iggymcfly

Nowitzki doens't really play center though. He'll guard a big guy in a pinch every now and then, but he's a lot more comfortable playing the 4 or even the 3. Usually, when he was at the "center" position for the Mavs, it meant they were basically just running up and down the floor with 5 interchangable parts and no set positions. If the Lakers are looking for someone to shut down O'Neal and Duncan, I'm not so sure Dirk is their guy. As for the Mavs, I think they'll be fine if they trade away Stackhouse, Howard, Nowitzki, and Deng (the likely pick). Nash, Finley and O'Neal are all gonna play 30-35 minutes anyway, and all those backups are capable guys. Shawn Bradley is criminally underrated, and could still start in this league if given the chance. Due to his sheer size, he pulls down rebounds and gets blocks, and will be a much better backup for O'Neal than Horace Grant was. Najera and Laettner are both good enough that they've started recently, and I wouldn't even be surprised to see one of them start over Walker by the end opf the year. Delk and Best are are also very capable for the minutes receive and won't handicap the team in any way while they're on the floor. Of course, the more likely scenario is that after Dallas ships off their four or five players for O'Neal, they'll ship Antoine Walker somewhere else, probably out East, and get another decent four and a couple bench players instead. Not that I really want to see Kurt Thomas and Shaq battlling throughout the year to see who can possibly shoot a lower FT percentage.

As a Mavs fan, I like this second trade a lot better. Nash is the key to making Shaq successful in Dallas, and Howard and the draft pick are both expendable. Without jinxing anyone, I'd say that if the trade goes through, the Mavs will have a very good chance to get multiple rings.

In my mind, there's a difference between being physically dominated, and being outwrestled,. Eugene isn't strong, but he can wrestle. I saw the story of the match on monday as HHH going in thinking it was going to be easy, but he was getting beat not because Eugene was stronger, but because he was a smart and skilled wrestler. Well, he shouldn't be able to "outwrestle" HHH either when he's only spent a month or so actually wrestling, and HHH has been promoted for years as a "student of the game" in regards to wrestling, and was basically promoted as the best technical wrestler in the company before Benoit came in. I don't mind him getting some offense, but he should not consistently dominate HHH. Also, the whole "hulking up" thing was bullshit. I could see him getting angry and getting some good punches in, but he can't just overpower the top heel on Raw because he gets angry. Don't get me wrong, I really like the gimmick and I think it has a ton of potential. But letting him dominate the offense against the top two heels on the show one month into his run takes away a lot of his momentum. It removesd any upset value from what he would do over the lower-level heels on the show, and robs him of a chance to play a purely sympathetic character against someone at the top of the craft. It's not that I don't like the general idea; I just think they're taking unnecessary shortcuts to pop the crowd that undermine their serious money-drawing heels, and detract from the longevity of the gimmick. I mean how are we supposed to see Benoit play the underdog role next Monday against Kane, or even have Kane be a credible threat to his title when we all know that Kane can be outwrestled by a retard, and that Kane's brutal superhuman punches can be shrugged off by anyone that's angry. It just really annoys me the way the WWE makes all their heels out to look like pure shit. The fans have been conditioned to believe that if a heel wins clean, it means he's preparing for a face turn, and it cripples the WWE to the point where they have to run Eddie Guerrero vs. JBL as a PPV main event.

I don't get why the Mavs are so damn anxious to trade Nash instead of Dirk. If they're trying to win now with O'Neal as their centerpiece, then Nash should be the one player they want to keep. He and Shaq will both be good for about the same period of time, and his specialty will be what the Laker's lacked. The ability to get Shaq the ball. I think Nash is the best all-around point guard in the league right now, and he and Shaq were basically made for each other. Meanwhille, Dirk and Finley are much like Kobe in that they have to get their shots to get in rhythym or they're just not that good. Nash, Finley, Stackhouse, and an ever improving Daniels around a newly motivated Shaq would certainly put the Mavs in the running for a ring, if not make them the favorite. And I don't want to hear this shit about how Shaq is why the Lakers lost when he was 11-15 and Kobe was 4-20. Maybe, the reason the Pistons double teamed Kobe instead of Shaq is that they new Kobe was too fucking stupid and selfish to pass the ball.

