King Cucaracha

Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment... First thing, Punk isn't as awe-inspiring as people make out. For every Samoa Joe match there's a match that in all honesty isn't that good. He's not a bad wrestler by any stretch of the imagination and I do like him, but he's over-rated by a lot of people. Second, why are we treating this news item as complete truth and saying the "HHH likes Punk" news item was bullshit. Didn't they come from the same 'source'? I shouldn't be surprised that everybody's so quick to see the worst in HHH and HBK all the time, every time I guess. But it'd be nice if people would take any article with a pinch of salt, instead of just the ones they want to.

Backstage we go, as OAOAST interviewer extraordinairé Maria (you know...the blonde chick...no, not that one, the dumb one...no, not that one...the one from Raw...no, the one who wasn't married to Kidman. Yeah, that one.) is standing by. And with her are the rather banged up, NEEEEEW OAOAST World Tag Team Champions, Zack Malibu and Leon Rodez. MARIA Last Thursday night, you won the Oat Toast Tag Team Championship of the World. But, you don't like each other. Is that going to be a problem. MALIBU You know, roll back a few months and myself and Leon weren't exactly the best of friends. Infact, scratch that...we've never been friends. We probably never will be friends. And the only reason we're standing here with the World Tag Team Titles is because Calvin paired us up for TLC as an experiment. Now we ended up winning, we've got to get along I guess. But one thing I will say is, friends or not, I respect Leon Rodez. He's a great athlete. A future star in this business. And he's not an ungrateful turncoat like most young wrestlers around here nowadays. RODEZ *sniffs* That's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said about me. *sniffs* You know, we might not be friends now...but I get the feeling that this is the beginning of something special. Zack Malibu and Leon Rodez. All we need is a snappy name...like "The Z Squad"! Zack shakes his head, to Leon's disappointment. As he hangs his head though, Rodez catches his reflection in his Tag Title belt and brings it up to his face. RODEZ Wow. OAOAST Tag Team Champions. Who'd have thought it? But it's reality. And thrown together or not, you can bet we'll make the most of this opportunity. We're going to be a team like no-other...and in time, maybe we'll grow to like each other. Maybe even love ea...no, wait...scratch that one. Like each other. Like each other a lot. Pretty soon, we'll be a real team. I know what everyone's thinking. "What right do they have to be Tag Team Champions. They've only been partners five minutes, we've been teaming for five years". Yeah, we've got time to make up. But give it a few months and we'll be like a real team. Inseperable. Like conjoined twins. These Tag Titles will be like our children. Our adopted children, obviously. A part of each of us, like Hermaphrodítos. We'll be like Herpes and Aphrodíte. MALIBU You mean Hermes. RODEZ What did I say. MALIBU Herpes. It's Hermes. MARIA No silly...Hermes is the crab on Futarama. *giggles* Zack looks at Maria curiously, wondering if she really is as stupid as she seems or just putting it on. MALIBU Hermes is the Jamaican. RODEZ Uhm...I'm pretty sure the crab in Futurama isn't Jamaican, Zack. Looking away from Maria, Zack gives the exact same look of despair to Rodez. RODEZ Anyway...as I was getting to, there's been a lot of criticism of my new tag team partner for being stuck in the past. For holding back the youngsters, keeping some sort of 'glass ceiling' over the OAOAST Locker Room. What a laugh that is! We're lucky if the OAOAST can afford enough cardboard to make us ceilings, let alone glass. But besides that, the fact that Zack is teaming with me as Tag Team Champions is hopefully enough to shut the critics up. And as for me, if you saw my run as X-Division Champion, you'll know I never hold anyone down. Unless they ask me... Rodez smiles dirtily at Maria...who just stares back blankly. RODEZ ...as in, sex... MARIA Oh...ooooh...*giggles* RODEZ And together, me and Zack won't be holding back from challenges or having sex with challengers. What we will be doing is putting these Tag Team Titles on the line anytime, anyplace, anywhere against anyone! It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 80, we will take on all comers... MARIA *giggles* RODEZ Uh, yeah, that wasn't supposed to be... Maria continues to stare blankly into the distance. RODEZ Nevermind. Anything else you wanted to ask? MARIA Yeah. Zack...do you have Screech's phone number? He's sooooo cute! Zack takes a sidewise glance at Rodez, who just shrugs his shoulders. Still waiting for an answer, Maria stands with arms folded, as Zack tries to find some sort of answer, any sort of answer...but fails and simply walks off. MARIA Did I say something bad? RODEZ Oh no, no, you did great! Yeah, it's just he has to go and meet Kelly that's all. So, are you doing anything tonight? MARIA *giggles* Rodez escorts Maria off, effectively ending the interview.

