cabbageboy

Personally I think Edge is just going to job again. And I will also go out on a limb here and predict that RVD will retain or it'll be inconclusive at SNME. I think they'll end up doing a ladder match at SS with both belts on the line, RVD grabs the ECW belt, Cena grabs the WWE belt, and Edge bitches about it for months. What was the original finish to Cena/Sabu?

I was surprised to see Balkman go this high as well. But on some perverse level I can actually defend that pick. Keep in mind that South Carolina won the NIT the past 2 years, so maybe Isiah saw Balkman play at MSG and was highly impressed. What the hell, I thought Balkman was a really solid player in the SEC. He certainly abused U of L in the NIT Final 4. Then again, this IS the NIT we're talking about.

Well, in terms of that it was likely people wanting to relive what they felt were the glory days of wrestling (the 1980s) during a time when the WWF's product was pretty crappy. The reason these Montreal threads keep popping up is that it's still a relevant topic in today's business. Yeah, it's kinda lame to talk about Rock 'N Wrestling circa 1996 because that whole 1985 era was incredibly passe. Montreal isn't passe, mainly because Vince is still the evil owner on TV and they insist on doing a screwjob finish seemingly once a year.

Pittsnoggle will likely end up somewhere as a free agent. A big man who can shoot like that? As far as Dean goes, sadly I wonder if the constant injuries at U of L soured teams on him. That and the fact that he spent most of his college career playing point, when he's more of a shooting guard. I'm baffled as to what people see in Rajon Rondo though. I knew he'd go 1st round but I don't get why exactly. At UK he'd tank it half the time (even to the point where Tubby Smith benched him for BRANDON STOCKTON). He can't shoot for shit either. Hell, Darius Washington is better.

Bob, let's be honest here. This is Darius Washington we're talking about. I think we all know what his iconic moment in history is, don't we? But then I'm a U of L fan.

The Montreal Screwjob did actually lead to a very tangible increase in TV ratings however. Raw was doing ratings in the 2s before Montreal and after that they went up about 0.8 and stayed above 3.0 for all but 1 week. That said, I'm not exactly sure how much of what Vince did to Bret really mattered to fans, especially the new fans. There were months that went by after Montreal where Vince had little to do with the shows at all. The stuff that really drew the fans in was Austin winning the Rumble and going for the title, DX and their antics, Mike Tyson, UT and Kane. By the time Vince truly launched into his evil owner character it was April, 1998. That was 5 months after Montreal, and even then Vince's character was based on not wanting Austin as his champion and the whole Bret incident was only vaguely mentioned.

This booking won't really matter if RVD simply gets off of Raw for good once he drops the WWE title. In the eyes of the WWE fans though he's somewhat of a traitor, given his constant pimping of ECW and openly wanting to go back. In fact if this new ECW doesn't last he may well be shit out of luck trying to get his heat back (unlike Angle, who was an out of the blue draft pick by Heyman). As far as Smarks go, I'm not sure of the exact percentages on this but I think quite a few net fans like RVD a lot. There are some who seem to really hate him no matter what. And then there are others who find him a guilty pleasure, praising his work when he's on TV in major angles and motivated, but turning on him when he gets jobbed out and is unmotivated. I think Sabu falls into this same category. Comparing RVD to Jericho is a misguided notion however. RVD has already been booked WAY stronger as champion than Jericho ever was. In the past month he's gotten clean wins over Rey (pre title win), Angle, and Edge as well as his more controversial title win over Cena.

I remember hearing about the Fingerpoke a month before it actually happened. I couldn't believe anyone would seriously consider doing something that moronic. Nash beating Goldberg is one of those decisions that is almost impossible to look at in terms of that lone match. The disasters that followed make it easier to say it was a terrible idea. Whereas if they had done some feasible booking after Starrcade 98, it wouldn't be looked at the same way. They even had the initial stuff right: --Goldberg beats Scott Hall's ass for screwing him out of his streak. --Goldberg then beats Nash's ass in revenge for ending his streak. --Goldberg then tracks down Hogan and they have the big PPV title match that they SHOULD have had originally. Goldberg wastes Hogan and regains. This is the obvious direction things should have gone in, but Hogan and Flair did the goofy double turn, Hogan got hurt in April, and WCW generally went to hell. Somewhere around the time DDP won the title things got seriously fucked up in WCW in terms of the overall direction. As in there really wasn't one.

