Toxxic

Kurt... Ken Shamrock just called. He wants his anklelock back.

There were no nearfalls in any match except LMS. That's what made the entire night feel so odd. Basic summary: Evo vs Duds: Weak brawling, Coach interference, anti-climatic ending. Cruisers: Spot, spot, unintentional interference, end. Guerreros: Oh look, we have the start of an interesting wrestling match - oh, that was it. Holly vs Brock: Brawl, hug, F5, goodnight. HHH vs HBK: Lots and lots and lots of punching. Chairshots, blood, lame finish, BULLSHIT chant. Rumble: Great. The only way it could have been better would have been in V1 had lasted longer and eliminated Goldberg. Oh, and Orton was just as good as most other people in the Rumble. He actually is showing signs of improvement. Amazing.

Excuse my ignorance - what's a "Phoenix Splash"?

There's a Canadian accent? Face it, you all sound the same. God knows how many thousand sqaure miles of North America and the only accents that can easily be distinguished are ones from the deep south. And possiby Chicago, unless I'm thinking of New York. Now you try putting a Londoner and someone fom Glasgow in the same room and see if they can even understand what the other person is saying. THAT, my friends, is an ACCENT. "Ahum French, yew eediot! Vy elss do yew think I haf zis OUT-RAJEOUS AWCCENT!?"

Hey Dace - I recognise O'Haire and Rhyno, who's the third member of the Unholy Trinity?

The Cruiserweight Title is pretty much ignored? Probably. i can't remember what happened last year, but it's pretty much a no-brainer.

So we're assuming that HHH loses to Michaels I take it. But I'm not sure how Benoit would fit into that unless WWE do a face vs face, which they are normally very reluctant to do (the last main instance that i can remember being Rock/Austin in the lead up to WM XVII). And from the current storyline on Smackdown it would make more sense for Eddie to be fighting Angle before Brock. Still, your matches sound good so i'll cross my fingers.

Surely... SURELY not? I know Funaki lives there now, but SURELY he was born in Japan? I mean, back in the day when Kai En Tai WEREN'T dubbed (which was the most freaking hilarious thing ever, and probably the sole reason why I still mark out big-time for Funaki) if I recall TAKA did the talking, and I'm positive that HE was born in Japan. It would make no sense for Funaki to be letting the guy who speaks less English do the talking... Hell, for all I know TAKA speaks English with a Long Island accent, and he and Funaki were forced to speak in accented, broken English so no-one would feel bad about the APA destroying them regularly. Makes (WWE) sense.

No charge. No, actually I want you to physically stop me from replying to anything that guy writes ever again. Don't ask me how - that's your responsibility. But am I the only one here who has yet to see a single good punch thrown by a female wrestler in the WWE in recent years? Even Jazz?

Well, basically Dave I disagree with you on virtually every point. But that's OK. You're allowed to be wrong. A few things i will pick up on: The girls - fire them all, from a wrestling standpoint. None of them can wrestle as well as even the worst males, and there are several of them I'd like to see go. Victoria, Molly and Jazz can all do some moves well, but I have yet to see a single punch or clothesline thrown by a woman in WWE that looked real. And brawling is a lot of what they do. Orton - you know, you're rather amusingly wrong. His ringwork is mediocre to average, his timing is very bad and his mic work is sloppy. He's still learning, yes, but he seems to know so little compared to how he's being pushed at the moment it's a damn good job. He's not hopeless or the worst thing ever seen in the WWE ring, but he's one of the worst to get such a big push so early in his career. Orton in 2-3 years may be a credible main eventer, but I'm not putting money on it, nor would I anticipate him being ready before that. Jericho - could be given the title anytime, and it'd work. Won't happen, but the guy's bulletproof. And I'd rather watch 10 minutes of high-flying generic cruiserweight action than 10 minutes of generic big man brawling. Or 20 minutes, or half an hour. The only cruiserweight i don't at least partially enjoy watching is Spike Dudley. Why? Because generic as they may be it's a) more impressive and b) they all have *something* their own (with the possible exception of Kidman). Matt Morgan and Heidenreich may have been separated at birth. I agree, London isn't the future of the WWE, but in my view he should be. I know he won't be, and i know he may not last long, but I'm going to enjoy him while he's there. There's a reason I like Velocity better than any other WWE broadcast.

IIRC, Jericho prior to 2002 Rumble was anything but soft-spoken, screaming at Rock that he should not look past him.

Shoot or kayfabe. "I'm looking forward to making money with him": "I didn't like the guy before the incident you're talking about, I like him even less now, but management will castrate me if I badmouth him publicly. That won't stop an unimaginative creative team putting us in a program together soon with the view that real heat is transferable to the ring and in the hope that us stiffing the shit out of each other will make up for lacklustre booking." "He just hit him with a modified (insert name of move)": "Dear God that looked shit."

Absolutely not. Getting Bob Fucking Holly over isn't so important that it's worth that. I'm not bothered about getting Holly over - I'm trying to give the feud some conceivable possibility that Holly will win the title and incidently kick-start Lesnar's reversion to arse-kicking monster. Otherwise the entire feud will have been pointless. You know, I think I just realised something... Although what you were saying about Brock having no need to worry about Holly because he's already taken out the bigger Show - size isn't important (past a certain point) here. Sure, Show is a threat to Lesnar in a match. So's Rey Mysterio when booked correctly. Both are trying to *beat* Lesnar. But Holly isn't necessarily going to try that. If I was storyline Lesnar I would be expecting Holly to go for my neck the moment the bell rings, or before, and try and break it whether or not he gets disqualified. Show wouldn't do that because then he wouldn't win the title, but Holly doesn't give a shit. The only size Holly needs to be is big enough to conceivably break Brock's neck, which he is and someone like Mysterio wouldn't be.

