Promoter

I think Vince was going for the same response with The Rock at WM 16.

I saw a similar thread on another website and it actually asked to re-write history if HHH had won the KOR in 1996 instead of Austin. I think this is one incident that really could have changed things.

Please read the rest of my post you are quoting for the answer about why Shawn and Vince would do it. Let us not forget Bret Hart is also an egomaniac who prides himself to the point of extreme mark about his legacy being revered and you have your answer.

Another match I saw that surprised me with Hogan was against Savage at Maple Leaf Garden. They showed it on 24/7 in December I think. Hogan actually finishes the match surprisingly with a small package after Savage missed the elbow if I recall correctly. They should put stuff like that on the DVD. I'm sure those matches have hardly been seen and Hogan actually looks motivated in those days to put on solid matches. Hogan vs. Hart from nitro is a gem because that's the only time they ever wrestled to my knowledge. I liked some of Deon's match selections too. Some of those need to be on DVD quality like Hogan and Sid vs. Taker and Flair.

Hogan had a good match with Ultimate Warrior. That says it all right there.

My point is it would be big of all 3 men to let go of the past and do something dramatic like HBK inducting Hart. Nothing more, nothing less. HBK has already stated he would not attend the HOF ceremony if it meant Hart being inducted and actually showing up. For all we know Vince and HBK told Bret sorry and that's why the man has even agreed to come back. We don't know. As someone said about the prestige of the HOF being laughable I agree for the most part. Bret must know accepting this in any form makes Vince money for WrestleMania especially with Vince/HBK being rumoured to happen at the event. Listen to some of Vince's comments last night on RAW and then you'll see why they would say sorry for Montreal genuine or not. Vince caused his brother to die, but he also played a part in Eddie's death too, but his family and friends have taken part in angle involving him. I don't put anything past Vince saying or doing whatever it takes to get what he wants to make a monster WrestleMania. This is why I try to understand why he books things the way he does in contrary to what smarks and the masses thinks. Vince is an egomaniac who has the WM legacy to live up to each and every year and I don't think he deliberately goes out there and tries to do stuff to make things tank for the most part. Look at who he's brought back and why over the last few years to hype Mania and HOF. Even to go as far as trying to get Bruno Sammartino to participate.

To answer your question NO! Tell me why would it be stupid for HBK to induct Bret Hart if Vince, HBK, and Hart have mended their indifferences? I think it's damn near impossible, but I don't think it's stupid. It will be saying all 3 guys have let go of that night in Montreal and show that they're friggin professionals and adults. Seriously, it's not like what went down is something so meaningful in life that all three men can't let it go for the mainstream audience to see.

We should keep this option open I know about his physical state although he HAS said he is not that badly off as people think on TSN's sportsdesk around fall time in 2004-winter 2005 when promoting that Alladin thing. Vince vs. Bret with one punch, kick, and sharpshooter may be all that's needed. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I wouldn't put it past Vince or a wrestler to go against logic.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vince told that "assistant writer" to write in and say those things to help further the hate this angle is getting.

Don't they have anything relating to Hogan/Flair on film in the wwf in 1991? How about Hogan/Andre from NBC or Hogan/Bundy SNME feud? Disc 4 looks crap.

Actually, I'd like to expand on the last two posts. HHH turning on Hogan and joining the nWo would have been good and I also think putting Shawn in there as well. Something like the Kliq taking over and ousting Hogan. I also think they should have done the brand split different. They should have done Hogan vs. Austin in Toronto in a title vs. title scenario. Hogan should have been brought back with the big gold belt and gone up against Austin with the wwe title and split the wwf from there with the nWo storyline. That way the match lives up to the hype and it creates a historic split. Hogan would have been easier to deal with in terms of jobbing at the time because it was his return and Austin would have been happy for the victory. WrestleMania 8 could have been Hogan/Flair, but I actually think Hart vs. Flair should have happened where Hart got the strap. They were in a transition that year and if Hogan couldn't get the job done and Bret Hart could in terms of toppling Flair it might have made Hart a bigger draw as champion down the line. It would need to have been built up longer though. Hart was getting strong babyface heat in '91 too. It was the better play than Savage, although that was good too. The best time Hogan/Flair's match should have taken place was WrestleMania 7 at LA Coliseum. I think that would have drawn the big crowd Vince wanted for the building. The timing was just a bit off.