Yeah I know but the fact that Punk was on a house show at least points to him being on TV before long. The main event was a serious reason for ECW only tapings. I cannot believe some of those morons started chanting "We want Cena." What the fuck? It's not like he is even on SD anymore so they saw him earlier in the night....unlike the first week he wasn't really advertised tonight. Angle jobbing tonight doesn't really mean anything in the long run. As I said, if this is anything like Heyman's OVW booking Angle losing just means it is round 1 of a long feud. Like CM Punk vs. Brent Albright on OVW. Punk lost clean a few times to ole Gunner Scott, but then finally got wins of his own.

Could it be that Punk already debuted at the ECW Arena house show this past weekend? I do agree that this Kelly stuff needs to actually do something or go somewhere. I have to wonder what they are thinking when they refuse to show any of Kelly, yet we have guys showing their asses on every Raw. Honestly, this show is quite a bit like Heyman's OVW stuff. It really is.

It's the Patterson influence I suppose. How else do you account for the male strippers and constant male asses all over TV lately? That Angle/RVD match was a good match almost in spite of itself. Angle did a lot of his matwork ground stuff and usually in an RVD match that is death to watch. I was thinking that they needed to do some vicious chair type spots or fight around outside the ring a bit, that'd make it a more ECW style match. You know what is truly hilarious though? Some of these ads on Sci Fi. I mean an ad for metal detectors? An oxygen tank for that old dude? And of course the Girls Gone Wild commercial, which made me for some reason think of that PPV where Test was a guest....and then followed immediately by the promo for Test!

Cheech apparently agrees with me. Look, if Goldberg can't lose one match and stay over then he's nothing anyway. Let's just say that Goldberg had simply beaten Nash for the belt in the scheduled Jan. 4, 1999 rematch and then had another long title run. Is it really still a terrible decision?

Well, the entire way that ECW was brought back has been goofy. I thought ECW should have never been flat out mentioned as being owned by Vince. There's no real reason why Vince would be upset about RVD being an ECW guy holding his title hostage, since RVD is obviously too much of a harmless stoner to trash WWE (by tossing the belt, badmouthing WWE, etc). Given that the crowd has essentially treated RVD as a heel since this ECW thing began, they should have just made ECW an outlaw group with no Vince connection, and RVD is flat out holding the belt hostage.

If RVD feels like a 3rd wheel here it's mainly because most people are expecting him to lose the WWE title so he can go to ECW full time. It comes off really strange that Vince doesn't seem to care about any of the title stuff. What is more important: Michaels and HHH having a midlife crisis and doing silly shit or a guy from (in theory) another promotion with his world title?

Okay wait up. Do you mean JBL had the longest title run since Austin in 2001 or that his run was actually GOOD? Cause it certainly wasn't any good. Did he have a good feud after the Eddie feud? Not really. A good match? Not really. I think JBL has been better since he lost the title oddly enough...he was just never credible in any way, shape, or form while he had it. They put it on him without building him any. If JBL had gone after the US title and then been built to the world title then he'd be viewed more positively. 2002 had possibly the worst stuff WWE has ever done, but there was at least a lot of good to go with the truly hideous. In 1995 there really wasn't much in the way of good stuff outside of whatever Michaels was doing. Nash was facing unover giants in the main event, Bret was being buried, etc.

2001 was certainly the best of those years. What the hell, I even think the Invasion is unfairly bashed. It really only had 2 truly terrible months that year, namely the April/May Two Man Power Trip garbage (as in the stuff right after WM and before HHH got hurt). 2005 finishes 2nd here with me, mainly because they didn't do anything I found truly hideous and abysmal. Well maybe the initial USA shows, but that's about it. At least they tried to establish two guys with the belts in Cena and Batista. 2003 I guess is 3rd here. I had to deliberate on this one, since for the most part I found the year to be the dead zone. But at least it didn't have crap like Katie Vick and Austin and Bradshaw vs. the NWO on every Raw for a month. Steiner was good for some unintentional laughs, and SD was a decent enough show (though the Angle/Lesnar stuff never interested me much at all). This year had the Rise of Eddie as well, which was great. 2002 gets a slight edge over 2004. SD was very good late in the year, and I think Raw had a good share of good stuff before guys like Eddie and Benoit left. Yeah there was stuff like Katie Vick but at least they didn't do anything truly moronic like putting the belt on Bradshaw. 2004. I was tempted to place this year higher due to Eddie and Benoit both getting the titles, but the 2nd half of the year was so totally disgusting that it made me sick. Eddie losing to JBL, Benoit losing to Orton (who himself simply jobbed to HHH immediately after it)...ugh. The Post SS stuff was particularly awful, as neither show was any good or had any direction. Think about that. 2004 was the only year since the split where both shows sucked for a large amount of time.

