Jingus

Yeah, his matches with Edge and Umaga were good. I credit those more to his opponents than him. Haven't seen the ones with HBK. But mostly, Cena just seems to do the same ol' Attitude-style brawls over and over again. His execution on the moves is often pretty shady; he's kinda like Rock without the explosive quickness and only half the charisma. And I would never, ever refer to any match involving Khali as "watchable". Yes, I do have tough standards for in-ring action. Because that's my favorite part of wrestling. If they never aired a single promo or backstage skit again, I wouldn't shed a tear. Wrestlemania always draws, period (and how is beating HHH again special after the first time?). As for the Starrcades, what about the fact that WCW's ratings and buyrates steadily declined after Starrcade 97, got MUCH worse after 98, until the company finally flopped?

But I don't consider any Cena match I've ever seen to be "great". And not that many of 'em "good". You like him, fine, but don't insist we should ALL like him. (Hell, I just rewatched his debut match against Angle, and he was doing interesting and different stuff in that which he hasn't even attempted in years since then.) As for "it will actually mean something when someone beats him"? Uh... when has wrestling EVER not fucked off the eventual beating of the superman? Except for Hogan/Andre, I can't think of a time when someone losing has actually helped draw money. Well, ironically, except for Edge beating Cena after cashing in his MITB, but that was a lightning-strike situation that they've already tried and failed to recreate. What, "that whining, skinny indy guy" holding Triple H's bah gawd world title? Dream on.

Who are the announcers, and why do they suck?

I would've if I could've heard the show. Not knowing if someone else might've been on the phone, if you were in the middle of something, I didn't want to take the chance. (Plus I didn't have the number.)

Arrgh, it's not working. Maybe it's cuz I'm on a Mac, I dunno, I click on "listen", and it downloads a file called "Stream15.asx.asf" which my computer can apparently do nothing with. Weird, cuz I could listen to last week's archived show just fine.

So I recently moved out to a suburb just north of Dallas, TX. Anyone know of any wrestling companies in the area? The (very few) contacts I've got in this state are all either in Houston or San Antonio. And everything from Obsessedwithwrestling to Google has proven pretty useless at trying to find indy promotions' websites.

They're already going "Benoit? Who's that? Never heard of him, and he certainly never won the world title at the 20th anniversary Wrestlemania in Madison Square Garden by making HHH tap out for the first time in recent history!" They truly do expect the fans to forget anything that happened more than a few months ago.

Not as a typical Shithead Orton thing, though, from the way I read it. Supposedly, he put Cena in the sharpshooter, and then looked up towards the ceiling with a sad, agonized expression on his face and THEN audibly asked "Why?" Sounded awfully weird, but not downright offensive. Of course, the office might actually punish him worse for this than they did for him trashing a hotel room, smoking a joint in front of the employees, sexually harassing the divas, so forth & so on.

That's the problem: someone obviously DID think it was a good idea for him to play retard, cuz he's been doing exactly that for years. Unless he got some kind of goofy Flowers for Algernon-type "cure" that made him smarter, I can't think of any way out of that character other than to reveal he's been faking it.

Even though they take a lot of shit, I think the ROH crowds do have the best chants. I mean, how the fuck do you get a thousand different people to somehow magically agree on a spoken rhythym for a phrase as complicated as "You're gonna get your fuckin' head kicked in!" and turn it into a chant?

Yeah, they could try. The easiest way, imho? Have it revealed somehow (by GTV or whatever) that Dinsmore's not really retarded, that he just faked it so he could get a contract via affirmative action. And suddenly he's a Ringeresque heel because he's pretended to be a fuckin' retard for the past three years, just for the sake of getting a job. And if it doesn't work? Balls Mahoney whacks him with a chair and BANG, he loses so many grey cells he thinks he really IS Eugene. (Permanent brain damage = always funny.)

But... the marks would still be yelling "Hey look, IT'S EUGENE!!!" at him everywhere he went. It'd be like Terry Taylor was post-Red Rooster. Dinsmore can never have a normal career after this gimmick.

Not to mention that until 1995 when both companies started running weekly pay per views, you only had a small handful of PPVs per year. Now you've got one every three weeks just from the WWE alone, plus TNA, now ROH, various low-rent crap like WEW and Japanese Hardcore Wrestling, all those "legends of wrestling's past" cheapy ppvs, etcetera. The amount of free TV is much more, but the amount of TV they expect you to pay for is much more to. And I'm not gonna fucking pay to watch John Cena win every time. (Apparently a lot of people agree with me, looking at recent buyrates.)

