Hektik

In terms of whats going on in Pro wrestling & MMA, or their history, I trust Meltzer more than anybody else. I can't say the same for his rating of matches (or some times wrestlers). Take a look at a quote he wrote earlier this year: I do think it is wrong for Angle to get in ahead of other wrestlers, particularly Eddy Guerrero. Benoit got in because of his wrestling ability. I have always stated that Eddy on his best day is better than Benoit on his best day. Eddy has always been overlooked in terms of workrate. When you look at his career and the family he came from, he is more deserving than Angle and should have made it this year. Take a look at the link and tell me Eddy doesn't deserve to be in the WON HOF ahead of Angle. http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/index.php?...topic=50565&hl=

I just read this weeks HOF Observer, and Angle got in because they also included his Amateur career. It says he was at one time the best legitimate wrestler and one of the best illegitimate wrestlers. Keep in mind that Meltzer also covers MMA and Amateur wrestling (although not as much as Pro & MMA) in his newsletter. Just last week, one of his top stories in the observer was on wrestling in the olympics.

Randy Orton throwing legit punches to Mick Foley on Raw. He busted him up the hard way and people in the Raw thread said that it was a boring beatdown segment. Then the next week, posters on the Raw thread claimed that Foleys "make up" looked fake.

If those games are at San Diego. I like the Giants chances. San Diego already has 9 wins over SF, while the Giants have only won 3. The padres also seem to be the only team able to beat Jason Schmidt.

These are excerpts from the 8/16 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: While not announced officially, several sources have confirmed that TNA has made the decision to cease weekly PPV shows on 9/8. The decision at this point is to do monthly three hour shows on Sunday evening, similar to WWE and Pride, starting in November. Starting at 9/14, the Orlando taping will be moved from Thursday to Tuesdays, to give them more time to edit and post produce the show for Friday. There will be taped best of PPV shows airing 9/15, 9/22, and 9/29, but as of the end of September, TNA won't have Wednesday night PPVs, and won't be doing PPV shows in October. The idea is to have a 7-10 week build for the first Sunday show. Since WWE is the powerhouse and has its dates locked up months in advance, it will become a game between Pride and TNA to get dates locked up first. On months that WWE does two PPV shows, those two companies will have to fight over the two remaining dates. While Pride is far bigger, and does slightly better on PPV in the U.S., TNA is more organized long term. The idea at this point is $29.95 per show, which I think may be a little on the high side, at least to start out. The plan is to upgrade the shows, running them in mid-sized arenas (5,000 to 7,000 seats) throughout the country. Most likely, that will change when they realize they can't sell tickets. The original TNA TV plan was similar, but after only being able to sell about 100 tickets for the debut show in Huntsville, AL, they moved to Nashville as a permanent home, at the 9,000 seat Municipal Auditorium. When they couldn't sell tickets there, they moved to the 1,300 seat Fairgrounds, where they usually come close to filling the building with free tickets, as the paid is usually hovering around 300 to 400. Going to 5,000 seat to 7,000 seat arenas, and different cities, will increase costs somewhat. With major monthly shows, they can hype them better, and also should bring in outside headliners. The could probably do shows like that on a $150,000 budget, and maybe a little less. At $29.95, they can break even for the night on 10,000 to 11,500 buys, which is hardly an unreasonable number. As noted before, taking into account the costs of still doing weekly television, as a company, they aren't going to do well on less than 27,000 buys. At this point, there is talk of Fox Sports Net moving the show to a Sunday morning time slot. No decision has been made, but the slot being talked about is 11 a.m., which would go head to head with WWE Experience. That wouldn't be the worst idea, because nobody watches Experience, and it would look good if the company could come close to, or even beat a WWE show on Spike, head-to-head while on the weaker FSN. That gives them something to brag about, and if they can dual evenly in the slot with WWE, and I'd think they might be able to, it might help their chances of getting the necessary time slot upgrade, because in this day of age, Sunday morning isn't it either. The negative for Sunday morning, is come September, once the NFL starts, the show would be bucking NFL football on the west coast, and football is the only thing that historically is proven to bite a chunk out of wrestling ratings. The buisness relationship with AAA and Antonio Pena fell apart. No reason was given other than the general impossibility of doing buisness with Pena. They were talking about a joint PPV in San Diego when he stopped coming. Even though TNA hasn't used Hector Garza, suddenly Garza decided he could make better money and be paid on time and didn't feel like being under Pena's thumb and quit. With Latin Lover threatening to leave and Heavy Metal also making noise, Pena didn't want to send guys to get a taste of better money, so just stopped doing buisness with TNA. Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantell wanted to go to CMLL, which has better wrestlers and far more depth than AAA, but Mike Tenay advised tham against doing so, saying they would just wind up with the same problems, and they could book the biggest name talent in Mexico on their own since the highest paid guys now are independents. On 8/11, they are debuting the original La Parka under his name L.A. Park (to avoid legal action from Pena who owns the rights to the Parka name). Strangely, they are billing the original Psicosis under that name, even though Pena owns the rights to that gimmick as well as uses a different wrestler under that name, and the original Psicosis wrestles in Mexico as Nicho. At this point they are not booking Hector Garza until he can offer proof that he is legally out of his AAA contract, as they aren't looking for legal problems with from Pena. They are also going to use Super Crazy when his paperwork gets done, and plans are to use El Hijo Del Santo for major shows as an attraction and Perro Aguayo Jr.'s name has also been bandied about.

