Fro

The Bashams were a GREAT tag team in OVW... watch some stuff of them. They weren't a tag at the time they were called up in OVW, but that doesn't mean they haven't teamed before. It's not their fault they're not allowed to go all out. Conway/Dinsmore were probably even better... Seven/Bane were TERRIBLE.

Gotta be the magical ghost cameramen... that's another fun thing about OVW is that there's an explanation for the camera being there (someone pulls the camera in a locker room to cut a promo, someone notices the cameraman and kicks him out after a few seconds, or we get footage a "fan" shot in the parking lot of an heel attack, for a few examples). It's not that hard to do. Evil heel authority figures are way too cliched now. A good heel stable (like Evolution) can perform the same functions as far as getting heat. Arrest angles are pretty stale. Music and Titantrons magically playing for everyone's entrance/run-in, even if it's someone completely new or a surprise comeback.

What they really screwed up on was not giving London and Spanky a huge push as a babyface team... they were so great together and never made it onto Smackdown. They really had lightning in a bottle with those two teamed up. They screwed up with the Bashams obviously by not letting them use their OVW movesets and by not "keeping what worked" from OVW. I would have put them with a Triad-type gimmick with Kanyon and with Jackie Gayda as their valet (she and Victoria and those four were all a unit in OVW).

Yes, I agree, Eddy v.s. a tweener RVD with Heyman as manager would be the best possible feud for right now. That's something that would get a lot of traction and those two have great chemistry. Of course, that leaves you a bit thin on faces but the heel side is a wasteland right now.

I think it's pretty much a work by this Snatch guy to get himself over. WWE doesn't just promise people contracts down the line.

I don't see any turns for at least a couple months. It does make sense for RVD to turn heel in a couple months, but he's got to sign his extension before they do anything with him. I would say Michaels is due to turn heel, but that doesn't help him a lot as far as starting fresh feuds (Edge? Benjamin?). Raw is completely set for the rest of this summer.

There's ways out of it... it can be gradually phased out ala Kane/Bubba Dudley/Rick Steiner. He can turn heel and reveal that it's a gimmick, or reveal Bischoff forced him to act like that to keep his job. Or they can do the Russo "shoot" angle and have him come out and complain about Gewirtz making him play a retard every week on TV.

If you look in the Backstage area, Afa the Wild Samoan has a column for some random reason and Samu has a column where he says he's a road agent. Gotta wonder why they're involved, but it sounds interesting.

Angle keeps calling him Luther and I think he is Horshu. Great role for Horshu... he's been playing a character in OVW with that look he has on Smackdown + shades as "Inspector Impact" as basically a heel-GM. He's got some good mic skills. God, it's great to see them not screw with something that works in OVW for once.

There's something wrong with you if you can't improve when you're teaming with Flair and wrestling Benoit and Shawn Michaels nearly every week. It looks like Finlay has been teaching him how to punch and kick in a better looking way as well. It doesn't hurt Batista that Goldberg and Brock are gone, so that opens up the use of a couple more moves from his OVW moveset for him. The guy has the look and charisma, so if he can improve in the ring he'll be something. There's a reason why he was the most over guy in the history of OVW.

It might be 3 PM PST, which would be okay. The show's going to get preempted like crazy in some markets (i.e., Chicago where there are a ton of Cubs day games).

The Bashams are great, but they don't get much of a chance to show it because of moveset restrictions. See London v.s. Doug a couple weeks ago on Velocity for a small sampling of what Doug can do. He's pretty good on the microphone too, yet the Bashams never get mic time. I'd advise everyone to pick up one of their matches against Nick Dinsmore and Rob Conway and then tell me how "boring" they are.

I'm pretty sure Vince is a little racist: - Booker T feuds with HHH and Austin - DX trashes the Nation's Locker Room - Mark Henry as a sad Barry White parody - Virgil and Saba Simba (nuff said). - Teddy Long's racist shtick. - The Nation of Domination - Farooq gets fired but Bradshaw gets a megapush. - Austin wearing a Confederate Flag on his back and hating the Coach for no reason. Austin's character really hinted at being racist at the end. - Eddie being "stupid" and having to study for his GED and stealing stuff, not to mention his ridiclous accent (although it's better now). - Kaientai choppy-choppying Val Venis's pee-pee and not being able to speak English. - Samoans having "hard heads". - French or French-Canadians being EVIL - The FBI being Italian and in the mob Not in the same genre, but Billy and Chuck and Rico are pretty bad as well (i.e., hate these guys because they're GAY). Vince will push someone if he feels they'll make him money, though.

