Jingus

Shit, I did forget about that. Weird, since Chi-Town is my favorite of the "big 3" Flair/Steamboat matches. I've been wanting to see some Destroyer matches, but it seemed like the only person who has more than one or two of them was Lynch, and I never had enough money to spare to buy tapes through him. Yeah, but the only hold like that I could think of that's used similarly in America is the Tazzmission, and Tazz wasn't exactly a bastion of psychological soundness in his matches.

In terms of physical execution of moves, DK/TM was one of the more incredible feuds in history. Here were two of the fastest wrestlers in the world trading off spots, which at times looked simply amazing. The issues some people have with the matches come with the pacing and selling, like how either man could take a tombstone piledriver and be back up and fighting within twenty seconds.

Mike, you're missing my entire point: ACT apparently had preexisting company rules against hiring such felons in such positions. Therefore, the cons were never supposed to be there in the first place. Ergo, it's not ACT's fault... they already said not to do that. Some individual employee(s) broke their own organization's rules. It's those individuals' fault, not ACT.

Somehow, I doubt that the US forces are shaking in their boots at the thought of some Jordanian lawyers fucking them up. For that matter, how could a lawyer in a foreign country fuck with either Iraq or America on any issue whatsoever? And exactly what "international law" was he citing there? I've never heard of any law that let genocidal tyrants go free if their former countries didn't have a prison secure enough to hold him themselves.

I'm sorry Mike, but blaming ACT as a whole is absurd, as the mistake is so clearly wrong that 90% of the population would've never made it. If you asked John Kerry "hey, should we hire convicted violent sexual predators to work on your campaign?" he obviously would've said no. The mistake was made somewhere in middle management, and that's where the blame should fall.

But my point is, that any idiot knows you don't hire convicted child molesters to do work involving processing people's social security numbers and such; aside from being common sense, it's a PR nightmare if you get caught. So I doubt that ACT or any major political organization would do it on purpose. It was against official policy to hire them, after all. So my question is, which specific ACT personnel fucked up?

So essentially we have no idea exactly how big the problem is, or whose fault it was, correct? Then I don't see why it's a big topic for debate until the details come out.

Baba may have looked like a deformed decrepit old freak, but hey, at least he did smile a lot. Odd coincedence: I was just watching a Hansen vs. Baba match last night, and it seemed like the giant just never quit grinning; except for the odd moments where Hansen was beating the piss out of him, of course.

It's not favoritism towards anyone; Tom pretty much doesn't ban people, period. Whenever a regular CE poster is banned, it's usually some other mod who did it.

Wait one minute... you're saying that NONE of the men urinated more than once PER WEEK? Either you guys were out in the blazing sun 24/7 and sweated out every single drop of moisture in your bodies, or you're all just freaks of nature.

The book is very different. While the movie actually had a plot, the novel just kinda meanders through a wide series of events, and it's also mean-spirited as hell (specifically thinking of the panel showing the girl with the tumor). But if you loved the movie that much, I'd at least flip through it at the local bookstore.

Maybe due to squeamishness from the networks, the show tended to stay far, far away from any actual details regarding Willow's sexuality. She and Tara were together a full year before they were even shown kissing, for chrissakes. Even while Buffy & Spike were clearly shown humping away like crazed bunnies, Willow's sex scenes never got any more explicit than a shot of her face while she was breathing heavy. There are some fanboy/girls out there who insist that Willow is and always has been gay, which seems fairly retarded considering that she was clearly sleeping with Oz and enjoying it muchly. I'd call her a bisexual who got turned off men ever since Oz dumped her and leave it at that. As for the Cordelia hate? Quick-&-easy answer: Charisma Carpenter was the worst actor(ess) out of all the main stars on Buffy or Angel, and the writers always made her be whiny as hell to boot.

Mineral, spring, and filtered water are all just second-rate pretenders to distilled water, anyway. It's cheap as hell, usually less than a dollar per gallon, and is widely available at places like Kroger or Walmart or wherever.