The Rumble had possibly the best crowd reactions of the year, for the Raw/Smackdown fight, the Hassan beatdown and the Cena/Batista showdown. The botched finish didn't help and there wasn't enough drama (Benoit entered #2 and lasted right until near the end, but disappeared for much of it and was hardly mentioned by JR or Tazz as lasting a long time), but if we're nominating over-rated nothing like Angle/Jannetty and Angle/Flair, might as well throw this in.

Ditto. I spend the first day after the card goes up reading and re-reading each moveset, looking for interesting spots. Then I try to come up with some sort of basic story and from there, it's pretty much a case of filling in the gaps with whatever random crap pops into my head. Add a period of bone-idleness between reading (Day of card), losing interest because I LOATH writing entrances and then starting (Day of event) and that's 90% of my matches. For important stuff, I do try to put more thought and more specific psychology into matches. Actually coming up with a plan never works, because the plan either wins but is flawed (vs. Toxxic, Slay Ride) or loses and is flawed (vs. Sacred, every time he showed). Also, having a successful but forgotten SJL run is great when you're running out of time, allowing you to copy and paste random spots.

Everyone's forgetting one. The Royal Rumble.

Did Genesis IV have a music video, or was that III? Is anyone doing the old school Genesis "Tale Of The Tapes" this year? I can knock them up and send them to Mike to edit in if need be. Because, lets face it, what would Genesis be without Tale Of The Tape?

Well, seeing as you already did let me know, you can consider that one dealt with.

Or, in SWF terms, Creative Control. That being Raynor (chris3), MVS (ChuckWoolery) and Flesher (Ace309).

Hogan/Cena might actually be worse than Hogan/Austin in terms of quality. Considering Hogan's got a wrecked knee and Austin's got a wrecked neck, that's saying a lot.

case for what? Case for the fact Benoit and Eddie main evented seperate matches on WMXX, which got a better buyrate than anything in 2002, and Hogan wasn't on it?

Surprisingly good? Considering the three guys involved, it was shockingly average. Sorry...considering Tank is involved. Hero/Kingston is always good.

People were never going to accept Matt Hardy as #1 face when his gimmick was basically 'whiney dumped boyfriend'. Like CC says, most younger males would be cheering for Edge because he got laid and suddenly became cooler for it. The rest of the males are going to be begging for someone to kick Matt's ass because he's whining all the time. The only fans Matt really gained were the same fans who loved him because he was 'hawt' and took his shirt off when he was in The Hardys. As for Cena, the big problem is the WWE's insistance on turning him into the next Rock or the next Austin by making him like Rock and Austin. They've slowly been cutting into whatever individuality Cena had and going for the quick fix, which hasn't worked as well as they hoped. He got over. But not mega over. The main chance of him freshening up his character is to do another face-heel-face switch. But that'd be going backwards 2 years on the Rock/Austin timeline, plus for merchandise sake it won't happen.

Peoplez amz not seeing the thread, and such. Zack, I've no idea what you've got planned but I'm assuming we're defending the Tag Straps. If nothing else is planned, I want to suggest The GPX. Then after that, we could have Zack and Leon defend against new, young teams as a way of proving Zack isn't holding back talent. Maybe use some OAOVW guys on HD and then have something next month with Los Diablos Del Fuegos maybe. Lead into an eventual Zack/Leon-Wright/Bohemoth match somewhere. Unless you have any plans. Also, if anyone wants to write a HI-YAH HV Title Match against Bohemoth, please volunteer. It should be noted, I am willing to drop the title. I'm finding it hard to fit in all my chars at the moment. I'll have to either not write for the Tag Title Match or not write for CW/Parka as it is, as I also have the Women's 3-Way.

