Fro

I agree, they totally hotshotted this feud. Meltzer says at wrestlingobserver.com:

Look at how they screwed Orton over by rushing his face turn... they totally flubbed this... yes him getting turfed out should have happened, but 2-3 months later at least (after a rematch with Benoit on the next PPV and after a Survivor Series match). Who's Orton going to feud with as a face? HHH? Kane (lol)? You're going to have to turn people heel just so he has people to feud with after HHH. I think Edge may be heading that way, but Orton just feuded with him 2 months ago! And HHH isn't a realistic option as a heel champ either since he's already destroyed everyone on the roster except for Edge. They're booking themselves into another JBL situation (although Orton is a much more viable champ, heel or face), IMHO, as far as having to run stale feuds.

You don't have to be in the top match of the card every PPV or hold the World title to be a main eventer. Anyone who says Taker hasn't been a main eventer since 1994 is ridiclous. He could get a title shot at any time or get handed the belt and be a credible champion. The reason why he doesn't have the belt is because he doesn't need the belt to be over and sell tickets and Tapes/DVDs/T-Shirts/Foam Hands. The Undertaker's not my favorite wrestler but he's in good shape, works hard and tries, and uses new moves, and he's been having a pretty good run lately. He certainly isn't a talentless hoss... he's had way too many good and even great matches for that.

It was all a ruse by Lita to get at Matt/get at Kane or it will be ignored.

It was a hard sell show with only 4 matches. They also had the Diva Search Segments, the Hard Sell segments, the Kane/Hardy contract signing (wrestlecrap), the Smackdown Rebound segment, more hard selling, a squash match with two OVW wrestlers involved. The women's match was pretty subpar and was just thrown out there, and involved several green workers. Not to mention MNF started. This was a good show with a fast-forward button, but there were only about 3 segments of value on the entire program.

Sakoda's a Asian-American as well. Yang/Akio you can often hear calling his spots in a southern accent.

I don't know how anyone can complain about Benoit's push after Backlash. I mean, he got lost in the shuffle a bit before Mania, but everyone's been tapping out to him and Benoit's been getting pretty damn over. I'd like to see him get a more or two more with the belt to see what could happen with him, because he's getting the reactions of a long-term main eventer at this point. He's never going to be Hogan or Rock or Austin, but he's getting reactions similar to Bret at this point.

The problem with TNA is the fact that because they haven't weekly PPVs, they haven't been able to create stars like they should. The other problem is a lot of guys they're pushing aren't ready to hold the world belt and have credible feuds every week. They're also putting out a crappy product at points. They've turned Impact into a glorified WCW Worldwide in an attempt to hype the PPV. Also, running the same house every week is going to kill the crowd unless the booking is excellent, like OVW, for instance. At this point, they need to suck it up and go to monthly PPVs and get some sort of sense of direction as to which guys the company is going to push besides Jarrett and the very green Monty Brown. The current format doesn't let them put on a blowaway show to get everyone talking or get anything remotely episodic going on.

Huh? The Cubs are only 8-11 against the Cards, and that's without their starting pitching, Sosa, A-Ram, bench players, bullpen being healthy in all those games. Adding Nomar puts them over the top, and he's been a Card-killer in his games against them. They will have even more of an advantage with a 3 or 4 man rotation in the playoffs.

Here on Fox Sports Midwest, they showed the first 2 segments (Jarrett and Kash), then FSM took a break before the "Raven match" and we came back part of the Jarrett match again.

HHH v.s. Edge (IC or T v.s. T) Benoit v.s. Orton (World or for nothing) Taker v.s. JBL Eddy v.s. Angle Batista/Flair v.s. Jericho/Eugene (or Regal) Dudleys v.s. London/Kidman (or some kind of 3 or 4 way) Hardy or HBK v.s. Kane La Resistance v.s. Rhyno/Tajiri CW match (involving at least Rey and Spike) Women's Match Looks like a full card to me.

The Hogan one doesn't have a lot of *great* wrestling in it, but it's got a great mix of matches and all of the 1985 stuff of Hogan rules so much. Lots of rarer stuff on this as well and this is pre-Panda lawsuit settlement. It's missing a couple key matches, but they were obviously leaving room open for DVD set 2. The Flair DVD obviously is the greatest thing ever. A lot of the 1992-era WWF stuff is tarnished a bit by the WWF lawsuit thing. I thought the Foley DVD was a bit disappointing, just in the way the WCW footage had new commentary and the clipping of the ECW footage to heck, and then some Attitude logo blurring. They also clip a lot of interviews unfortunately. It's good to have a lot of stuff in one place, but it really needed another disc. The Benoit DVD looks amazing on paper. We'll see what they do with it.

