Just John

A Kevin Nash shoot from 2007... Yes!

I liked Mickie's psuedo-lesbianic psycho promos from her feud with Trish. That whole angle was really well done. Well, until WWE just dropped it out of nowhere then Trish got hurt, but the build from Fall 05 to a couple weeks after WM 22 was great. Heel Trish also cut some good sarcastic, bitchy promos. She was like a watered-down female version of Edge. Her jabs at Lita during the Kane pregnancy angle were always amusing.

Cole and JBL putting Khali over as an unstoppable force after he moved to SD, wondering if anyone could beat him, even though Cena beat him twice within the previous 2 months. Umaga got the same treatment heading into WM.

Man, it looks like all that cheating was only holding the Patriots back. Not only have they completely dominated one of the top teams in the league, they've made it look extremely easy in the process. Brady still has all day to throw, his receivers are usually wide open, the O-line's creating plenty of running space, the D-line is getting good pressure, the pass coverage is making great reads... I'd like to think this would get people to still recognize the Pats are an elite team, but for some reason, I still expect to hear nothing but "CHEATERS" from the haters.

Well, they're not on 06 Detroit's level or anything, but I don't expect them to be that good this year, regardless of them making the playoffs last year. We'll see if that label holds up at the end of the season.

That Patriots story is hilarious. I love how they cheat against the biggest jobbers who they'd have no problem beating straight up. I think they're just trying to get everyone to hate them again since they haven't dominated the league for a couple years now.

I've flirted with the fantasy/pick-em scene before (Hell, I won the pick-em thing here one year), but it really isn't for me. I find myself enjoying the sports a lot less because I'm too competitive and get too caught up in the fantasy game. The same thing even happened when I played WWE fantasy. I'd rather just enjoy sports or wrestling for what they are and not get stressed out over scoring points based on statistics to beat a bunch of random people on the internet. I have nothing against people who do fantasy and even give advice to people who ask, but playing's just not for me.

At the very least, it's much better than the NFL.

Scorpion all the way. Get over here!

Anytime someone tried to power bomb Kidman. A wrestler taking off his boot to use it as a club instead of just kicking the guy with it. A specific example that bothered me this year was when I was at Lockdown. D-Von was standing on the top rope in the electrified cage match, and Hernandez runs over and military presses him back to the middle ring (instead of, you know, pushing him into the 10,000 volt cage). The entire crowd was like WTF after that happened.

The "Vince loves rooster" and "Always Pounding Ass" shirts are among the last I'd wear in public. Also, Kurt Angle's "Freedom of choice" shirt.

Reason ESPN sucks: Kornheiser is still announcing MNF. He hasn't gotten any better since last season. Although, the crew did manage to make me laugh when they were ripping Eli Manning for no reason. They were talking about Grossman being in Peyton's shadow, then someone brought up how Eli must feel, and Tirico said "Well, at least Eli gets to be in Peyton's commercials sometimes."

Cena also regularly uses the top-rope leg drop and throwback, but I'm sure if you go match by match over the last year, he's not restricted to the moveset you just described. His wrestling is similar to that of The Rock. People used to shit all over Rocky's work back in 2000 or so, saying he does too many punches, the people's elbow is terrible move, and so on. However, despite not choosing to use a broad moveset, he was still one of the best wrestlers of that time because there's more to working a match than just hitting moves. Timing, selling, keeping the crowd involved, etc... Both guys were/are great at these things. The thing most people forget about "limited movesets" is that the overness of a move goes a long way to making it credible. Cena gets a bigger pop when he sets up for the FU than Shelton Benjamin does flying off a ladder. Rock's punches got more heat than Jeff Hardy's flipping moves back in the day. And other than Matt Hardy, I'm at a loss as to which midcarders have been having more consistent quality matches than Cena this year.

Ok, what wrestler doesn't have a generic base formula for 5-10 minute tv match? You could simplify about every wrestler on the roster in the same derogatory fashion you used on Cena. Finlay: Pointless chain wrestling, opponent builds momentum, gets cut off with a stiff left-arm clothesline, resthold, tease comeback, Hornswaggle spot, resthold, real comeback, distract ref, shillealagh causes DQ/cheap pin Rey Mysterio: Uses quickness to make opponent look dumb usually including a 619 tease, gets caught with a power move, beatdown, comeback that always includes the seated senton and that silly-looking handspring bulldog, 619 with awkward setup, drop the dime, pin. CM Punk: Pointless mat wrestling and strike teases, opponent catches him for a beatdown, fight back with the knee-bulldog combo and some poor-man's KENTA offense, tease finisher exchange, catch out of nowhere with the fireman's carry into the G2S. And so on... I mean, you admit Cena mixes up his ppv stuff, and spot some good tv matches like the Nitro and Michaels matches, what else do you want? Name some WWE guys that have substantially more variety than Cena.

First of all, Cena doesn't need to be booked like a monster. He's booked to where he always steps up his game for big matches and digs down deep to pull out the win. He has more of a Misawa-like invincibility aura than a Hogan one. It's still a very effective way to book someone. This is ridiculous. The Khali ppv matches are the only ones I think come close to fitting this description, though that's generally what you see from any monster/normal guy match. The Umaga matches don't even fit this. At the Rumble, Cena was getting dominated a lot, but the idea was him avoiding all the death spots to keep him in the match until he could finally choke Umaga out. At NYR, he got dominated, but there was no "hulking up," rather a simple survival roll-up. The HHH, Edge, and Michaels matches were all evenly built back-and-forth kind of stuff. The RVD match was actually mostly Cena because he was the heel. I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea all of Cena's matches are the same, because they aren't.

