DrVenkman PhD

WWE.com is saying that Trish and Christy will have a WrestleMania rematch while Benjamin defends the IC belt in a triple threat match against Jericho and Christian.

^ beat me to it

IIRC, the ad for WMX-7 (during WM 2000) originally called it WM 2001. I was not pleased about that. WMXX's advertisement for WM21 did contain the logo that ended up being used.

Sad trivia note: I marked out when the "XXII" appeared on the screen. It's a very bizarre pattern of things that don't make sense, but it might be a symetrical deal - notice that roman numerals retrned with "XIX" and "XX", then went away when it should have been "XXI".

Meltzer:

Bob Orton wore the cast. Order this DVD TODAY

I just watched WMXX again today wrapping up the most sucessful WM countdown in some time... I've found myself skipping tapes or, last year when I wasshort on time, just watching the WM2000 bonus disc and then going 16-19. But this year I gave myself proper time and watched them within a 2 week period. Anyway, never noticed Paul Bearer yelling "You're no son of mine!" at Kane before. I did remember noticing Nunzio doing they "ehhh, we're cousins!" bit with Noble before though. That's two family lineages that the guys acknowledged that the writers ignored / forgot. It was good to see JBL in a pointless tag title match just 1 year ago.

Kane looks bad ass in his sunglasses and tux. Good to see Hogan hug Shiek and end their bitter feud.

The funny thing about that was I just watched WM14 the other day... that show was a 15 team battle royal to open the show plus a tag title match. The tag scene certianly has changed in seven years.

Haven't seen Sabu vs Funk from raw since it's air date... they packed real some good stuff into that 5 minutes. Heyman's commentary was good, especially at the end of the match in regards to a table. A lot of this is stuff I've never seen and heard either very good or very bad things about and thus want to see either way.

While I do agree, the positive here is that every match means something and no meaningless "this could have been done on Raw but here it is on WM just because it's for a title" title matches are on the show (see: last years tag title matches). It's assumed that they were building to a CW title match but Chavo was injured. Benjamin, Eddie, and Rey are all in matches. I wouldn't count out a world tag title match on Heat, but then again there were no matches on Heat at all last year.

That reminds me of JR calling Marty Jannetty a young man a few weeks ago. They must have called him Ricky Steamboat in 1991 because that's when I started watching wrestling and I knew that was his name. I had no prior knowledge of his NWA work. I'm even thinking they announced him to the ring as Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat at SummerSlam 91 but I don't feel like verifying this at the moment.

Now, was this thing scripted or partially scripted or was Jarrett actually told to shoot?

Guess I was wrong about the Ahmed thing... he was the "black man that couldn't speak English" that JJ apparently mentioned, not the drug addict (I'll assume Hall for that). Stolen from TOA: Dressed in a jacket with his hair tied back (looking a lot like Curt Hennig) Jarrett delivers the mother of all "shoot" interviews. (How did we know it was a "shoot"? Jarrett told us. Heh). The high points: * He mentions Monday Nitro by name, saying that they tried to bury him last week. He mentions the offer that was made to him and subsequently pulled by WCW. He accuses Bischoff of holding him back, denying him any chance of advancing. * He gripes about being put in the ring with an "ex-football player" and his "dumb blonde" wife. * He trashes McMahon for turning him into a lame country singer. "You booked me with a clown ... a former drug addict ... and a black man who couldn't even speak the English language!" (Yoiks!) "You told me to come out here tonight and 'shoot', and that's exactly what I'm doing ... right between your eyes! You can take 'With My Baby Tonight' and stick it up your BUTT!" He accuses McMahon of trying to finish his career since he couldn't put his father (Jerry Jarrett) out of business. * He says Bret Hart is living off his past accomplishments. * Shawn Michaels can only wrestle once a week. All he can do is point at his crotch and give his little hand signals to his "boys down south". * All Steve Austin does is say "ass" to get noticed. He says Austin will always be the "Ringmaster". He says he's offended by the blasphemous "Austin 3:16". By the end the crowd was chanting for Austin to come out and kill him. Jarrett says this is what McMahon gets for all that money he gave him, and that he better be prepared for a lot of headaches.

I wish they would have done Savage over Steambaot in the tournament and did the face handshake of respect deal, but whatever.