Geez! I was anticipating that Bob Orton/Roddy Piper match they cancelled at Survivor Series.

How about Shawn Michaels inducting Bret Hart? Now that is high drama right there. Seriously, if HBK and Vince want to say sorry for Montreal this might be the way to do it. Of course......this is highly unlikely.

Look at this man and tell me he is not right in the mind and you can see why he thinks the way he does for booking some of the stuff he does. His "shoot" comments during this segment says it all.

Where did I say I posted this to turn people on my side? I posted it because it was funny and ironic that this forum made jokes in other threads about HHH calling himself King of Kings and the topic about saving WrestleMania proclaimed in one response that Jesus was already in the main event. Then I saw this post at another site and posted it here. I don't need anyone to turn on my side about Cena/HHH at Mania. The match is going to happen no matter what anyone thinks. I just tend to disagree with others that HHH/Cena is THAT bad and Cena's reign is THAT bad. I have seen a lot worse watching wrestling over the years and I also see WHY the wwe may think the way they do about having a hard on for this match. It's that simple really.

Guys, I stole this from another website's forum, but damn if it wasn't interesting. ------------------------------------------------------------- The sledgehammer So here's the thing, really. I don't much care how much money the WWE makes. If anything, it seems McMahon is good enough at crunching numbers that it should never really matter to the average fan how profitable things are in the industry. The concern should just be that it stays in business, and like I said, it seems he's good enough at the number crunching that this would never be a problem. Hell, when the dude starts making too much money, he just tends to blow it on football franchises, bodybuilding pay-per-views, b-grade action movies, and maybe a tanning session or two anyway. Point being I don't like to cheer for the money. It's not my job. I'm not a shareholder. Right, so I just felt the need to get that out of the way because for some reason, it seems like too many conversations about wrestling devolve into the money thing and I could ultimately care less. I've been watching since I was 12. That was when the first Mania happened and all the kids at school were running around doing high knees, body slams, and leg drops to each other in the halls for fun. Everybody knew it was fake. The old fuddy duddy pre-baby boom teachers would grumble that "it's all fake" and we'd be like, yeah, so... what's your point. I remember the first time I really got met with the whole "why do you watch this shit" question. My best friend was over a few years back, 2002, and he hit me with it. I said, "watch this," because the Triple H-Steph renewal of the vows thing was being staged at that moment. He watched the whole thing. "Pedigree" I laughed, a few seconds before he drove his wife's face into the floor to a roar of approval from the crowd. He kept turning his head from the screen, laughing, looking back, laughing some more. "I've never seen anything like that," he laughed afterward. Now he knew why I watched this shit. OK... ranting around in circles here but I have a point. I don't give a shit about the money, first of all. As long as the show is on. There really is nothing else like this. Also, I've started to question how much McMahon himself cares about the money. I mean... there's the myth among fans that if we cheer or boo a certain way McMahon will have to listen because we're the ones that pay him to stay in business. This is true to a certain extent, but for the most part, he's always just kind of done what he wanted to do anyway and turned his mental power toward finding a way to make whatever he was doing marketable enough to keep going. That's the grapefruits thing. The fact it's turned his little family business into a publicly traded mini media empire is fucking astounding, and more than enough reason to give the dude his due. I guess what I'm saying is I don't understand the mass amounts of criticism that get heaved at him. That's the main point of this whole post, but I'm trying to work my way to a lucid state with the thought. See, I'm gonna say something so outlandish here most of you will feel compelled to throw insults my way. That's fine. My hope is one or two people will want to have a good conversation about the subject and we can just ignore the sophomores. Here it is... Vince McMahon is our era's William Shakespeare. Now to set the stage, I've slept in gutters, roomed with psychopaths, got drunk with ceo's, jumped off cliffs, lived in churches, had sex with angels, and along the way I've managed to study a bit of academic intelligence also. One of the things I've learned is that there was once a dude named Shakespeare who ran a little theater company in England. He specialized in churning out lowest common denominator plays that the majority of his culture considered crass, low brow, colloquial shit. Mainstream critics of his day wouldn't give him much thought. He was for the common man. Some hack who stole his material from working class mythology of the time. Make matters worse, turns out there wasn't even one guy doing the whole thing. All those plays written by William Shakespeare were nothing more than plays written under the cooperation of William Shakespeare's little working class theater company. Hell, some of the actors probably even came up with their own shit to say. It was a whole lot of 15th century British slang, which is why uppities get scholarships to study the man's genius these days. Imagine it'll be the same thing in a few hundred years when they start trying to figure out what guys like Guerro and Flair and Cena, much less Warrior and Triple H and Hogan were saying in their promos. A whole forgotten language immortalized in the theatrics of this century's crass, low brow, colloquial shit for the common man that gets snubbed by mainstream critics if considered at all in the first place. Fuck 'em, I say. They get paid to watch TV and talk about it, and they think they're better than anybody else? Fuck 'em because I work for a living and wrestling speaks to me, speaks my language, tells my stories, and entertains the shit out of me. I've been in fights, gotten fired from jobs, watched friends fall, had chicks slap me across the face, and while it's thankfully not a daily practice of mine to get hit in the head with a steel chair, anybody who's been in that office with corporate america the day they tell you your services are no longer needed knows exactly what it must feel like to get hit in the head with a steel chair, thrown off the top of a cage through a table, or pummeled by some evil rich fuck with a sledgehammer. That's my point, basically. Wrestling might be fake as a sport, over the top as entertainment, but it's the most real thing I've found on TV, not that I watch a lot of TV, but comparing it to yuppified melodramatic crap like Lost or Invasion or ER... you get the point. Hopefully. Right, so one more thing to illustrate my point and then I'm out... the current story that's got smarky smarks all bunching up in the panties is this John Cena vs. Triple H match on a crash course with inevitability this Mania. Think about it... just for a second... this isn't the NWA, or AWA, or even TNA, or ECW. There's no pretense in the WWE that this is a real sport. Vince has always called what he did theater, his wrestlers characters, and his ring a stage. It happens to be a show about a fight, but that's the hook. It's the metaphor we dig. We understand what it's like to be in a fight in life, or we wouldn't bother watching. Wrestling gives us what the old Greek Aristotle talked about when he philosophized on theater and talked about the purging of intense emotions leading to catharsis. Gooey ten cent words and shit. Point is, John Cena is this character, this everyday thug who fights for the people, and now those people have turned on him. OMGZ BUSINESS IS GOING INTO THE SHITTER! Heh. K... Ratings are up. Anyway. They spent the last year feuding him with the two most popular tweeners on the roster in Jericho and Angle. They had to know... I'm just saying they had to know what was going to happen, and where they are now has to be the destination they were going for. Why? Because his name is John Cena for fuck's sake. Hasn't clicked for you yet? Just shorten it up to the initials. Then throw in his hip hop catchphrases like "Word Life" and "The Time is Now" and hopefully you'll see the point of all this without having to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer. I'll point out this. Kids love him. Anyway... the guy they're setting him up for is Triple H. King of Kings. Master manipulator. Plays the Game. Do a little research on what his name means in occult sciences and you'll see how we as fans have been under his evil control for almost a decade now. He's the motherfucking antichrist. The genius of the story is in how they've turned the fans just in time for the climax. At Mania in Chicago, the antichrist will step in the ring with an everyday jabroni, initials JC, loved by kids but turned on by those he's the most like, and the thing is gonna be riotous. The antichrist will probably be heavily cheered, and will probably win the match, and will probably show up on TV the next night with that awesome evil smile on his face and the belt slung over his shoulder while he growls "Look what you just cheered for." Will it make money? Probably, but I don't give a shit. I'm just here to enjoy the ride. That's my point. Not sure what I'm expecting in response... like I said... expecting lame insults clever to the beholder, and hoping for some decent conversation. I've typed more than enough, though. Sorry bout the wind.