He's done a lot better than I thought he would. He's certainly more comfortable on the stick since becoming Champion, and he's stayed pretty over. The ratings and house show attendance during the Benoit reign have been up by a good amount. It will certainly help that he'll get a massive TV pop in Calgary tonight. The next couple months will be key for him. He's not going to be the next Austin or Rock but he could be the next Bret Hart.

This is coming from the same people who had Spanky and London under contract and didn't do anything with them. It's not a surprise. They could do so much with the dead weight on the shows by getting them into tag teams... How about these teams?: Shannon Moore/Shane Helms (3-Count basically) Jamie Noble/Akio (Jung Dragons basically) Rob Conway/Nick Disnmore (OVW Lords of the Ring) Mark Jindrak/Sean O'Haire (whoops, they released O'Haire) Lance Cade/Bradshaw (Stan Hansen ripoff boring Texans) Chuck Palumbo/Billy Gunn Instead, they have a boring tag scene and a bunch of guys as dead weight at the bottom of the card.

Foley can't go 60 minutes? He could go thirty when he was on top at least. I believe Foley and Eddie Gilbert had a 2 out of 3 falls match with different stips that went 45 minutes, at least. Foley's not in an elite class of wrestlers as far as mat wrestling, but he's not incompetent (see his match versus Michaels). If Flair was really objective he'd mention how great a talker Foley is. I'm not too surprised Flair still holds that opinion of Foley. Even though HHH can be pretty darn good (when he wants to be), he's not the best in the business today. But if I were in Flair's position, I'd be kissing up too. And I'm thankful for Flair doing so, because if Meltzer is to be believed, Flair has had a lot of influence (influence on HHH/Michaels who are influencing Vince and Steph) as far as Eddy and Benoit being champs and focusing on more wrestling and wrestling history. Yes, it was a really good interview.

It doesn't really matter because much like all the rest of the hosses from OVW, this guy can't wrestle a lick. I'd rate Seven (who's Mordecai) below Matt Morgan but above Batista as far as ringwork goes. He is so bad that Cornette doesn't even regularly use him on TV!

Absolutely not... there's no "next Lesnar". Batista has the charisma and look to be it, but is way subpar as far as ringwork goes (although it seems he's gotten slightly better which is pretty difficult not to do when you're teaming with Ric Flair and wrestling Michaels and Benoit as much as he does). If any hoss from OVW is going to pan out, it's Matt Morgan if he can improve his ringwork. He's got the mic skills and he's a lot better in the ring than Batista is, anyway.

I think people see Benoit as the Stampede heir more than Jericho. Especially since he and Bret wrestled in WCW a bit. Benoit certainly can wrestle a Bret-style match, and Jericho really doesn't do that. Benoit uses a lot of moves Bret and Owen did, and obviously a ton Dynamite Kid did. Finally, Benoit is from Alberta and Jericho isn't. I'd say the hatred for Michaels probably runs a lot deeper in Alberta than in Montreal. I believe this is the first time Michaels has wrestled up there since coming back as well.

Benoit jumping ship was really the difference. Lesnar leaving and Angle going out destroyed the Smackdown main event scene. Raw's just been utlizing their talent better and also they have more of it. The main event scene has been pretty solid from top to bottom. HHH/HBK/Benoit has been entertaining, although it's not an overly hot feud or anything Foley/Orton has been good Jericho/Christian has been good And then you have Edge v.s. Kane, which isn't good but is appealing because it's a return. You've got Benjamin a guy they've pushed pretty well. Flair/Batista are holding down the tag belts and even though they're not a *great* team, they're over and people care when they lose the belts. Orton is a good IC champ. I mean, even with Foley leaving, you're going to have a hard time screwing that main event/midcard scene up for a while. They're set for a while as they can feud any of the 8 guys in that 8-man tag + Jericho, Edge, and Kane and Christian isn't that far behind. Now, the problem is after that there's a *huge* dropoff as far as the roster goes.

