strummer

Chris "Mad Dog" Russo's theory on this is that you can only brag about your team's championships that you were alive for and watched closely. For example, a Packer fan who started watching in 1990 has no right to brag about the championships they won in the 50s and 60s. He also has the Yankee rule for baseball. If your team has one at least one championship during your time as a fan, you can't complain. But since the Yankee's have an absurd payroll, they should win every year and should be criticized if they don't.

Sid turning on Hogan in 92. All of Hogan's "friends" always turned on him.

on that note, just one more year for Yankee fans

have to add Honky Tonk man beating Steamboat for the IC title in 1987. Honky was a joke at that point and Ricky's credibility was at an all time high since joining the WWF. Even as an 8 year old, I knew that it wasn't fair to Steamboat as he was a superior wrestler and he lost to a low card gimmick guy. If this would have happened in the late 90's or today, Vince would have been crucified.

Christy is going to get a huge push for doing this. This will be promoted better than some of the undercard matches for Wrestlemania. Hell in 2003. they had Stephanie practically orgasm over Torrie being in Playboy, they had Stacy and Test promote it on Raw, gave her 5 or so segments at WM 19 and at least 3 or 4 "Playboy parties" on SD.

For people on the "Clutch" bandwagon. Here's the numbers of two of the most well known "Big Game" quarterbacks. Terry Bradshaw: 51% Completion Percentage 212 TD 210 INT. Joe Namath: 50% Completion percentage 173 TD 220 INT

That is true, in the 1980s no one was bashing the 49ers after they made it to Superbowl after Superbowl. People like dominant teams and the Pats don't blow people out, that is a big reason for the hate IMO.

I hate this argument in baseball, and now it's permeating into football. No player is inheritantly "clutch". Not Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, or Tom Brady. You can't judge the value of a player by his play in one game. or a select handful of games.

A lot of people (most notably Scott Keith) have said ECW died the day Benoit, Malenko, and Guerrero left for WCW, but it actually picked up steam after they departed. Their peak (creative wise) was from Fall of 95 to the summer of 97. When Raven left, that's when it started to go downhill. The workrate might have been better from 98-2001, but the angles were downright boring and painfully unimaginative. Paul's answer to his creative lull was to blatantly kiss up to the smarks and give every match 20-25 minutes. All of a sudden ECW was "all about workrate" And to an extent, that plan was successful, because house show business was at an all time high in 2000/2001. But at the end, all the creativity was sucked dry from the product, and combined with the financial distress, it was dead. If this was 2001 or 2002, I would buy the show, but I've got ECW out of my system, so I will pass

Yes, definitely, and you have to factor in the salary cap, and how incredibly tough the AFC is. They are the dynasty of the so called "parity" era in the NFL And given how terrible the NFC is right now, the Eagles should dominate the conference in the near future. The question is can they win the last game of the season. They are the Minnesota Vikings of the 1970s.

Maeby's not black though. Yeah, but Maeby's Jewish and so is Maya. A least I think the girl that plays Maeby is Jewish Let it be true so I can say I trapped Bob in his own logic. From what I've read, Lorne promotes competition amongst castmembers and writers, because he thinks it makes the show better. On the flip side when Adam Sandler was on the show, and was emerging as a star, he had the writers in the palm of his hand and would get other sketches cut to put his stuff on the show. Julia Sweeney left SNL because of this. One of her sketches got cut because Sandler thought of a new song THE DAY OF THE SHOW, and she decided to quit that exact moment.

Bateman should be great. He IS the comeback story of the damn century, his career was DEAD (and completely DEAD, no short breaths of life) for over 15 years and he's back, and now getting praise and a hell of a lot of attention. And it's funny to me that people recognize David Cross only from Arrested Development, when he's been a cult hero on the comedy circuit since around 1992. I don't know if David would ever host SNL, maybe out of loyalty to Odenkirk, or because he doesn't want to give the impression he's "selling out"

Credit: HollyWood Reporter Could this mean the Tina era is over on SNL?

Notes from Rajah, taken from the Torch: -Batista was very outspoken about OVW in the past and it almost caused him to loose his job several years ago, sources say. He wanted more of a speaking role to practice on that area and that was not given to him and he also had a bad rep in OVW for thinking he was too good to go through the workouts in OVW at one point. While his criticisms may have been valid, many feel he would have been better suited not speaking out so much against OVW. -There are grumblings in the back that the WWE Divas may be credited with the recent surge in ratings. The Smackdown Divas have had no problems co-existing with the male wrestlers, while the Raw Divas have had a more difficult time fitting in backstage. Stephanie McMahon has been working with the Divas on their pre-taped segments and most of them are only signed on a week to week basis with no long term contracts. -WWE has released the finalized poster for WWE No Way Out which is somewhat different than the previous advertisments that had been released for the event. The poster still shows JBL climging over the top of a steel cage with barb wire wrapped around the top, but also gives us a glimpse as to what the barb-wired steel cage may indeed end up looking like. The Preview for the even reads as follows: Conflict has a new battleground in the first ever barbed wire steel cage match. There’s no place to run. There’s no way out. SmackDown presents WWE’s No Way Out, Sunday, February 20th, live at 8pmET/5pmPT.

