cabbageboy

Malenko being #1 was awesome. Hey, could Austin go out there and ground a cruiserweight with leg work for 20 mins. and make you LIKE it? I think not. Not shocking that Batista and Cena are 1 and 2 though. Hell in 1995 Nash was #1 due to his long title run. The PWI 500 is more sane than their year end awards. Hell, in 1996 The Giant won wrestler of the year even though I can't for the life of me recall much he did beyond a mediocre title run. Even though I didn't care for Shawn Michaels he was easily wrestler of the year in 1996. Ditto Lex Luger in 1997, where did THAT shit come from? His lame 1 week title reign justified him being WOTY over Steve Austin, Bret Hart, etc.

This Orton/Rey match only makes Eddie look like more of a jobber. He can't beat the guy in 7 tries and Orton just beats him after 1 try. Orton is someone I am almost totally apathetic towards...I just don't care. Don't like him, don't hate him. Am I the only who whose face went pale after reading Batista/JBL is a bullrope match? Surely they wouldn't... In regards to The Network, they need Cyrus so bad for this. It'll probably work better than it did for ECW, if for no other reason that Vince doesn't give a shit what UPN thinks (whereas ECW pissing off TNN probably didn't ingratiate them to other networks).

I don't see a lot of people ever accepting the goofy 6 sided ring thing and I really wish NWA: TNA would get rid of it if they ever want to make it big. The UFC show did a 1.8 this week after Raw....why not put the NWA on that time? Anyone else think that this shit Velocity time slot is a test to see how it does and if it goes over well they might start airing it on Monday nights at some point? I also wish that they would stop calling the promotion simply "TNA" and concentrate more on it being the NWA. People at least might remember the NWA from the Flair glory days. TNA though? It sounds kinda cheesy.

Eddie's character would be fine if he wasn't a glorified jobber at this point. I am truly baffled as to why they are doing this considering he's one of the few guys on Smackdown that draws any ratings or money.

Yeah and the Harts jobbed to the Nastys at WM 7 so Bret could go solo. Nastys lost to the LOD, LOD to Money Inc., then Natural Disasters, then Money Inc. and after that it's blurry to me a bit. I think the Steiners won somewhere in there and once the Quebecers won the belts in that bogus fashion I lost interest in the tag division.

WM 19: 3.0556 WM 21: 2.5 WM 17: 2.3182 WM 12: 2.2 WM 20: 2.1875 WM 13: 2.1786 WM 10: 2.1667 WM 14: 1.8125 WM 6: 1.7143 WM 3: 1.6667 WM 11: 1.6429 WM 18: 1.6364 WM 7: 1.5357 WM 9: 1.4167 WM 16: 1.3056 WM 1: 1.28125 WM 15: 1.1389 WM 2: 1.0625 WM 8: 0.8889 WM 4: 0.75 WM 5: 0.6607 Interesting that I just watched WM 19 and frankly thought the show wasn't worth a shit. It was a decent Michaels/Jericho match with the wrong guy winning, Lesnar damn near killing himself by fucking up, and HHH killing Booker's career. And a stale Austin/Rock match. Sorry but it isn't anywhere close to being the best WM, despite these ratings. Ironically WM 4 and 5 rank among my favorite shows and they are dead last here. Maybe booking and storyline is as big a part of enjoying the show as the actual wrestling?

Yeah I was about to say Demolition held the tag titles and maybe lost them to the Brainbusters for a bit, then maybe the Colossal Connection. Bossman and Akeem never got near em.

No reason for anyone to blow up over Wood now. The Cubs are totally out of it and he was mainly coming out of the pen anyway.

Raw is a formless show right now, it really is. It seems like no one has any real defined position on the card. It's sorta like ECW in its last year where you'd see guys like Corino and CW Anderson tossed into #1 contender matches despite neither guy being remotely credible. Raw right now is giving me this eerie WCW 2000 vibe....it seems like nothing but worked shoot angles and the New Blood (Carlito/Masters) vs. the Millionaires Club (Flair/Michaels). The irony is that Smackdown is now resembling ECW 2000 with the heel network exec and all.

What I mean by "throwing shit at the wall" is that it's blatant that none of these guys is going anywhere long term...they are just sticking them in there for the hell of it until getting on USA, then they'll begin a new major angle. I mean really, at the next PPV Chris Masters is going to job to Michaels and that's it for him. Carlito will job the IC and then do nothing for the next 6 months. Sure there are a lot of guys being misused or not used at all...that's the point. They don't give a shit about these lame duck Spike TV shows, so they are going to reintroduce guys like HHH and RVD once they get back on USA.

When is someone going to state the obvious? Raw right now is in "I don't give a shit" mode of cashing the paycheck before they move back to USA. It's sorta like the lame duck Nash booking in WCW before Russo took over, or the post Montreal WWF 1997 stuff before they began Austin's push. The problem is that there really isn't anything on the horizon for Raw that will make it any better. Oh yay, HHH vs. Cena. I saw that on a house show and we're in for some suffering, guys. Till the USA move it's just going to be throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks, hence these nonsensical pushes for Carlito and Chris Masters (not to mention Tyson Tomko squashing the tag champs).

This is the point. Look, Masters flat out can't beat Michaels in this feud, not if they want Shawn to have any credibility left. That's why it's weird that they are even doing this. If anyone breaks the Masterlock it has to be someone really jacked who does it. The only way anyone will buy it is for someone to flat out power out of the move. Someone like Batista's size.

