10 Pounds

There has been talk about UFC 97 on sports radio in Quebec, the news hasn't hit mainstream MMA websites yet but probably will soon. UFC may or may not happen in Montreal after all. It’s not officially cancelled but there are problems with the Alcohol, Races & Games commission in the province of Quebec. It only allows boxing, mixed boxing and kickboxing events in the province. The law forbids any kind of events that would include elbow or kneestrikes, thus it would include any UFC events. The worst part is even if UFC 83 broke all sorts of box-office records here in Montreal and it happenned a year ago, the AR&G commission was aware of its existence only a few days ago. The director of communications for the commission even acknowledged the fact they haven’t properly done their job in supervising UFC 83. What's more unbelievable is there must have been near 40 or so smaller MMA cards done in Montreal since the last 2 or 3 years. There are even broadcasts of a local MMA promotion in prime time on the 3rd biggest TV channel in Quebec, yet nobody seemed to be even aware of what MMA was until a few days ago. The government is still on the early/mid-90's position where MMA is barbarism and injuries are inevitable. There are over 12 000 tickets pre-sold (the official tickets sales date is this Saturday), those people may have a refund if the event is cancelled. The only way UFC 97 could happen as of right now in Montreal is if UFC follows the provincial law by banning all elbows and knee strikes, which is completely ridiculous. When asked if the laws could be changed in time before April 18th, the guy from the commission said it would be difficult to change laws on such a short notice. Montreal lost its F1 World Grand Prix earlier in 2008, UFC could bring a good portion of the money lost in the Grand Prix weekend but the AR&G guy said on the interview the commission wasn’t there for economical growth. He said UFC is welcome in Quebec if they respect the commission laws but they won't mind if they'll move the show elsewhere. Here's the link for the article....although I don't think it will be useful for this board since the article is written en français (I've told you the news didn't hit mainstream yet). What I've just written is pretty much the summary anyway.

That kid is even more psycho than the Nintendo 64 kid.

That blows. I've been a EGM reader since the late 90's, back when the magazine used to be a 200+ pages brick. Half of them were ads but the content was really good. I think the mag lost some of its quality since Hsu left the crew but I still prefer to read videogames news (not much of them since the switch) and reviews on paper rather than to read it on the Net. I guess we'll never know what the mysterious game was for the February issue.

Your problems seem to be local because on my side, my VOD service never has been better. It must have been like two months since I had a problem of any kind. All the shows, even the 2008 PPVs and the Roundtables, have been availlable on the updating days straight at midnight. Sadly, the problem with the non-existant updates seem to be the usual "We haven't received the new programming list/The cable company is responsible for the updates" blame game. For all the phone calls I've made, I have never received a clear answer. I've called at Cogeco's technical service and they say they're not responsible for the updates (then who the hell is?). I have never received a reply from WWE save the BBB e-mail....and even that one didn't say very much. I know how frustrating this must be. Best of luck in your update tonight.

I know I'm a Nitro episode too late but God was that a painful third hour hearing the announcers plugging Hogan's movie over and over and over again non-stop. You'd think it would be a sure channel-switching tactic, wonder what were the reviews of that show were. When does the Nitro where the nWo destroys the set for like 30 minutes happens ? I think it would have been before Starrcade but my memory is a little bit fuzzy on that one. I also remember a Nitro where it was Tony Schiavone in a studio and they showed nothing but Hogan matches, from his WCW debut to his running for President. Maybe that one was a Holiday special.

The best part of December to Dismember was seeing two dudes totally marking out and high-fiving each other for Sandman's music.

I laughed at the renaming of this thread. Nine pages and not a single problem was ever resolved since there's nothing we can do about it I haven't got any problems since September where only one week out of four was updated. The only thing I never had last month was the Roundtable....is it supposed to be availlable this week or is it next week ?

If he's going to sign, he needs to bring back his Captain Charisma hoodie and "Just Close Your Eyes" as his intro. Him signing back is great. I don't expect a main-event run anytime soon (I may eat my words since the Russian could very well be champion) but I'd like to see a solid upper card feud against Jericho or CM Punk. Let's just hope he won't be made an example of since he was one of the first to willingly jump to TNA....that treatment will go for Angle, if he ever comes back.

Odd they would focus on nothing but Goldberg matches in the shorties. I was kinda hoping we would get another "25 days of Christmas" theme like last year. Although they could mix the two themes and have footage of Santa's Slay availlable This month's shorties, however, are totally awesome. You got the Jive Soul Bro and Rap is Crap music videos which I haven't seen in forever and Real American is always a classic. *rips an Al-Gaddafi photo* It's only unfortunate they had to put those lame Miz inserts in the videos.

HRG getting shot through the eye by Suresh just like the painting predicted was my best moment of season 2. Too bad he came back to life five minutes later, I would have milked it for a little while longer. So far, I'm not sure about this season. It's not bad but it's not season 1-quality yet. On some points, it's better than season 2 because it's faster-paced and you don't have the horrible spanish twins storyline getting 25% of airtime. On the other hand, if they would reduce the amount of useless "fast-forward to the future" moments that only exist to do cute "shades of gray" by making heroes villains and vice-versa, it would be better. I don't mind seeing new characters but many of the characters from season I & II have now little purpose. Hobo Nathan didn't do much last year and Born-Again Nathan isn't much of a step-up from it. The whole Niki storyline finally ended last year and they copy/paste another one just to have Ali Landry on the show. Sylar still is awesome but I preferred him more as a cold-blooded killer rather than kill to satisfy a "hunger".