I would be psyched to see Shaq come to Dallas. He's been my favorite player that actually plays for a long time, (Shawn Bradley hasn't been doing anything for a while and he couldn't even get any minutes this year.), and Dallas has been my favorite team since back when it looked like they might be good when they had Mashburn and Kidd. Even if they get rid of Nowitzki and Finley, they'd still have Nash to shoot the ball when needed and feed Shaq when not, in addition to Daniels who's gonna be a great player and Antawn Jamison. Also, Van Exel's been wanting to come back to Dallas ever since he left, so even if they didn't win it all next year, they would in two years for sure. Could anyone beat this lineup? PG: Steve Nash SG: Nick Van Exel SF: Marquis Daniels PF: Antawn Jamison C: Shaquille O' Neal HELL NO!

It was a very well-written article, but I can't really get into the fine points, because I'm too tired, and you've already kept me up until 3:40 reading this. I will say that while the two-man power trip didn't really make sense, the fact that they kept tension between them throughout, and the explanation that HHH was being loyal to Vince made it work. It wasn't until they did the Invasion angle and decided to never do the Austin/Rock rematch at Summerslam, that the show started to "fall apart." But I guess that could be a whole nother column. Anyway, good work on the article. A lot of was spot on, and it was a good trip down memory lane.

I think the problem with Eugene though is that they're afraid to let his character go all the way. I mean obviously his character is a retarded, naive, emotionally vulnerable guy who wants to be a wrestler and happens to be talented that way. The vulnerability is what drew people to him and what makes his stories so engrossing. However, when he gets in the ring, instead of just letting him be vulnerable and keep vainly fighting back until he gets saved, they have to go their typical face route. He has to have superpowers and be invulnerable, just like Hogan and Warrior and Austin and Rock. I wish for once they could just run with the character they have and leave the superace bullshit on the shelf. It's one thing if he's facing Coach or somebody, but when he's facing HHH and Kane, he should not be able to dominate them physically. If he gets a fluke win over them in 6 months, then so be it. But physically dominating the top two heels on Raw within a month of his debut is bullshit.

Bullshit. That's when the ratings were the highest, because everyone was waiting for the Rock to come out and demolish HHH. However, the fans stayed tuned are gonna be pissed, and they're sure as hell not gonna make the same mistake to tune in next week. Of course, the Benoit/Kane match might offset the damage in next week's rating, but it was a terrible business move to make everyone think the Rock was coming out to make the save and have him not show. That's the kind of stupid shit the WWE used to never do that's killing all their business now. Well, that and crappy storylines, and bad acting, and giving their heels so little credibility that neither one of their two top heels can pin Eugene.

I got 240,081. Beat THAT.

"New" main eventers aren't what the WWE needs right now on Smackdown. What they need are credible main eventers to make people take the title feuds seriously. They need to get the belt on Angle (if he can still work) or Undertaker (if he can't) ASAP. Then, from that point they need to take the title seriously, by not having the champion open the show against jobbers, or lose on PPV to midcarders, or just generally be uninteresting for months at a time. Then, after they've built up the belt for a few months, they can think about giving it to someone like...uh...well I can't really think of anyone on Smackdown they should give the title too. Booker's been jobbed way too much to ever be a credible threat to the title, RVD's leaving, and JBL's a douchebag midcarder. Maybe if Mysterio got a quick two week reign it might change the way he's thought of in the WWE, or they could give Cena some kind of middling reign due to his popularity. What they really need is to build up some serious heels, but JBL got pushed so hard right away that it's just not gonna work with him now. Chavo's never gonna get out of Eddie's shadow, and Dupree's going to continue to be a joke as long as he keeps this gimmick. Haas was making progress until they inexplicably decided he'd better as a lower midcard comedic face than an upper midcard serious heel. At least when Big Show comes back, they'll have someone with automatic credibility on the heel side, but I don't know if I can take 4 months of Taker/Show on PPV. Given how decimated the heel ranks are on Smackdown right now, (and the main event in general), there's only three things that can save the show: 1. Kurt risks injury and comes back to take over the #1 heel slot on Smackdown. 2. Brock realizes he's just not that good at football, and has tons of heel heat for thinking he could turn his back on the WWE, and become a "real athlete" again. 3. They decide to move someone over from Raw to challenge for the title. Until then, Smackdown's just gonna keep on sucking.

