RavishingRickRudo

That match looked like it was wrestled in slow motion.

But Hogan was pretty consistent with his reasons - Bret should have dropped the belt because Bret wasn't a draw, he didn't want to drop the belt to Bret because Bret wasn't a draw. Hogan is all about the money. Sure he's a liar, but I can't think of another wrestler -if I were to be a wrestler- I'd rather learn from. Can you imagine a Hulk Hogan seminar? Day 1, Hour 1: Headlocks, wristlocks, bodyslams, and legdrops. Day 1, Hour 2: How to get the most money possible.

Sorry. Phil Baroni vs. Dave Menne.

Frank Shamrock vs. Igor Zinoviev

No.

No?

No.

Does this include photos as well?

I giggled for, like, half a minute after reading "Big Steph"... and then a few more times just thinking about it.

FUCK.

I'd be more surprised with them cutting Joe since it would sorta screw up TUF if the winner can get cut within a year.

In that case, what you are looking at is an undercard fighter earning probably in the ballpark of $250,000 per fight (just in build) and making the company very little in return for the first few fights. Too risky in regards to the real money for the potential reward. And Rampage could at least speak English...

Like Stevie said, K-1 will be the benefactor of PRIDE potentially being more frugal. That said, I can't imagine a start-up company NOT coming up to take advantage of an excess of talent (in a TNA-esque kinda way, only -you know- bigger and better) if PRIDE were to go under.

I think the Rampage-Effect B would hurt the probabilities of Silva in the UFC as well. (The Rampage-Effect B being Dana not seeing the point in spending lots of money on a guy who will not be the name draw ala Chuck Liddell or Randy Couture. Rampage-Effect A is the decline of a fighter after finding religion)

Oh jesus fuck, you could have easily written "PRIDE is in Trouble", but instead you wrote, "The end is perhaps here", which is significantly more doom & gloomy. No matter how you tried to qualify it, the emphasis isn't on "perhaps" with a comment like that. Words like "End" and "Dead" are melodramatic and aren't really used if you are "waiting to see what happens" and showing restraint. You can position it all you want, ("there are significant things pointing them towards destruction" is one of the more ridiculous spins for "The end is perhaps here" that I could think of) please try to tell me you weren't being alarmist and apocalyptic in your first post.. PRIDE makes millions and millions and millions from their gates. They have relatively close prices to the UFC from what I have seen, and they draw way more fans, and the UFC makes sick dough in the live gates, upwards to $4 million. Yes, PRIDE makes most of their money from television as the TV companies tend to foot the bill on the grand expenses, but that's not to say that they are "dead in the water" as they clearly have other revenue streams that provides them more than enough to maintain a certain lifestyle, if you will. It certainly won't be as "big" as before, but it won't be at DEEP levels, and it will be enough to afford the stars they need. You're acting like they have nowhere else to make money when they clearly do. PRIDE (or rather, DSE) folding would be because of internal reasons and perhaps even a tactical move than because of a lack of money.

This is odd given what you named this thread. Not having Yoshida vs. Ogawa on the card and being DEEP-like are two very different ends of the spectrum. PRIDE makes huge gates. The UFC makes huge gates and they have half the attendance that PRIDE does, and PRIDE prices almost as insanely as the UFC does. I imagine they will still be able to afford quality talent if they do decide to run shows.

The difference between jobbing and being perceived as a jobber is a big one. In ECW Tommy was a player, in WWE he was a pawn. In this feud, as 1/4 of the match, he should be a player. The sell on this match is basically the Foley and Edge supposed "super"-team, as Funk and Dreamer are essentially non-issues.

http://fightopinion.com/forum/index.php?topic=118.0 This isn't the first time PRIDE has been said to be close to death, I got myself all worried a few years ago around the time Morishita died, so I won't bother with it until PRIDE is officially dead and not coming back. And after that, I will just have to watch HEROS and SHOOTO. And odds are, a seed from PRIDE will grow soon after its death, as history tends to show.

