King Kamala

Yes! Finally Rap is Crap on DVD! I'm also happy that they got the Terry Taylor/Curt Hennig match from WrestleFest on there. That match has never been televised in any form IIRC and supposidely stole the show. I'd like a couple more matches and putting Shawn Michaels/Mr. Perfect on there is a slight headscratcher but otherwise, it's a perfectly fine match selection.

It's available to watch instantly. At least it was a year or two ago when I first watched it. I think you'd really dig it.

Milky, have you seen Across 110th Street? It's on par with Shaft in terms of great blaxploitation movies, I personally like it a little better. Just a really well made film. It's easily the most violent and least glamourous of the genre. An incredibly bleak and depressing movie. Though it's lumped in with the genre, I'm not sure if it's really blaxploitation persay. It had a then popular white actor, Anthony Quinn co-starring . I think of it more as a good crime drama with a predominantly black cast. Good semi-recent review of the film with spoilers

Oooh I love me some surveys. I went more with the definitive matches route instead of the matches that aren't yet on DVD route. Nothing wrong with either method though really/ For the record I picked 70s-80s Pat Patterson Vs Ted DiBiase (for historical purposes, it'd be good to have the first IC champion in action on the DVD. Incidentally, Ted DiBiase was the first holder of the shortlived IC title predecessor, The WWF North American Title.) Jimmy Snuka Vs Don Muraco (one of the most iconic matches in WWF history) Randy Savage Vs Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat (see above) 90s Bret Hart Vs "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith (Easily one of the best matches in WWF history. And the first and almost definitely last and only time that the Intercontinental title main evented a major PPV) Razor Ramon Vs Shawn Michaels (again- another iconic match) Steve Austin Vs The Rock (I don't remember this match being particularly great or anything but it's two of the biggest icons in the sport in one of their first matches against each other) '00s Kurt Angle Vs Chris Jericho (For a while in early '00, it seemed like the IC title division was on the up and up. This match is a great example from that period) Randy Orton Vs Rob Van Dam (Again- two more future World Champions showcased battling for the IC title) Ric Flair Vs Triple H (I've always dug this match and once again two more main eventers to stick on there to sell more DVDs)

I thought of Jericho for the weasley, meddling heel(really there's no other choice) right after I typed that spiel but I didn't feel liked editing it. And I don't usually like the World Champ being 2nd banana but I think this case would be an exception.

Now that I've watched the angle on Daily Motion, it's time for Fantasy Booker With King Kamala Classic. I'd book CM Punk ala Bret Hart during his first title run. They've already done the first part well (A well respected mid carder out of nowhere defeats the arrogant heel champion while he's off his game).I'd have Punk declare himself "a fighting champion" and defend the belt weekly against mid-card guys who don't typically get World title shots, building up momentum for a showdown at a big PPV with an unstoppable, established main event heel. Personally, I'd go with Batista. Batista got screwed out of the title last night and effectively did most of Punk's work for him tonight. That jealousy could drive Batista mad and perhaps a weasley, meddling heel could convince Batista that The World title is rightfully his. Anyways, dorky fantasy booking rant over.

I picked the wrong night to miss RAW UGH!

The Maestro was an odd case for certain. He was signed to WCW back in '98/early '99 as Gorgeous George III (He claims he was the original's Great Nephew) and sat on the shelf for months. Then they signed Mach's girlfriend, Gorgeous George in the Summer of '99 so they had to retool him to clear up any confusion and thus the Maestro was born. And the rest is...(non)history. I think The Maestro actually first showed up either during the tail end of the lame duck run between Bischoff and Russo or during Russo's run. Nevertheless, he was around during the Sullivan era. I may be remembering this wrong but the weird thing about him was he would show up on Nitro and do his extravagant entrance and whatnot and the announcers would hype the shit out of him and then he wouldn't show up for a couple of weeks and they'd do the same thing. His appearances seemed really scattered. Maybe WCW couldn't afford to rent a grand piano every week at that point? The Maestro was a character straight out of mid 90s WWF. Ooh, an evil symphony conductor! That's going to pack 'em in!

Hurt his career may have been a bit of an overstatement. It's given him a ton of screentime and one of the biggest pushes he's had in The States and Finlay deserves it. Like I said in The NOTC roundtable, at this point in his career Finlay shouldn't be doing the superstiff brawls that put him on the map all time. At the same time, it has the same effect on his career that "The King" gimmick had on Harley Race and the yellow polka dots on Dusty Rhodes. Yeah, sure they made a lot of money. Perhaps the most money they've made in their careers but it's an odd and slightly embarrassing coda to a career. I have a feeling there'll be a whole generation of fans who will remember Finlay as Hornswoggle's big buddy rather than a kickass brawler.