What's they story on Jeff Jarrett returning in 1997 and doing a "shoot" interview and reinvents himself... then shortly before WrestleMania 14 becoming, out of what I remember as being absolutely nowhere, "Double J" again? Of course that was followed by Debra, a woman he spoke poorly of in his 1997 re-debut, becoming his manager. The whole thing seemed very odd. On a similar note, why did Vince even allow Jarrett's 1997 run to exist? I believe it was the first time I had ever heard Vince saw WCW on Raw and I was pretty surprised (Vince, I believe, even commented on this by saying something to the extent of "that's something you probably thought you wouldn't hear on Raw"). Jarrett said something about leaving before and not liking working with drug addicts without naming names, then they follow it up by having him directly say to Ahmed Johnson he was talking about him. My memory of this quickly-abandoned persona / angle is a bit shakey, this seemed to be well before "attitude" took over the Fed and that sort of angle would be normal or accepted.

Austin/HBK won the tag titles and that was pretty much it. A tournament was held to determine the #1 contenders (won by Owen and Bulldog), and they lost to Austin and Dude Love (during the "Pick Me Steve" angle when Michaels was out of the whole deal for reasons I can't remember). They lost the titles by forfeit officially at Ground Zero (Sept 97) due to Austin's injury.

Not so much "wrestling" but things about two Hogan movies (NHB and Sub-Urban commando) "The movie was produced by star Hogan and his boss, World Wrestling Federation head honcho Vince McMahon, only to be distributed by New Line Cinema after completion. When the first-draft of the script was turned in, Hogan and McMahon disapproved of it, so they took a hotel room in Redington Beach, California and stayed up for 72 hours rewriting the script together." " Originally titled "Urban Commando", and intended for Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When these two opted to make Twins (1988), the script was bought by New Line Cinema as the follow-up to their highly successful Hulk Hogan film, No Holds Barred (1989)"

A game kinda like the Sims except the only objective is to control CronoT and think of something retarded to say on a forum.

