cabbageboy

There is absolutely no way they should release Katie Lea due to Layla being the UK diva. Katie can actually work and should be contending for Beth Phoenix's title. Burke is the most enigmatic release in a while. I can see Kenny since he was in the Spirit Squad and thus doomed forever, but Burke showed something in ECW (not so much OVW, since I disliked his face work). But really did Burke ever have especially good matches? His series with Punk wasn't all that notable, though he did have a couple of good TV matches with RVD during the New Breed/Originals feud.

I have the feeling that Regal win is a home country deal and he will just end up jobbing it back to Santino once they hit the States again. I was hoping they would run this Santino angle all the way to the HTM week 64 limit and then The Ultimate Haas would beat him for the belt.

Why would they keep Lena Yada though? Did she serve a purpose? Gail Kim can at least work in the ring. Man, if you take a look at that OVW group of guys from 2005-06 WWE has seriously blown it with nearly all of these guys aside from CM Punk. It's just staggering the amount of talented guys that used to be in OVW that WWE has done nothing with or release. The Spirit Squad gimmick may well have been the worst gimmick ever since it basically ruined the careers of all the guys involved. Ironically Burke rejected the gimmick and it looked like it was a good idea that he did, but he too ended up released. Burke is a better heel than face. Some of his ECW work was fun with the New Breed, but I dare say that WWE feels there might be one too many black guys on the roster.

Yeah but is being a former TNA world champ a big deal to Vince? Anyway I don't see Christian being much beyond a US title level guy in WWE, maybe sign Tomko back as well and put those guys with Edge. Christian/Tomko can tag, Christian can go for the US title while Edge goes for the WWE title, that sort of thing.

I know the idea of this is for the TNA young guys to eventually win, but history has shown us that when you keep putting heels over and have them dominate then it gets harder and harder to do anything else. See NWA from 1986-88 and WCW from 1996-98 for reference.

I didn't see this PPV but it sounds quite honestly like a 1996-98 WCW PPV with the NWO guys beating everyone down at every turn. Some of the action sounds solid enough, but the booking sounds...ugh. Anyone care to explain the Booker/Christian angle to me? Or rather what the downside is for Christian in all of this. If he wins, he gets a bogus belt that no one cares about. If he loses, he gets to join an awesome group of guys who will all run in on his matches to make sure he wins. Maybe they should have made it clearer that the Main Event Mafia plan on screwing him over and making him a servant.

Time to see how I did with the predictions: DEN @ CLE: You know, if Derek Anderson was still starting I'd feel decent about the Browns here. But with Quinn I don't know. I'll take the Broncos reluctantly by 7. (It was a struggle but the Broncos managed to win on the road. 1 for 1) Sunday, 1:00 NO @ ATL: Falcons are a real feel good story this year and I think they keep it going at home against the Saints. ATL by 4. (Wasn't even as close as that. 2 for 2) TEN @ CHI: Rex Grossman vs. the Tennessee D? If it had been Orton I might have picked upset here, but can't see it now. Titans by 10. (Grossman was mediocre for 3, decent in the 4th, came up short anyway. 3 for 3) JAC @ DET: The Jags very well might be done after the unmitigated disaster that was losing to the Bengals. What the hell, I think the Lions get their first win over JAX as well. Detroit by 1. (More of an ironic joke pick than anything. Ah well. 3 for 4) BAL @ HOU: This is the rescheduled Hurricane game. Both teams have gotten better so this will be a better game than it would have been in week 2. I'll take the Ravens by 6 but it could go either way. (Wow, a bigger beatdown than I thought it would be. 4 for 5) SEA @ MIA: Seattle sucks to begin with and they also now have to travel cross country. Miami is much improved, so this will be a beating. Dolphins by 17. (Wasn't a beating at all, in fact the Dolphins were fortunate to win. 5 for 6) GB @ MIN: Packers just have all sorts of tough luck losses and playing on the road in MINN won't help much. I'll take the Vikings by 5. (Tough losses for GB? Why yes. 6 for 7) BUF @ NE: The Bills desperately need a win. That said, I can't see them getting it at Foxboro. Pats by 3. (Ended up being a bit easier than that. 7 for 8) STL @ NYJ: The Rams are back down to earth after rallying for a couple of weeks. Can't see Favre losing at home here. Jets by 10. (This was a flat out beatdown of the highest order. Wow. 8 for 9) Afternoon games CAR @ OAK: Okay after last week's fiasco and Al Davis threatening to release everyone I can't possibly imagine this game being close. Panthers by 14. (Ugly, ugly game. Went basically as expected in the end though. 9 for 10) IND @ PIT: Is Leftwich starting in this one? If so I think the Colts have a real shot to somehow sneak into Pittsburgh and steal a win. Indy by 3. (Ben did start here and it was much to the detriment of the Steelers....Colts stole it on the road. 10 for 11) KC @ SD: Chargers are favored by an insane 15 in this one, but do they deserve it? Chiefs have actually been playing better of late, so the Chargers still win but it will be by 6. (Chiefs have become quite the hard luck team, they really have. 11 for 12) NYG @ PHI: Biggest game of the week by far. Eagles can make a statement here and get back into the NFC East race, or the Giants can basically put it to bed. I'll take the Giants by 4, since I can't get it out of my head the way the beat down McNabb last year. (Giants held on to win it by 5, great win on the road. 12 for 13) Man, quite an improvement over last week's mediocre predictions.

Just text back: "It's the Bears with Rex Grossman....what did you expect?"

Maybe seeing Bernie Mac in a silly comedy after he died saddened some people and thus it did worse than expected?

The key difference here is that Florida has the chance to play teams like UGA and Bama, whereas USC has been fattening up on the Washington scrubs of the Pac 10. It sounds like I'm pimping Utah to be in the title game if they beat BYU, but obviously they won't be. I'm just saying that if they end up being the last unbeaten team of any real significance (and sorry, Boise State isn't a title threat with a SOS of 81 in the WAC, ditto Ball State in the MAC) then maybe they should be considered at least. Gotta love the BCS, the only system where teams can go undefeated and not get a chance to win a national title.

You know in the General Wrestling forum Kamala said something similar about it being a rare day when I'm right about something. Over the past few months the only thing I've posted on here that was actually incorrect was a post about Raw ratings in 2000, when I accidentally quoted the ratings for the US Open weeks instead of the move to TNN.

I caught quite a bit of that WVU/Cincy game and it was truly insane. Why on earth would Cincy ever do a voluntary safety when up 20-7, considering that puts WVU down a TD (with 2 pt. conversion) and a FG? Just punt the ball away and then they have to score 2 TDs in about 1:30 and that won't happen. Regardless, Cincy was the better team so at least they managed to win in OT. Well, Penn St. went down today. Now we just need either Bama or TX Tech to go down and Utah to beat BYU and then there will be a fascinating scenario in the BCS. I've often said there's no way the BCS can screw an undefeated major conf. team in favor of a 1 loss team, but how about an undefeated team from a conf. like the Mt. West that is actually better than at least the Pac 10?

That A & E show is laughable, especially the part where they said Andre agreed to lose the title to Hogan at WM 3 when Hogan had already been the WWF champion for 3 YEARS.

The ACC doesn't have many outright awful teams, but at the end of the day a conf. is judged by its top tier teams. As in who can really make noise in the BCS. The ACC doesn't really have anybody good in it. It's about like the Big East in that regard: A bunch of mediocre top 50 teams with 1 that is outside the top 100 (Syracuse, NC State). Though to be honest WVU has at least turned it up a notch after a bad start, so I would take them over anyone in the ACC. If we're talking about Utah, I 100% agree that this team would get squashed by the truly excellent 2004 team. That team was probably the single best non BCS conf. team ever. I would have been highly interested in a USC/Utah game in 2004. I doubt the Utes would have won, but I do know they would have done better than getting squashed 55-14 like OU did.

Wasn't Rude actually hurt here and thus didn't face Simmons for the title? I would think he had to be in line to win the title here. When he came back he ended up mired in a feud with Dustin over the US title for months on end, before finally getting the bogus "world title" later in 1993.

Wow, the booking in the UT/Kozlov match made Kozlov look weak. It makes me think that they just want this HHH feud over with and will go ahead and do the match and job Vlad out and then forget about him. They didn't even want to have UT do even a tainted loss to him.

Yeah that would be Layla. Not a shock on either guy but I don't know what Palumbo did to deserve this. He was doing fairly well on SD and was inexplicably traded to Raw where he did utterly nothing. London should go to the X Division.

What does this weed crackdown consist of though? I mean all they can do is keep fining people for failures, right? RVD needs to come back too. Ah well.

Is Utah a mid-major exactly? Or BYU for that matter? Either way I think Utah should definitely be in the title hunt unless they lose to BYU. Sure, they win ugly games but they are still 10-0 and have gotten the job done. I didn't think they would beat TCU, since TCU just seemed better going in. And for what it's worth, take a look at www.realtimerpi.com and see Utah is #6 there with a SOS of 33. Alabama has a SOS of 30, Penn State's SOS is 46. If they run the table they would have wins over TCU, BYU, the Oregon State team that beat USC, and a reasonably decent 7-2 Air Force team. I'd be interested in seeing what would happen in the BCS if Alabama, Penn State, and TX Tech all went down and Utah won out. Utah would probably get the shaft anyway.

Yeah I would always buy a combo unit since I still have all sorts of old tapes that I might want to play. Or a combo DVD/VHS recorder so I can convert stuff over to disc.

I didn't care for Rhino threatening to attack the poor interviewer chick for no good reason. But then I've always felt Rhino makes for a crappy babyface. The dude is a natural heel. I would assume Angle is only facing Abyss because there really isn't anyone else for him right now. Sting has the world title, Styles is feuding with Sting, Booker/Christian are feuding, Joe/Nash, etc. Abyss is an obvious win for Angle since he's still teaming with Morgan and the loss won't matter much due to Abyss/Morgan now being #1 contenders for the tag belts.

This isn't really shocking. He was a flop as an interviewer in the time he tried that, then he tanked even worse as a lead announcer. Oddly enough being a GM was probably the best role he had in WWE, but the thing is you could never figure if he was a heel, face, neither, or just incompetent. That said, if this leads to some sort of Shane/Steph power struggle on Raw, I might want Adamle back.

You know what's sad? I actually sort of agree that Kane and Khali are both guys who have been solid as heels and faces. Interesting to mention Rey....I couldn't tell if he was exactly heel or face in the Filthy Animals, but he was a total douche for most of 1999. I thought he was a heel during the No Limit trash. In fact with him using the bronco buster during that era he was getting dangerously close to being X-Pac.

The awesome part of the 1988 match besides the Fuji angle is also that the Conquistadors made the final 2 teams of that match. I have to wonder about 1987 after watching again last night. Why not just have the Stallions be the last team surviving and have them go against the Harts and Islanders? It was puzzling having the Bees and Stallions as 2 face teams with the Islanders the lone heels left, since it put a sort of sympathy heat on the heels (not to mention that the Bees screwed them with the masks). Why didn't the Young Stallions get pushed after that match? You'd think they would use that win to get into contendership once Demolition won the belts, but they were just JTTS.

Maybe it's due to not wanting to give up the ghost as a Colts fan, but I just can't see Pittsburgh squashing Indy this week. Not with Roethisberger out. That said though, Byron Leftwich has already shown teams like Dallas that you need a solid backup if the starting QB goes down. The Lions are starting the mighty Culpepper this week, aren't they? More reason to pick the upset, baby!