Aero

What exactly was the plan for Ultimate Warrior in WCW in 1998? I think I read his final appearance was on the Nitro following Halloween Havoc, so it seems like his feud with Hogan was supposed to continue. What were the circumstances behind his leaving the company? It's easy to assume it was money-related, I suppose.

Considering the WWF was on such a roll with good PPVs in 2000, it was pretty shocking to have KOTR 2000 turn out as bad as it did. Sure, there was some crap in there (main event and evening gown match), but that tournament could've been great. You have Eddie, Benoit, Angle/Jericho in it, and only one of them makes it to the second round? They should have just had Jericho advance to the finals to face Angle because there would have actually been a good amount of suspense. 1. How much of the tournament should be shown on the PPV? Quarterfinals on? Semi-finals on? I prefer quarterfinals on PPV, but the problem is that WWE usually sucks at putting together full, one night tournaments. 1993 and 1994 were both good enough, but 1995, 2000, and 1999 were awful. When someone wins the tournament from just the semi-finals onward, it's simply not as "arduous" as winning three matches in one night. 2. Since the last KOTR PPV in 2002, do you think the WWE has been better at building young superstars? Worse? I'd say better, if only because I don't think the KOTR really built too many guys. I'd say it had a major hand in building Owen (although one could argue he was already set after his WM win), Austin, and maybe Edge, but that's about it. It made Austin by giving him his catchphrase and pushing him to the next level. Edge finally became a singles star shortly following his win, although I think he could've done fine without it. While it helped Mabel get to the main event scene for a while, he wasn't even around for an entire year following his win. In fact, his win only really amounted to a failed push and a feud with Taker. To me, HHH didn't really do much with the win either. He was already in the upper mid-card as far as I was concerned. Brock was going to be pushed anyway, so the tournament really seemed like an afterthought for him other than getting him a title shot at Summerslam, which could've been done in a different fashion. 3. If Steve Austin hadn't won the '96 King of The Ring, how would it have effected his career? What if Triple H hadn't won in '97? It's tough to say, but I think he would've been about the same, minus his catchphrase. I don't think the WWF would've given up on him. He hardly had any feuds before Bret Hart anyway, so I think there's a good chance he would've gotten the Bret feud anyway. He already had the Stone Cold character down before KOTR. I assume the HHH part is a 'What if he won in 1996?' He definitely would've probably gotten the IC Title quicker, but I don't think his win would've amounted to a main event run much quicker. 4. What are some of your favorite King of The Ring memories? Bret vs. Perfect, King Mabel getting pelted with garbage, Austin's coronation, HBK vs. Austin, Mankind being thrown off the cage, Steve Blackman ALMOST main eventing in 1999, Shane going through the KOTR glass. 5. Least favorite? The entire 1995 PPV (minus garbage pelting), Art Donovan, most of the 1999 and 2000 PPVs, the Taker-DDP brawl, and a HORRIBLE Taker-HHH match.

I have to say, La Parka being revealed as DDP was a surprise to me. And I don't care what anyone else says... DDP is awesome.

Not to say that today's episodes are horrible, because I still enjoy the show, but the earlier episodes are so much better. This current season and last season just has too much goofiness, mainly from JD.

BREAKING NEWS WWE bans ringside photographers. Discuss. Next poster: "That sucks." Now it didn't happen exactly like that, but you get the idea.

Originally, I didn't completely hate the concept. I actually liked Taker and HHH around this time, so I was thrilled to see them on the same team. However, the only other people in the stable that were worth anything were the Acolytes... and maybe Boss Man. I mean seriously: Viscera? Mideon? I thought it was plausible, I guess, that Shane's Corporation and the Ministry could've joined together. Once Vince revealed himself as the Greater Power, though, the last few months immediately seemed like a complete waste, and even as a mark in 1999, I thought it was pretty absurd.

