Hunter's Torn Quad

Lesnar vs. Akebono official! by Stuart - 07 Mar 2006 The big main event of Brock Lesnar vs. Akebono for the IWGP Heavyweight Title has been made official! Lesnar's V2 defense will come against the sumo legend at Sumo Hall and should be a great spectacle. NJPW, 3/19/06 (WPW/NJ+IWTV Internet) Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan 1. Togi Makabe vs. Toru Yano 2. Elimination Match: Jushin Thunder Liger, Black Tiger, Jado & Gedo vs. Kintaro Kanemura, Tetsuhiro Kuroda, BADBOY Hido & GENTARO 3. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: El Samurai & Ryusuke Taguchi © vs. Koji Kanemoto & Wataru Inoue 4. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata BIG MOUTH LOUD 5. IWGP Tag Team Title: Masahiro Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan © vs. Yuji Nagata & Naofumi Yamamoto 6. IWGP Heavyweight Title: Brock Lesnar © vs. Akebono From SSS.

Would you be surprised to learn that Hunter's changed position on the "heels who get cheered against Cena don't know how to be a heel" argument?

I think it's noteworthy that the most over guy in the main event is someone who got fired two weeks earlier. The match is decent, but it's overshadowed by all the Flair chants.

Of Coffey's list, the only one I can really disagree with is Michael Shane/Matt Bentley. I think that if he was booked as a true heel, Bentlet could be something special.

Another reason people like Undertaker and Hunter get cheered even when they're meant to be heels is that they very rarely come up short. It's hard not to get behind someone who ultimately wins all the time, even though they're heels. If all babyfaces were booked that well, you wouldn't get so many heels getting cheered.

For the time, it was definitely the worst PPV ever. The only reason it looks better now is because so many PPV's have come along that are much more terrible.

And with it being network television, Shane won't be able to take the crazy bumps he has to cover for his lack of any real ability.

The MITB is set to just be Shelton, RVD and Flair. No, its not. Long announced on Unlimited on Raw that there would be 3 SD participants. I stopped watching Raw ages ago. Did he say who would be taking part?

The MITB is set to just be Shelton, RVD and Flair.

Once squash per Raw/SD wouldn't be too bad. And if they have an upset win by the jobber every so often, people would get educated into paying attention in case they miss the upset they know can happen from time to time.

Do you mean his prime time network weekly show, or his primetime cable weekly show? Comparing either UPN or USA to NBC is retarded. This is a much bigger platform. Great. More people to watch Vince's ass when they show the build up Shane vs. Shawn.

It's too good to have been written by Alvarez. And even if it was Alvarez, DM would have said so rather than just hinting at who the writer was. Given the subject matter, and the names used, it really should be obvious who wrote it. I know who it is, and you should too Dr V.

Sid had terrible punches. They couldn't break an egg.

Name the others. And if you can't have a good hardcore brawl with a motivated Foley, as Foley was for that one, and a good wrestling match with Benoit, then you may as well hang it up.

I shouldn't be surprised that so many people are incredibly short sighted, but I am.

But why exactly was it Foley's responsibility to be the catalyst for the turn around? Who said it was? The point being made is that Foley could have made the choice, and did before being charmed by Vince, to be part of something that could have helped wrestling as a whole grow. But he didn't. Is it that hard for people to see why Foley not doing something that could have helped wrestling would make some people ticked off?

Because it's stupid to expose the legit weaknesses of your top babyface? If this makes him no longer the top babyface in the near future, its a good thing. It makes him no kind of anything in the near future. He just got exposed as being crap. Oh well. Maybe that will finally motivate him to improve. Even if it does, he'd have to improve an insane amout to mean anything in the future with how badly he got exposed.

Because it's stupid to expose the legit weaknesses of your top babyface? If this makes him no longer the top babyface in the near future, its a good thing. It makes him no kind of anything in the near future. He just got exposed as being crap. That's bad business, no matter how people try to spin it.

