iggymcfly

Well, I'd think of painkillers as even less of an offense than weed since someone taking bumps on the road 4 nights a week would be more likely to use them for their prescribed purpose than for recreation. I mean you can get a doctor to give you Vicodin for 1/4 of the pain that people like RVD and Sabu deal with night in, night out. RVD wasn't found with anything other than the weed and vicodin, and he's the one I was talking about here.

This whole thing seems like a little bit of an overreaction. I mean if RVD did get probation that prevented him from traveling or something, it wouldn't be for months. Why not just let the angle go to it's natural conclusion at SNME? The drug policy obviously wasn't implemented for weed, it was for hard drugs and steroids. I think they basically killed their next few weeks of TV (including a SNME episode that's pretty important to their future on NBC) over absolutely nothing.

I know this is a couple pages back, but I just wanted to say that Triple Threat matches have ALWAYS been NO DQ in the WWF/WWE. Always. We've had this discussion on about 8 different occasions.

Only the WWE title's on the line. And if they go through with this, I think the writing's on the wall for RVD and ECW. If they can't even wait until Tuesday for him to drop the title, he's finished.

Cops always use that shit as an excuse whether they actually smell anything or not. It's just a cover so they can search you without probable cause. It is true though that good weed can smell pretty strong regardless.

Yeah, I guess it's legit. Damn, that sucks. RVD and Sabu are pretty much the only really marketable stars that ECW has at this point. If they have to be taken off the road at some point, the whole promotion's screwed. Hopefully, Vince has good enough lawyers to make sure they can continue travelling throughout the process. If it's just weed and vicodin, they'll probably still be OK, but anything harder than that and ECW's basically dead.

I'm still not sure how reliable this story is. The page in the link credited WWE.com, but when I went there to double-check the story, it was nowhere to be found. I looked through the front page, the news archive, and then searched by "arrest" and found nothing everytime. Also, the actual story was really poorly written, and you'd think that a legitimate newspaper would do a better job with it. Just because PWInsider copied and pasted it doesn't mean that it's actually correct. I'm saying there's about a 75% chance that it's bullshit at this point.

I like that you have the all-time records thing up there. That's neat. I doubt I take over first in overall wins this year, but I will pass Teke for best winning percentage. One more thing to shoot for anyway.

I'm loving RVD as of late. It's a combination of: 1) him being way more motivated and putting on much better matches 2) the fact that he's someone who actually feels fresh on top of the card 3) wanting to see the ECW brand given some credibility 4) him actually getting two wins over my favourite wrestler of all time John Cena I've always been a fan of RVD, but I haven't been really into his character to the point that I'd consider him my favorite wrestler like this since back during the invasion.

1) a) Cena actually got me to quit watching Raw for quite a while through the fall. After Summerslam, I stopped following the product closely at all until I heard that Edge won the title at NYR. b) Yes, I was watching the product beforehand, the Batista/HHH feud had rekindled my interest. When Batista switched shows, I tried to watch SD a couple times, but the stuff he was doing with JBL was even more embarrassing than what Cena was doing on Raw. c) The wrestler I'm most interested in right now, (RVD), is on top of the card, so I continue to tune in on the basis of his segments. I like Edge as well, so I'd probably watch another one of his title runs too. 2) No, we're not being "worked" at all. Vince has just been doing everything he could for the last 18 months to get Cena over as a face, and enough of the crowd has accepted it for him to call it a success. Hooray for Vince. A large portion of the crowd still doesn't like him and as a concession, Vince is making a Tuesday show with a better top face, although it does utilize the exact same shitty booking. 3) If Cena really wants to succeed, what he needs is an editor. Someone who's smart about the business who can go over his promos with him before he gives them, and help him make sure he doesn't sound like a dumbass. Like when he's reading about the "T-shirts that smell like fart juice", they could say: "No, don't say that. Everyone over the age of 12's going to think you're retarded. Say 'cum-stained T-shirts' instead, so you're making a clever observation that denigrates your rival rather than stupid potty humor". Well, that's the most important thing anyway. To really get the intelligent fans into the character, they'd have to stop booking him like Superman, stop having him act like such a poser, drop the "You can't see me", drop the salute, drop the five-knuckle shuffle, and most importantly, quit the stupid thing where he changes to a soft voice and gets a smarmy shit-eating grin on his face whenever he's doing an intense promo.

RVD has to pick Sabu. If he does that, the match will be awesome even if Cena picks Lita and Edge picks Andre the Giant's corpse. As for who Edge and Cena should pick, I admit it would be fun to see Batista out there, but that would make him the de facto biggest face in the match (it would be his return), and I'm afraid that RVD and Cena might look bad by comparison. Therefore, I think the Edge/Foley, Cena/Flair thing sounds downright perfect.

