight top mid- to upper-midcard wrestlers tied up in one match (MITB) and arguably your No. 1 wrestler in terms of mainstream recognition (HHH, by way of longevity more than anything else), that doesn't exactly leave much in the cupboard to put together a solid undercard, so in that regard, they're not doing too bad in putting this together. Predictions- - Benoit over MVP - Khali over Kane - Melina over Ashley - New Breed over ECW Originals - Edge wins the MITB - Lashley over Uuuuuuumaga - Cena over Michaels - Batista over Undertaker

Good theme for that WM, especially with the show being in Anaheim and all, but it was also pretty much a straight rip-off of "California Love" by Tupac. "Superstar" for WM18 (even if Saliva's lead singer whiffed on getting the crowd fired up by screaming "Wrestlemania! Get your ass off your shoulders!" as they were playing at the event) was a fitting song for WM. "Always" for SurSer 02 was pretty good too. "Control" by Puddle of Mudd (a band I don't really particularly like) was fitting for the "Winner Takes All" main event on the show. And while everybody remembers Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" from last year's WM, the "Big Time" by Soundtrack of our Lives the year before was better than it was ever given credit for.

I'm not sure I've ever heard the phrase "fugly ass" on broadcast TV before, and I don't think I ever will again.

As for not having another WM in Vegas because they "don't have a football stadium like Orlando does," what was the stadium like that the XFL team there played in? And the way they got around having a PPV in England (SummerSlam 92) was to tape it and air it on a delay. Even in the pre-Internet days, results leaked pretty quickly with the 900-number hotlines, so I don't really think they'd do that again.

They've got a year to work out the logistics, so I'm going to guess that they'll have a plan in place. Probably a big pavilion over the ring similar to what they had at Cesar's Palace for WM9, only a lot bigger. As long as the ring and ringside area are dry, they'll be fine. Trust me, if fans at the Super Bowl can sit through the rain for 4 hours, fans at WM can handle it.

That's pretty cool. Kinda funny that the Observer website had a blurb saying "as we've been reporting for months, WWE is going to announce today that it is holding WM24 at the Amway Arena in Orlando." Oops.

It was shocking because Jack had to put a bullet through his boss' head, point blank. Jack has been in a million do-or-die situations and has always found a way to escape the worst possible scenario, so for him to finally just pull the trigger and blow his boss' brains out in a parking lot was pretty jarring.

Steiner screwed himself in WWE with his Rumble match against Triple H. That was just god-awful. It was like everybody collectively realized "all style, no substance" at once with him.

According to TV.com, there's an episode set for April 30 ("May the Best Man Win") with the following preview: "Barney thinks Bob Barker is his father." Barney and Bob Barker? LEGEN- Wait for it.... -DARY!

Want to shave your head because you don't like the direction your hairline is heading? Fine. But if you're going to make that drastic of a change in the appearance of a main character on a TV show, you can't just have your characters act like it didn't happen. Even a snarky line from Turk about Cox wanting to look like him woulda been better than nothing.

If Aaron Pierce turns heel, you will have a TON of pissed off 24 fans.

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I'd like to see Rey-Umaga at WM. Mysterio is a hell of a lot more fun to watch than Bobby Lashley, and he can bump around like a pinball for Umaga's offense.

*WHACK!* "That's two." That was awesome! (And by the way, the Continuity Police called me to point out that in this week's flashback sequence, Lily had red hair. Just saying.)

Try it again. You may be surprised (and possibly horrified).

What the hell? TV.com has a little more in its preview:

In regards to Marshall and Lily, she made an appearance at the very end of the season premiere, but they weren't back together for at least another 3 or 4 episodes. The actual NYC marathon is November, so it's possible that's when it was on the show, but I thought Marshall started training months before (because if unless you're Barney, you can't just show up on race day and complete it), which is why I thought this traced back to last spring (and I thought they had on there at one point that this started in April '06). The only episodes last April were "Nothing Good Happens After 2 AM" and "Mary The Paralegal", the latter of which was the height of Ted and Robin being at odds with each other. I guess you'd have to assume Monday night's episode took place before "2 AM", but Robin still had the whole "jealous of Victoria" thing going, so saying they'd just be hanging out together no problem seems like a stretch. I dunno. Anyway, on the bright side, according to TV.com, they're running new episodes for the next three weeks. After all the repeats the last couple months, that's a plus.

Am I the only one really annoyed by tonight's episode? They're normally fairly good with continuity, but this was a debacle. They retrace their steps back to last year. Ted and Robin were going out to dinner and acting like they were a couple then. If you go back to last April, this was the time of the Ted-Victoria story arc, and it culminated with those two breaking up and Robin throwing Ted out of her house. So when the hell would tonight's story have fit in there? It's like they completely forgot that even happened. Not even a casual mention of it. Not to mention the fact that Lily's hair was bright red last year and dark this year (and outside of the differences in appearance from the pilot, they've been really good about this stuff), yet the scenes from "last year" have her with the dark hair. Just really disappointing all the way around.

Watch his mannerisms, his voice inflection, the way he carries himself around the kids and the way he treats them. It's a lot like the early Mr. McMahon character in the late 90s before he became the cartoon character he is today.

I know plans change over time, but word came out as early as late October/early November that the plan was for Batista to go over Undertaker in a "title vs. streak" match. Try to talk yourself out of it as much as you want, but everything that has happened since then would seem to indicate things are playing out as they were planned back then, and considering the Undertaker is still a part-timer at best, I just don't see the company putting a belt on him. That said, I'd love to be wrong.

And for the record, combining the two championships, Angle has 380 days total. Michaels gets a slight bump up to 424.

Cena has been champion longer than Austin was? I just threw up in my mouth. By the way, if you include World Heavyweight Championship reigns, Triple H would be seventh all-time at 539 days. Considering he's had 10 title reigns, that's a pretty modest amount of time. And no way in hell would I have thought Cena has held the belt longer than him. EDIT: My mistake. I interpreted the Wikipedia title reign list incorrectly. Triple H held the WH title for a total of 616 days, bringing his total days of holding world titles to 875 (fifth all-time). That seems more accurate.

When it became apparent that Jericho was out the door of WCW at the first opportunity he got, they started jobbing him left and right, and it certainly didn't hurt him one bit before coming to WWE. He had one of the most successful debuts of anybody I can ever remember. If people know WHY you're jobbing all the time (i.e., you're leaving the company), nobody takes those losses seriously.

I thought they're taping ECW before Smackdown, then airing it on a delay?

This is beyond awful. I haven't watched ECW in months, and now I remember why.