It wasn't a blow-away show, but it was pretty good. Nothing stood out for me except Lynn v.s. Whitmer, Styles v.s. B-Boy, and the main, although about every match had a cool spot or two. It may be better on video, but the show was right at four hours so it seemed too long in person (with mostly singles matches without anything to break it up). Michael Shane didn't do too much because he was in the first match. The stuff with Webb and Shane was good, but this was fairly short. Not much reaction for Shane and he came out later to sign pictures and nobody came over to him. Women's match was entertaining. Jacobs versus Strong was pretty decent, but some comedy spots. Strong is pretty stiff (you know a guy is stiff when they chop and everyone goes "ooohhaaa" instead of "woooo!') and had some cool spots. Delirious v.s. Nigel was too much comedy for my tastes. I think Sydal v.s. Sitoci had some crazy headropping spots Lynn v.s. Whitmer was probably MOTN (I'd say around ****-ish, even if the Whitmer-controlled parts were pretty slow). There was some nice mat stuff and stalling in the beginning, then Lynn took over after the first fall and they brawled into the bleachers. Lynn did a jumping side kick on Whitmer into the gym wall and then later dived off the old basketball timekeeper's table (which was probaly 6-7 feet up) onto Whitmer. Pretty good stuff. Lynn had a long line to get signed pics all through intermission so he probably had a good payday. Cannon v.s. Collyer had to follow Lynn so the crowd was dead. Wolf v.s. Daniels I didn't care for... the house mic went dead and seemingly nobody knows how to yell loudly in IWA so we completely missed the angle after the match. Styles v.s. B-Boy was good too, in the *** 1/2 range or so. Styles was great here and B-Boy kept up for the most part, but this wasn't anything you have to go out of your way to see. The main event was a pretty plunder-filled garbage match with hundreds of light tubes, thumbtack bats, and some other stuff. I didn't even realise Wifebeater turned on Robinson, so that shows the lack of psychology here, but this was a sick garbage match if you like that stuff. Lots of blood, lots of people getting smashed through rolls of light tubes and onto the glass. There was so much stuff in the ring they could hardly get in and out without accidently smashing a light tube. It was a pretty decent crowd, although it's not a small building so it's going to look empty... I counted about 180-200 people in the house (they could probably get 1000 or so in the venue). The smark half of the crowd made enough noise that it should come off well on tape.

I imagine they can't afford to book tag teams on regular shows and still bring in name talent guys like Styles and Lynn (except for in Highland).

I'll in Oolitic I think, although I'll probably be flying solo... I'm only about 15 min away but I don't think I can rope anyone into going... most of the group I watch PPVs with is either 1) Not interested, 2) Going home for Easter, or 3) Working.

Well, there's a different between Nick playing a simpleton and Nick playing a retard. It's a very fine line. It sounds like the character Nick was playing on the House Shows was a goofy simpleton, whereas the character that the WWE machine spewed out was "special".

I think Bradshaw can be carried... he's never been in the ring with a top tier worker for us to find out for sure. I can't remember him wrestling Bret, Michaels, Flair, Benoit, Angle, or Eddy before. The APA never fought any great tag teams (they were MIA during the Smackdown Six period). Certainly Flair or Michaels in their primes could drag *** 1/2 out of him. If I were laying out the match, I'd have Eddy in control for most of the first part of the match working over Bradshaw's legs, then book most of Bradshaw in control as a brawl outside the ring. Angle makes it falls-count-anywhere and No DQ. Bradshaw hits Eddy with some assorted plunder. Bradshaw powerbombs Eddy on the hood of his low-rider. Eddy is dead. Bradshaw carries Eddy back in goes for the 3-count, only 2! Bradshaw goes through the rest of his moveset and gets 2-count for each move. Hits the sleeper, mini-Eddy comeback. Eddy goes up top but gets crotched by Angle. Bradshaw hits a fallaway slam off the top and gets two. Bradshaw hits his Clothesline from Hell, Eddy kicks out, Eddy makes comeback and wins. That's the idea... you can get a good 20 minute match out of that... won't be great, but it would be good. Bradshaw is a better worker than Sid or Nash and Michaels and Bret carried both of them to pretty good matches.