iggymcfly

Well, in all fairness to Jericho, he was a legitimate "superstar", "top guy" in late 2000 and early 2001. If they'd pulled the trigger on the phantom title change over HHH, he would have been right there, and he was still right at that level when he and Benoit were feuding with Austin for the title. It's only his bad booking afterwards that has made people stop caring about him. As for the idea that no one could possibly carry the face load on Raw without Cena, I disagree. If I were booking, I would be in the process of turning Kurt Angle face right now, so that he can be the top guy until RVD's ready. People always think of him as a "heel for life" type, but his mic skills are so good that he can have the crowd eating out of his hand when he wants to. However, I agree that in the current WWE landscape, Cena's not turning heel any time soon. He gets nothing but consistently positive reactions for everything he does, and even in a smark-heavy PPV site, he'll probably get a mixed reaction at worst. Also, has done the same thing they used to do for HHH when they planned on having him as champ for a while, and moved everyone else to the other side of the face/heel divide. When HHH was supposed to be the whole show, it seems like Jericho would be the only other real heel for months and months on end. Well, lo and behold, they build the show around Cena, and all of a sudden, other faces are nowhere else to be found. From the looks of things, I think Cena's going to be Raw's poster boy through to Wrestlemania 22 and possibly even beyond.

Good promo from Edge. He's actually reviving the feud a little bit. His promo tonight interests me more than anything Matt's done the three weeks that he's been back.

LOL @ the crowd "roaring their approval" of Hogan and Eugene. When JR tries that hard to sell the faces, he just comes off like an idiot.

My point is that he had credibility with the crowd when he came to Smackdown. They all bought him as a major player, and were like "wow, Benoit's on Smackdown now, I wonder if he's going to be their next champ?" That was because of what HHH did for him. If the booking crew on Smackdown then decides to treat Benoit like shit, job him to Orlando Jordan, and give him appearances on Velocity, then that has nothing to do with what HHH did for him from Wrestlemania through Bad Blood the previous year. Note the cause and effect difference there. Your argument is tantamount to saying that the reason that Orton didn't get over as champ is that Benoit didn't put him over right. Benoit did everything that he could, it was the booking afterward that hurt him.

Billy Gunn. Everyone always acts like he was this massive failure, but he did a good job with what he was given. He was in one of the most popular tag teams of all time in the NAO. After that ran it's course, he was a very good upper-midcard heel under the Mr. Ass gimmick, with mic skills along the lines of a Chris Jericho and in-ring skills that were passable for the time. After a completely directionless face run, Billy then made the "Chuck and Billy" tag team work like almost no one else could have, to the point that it was one of the most entertaining undercard gimmicks on Smackdown. Then, he even got over a face turn (from a gay tag team!), after which he appeared on one PPV, and had no memorable appearances again up until his release.

Of all the people, including the side-players in the Benoit vs HHH feud there was only one clear loser: Benoit. The proof is in their post-SummerSlam spots. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You would think more people would notice that Hunter stayed at the top level and Benoit moved back down to the midcard/upper midcard after Benoit 'won' their feud. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Benoit had tons of credibility exiting their feud, and still looked like he was a major player when he re-debuted on Smackdown. If the idiot Smackdown booking team couldn't find anything for him to do, and then decided to start putting him on Velocity, I really fail to see how it's HHH's fault. Also, how can you say that HHH is "at the top level" right now. He jobbed three months ago, and his credibility was so shot that he had to leave Raw. If you look at in kayfabe terms, he basically left the show because he wasn't good enough anymore/got beat up so bad by Batista. If he returns and has his first feud back with Cena, then maybe I'll cede the point, but for now, I think that it's completely unwarranted.

Is Kane really supposed to be gone for a month and a half? I mean I get that he's going off TV for a while to step out of the way for Matt and Edge, but after they've had their first big PPV match, is he still going to be such a problem that he can't even have a minor feud in the background? Unless there's something from Keller or Meltzer that I'm unaware of, I don't see any reason to think Kane wouldn't be on the card at Unforgiven. For that matter, I thought the Jericho thing was blown out of proportion and that while he was likely to miss house shows and maybe Raws here and there, he was still going to do some dates, and definitely wouldn't miss a PPV. Is there information out there that I'm just missing?

If I were to guess, I'd say HBK will probably feud with Big Show going into Unforgiven. Show's a mildy credible face and they'll want him on the card, so they'll probably just find it convenient to have him put over Shawn to help build up Shawn for an eventual title shot. As was previously stated, Angle/Cena, RVD/Carlito and a Matt/Edge rematch are pretty match givens, so that's half the card right there. To fill it out, I see something along the lines of: Eugene vs. Chris Masters Random segment with diva search contestants/winner Viscera and Kane vs. Snitsky and Jericho Hype video for the return of HHH Shelton Benjamin vs. Kerwin White (possibly a Heat match)

NO WAY! Next thing, you'll tell me that Matt Hardy was under contract when he came out of the crowd and attacked Edge.