Three Count's title run with The WCW Hardcore title was during the tail end of Sullivan's run. And yes, The WCW Hardcore title was absolutely terrible. A top contender for Worst Title Ever. Sure, it got Norman Smiley on TV on a regular basis (I've always dug the guy, an underrated talent) but it also gave Brian Knobbs a singles push. There's no reason Brian Knobbs should have been getting anything resembling a push in '00. And I don't want to place all the blame on Kevin Sullivan. Heck, I don't think I can even place the majority of the blame on him. I just couldn't think of a better title for the thread. Maybe "Let's Talk About...The First Three Months of WCW in '00". Anyways, whoever said he was given absolutely dire circumstances to work under is absolutely right. At the same time saying he did well under those circumstances is absurd because almost nothing went well during his run with the book in '00. And bookers have done better with worse situations. I think it was one of those situations where almost everybody had some small share of the blame. But the most blame has to be put on the general apathy of the workers and writing staff. Everything just seemed tired during that period.

Let's refresh our memories on some of the suck, shall we? Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarrett Vs Sid and Hulk Hogan (Nitro 3-20-00) Big Poppa Pump shoots on Ric Flair Tank Abbott Vs Big Al (SuperBrawl X) Sting Vs The Total Package Lumberjack match (Uncensored 2000) Hulk Hogan Vs The Wall (Nitro 3-27-00)

Alright, I was afraid I would derail the Thunder thread in the 24/7 folder so I thought I'd take the discussion here. The first three months of WCW in early '00 produced the worst television in the company's history. IMHO, it's beyond argument. Yeah, both of Russo's reigns with the book in WCW were awful. But at least, they failed on a grand scale and it produced interesting television (notice the emphasis on interesting. Not good, interesting). We can all agree The Summer of '99 was also terrible but at least you had some good tag team action with Benoit and Saturn facing off against The Triad and some decent cruiserweight matches here and there on Thunder or Saturday Night. Early '00 had virtually nothing. Most of the roster (especially the younger guys like Booker T and Kidman) seemed to be almost depressed and kind of half assing it after The Radicals left for the WWF. Anyways instead of writing paragraph after paragraph, I'm just going to do the "Good", "The Bad, and "The Ugly" ala everybody's favorite WCW recap site DDT Digest Good (Mind you good is an overstatement for most of these) Vampiro/ The Brothers In Paint. Vampiro is the one guy who really seemed to step it up during this time period. Before, he was mostly a lackey to second rate musicians with squared circle aspirations but he emerged as a solid upper mid-carder during this period. I also enjoyed his short-lived Brothers In Pain team with Sting. Yeah, you could tell WCW was kind of trying to ripoff The Brothers of Destruction but I thought it sort of worked and I've always been a fan of old mentor-new hot shot type tag teams. They should have slow burned the team's rise and fall but IIRC, Russo broke them up on his first show back. Team Package. Call me nuts but I kind of liked this combo. Luger and Flair went pretty well together. I may lose my smark card but I liked Luger during this period. It vaguely reminded me of The Narcissist and anything that ushers back memories of The Narcissist is good in my book. Three Count. It's funny reading recaps of shows back then now. A lot of people thought they were WrestleCrap worthy back then but I think time has proved them to be a really good undercard pretty boy heel stable. Los Fabulosos. El Dandy offering to excite Stacy Keibler's groin and the Power Rangers outfits they wore were and I suspect still are high comedy. WCW Saturday Night. I've heralded my love for latter Saturday Night on TSM many a times. But really at this point, WCW Saturday Night was its own separate entity with its own storylines, separated from the other shows. The Bad Tank Abbott. 'Nuff said. The only time he was tolerable was when he was the muscle for Three Count and that was after the era we're talking about. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Iaukea. Another attempt at making Prince Iaukea the next 2nd generation superstar. Yet again, no one cared. This gimmick was especially ridiculous since it was right around the exact same time that TAFKAPI showed up, Prince said you could call him by old name again. Booker T and a bloated ass Ahmed Johnson fight over the letter "T". Again 'nuff said. This feud only could have worked if Sesame Street had a promotion. Hulk Hogan. His red and yellow act was incredibly tired at this point. It was way too late for a good, All American babyface to work and a few years to soon for a nostalgia run. It didn't help that Hogan was paired up with Ric Flair. A feud that had been bungled and run into the ground many a times. Speaking of Hogan... YAPPIPI! YAPPIPI! The Wall. I like a good monster heel and they actually built him pretty well but he just flat out sucked. Jeff Jarrett and Sid's feud for the WCW World title. I can't think of a more forgettable World title feud than this one. I watched WCW on a weekly basis at this time and I still can't remember why this feud started. It seemed like Sid was about to feud with Kevin Nash (because THAT ONE set the world on fire the first time) and then all of a sudden, it was Sid Vs Jeff Jarrett. I think both guys can be main eventers given the right opponent but they just didn't mesh at all. The Harris Boys. These guys got runs in all of the Big Three (ECW, WWF, and WCW) and they sucked during all of them. One of my least favorite tag teams of all time. According to wikipedia, they now manage former American Idol contestant Bucky Covington. HUH? The KISS Demon. 'Nuff Said nWo 2000. Who better to carry on the legacy of the nWo than Jeff Jarrett, The Harris Brothers, a catatonic Scott Hall, and an even lazier than usual (and that's quite "the accomplishment) Kevin Nash? Awful awful stable. The Ugly The Dog. Finlay's association with The Dog may have been even worse for his career than his current association with Hornswoggle. The Dog was just a stupid dumb shit gimmick. Wikipedia also tells me that The Dog was a last minute replacement for Sabu. Scott Steiner's return in March '00. Less ugly than outright bizarre. Steiner randomly shooting on Flair and saying that he'd rather be watching Stone Cold on RAW. Audibly yelling "FUCK YOU!" at Hogan during a match on Nitro. Incredibly entertaining but also incredibly stupid.The Old Age Outlaws. What better way to help your company's reputation for pushing old, washed up wrestlers than creating a stable featuring Terry Funk, Arn Anderson, Paul Orndorff and Larry Zbysko to combat your top heel stable? This one may have been at the tail end of Russo's first run though. What are you guyses thoughts on this era? I have a feeling this won't churn up as much discussion as The Russo topics have. Russo WCW was interesting bad, this was just depressing for the most part. I somehow doubt that we'll find an apologist for this era on here. Even the dwindling amount of hardcore WCW fans could admit these shows just flat out sucked. Seriously, watch SuperBrawl X or Uncensored 2000 sometime and try telling me that they are anything remotely good.