I don't think you can get on Mickelson too bad about losing this one. On a day when no one in the whole tournament played under par, he made three birdies in four holes to take the lead. Yeah, he double bogeyed 17 to lose it, but he still shot a damn good round, and if Goosen hadn't shot an amazing round, he would have won the US Open by three strokes.

Look at it this way. When Kurt Angle saves Smackdown, he entertains millions and millions of people. If he gets paralyzed, that only hurts him, his family, and his close friends. Probably 100 people at the most. The only person who should tell Kurt Angle not to wrestle is Kurt Angle. If he decides that he wants to entertain us, we should just enjoy it and go along for the ride. Since Kurt and Shawn are IMO the two best wreslters in North America (screw Benoit), I'd be ecstatci to see them get in the ring together for a real dream match.

All right, I've been playing the game a lot more, and I got in the groove a little bit. I really like the game overall now. However, when I was playing tonight, and I realized that I'm kind of anal-retentive about stats on sports games. First, I wanted to check out how many holds my middle relievers had, only to find that the stat wasn't even included in the game. They show how many doubles a guy has given up, but holds which are a pretty basic stat aren't included. Then, I wanted to see how Chase Utley has been doing since I traded for him, to see if I should send him down because I kind of wanted to call up another starter. However, there are no game log or last month stats or even stats with the ballclub to check. Finally, I was looking at the different goals that give you MVP points and since one of them was have the fewest errors, and my little glove icon said I was first in defense, I thought I'd see how many errors my team had versus the other teams, but short of actually adding up the errors each player has, you can't do it. You can only compare stats player by player, not team by team. Now granted, these are minor gripes, and the game was known for not being as deep stat-wise as ASB. Overall, I still like the game better because of the pitching/fielding system, and the greater minor league interaction. I find managing my minor league games to be the perfect distraction from the grind of playing 162 ML games. I just thought it was funny that I would actually miss these small features and extraneous stats. Since I usually skip at least one year in sports franchises I buy, MVP 2004 will probably be my baseball game for another year and a half or so, but I really hope that they fix some of these minor things by the time MVP 2006 comes out. There's no reason to leave in little problems like that with the number of beta testers they employ on a game like this. Note: Oh, and speaking of glitches, one thing that really bugs me is that a starting pitcher doesn't have to throw five innings to get a win. That's a fundamental rule of baseball that shouldn't be ignored in a major game.

That's bullshit. Shawn wasn't even considering wrestling until after HHH beat him up. Jealousy was the whole basis of the feud. Later on, when they involved Flair and started talking about passing the torch and staring yourself in the mirror was when it got stupid.

I don't understand what could have possibly been wrong with the HHH/HBK storyline going into SS 2002. HBK was a multiple time former WWE Champion who had main evented WM the last match before having to leave due to a debilitating injury, so I'd certainly say he was a credible main eventer. Then, he comes back to hang with his buddies, (first Kevin Nash, and later HHH). HHH, meanwhile is not getting very good face pops, and is jealous of HBK's popularity. Fearful of falling back into HBK's shadow where he lingered for years in DX, HHH tries to subordinate Shawn by injuring him. Then afterward, he plays his protector so that he can leech greater status off of Shawn. However, Shawn discovers his scheme and feels utterly betrayed by his former best friend to the point that he comes out of retirement to face him at Summerslam. That is a great epic story, and it was executed to perfection. The promo HBK delivered "via satellite" after discovering HHH was the culprit showed real fire, the intensity of which has not been seen since by anyone since on the WWE roster. You felt his betrayal, you felt his anger, and you felt his pain. Then, they delivered just a taste of revenge on Raw the next week, to give a little taste of what was coming at the PPV, but still leave the viewer wanting more. Now granted, they let the story slip a little bit when they picked it up going into Survivor Series, diluting it with the Elimination Chamber, and then focusing it on dumb shit like passing the torch. (WTF, he came back from a career-ending injury due to his hatred of HHH; the feud has nothing to do with passing the torch from one generation to the next.) However, going into Summerslam, I thought it was perfect. If you focused on the actual exciting, passionate elements of the story instead of: "Wrestler A made Wrestler B look bad when he talked to him in the hall" and "Wrestler C shouldn't get to win matches because he might not be able to wrestle full time", you likely would have appreciated it too. The build for the match at SS was near perfect, and probably better than the build for any other match the WWE has done in the last 2 years.