Maybe you don't hear the fans go nuts for him. Or see them buy his merch. Or read reports that he's generally the most over guy on house shows, and if he doesn't appear, people are annoyed, which doesn't usually happen with anyone else. Maybe you're also ignoring the fact that the fans don't care that he's not that good, which is a great sign of someone being over if the fans are willing to overlook his shortcomings. Or we could throw all that out, and just assume you're an idiot. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hey, I'm a fan too. And Cena bores the living fuck out of me. The New York Yankees have a lot of fans too. And I'm sure they "go nuts" for them at Yankee Stadium and buy a ton of Yankee merchandise. However, I hate the Yankees, and therefore, I'd rather see them finish last in the East than see them win the World Series. Just because Cena gets cheered by a bunch of stupid fucking 12 year olds doesn't mean that the rest of have to like him. In fact, I'll take it a step further, and say that the WWE really can't grow with him as champion. During the Attitude era, regular intelligent people started watching wrestling because the storylines were good and the characters were engaging. Over time, most of those people got stripped away due to the often embarrassingly bad nature of the programming. I'd venture to say that of those lost fans, about 90% of them would see right through Cena's schtick and find no interest in him whatsoever. It's only the very markiest of the marks who can get into the most banal and simplistic storyline that find Cena to be engaging. If you notice, it's the holdover "smart fans" that seem to be the most disgusted with Cena and dislike his mic "skills" the most. If we happen to have a little bit of taste, and don't want a wanna-be rapper to be the World Champion of Raw, then that's our prerogative. We don't need to be dumbed down to agree with the masses.

CanadianChris makes a good point. Not that the Florida loss was as bad as the Cal loss (it wasn't), not that USC was as good as LSU (they weren't), but that we debated it endlessly a year and a half ago. Moving on to this year's new rankings which Dama was kind enough to post, I really don't like having Texas at #2 and Oklahoma at #5. Neither was overly impressive in their bowl games last year, and Oklahoma lost a ton of talent. It seems like what will happen is that the weak Big 12 schedule will pump both teams up to rankings they don't deserve, allowing a one-loss team to sneak into the Rose Bowl whether they deserve it or not. Really, the way the rankings set up, the Texas/Ohio State game becomes even more important. Whereas USC already has a spot in Pasadena ready for the taking, the winner of the Texas/OSU game pretty much gives their conference first dibs on the other spot. Just the very high-profile nature of that matchup gives Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, and Michigan a big lead in the polls over the likes of Florida, LSU, and Virginia Tech.

This is evident you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. LSU and Oklahoma also lost to an opponent in the season. What the fuck is your point? And LSU was #2, not facing #2 as you claim. I am not discrediting LSU, they deserve their HALF of the title. USC deserves theirs. End of discussion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you could READ, you would have noticed that I said USC was different from the other teams in that it had a bad loss, not in that it lost a game. Cal went 6-5 despite missing Washington State in a weak Pac-Ten. Florida on the other hand, was a Top 20-caliber team, that was one or two bad breaks away from being in the heart of the BCS picture. Big difference.

I'd say the WWF, starting in 2001. At that point, "peak-level" business was still completely salvagable if they hadn't screwed everything up so terribly. The Rock's return could have been done right. (i.e. he beats Stone Cold or the title), and the Invasion wouldn't have had to drag on into the terrible boring crap that it ended up being.

The fact is that through the formula that was contracted to determine a national champion, USC did not qualify for the championship. This was due to the fact that they played a weak schedule and had a bad loss to Cal who was nowhere near as good two years ago as they were last year. The two teams that did qualify for the championship played and LSU won. End of story, LSU's the champion. The idea that USC "looked more impressive" against the #4 team than LSU did against the #2 team is totally immaterial to the discussion. Auburn actually had a better claim to being a split champion last year than USC did two years ago. They went undefeated in a difficult conference, and just got screwed out of the championship in favor of an inferior Oklahoma team. No bad loss to Cal, no weak schedule. The fact that Auburn didn't have newspaper writers to say they "looked impressive" doesn't really shoot down their claim at all IMO.

Wow, when I saw that logo, I actually thought that the team name was the Charlotte Krunot. By the way, I'm sick of corporate hip-hop perverting the meaning of words for their own purposes. "Crunk" means drunk and stoned. PERIOD. If you're crunk, you're drunk and you're high off chronic. Anything else is just a goddamn lie.

