Epic Reine

Stacey: "You'll be unemployed within the next year and dead within the next six!"

The problem with cashing in and losing is that it cheapens the integrity of the MITB match. Money In The Bank has become one of the main attractions of Wrestlemania and people generally wanna see the person who wins it, win a world title. It's similar to when someone wins the Royal Rumble, they're expected to walk into the Wrestlemania main event and walk out a champion. (this year not withstanding but Orton was a heel and fans wanted him to lose anyway). Having Punk lose will just make the briefcase less valuable and people will become less interested in the concept if they carry around this prop for months and don't utilize it. The solution is to have Punk win it in a way that hasn't been done before. The pre-announcement thing isn't bad and it could work but a fresh idea like having a world title challenger get attacked backstage and not able to compete for the world title that now. When the champion comes out, who is his replacement opponent? Cashing in the briefcase, CM Punk. Have him win it and it sets up a problem with the ex-champ and now with the challenger who never got his shot.

It happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYvCFt1AbZM

Jeff was picked over Matt in the summer of '02 to face RVD over who would face Benoit for the IC title at Summerslam. Matt got jealous and cost Jeff the match and title oppourtunity and then jumped to Smackdown later that week. Jeff got a measure of revenge at the '03 Royal Rumble by running in and immediatley targeting Matt and even hit him with the Swanton. There wasn't a real "fued" per say but both men were on opposite sides of the heel/face spectrum.

When Big Show turned heel in early 2000 because he didn't like the way The Rock was calling him names. Hey, The Rock WAS being an asshole. Can't blame Show for getting upset.

The formation of Evolution lasted about a week before Orton (who just returned from an injury) and Batista both went down with injuries during the same match. It was a house show match with the Dudleyz in early 2003 I believe. Evolution was never mentioned again until Orton returned that summer. Batista eventually returned later that fall.

Knowing is doing a hell of a lot better than I originally guessed.

Booker was somewhat buried when he came into WWE. He had a great debut but then they jobbed him to every main event player during his first few months (Taker, Rock, Austin) and eventually became nothing more than a midcarder by 2002. It took him years to regain his momentum.

Yea, I think the story was that they asked Jay-Z first and he turned them down right away. They then asked Fabolus and he actually agreed to do it but I think he got in trouble with the law around Mania time and couldn't be there so they just had Cena bury both of them on the pre-show. Cena cut a promo on the Smackdown before Mania and issued an open challenge to any rapper in a freestyle contest so I assume this was originally planned for the main show.

and tassle boots!

Apparently, Van Damn and Dolph Lundgren are making a third Universal Soldier movie. The first one is one of my all time guilty pleasures, the second one sucked though. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288403/

The "Once" parody on The Simpsons tonight was pretty funny.

Why did they discontinue the European belt shortly after WMXV only to bring it back that summer?

Woe, Test's death made the newswire at IMDB. That's the only wrestler's death (not counting Benoit) I've ever seen reported there.

When you're a face, you easily defeat your opponents cleanly but need to bend all sorts of rules to barely win a match when you're heel (JBL, Hogan, etc.)