I like Benoit v.s. Orton as the main event. Orton's pretty close to being ready to get the belt (although I'd probably wait until the PPV after Summerslam). I think that sets up much better for a HHH v.s. Orton main event then having Benoit lose to HHH, then have Orton chasing HHH somehow.

I imagine he's doing it for a bit less than his normal fee due to the show's location and the fact that he's probably seen and enjoys the ROH product. It's pretty clear from what I've heard of Foley on Meltzer's show that he keeps up with what's going on and is one of the "smarter" wrestlers as far as being aware of what people are doing outside of WWE. He's certainly still a wrestling fan, as well. And, he's absolutely worth whatever they're paying him. They'll make a killing off the tape/DVD and more if he does a shoot interview before. Not to mention they'll draw a very large crowd (which will buy a lot of other tapes/DVDs). It also will help a lot in them getting past the whole RF thing.

Matt Morgan Push: Take 2. Can someone clue me in on the Foley thing? I thought he only wrestled like 3 matches with WWE. The WM XX Tag, Backlash vs. Orton, and the RAW 8-Man Tag. I didn't think he was working house shows/whatevers. OVW runs about 6 "big" shows at the Six Flags theme park in Louisville, and brings in a "big name" or two from the WWE usually, but not always. Foley comes every year regardless of his WWE status, and I believe he's booked independent of any WWE involvement. He only cut a promo in the ring and was special ref for the main event. A pretty sweet deal for him as he can get some roller coaster time in (if you've read his books, you know he's a HUGE coaster fan) and do some wrestling. Usually the ex-SMW wrestlers come every year (Foley, Kane, Jericho). Benoit comes regularly too, as do the ex-OVW wrestlers (Cena, Bashams, Rico, Orton, etc.). Eddy was supposed to wrestle a week ago but the show got rained out. Cena's booked against Matt Morgan for the show next Saturday.

If the problem tends to be booking, how is getting on FX going to change it? -=Mike You can actually book a good, moderately long feud and get guys over if you have a Free TV show where you're not trying to build the next week's PPV week after week. They're in pretty much an impossible situation right now due to the format. Removing the weekly PPVs would allow them to build stars and feuds. Right now they basically have to hotshot everything (hell, the Naturals v.s. AMW has lasted about 6 weeks and they've already exhausted all possible matches and are blowing the feud off) to sell a PPV. They wouldn't have to shill the PPV like crazy and could focus on the matches. That would also free up time to allow for a match that goes longer than 10 mins on the weekly TV show. If you look at all the things they have to try to use Impact to accomplish, they've done an admirable job with that show.

No not really, but back then(as a kid before the internet exposed bad workers and mic skills) the feud with Flair was great. Dusty could be incredible on the mic.... probably the closest guy as far as that goes would be Cena at this point.

Dinsmore used the german suplex and the crossface as his finishers in OVW, so that's why they looked particularly swank.

The problem is that the Rock and HHH are more of "hosses" than Monty Brown is. I think A-Train, Taker, Big Show, Luther Reigns, and Kane are all better wrestlers than Brown fairly easily. I think Brown has some potential but the guy is WAY too green to be out there. He needs to wrestle for a year in Wildside.

I've only seen them on Impact, but it looks a bit like the Truth Commission gimmick (which did do fairly well in Jerry Jarrett's USWA, before the failed WWF version).

IWA-MS is probably the hottest indy around right now. Hopefully they can continue to expand their fanbase. I'm somewhat disappointed that there's no shows scheduled anywhere in S. Indiana (or even in Indianapolis) at all though.

The Super X Cup (not with teams, but with singles wrestlers) with Juvy is well worth picking up. I also thought the Jarrett/Raven show mentioned above was worth $10.

I prefer nobody, but if they want someone to do it, give it to Luther Reigns. The guy was pure gold in a similar role in OVW, and keeping him out of the ring is a good thing. He's a great talker and has an intimidating look, which would be something fresh for this role.

I like the idea of the committee as well. And there's some booking possibilities (i.e., Dusty and Jerry Jarrett are face, Jimmy Hart and Larry Z are heel, 5th guy is tweener) that would be something different.

This was the best show they've done easily. Even the Monty Brown squash was watchable. They did a pretty good job hyping the PPV as well and made Shamrock seem like a huge deal.