I can understand peoples wanting to see this match but to think that it will actually be good and that a clean Michaels job (which is debateable) will actually help Cena is sketchy at best. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I was thinking more along the lines that a clean Cena job to Michaels might actually make me interested in Raw again. I really want to see someone take the belt off Cena and the fact that Michaels is the only one with enough credibility is the reason that I'd like to see him get the next title shot, but honestly, Angle going after Cena would be good as well. Angle's interesting enough on his own to make me interested for one PPV, but after he's done, there's a good chance that I'll just quit watching WWE altogether for a few months.

The thing is, if you look back at the history of other championship-level teams, changes in the coaching staff almost never hurt a team the first year after they take place. All the players have been properly trained, and the new coaches don't really feel comfortable changing all the schemes yet, so they pretty much play just like they did the year before. In the long run, it might knock down the Trojan dynasty a rung or two, but I think for now, you're looking at the 12-0 back-to-back national champions. (I can't say back-to-back-to-back, because LSU was the real champ two years ago.)

I would love to see Luke come back if they have somewhere to go with his character. He was awesome when he was Ryan's foil, and he even did a pretty good job as "babyface Luke" when he had a chance, but half the time he wasn't even on the show because they just didn't have anything for him. If they've got a plan for him, he good be a great contributor, but if he's just going to hang around like Zach did, and do nothing of interest all season, they might as well just leave him of the show.

Oh, come on. It's going to be revealed in the first five seconds of the episode anyway. It's not like you're missing out on some great gradual reveal. I came across it by accident, but when I did, I certainly wasn't pissed. Just think of it as a summer update about what's going on in OC land.

Yeah, I agree that the last few scenes of the finale did a lot to redeem the season. The "I've spent the whole year trying to be something I'm not" was the biggest mark-out moment I've had from any show in a long time. Still though, you don't realize what the second season was missing until you go back and see the first season again. I mean, watching that first season, I'd say that 18 out of 20 episodes that I've watched/rewatched were "good episodes". In season 2, there were maybe three or four "good episodes" the whole season, and they all came at the end with Trey. Furthermore, outside of the finale, none of the "good episodes" from Season 2 were anywhere near as well-crafted as the ones from season 1. I'd like to think that Season 3 will be better, but with Kirsten in rehab and Trey in a coma, it's hard to get too optimistic.

This isn't even new or anything, it's from like four months ago, but I really liked it, and it's a lot funnier than the crap that Rant posts all the time.

God, I finally got the box set for the first season, and I just can't help but talk about it. This season was the best television ever produced in the genre, and even rivals the first season of the Sopranos for the best season of any show I've ever season. The second season catches glimmers every now and then, but it's just not the same at all. I just watched the New Year's episode, and I was on the verge of crying like a little girl when Ryan made it up there right before midnight. I originally started watching the show when Oliver was pulling his creepy shit later on, so just seeing him on screen sends chills down my spine. When I was watching the episode, I was pretty sure that Ryan was going to just be too late or something, and see Marissa kissing Oliver, so when he made it, it was just tremendous. I can't even watch any more shows tonight, because I want to go to sleep while Marissa and Ryan are still happy together. It's funny, when I first started watching the OC, I was more into the Seth/Summer stuff, and I really couldn't stand Ryan's character at all, but watching over from the beginning, the whole Ryan/Marissa thing has me just captivated on the edge of my seat, and actually like really caring about their relationship. I totally feel like a girl about the whole thing, but I just had to let it out.

Oh, come on. How could you forget the Raw where Shawn found out that HHH was the one that attacked him in the parking lot and cut that super-intense promo via satellite. That was *awesome. *-not as sarcastic as you might think

I said Cena, just because Raw has their brand-exclusive PPV before Smackdown does. After Summerslam, they really need to get the belts off of both men and shake things up a little bit. I think that HBK and Orton would be perfect to lead their respective brands, at least temporarily.

HTQ. You're little business plan is great.......in the short term. You'll get a big number for his return, and you'll draw good buys for Mania. Hooray. However, you won't build the fanbase at all in the long run. Sure, everybody will be excited to see two shows, and they'll all watch those two shows, but the shows in between will be so damn boring, that after Wrestlemania, the fans will all tune out again and you'll have no progress whatsoever. If after SS in 1998, the Rock had been "protected" throughout his feud with Foley, do you think the Attitude Era would have taken off as well as it had? Sure, some of the marks might have been a little more interested in WM, and it might have done an extra 50,000 buys, but in the long run, the lack of unpredictable, entertaining, television would hurt business. With Brock having a year and a half of ring rust, they have a perfect opportunity to give him a surprise loss without hurting his credibility whatsoever, and give him some interesting character development in the process. Foregoing that for the most simple, basic, uninteresting story imaginable is the kind of short-sighted move that has held the company back for the last four years.