*pokes brain with fork* Most over-rated match of the year, bar none. I'm like Coffey on Benoit/Regal as far as Angle/Jannetty goes. I watched that match three times, because it had been hyped so much on the board and saw nothing. The 'mat-work' everybody was drooling over, no different from somebody slapping on a chinlock, except Angle changed the moves up to make them look different. Still the same boredom. Jannetty doesn't really look in pain at all during the match, which takes away from it. I wouldn't say he 'didn't sell', but he certainly didn't sell anything with a blank look on his face while in most submissions. Then Jannetty makes his comeback, which is okay enough but hardly anything to go crazy over. Cue 'dramatic' AnkleLock sequence and that's that. It wasn't a 'bad' match, but it was hardly MOTY candidate.

Nope. No Sky for me means watching Chelsea. And, as predicted, it's a yawner. "Oh look, they're passing the ball quite well against a mediocre Belgian team!! They're worth every million!!"

Eh, what can I say, even as SWF and OAOAST Tag Team Champions together, we don't make a good team.

TK and Reject are fine as challengers. I'm assuming that one will be at Dirty Deeds then?

That's the usual plan for me. But this weekend, I decided to go nuts and...well, went OTT. Then again, no point in saving myself for the Champions League, with boring boring Chel$ea playing.

117. "like a sack of wet mice" 118. Mr Bukkake

Well, after this weekend I've truly watched enough football. And for about the first time ever, I started to feel a little...well, bored of it. Started on Saturday morning with Soccer AM, then Norwich/Plymouth, Soccer Saturday, Madrid/Celta, Jimmy Hill on Sunday, Goals On Sunday, Derby/Crewe, Bolton/Blackburn (which was crap, if not for FanZone), Barcelona/Mallorca and then Lazio/Cagliari on Bravo. I can't be arsed to watch West Ham/Villa tonight, where-as usually I'll watch anything going (as you can see above) so long as I'm somewhere with Sky.

What I heard from Wildchild is that they (he and Johnny) weren't going to job on protest, because either Spike only got the shot by threatening to leave the fed if he didn't get it or Spike was going to leave if he didn't win. Or, something along those lines. I can probably dig up the PM if it really helps anybody.

Not that I've ever left and returned, but you'd probably be okay just re-posting stats. Might be best to let someone know you're coming back too though, like Spike said. Oh, and welcome back in advance man.

Am I missing something?

The 'storyline' and the build-up to X-7 sucked. It consisted of, IIRC, The Rock feuding with The Big Show and Austin feuding with HHH for a month. Then, Debra became The Rock's manager. Which lasted all of two weeks, before it got dropped unceremoniously. And even worse, it was dropped ON TV, with a weak explanation. A couple of sit-down interviews, a good Mania main-event feud does not make. That's the one thing that bothers me about X7...aside from the finish. HTQ summed up my feeling on XV. The brawl through the crowd was cool at the time but it harms the match when you re-watch it, because you're begging them to get into the ring. I give them credit for not going the usual ref bump route and actual have the referees deliberatly beaten down and they managed to get Vince involved without TOO much run-in idiocy. But like I said earlier, for what they were trying to accomplish (chaotic brawl) for most of XV, Backlash was more entertaining the very next month. And XIX was too much of a finisher fest. Understandably, Rock stalled a LOT during the match. We're talking RVD ECW levels of stalling when he gets the jacket.

Chuck Palumbo A-Train Jim Cornette, as an actual manager Also, Corino would make at least a very good tag team partner for CM Punk. They've teamed before and interact pretty well. That, of course, would require a tag team division for them to work in. Bring in Corino as 'the guy who's deaf in one ear' if need be. I'm not begging for Steve Corino, IC Champion.