Yes, it can be the worst Thunder ever. Sid wrestled three times! And amazingly the next week's episode was just as bad! I know I'm going off on a tangent but Sullivan's reign with the book in early '00 is the worst era in WCW history. It's beyond argument really. Worse than Russo because at least Russo failed in a semi-interesting way.

Yes it is that Thunder. For some godforsaken reason, Sid used that godawful Crossface as a second finisher during that time period. He also beat Tank Abbott and Kevin Nash with it IIRC.

I like some of the second tier Skynrd songs, "That Smell" and "Gimme Back My Bullets" but rednecks can have the rest for all I care.

All this Thunder talk has put me on a quest to find...THE WORST (SOUNDING) EPISODE OF THUNDER. ddtdigest will be my guide... I THINK IF FOUND IT (2-2-00)!!! I actually watched that episode "live" and indeed it was terrible. I remember them hyping The Machine (Emory Hale under a hood) and in one of my first smark moments thinking "Wait a second, they haven't talked about this guy before tonight and all of a sudden they're hyping him? I bet he gets squashed!" And what happened? He got squashed by DDP! Reason #1 for this show sucking: Three Sid matches!

So bps is up with another hour and a half to go before HTQ can make his pick and Steviekick can make his pick anytime, right? Man, weekends absolutely kill these things!

I just watched that match a month or two ago on YouTube! Your assesment of the match is pretty spot on. 'Twas a fun TV match while it lasted though. AWA on ESPN was the show I was forgetting. Yeah, those shows were pretty much as bad as Thunder especially the stuff after Curt Hennig jumped ship. Egads! Incidentally, both had Lee Marshall on color commentary for a time. Easily, the worst announcer in professional wrestling. Worse than latter day Tony Schiavone, worse than Michael Cole. Maybe not worse than the guy who did Heroes of Wrestling but closer than you'd think.

Would it be fair to call Thunder the worst major league wrestling show of all time? It's worse than ECW on TNN which occassionally whipped out matches that were better than what they were doing on PPV. It was worse than C list shows like Shotgun, Jakked, and Worldwide if only because there were higher expectations and it's always fun to watch squash matches and third rate gimmicks (The Gambler FTW). I have a feeling there may be a show worse than Thunder but I'll be damned if I can think of one.

