iggymcfly

Well, I get it for the pillmanizing and stuff because I've used that before, but the "authority figure refuses to let injured worker wrestle" would be completely useless unless you actually had an injured wrestler. They only put it in there because of the Bischoff/Stone Cold thing, and it only worked in that case because Austin was injured. Anyway, should I just end the feud off-camera or wait four weeks for Scott Hall to come back? The problem is that this Hall feud was kind of a transition feud for AJ anyway, and I've been waiting for his feud with Jerry Lynn to start forever, but on the other hand, AJ's only my #3 heel, and I'm afraid it would hurt his overness to end it. Oh, and also I'm in February 2004 and I've lost PI and money every month. I've already taken TNA down to 80% cult level. I'm afraid that if I wait until March to blow the feud off, I might be fired.

God damn it! Five days before he's supposed to job to AJ Styles to blow off their world title feud, and after I'd already announced the match, Scott Hall says he can't wrestle for a month because he has a broken nose. A broken f*cking nose. And it gets worse. Not only can he not wrestle with this broken nose, he can't get his ankle broken so he'll miss time, he can't get suspended, he can't even do the angle where the authority figure says he's too injured to wrestle. What the hell's the point of having injury angles if you can't use them on injured wrestlers?

From about November 2000 until about August 2002.

HHH had way better buildup in 1999 than Booker T did going into WM, and Austin had been the center of the promotion for twice as long as HHH had this year.

My dream match is an Ironman match between Kurt and Brock where Brock keeps getting the pinfalls, taking a good lead, while all Kurt does is go after the ankle, until Brock has to tap multiple times toward the end of the match and loses.

Point taken. HHH/Nash was a huge mistake. At least HHH could stay over with some degree of inertia as the champion, however, while Booker would need a hot program as the new champ.

HHH went from being an angry blue collar badass to being a cocky, cowardly, white collar snob. He couldn't have had much more dramatic of a character change.

Talking to the wrong guy, then. Workrate isn't the world to me. Booker entertains me (as HHH probably does you), and I'll admit he isn't a workrate God, but he's not as terrible as you say. Point is, he was over when he was challening for the title, and the company could've put him over the top with a little more thought and better execution. Why have HHH go over clean at WM (which is about the stupidest outcome imaginable)? I guess both our biases aren't doing us any favors in this argument. I'm actually not that big on workrate either. I just find Booker T to be pretty much all around boring. There's more reasons why he shouldn't have gone over. First, the HHH/Booker T match was the fourth most hyped match on the night which isn't the best environment to end a long, successful, heel title reign. Also, there was nowhere for Booker to go if he did win the title. Jericho and HHH were the only viable heels on the show. After he'd finished his program with HHH, Booker's character wasn't really strong enough to justify keeping the belt.

If Triple H wanted to keep getting a pop, he wouldn't have retooled his whole character, and switched to dress shirts and red tights. I know it all seems natural now, but at the time, it seemed like HHH had totally changed his persona to keep from getting cheered over the faces.

Heels don't have to have crappy theme music. Jericho and Guerrero never changed their themes when they went heel.

HHH isn't supposed to get pops because he's a heel. I find Booker T's matches to be consistently more boring than any other main event faces in the WWE. Even A-Train and The Big Show have had better matches than Booker T.

OK, I'll admit it. The fatal four way match got bonus points because I'm a mark for Angle, and I was absolutely convinced that he was going to lose the match. Then you throw in ten believable nearfalls, and a realistic level of selling (even if it wasn't quite up to your standard from twelve years ago,) and I thought it was very good.

Poor moveset isn't an excuse, but Edge had a good enough moveset to limit the use of the legs to a level that was reasonable. Look at RVD against HHH. HHH went to work on one leg for ten minutes, and RVD did nothing but kick with that leg for his whole comeback. Now that's crappy selling.

Just to clarify something, I never said Booker T wasn't over. I said that people sleep through his matches until the last two minutes because nothing happens. He still gets a pop for his signature moves and catchphrases.

Edge was limping throughout the match, and doing a damn good job of it. But I guess you wouldn't know that since you're putting your two cents in on something you don't even seem to remember.

OK, if that wasn't good, RRR, why don't you tell me an instance of "good" selling that actually happened in the last year. Edge is 10 times the wrestler that Booker T or RVD is.

Because thanks to HHH, they know Booker isn't going anywhere. Same with RVD. RVD used to get much bigger reactions. Make him HHH's bitch, keep him off a few PPVs.... now the fans have been trained to know that RVD isn't going anywhere, so it's harder to get enthused about his matches. Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT. You're going to blame Booker T's complete lack of overness on one loss to Triple H? The reason they don't get excited is because he wrestles WCW style throughout the match, (stall, hit move, stall, stall, stall some more, fall down), before hitting his signature moves at the end.

I've watched the fatal four way match multiple times too, and Edge switched mainly to moves that weren't using his legs for several believable nearfalls, and if you hit a missile dropkick, you don't feel it until after the fact, because you're just falling through the air until you make impact.

Jester, the crowd may be on mute when HHH sets up the pedigree, but they're on mute throughout a whole Booker T match until the last two minutes. At least Hogan can keep the fans interested with his ear bullshit. The fans fall asleep during Booker T matches.

It's exciting when he's fighting through the back injury that everyone thought was legitimate, and EVERYONE in the crowd buys into it for one of the biggest pops I've ever heard. It's gratuitous when the whole structure of the match breaks down into a random switching of submission holds.

OK, but that's unrealistic in a way that's exciting enough that it's forgivable once or twice in a match. And besides, he did sell the back injury for three months afterward. The Angle/Benoit stuff was just gratuitous.

Boy that wouldn't have buried all the people who couldn't beat HHH for seven months at all, would it. After Goldberg/Kane, you wouldn't have a money match left on Raw.

If you're really fascinated by my star ratings, I thought Angle/Edge/Benoit/Guerrero for the #1 contendership for the WWE title was a ****3/4 match, and the second best in the WWE last year. Angle/Benoit at the Rumble was probably about ****. It could have been higher, except they gave up on counter-wrestling logically and just switched each other's submission holds about five times in a row. It didn't look realistic at all.

Well, Goldberg's winning the title at Summerslam, and Kane's been the focus of the show for the last two months. Isn't that shaking things up?

You know what I love? Everyone says that HHH never gives a decent storyline to any of his opponents, and then in the same breath, they say that Booker T's storyline was perfect for him to get the title. Shit, HHH made Steiner look like fucking King Kong, but when the fans realized how much Steiner sucked, they booed him anyway.