Yes. Brain damage. Unnatural levels of chemicals like dopamine or seratonin. Various shit like that. To the best of my knowledge, TNA doesn't have one at all. Not even a pretend "oh yeah we're testing LOL" policy. Remember, they've had multiple guys (Hennig, Crash, Wall) die via ODs during their TNA run.

Nope. They're usually a complete scam. Just buy a copy of Whatever for Dummies instead, much cheaper plus you get to take it home with you.

Supposedly it was a worker at the park, she was trying to get some kid to sit down on the ride and got hit by the machine.

Part of it is that the different companies are in different countries. The laws might not work the same, and Japan might not recognize American copywrights and vice-versa. Shamrock was already long gone, back to MMA and Pride, by the time Angle started using the anklelock. But I do think it would be a decent feud, even today, it'd get the marks interest (plus Shamrock was always a better worker than a shooter).

That's actually how they got their job in the first place. They had an on-&-off feud on the local indies for years, and put on a great match one night at the Fairgrounds when the TNA office was there, doing a trial run for their commentators (that's the night Cornette spit on Ed Ferrera) and scouting for cheap talent.

He had a back injury in '97, he had to take some time off, when he came back is when he turned heel and joined the Nation of Domination. Today's wrestling style is MUCH more gruelling and painful than in previous decades. Go watch a tape of wrestling from the 60s or 70s. Yes, the matches were longer, but they were a lot slower and lower impact. Most wrestlers take more bumps in a single night now than the previous generation did in an entire week. Bumps are pretty much the leading factor in wrestlers' bodies deteriorating. It's nice to fantasize about a lighter schedule, but unless the WWE is FORCED into doing it, it's never gonna happen.

...like Sid, since he did work for old ECW?

Pretty much the same here. That's one thing I REALLY hate, how he just never fuckin' loses. Stone Cold got pinned more back in the Attitude era than Cena has been in the past couple years. Does anyone else think the spinner belt looks really fucking stupid? Especially since it's a clean-cut white boy carrying it? Personally, I never liked the rap gimmick. His deliver was ...really ...fucking ...slow, and man did he love him some fag jokes. But it's still better than his gimmick now, which is... uh... a backyarder with freaky caveman strength and a Foley-like pain tolerance who can't afford to buy real ring gear? It's amazing the number of blind Cena marks I've argued with who NEVER have a good response for that point. Either they just change the subject, get mad, or try to explain it away with some absolute bullshit. The people who like him THAT much make me doubt their intelligence and/or sanity. Except for his feud with Khali, Cena's rarely the best worker in the ring while he's wrestling.

Someone doesn't have to struggle to cause bruises. If you're choking someone with enough force to kill them, you're gonna leave bruises on their neck, period. Also, about the size difference, yeah, forgot about that. It'd be almost impossible for him to put a real crossface on someone that tiny. It was just a simple rear choke in all likelihood. (The important part is that he killed his son, not that there's a chance he might have used his trademark hold to do so.)

Same here. I think people are jumping the gun on this one. In theory, ANY kind of rear chokehold could be said to be a "Crossface variation". The doctors only confirmed that the marks on the neck were inconsistent with being strangled by hands. Now, that's actually a very inefficient and iffy way to kill someone, a human being's fingers just aren't that strong, it takes forever. Doing it from behind with a jiujitsu-style choke is much quicker and more sure. Benoit would've known that for sure, being an experienced submission wrestler. As for the Crossface, well, try it yourself. Seriously, find some willing participant and try to choke them out with it. It's not that easy. Firstly, it's not designed to be a choke at all; Benoit's hands are aCROSS the FACE, not the throat. Yes, I know that it can be modified, like in the finish of the match against Jericho at Judgement Day 2000. But it's actually pretty hard to put that much pressure on the windpipe from that angle. With the true crossface, you're sitting beside the opponent, with very little of your weight on top of them, pulling backwards, without that much leverage. Like I said, try it yourself (and try not to break their neck, pleez, that's the LAST thing the media needs right now is to hear about some mark who killed someone with Benoit's move). You almost HAVE to move to a different position, let the other person carry your weight, in order to do real permanent damage. And once you move and change the angle of the hold, it ain't the crossface anymore. So unless it's confirmed by the medical examiners that it was indeed the crossface (which I doubt), for christ's sake stop going around and screaming OMG HE KILD THEM WIT CRIPLER CROSPHASE" like a bunch of marks.

They were pretty serious back then, considering Vince had just barely scraped by getting convicted and going to prison over steroids. Also, any athlete who REALLY wants to pass a drug test can do so, there are ways.

Considering Shamrock got canned by UFC, I wouldn't be surprised to see him show up in TNA any day now. Him vs. Angle in a battle of the anklelocks might draw a little money.