Okay everyone, calm down a bit, here are two rather important questions: 1. Did we ever find out exactly what the men had been convicted of? and, 2. Since ACT wasn't supposed to be hiring ex-cons anyway, do we know exactly who dropped the ball on the background tests? Without the above information, I don't think we can draw any final conclusions from this matter.

Why shouldn't ROH have gotten bashed for this? Feinstein was still involved on some level, and ROH office personnel knew it, yet they still lied and claimed that RF was completely out of the picture. There's plenty of fans out there that don't trust ROH like they used to, and I can't really blame them.

Firstly, "internet wrestling fan"? I've been in wrestling as a manager, ring announcer, and television commentator for the past two years, and have even had a couple matches myself. Secondly, no, submission holds don't require any setup in real life, like in a shootfight. But pro wrestling bears very, very little resemblence to any real fight, especially the WWE. It's one of the unwritten rules of wrestling that you're supposed to work over a body part before trying to slap on a "finishing hold". Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Harley Race, and both Funks all worked over the legs before applying the figure-four, sharpshooter, indian deathlock, and spinning toehold. It's simple psychology: if the body part being targeted is 100%, then just about any hold isn't likely to produce a submission out of it; it's gotta be beaten on first. I went looking for my tape with all the Angle-Benoit matches and couldn't find it, so I don't have many specifics to offer, so yeah, you got me there. Well, actually the match that turned things around for the WWF and catapulted Austin to superstardom was the main event of Wrestlemania 14, with the massive hype that Mike Tyson drew to the event, but anyway. It's just that I've seen the I Quit match referred to many times as "groundbreaking" or some other similar term, when there isn't really a single revolutionary thing in the match. I'm tired of hearing it praised for it being "original" when it wasn't. A great, intense match that was easily MOTN? Certainly. Best WWF Match Of All Time? Hardly. And if you'll look back and read my posts, I never called it a bad finish for their particular storyline; it's just that I've always hated the "pass out from the pain" finish in any match, no matter what the participants. It's kinda like the "both sets of shoulders down from a belly-to-back suplex" finish; it doesn't matter how good the match is, it just pisses me off every time because I think it's a copout to avoid having either guy actually do the job.

And we end up with more girls taking their clothes off for all mankind. (And if they're THAT ugly, we've always got the Back button.) What's the problem?

That's some vast overgeneralizing there, HTAC. Sure, there are some complete losers out there in cosplayland who couldn't stitch a seam if they had a sniper waiting to cap them if they failed, but there are also some perfectly ordinary and fine-looking people out there who really do put the effort into their outfits. I'd much rather deal with cosplayers than with the people who dress up as Starfleet officers. Who's lying about beauty? I freely admit that I'm at least mildly attracted to well over 50% of women within a stone's throw of my age bracket, especially if they're wearing some unusual clothing, which cosplay is all about. And "mediocre camwhores" is just plain mean.

Oh yeah, cops get roughed up all the time. My brother got his degree in police science, and he used to tell me a bunch of the horror stories about cops getting mauled and killed out there. It makes the "swing nightstick first, ask questions later" approach understandable... but still not acceptable.

Actually, I haven't seen this match since I watched it live on PPV, so no specific examples stick out in my head. But I've got their Wrestlemania X-7 and Ultimate Submissions matches here with me, so I'll take a look at those sometime tonight and come back with a couple. It's just that none of either man's submissions were really set up ahead of time. Look at how Ric Flair or especially Bret Hart would work a leg before slapping on their finishing holds; Benoit and especially Angle do none of that. Angle doesn't bother even attacking their leg once before grabbing the anklelock, and Benoit is almost as bad with the crossface at times. I agree with you, the best parts of the match were 1.Bret's new sociopathic attitude, and 2.the great camera shot of Austin's bloody face screaming in the sharpshooter. But this was right before the Barely Legal PPV, when the hype machine was going full-blast and the ECW Invasion episode of Raw was just a stone's throw away. The majority of fans had at least heard of it. Also, Mankind had been tearing through the company with a whole bunch of brawls for the year prior to this, so nothing in the I Quit match was really new. The finish did fit... but like I said, WCW did the exact same thing just a few months prior in the main event of a PPV, with Fake Fucking Sting and Lex Fucking Luger in place of Bret and Austin. The exact same finish: heel puts baby in sharpshooter (scorpion deathlock, same thing), baby doesn't submit but passes out from the pain anyway. And I'm amazed at the number of people who will still praise the WMXIII finish for being "creative" or "original".

