iggymcfly

All these bleeding hearts for Buffalo sports forgot their biggest victory of all. The OJ murder trial. I mean, when the greatest sports hero in the history of your city gets let off for murder, how can it not be a time for you to rejoice. Oh, and I have to say that in professional sports, I think baseball is the most meaningful. College hoops and college football are both tons of fun, but MLB's where it's at for the pros. If I could see the Orioles win a World Series, it would be WAY more meaningful than a Stanley Cup or a Super Bowl or that little gold ball on a stick that you get for the NBA Finals.

From all reports, Austin's neck was fucked up a lot worse than Kurt's ever was, and he changed his style, and managed to squeeze out four incredibly successful years. Sure, he did a lot more brawling and wasn't the in-ring competitor he once was, but he also had several ****+ outings. I think if Kurt embraces the stable leader role, and wrestles about as much as say Ric Flair, with a few squashes mixed in where he does a couple belly-to-belly suplexes and hits an Angle Slam, then he should be fine going back to the ring. Oh, and as for the people that were bitching at Fear Havoc, when Angle's 100%, he IS the best wrestler in North America. Yeah, Benoit and Guerrero might be more crisp, and sell a little better on occasion, but has Benoit carried Edge to ****+ on multiple occasions? Hell no. Has Eddie carried Brock and the Big Show to ****+ in a triple threat match. Hell no. Could either one of them make a three-on-one handicap match against three of the top wrestlers in the WWE look like an even balanced exciting match, that's not too unrealistic when they win. Hell no. Shit, Benoit and Eddy only held the title for about three months each, and they already started getting complacent and bringing down their game a little bit. Angle's held the title with pride through four different reigns without ever letting up for a second. And Hogan's a legend. He's from an era where different things amounted to overness, and he succeeded like pretty much no one has. However, he never had as much charisma as Kurt Angle. Hey brother. Say your prayers, brother. You're going down brother. In this era, he can't stick around for six months without getting stale. I'm sure if Kurt Angle wrestled in the 80's, he could have been WWF Champion better than Hogan, and NWA Champion better than Flair. Of course, he probably would have tried too hard in the NWA, and got crippled after five or ten years, but while he was there, he would have been the best damn thing going. OK, I admit I'm kind of an Angle mark, but that doesn't make anything I said any less true.

I still don't see why everyone thinks that the likely route is for Benoit to win at Vengeance and HHH to win at Summerslam. If HHH loses at Vengeance, he has no reason (storyline-wise) to get another title shot. This will be his record against Benoit: WM: Loses clean via tap-out Backlash: Loses clean when Benoit makes Michaels tap Vengeance: Loses again(!?) to Benoit Where's the justification for a fourth match. If anything, it will just be a weak match that the fans show little interest in. It certainly won't be an epic clash that gives Benoit's initial title win a run for its money as the most engrossing main event of the year. If HHH is going to main event Summerslam, one-on-one aginst Benoit, he has to get a win over him at some point, be it at Vengeance or on Raw leading into the PPV. I suppose if they really want to keep the title on Benoit until then, they could run a DQ finish at Vengeance, but that seems kind of unnecessary when Benoit's already beat HHH twice. If they want the feud to continue with any heat, Trips really needs to pick up a victory.

Well, in the long term, it would be nice for Benoit to keep his reign going, and drop the title to someone other than Trips, so that Raw doesn't get too static. However, in the short term, we've got Summerslam coming up next month which is supposed to be the 2nd biggest PPV of the year. They need a main even that people want to see, and Angle coming back or no, I don't think they're gonna get it from Smackdown. If HHH wins the title at Vengeance, then either a HHH/Benoit stipulation rematch or a HHH/Edge matchup are feasible main events. In the first case, you've got HHH ending a fairly decent sized Benoit reign in which he'd already beat Trips twice, so it owuld make sense to do something serious to end the feud. Also, it would have a "big" feel since it's the match that finally decides who's better, after several months without a clean one-on-one finish. I'd give a stipulation here that's familiar, but not overused like maybe three stages of hell. Edge would also be a fresh challenger who's got a fairly well-defined beef with HHH, and who's had a decent push beating Kane, and possibly Orton going into the PPV. Meanwhile, if Benoit wins, I don't see where you go with Summerslam. They can't really do another rematch with HHH, because Benoit will have already beaten him three times in a row on the last four PPVs. Eugene interference or no, if HHH loses again, he's done. He can't just get another title shot. With Edge's newfound focus on Evolution, it wouldn't really make sense for him to switch gears and go after Benoit, and Jericho's been too upper-midcard to sell the 2nd biggest PPV of the year in a face-face matchup. I guess they could try an elimination chamber, but I don't really think this is a good time for that, as HBK and Kane have a big-money feud that needs a one on one match, and Orton should really defend his IC title. As far as booking PPV to PPV goes, I think HHH should win the title Sunday. I suppose if I were booking, I'd let Edge get the shot at Summerslam, with Benoit only getting a quick rematch on Raw that Edge interrupts anyway. Then you've got the seeds sown for a Benoit heel turn on Edge due to jealousy, since we all know that Benoit's way better as a heel than as a face.