If they take him straight from OVW to a PPV title shot, Smackdown is offical over, and is down to C-Show status. Oh, and the WWE title becomes the #3 belt in the company behind the IC belt.

It certainly would be nice if the faces put over the heels a little more, but it's certainly not HBK that's the problem. Shit, look at HHH who's the most dominant heel on either show. Before finally getting a clean win against HBK, he didn't have a clean win on PPV since the HIAC a year ago against Kevin Nash. The whole mentality that being a face means being consistently far and above your opponents talentwise is one of the monst annoying points of the WWE mentality. At least back in the day, you'd have a super-Rock or a super-Austin and the rest of the roster would be mortal, but nopw it just trickles straight down. La Res has to cheat to beat Hurricane and Rosey. Chavo has to cheat to beat Spike. Friggin' Eugene can't even job clean to Kane. The whole thing is madness.

Faces don't put heels over cleanly in the WWE. It just doesn't happen. There's a reason that there is only one credible main event heel right now between the two shows. It takes a very rare case for a heel to semi-regularly win matches without cheating. Angle and Brock are the only two heels that I can think of in the last three years that could get clean wins.

I can tell you why a ladder match wouldn't have worked. Because there was no title on the line. What are they just gonna climb the ladder and get a certificate that says "Congratulations, you are the winner of the greatest feud in WWE history!"? Besides, when the whole point of the match is to brutalize someone you hate, climbing a ladder seems pretty counterproductive. Not to mention that they already had a ladder match as just one of three falls in a match where the feud still did not end. They needed something definitive to close the feud out. Now if they didn't use the cell properly, fine. That's something they should have changed to improve the match. However, they can't just end a two year feud with a ladder match. It just wouldn't make sense.

Just for a clarification on star ratings, mine aren't anywhere near as stringent as Loss's. To me, a *** match is a good match that has some minor flaws that keep it from being special. A **** match just means a MOTY candidate in the WWE, probably one of the top five to ten matches of the year. An actual match of the year for me (in the WWE) usually ranges from ****1/2 up to ***** depending on how good of a year there was. I saw almost every PPV for a while, from Unforgiven 2001 through Unforgiven 2003. Since, then the only PPV I've seen was WM XX. Couple that with Raw and Smackdown watching that's gone from religious to occasional back to religious, and back to occasional again over the last six years, and that's pretty much the sum total of the wrestling I've seen. Out of all those matches, the only one I've given ***** is HHH/HBK from SS 2002, because I thought that for the situation, that match was perfect. The story was perfect, the spots were perfect, and the finishing sequence was perfect. The selling was not perfect from a technical standpoint, but from a dramatic standpoint it was. The kip-up didn't ruin disbelief or anything to me. All it did was show that HBK was making a conscious decision to ignore the pain, and put everything he had into defeating HHH. In wrestling world, that doesn't suspend disbelief the same way that say Rock no-selling the lionsault as an effective finisher or Benoit no-selling the ankle lock as an effective submission or Angle no-selling the crossface would. It fits in with the story of HBK rediscovering himself as a wrestler perfectly.

Well, I'd have to watch the match again some time to see the perspective on it I guess, which I haven't done. Maybe if I saw it again, I'd drop it to ****1/2. As for the feud, I wouldn't say that HHH immediately got his heat back, and then dominated the feud though. The very next time they wrestled was at Survivor Series where HBK took away HHH's title.

I don't see any reason to think that HHH is going to get the belt back any time soon. They've done so much to make him look like Benoit's bitch I don't even think he'd be a credible champion right now. I mean shit, he lost to Shelton Benjamin twice. If he does somehow win the title at Vengeance, I'm sure it would only be to drop it back again at Summerslam. I say the best way to do it would be to get the Benoit/HHH match done at Vengeance, since it's not as big of a money match anymore, and just let Benoit get the clean job to end it. Then, they've got another month to build up Edge before starting the Benoit/Edge feud at Summerslam. To make it a big event, build it up as kind of a face/face thing going in. Then do the Edge knows he can't beat Benoit clean and resorts to beating him with a chair to win the title. Since he wins the title, it will still be a big event, and it will also be a good wya to get the feud going between the two. Of course, Benoit will win the title back in a month or two, before ultimately losing it to Randy Orton around Survivor Series or even the Royal Rumble. Meanwhile, HHH can undergo a winter of rebuilding/making movies, and by the time Wrestlemania rolls around, there will be no problem with him regaining the World Title. On Smackdown, the best option is still for Eddie to drop the belt to Angle at Summerslam. If that can't happen, which it seems like it might not since I haven't heard anything about it in a while, then they might as well just drop the belt to Taker. It will at least be fresh and different, and might get people watching Smackdown. Of course, they'd have to have a decent heel challenger for Taker to make it work, but Big Show will probably be ready by that time, so maybe they can make it work.