Of course they're hypocrites. What'd you expect? The flip side, though, is that we have to take these little victories for worker's safety where we can get them. It's not much of a victory when it's ultimately going to have little if any effect on the problems it's meant to curtail. This program is a good idea in theory, but it won't mean anything in the long term without other problems getting sorted out.

TNA have a working agreement with New Japan, so the chances of it being Kobashi are pretty much zero.

The tournament format is considered a failiure. The 2002 KOTR got, for the time, a low buy rate, and the tournament was blamed, rather then the Triple H vs. Undertaker main event, so it got canned.

Because it's stupid to expose the legit weaknesses of your top babyface?

Foley had actually decided to go with the TNA deal, but changed his mind at almost the last minute thanks to one of Vince’s infamous talks. It wasn’t the money that swayed him, it was Vince. And the people criticizing Foley for going with WWE have a point. Foley going to TNA would have been a huge shot in the arm for them and would have given TNA a big credibility boost. While there is no guarantee Foley would have turned TNA around, Foley would have definitely helped them in that regard, and it would have helped them become more of a threat to Vince. Granted, it wouldn’t have been that much of a threat at first, but any threat to Vince invariably makes him try harder, and that along would have been thing as it would have raised the quality of his product, and I don’t see how anyone can complain about that. Foley going with WWE just enforces the status quo, and I don't think anyone wants that.

Despite what some people have said, it was monumentally stupid and idiotic, if expected, for Hunter to bury Cena on Raw. You NEVER highlight the legitimate weaknesses of a babyface, especially your top babyface. A heel should never say something that the people can agree with. Hunter did just that, in spades, on Monday, and in one fell swoop cut the legs off of John Cena before their Wrestlemania main event. Yes, this segment, where the heel exposed the weaknesses of the babyface, was meant to draw buys for Wrestlemania. Quite how making your main babyface look like shit is meant to draw, I don’t know, but I don’t think that matters with Hunter. Maintaining his death grip as the top star of the whole company as always taken precedence over building stars for the future. And no, Batista doesn’t count, because he is zero threat to Hunter’s spot. The chances of Hunter doing what he did for Batista with Cena or anyone who could be long-term star are nonexistent. The new WWE Talent Wellness Program is a step in the right direction, but it’s ultimately just pissing in the wind as long as the real problems, such as the hard road schedule and Vince wanting the kind of look out of his top guys that can only come out of a syringe or bottle of pills, are ignored and brushed under the carpet. Until those issues are tackled, the program, for all its good meaning, won’t do any real good in the long-term. The Spirit Squad is a half-decent opening match comedy gimmick, but it should not include guys like Johnny Jeter or Ken Doane, who actually have the ability to be solid and possible top line members of the roster. The Spirit Squad gimmick is a modernized version of The Red Rooster, in that if it has any length of time, whoever gets saddled with it can never be taken seriously again, no matter how talented he is. Terry Taylor was still a good worker post-Red Rooster, but the gimmick killed his career because was never taken seriously again. The Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club segment to end Raw was just stupid, pathetic and was yet another example of Vince booking Raw for ego and kicks. Nobody gives a flying fuck about Vince’s ass, his talentless son (it doesn’t take talent to fall onto airbags), or this stupid angle that should have stayed dead. Instead of something that might have helped build real interest, we’re going to be stuck with Shane doing his stupid routine of shitty dancing, over-contrived bumps, and no-selling. And he’s going to be facing a guy who already has that covered. Yes, Shane is wrestling Shawn Michaels at the first return broadcast of Saturday Nights Main Event. The only highlight of this train wreck will be who can do the most nonsensical bumps and who can sell the least. Shawn’s performance here is likely to be similar to his show, and I emphasize the word show, against Hulk Hogan at Summerslam, just turned down a notch or two. Vince might have been fine with Shawn’s business exposing antics against Hogan, but he’ll not stand for that against Shane.

They didn't want the belt on Luger, and it wasn't so much they wanted Flair to win but they didn't want Luger to win the belt. The clean finish was ordered because Dusty had run screwjob finishes for so long that business had been killed in every market, and they wanted to try and stop that.