strummer

if the D line doesn't get pressure, they have no chance, AT ALL

This game is making it perfectly clear the Giants without a doubt have the worst secondary in the NFL

everyone always says that Andre shouldn't have been wrestling after 85/86 but the guy was still a great draw. Obviously the Hogan program did tremendous business but the guy drew money on top with Jim F'N Duggan (including selling out MSG) I don't think Andre's legacy was "tarnished" for having such bad matches from 87-90 AT ALL. The fans still reacted to him and he still drew.

Starrcade 97 I had grown tired of the WCW product around November 96 when the Hogan/Piper program had started. After purchasing almost every WCW PPV from late 95 and all of 96 I was now only sporadically buying their shows. Starrcade was a "final chance" for the company to hook me once again. They failed miserably. I had tons of friends over for the show and no one made any noise the whole night. Now admittedly, these guys really were never into the Benoits, Guerreros, Malenkos, but they weren't into ANY match that night. They wanted to get into Hogan/Sting, but the booking prevented them from doing so. The show was just so BORING, and did not have the feel of a big time event. That was the night I gave up on WCW for good. And the only time I really felt like I wasted money on wrestling.

just knew HBK wasn't jobbing 2 PPV's in a row. Masters push is over.

with all the faces winning, I think it guarentees a screwjob in the main event.

another year where Conan is jobbed. Oh but the Daily Show is "about more than comedy" "It tackles the issuezzzz!!!" Conan just does that comedy stuff LAME

This Jets/Dolphins game is HORRIFIC. Jets are playing like crap but are going to win easy.

blatant cross promotion with CBS showing clips of The Longest Yard in the lead in to hype the DVD release. Pathetic.

Celebrating the re-release of Tommy Boy on DVD? OK. I see they are making the world title program into a comedy feud. MNM are now officially dead. They will probably still try to make Melina a star, as for the other 2, no chance. And how will they explain the handicap match at No Mercy when UT has already beaten Randy on TV? Like we are supposed to believe that adding a 60 yr. old man to the match will somehow put the outcome in doubt.

it's only Week 1, but I wonder if Sean Salisbury still thinks the Cardinals are the "team to beat" in the NFC West? Have to love all the "Bret Favre is done" talk that is going to come up this week, only to see him throw 4 TDS next week and then the same people proclaiming "Bret Never lost it!!" "He's still gritty, tough and a natural winner!"

Being in Seattle. Seriously. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Meltzer post at WC: They blame being in Seattle for the low buy rate for Mania that year. It's a b.s. reason, but they want major markets for Mania. Next time in Houston I'll bet they try the Astrodome again. The gate will be almost the same in Chicago as it was in Seattle anyway. Houston and Toronto are where they can make the most money live, but they don't want Toronto for Mania because the crowd will steal the show from them.

When interviewed last off season, Leyland was going on about smallball bullshit and how the Phillies strike out too much and don't advance runners, yadda yadda yadda. Leyland is another smallball mark, no way he would have been a good mix with the Phils, who are a high OBP and power team

From the Weinerboard: Got there about towards the end of Velocity sadly, so I'll start with the main event there as that's all I got... Booker T w/Sharmell defeated Steven Richards. Smackdown starts with no pyro as Teddy Long announces this first half of the show will be for WWE.com. Animal & Heidenreich defeated MNM after Animal grabs the belts from Melina and uses it while the referee was knocked out. Decent match. Teddy Long came out and sat in the cheap seats the entire night with who I believe was the "UPN Executive man" with Christy & Stacy also in the background. Ken Kennedy defeated Paul London. Paul Birchall w/William Regal defeated Scotty 2 Hotty. Tony Chimell says to prepare for the pyro as they will start with the UPN half of Smackdown. Show starts with the cage already down as Eddie & Rey gets underway. Eddie Guerrero defeated Rey Mysterio via pinfall. Eddie has the match won as he can easily walk out the cage, but comes back in to seal the deal with a frogsplash. Good match with a couple good spots. Undertaker comes out and calls Mr. Randy Orton out. Orton (with Bob) brings out a big check for $1,400 that he was making out to the "Undertaker Retirement Fund." Taker does his lightning-bolt thing and sets the check on fire, scaring Bob & son off the stage. Backstage, Ken Kennedy says...something to Sharmell. Don't remember much, but I'm liking his character. Nobody else seemed to care much though. Chris Benoit defeats Orlando Jordan in 22.5 seconds. After the commercial, plenty of "You tapped out" chants directed towards Orlando as he was in the ring throwing a tantrum similar to what Christian used to do. Batista defeated JBL. Decent match, but nothing really memorable. After the show, half the arena emptied out, but then Orton's music would hit for the dark match and everyone rushed back. Orton called out the Undertaker and they had themselves a VERY good one-on-one match although it was advertised to be a six-man tag. Match of the night filled with near-falls, knocked-out refs, and a Bob Orton interference. Undertaker defeats Randy Orton. Fun night, but nothing comparable to my experience at the Rumble (even though I had much better seats). Spent most of the night happily arguing with the drunks surrounding me. This one guy behind us would chant "Atomic Drop" for the ENTIRE night actually...