Ryan Leaf - $30 million dollars

The best kind to use is the disposable two blade razor.

This is an article that I saw that goes after Bud Selig and the damage he causes small market teams. One thing that is not mentioned is Bud Selig using his "build a new stadium or move" threat. If you take a team like Oakland and make them to build a new stadium, it will force them to shrink their payroll to a point where they can no longer be competive during the years of stadium construction (unless the whole thing is privately financed).

You're not losing it, I checked the website I got it from.

Looking at the date, two weeks ago.

I never got the whole elitist baseball attitude. If I can be brutally honest here, I don't give a flying fuck about a teams history or tradition. Yeah its nice to look at during the offseason but it has absolutely nothing to do with the current season.

An excerpt from the 8/2 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: After the first 60:00 singles match on live U.S. TV in 23 years, and the first ever to a national audience, the Summerslam show for 8/15 in Toronto has finalized its top seven matches. The Raw brand top matches will be Chris Benoit vs Randy Orton for the world title, HHH vs Eugene, Chris Jericho vs Batista and Kane vs Matt Hardy. The Smackdown brand matches will be JBL vs Undertaker for the WWE title, Kurt Angle vs Eddy Guerrero and John Cena vs Booker T for the U.S. title. The lond term plan is to build toward HHH vs Orton as the big match at Wrestlemania. With Orton garnering so much momentum, this seems like an easy build by putting Orton over as champion and causing dissension in the Evolution group. HHH originally wanted the match for last years Wrestlemania, but recognized it was too early for Orton, who has really come on his own as a major star in the last two months. It was too early to break up Evolution, plus some of the booking didn't go on the timetable. Last years booking plan was to have Orton win a feud with Mick Foley late last year (which ended up being delayed until Wrestlemania) and then Shawn Michaels, figuring that would get him ready for HHH. Orton at this point is planned to beat Benoit for the title, with one of the ideas being tossed around being Edge goes heel and costs Benoit the title. This would lead to a natural Edge vs Benoit IC title program, while HHH continues his program with Eugene to keep him out of the World title picture. This would leave Jericho, a returning Shawn Michaels and Benoit as challengers to take up Ortons time for the fall and winter. The drawback in the Benoit-Orton finish if it involves Edge, is because one would also suspect that JBL's title retention over Undertaker would be similar, in that John Heidenreich and Paul Heyman would cost Undertaker the title since Heidenreich is getting the slot originally geared for the departed Mordecai. The one thing they've learned in exposing Mordecai in booking, is to give Heidenreich a mouthpiece, and also to keep his matches very short. If they had learned that with Bill Goldberg, how many more millions would they have on hand?

I think the reason the Dodgers made this trade was to get RJ and Finley. If they don't at least get RJ or Finley then this six player trade made the Dodgers a weaker team. Lo Duca, while not a great defensive catcher was a good hitter and as people have said the "heart & soul" of the Dodgers. I think trading Mota was a bad move. The Dreifort-Mota-Gagne bullpen combo really made it a 6 inning game if the Dodgers had the lead going into the 7th. Now there 8th inning guy is gone which now puts Dreifort in the 8th and I believe Todd Martin(?) for the 7th. Although, I don't understand why the dodgers just didn't deal with Arizona directly if they want Johnson and Finley. I know that the D backs wanted a catcher and relief pitching. They wanted the Padres to give up catcher Humberto Quintero and either Akinori Otsuka or Scott Linebrink for Steve Finley. Thankfully the Pads GM Kevin Towers just laughed at them for even sugesting Aki or Linebrink for 39 year old Finley. I would think that the Dodgers could have sent Lo Duca, Mota, Encarnacion, & Jayson Werth to Arizona for Johnson and Finley.

I still think that Eddy will regain the title so he can job it to Cena at Wrestlemania. At Wrestlemania 20 the overall theme was the smark fantasy of Eddy and Benoit as world champions. The theme of WM 21 will be the golden boys era, Orton and Cena both world champions.

The reason I say that is because most people consider Anaheim apart of LA anyway. Until the Angels changed their name a few years ago there was no Anaheim named team. The Angels played there since the 60s and were known as LA/California and the Rams played there also as Los Angeles. San Diego has always had there sports teams named as San Diego and has always had its own seperate media market.

Well, they were known as the Los Angeles Angels before the Dodgers moved out west. The Angels like to be known as a big market team when they really just leech off the big LA media market. I mean who really knows of Anaheim anyway. I live in San Diego and didn't know Disneyland was in Anaheim until I got older. I didn't even know what an Anaheim was.

They got rid of the corporate sponsor.