OK, just like Matt says, I'm gonna try to think positively. Well, since Matt has a knee injury going into their match, maybe Kane can do something really cool in their no DQ match to take Matt the fuck out. Then, when Matt sells it for two months while he's fixing up his knee, Kane can actually get some heat and start to reclaim his monster status. Of course, knowing the WWE, they'll probably let Kane beat him on Sunday, and then Tyson Tomko will put him through a table on Raw, "injuring" him to set up a feud between the two.

It would be nice if you capped at least the main event for Vengeance though. That way, I could see it when I get home from work without having to search all over the internet and having to find out who wins. Of course, I'm probably not gonna donate either, but if you would cap the main event with the bonus matches, it would be nice.

Actually, Kane overcame losses to people like X-Pac fine. When he really started losing his heat was when they did that stupid shit with his character where they completely denied his whole backstory, and just said he was some guy who killed his girlfriend in a drunk driving accident. Apparently, he decided he was burned from a childhood fire when he was about 18, and started wearing a mask. They took a perfectly good story, and buried it for a stupid one. The people tried to give it a pass anyway when Kane got his monster push, but then he started magically overcoming fire, and wrestling ridiculous matches with Shane, and they finally just had to give up. At least the stupid shit in Undertaker's character is more alluded to. It's not completely contradictory. For instance, when they say that Paul Bearer was the only person who mattered to him, he could be divorced from Sara or something, and in a place where he feels that way. It's not ridiculous. Kane's character has so many plot holes that people who watch regularly just can't take it seriously.

Bah. I say nobody actually retires Undertaker. Just let him go into his last Wrestlemania undefeated with the storyline that the one man he never beat was Brock Lesnar. Then, he can beat Lesnar clean to punish him for being such a bitch and going to the NFL and retire undefeated like the legend he is. No seriously, I kind of like the idea. I think I'd do that if I were Vince.

Yeah, that was only mentioned in the thread by about four or five people already. Read and then reply people.

I think the best thing to do with Angle and Show is to kind of keep them away from each other with the subtle implication that Kurt's afraid to go near the Big Show, and for that reason can't confront him about what happened. Then, after a three or four month heel run near the top of the card where he never actually wins the title, Angle decides to confront his demons and get revenge. This turns Angle face, and eventually culminates in a match at Wrestlemania between the two.

Well, I actually watched most of Smackdown tonight, and while it wasn't particularly engrossing, it was enough to hold my interest most of the night, and there wasn't anything too bad. If they just had a little bit of star power on this show, and they kept writing decent shows, and they got the belt off JBL, and they made everyone forget JBL ever held the belt, they might be all right.

Wait a minute, Brock's built fine, he never lingered in midcard hell, and when he jobbed to Eddie, he'd had the title for six months already. Oh, you meant the other dodgy gesture-waving former alcoholic.

There were certainly some very good Raw title matches in the last year, (HHH/HBK, etc.), but they still felt kind of throwaway two weeks later. As far as getting a truly great world title match that still had some resonance down the road, I'd have to go back to Rock/Jericho at No Mercy in 2001. They let the Rock play the heel the whole match and the crowd got into Jericho, but then they made a beautiful turn when he saw that he really couldn't get the job done without the steel chair. The thing is that a lot of times, when cheating is used, it seems like it's used instead of using a good finish for the match, i.e. Orton's stupid rollup on Jericho with the tights last week. Yet when Jericho used his finisher on the chair to pin Rock, it kind of enhanced the finish that he had to go outside the bounds of the match to actually be able to defeat him.

I think the Eugene storyline is good as it is. Sure, it would be nice if they could write another story for Benoit that could run concurrently, but given the lack of ability the writers have shown over the last couple years, just one storyline this good is enough to keep me happy.

I'm pretty sure it's just emailed questions on his website. It's not an actual interview.

The job repeatedly to La Res with new partners didn't work for Hurricane, and I don't think it's going to work for Rhyno either. The thing is that the tag division is not the women's division. They can't just throw jobbers in there, make them champs out of nowhere, and expect the crowd to react well. After La Res beat Benoit and Edge clean, they got some serious rub, and some serious credibility on Raw. Now, they can't just end their reign against someone who hasn't won a tag match on Raw. What they really need to do is have some tag matches on Raw that don't feature the champs, and let teams actually earn their title shots. That way, a team can get over enough to actually earn the belts before they win them. If they can't build an actual tag division, the least they could do is accentuate the stables a little bit. If I were booking the tag division, I'd make a defined stable that enforces for Bischoff. A-Train would be perfect in the role, and he could team with Cade every now and then, if Cade's even still associated with Bischoff storyline-wise. Then, when they get a tag team they want to build up like Rhyno and Tajiri, they could beat A-Train and Cade, (with Cade taking the fall) then maybe Flair and Batista or Flair and Eugene (with Flair taking the fall), before actually earning their shot at the titles. If they did a storyline where they tell Rhyno he's not getting another shot at the tag titles, and he not only gets new partners, but actually has to battle his way through the ranks a little bit, it might make it actually mean something when they win the titles.