Raw 2

1) What is your favorite WM, top to bottom, of all time? I really didn't want to say it but I still think it might just be WMX7... excluding the Chyna/Ivory match, it's all good past the 3rd match, and I don't really take issue with any of first three matches either. 2) What is your least favorite WM of all time? WrestleMania 2. I find it (and the first one) boring, but I also find the 1st one interesting historically. If I were to disregard all Manias from the 80s (due to having no nostalgia from watching wrestling at that time / the style being different), I would go with WM15. 3) What is your favorite WM match? Bret Hart vs Owen Hart - superb wrestling match that I never tire of watching. 4) What is your least favorite WM match? Undertaker vs Giant Gonzalez - subpar "wrestling" match I tire of watching before the bell rings. 5) Name some honorable mentions for favorite match: Benoit vs HBK vs HHH - WMXX - Great match, great moment. Savage vs Flair - WMVIII - Until last year, this was my favourite world title bout, more so than Austin/Rock from 2001. This was the first Mania I watched live with my family at a local tavern and I was a big Macho Man mark. Roddy Piper vs Bret Hart - WMVIII - It's a shame that WM VIII has a weak undercard and a poor Sid vs Hogan main event going on last because it may very well have the two best singles title matches on the same PPV ever (of the era where there were only two singles belts... Eddie/Angle and Benoit/HBK/HHH being on the same show doesn't count). 6) What is your favorite WM venue? Caseser's Palace all the way. Love the outdoors and the whole set-up. Of course MSG is full of history and I intend to see an event there sometime during my life and the big stadiums look great (Safeco Field almost felt outdoors and HBK's pyro was crazy), but in the end I'll always love WM9's set. It should be in a video game. 7) What is your least favorite WM venue? Annaheim Pond - those people did not deserve two WrestleManias in a four year span. The arena has nothing special, neither set was anything important, and the crowd there just seems to suck. Of course, they weren't given a whole lot to make noise over either. I really don't have a venue that sticks out as "least favourite" as the current people's choice (Trump Plaza) was interesting to look at with it's stairs and 5 million security guards for Liz. 8) Going in, which WM card do you think looked the best on paper? Well in my mark years I can't ever recall caring what looked good on paper, but I was really excited about WrestleMania X. I really wanted to see Bret win the title (but I thought Luger would), the ladder match, Owen vs Bret, and most importantly, Savage vs Crush. 9) Going in, which WM card do you think looked worst on paper? Again, from WM VII - WM XIII I never really had a "this looks bad" attitude towards any of the shows and I wasn't watching prior. I guess WM15 was the one that going in I thought looked bad on paper despite still being a mark (hell, I still am, just a bit better taste). 10) What do you think is the most underrated WM of all time? WrestleMania IX - Awesome set, two good bouts to open the show, Mr. Perfect / Bret Hart doing their best to get something out of Luger / Yokozuna, and I get nostalgic for Hogan winning the title... yes, it's the reason the show is almost universally hated, and 12 years later I should really recognize that idea as being awful (and I do), but I marked hard at the time. 11) What do you think is the most overrated WM of all time? This is difficult to answer without sounding like a hypocrite - my answer would be WM III, since people rave about it despite there being only two matches worth watching with a bad Hogan main event and a weak undercard.. but this pretty much describes WM VIII, which I love, and one question earlier I just called WM IX "udnerrated" using the same logic with nostalgic value, which many people do have for WM III. Any WrestleMania people enjoy usually does have a reason for the praise - whether it be for a nawesome match or pure nostalgia. WM III, WM VIII, and WMX are both strongly reviewed and each only have about 2 good (though with the later years, 2 VERY good) matches. A WrestleMania that has none of this (like 15) is not highly rated at all. I remember one time my pal Shinji- and I were discussing a Rantsylvania Rant Crew article on why WrestleMania X sucked that was flawed - it's evidence only really amounted to WrestleMania X only having two good matches and a bad main event, but then brought up how great III and VIII were. Bottom line, the answer is none of them. 12) What is your favorite WM moment? Benoit and Eddie celebrating to close WM XX, Savage beating Flair for the title, Savage and Liz reuniting, Warrior returning at WM VIII, Hogan at WM X8 13) What is your least favorite WM moment? I thought about this for a bit but couldn't come up with a good answer. There are dissapointing things, but nothing really makes me mad... I guess HHH pinning Booker T with a pinfall that was delayed about 20 minutes from the Pedigree to the pinfall really sucked, but this place has enough HHH hate. I'll jsut say my least favourite moment was Ric Flair not unveiling the Liz centerfold. 14) Who would you pick as the top three Wrestlemania performers of all time? 1. Bret Hart 2. Randy Savage 3. Hulk Hogan (obviously not for the workrate) 15) How many of the previous 20 Wrestlemanias have you seen? Twenty 16) What was the most surprising WM moment to you? Hulk Hogan doing the Hulk Up at WM X8 (and the reaction in general) - He was booked as the heel and while, from my experience at Raw the previous Monday, it was obvious he would be cheered, I really did not see that one coming. The Hulk Up was the icing on the cake. 17) Who was your favorite "special guest" at a WM? Pete Rose - even before WWE turned it into a historical contribution by having him re-appear twice and giving him a "celebrity" HoF induction, the very idea of having your invited celebrity guest go out and cut a heel promo and take a tombstone had never been seen before. Good stuff. 18) Which WM have you seen the most times? Probably VIII or X, I watched those a lot when I first got the Mania Collection for Christmas in 1998. Prior to that I watched VIII a whole bunch of times when I borrowed a tape from someone in 1992, then rented it a few more times from the video store. Since my tape collection has grown and I tend to watch shows chronologically instead of randomly, it's pretty much stayed the same for everything else. 19) Which WM commentary team was your favorite? Ventura and Monsoon were great, but Hennan and Gorilla were my favourite - I just loved Hennan, even as the mark kid that was't supposed to. He has some real good lines at WM VII - one I can't quite recall where he talks about the guy sitting behind him during Nasty Boys vs Hart Foundation, Gorilla Monsoon talks about someone in the match doing something (Jimmy Hart?), and Hennan follows with "Who, the guy behind me?". I don't make it sound funny but I crack up every time I hear it. 20) Above all, what do you want to see at WM this year? Good clean fun, a show I enjoy. Something I WANT to add to my DVD collection, not just buy so my WM collection is complete (I'm looking at you, WM15). I expect bad matches but also good matches from Angle/Shawn and the Money in the Bank match. It would also be pretty cool if Hassan winds up the IC champ before Mania only to lose it on PPV to Jannetty, but that's not very likely. I think people might get sick of Marty soon, anyway, but I'll still be happy.

SKeith actually posted a blog update today dealing with the issues brought up here (Borga vs Luger, WMX ending, Mind Games, and Final Four), the timing of which makes me think someone e-mailed him while reading this. So, there you go.

Well that was time poorly wasted. Uh oh, they shipped you games and you'll have them ready to sell immediatley on launch date! Sony sure is retarded!

I believe that is a joke tidbit Mr. Drose was alive and well in 2001 at WMX7

I was on the Metro going back to the hotel after July's Raw in D.C. and a group of people were wondering if Eugene was really retarded or if it was an act. They seemed to feel that since they hired Zach Gowen with one leg, they would let a mentally handicapped guy wrestle. Then they said Zach was awesome. Not really AWFUL or anything since some people are still marks, but I found it dumb.