I think the Bret Hart scenario is the real barrier to this for real. He really does look like he is sticking to his principles unlike his colleagues ranging from Piper to Foley to Hogan. The only other person who seems to stick to his principles about not returning is Ultimate Warrior. I just got to believe that Vince has a reason why he is so hell bent on keeping Cena face where even HHH is defending the fans turning on the guy on Angle not being a good heel against him. The argument went as far as using Edge's recent work as proof that Angle did not do his job correctly in having fans rally behind Cena. Why not just tween him or turn him heel? The Rock I don't see as too much of a problem for a big time show such as celebrating WM 3 if the wwe does something good for him at the event. If I was a betting man, I would just build Cena into a monster heel and put him against The Rock next year. It "could" have the same type of appeal of Rock/Hogan where the preceeding top star faces the old guard. Hell, Rock may be the only guy who can get fans to look at Cena differently. I don't think HHH or anyone else currently on the roster can change the fans' perception of Cena. He needs one of the guys from the attitude era helping him.

Jim Ross was not in the wwe in 1992. Jim Ross made that comment in 1996 during the Ross Report on one of the syndicated shows as the build up for the KOR comeback story for Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

I guess I'll go into my question about WM 23 because I have a feeling that some of the things being done for Mania this year might explain why guys like Cena and Orton are in the main events. WrestleMania 23 is supposedly going to be promoted as the 20th anniversary of Hogan slamming Andre the Giant. It's going to take place in Detroit. Now, if Hogan and Austin aren't scheduled for WM 22 maybe just maybe Vince is thinking long term and will use the match at WM 23. The same with HBK/Bret. I know about all of the problems surrounding this match from ever happening as well. However, I bet Vince will throw tons of money at Hogan, Austin, HBK, and Bret to do these matches to sell out Ford Field and at least try to surpass the biggest Mania of all-time in WM 3. It could be a 2 year build up for the event. Hogan has already challenged Austin on HomeComing and we have not seen both men since. Vince vs. HBK is brewing at the moment and HBK has already stated he will become a part timer after Mania. So, what better way to have HBK return in a special attraction against Bret next year and Hogan/Austin being pushed as the biggest match since Hogan/Andre? In the meantime, get the younger guys over like Randy Orton and John Cena in the meantime which would explain why the wwe has Orton and Cena pegged for the main events of this year's Mania. Bring in The Rock next year to face one of the two and that's your third big match for WM 23. Anyone think that maybe some of this theory I have come up with might explain some of the wwe's actions? I know they aren't famous for booking long term, but it does seem like they do for certain things like HHH/Cena and Orton in the main event of Mania this year which have been rumoured for months.

Yeah, Jake does look horrible and is asking to tap out, but Father Time probably doesn't want him in his sphere and is leaving him here to rot. The Grim Reaper sent him to the demon world according to Jim Ross in 1996 when he jobbed to Taker at Mania 8.

I thought he was saying "look at his name" meaning HHH, to correspond to 666, but HHH would be 888. So maybe he has a sinister connection to toll-free phone numbers. I took it to mean John Cena's initials represented Jesus Christ and HHH claiming he was the King of Kings was Satan challenging his position. WM 22 would be armageddon. I'm agreeing a lot with treecelightning though.

I think this is the winner myself I mean the wwe has taken its toll on the guy more than the Olympics. Look at him at the Royal Rumble in 2000 against Tazz and now. Angle vs. Lesnar was probably his greatest rivalry since he traded titles and both men had the same kind of background. The feud wrote itself. Benoit/Angle and Angle/Edge should be in the top 5 too in no particular order with the HHH and HBK following.

How about saving WM 23 in Detroit? We might have another WM 7 on our hands at the rate things are going.

How about a power hungry and dysfunctional family by the last name of Mcmahon? Have Stephanie marry HHH and have a kid together. Vince goes into a spa and is accused of sexual assault.

How about it disappointing John Cena