cabbageboy

I dunno, the SS 93 with Yoko/Luger was such a sour spot to me personally due to the cheap finish that I never remembered anything else about the match or show. In fact put that on the show with a booking crutch that I absolutely loathe (namely the Lawler/Bret finish with the overturned DQ decision) and that show isn't real high on my list of favorites. I was stunned to read the Keith rant and see such high marks for the matches, since I have a hazy memory of that show sucking. Of course Yokozuna used his fatness well....EVERY fat fuck does that. Hell, King Kong Bundy could squash people with sheer fatness. I have not seen those Bret matches mentioned, or if I rented those tapes I obviously don't recall now. The two WM matches with Bret both suck so it's not like I'd go out of my way to find more. So the guy had a few matches where Bret carried the hell out of him....the other 95% of his WWF work still sucks. The three worst title runs ever in my view are Yokozuna in 1993-94, Diesel in 1995, and JBL recently. Note in every case it was a guy getting the belt for an obscene amount of time without remotely deserving such a run.

Bret vs. Shawn is like the Beatles/Stones argument of wrestling fans. Except neither drew anywhere near the money either of those bands did, haha. Here is one argument that I can put in Bret's favor: When he was on top the WWF was at least not #2. I'm ignoring the Aug.-Nov. 97 time period since WCW was already well ahead in the ratings when he got the title. I refer more to the late 1992 to WM 12 time period. It's difficult to really gauge Bret's drawing ability because he was NEVER the guy it seemed like. During the 1993-96 time period it seemed that Vince was constantly looking for the next big star and he just put the title on Bret for lack of a better idea. Warrior/Flair tanking? Put the title on Bret to stabilize things. Yokozuna sucks dick and Luger isn't connecting with fans as much as hoped? Put it back on Bret. Diesel's run is killing the company? Put it back on Bret. Bret mostly got the title when Vince couldn't think of anything else to do. He was never booked as THE MAN, but was a guy who was essentially a transition champion about 5 different times. Michaels however was flat out given the ball in 1996 and he pretty much tanked. Take a look at the buyrates from that period of time with Shawn as champ, they are pretty crappy. Even SummerSlam that year did a really crap buyrate.

I made a vow to jump off the Humanities Bldg. (U of L campus) if Cincy won the nat. title in 2000. We'll never know due to the Kenyon injury but I still think they would have choked. Another classic for your Cincy hating dollar: 1998 2nd round defeat vs. WVU. That kid West from WVU nailing a bank in 3 at the buzzer, Melvin Levett gets his ass kicked and knocked out on the floor....one of my favorite games ever.

Well the thing I find odd about this is the timing. If they were going to fire Huggins it should have been after the DUI. They had it set up to where he was a lame duck finishing his contract anyway. The unreported undercurrent here is this however: It was over for Huggins. Let's face it, all Cincy could hang their hat on was winning C-USA and beating the crap out of U of L every year during the waning days of Denny Crum (and early Pitino era). But now U of L has it going again, kicked their ass last year, and Cincy's dominance in conf. is over. Add to it they aren't going to be winning the Big East anyway and Huggins becomes a liability. They can be a midpack BE team but have a bit better image as a program, know what I mean? The last Huggins game at Cincy was a gem though...the tourney loss to UK. That game emcompasses everything Huggins is all about: Tough effort to start, an opponent that won't be bullied or gooned, and eventual lack of control over his team as it degenerates into 1 on 1 brainlock and the obvious loss.

Exactly. Michaels and his boys damn near killed the company in the mid 90s. In all his time there Shawn has produced maybe 1 really great buyrate (WM 14) and then I'd say it was mostly a "good riddance" type buyrate coinciding with Austin's meteoric rise.

Hogan is fine as far as the occasional special attraction like at SS. But I dunno if I want him in there with the younger guys all that much. I was fine with him vs. Austin at WM since that's two old guys in a dream match. Cena/Hogan isn't anyone's dream match because quite honestly Cena isn't that big of a star at this point.

Good, now Benoit needs a nice run with the US title. You know what's sad though? For god knows what reason I watched Road Wild 99 the other day and Benoit was US champ going against DDP. In 6 years the guy hasn't had much progress, has he? Ah well at least he had the one cup of coffee in the main event.

I dunno about 150 million. The movie only opened at 20 million so it'll have to have insane staying power to hang around that long. I think it might make it to about half that much, but hey 75 million isn't bad and is a nice starring debut for Carell.

I pondered all of this in some other threads, especially the Eddie thing. I kept insisting that if Eddie is seriously going to get title shots soon he needs to just flat out beat the fuck out of Rey to end this thing and give him some sort of credibility. Cause right now he's a glorified jobber. The weird aspect to it is why does JBL keep getting these opportunities? It's not like he didn't get killed flat out at SS. I mean, I flat out demanded that SS be Cabinet jobbing night, and it was....and then they still go ahead and push em anyway?

What's up with this Hogan/Cena thing? I can't believe anyone would think that would be a good match. For one, the match itself would feature two guys who don't have a lot of believable offense, and as someone already said the crowd would seriously turn on Cena and cheer for Hogan (though maybe a Cena heel turn could accomodate that?). Would this be a title match? God I hope not.

The problem with that HHH/Shawn/Angle/Flair Horsemen group is that everyone there is a top guy. The idea behind the Horsemen was that Flair was the unquestioned leader with the world title, then secondary guys like Tully, Luger, Windham, whoever would go for the US title. Then you had guys like the Andersons who went for the tag titles. But this group? They'd all want a crack at the world title, aside from maybe an older Flair. It wouldn't last very long.