For all the arguments about the little mistakes the WWE made in 1999 and 2000, the shows were great then. They were consistently entertaining and the problems were far from troublesome. Yeah, things started to get a little stale in the summer of 2000 when Rock and HHH faced each other for the title four PPVs in a row, but the shows were still very good. In fact, going into WM X-7, they were back to being as good as they had ever been, if not better. Ratings and buyrates were at an all-time high, and any little "problems" weren't hurting the product significantly at all. The problem was that with The Rock injured, the only real big money feud they could push in the spring/summer of 2001 was Austin/HHH. Then, before they actually got to that match, HHH got injured. Then, in the summer, the Rock finally came back to save the day. People were just aching for that to happen. They were counting down the weeks one by one, about a month and a half in advance. He cut one quick promo on Austin, and then all of a sudden started feuding with Booker T who ABSOLUTELY NO ONE cared about at the time, and the backlash was so strong that Booker still hasn't completely recovered to this day. At the time, they did a pretty good job of building a star in Angle, but they were so focused on the crappy invasion storyline that everyone was still turned off, and then the WWE started losing their fanbase for good. By the time they skipped over Austin/Rock again and started booking Jericho as a joke champion, the WWE had lost a huge group of fans that they would never ever get back.

So basically, you get rid of the twist that made WM 2000 and WM X-7 memorable, and replace them with the cookie-cutter "face chases the heel and wins the belt at WM" that happened every other year. Then you hold off on the Invasion until WM, to the point where it would have no heat at all. Then, finally, instead of freshening up Austin's character, you just have him get crazy, leave, and come back, skipping the whole heel run. Yeah, if you had all the WCW stars signed, it would make for one good "dream PPV", but the rest of the time it would suck, and you'd be taking out all the fresh ideas that actually made the WWE good in 2000 and 2001. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. If I were going to "fix" anything from that period, what I'd do is make sure that Rock main evented Summerslam 2001 against Austin when he was crazy over, and drawing 6.0 to 7.0 ratings on his own. They could have decided to either keep the belt on Austin or give it to Rocky at that point, but they needed to let that Austin/Rock feud have some closure. As it was, the fans waited and waited for that matchup, getting a tease at Vengeance, and then finally getting at WM XIX at which point, they no longer cared.

Actually, I could totally see HHH wanting to go 60 minutes with Benoit, and I could see the two of them doing it too, as Benoit's style would help facilitate that kind of match. However, it would be stupid to do it at Vengeance, with the whole storyline being the interference of Eugene and Evolution. Also, even if they did, I don't think the WWE ever announces a 60-minute time limit for it's matches, so it would be completely out of nowhere to try to make a draw on that basis. If they actually wrestled a 60 minute match, they'd probably just keep going to a decisive winner.

Let's go back to making fun of WildPegasus. That was funny. Ha ha, so funny. So anyway, has anyone noticed that Randy Orton's schlong looks longer than normal? I wonder if that EnerX stuff really works?

There's no way in hell that The Rock should have won at WM in 2000. It was the first time a heel had won at Wrestlemania in 16 chances, and you're saying that he shouldn't have? How predictable do you want the WWE to be?

Coach and Tajiri could easily kill some time, either doing some kind of skit, or they could throw in a 5 minute comedy match between the two. All they need to do is have Bischoff announce the match at the PPV since he was gone Monday, and your storyline's already set. Then, if you have Benoit and HHH go 45 minutes, which I think they could, the show should be in no danger of running short. With a good worker like Benoit, HHH will be much less prone to run out of things to do and lie around the ring. The card seems a little thin, but they shouldn't have too much trouble stretching it to two and a half hours.

Well, by itself, the IC title is below him when he's held the world title for about 14 of the last 22 months. However, in theory there's no reason why they couldn't do a champion vs. champion match, or even be bitches and make Edge defend the IC title early in the night before he gets his title shot against Trips in the main event.

Elvis? Bruce Lee? Jackie Chan? Don Knotts? What the fuck kind of "best actor of all time tournament" is this anyway. You might as well throw in Kevin Nash and Britney Spears while you're at it.

I thought The Butterfly Effect was probably the most underrated movie of 2003. People panned it before it even came out just because Ashton Kutcher was playing a serious lead role in it. However, he played his role perfectly well, and the directing was great. There were a couple small plot holes, as there tend to be with time travel movies, but it was still a very good show.