Very good point, Mike. In terms of crowd heat, that was one bizarre match tonight. RVD is working a tweener persona right now in WWE terms (on ECW he is obviously face). I don't think I've ever seen a match where both participants were booed by various people in the crowd. I've seen matches where neither man had any heat at all, but this wasn't like that. This was....weird. Imagine when they add a full fledged heel like Edge to the mix.

Loaded Glove, as I said RVD got to the ropes at ONS while in the STFU, so there's certainly doubt as to whether he would just tap or make the ropes. If they are doing the "Edge and Heyman are in cahoots" angle then RVD cannot be in on this. He has to be stoned and oblivious to it all.

One other thing to note about Orton: The guy can't even hit a proper diamond cutter. It's his finisher and he can't even do it. The Foley match with Orton was pure Foley chaos, and frankly I think he and Edge topped that match this year at WM. Edge actually took the tacks like a man in that match, didn't just run to the back to get them scraped off for the most part. Orton was horribly, horribly exposed as a worker on SD. See, Raw has a more car crash atmosphere so he could do shorter matches, get in his basic spots, and hit the RKO. SD is a more wrestling based show and he was thrown out there for 20 min. type matches...and he SUCKS at that. I was bewildered that all those SD matches with Benoit were being praised on here, since it was literally 80% Orton doing headlocks and rest holds, and the only bright spots was whatever decent stuff Benoit did. Hell, they'd be better off pushing someone like Johnny Nitro instead of Orton at this point.

As others have noted, there's no reason to suspect RVD was going to tap tonight. Why would he? At ONS he was in the STFU and simply got to the ropes and that was that. I do think Edge's run in would have been slightly better if he had done it while both men were simply down. I enjoy some of the gray area here. Stuff like "Is Edge doing this on his own or is Heyman bribing him, or is it all a coincidence?" It's subtle booking and it's surprising really.

Backing up a bit, let's say the Rockets would have faced the Bulls. First, the Bulls almost undoubtedly would have had home court both years if Jordan had played (hell, the 1995 Bulls had the SAME record as the rather mediocre Rockets, who were a mere 6 seed). Let's face it, the Rockets weren't a real dominant team. Just a placeholder champion type team in between the two Bulls runs. I don't think the Bulls would have swept them, since they never swept anyone in the finals. It would have been a ho hum 5-6 game series both times, maybe not quite as interesting as either series vs. the Jazz.

Yeah, I am highly relieved that RVD didn't just job the belt tonight. He would have come off like a total moron having voluntarily put the belt up on Raw when he didn't have to. I'm assuming the way this is going is thus: Cena is WWE face, Edge is WWE heel, RVD is ECW tweener. I am hoping this all ends with RVD and Cena kicking the crap out of Edge, double pin type deal, RVD gets the ECW belt, Cena gets WWE belt, and they do the male bonding thing. I have to admit that was one of the hottest Raw endings in quite some time. The first hour of the show was really light on wrestling (I flat out tuned out during the various Diva Search bits) but once the DX impersonations of the McMahons hit the show got into a groove. I didn't even mind that Kane jobbed to Orton really, since he got his heat back by crushing the fake Kane and taking the mask back.

Well one problem is I assume they'd do it with the STF, but doing a mega screwjob on RVD has several problems: --The STF has the hands over the guy's mouth so you can't tell if he's yelling "I quit" or not, whereas with the Sharpshooter you could tell Bret never submitted. --Cena right now is a face and if he's going to feud with Edge some more, chances are he'll stay a face. --The idea that "Cena didn't know about the screwjob" is bullshit and likely would confuse people. --Does Vince care? Let's face it, Vince has no sold RVD even having the belt. There hasn't been one mention of Vince being upset that RVD is now the champ, no effort to screw him in any way. --There are other ways to do this. Why not have Edge come out and demand to be added to the match? RVD can lose the title in the 3 way, or he and Cena can both pin Edge and there it is.

I couldn't help but think that the Edge/RVD match last night was what we SHOULD have seen at ONS, except there it would have been Edge defending and RVD winning the title.

Goldberg didn't smash his arm through the car window until Dec. 1999. What the hell did Goldberg do from roughly April of 99 till like Sept. when he faced DDP again? I honestly don't recall anything he did.