next week (2/12) Here is this week's preview:

The Savage snake bite angle in 91. Suprised the hell out me, because stuff like that didn't happen on WWF TV back then, I was just waiting for someone to make the save, but it never came

Notes from Meltzer: The feeling come out of the show from a Japanese perspective was it was a strong and entertaining event. The crowd was strong for everything. The fans enjoyed Kane vs. Gene Snitsky, which is likely a dark match, because Kane threw a beautiful dropkick, which nobody expected and got a huge reaction. They had no trouble with the rest of the match. There was disappointment that Benoit vs. Jericho was kept so short. Eric Bischoff in the open on Raw put over that they were coming from Tokyo. It's kind of weird because Saitama is a different and major city of its own. It would be like if All Japan did a taping in Philadelphia and said it was New York, on the guise that their audience would only know New York. Steve Williams, Katsuyori Shibata and Akebono were at the show. Williams was backstage. He may be at tonight's Giant Baba tribute show. Most of the people I know in Japan are going to the Baba show instead of the Smackdown taping, but the Smackdown taping is sold out, as this show was. Maven vs. Batista was what you'd expect from 32 seconds. Regal & Tajiri's tag title win over La Resistance went over well. Short match. Of course the people were heavily behind Regal & Tajiri, and Tajiri did a speech in Japanese after winning the title. Akebono came to ringside before the Shawn Michaels vs. Ric Flair match. For reasons I'm not really sure, WWE doesn't like to acknowledge athletes at the show unless they are NFL or NBA players, but I'd think just because he's 480 pounds and looks unique they may point him out. Flair vs. Michaels went 10:00 and people loved it. They were into everything Flair did. I was told by someone right at the ring that the timing and work was very good here. They did an angle where they had a fashion show with three women, who I think were Christy Hemme, Victoria and Maria. Simon Dean interrupted it so there was no winner. It was designed to get Hemme over as she gave Dean a low blow. Randy Orton over Tyson Tomko had Stacy Keibler managing Orton and Christian in Tomko's corner. Orton won with a schoolboy. This was to set up an Orton vs. Christian program, or at least match next week. Christian & Tomko beat up Orton after the match and laid him out. Orton was selling for several minutes with all the referees around, so they played it up as something big, probably off the concussion deal. HHH vs. Edge for the title was a U.S. style title match with a few Japanese spots thrown in. Flair was at ringside and interfered a lot. Edge played the babyface role. Match was said to be excellent from a timing standpoint. HHH did the Nishimura head-stand out of a headscissors, which got a Nishimura chant going. He did the high knee which reminded people of Tsuruta, although he does that as a Race tribute all the time anyway. They did all their usual spots. HHH survived one spear, and also made the ropes from Edge's submission move. Edge speared the ref when HHH moved. Flair brought in a chair but Edge speared him. HHH did a Japanese style back suplex. Batista came out for the finish. I think there was a secnod ref bump and Batista used a spinebuster on Edge, to set up the pedigree finish. Edge was said to have gotten over really strong in the match. The buzz after was people didn't realize just how good a worker he was. Match went 16:49. After the show, HHH played total babyface, doing a 5:00 promo saying how much he loved Japan. He shook hands with Akebono. Nobody left until he was done, and when he did leave, they were cheering so much they wanted him to come back out.

Great interview Graham. He seems a little conceited when it comes to his wrestling career, but all wrestlers seem to be like that. I think the smark world would take exception to him "carrying" Randy Savage to great matches

It was on Conan, I forget the exact jokes, one was about Brynn (?) Hartman being a bitch or something. Conan got real quiet and so did the crowd. It was awkard. The Farley joke was also on Conan, saying something like "Yeah I wanted Chris Farley to get the part, but then he went and died" It didn't get over. But then he said he could joke about them because he was friends with them.

Chris Rock did jokes about Farley and Hartman in his act for a little while after they died, but said he was allowed to because he loved them or something. He said he would get pissed if someone else joked about them if they weren't their friends.

Didn't know Tina had the deal for that along already. But, I mean seriously how the hell does Paula Pell get a deal? UGH, her pilot sounds terrible. Lorne's playing politics here I think. Maybe Seth and Amy on Update next season?

from PWI:

Beat me to it SD!! Another torn quad

The WWF matches from the 80s would probably look terrible compared to the matches from the other promotions (well maybe not late 80s/early90s AWA) but they might draw more viewers (especially in the Northeast) because so many people grew up on 80s WWF and still have fond memories. The WWF reached a tremendous audience during that time because of syndication and the NBC deal. So many would probably want to see something like King Kong Bundy v Hillbilly Jim than Bob Backlund v Patt Patterson