I think a lot of personal bias comes into these star ratings. All the Benoit marks give the WM XX main event a lot higher star rating just because it's the match where Benoit finally won the title. Personally, I thought that match was fairly weak for a WM main event, and lagged behind both the Raw title match and the SS 2002 match in terms of quality. Here's my star ratings for the matches I saw. Summerslam 2002- *****. I know no one's with me on this one, and it probably wouldn't be the same today if they'd just had the match, but at the time it was just so electric. The story was great, the crowd was about the hottest they've ever been, and the match at the time was so emotionally charged. You can say that HBK didn't sell the back, but I prefer to think of the kipup as HBK originally moving to try to protect the back before giving up, taking all the pain and doing whatever he could to take the fight to HHH, including using his aerial maneuvers. The thing is he really suspended disbelief, as everyone in the crowd forgot that it was fake, and was just cheering for him to survive his back injury and win. (Well, except for the HHH marks anyway.) Then, finally he broke away from the pure fighting, and showed he still had wrestling skill, in about the only good rollup finish of all time. This is my favorite WWE match ever. Armageddon 2002- ***1/2. Yeah, this one was nowhere near as good as Summerslam, and it was kind of a spotfest, but it was still a really exciting match. You can say that the first fall should have been shorter, but it wouldn't really make sense for the first fall to go 15 minutes when it was contested under the same rules that went 35 minutes at Summerslam. The story wasn't as good as the one at Summerslam, but just the idea that they were trying to do whatever they could, (be it flaming barb-wire bats, etc.) to destroy the other main is a pretty good story on its own. Raw title match, Dec 2003.- ****1/4. This was a very solid pure wrestling match between the two, with them both just fighting for the title. There wasn't anything extraordinary about it, but what they did was executed perfectly. While the finish was a screwjob, it was at least a different screwjob then we're used to, and made for an excellent match. WM XX main event- ***3/4. This was basically just a good formula triple threat match. Rather than trying to do something a little different and have an overriding story to go with the match, they just broke up each other's pinfalls and submissions like normal. This match was also hurt by it being painfully obvious that Benoit was going to win. With HBK blowing his shot two months before, there was no way he could win, and HHH had been champion way too long to retain against someone who had won the Rumble from the #1 position. While it was well-executed, there were no believable false finishes, and it just lacked the special quality of say the Vengeance Triple Threat from the year before. I don't expect people to actually agree with these star ratings, but that's the way I feel about the matches, and I defended them as best as I could.

If they try to go face/face though, the vast majority of the crowd will be with Taker. Eddie's actually lost a lot of his support with this dreadfully boring JBL feud. Just seeing someone fresh shake up the main event picture will be enough to get Taker huge pops if he wins the title.

OMG! That was the funniest thing I've read in months. It was funny and it was sad and it was true. Anyway, as for the actual content of the thread, I didn't see the Benoit/Kane match, and I've never seen any Japanese wrestling. However, I did see Benoit/Angle from RR 2003, and I have to agree that it's vastly overrated. I'm an Angle mark and I tend to overrate his work if anything, but I couldn't justify giving that match higher than **** and even that might have been pushing it a little. What annoyed me wasn't just the suplexes. It was the constant reversals on a dime, as if putting someone in a submission hold did absolutely nothing to put them at a disadvantage, and all they had to do was roll around and pretty soon you'd be in a submission hold instead. It wasn't good psychology or wrestling. Now, if you're including such factors as buildup and quality of the feud, the last WWE match I'd consider a classic was HBK/HHH from SS 2002. I know I'm not in that much greater company that Evil Blood on the point, but I really think that match had a special "real" aura to it that I haven't seen since in the WWE. I know that it's hard to admit those two guys would do it, especially following what from all accounts was a very disappointing HIAC match, but that first street fight was a classic in every sense of the word.