Hunter's Torn Quad

If the finish to Joe/Tomko had been Christian interfering to allow Tomko to win and then they, and Steiner, had beaten Joe up it wouldn’t have been too bad. I would have still thought it was stupid for Joe to lose a week before his title shot, but it wouldn’t have been as mind numbingly stupid as this. Joe, the apparent top babyface and the guy who will be winning the NWA Title at Destination X, got laid out three different times in five minutes; He gets laid out by Christian and Tomko When he’s recovered from that and fights back, he gets laid out again by Christian and his crew. When he’s recovered from that, he gets laid out again, for the third time in less than five minutes, by Abyss. That is completely stupid booking to have your next world Champion treated like that, and it’s frankly stunning that people who are meant to be ‘smart’ are complete oblivious to this. I keep thinking that people have shown the depths of how dumb they can be, but then they come back and show that they can, in fact, get dumber.

Not only that, but Joe got laid out three times in five minutes. Yeah, that makes sense(!)

Homicide.

Usually, the news of anybody getting buried for stupid reasons gets people bent out of shape or at least shaking their heads. We get a lot of reports on Punk's standing because it seems to be either changing every week or because he's getting knocked by one group of people with power, the agents etc, while getting a bit of a push from other people in power. He's the current hot topic. Eventually, we'll get ongoing reports of some other wrestler getting heat because he blinked out of sequence when giving JBL the secret handshake.

Noguiera's KO looked great, as did Silva's. If this is PRIDE's final show, it's quite the way to go out.

I frankly think all these reports are just the various newsletters and "insiders" talking out of their ass. Two weeks ago his push was supposedly dead and he was gonna be buried, then he won two straight weeks and is in MITB, then a few days ago the latest report says he's in line for a big push and moving to RAW, now he's got heat again? Sounds like a lot of bullshit. Probably by people who like to sit back and read everyone freak out over it like you all are. Thankfully, we've got people like you who can set us straight. Punk went from winning clean with his hold to having to beat Matt Stryker via a distraction when he wasn't losing or winning with his only offensive move of the match after selling for the entire match. Is that more 'made up bullshit'? Punk had heat, simply from being a Heyman project, because Heyman is not liked at all by Vince and company. With Heyman gone, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the people left behind, who hate Heyman, are going to put his projects, like Punk, in their place. That's how people like that work. As for Punk going from having heat and no push to a renewed push, is it really that hard for you accept that moods change in WWE, and Vince feels like giving Punk a bit of a push?

I don't think that match did anything for Jindrak and O'Haire, mainly because of how unprofessional Luger and Bagwell were.

I don't get it either. I don't see why Gabe keeps pushing BJ. There's nothing really bad about BJ's work, but he has no charisma or personality at all and his work isn't outstanding enough to warrant a top spot.

It didn't make him a star, but Undertaker's program with Mankind got Mankind over pretty strong in 1996. Not a program, but Antonio Inoki made Vader a star in Japan by putting him over in 2 minutes in Vader's debut. I think that's a big difference between Japan and the US, in that in Japan you can make someone a star in just one match by putting them over clean and decisively, where in the US it generally takes more time and constantly showing the lower guy to be the superior of the higher guy for that lower guy to be elevated.

And it turns out cancelling the SNME was a WWE call.

4.0, which has to be a disappointing rating, considering it's down from the 4.1/4.2 it's usually got the past month or so and it was also the day after a PPV.

The Backlash poster:

PWI

True, but as the guy doing the vast bulk of the writing, he's the guy who needs to go first.

When someone gets a clue and fires Russo.

Apparently, the latest Torch says the rules of the Last Rites match between Sting and Abyss call for the winner to strap the loser to a cross like structure. Welcome to 1998. Again.

Let's be construcitve with our criticism. hardcore, your polls are a good idea, in theory, but a little more work needs to be put into the choices given.

Let's keep this thread going in the serious manner it seemed to be intended, and knock off the abuse of the new poster.

Bryan Alvarez on Impact getting killed by Raw and TNA in general. Yes, it's C&P job and I'll re-post a paraphrasing if I have to, but this is something that really should be read by everyone, especially our more super hardcore TNA loyalists:

Meltzer. It'll be interesting to see what goes down in the next six days, and what happens to Mistico in WWE, if he ends up going.

It'll probably be released around HoF time to ensure maximum sales.

I have a bad feeling Umaga is getting stunned.

Agreed. On a separate note, I was thinking of something for the X-Division, let me know your thoughts: Give the X Title to a worker who uses a slow, methodical style. Maybe Bobby Roode. Have him use a bunch of holds and power moves, and in his promos he bashes the fast paced X-style, a la Steve Corino's anti-hardcore movement. Then you have direction for not just the champion and the horribly wasted Roode, but you give the X faces some kind of direction. And that direction would be down. Well, if they weren't there already. The point of the X-Division is to have fast paced matches with big spots. Why not, I don't know, have a champion who can wrestle fast paced matches and do big spots? The idea of having an X-Division champion who doesn't wrestle the typical X-Division style isn't a bad one, but having that guy bury the X-Division wrestlers is. Plus, didn't we have that already with Sonny Siaki back in the weekly PPV days? We did, and it didn't get over a lick then.

As long as Lashley vs. Umaga consists of them beating the shit out of each other, it'll be fine. Someone must have spiked AA's booze or Finlay's Guinness.