Why? Do you know how close he came to coming in with the bases loaded and no outs and making it out of there with no damage? Looper's the one that left zero room for error. Looked like they were going to get out of it for a moment, but those are the Mets for ya. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Looper blew the save in the 9th and then loaded the bases in 10th. Takatsu then came in and almost got out of it. but of course... Edit: sorry Bruiser, now I get what you were saying, didn't notice the edit

I now it was planned before hand, but isn't it fitting that the first SD with Dusty on creative featured a bullrope match?

from the Observer: WWE Smackdown TV spoilers by Jason Hanes In the dark-match pre-Velocity, Kid Kash and Brian Kendrick d. a generic looking tag team. After the intro of the Velocity announce team, Mexicools Super Crazy & Psichosis d. Big Vito and Nunzio after a leg drop from the top rope. Mexicools were over big as faces with most of the crowd (noticed a lot of Hispanics there tonight). Sylvan (no longer Grenier and now the Euro Fashion Model - as opposed to MNM the Hollywood Fashion Models) d. Matt Johnson (announced as being from Atlanta). In your Velocity main event, Booker T with his annoying wife d. Steven Richards with the axe kick after the spinaroonie. Booker got one of the bigger reactions of the night (probably for being the first "superstar"). To start SD!, Teddy Long comes on the Tron and announces that due to the telethon, the first hour of SD! will air exclusively on WWE.com, with the second hour airing at 9 central on UPN (as soon as he said 9 central he knew he screwed up). In the first match, Heidenreich and Road Warrior Animal d. MNM to retain the WWE Tag Team Titles. After the most contrived ref bump in history, Melina sneaks in to hit Animal with the title belt, but Animal grabs it, turns around and hits (I think) Nitro with it to get the pin. Ken Kennedy d. Paul London with the fireman's carry splash off the top. Not a lot of people knew who Kennedy was, but by the end of the night he was getting a solid reaction. For the record, as Kennedy announced, it was a 20-minute time limit and he weighed in at 243 pounds. Bushill d. Scotty 2 Hotty in the bathroom break match. People of course started the USA chant at Bushill, which considering that the UK is pretty much our only strong ally in the war on terror, I don't know how smart that is. Finish saw Bushill with a shoulderbreaker into an armbreaker. The Undertaker came out, calling out Randy Orton. Randy comes out with father in tow and has a giant check brought out for the Undertaker Retirement Fund in the amount of $1,416. The Undertaker didn't accept the gift and instead used his power of exploding stuff and creating fire to set the check ablaze. The televised portion of SD! starts with Eddie d. Rey Mysterio in a STEEL CAGE~! match. Farily solid, but fans seemed to want more stuff off the cage. Finish saw Rey miss a splash from the top of the cage, then Eddie get out of the cage, get to the bottom step, and come back to hit a frog splash for the pin. Ken Kennedy runs into Sharmell backstage and introduces himself. He tries to start something between Benoit and Booker T by suggesting "Friends don't let friends drive drunk, but the sure as heck give them title shots!" Before Sharmell could respond, Ken says it was a pleasure meeting you and the name is Ken Kennedy --- Kennedy. Crowd ate it up. After the Benoit DVD video aired (without the plug for the DVD), they showed the Linda McMahon PSA for flood relief. Tha segued into Atlanta, GA's own Chris Benoit (sure) d. Orlando Jordan in 22.5 seconds. You knew something was up when they put the timer on the Tron. During the show, Teddy and the "network guy" were up in a suite overlooking the arena and 5,000 or so empty seats. Looked like Christy Hemme and Stacy were up there as well. Our main event saw Batista d. JBL in a BULL ROPE~! match to retain the World Heavyweight Title. After a dazzling display of clotheslines, the finish came when Batista powerbombed JBL, then started dragging him around to every corner with JBL touching the corner right afterward. At the fourth, JBL flipped over Batista, reached for the corner and looked like he would get it for about 10 seconds. Then Batista pulled him back, hit a spinebuster and touched the corner to end it. Dark match main saw Undertaker d. Randy Orton in a pretty competitive match. A lot of fans were leaving, then turned around and came back at the end. A fairly hot crowd, but Atlanta is definitely a Raw town. The Raw here in March drew almost a legit sellout. Tonight, there were tons of empty sections on the hard camera side, and the entire 200 level was tarped off.

I totally agree on Meltzer. I started a thread last year in Gen Wrestling about how his lack of objectivity really hurts his writing and credibility. He does extrapolate and tends to think that his opinions are generally accepted by most wrestling fans and that he speaks for "us", when in a lot of circumstances that isn't the case. I also hate it that he openly makes fun of wrestlers he doesn't like. I don't want to get into it but it really hurts his cred. as a wrestling "Journalist"

Yes it is. Herb had a wrestling tidbits site and was very famous throughout the 90s as a wrestling analyst on the net. He was REAL BIG when I first started online but faded as time went on. He was famous for being the first online journalist to post news from the Observer. He is also generally regarded as first "workrate freak" to reach the scene. He was a real controversial figure on the scene back in the day. Also, Rick Scaia was part of the original Wrestlemaniacs team that was popular in the 90s (with Scott Keith and "Mi casa" Mike. He runs a site called Online Onslaught. Again he was more popular in the 90s and has faded. Justin Shapiro does work on the Observer site (Heat Report, sometimes RAW), The Weinerboard and was a pretty big contributor to the Old Rantsylvania and Smark sites back in the late 90s, early 2000s (I think it was him, it's been a while). Yeah, I guess I assumed you were on the net back in the day LOL. This was pre-Meltzer days where you had a lot of famous personalities on the net.

Does have to be just TSM posters? If not: Scott Keith Herb Kunze Rick Scaia Scotsman Chris Coey Justin Shapiro

LOL Malenko acting scared of Masters

NON-Finish of course

2nd straight main event slot for Masters

Shelton v Conway. Shelt is doing the job

Trish has been saving Ashley at House Shows the last couple weeks. They might be saving her for the USA debut, in fact I bet they are.