Goldberg was a face too. If you build up an invincible face, then present a situation where he might lose, you get people buying to see him "overcome the odds" and keep on winning. This works best when you put him against another strong face like Warrior/Hogan or even Nash/Goldberg because then everyone has someone to cheer for and faces are usually built up as stronger than heels. I would also suggest ppv buys are down becuase of oversaturation, not because people don't want to see Cena. The other thing that should be noted is that it doesn't matter if fans are cheering or booing Cena, so long as they pay to do so. Cena can be top face to most people, and a top heel to others.

I think you have to give Cena some credit for the Edge and Umaga matches. Yes, Edge and Umaga are very capable in-ring performers, but they're not carrying Cena out there. Cena's timing, selling, and mannerisms all helped those matches succeed. I watched the TLC match with Cena and Edge today, and I remembered how great Cena was at working the hostile crowd when he had to play heel. Edge didn't go above and beyond to get the crowd to cheer for him to help the match, but Cena really went out of his way to antagonize the crowd with his taunts and smirking. I don't know how anyone could make a case that Cena's bumping and selling were not key factors to making the Umaga series a success. I don't know if you've seen the JD match with Khali, but I thought that was definitely watchable. I might agree it shouldn't have been a ME-level program, but the match was fine, and it was all Cena. If you're going to dismiss my WM examples, why did you even try to pre-empt the obvious Hogan/Andre example? HHH's loss the second year speaks volumes about how he was perceived. Since WM 21 drew one of the largest WWE buyrates ever, I think this example deserves some notice. With Batista's only successful program after this being with Taker, I think we can give HHH more of the credit for that draw. WCW long-term consequences shouldn't matter since the fans' desire to see a loss can really only be reflected with a ppv buyrate. Just because WCW had bad booking doesn't mean that people weren't very interested in the results of some of their matches. I could cite some examples where a guy loses, then business picks up afterwards, but that's not really what we're looking at here.

His matches with Edge, Umaga, and Michaels don't come across as at least good? He even got watchable matches out of Khali. I mean you don't have to like Cena, but saying he hasn't that many good matches lately seems like some tough standards. And the prospect of someone losing has never drawn in wrestling... Hogan at Starrcade 97? Goldberg at Starrcade 98? HHH at WM 20 and 21? You build a guy up enough and eventually, yes, people will pay to see him lose.

Yeah, should've just called them "alternative." My complaint still stands.

Surprised people still hate Cena. You'd think a year and a half of good to great matches would win people over. His superman run is one of the best things in wrestling right now. When someone beats him for the title, it will actually mean something. When it looks like it has a chance of happening, people will pay to see it. As far as the intial question of he ranks as a top wrestler, my WWE rankings are as follows: 1. Matt Hardy 2. John Cena 3. MVP

Even though I only heard this cover once, and it was at least 6 years ago, I'm still very bitter about the Vines shitting on Ms. Jackson by Outkast. A punk group covering rap is stupid as is, but this made me want to seek out the band and kick the lead singer in the balls.

Batista will be lucky to make it to 60 with all the juice in his system. His saving grace might just be all his muscle tears giving him time off to recuperate from the general beating one takes from a normal wrestling workload. Cena I would be inclined to agree stands a chance of making it out alright. The key is he peaked young enough and is likely to make so much money from merch sales that he can retire before major damage is done. The increased money factor thanks to merchandising and better marketing is a benefit I'm sure Stu Hart and most, if not all, pre-Hogan wrestlers didn't have. Anyway, onto the main point of this thread... The example I always like to bring out for workload discussion is WWE vs. NOAH. NOAH is basically an extension of pre-2000 AJ, so the long term consequences should still be similar. In Japan, you seldom have guys die from wrestling-related factors, and nowhere near the frequecy of the US. NOAH and AJ guys worked a style that was infinitely more dangerous than WWE on a match-by-match basis. Stiffer strikes, more head drops, longer matches... Just about everything that could make a wrestling match more taxing on the body. However, not only do you not see the death total getting close to WWE, but the injuries are substantially lower as well. The two key differences are the month-on-month-off approach and no rampant steroid use. The "WWE style" does nothing to prevent long-term damage to wrestlers. You can only take so many back bumps before they start to catch up to you. Doing them non-stop for year isn't healthy no matter how you slice it. You seldom see a head drop suplex in WWE, but look at the number of guys having neck surgery compared to Japan. Overall rest is infinitely more important than "safe" moves. The brand split era makes the solution so easy. Raw one month, SD the next. 2 tv shows and 2 house shows a week, culminating with a ppv. Big ppvs can be co-branded. The only problem is that you'd have to convince the bean-counters in WWE to still pay the wrestlers what they get now, though they would be working less shows. Other than that, it seems like the economic side would still be feasible with 2 tv shows, and a decent number of house shows. Yeah, it would cut into WWE's bottom line some, but it's not as bad as going into complete hibernation for a couple months. You still get constant ad revenue, exposure for top guys, and 4 shows a week all year to bring in money. I doubt Vince would ever go for anything that would cost him money, but this seems like a reasonable solution, especially from a wrestler health perspective.

It's all about Corey Brewer.

Face Umaga and ECW champ Johnny Nitro were easily the best things on this show. Don't worry Punk fans... Benoit will beat Nitro's ass by the GAB and we'll get the Punk/Benoit feud we've all been waiting for. But for a one-night deal with Nitro winning out of nowhere after being undeservedly depushed for his partner's drug problems or people's issues with his gf, this was a pretty neat moment.

Those new ATL unis... Woof.