I think they've done it wrong. Holly is being booked strong, but is in no way a viable threat. What I think should be happening, after some reflection, is the following: Holly comes back and goes after Lesnar. Lesnar is clearly nervous about the guy who wants to break his neck. Heyman won't give Holly a title shot, so Holly says he doesn't want a title shot, he just wants Brock. So Holly gets Brock for the Rumble - he's so intent on maiming Brock that the title is a secondary consideration, or indeed that is ignored if it gets him a shot at Lesnar. Lesnar is still worried. At the Royal Rumble... Holly beats Lesnar. Now calm your screams and listen. Holly doesn't beat him clean - some backfiring interference, or Lesnar bumps the ref intentionally and then Holly uses a chair, or whatever. Either way, Holly beats Lesnar, but the champ escapes with his title and before Holly can break his neck. Now Holly has the taste of blood. He wants Lesnar again, NOW he wants the title, and since he holds a non-title victory over Lesnar he IS the number one contender. So two weeks later on, or at the equivalent SD! to No Way Out, whatvever, Heyman has no choice but to give him the shot. People are thinking "the title won't change hands on Smackdown!", but no-one would have thought Holly could beat Lesnar. So the match starts with Holly going after Lesnar again - but this time, Lesnar switches back into "Monster" mode and starts destroying Holly. Faced with the possibility of losing his title, as opposed to just trying to get away from Holly, Lesnar goes apeshit and unloads on Hardcore, beating him cleanly. Now Holly has had a half-decent run as top face, was probably in some minds at least a REAL title threat, and could if necessary be used in that way again (assuming a breakout of leprosy in the rest of the roster or something). Brock meanwhile has rediscovered his ability to kick ludicrous amounts of arse and is no longer booked like a pussy, giving him about 6 weeks or so to set up a feud for Mania against "real" opposition. Thoughts?

Not unless he harasses another underage girl. Wasn't he cleared of that? Perhaps. But he hasn't been cleared of being the most irritating fuckwit this side of... Ok, I'm actually struggling to think of someone i find more irritating than Lawler. Not just in wrestling, in the whole damn world. Justin Timberlake perhaps? No! No, I have it! Elmo from Sesame Street. Bastard needs to DIE~!

No, that's more like "Thank God, Austin's here - I don't have to worry what to say during this segment, I can just repeat his name."

Personally I'm backing Britney for first female president. And being very glad that I'm in another country.

Oh, and for the thread: "He just got broken in half" (I think if he did there wouldn't be ANY doubt as to the outcome of the match)

It was meant as such. I'm not smart enough to do subtle.

Oh without a doubt. But then Hardy > 9/10ths Raw's roster. In fact Mattitude should be competing for the Raw title if things were going on merit. Against Jericho.

"The hip youngins"? AS, I swear I remember during the original debate about "You can't see me" someone looked at your profile and saw you were somewhere in your 20s. So either you're a rather older person forgetting their act of being someone in their 20s, or you're someone in their 20s doing a GREAT impression of an older person. Basically, you sound exactly like a guy in his 50s on another board I post on. This isn't a dig, it's just an observation. And personally i think a Cena/Benoit confrontation where Cena no-sells the chops and then Benoit floors him would rule all. But you have to love "You can't see me" simply because of the signs with the moveable hands in the crowd. No, I'm not talking rhetorically, you HAVE to love it. You don't get a choice.

Strangely, we have Johnny Ace, inventor of the Ace Crusher, and two guys who derived their moves from it in DDP and Austin in WWE (isn't DDP a road agent now?), and he hasn't gotten one of them to help him pull the move off better or to come up with a version all his own? Incidently, what does RKO stand for? Is it his initials, signifying some middle name beginning with 'K' I don't know about?("Kennedy"? OMG~! There's another reason Vince is pushing him!) Or does it stand for "Randy Knock-Out" or what?

1) The Worm. Yeah, a chop to the throat would hurt, but not enough to beat you. And you certainly wouldn't wait for Scotty to finish arseing around and get to you. 2) The People's Elbow. It's a fucking elbow drop. 3) Rock's Sharpshooter. I could do a better version, I'm pretty sure, but that's just a poorly executed move rather than a really bad one. 4) The RKO. Sloppy As Fuck. Orton should sit and watch DDP matches and then figure out how to make the Diamond Cutter look crisp whilst running, cos he ain't got it yet. 5) The Lionsault. It's a moonsault from lower down, which means less impact, and it's meant to be a finisher? 6) All the super kicks. Just stop it! It seems that no-one can win a match on Velocity or Smackdown without kicking someone in the head! Leave it to Michaels and Tajiri to do that.

Orton did get heat on Raw, largely due to the fact that for the first time i've ever seen he actually looked like he wanted to hurt someone. Of course, the fact that it looked like Van Dam legit KO'd him for a few seconds with that ring post may have had something to do with it, but those Euro uppercuts looked vicious.

Bloody brilliant.