1962 (the year Dodger Stadium opened) isn't exactly that old when compared to Fenway/Wrigley/Yankee. The Angels now play at Angels Stadium, they don't have a corporate name, but It still doesn't make it classic.

I can't believe there are people on this thread that consider Dodger Stadium a classic stadium. The Yankees have already tore down and rebuilt the inside of Yankee Stadium, so it's not like the whole stadium is "sacred." If people care so much about keeping it, why don't they try to preserve it. That way the Yankees can have their new stadium and the original Stadium stays as a landmark.

Here is an article that Trevor Hoffman wrote about the closer role and the HOF. He makes a good point that we will have to wait and see before we automatically dismiss the current closers from consideration. Hall voters may delay entrance of top closers By Trevor Hoffman I think Goose (Gossage) is from the older era of closers. People don't realize he went out for two and three innings or three and four innings to get his saves. I don't think you can put a price tag on how guys like that ultimately got their saves. And to accrue over 300 career saves (that way), it should be a no-brainer (for election to the Hall of Fame). But I know it's a specialty role. Members of the media might need more time to see how this role is going to play out in the future. They don't want to jump the gun on any conclusion. I just think there's an era of guys (who are closing) right now, who people need to see how they play out. They want to see if that 478 (all-time-leading saves total) Lee Smith threw out there is a pretty solid number. I think it's turning into something pretty tough to achieve. And you have to give that credence; he holds the major league record. It's hard to compare one era to another (with closers) when you don't know how the (Robb) Nens, the (Billy) Wagners, the (Trevor) Hoffmans, the (Troy) Percivals (ultimately will measure up). And I leave Mariano (Rivera) out because I think he's done so much in the postseason that he kind of separates himself from everybody and ultimately puts himself in an area like Eck (Dennis Eckersley). (John) Smoltz (could go into the Hall of Fame) if he continues to add up the save numbers and you add in his wins (as a starting pitcher) and his dominance in the postseason. I don't think Eck going in the Hall of Fame is going to open the floodgates for a lot of guys (who are closing) now. I think it'll put Goose on the map. It should put Lee Smith on the map and (Bruce) Sutter, because he revolutionized the role. I'm flattered when people say, "Aw, you're a Hall of Fame choice." It's tough, because I've seen that happen to (Detroit manager) Alan Trammell, (a former shortstop, who has languished in Hall of Fame voting). And Tram's numbers are right there with (Hall of Fame shortstop) Ozzie Smith's numbers. You never know where things are going to play out. I think being in my position, you just have to grind as long and as hard as you can and strive for perfection. I think that's the only way you can try and force something to happen, ultimately, in that type of a (Hall of Fame) vote. What ultimately is going to separate people in this role? It's not just going to be the (number of) saves. Otherwise, I think Lee (Smith) would be in. San Diego closer Trevor Hoffman has gone 24-for-27 in save situations this season and ranks fourth all-time, with 376 saves. Hoffman, 36, has a career saves percentage of .889, third best behind Eric Gagne (.964) and John Smoltz (.920) among pitchers with at least 100 saves. Hoffman has earned more than 40 saves in five seasons, including 1998, when he went 53-for-54 in save situations and finished second in voting for the National League Cy Young Award.

San Diego Padres -SS Khalil Greene -3B Sean Burroughs -AAA CF Freddy Guzman I was pretty surprised last year when the Padres traded two players that I thought would be untouchable. They were Oliver Perez and Jason Bay. The Padres got Brian Giles in return, which at the time made sense since the Padres were building up for 2004.

You make it seem like Michaels was trying to be a company man. Too bad he wasn't earlier in the year. When he was champion, he threatened to quit because he did not not want to job to Sid, which brought about the whole lost his smile speech. He would threaten to quit and jump to WCW many times in 1997 if he did not get his way. As Meltzer pointed out, it is quite comical to see how many titles he won and then see that he would never be beaten in the ring to lose many of them. Why would Bret want Austin held back, he was very much in favor of Austin. If you look back in late 1997, Bret said he would lose the title on Raw after the Survivor Series to Taker, Austin, Vader, or the Brooklyn Brawler.

Here is an excerpt from this weeks Observer that I think is very interesting. I think it is pretty much safe to say that "who he is close to" and "people in power today" are really HHH and Shawn Michaels.

You have to state what you mean when you say draw. When Ric Flair says draw he means how many arenas did you sell out, not how high your TV ratings or PPV buyrates were. You bring up Bret's WCW run when he was already well out of his prime. I could be cruel and just flat out say Flair has not had a good match since 1993 and has since been living on his name and spots. In his prime, Flair's best quality was being able to carry slugs to good matches. He was able to carry green/bad workers like Sting and Lex Luger to good matches. In many ways it launched their career. The big problem with Flair was that he sometimes had problems calling a match with good workers. Ric Flair tried to work Bret Hart the same way he would Luger or Sting and you just don't do that. That is why the Flair/Hart series from 92 is so dissapointing.

Benoit does it the way it should be done. It is more of the wrestlers not taking it correctly. Benoit just doesn't pull back as much so it will be easier on his opponets. Now the Rock couldn't even cross the legs correctly.