Honestly, I wouldn't totally be surprised if 'Taker went as long as Flair did. Hell, look at all the 80s WWF guys still on the weekend indy circuit and they didn't have a three month vacation every year like 'Taker has.

Was there ever a good episode of Thunder. The best episodes were probably servicable diversions. Even during WCW's relative boom period in '98, Thunder was pretty meh. WCW may have had the talent to put on nine hours of solid wrestling each week in '98 (3 hours of Nitro, 2 hours of Thunder, 2 hours of Saturday Night, 1 hour of Worldwide, and the occassional Pro exclusives) but they sure as hell couldn't.

God dammit cabbage. You and some of the board got to get your head out of '06. OK, he doesn't have Bret/Shawn type wrestling credibility (whatever the fuck that is) but once again, who does? He's a perfectly competent worker, I'd even venture to call him good. He's not a mainstream star but once again who is besides the aforementioned big three? Cena probaly has more mainstream recognition than an Ultimate Warrior or Kevin Nash and just about as much as a Ric Flair or Undertaker or Goldberg. It's completely unreasonable to expect every champion to have every champion be a wrestler the caliber of HBK and Bret Hart and/or a mainstream superstar the caliber of Rock or Hogan. Yeah, his character is annoying and it is stale. But he isn't more annoying than a Randy Orton or a Batista or a tired Triple H or a broken down, should be retired Rey Mysterio Jr. And none of those guys catch half the flak that Cena does. It's incredibly easy to blame him for WWE's current woes but also incredibly ignorant. Who does Cena appeal to? Kids. Who does WWE try to appeal to most and who spends the majority of money on WWE? Kids and their parents (Mostly their parents but you get the jist). Look I'm not saying the serious wrestling fan doesn't have his say in the wrestling world and I think with 24/7 and retro DVDs flying off the shelf, they're being treated much better than they were ten years ago. But that's besides the point. Ugh I'm just rambling right now. I'm going stop. Not worth getting an ulcer over arguing John Cena(!!!) with a stubborn buffoon like Cabbageboy (!!!)

It's all about NetFlix. They have pretty much everything except hardcore porn. It's pretty much down to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video right now in Maine and even some of those are closing. There is one pretty cool independent place downtown but I don't get a chance to go there all that much.

I never truly got the appeal of Shaft despite the fact that I own all three on DVD (Shaft Goes To Africa). There are a few cool scenes in each one and the first one is legit solid movie but they all kind of drag. There isn't nearly enough of the camp and corniness that makes me love blaxploitation. They're basically white detective movies with black people shoehorned in as the leads. And according to Melvin Van Peebles, Shaft was originally going to be with mostly white actors and they just piggybacked on the success of Sweetback and rewrote it to have black actors in the lead. Across 110th Street might be my favorite blaxploitation film but I almost think that one's too classy to truly qualify as blaxploitation. I really love that movie though and what a killer theme song. Incidentally, has anybody else checked out the documentary about Melvin Van Peebles, How To Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It)? Hell of an entertaining movie. I never knew how truly versatile the guy was. BAADASSSSS was also an incredibly fun movie and boasts one of the greatest titles in film history.

I hate to go off on a tangent but I don't get why people deride Cena for not being "a mainstream star". Yeah he isn't one and he probably never will be but who is really? There are only three living wrestlers who are; Hogan, Austin, and Rock. And two out of those three barely qualify as mainstream stars. Heck, I'd go as far as to say Austin isn't a mainstream star period. He was one ten years ago maybe even five years ago but he sure isn't anymore. Anyways, I can certainly see why people dislike Cena. Yes, his gimmick is sort of annoying, he's kind of bland, and WWE was really shoving him down the audience's throat for the past few years (They've relented a bit in the past few months). But I don't understand the wide spread adamant, seething hatred for the guy. The man has had too many good matches to deserve that and he's a good talk show guest! I guess Cena isn't supposed to be for jaded, cynical marks like us. Like Wu Tang, Cena is for the children. If this board was around in '86, everybody would have been bitching about how Vince is trying to shove Hogan down our throats. Incidentally, Cena at this point is a better worker than Hogan ever was (got to tie it back somehow). Anyways, if The Rock were to make a return for some reason, I think I'd want him to go against Shawn Michaels. I don't think it'd be a mega dream match like Hogan-Austin but I'd be way way more interested to see HBK-Rock. But given The Rock's apparent dislike of HBK, that match happening is about as unrealistic as seeing Bret Hart Vs Shawn Michaels at this point.