Michaels has to go down to the Masterlock tonight...he's simply not a big enough or powerful enough guy to escape it. Besides, he's gonna win the PPV match anyway so keep the guy's finisher intact. The PPV match to me has to end with Shawn flipping off the turnbuckles and reversing it...thus not breaking the move but winning the match.

Pretty sure Angle was still technically heel during the Austin skits in 2001. It wasn't until after Austin betrayed the WWF by siding with the Alliance that he went full fledged face. Then he was heel again by Nov. Angle is too smarmy to be a face. Just one of those guys that you can't cheer for when he's TRYING to get cheers.

It's funny but when I saw that Dodgers/Astros 1-0 final I just KNEW Clemens pitched today. I haven't seen anyone get this kind of shitty run support since Greg Maddux: The Early Braves Years.

Well, the reason every A-Train push was cut short is because he never drew one ounce of heat. He was the sort who had such a bad look with all the back hair and piercings that his very appearance sent people to the bathroom and concessions. Albert did a few nice "I wish I was Vader" spots, but he really couldn't work a crowd like Vader.

It boggles the mind to think of how this stuff would get over with WWE main event level guys instead of the OVW rookies (let's face it, Deuce Shade is basically the Gambler of today). I wonder when was the last time OVW ran the Louisville Gardens? I'm thinking if they keep this up they could draw a nice house for a potential Jeter/Capotelli blowoff.

Austin slides just under the bar of Vince's standards I guess. As far as Benoit goes, he's the sort of guy who never really stays over. People acknowledge his skills but he's never really wildly popular. If he's getting pushed, fans generally respond. If he's not getting pushed, the casual fan doesn't chant his name exactly.

I don't recall anyone saying FSU was going to beat OU in 2000. In fact I remember it being a total joke that FSU was even IN that game. Mind you, not as big of a joke as it was when they played Tennessee for the title (now that was a fucking farce), but close. FSU is bar none the most perennially overrated team. They mostly beat up on a shitty ACC and now that the league is better I doubt they'll win it much again under Bowden.

And the final on that Cubs/Marlins game? 14-3 Cubbies. Remember what I was saying about the Marlins shutting someone out and then the next day giving up 10+ runs? A's back in first in the AL west, yo. They weathered the Royals series quite well. And what's with the Angels getting stomped by the D-Rays in that series? D-Rays doing some spoilage down the stretch.

Dama, I dunno about that. I thought FSU was pretty lame in 2000 and had no business even BEING in the title game. In fact I thought they'd get beat worse than 13-2. Was 2000 the year when Weinke threw 6 INTs vs. NC St.? Michigan was pretty legit in 97 but my god Tennessee was one of the luckiest teams I've ever seen in 1998. From winning at Syracuse on a last second FG to Clint Stoerner inexplicably placing the ball on the turf for UT to scoop up they just had an amazingly lucky as hell season. That said, Ohio St. in 2002....now that's the luckiest team ever.

Hassan's whole schtick was his Evil Arab gimmick. Ask yourself, if he was simply Mark Magnus and gave his same type promos and did the same matches, would anyone give a shit? Of course not.

After having seen WM 19 RVD got off lucky compared to poor Booker though in the HHH burial dept. At least he didn't have to endure HHH making offensive racist remarks and then have to job to the Pedigree (after a 20 second sell period of course). RVD has a couple things going for him that Jericho didn't. 1. He's been hurt and off TV, thus whatever jobbing he was doing before that is long forgotten. 2. Unlike Jericho there is somewhere to go with RVD, since he's never won the world title. Jericho and Benoit are both guys who have blatantly gotten their one run with the title and have been booked like lesser stars since. With RVD they can do a nicely edited package detailing all the various times he came oh so close to the title but was somehow denied (skipping over the various tag team stuff the past 2 years). Hell they could even go back as far as ECW in 1999 when he was supposed to face Taz for the title, but Taz left, then he was supposed to face Awesome, but Awesome left (and RVD got injured). Then mention some of the things like him seemingly beating UT for the title but Flair restarted the match, then Flair costing him the HHH match. Nothing really showing him jobbing clean mind you, so no No Mercy 2001, although maybe mention him beating Austin in a non title match. This would be a really great angle I think, but it would have to end in something like HHH agreeing to job in a title scenario, and I dunno if that is realistic.

I always wondered about that Hassan title win story. It made zero sense and would have seriously killed Batista's heat. They would have jobbed Batista in his hometown (DC no less) to a guy who isn't any good. Batista's next challenger is a problem. Eddie has more credibility with virtually every fan than Orton...the problem is that the booking has been inverse of this fact. Orton has beaten UT of late and seems like a good time to push him again....thing is I know I could care less about him wrestling Batista again. Eddie is the better choice but he's been a total jobber the entire year. I almost think they need to put the title on Eddie again, he needs something to improve his standing. Going from jobbing to Rey to jobbing to Batista is a waste.

I'm with you on this to a certain point, but you lose me on the stuff about Bret not being that great in the ring. In another thread I mentioned that Bret was the only guy to be a 5 time transition champion. I have to seriously debate Michaels being a better wrestler though. The only thing he can do better is get his ass kicked and do wild bumping. That is it. And frankly that sort of thing isn't what a top face should be about....nobody would pay to see Ricky Morton main event as a singles wrestler, all he did was get his ass kicked. Shawn never had much credible offense either, not to put down guys like Nash, Vader, Sid, etc.