Cheech Tremendous

ESPN is reporting Eddy Curry to the Knicks. Details forthcoming. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2180298

62. Max on Max

I think he's hurt. Blew out his knee or something.

firejoemorgan.blogspot.com Joe is a curse on the baseball community.

Tell Warrior to fuck Warrior.

I thought it was a good movie, but utterly forgettable. There's no way that it becomes the classic that Wonka is. That said, the general consensus amongst people I know is that they HATED the movie. Seriously, I have not heard a positive review from any of my friends or co-workers. I don't if anyone else is hearing the same, but I thought it was interesting,

What are you talking about? This guy was getting called up before the Cornette incident.

Not to rain on the parade, but is there any indication he could book a show like Smackdown? Booking an hour of tv with no storylines that no one watches is probably a little easier than the main show. Telling Benoit and Regal to wrestle for twenty minutes isn't exactly rocket science.

Wesley Willis

Yeah I'm sure that was the plan until they re-signed Hardy.

Man I was thinking the same thing. I know the whole angle was in bad taste, but that video was so well done that I was totally caught up in the moment. I want to see where this thing goes from here.

I'd rather have my eyes stabbed out with a rusty fork.

When Cena speaks, the arena literally stops. He has them in the palm of his hands. The only other person/people in very recent memory who have had that much control over the crowd is Austin and Hogan. Have you seen an Austin promo from 1998? The crowd pops literally every time he pauses because they are so excited to see him. The crowd doesn't react to Cena the same way. Maybe you haven't noticed in the live crowds the dozens of little kids with inflatable John Cena hands, stupid spinning necklaces and fake knucks. And Cena has been on Raw for a month. Smackdown was losing ratings w/ JBL as the champ, and there was a slow increase weekly when Cena won. If fans are leaving like you say they are, then new ones must be coming in to at least keep the ratings consistent. He's not driving old fans away, but he's not bringing the fans that already left back, and he's not bringing in new fans (And if he's such a draw like Austin and Hogan, he should be). Add that to the fact that his gimmick is growing more stale by the week. And if he's so big then fans should have tuned in to Smackdown regardless of if Cena had the belt. Did fans tune out in 98/99 when Austin wasn't champion? In all these discussions, I keep hearing about what a great draw Cena is and how much he's doing for the product, but I honestly don't see where that is coming from. Reports are that there are tons of kids in the audience and that he's moving all kinds of merchandise. But, the dude has been champ for close to 4 months now. There has been no postive gain in ratings, house show attendance or buyrates since he's been on top. This leads me to one of two conclusions: a. the amount of people he is bringing into the arenas is being tremendously overstated b. he's turning off just as many fans as he is bringing in I could be wrong here, so please enlighten me if I am. Why do we keep calling this guy a draw? And before we get into this argument again, I know that he is over. I do not equate being over to being a draw.

That's only your opinion, though. Most people seemed to like it. Don't their opinions matter? I'm never gotten the whole "RVD can't talk" argument. It just seems like another unjust criticism of the guy that he pretty much proved wrong at ONS. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A whiny diatribe with some lame cheap pop lines was a good promo? It was shamefully bad. I was actually praying for Hunter to run out and talk instead. I first heard it and I was honestly floored people praised it. It was horrible. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It is true that RVD is not that great on the mic. I would never want him out there cutting twenty minute promos or carrying a main event program on the stick. But here's the thing about the ONS promo... maybe it didn't have a great delivery and maybe it wasn't overly entertaining, but at the end of it I really wanted to see the guy WRESTLE. The thing is, guys like JBL and Cena get praise for coming out every week and being so entertaining, but it literally means nothing in the long run. The RVD promo wasn't great in the traditional sense, but it brought out enough emotion to forget about everything for the moment and really root for the guy. That should be the goal of any promo. And I think it's really unfair to bring up Shelton Benjamin in this discussion. The guy is going to be fantastic. Tremendous upside, athletic, good in the ring... but to think he is ready for a top face spot or to imply that he is at RVD's level right now is laughable. It's really putting too much on the guy at this point. He'll get there eventually. Right now, he has some good spots but doesn't put together that great of a match and hasn't shown much on the mic. I just think its premature to put him in this discussion because he still has time to get to the next level.

Shouldn't he be getting some heat over this Hassan debacle then?

Then we fundamentally disagree. I can't fault the guy for doing his job, whether it was in poor taste of not. We all see how political this WWE stuff is, and if he wanted a sustained push it was in his best interest to go with the flow. If you have a problem with that, I respect your opinion. Plus, I really thought the guy was over. And someone else did because he got to wrestle Hogan in his comeback match, meet in Austin in his Raw return and get a Summerslam main event. I thought he got real "I hate you" heat instead of the cheap boo because he doesn't like America ( a la Unamericans or La Resistance). But then again, I guess we were just seeing different things.

I would at least toss New Jersey into that title contenders mix as well.

The Warlord? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My mom was absolutely convinced that the Warlord and Goldberg were the exact same person.

The guy wants to be a professional wrestler. He was training to become a professional wrestler. The WWE called him up before he was ready and saddled him with a cheap heat gimmick. The guy worked hard, did his job and got over enough to warrant a push to the main event. Now he might lose it all because the creative team is a bunch of monkeys with typewriters. How could you possibly fault the guy for that?

MikeSC, do you believe that Cena and Batista should be champs now... because RVD is a better worker than both of them and was just as over in 2001/02.

This would probably be the first WWE release that would really bother me. This guy is young and talented and did everything that management asked of him. He goes from main eventer to food line in one day. Unbelievable.

Wow, that sums up my feelings as well.

Yeah, I see your point... they haven't had much success in the past. It was just the first idea that came to mind. But, also take into consideration the guys you mentioned and where they were at the time of dropping their gimmicks. Hassan was several weeks from headlining the company's second biggest PPV of the year. I was just thinking that I feel bad for the guy already. Why couldn't that be channeled into some sort of sympathetic character. I mean the guy was getting death threats (worked or not) and bashed in the NY Times. There has to be something they can play to keep the guy over and on tv without the original offensive gimmick.

Yes, he does. During his comeback in 2002 and 2003, other wresters including Palumbo and Storm were told specifically not to use the move.

It's very unfortunate that Magnus will likely lose his job for doing everything that was asked of him and doing a good job of it at that. It's creative's fault, not his, that the angle went over the top and pissed everyone off. I say just run an angle where he is "fired" over the controversy, cuts a worked shoot promo about how he couldn't get a break until management guaranteed him a spot only if he played an Arab character. He apologizes, says he loves his country and wants another chance no matter what it takes and boom, sympathetic babyface.