I can't speak for the IWC, but personally, this has hurt Foley in my eyes. This is a guy who cut some of the best promos I have ever heard, this is a guy who had me -for a brief moment (which is actually saying something)- believing he wanted to kill Randy Orton, and here he is crumbling both in regards to character and promos because of a faulty, lame, premise. And even worse, they are unable recover because they can't even see how bad it is.

Yeah, I also meant to say that Foley's attempts at trying to make this "real" has made it "real"ly lame. Completely off the mark and, actually, pretty darn lazy as there are many alternatives that could have had Foley (a)against ECW, and (b)teaming with Edge.

Wasn't PRIDE on the brink of destruction around the time Morishita committed suicide? I recall doom and gloom and the threat of PRIDE folding during that period, and they pretty much just restructured and nothing really happened.

There is a really bad foundation with this, and from what I've read, this is pretty much all of Foleys idea, which really does taint my opinion of him, at least from a creative perspective. Foley is my favourite interview, ever, and part of that is the creative and "realness" of his promos. The foundation itself is "Foley wants to put an end to ECW because he doesn't want anyone to tarnish is WM match with Edge". There is a bunch of stuff in that which is hard to buy. First, A MATCH? That's retarded. Family, Friends, even a possession if well built and established as being important, Respect, PRIDE and Honour, etc. These are things we as fans can understand as being worth fighting over, but a match and match quality? That's too smarky, and really reaching for Foley. And it's on that we are supposed to believe that Foley and Edge are all chummy. It's ironic that Foley and Edges feud was lame because it was hard to buy tthe two hated each other because of their previous, friendly, interactions, and now it is hard to buy them as friendly because of that very feud. Second, if you lack the brain cells to buy that angle, you are still to believe that ECW is a potential threat to usurp the WM 22 match, when all we have seen from ECW in this feud and on WWE TV is kendo sticks, tables, and chairs. Simply put, ECW isn't a legitimate threat. It's an ill-founded feud that has been poorly executed, and most -if not all- of that is because of Foley. Foley had an idea, which was for him and Edge to team against Dreamer and Funk, and couldn't fill in the blanks and connect the dots to get him there. The feud has its moments, but because the foundation and premise is so faulty, it doesn't really matter.

It depends on where you live(d). Wrestling is made for live audiences, not audiences on TV, so any period where you got good monthly or even weekly wrestling is probably the best time. With the WWE, unless you lived in a major market, you'd be luckly to get live wrestling once a year or two, and even then, it's harder to enjoy the shows in big arenas than it is in smaller venues. For most of us, we've grown up in this sorta self-aware period of wrestling where if a wrestler says "I'm going to kick your ass!" you sorta chuckle, whereas in past generations those wrestlers were legit feared and hated and loved, rather than what we have today where there is this distance between the two. With that said, and I know I'm going to get some rolled eyes and "here he goes again" with this, but with the expansion and development of MMA, I get alot of what I want in wrestling, and what used to be in wrestling, which is where that distance, that self-awareness, is gone, because it's real. When a fighter says "I'm going to kick your ass" you better be afuckingfraid. I think todays fan has more options in one way, in regards to internet and tape buying, but on the other hand, that fan doesn't go to the live shows and actually get to feel what they are watching.

The UFC's during that time were not very good and had very poor production values, so I would doubt they would be put out on DVD as individual sets.

The first TAP OUT got good ratings from reviewers, but all the UFC games that I have played pretty much sucked. MMA is so hard to get right and developers don't get the nuances of anything (and even if they did, it would be near impossible to put it in game form), and when punches make the sound of you hitting a baking tray, there is a certain amount of realism lacking. The best MMA game IMO is the K-1 Grand Prix game for PS2, and that's a kickboxing game. The PRIDE game was fun, too, but the replay value sorta goes down after a while.