Orlando Jordan getting his ass kicked by everyone in the main. I'm not sure whether to enjoy that or be mad that he's even getting such choice screen time in the main event.

In the end does it really matter how Angle is booked here? I think the Jericho feud showed that a guy booked for shit can still get half the crowd against Cena. Angle has already been booked stronger than Jericho ever was (squashed Eugene, beat Shelton down soundly).

Ok I want to hear the big defense for Yokozuna. Elaborate for me these ***** classics he had. Hell the highest Yoko match rating I can find on a Keith rant is **1/2 for the SS 93 match with Luger and I don't even remember it being that good (and has a lame non decision to boot). The one defense I will say for Yoko is that he apparently drew some decent money. In fact I recall going to a house show in 1994 with a UT/Yoko casket match main and it sold out the Louisville Gardens. I think people might shit on the booking of the UT/Yoko RR 94 match a bit much, considering it at least made you want a rematch where UT would kick his ass with no interference.

Yeah but here's the thing: Austin and Pillman were good wrestlers and thus it actually mattered. The Road Dog and Billy Gunn were struggling but at least Roadie showed some charisma with Jarrett (and was pretty decent on the USWA I might add) and Billy Gunn had several title runs with Bart. Jordan and Basham? Unless they get some out of this world gimmick there is no reason to care. They both suck, have no heat, have shown little potential to draw any heat.

I honestly think Jericho got a sympathy type cheer at SS. Either that or there's a section of the fans that flat out doesn't like Cena and will go for anyone he wrestles.

I'm no big fan of Orton but he's a lot, lot better than Orlando. The guy at least has offense more complex than a friggin punch or armbar. He can at least cut an actual promo with more than "I'm gonna knock you out" involved (The RNN updates were classic).

Have I said Cena needed to be turned heel? Not once. My point about Jericho is that he's a jobber at this point. He's not a real contender, he did nothing to NOT be a jobber anymore, like go on a win streak or win a contender match or tourney. He just got a title shot for no real apparent reason and his only match was to beat up a ref. That isn't exactly a strong contender. And even with that shit booking, the man STILL got about half the crowd? Hell, the main point of booking such a bleh challenger is so that Cena would have the whole crowd on his side. I suppose my main point is that legit over guys don't have half the crowd turn on them during a match. The Rock had it happen a few times but those were just bizarro crowds and the booing was for a variety of reasons.

I am amazed anyone would have the balls to suggest Orlando Jordan should get another win of ANY kind over Chris Benoit. That was kinda the whole point of that SS squash: "Sorry dudes, we fucked up, see now we'll have Benoit squash this jobber." I think Jordan is on the margin for being released. It's just a matter of time before JBL fires him as Chief of Staff (replacement maybe Val Venis or dare I say bring back Ron Simmons?) and after that whatever residual heat OJ had will be gone. Jordan is literally the most worthless guy on either roster. He can't wrestle, can't brawl, can't do aerial, has zero mic skills, zero charisma. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who can't do ANYTHING on the roster. Hell even Tomko had some moments with Christian.

Why change the push Angle is getting? The real problem is that if he is booked this strongly he really should win the title. The Bischoff connection is irrelevant unless Bisch constantly interferes in the match itself. I think the main reason for Bischoff to interfere on Raw last night was to prevent the fans from cheering Jericho much. Angle, if he's booked this strong, doesn't need Bischoff.

Having seen SS, the crowd was much, much more for Jericho than 70/30. I dunno precisely the number of people who cheered for Jericho but I thought he had at least half the crowd. Bear in mind Jericho was booked like a jobber and got that much of a reaction. Things will prove interesting when a strongly booked Angle goes after Cena.

The litmus test of this is coming next month, believe me. The Angle/Cena match is a major, major match in so many ways. I mean, Jericho got a large amount of the crowd and he was booked like a total jobber, never even doing anything worthy of getting a title shot. I've maintained that a lot of fans are ready to turn on Cena (not little kids but 20s-30s males) but haven't had much opportunity since he's been on Smackdown wrestling guys who the fans couldn't possibly respect (JBL, Jordan, Carlito when he debuted, Suzuki, Dupree). They put him in a with a jobbed out Jericho and the crowd was almost 50/50 to the point where they had Bischoff do every vile heel tactic in the rematch to ensure Cena wasn't booed. Angle is being booked as a very strong challenger from the look of things. I wouldn't be shocked if the crowd at Unforgiven turns almost totally on Cena and starts rooting for Kurt. Then what?

I'm already terrified. On Cold Pizza they had football experts saying U of L could go undefeated and play USC in the title game. I seriously hope we don't start believing all this hype a la 2002 and then go out and fuck off and lose to UK or something truly awful. I too do wonder about Tennessee...do they have a lot more than last year? I didn't think they were much last year, but maybe that's because they came THIS close to losing to a 2-9 UK team.

Actually Leslie Nielsen was IN the last Scary Movie flick. I just listed Naked Gun as an example of something totally silly with no serious themes to it, or at least if something was serious it wasn't SERIOUS in the film. Even stuff like Old School has some serious moments (like the old dude dying, Farrell's crumbling marriage). I'd like a Wilson/Vaughn remake of Peach-O-Reno, with the boys as divorce attorneys in Reno by day, casino owners by night.

I am possibly the only person on earth who used to mark out for Rob Bartlett.