Jesus, where the hell did you grow up? In most places, the media and/or lawyers would be all over that shit.

Goddammit, which mercy-having killjoy did that?! This guy was clueless in a truly spectacular manner, I was looking forward to punting him around.

But it didn't really have a point, and it didn't really go anywhere. I love both Benoit and Angle as workers, but for some reason I've never thought they clicked together in the ring; the cage match from Raw is probably my favorite of theres. They do a LOT of matwork and counters that are amazingly fluid and lovely to watch, but it never really goes anywhere, and it's mostly forgotten by the end of the match. No matter what Angle or Benoit do on the mat early on, sooner or later they're gonna start suplexing the shit out of each other and all that earlier work just goes down the toilet. It's similar to a lot of the matwork in New Japan cruiserweight matches: fun to watch, but you know they're just wasting time til they get to the highspots. The match they had at Survivor Series was way better in my opinion, so was the 10-man from Canadian Stampede (as I remember it, but it's been a while since I've seen that one, I need to watch it again sometime to refresh myself). All the brawling through the crowd in the WMXIII match looked a lot less revolutionary if you were already watching ECW at the time. And finally, yeah, the finish worked for Austin's character... but WCW had already done the EXACT same "pass out from the pain" finish with Luger just a few months prior at Fall Brawl '96 in the Wargames match, using the same hold no less.

Overrated? Hmm. Many different guys come to mind, but no one guy stands out. I can't think of anyone in particular who stole all his offense from other wrestlers, who is only an average bumper despite being a skinny cruiserweight, who can't fly worth a damn despite being a skinny cruiserweight, whose matches all look alike, who wrestles WAY too stiff, who can't sell worth a shit, who can only have decent matches if he's in there with only a handful of certain guys who know how to carry him, who cuts incredibly goofy bad kung-fu-wannabe promos, who does a lot of worked-shoot bullshit in his matches but would get his head torn off by any real shooter, who "lives his gimmick" and takes himself way too seriously, yet who still gets verbally fellated by armies of smarks and gets booked all over the world... ...oh nevermind, I just described Low-Ki.

1)Austin vs Rock-WM 17 (24-7) 9)Angle vs Benoit-Rumble '03 (17-14) As much as I think Angle is unfairly buried by some of the smarks out there, him and Benoit trading off beautiful but meaningless matwork doesn't equal up to the brilliant storytelling that Austin and Rock did in their match. 4)Bret vs Austin-WM 13 (24-7) 5)Bret vs Owen-WM 10 (30-1) Let's face it: the I Quit match hasn't aged as well as a lot of Bret and Austin's other work, plus I've always hated the "passed out from the pain" finish. The brother vs. brother classic, on the other hand, was easily MOTN of that Wrestlemania... even with the ladder match on the same card. 3)Rey vs Eddie-Halloween Havoc '97 (19-12) 42)Bret vs Bulldog-Summerslam '92 (17-14) This was a really tough pick for me. I loved the Bret/Davey match. But in the final analysis, Bret was physically carrying Bulldog through much of it, while Rey and Eddie both sprinted and bumped through HH97 like it was their last night on earth. 7)HHH vs HBK vs Benoit-WM 20 (23-8) 2)Bret vs Austin survivor series 96 (24-7) A match that wasn't even as fun as its own rematch a month later vs. The Greatest Match Of Austin's Career. KICK WHAM STUNNER.