Because this is for both belts, and the SNME match is for the WWE title only. It does seem like it would make way more sense though if they would have at least waited to announce the SNME match until after RVD/Edge. Shit, if they were really smart, they could have had Edge get a title match last week with the explanation that Heyman "owed" Edge for saving RVD, had Cena interfere to screw Edge, and then make SNME a triple threat with the logic that all three men need to be in the ring together so that they don't screw each other and keep there from being a clean finish. Then, we could have had RVD/Angle to see if Angle gets into the triple threat this week when the SNME match had already been announced on Raw. Instead, they basically announced the triple-threat to the non-net audience in Angle's promo with no reasoning behind it whatsoever, and are no just throwing around a bunch more matches without even bothering to explain to why they're taking place. I don't know why they always get these little things wrong like this.

Let's not get carried away here. I'm as big of an Angle mark as anyone, but I don't think it was anywhere near MOTY territory. In fact, I'd say that the RVD/Cena match from Raw and the tag match from ECW TV the week before were both better.

Obviously, he works as a good foil to the WWE invaders during the initial invasion storyline, but I don't see where you go with him for feuds down the line. He's got the natural charisma to work as a face and get over as an extreme "rebel" with the ECW fans, but can you still book him as the face against an established ECW star? I don't see a real ECW crowd in a place like Philly cheering him over someone like Sabu. At the same time, I don't see something like Angle/Big Show being the kind of feud that you want to establish the new ECW as around as it comes off too much like WWE-lite. Actually, while I was writing this topic, I kind of answered my own question in my mind. I think a feud with CM Punk based on how Kurt Angle lost his "straight edge" roots by embracing the new ECW would be dynamite. Based on the stars currently established, Angle looks like he's in limbo, but a feud spanning a month or two with Punk before maybe turning on RVD in a face/face matchup and joining up with Punk would be awesome. Thoughts?

One silver lining about giving away RVD/Angle on free TV is that with the finish they had (RVD going over clean), this would be a good way storyline-wise to plant the seeds for an Angle heel turn. I mean, he told us how he's obsessed with being a champion and now he knows he's not good enough to beat RVD clean. If he ultimately does join up with someone like Punk before having a big title shot against RVD, this would be a pretty good explanation as to why.

Just finished the show: Anyway, the good: -Sabu/Roadkill was an excellent spotfest, and it didn't feel like a rehash since Roadkill's got natural "big guy" credibility and they worked a little longer match. Excellent opener. -The RVD/Angle main event was well worked. I really liked the spot where Angle refused to break the ankle lock because.....there are no DQs in ECW! Why would anyone ever break a hold in the ropes. The bad: -This Kelly thing's getting really old. Really old. A bait and switch works once, maybe twice, but now? We all know she's getting naked, so what's the point? Are we really that desperate that we want to see some mediocre blonde do the worst dancing we've ever seen? -Dreamer/Big Show. Also, the exact same thing as last week. At the very least, they could have had Dreamer say "Show could do better than that" or something. This ached of just stretching the storyline longer without developing it at all. -Did they really need to treat Doring like such a jobber? I get they wanted Knox to have a win in his debut, but they could have at least made a competitive match out of it. Basically, the message is that anyone who didn't wrestle in ECW > anyone who did except for RVD and Sabu. -Rope breaks, the referee counting Knox out when he was outside the ring. Umm, hello? Is it that hard to adjust to the ECW rules? They're pretty simple. If there's a pinfall, you count it, and if there's a submission, you ring the bell. The rest of the time, you sit there and watch. There are no DQs and no countouts. Even in the opening spotfest, they had two rope breaks. -The fat stripper. If they really want to waste Sandman squashing lame gimmicks, I can almost accept that, but do they really need to use the same guy that was on Raw last week? It totally ruins the illusion that the brands are separate. If they want to keep this going, you know what they should do? Bring in a WWE jobber every week, and say that he's "debuting". Sandman canes the fuck out of him, he decides he doesn't want to be in ECW and goes crying back to Heat or Velocity the next week. -The camera work. Having a camera behind the plant so we can watch Kelly strip for him? Fucking weak. Looked waaaay too rehearsed. Also, did we need 5000 shots of Edge and Lita during the main event? It basically just says "don't worry about the ringwork, Edge is gonna run in anyway". It kind of made the match a little anticlimactic. Basically, I'll keep watching because I love the way that RVD and Sabu are working right now, but there's a ton of stupid shit they're doing that hurts the show that would all be really easy to fix. I don't mind Edge or Cena showing up occasionally, but please stop making the show come off like a bad WWE clone.

That was definitely a fun opener, but are they really supposed to have rope breaks in ECW? It doesn't really make sense to me. I remember when Tajiri was in the WWF, Heyman would always hype how the Tarantula was legal in ECW, but not in the WWF.