Watching the Taker-Kane build now, it's all just as stupid as any of the other soap opera type stuff they were going for in late 2002 (Taker cheating on his wife, Katie Vick... although not quite on the same level). Back in 1997, I was a huge Taker mark, so I didn't think too much about the stupidity of the story. In fact, one of the reasons I ended up ordering Canadian Stampede was because I thought Kane would show up. When he finally did debut, I already knew that they would hold off the Taker-Kane match until Wrestlemania, so I was counting down the days. A Jeremy Borash sign in the front row in 1997? I had almost forgot totally forgot about Cornette randomly bringing in the Samoan SWAT Team. Did they ever appear on Raw again? I looked through some of the results within the next few weeks on Cawthon's site and didn't see any mention. They looked pretty bad here, so I'm assuming they might have been sent back to development.

He is? I think his conduct at Nancy Sullivan's funeral would disagree with you. What's happened?

For the first few weeks of build, I really had no interest in the feud. I sort of got into by the end, but that was pretty much because full-blown heel HBK was so refreshing to watch. Considering Hogan wasn't an active roster member at this point, I figured he wouldn't be coming back just to lose. The match itself was much better than I was expecting, goofy selling aside. Regarding the effect the match had on their legacies, I'd say very little, if anything. For Hogan, it'll just be remembered as one of those matches that Hogan came back to work for the sake of getting a payday. For HBK, it'll just be a reminder of how much he can get the crowd to hate him at times. Am I remembering correctly that Hogan didn't appear on WWE TV after the initial superkick? Wasn't he also upset that HBK called him bald, or is that something else I'm thinking of?

While I agree that the build to a good portion of the matches hasn't been great, most of the matches do have a lot of potential. Matches I'm looking forward to most: 1. HBK vs. Flair: I was already excited for it just being (likely) Flair's final match, but the developments from Monday have me really hyped. HBK almost never has a bad WM match these days. 2. Show vs. Mayweather: It actually happened today when two non-wrestling fan friends actually started talking about this. Minus the one week where Mayweather did his live interview weeks ago ("Go get the jet"), I've enjoyed the build. I assume Show doesn't have a shot at winning, but I'm really curious to see how this turns out. 3. Finlay vs. JBL: The story behind the match sucks, but the last few weeks' build makes it seem like Finlay wants to kill JBL. Finlay had a pretty good brawl with Kane on TV in the summer, so I think this could be great. The only match I really have no interest in is Bunnymania. Haven't missed a WM since 1997, so there's no reason to start now.

Pretty big news regarding Season 4. This is a pretty big spoiler, but if you follow any Prison Break news anywhere else, you're probably bound to find out before the next season starts. From IGN:

It really seems like there's motivation behind the WWE Folder project this time. Dare I say it... it might actually work this time? It really is refreshing to see a number of new topics, though. So far, all the changes on the entire board really are great.

Federation Era: WM VIII. WM VII is a VERY close second, but rewatching VIII last week, just don't think so. VIII gets rid of a good amount of filler and has two classics: Bret-Piper and Flair-Savage. VII only has Warrior-Savage... not to say there isn't any other good stuff, but that's the one match that I would call classic. Besides that, VIII just has a unique feel, if that makes sense. And the commentary rocks. Attitude: X7 As if there was any doubt. After that I'd probably say XIV, if you consider it Attitude. Rewatching XIV yesterday, it's a really solid show. Nothing spectacular, but nothing actively bad. I seriously can't tell you how psyched I was for Taker-Kane back then. Current Era: XX It's tainted, but watching it back in 2004 was just amazing. It can stand to lose both 4-way tags (sorry RVD & Book...) and the Cruiser match should have been just Rey vs. Chavo, but it's still a great show. Runner-up is 21. The only disappointment I had for that was Cena-JBL. Pretty original answers...

I think Hanso is the head guy at the Dharma deal. And yeah, no new eps till April, and then they're getting stupid putting the show back at 10pm 10 PM works great for me. That means I won't have to choose between Lost and The Office.

