AndrewTS

Tajiri was just on Raw this past monday, I believe. Yeah I know, but he wasn't on the show at all since the Batista match and up until this Monday, and he didn't even wrestle or do anything major this week. So you can hardly cite him as a boring character that's been dragging the show down. I think we've basically touched on the myriad reasons--not enough good heels, the heels we actually have are the focus on the show and there are a lot of faces left spinning their wheels, so many of the talent is directionless. During the Raw hot period they had something for nearly everyone to do, even if it was filler or comedy (S.H.I.T., for instance). The Diva search stuff is getting really, really absurd...but you knew that.

Benjamin, Michaels, and Tajiri haven't been on the show in quite some time, so they're kinda non-factors, don't you think? Benoit's barely on the shows at all--they don't know what to do with him since they can't get him to cut promos often. Faces in WWE are usually bland anyway. Even the better face characters are severely toned-down versions of their superior heel characters. Also, the heels on Raw are basically...Evolution, La Res, and Bischoff. So all these plucky faces aren't going to be able to develop interesting characters since they don't have decent adversaries to be ticked at. Christian's injury was obviously a big blow, since he was great support to the midcard. Tomko can't carry that slack. Kane's wasted, per usual. This is when they need him to be strong the most, but they're just having him piddle around with this stupid angle currently, and continue to make him look like an inept jackass. The Women's Division isn't on fire, either.

Obviously, given the choice between the two, HHH as a face would be the most desirable. Orton as a face this early would be a disaster. HHH as a face though--"welcome back" pops aside, how do you get that to work? You'd have to find a way to get sympathy for him, and frankly he's been a monster heel so long that it is hard to do that. Should Flair stick with HHH? It certainly would help if they want to make HHH heel, because Flair just wouldn't fit in with Batista, Orton, and perhaps 1-2 others. Especially if you consider how...uh..."dedicated" Flair's character seems to Trips. Between Batista and Orton, they certainly have strong enough promo skills to carry them through the feud if they keep the rivalry strong.

I've heard all of their WCW bouts together were very strong, so if you're fearing an Armageddeon 02 disappointment, don't sweat it. Beyond that, I can't really add much.

Well, Smackdown has a potentially strong enough tag team division to more than support the show. Raw's tag team division is very weak, but in a pinch those belts make good accessories for 2 Evolution members. If you put all the tag teams on one show, you would either have most of them rot on Velocity/Smackdown and dark matches, or have almost nothing but tag matches on the main show. So I don't think it would be a good idea.

Her contract is ending and they probably won't offer her an extension; at least that's what the story was.

"And why would she be complaining, storyline wise? Weren't Sable and Torrie just on Smackdown two weeks ago?" I missed that SD where it happened, but Angle did something or other to one of them I think.

I thought those were all E.T. cartridges, actually. Probably a good bit of the ones that get dumped are worthless old sports games. Many unsold copies of Grabbed by the Ghoulies were melted down and made into playground equipment, supposedly. Of course, there are select few games that are discovered to be "rare," then people snatch them up.

Three years? That recently? Which match was that? Oh right--when he was tag teaming with Bikertaker, correct?

Nobody's taking personal shots at him. You obviously weren't around when Kevin Nash had his injury... Yeah. I'd say, jokes aside, most feel he should take it easy, enjoy his guaranteed money , and not try to rush back to the ring. Basically the same thing we said about Angle. Nash had built up a reputation by that time of being a wise ass who was looking forward to burying talent and getting a big push for no other reason than being WWF Champion (and nearly killing the company) in 1995. Then, right before he's about to get this massive push...he trips and tears his quad. So yeah, a good bit of people got some satisfaction out of it, even if it was kinda wrong. Since Test wasn't personally heavily responsible for killing one promotion, nearly killing another, and being a gignormously lazy and egotistical ass, it's hard to hate him too much beyond the "he sucks and is getting a push he doesn't deserve" type of hate. AS's mocking of him is really hardly any different than Foley's.

Kane was shooting blanks?

And thus, Vince's hellish vision for the Diva-only show begins to come into focus...

You say that as if they'll actually even move them. Even the marks don't believe they're actually "fired." They'll be back around Summerslam

Well, I don't think it will be worth it to hotshot the title back onto Eddy. At least build up the title change well. Well, of course for now supposedly JBL/Taker is in the works.

I had stopped up my Super K-Mart to see if they happened to have the Batman animated series box set (I got mine already, but a friend wasn't able to find it and he lives further way), and I noticed they had a ton of cheap DVDs, quite a few of them for $4.99. They had a few WWF ones, including Rebellion (2001), Summerslam 2000 and 2001, Unforgiven 2001, and Action! I don't know if it was just my K-Mart, but letting others know to keep a look out. Naturally, some of the cheaper movie DVDs were junk (Battlefield: Earth for 5 bucks. Oh boy!), but some looked like good deals.