No way does Cena win the title at SNME. All the heat for the main event of Summerslam (Cena/Edge) is based on the idea that Edge repeatedly screwed Cena out of the title. If Cena's the champ going into Summerslam, the match has no heat whatsoever. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Angle beats RVD tonight after Edge interference, and is added to the SNME match to be the designated job boy. At this point, they want to protect RVD from taking a pinfall for his title, and at the same time, they're protecting Cena like Jesus so he can't lose either. Since Edge's whole gimmick is "illegitimate champion", it doesn't hurt him at all not to pin RVD or Cena.

I guarantee you that less than 20% of the people who watch WrestleMania (you know, the PPV Rock/Hogan was on?) and probably less than 10% are internet fans. Not in the sense that they've never looked at anything to do with wrestling on their computer, but in the sense that they're not so workrate-minded that they'd be anticipating something like HBK/Angle to anywhere near the degree Rock/Hogan.

Carlito gets a couple cute lines fed to him a night, and he makes some good facial expressions, but he has a hard time holding together a real interview. He's a fun midcard character, but his character is too simple to be a main eventer. AAE yells and repeats one stupid catchprase. He's not even close to being in Orton's league. Cena overdoes all of his facial expressions, and has this incredibly annoying habit of trying to tell a story about a basic stupid storyline instead of talking like a normal human. Let me give you an example: "At ONS, I'm going to have to go into the ECW arena and face all the hostile crowd and RVD at the same time. They're not going to like me. They're probably going to boo me. But I'm not going to be scared to wrestle there. Blah blah blah." or "HHH, I know you think I'm a fluke. A transitional champion. You're probably a better wrestler than me too. But I'm not going to be scared to wrestle you. Blah blah blah." When he actually stays intense, and is trash-talking his opponents, his mic skills are actually pretty good. But he always does this transition where he puts on his smarmy voice, gives the camera a stupid, shit-eating grin, and starts going off on these long tangents, going through every silly detail of the storyline in a way that JR would be embarrassed to do. When the ECW guys came out and he beat up 4 of them the other day, he was doing a pretty good promo, and then he did "the transition" immediately after saying "I kinda liked it". I can't explain it exactly, but when he does it, it's absolutely terrible and makes me hate him with a passion. Oh yeah, this is supposed to be about Orton. Anyway, he's definitely better than Cena and Carlito on the stick. I don't doubt that Cena has more natural potential than Orton, but with no guidance, he gives at least one line every interview that makes me embarrassed to be watching wrestling. Tonight it was the "fart juice". Orton gets over feuds without saying anything that's so dumb I want to slap him in the face so he gets the nod.

EDIT: JerichoMark edited his post while I was writing mine. For the record, he initially stated that Orton had less charisma than 90% of the roster although I can see why he thought better of it. OK, let's break down the Raw roster for the sake of brevity: More charisma than Orton: Edge, Flair, Michaels, Trish About the same charisma as Orton: Triple H Less charisma than Orton: AAE, Beth Phoenix, Candice, Carlito, Charlie Haas, Chris Masters, Danny Basham, Eugene, Gene Snitsky, John Cena, Johnny, Johnny Nitro, Johnny Parisi, Kane, Kenny, Lance Cade, Lillian Garcia, Lita, Matt Striker, Melina, Mickie James, Mikey, Mitch, Nicky, Renee Dupree, Rob Conway, Shelton Benjamin, Torrie Wilson, Trevor Murdoch, Umaga, Val Venis, Victoria, Viscera OK, so the way I count it, 33 wrestlers have less charisma than Orton and 5 have as much or more. That means that Orton has more charisma than 87% of the roster which rounds up to 90%. Now defend your ridiculous statement, I'd love for you to show me even 10 wrestlers on that list that have more charisma than Orton. I could see an argument for Cena or Mickie James but that's about it. I'm sure you'll bring up Carlito, but his whole gimmick's terribly midcard, and I can't take him seriously like I can with Orton.

Yes, they were UTSU. But how many of them were in the last five years? Read the post before replying to it, it's not that hard.

I can't compete volume-wise with someone who has (possibly a record?) 95 posts today. I'll just say that I enjoyed the legend-killer gimmick, I like Orton's cocky intelligent persona, and despite occasionally stumbling over his words, I think he cuts a very good heel promo. Also, if you're talking about someone being overpushed, Orton's not even in the same stratosphere as Cena. Orton's pushed as a strong yet beatable heel. Cena's pushed as Jesus Christ himself who can never ever ever ever come close to losing clean. He also made Sabu tap in 7:00 to a terrible looking STF and but for a two week run where Edge beat him after he'd already won an Elimination Chamber match, he would have held the World Title for over a year.

Well, it's non-title. If Angle picks up a cheap win after Edge (or Cena) interference, I don't think it really gives anything away. Especially since ECW doesn't have a PPV scheduled for oh........ six months. Either way, it should be a good show tomorrow night on Sci-Fi. RVD's really had his working boots on the last few weeks, and even if the match doesn't go to a clean finish, I'm sure it should still be very good.