Is London still injured? I don't see him on the face side. Otherwise, it looks like no Stevie Richards or Colin Delaney (which makes sense, I suppose, since he didn't win his "contract" last week.)

I think I read that tonight's supposed to be Flair's last big in-ring promo, so I'll be looking forward to that. Could be something really memorable.

Not a whole lot more needs to be said about how bad the card is. I don't mind watching it, though, because the atmosphere is just awesome. One thing that always bothered me about the Bret-Yoko match was the finish. Bret simply had salt thrown in his eyes, and Yoko just crawls over and pins him like that? He couldn't have dropped a leg after the salt? Still, you have to love the USA chants during the match, as well as Hogan saying that he predicts the title will stay in the USA! (referring to a Bret win, of course, not himself)

Of course he's past his prime, but I still find him to be more entertaining than most of the guys on the roster. Of course, HBK is among the group of wrestlers that usually get the TV time to have good matches. It's a shame that he apparently doesn't want to play heel any time in the future. He's so much more entertaining. I was begging for it last year before WM against Cena. And sure, it was done in 1997, but I'd love a heel HBK vs. champion Undertaker feud.

I don't know about anyone else, but ending Flair's career really means nothing to me. The last time Flair really mattered was in 2005 when he was feuding with HHH. Ever since then, he's just floated around the mid-card with little feuds with Carlito, MVP, and Kennedy (not that that's a problem) or been Rated RKO's bitch. Most people seem to agree that he should have retired years and years ago, anyway. The way I view this whole retirement angle is that it's nothing more than a "Thank you" from WWE. They're not doing anything to embarrass him on his way out, and they're giving him that last big match with one of his best friends in the company, on the biggest show of the year in front of a huge crowd. The difference between getting the rub from ending Taker's streak and retiring Flair is that they've been building Taker's streak since about 2001. Each year, the streak is "in trouble". Yeah, there definitely would be some rub to get from retiring Flair, but it just doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal when so many guys over the years have beaten Flair in a regular match over the years (Kenny, Rico, Carlito, etc).

Any PPV that I don't have on tape is recorded. That includes a small list of WWF shows and almost every WCW show outside of some 1997-1998 shows. Rather than buy the DVD, I usually end up recording the newer WWE PPVs here if I didn't order it. It's a mixture of VHS and DVD recording. Because the Raws from 1997 were pretty much my favorite period of the WWF, I've been recording every Raw. While I don't see myself watching it all over and over again, I'm sure I'll want to watch some of the major stuff later on. If I don't record it all, I'm sure I'll end up regretting it some day, so I figure why not if I have the extra VHS tapes around?

Is it official that it was Desmond not pushing the button that crashed the plane? It seems logical enough, but I don't remember it being fact. Does Widmore factor into the crash at all? I was under the impression that he only found the island at the same time Penny did at the end of Season 2 when Desmond hit the failsafe, but it seems that he planted the fake wreckage beforehand.

I was originally thinking that he was going to see Jack to convince him to do the surgery, but Ben doesn't seem stupid enough to fall into one of Danielle's traps. If he did get trapped on purpose, then Ben showed no hints of any specific plan. I remember Paulo was hiding in the Pearl's bathroom when he overheard Ben & Juliette talking about convincing Jack to do the surgery, and the gist of the conversation was Ben saying he can make Jack do it himself by exploiting whatever he's emotionally invested in. That plan didn't seem to go into action until they captured Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, though. So yeah, I'm still waiting for some answers on Ben's first appearance.

Since season 3. I suspected it when he told Kate that she's not his type.

Man, remember when London & Kendrick mattered? Those were the days...

First PPV live on TV was Wrestlemania 13. I was a fan since the early 90's, but never had PPV capabilities until 1997. At the time I thought this was an amazing show. I still don't hate it as much as everyone else does, but yeah, obviously it isn't as good anymore. First PPV in person was Summerslam 97.