"Paul London over D-von Dudley. London gets a clean pinfall." O_O! "Kurt Angle is approached by the divas who complain about their treatment. He fires all of them." GO KURT!! Seems the show is a little low on number of matches...that might mean a lot of filler, unfortunately.

Orton vs. HHH at Mania...? I don't think I could bear either one of them as a face. I somewhat like Trips now and don't mind Orton, but HHH as a face sounds painful, and Orton as a face would be more horribly bland than he ever was as a heel. Even if Orton is over he just doesn't possess that "Rock" like charisma WWE was convinced he had.

They changed over in...oh...what, 2002? They took their time "pulling" them from store shelves since I saw and still seem those DVDs and other WWF ones in music/DVD stores all the time, brand new. I'd say it has more to do with them being quite old. *shrug* It's strange that a lot of those crappy non-PPV releases sometimes are difficult to find. DH: They had Hulk Still Rules? I've not seen that cheap anywhere, because that's about what I'd hope to pay for that.

Rudo: That would have given us a glimmer of hope for a Hardy heel turn, and would clearly be "in character," so that would be totally different. I wonder if Matt Hardy saw Gigli and said "well, the production quality, costumes, makeup etc were all great, editing was decent, and J.Lo was hawt!" Gotta find those positives, folks.

so we should be mad that Lita is trying? It's not like she and Matt came up with the angle. Do you really expect him to go, "Yo, this angle sucks more Dick that Patterson at a high school."? If they were offended by it, they can turn it down. If they must do it, Matt shouldn't be surprised that people criticize it. By defending it it seems he's all for the angle. I understand that most of the WWE peeps are used to the mentality of "do whatever the company asks," but it's ridiculous in my opinion to act as if an angle this bad shouldn't be railed against. It's bad, it deserves all the criticism one can rail against it. When Lita was going over-the-top it made the angle laughable. On Raw, she at least tried, but it simply couldn't erase the fact that the angle is terrible. So no, I can't enjoy the angle and find "looking for positives" to be a silly, wasteful exercise. I guess I can *try*: at least the following match with Jericho wasn't over coffee we didn't have to hear a Matt Hardy face promo this week Lita didn't wrestle this week That wasn't *too* hard.

"And I agree that the storyline is incredibly awful. But here's everyone getting all pissy because someone who's involved with the business, who's ran a promtion gets mad that we're ragging on his girlfreind." You must have missed the part where Matt said that we should look at the "positives" of this angle, and actually defending it. It wasn't just ragging on Lita, because the IWC has done that a lot because of her spot-blowing. It's that the ragging on Lita has increased since they tried to get her to "act" and she's been doing a horrible job of it, not that I think the angle itself is really worth her trying at all. A decent actor will "dog it" when not paid enough or if doing a role that he or she doesn't think deserves it. However, if WWE were a real TV show then Vince would have to be paying his talent as if they were actors and actresses, but he refuses to do that. When it is advantageous to Vince, he'll pretend WWE is a sport. When it isn't advantageous to him, he'll pretend it is a TV show. Hence, the wonderous, nebulous "sports entertainment" moniker, where he gets the benefits of both worlds. "At least some of us can still find some things enjoyable about it." Matt was fine until he decided to use that particular example to illustrate what he meant. He used arguably the worst angle WWE has run since Kane/Shane to illustrate something for us to find the "positives" in. Even the densest, most "one-dimensional" smark wouldn't have hired Nathan Jones, for instance. There are a share of times when WWE makes major screw ups, and a major criticism of the IWC turned out to be absolutely correct. Also, plenty of us have indeed been wrong, for example Eugene. Matt seems to completely disregard that many times the IWC can be right about something the WWE's head honchos can be wrong about.

"This angle is insulting our intelligence? We're pro wrestling fans! It's not insulting to our intelligence that a man can get his ass kicked for 30 minutes and not even get a black eye? It's TELEVISION. It's...and I hate to be cliche...a soap opera. If you're looking for something with continuity, and logical storytelling you're watching the wrong 'sport'." Because there's nothing different between a typical TV program and a WWE show. Nope, same damn thing. Also, I seem to not be able to recall smarks gushing over any matches that were basically a half-hour of punching each other in the face, so I fail to see the point. I suppose what WWE should do is, after a particularly nasty-looking punch, call for a cut, and then apply makeup around a wrestler's eye, then continue from there.

When's PSP in Japan? March 2005 will be too early for Japan since the system will only be first unveiled in 2005, right? So early 2006 I see as the very earliest possible for the States.

Supposely sites are saying "early 2006" for the actual release, presumably that'd be for the Japanese version. With the PSP and two different models, I'm thinking they're going to overdo it a bit. =P

I said "good looking," though.