Hunter's Torn Quad

Meltzer speculated on a Flair/Hunter vs. Carlito/Masters match taking place with Hunter turning on Flair and all three laying him out to start the Flair/Hunter program. If they do that, then that'll be what ends Raw.

I think they'll get between a 4.5 and a 4.9, with the biggest numbers coming for the overrun. Internally, I know they'll be wanting to break the 5.0 barrier, but I don't see that happening outside of the overrun, if at all.

It's a combination of Styles and Daniels getting better, and Angle and Shawn getting worse. Even if Angle and Shawn were allowed to go all out, they still couldn't touch Styles and Daniels.

The new versions are now up, and I sound much clearer now.

That's the downside of being able to do so much. Also, at least with Styles vs. Daniels we won't be likely to see any spots repeated in the match. With Angle vs. Shawn, we'll get a bunch of the same spots two or three times during the match.

If Raven isn't getting the belt back soon, and Jarrett isn't losing the belt until it's to their chosen guy, then they should have gone with Raven versus Jarrett in a rematch. It's at least as marketable as Jarrett/Nash, it as a better storyline to set it up than anything they can come up with for Jarrett/Nash, and it goes without saying that it would tons better than Jarret/Nash.

It won't. But they have, or are at least seen to have, 'star power'.

He solidly put Booker T over in WCW. Nash should have never won the title from Booker in the first place, but that was a Russo thing. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> He did clean job for Booker, that much is true. I wouldn't so far as to say he solidly put him over by any means.

Well, I've never heard him so overtly give a verbal blowjob to someone more than Nash did to Brown during his Torch Talk interview. I honestly think Nash would put him over if the situation arised. He seemed to have gotten the fact that Brown "has it" and even more importantly, he publicly critisized the company for not letting Brown run with the ball and be given the title. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And you don't think Nash doing an interview in an 'insider' newsletter had anything to do with him saying something like that? Nash was being Nash, and he was just playing the game. It's like the time Hunter said he'd work the March 2001 ECW PPV for free to help the company out (when it was alread 99.99% certain such a PPV would never happen). Both men were saying what would show them in the best possible light for the audience in question.

That's why I mentioned Hall, Nash and Hogan. He has faith in them to resurrect a money angle, despite the fact that he hates all three. At that time, all three had some sort of pull in the company even though they were working for the competition for over half a decade. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In his mind, Vince created all three, so he'd be ok with booking them super strong.

A thumb war between 2 retards would be more compelling. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Isn't that what we're getting, just with more appendages involved?

At least a KotM will allow Jarrett to win without pinning someone. And Jarrett would have to win, because we don't him throwing another fit and having to be taken off the PPV. On the other hand...

Nash put someone over? That's a good one.

McMahon has never done an interpromotional angle the right way, because he can never, and will never, allow stars that he didn't create to look superior to his own talent. It didn't matter that he owned WCW and they were his talent; he didn't create them, so they couldn't be any good, right? That terrible Booker/Bagwell match didn't help, but WCW were behind the eight ball going in. And I find the statement that Vince handled the Invasion as well it could have been to be one of the most stupid and idiotic things I've ever heard.

Steamboat had to win the match, but they didn't want him as US champion, so it had to be non-title. Now, with Sting beating Jack anyway, they could have easily made his match with Jack a title match, because the champion was winning.

You're fired. There were some problems with the recording for some reason; DA could hear me fine, but in the recording my audio was all muffled. It's being worked on.

He's even alluded to liking them as young as kindergarten age.

I liked the Winged Eagle WWF belt, the pre-BGB NWA title belt, and the red and silver NWA television title belt. I'm also a fan of the IWGP title belt from the 80's.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Now, it's not nice kicking someone when they're down. Tremendous fun, but not nice.

Those drugs he's taken for his body have done wonders for his face.

I think it's about $20M. USA are doing all the ad work with it, so WWE are losing out on that revenue. It also means a bunch of jobs were lost, as WWE no longer needed an ad department.

Tenay on WOL says there were six to eight reasons why they changed the belt, some of which he can say now, some of which will become clear later on: Wanted to position NWA champion for the best possible matches and the best drawing feuds for the next year or so. Add the most recoginzable name to the belt Add the dynamic of Jarrett and AMW to the top scene Tell the people that the title can change anywhere, and that house shows do count. Tenay also said that almost nobody knew the change was going to happen, including most of the locker room. Says that the rumors of Spike TV wanting the title change or that Jarrett made a power play were created by people who wanted an excuse for being caught out.

I have the complete 1/4 show on another tape, so I've seen that match. Yuji Nagata vs. Jun Akiyama – New Japan, January 4th 2002 This match saw Akiyama defend NOAH’s GHC title against Nagata in the main event of New Japan’s annual spectacular at the Tokyo Dome. Notes: I really liked the initial grappling these two did. It really felt like a feeling out process. Nagata sends Akiyama out of the ring with a blow to the jaw, and Akiyama is great at selling it by holding his jaw, trying to massage feeling back into it and with a look as if he just got hit by a good blow and needs to be more careful. When Nagata is on his back on the mat, Akiyama stomps on him, which prompts Nagata to get to his feet and an exchange of forearm blows takes place. This ends with them giving each other exploders, and Akiyama follows his up with a shining wizard, and Nagata is down and teases an early TKO. Nagata soon fights back, and puts Akiyama in Akiyama’s own front neck crank finisher. Akiyama teases giving Nagata an exploder suplex off the entrance ramp, but Nagata blocks it, and Akiyama responds by DDT’ing Nagata on the ramp, which he does so by grabbing Nagata in a front facelock and jumping off the ramp. For a comparison, Benoit DDT’d Angle on the ring apron the same way in their Rumble match in 2003. Akiyama quickly follows this up with a tombstone on the ringside mats, so he’s really pulling out the heavy artillery early. When Nagata tries to make a comeback with an exploder suplex, Akiyama counters this by taking Nagata down with a Fujiwara armbar and then puts Nagata in his own crossface finisher. Akiyama comes off the top rope for a big forearm blow, but Nagata counters by kicking Akiyama hard in the arm. He follows that up with a northern lights DDT and then puts Akiyama in the crossface. Akiyama even pulls out Misawa’s Emerald Frosion move. Akiyama hit an exploder on Nagata, which saw him drop Nagata as if doing a wrist clutch exploder, but Nagata kicked out. Akiyama followed up with a proper wrist clutch exploder suplex to get the pinfall. Rating: ***1/4 The match was good, and there was nothing really wrong with it, but for some reason there just wasn’t a whole lot of heat until late into the match. I guess that could be put down to Nagata getting killed by Cro Cop just four days earlier, but it could also be just as much down to this match not being a big thing for the casual fan in Japan, and they make up a lot of the crowd at this big Dome events.

Yeah, that was the shit.

I think the match is happening for two reasons. One, they want as few matches as possible on their USA return, and this match eats up 35 minutes. Two, I think they also want to show people what, in their minds, an Iron Man is meant to look like, because I don't think it's coincidence they announced this match just days after TNA announced the same type of match between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels.