cabbageboy

Being in Puerto Rico, Japan, or US indies isn't exactly being a star though, is it? Most people had little exposure to guys like Styles and Daniels before they were on TNA, so that is really where they got known. I think TNA is a promotion in transition right now, going from mom and pop Jarrett outfit to potential national promotion. I know that Jarrett and his dad started the promotion, but for the life of me I don't know why they swear by him so much. It's my opinion that they'd be better off with guys on top that most casual fans have never heard of, rather than old WCW retreads who are 100% guarranteed not to draw money.

The end of this can't be just the No Mercy match. There's way too much here that is intriguing and besides, who else is seriously a contender at the moment? Smackdown has the worst heel side of a roster I've ever seen. Every one of their heels is a total joke, aside from maybe Ken Kennedy (who just debuted). Whenever I read something like "WWE wants to push Orton to the title again" I am just bewildered. Take a look at the way he is depicted on TV, he and his dad getting their asses kicked by UT and even last night losing a handicapped match to...Roddy Piper?? Orton's like the redneck Chavo at this poing, relying on his dad to give him whatever heat he has.

I actually know what Morgan was talking about. 2nd basemen come off the bag all the time and to actually call that was just lame. It's like "Yeah his foot was technically off the bag, but it's lame to actually call that when 95% of the time the guy is out." Feel the money drawing White Sox/Angels ALCS!

I like this Eddie/Batista stuff aside from the bizarre gay twist it seemed to take with the soulmate talk tonight. You see, Vicki? You see what you've done to this man!? There's a lot of subtle stuff here though, like Eddie costing his own team the match to prove loyalty to Batista (not like he'd give a shit about Bradshaw and Christian anyway). That said, I honestly think to pay this off that Eddie should win the title. Not at this lame duck PPV, but maybe Survivor Series when he finally snaps and goes full blown into his cheating mode.

Well, the Rock thing was a bit different since the crowd was so rabid for Hogan anyway....was that all booked or did Hogan do a similar "going in business for himself" deal? As far as WM 6 goes, that was really the first clean loss that 90% of the fans had ever seen from Hogan. I thought the ending of the show only reinforced what an epic encounter it was and Hogan giving Warrior the belt and raising his hand to me was an attempt to put the Warrior over. I don't really get why Hogan did anything so heinous there that it would hurt Warrior's career. If Warrior's career suffered as champ it was more due to not really having any fresh feuds. By 1990 DiBiase's heat wasn't what it was 2 years before, so that feud really didn't capture the imagination. Rude/Warrior had been done to death and no one really gave Rude a chance of winning. And for various political reasons they didn't want another Hogan match (it was face/face anyway). Who was Warrior going to face?

Also, didn't they briefly have Steph form a tedious alliance with Angle once he won the title? I'll touch on the Invasion....I assume you know the WWF purchased WCW in March, 2001, right? The problem is that they didn't bother to sign much of anyone notable right off the bat and proceeded to do the Invasion with Booker, DDP, and a bunch of Natural Born Thriller types. The initial plan was to give Shane's WCW Raw, but after they did a couple of matches on Raw fans reacted so violently (namely to the hideous Booker/Bagwell match) that the idea was dropped. From then the angle was briefly salvaged when they added the ECW guys to the mix...but then announced Steph was the "owner" of ECW. It didn't help that at that point the WWF didn't own ECW's trademarks so the whole bunch of jobbers were referred to as The Alliance. Since this ragtag bunch didn't have much of anyone that was over (aside from the debuting RVD, who got over immediately at the Invasion PPV) they turned Austin to the Alliance and he became leader. From there, it seemed like everyone was fighting over some sort of title, since there were 2 world titles, 2 secondary belts (IC/US), 2 cruiser titles, 2 tags, and a hardcore title. The WCW guys like DDP and Booker T were totally jobbed out to UT and The Rock and made to look like jokers at every turn. Since the angle was dying a horrible death they just booked a 5 on 5 for Survivor Series for total control of the company, and of course the WWF side won. In theory the Invaders should have had to leave forever, but since seemingly everyone on that side had a title of some sort no one really was canned and those were were "fired" were back in less than 2 months. From then on the WWF went out and hired every WCW reject they could get (Flair, Bischoff, Nash, Hogan, Hall, Steiner, Goldberg) without realizing it was too late to draw money with those guys. That would lead us into the goofy NWO angle...... Vince was so outraged at Flair buying out Steph and Shane's stock that he vowed to kill his own company (nevermind he'd just SAVED his company from the Alliance). Thus, he brought in the NWO of Hall, Nash, and Hogan. There were several problems here: 1. The WWF fans only cared about Hogan and had no interest in seeing him in this WCW created character, so at WM he turned face after the Rock match. 2. Nash was injury prone, having shoulder surgery and also the notorious leg injury on Raw. 3. Hall went back to his usual drunken ways and got released soon after WM. After this they tried to add some guys to the NWO (Booker, Michaels, Big Show, I think even X Pac) but I swear no one cared about this. It didn't help when you had Flair book Austin/Bradshaw vs. various NWO members EVERY WEEK after the initial roster split. After a certain point Vince came out, gave his speech about Ruthless Aggression, said fans were sick of the NWO, and just killed them off. If anyone has anything to add, by all means do so.

Well it has an issue but it's one that is in the very beginning stages of development. We are just now in the "Eddie is a sleaze but seemingly friends with Batista, yet Dave knows Eddie is full of shit" part of the story. It would be fabulous if Eddie wasn't challenging right away, but rather there was someone else to feed to Batista before blowing this off. This PPV can go one of two ways: 1. Eddie really does wrestle a clean, scientific match...and loses. Then he realizes he needs to cheat to win, and in a rematch does every sneaky Memphis trick in the book. 2. Eddie has just been lying all along and professes a clean match but when the PPV comes he cheats in any way possible.

Not really, I think he just screwed up. He needed a "Do not have the skills to actually correctly apply a wrestling hold." The silly thing is that the crowd would go batshit for two guys doing a wild high wire act, no selling everything. There are different styles of wrestling. An entire show of wild X division stuff would get wearisome, but 1 or 2 matches of it is exciting.

Vinny will lead the Jets to the promised land...namely drafting Matt Leinart with the #1 pick. Without Cadillac Williams the Bucs might have trouble scoring a bit, but with their D I can't see Jets scoring much.

Having watched the Hogan/Warrior match on the DVD I'm a bit baffled at the "Hogan went into business for himself" post match thing. It seemed like Hogan gave him the belt, hugged Warrior, and got on the cart and left. I didn't think Hogan did anything wrong there.

Oh, and other times they take two singles wrestlers and just put them together as a team. I always thought tag teams worked best when you hadn't been predisposed to think of either man as a singles wrestler. I guess there are some exceptions like The Dream Team though. You know, hearing about Van Dam's injury makes me wonder if he'll ever be physically right again. Wonder if he'll adapt his style any to compensate for not being able to do some of the daredevil stuff?

It's hard to consider Vince a monopoly when you have someone like TNA around who has a fairly solid roster. I don't think you can call it a monopoly unless it is proven that Vince is actively trying to keep any promotion from being in business period.

Perhaps Flair refused to job to a guy who didn't wear any boots to the ring? You gotta admit a barefoot world champion sounds kinda strange.

If all we have to choose from is HHH winning, Orton winning, or Cena winning...how about just not have the Rumble?

BlackFlagg, I got an email from amazon that my Lewton collection has now shipped....have you tried them? I'd also bet Best Buy would have it since they carry box sets, not sure what they'd want for it.

Yeah I heard about that song when the whole Matt/Lita thing broke...and I still wanna hear this thing, haha. My friend Chris also heard the rumor about Orlando Jordan being gay, heard it from a few different people down here in OVW. I dunno about Heyman though. I've heard the rumors for years but it was mostly people like Cornette trashing him in the usual "He's a fag!" kind of way. Personally I don't really believe it since Paul E. always seemed to veer into the "dirty, albeit straight, old man" role on commentary.

Most of these guys weren't really ever all that over in any role though. It's odd someone would say Shannon isn't missed because he could be of some real use to Matt Hardy once Matt ends up on Smackdown. "Hey, Matt..you may have lost Lita but you still have me!" I dunno if Rico is really the biggest star ever on OVW. He was up there with guys like Leviathan (Batista), but I'd say the two biggest guys in OVW were the guys who were there from day 1: Nick Dinsmore and Rob Conway. When I think OVW, I think them.

Ladies and gentlemen....Steve Romero! Just kidding. After watching some old Nitros on 24/7 I really don't think Bischoff is all that bad. I can easily stomach him more than Vince from back in the day. Hell, don't they have Joey Styles under contract now, at least of some sort? Put him on Raw.

I'd like to see RVD win this when he comes back too, but I can't see them giving him the big HHH style U2 videos hyping his return at the Rumble. I'm predicting Cena will win the Rumble since he'll likely job the title to someone before then, then he'll get the title back from HHH at WM. Rinse, later, repeat. Perhaps RVD and some other guys can do another Money in the Bank match at WM? That'd be cool. RVD can win it and cash in his chance at the One Night Stand PPV, in the one "ECW vs. WWE" match on the show.

Yeah but why would Juvi never wrestle? He's by far the most talented in ring worker of the three, at least I think so. Oooh, he gave Paul London a boo boo on a 450. Get over it, WWE.

I am going to pick up the Warriors DVD for my dad's birthday. Oh and I already ordered the Val Lewton box set as well. I wouldn't say I'm as into Lewton as I am old Universal stuff (it's a bit dry and literate for my taste) but I really like some of the titles in it like The Seventh Victim, The Body Snatcher, Leopard Man, etc.

It's a good question though. I think Juventud is the single most misused guy on either roster. The last I saw of him before he got signed was on an NWA TNA Wed. PPV where he had a great match with Teddy Hart and then a mindblowing ****3/4 classic with Chris Sabin (this was an X division tourney). And now? He's basically acting as a manager for Psychosis and Super Crazy. And on an internet Velocity. WTF?

I think bookers should take a look and never do these "Who ran over _____?" angles. In my view the Hummer angle really killed WCW in the Summer of 99 and some here mention the "Who hit Austin?" angle as having started the WWF's decline.

Ok I think the last Raw on USA was Aug. 21, 2000. That show got a 6.2 rating. The next week (the 28th) on TNN got a 4.9. That seems like a fairly decent dropoff from one week to the next, so they did in fact lose viewers.

I think the coincidence is that the WWF started to decline in quality right around the same time WCW was really in dire straits. It was almost like "Well, the war is over so we can now coast." 2000 was a solid year for in ring action, but very little of it really mattered in the end. I mean yeah Jericho and Benoit wrestled each other 500 times that year, but what good did it do? The Hardys and E and C wrestled each other 500 times that year but I dunno if any of it really mattered. 2000 started the decline in my view, while 2002 was the most damaging (becoming WWE, the split angle that exists even now).