I just got my hands on a sweet 360 bundle for a nice price. I swore to myself I wouldn't buy a new-gen console until I got an HDTV but it seems that I don't quite fully understand the concept of saving money. The games that came with it were all on my "to-buy" list except for Guitar Hero III. However, someone showed me all the songs you could get online so I don't mind double-dipping if I get to play the Top Gun Anthem. So welcome to three years ago for me. Now I can finally get familiar with foreign concepts like the Marketplace, Live Arcade and RRODs.

Damn, I hope we'll get more shows added as the week goes on because I got nothing to see this week save for One Night Stand. Don't care much about the baseball theme but I looked forward to the post Badd Blood and Great American Bash shows. I still have a Ric Flair promo availlable, probably the same one that was there all September long.

"Baby Doll is so fat, elephants ask her for autographs" "Look at Tony Zane wrestling, he should wear a billboard for false advertisement" Damn, they should have had Cornette doing color in every show, that man is on fire every time. Sure his jokes about Baby Doll are blatantly sexist, but they're so over the top it's hard not to laugh. Lawler's jokes about Stu and Helen are still great even if they both died.

If you have Undertaker for a third straight year in a big main-event, I would rather see him vs Michaels than him vs HHH. Undertaker and Shawn Michaels never had any interaction in eleven years save for the last two Rumbles. The crowd were going crazy for them in 2007 and they had one of the best Rumble moments ever in the showdown of WWE legends. It would be the "freshest" of their availlable programs (as fresh as a feud between two mainstays can be) and would be a better match and better build-up than Taker vs HHH would be. Undertaker/HHH matches never really clicked in the past. Their KOTR 2002 match was awful and I didn't found their Wrestlemania XVII match to be all that great. Except for the sledgehammer spot, it was the same WWE Attitude main-event formula you saw in 98-99 where you brawl all over the place for 10 minutes. I'm not saying it was a bad match, but nothing stood out of the ordinary. If you make Undertaker vs HHH, the political battles would be much more interesting than the wrestling build-up. HHH won't play the usual role where he beats up Undertaker in a way we've never seen before only to be scared of the smoke-and-mirror effects and eating Tombstone in the end. A HHH vs Undertaker feud will eventually happen but, for Wrestlemania, I'd much rather see The Streak vs Mr. Wrestlemania vs The Streak vs The Game.

Well if that thing opens up a gate to Xen and that guy has a crowbar on him, I say we'll be all right. In the following weeks, I'm fully expecting a meteoric rise of "End of the World" talk everywhere in the media leading to panic and hysteria. I don't know if that thing is safe or not since there have been experiments of that nature in the past, just not on that scale. No one really knows for sure, but black holes and big bangs aren't the kind of things you play around with.

Yeah, IMO he's been the highlight of this series since he appeared in season two. However, it seems that his pill addiction mysteriously disappeared between season 3 and 4.

I remember playing a web game in 2000 or 2001 called "Wrestling Stock Exchange" where you had like 10 000 points at the start to invest in wrestlers. Main-eventers' shares like Rock, Austin or HHH would be like 400 points a share while shares for lower midcarders on indy wrestlers could be bought in thousands. Depending on his push or how many shares each wrestlers sold, your stock would go up or down. It didn't last long (because it's a freakin' wrestling-themed stock exchange game), but I just knew that my worthless Brock Lesnar shares were actually a sitting goldmine. Even though EWR could be repetitive, it was a great game that you could play without seeing time passing. I don't know how many hours I've wasted to build a promotion from the ground up.

Everything is there today. I think I'm going to light a candle at the Church.

In the "Better late than never" category, I had my second update of August today : New ECW, Judgment Day and Stone Cold 5-6. Never got any MNW, NWA or anything else since the first week. Let's hope the company won't screw up September since it's Flair month and there are historic MNW shows.

I knew there would be a Mega Man 9 but, since I don't usually follow current-gen news, I had no idea the game would revert back to the old NES look and gameplay. I just saw the trailer and it brought back good memories. That game looks like a must to any fan who grew up with these games. It even has bad Mega Man 1-style boxart !

Everything was updated this morning except for the TV section. Oddly enough, everything is gone as I'm writing this.

I've spent a weekend at OOB, Maine earlier this summer and there was some really good stuff at the arcade that I haven't seen in forever : The Simpsons, X-Men, TMNT, 5-6 pinball machines and Terminator II (two Uzis at the same time baby!). No fighting games however. It's a shame arcades are dead nowadays.

The NWA and Backlash 1-2 & 4 showed up today. Better late than never I guess. Still missing the 3rd Foley disc and everything else. Was a Raw supposed to be availlable along with the Nitros ? I remember the last Raw I saw was the one with the HBK/HHH vs Mankind/Undertaker main-event. I know they'll skip a few weeks worth of Raw but I just want to make a distinction between what 24/7 skipped and what I've missed because of incompetence.

I've called Cogeco and sent an e-mail to WWE over the same issue but I'm not holding my breath on either one since it's always the other's fault. Cogeco told me they would check it out and call me back but they'll probably say the usual : they update according to their list that WWE gives them. I never had a reply to any e-mail I've sent to 24/7 customer support save for the BBB one.

Fight the Good Fight. I don't have many things as well. What I'm most disappointed is no Raw, NWA nor Backlash. At least we got to see the good half of the WarGames (1991: hooray for the Pillman DVD). GFBE is mainly a one-match show, which is on the HBK DVD. Still, it sucks to pay 10 dollars for a half-assed service.