cabbageboy

It depends really. I actually think Jericho as badly booked as he's been will get some support at SS. Not to the point where the crowd turns on him but maybe a few cheers and a few boos for Cena. Angle will get even more cheers than Jericho, even though he too has been horribly booked. It almost seems like they are deliberately tanking Cena's opponents so that they don't get more over than him.

About that One Night Only match, why was it even booked? Did they not see the potential landmine that awaited by putting the non jobbing Shawn in against the local British hero? Maybe they didn't really care about pissing off the English audience knowing they could still do the occasional tour and sell out shows, I dunno. I doubt they could draw 80,000 again there though. Was Bulldog really the #3 guy in the Hart Foundation anyway? I always put him more like #2 behind just Bret, considering he beat Owen when they had the Euro title final. In reality I don't think either guy should have jobbed there. Shawn had HIAC and Montreal coming up, so it made little sense to job him, yet it was even dumber to job out Bulldog in front of his homeland crowd and dying sister. I'd have just done a double DQ with the Hart Foundation clearing the ring of DX, no title had to change, Michaels wouldn't have jobbed, and the fans go home reasonably happy.

How about the Patterson and Brisco evening gown match? That one got a really bad reaction.

Nah, he was nowhere near as bad in WCW as he later became. I mean there was nothing as bad in WCW as that HHH match from the 2003 Rumble. Some of his later WCW stuff like the Goldberg match from Fall Brawl was compelling. I might have erred when I said a while back that WCW had nothing left to say as a promotion when they went under. I thought that there was simply nothing there, nothing that would draw a dime. Maybe that's correct but as time goes by I wish WCW hadn't gone under more and more. I've been reading the Death of WCW lately. Some of it during the Nash and Russo eras of booking made me really laugh just reading it...that said by the time late 2000 and early 2001 rolled around I stopped laughing. If anything WCW was doing some reasonably compelling PPVs near the end, stuff that wouldn't embarrass any wrestling fan. I actually rewatched the last 3 PPVs from 2001 and was shocked as to how fresh and enjoyable those were. A lot of the cruisers were missing spots left and right, but damn they were TRYING hard.

To be honest, I have no idea what they are trying to accomplish here. The amusing idea behind Michaels burying Hogan is that fans deep down know what he is saying is true....they just don't give a shit. Hogan posing after his match is something that is so ingrained in the wrestling fan's consciousness that no one worries about it. I mean if I saw Hogan and he didn't do those things I'd feel a bit gyped. I personally think they figure the match will draw either way and Shawn is coming up with whatever shit he can think of to kill time.

Viscera just jobbed to Rob Conway, safe to say he isn't getting a main event type push. I'm confused, are we considering RVD a current Raw face? I mean he's on the Raw roster right now but is hurt, so he's technically not on the show yet. I said a while back that if Cena's heat dwindles RVD is really the only logical face to go with unless you wanna turn someone. If we're just talking guys currently active....there isn't anyone really. Angle has been booked as such a jobber this year that he wouldn't get cheered. In fact Angle's character is a real anomaly: He's too smarmy to be an effective face and doesn't ever seem sincere in the role, and yet as a heel he's too much of a joker to be taken seriously. Shelton has shown no real signs of being over of late and has been jobbing to Masters to boot. Michaels or HHH turning face again would lead to the same stale shit we've had for years. Basically the only two over faces late in the year on Raw seem like Cena and RVD, though who knows what they'll do with Flair or HHH.

Shelton is a guy that has to get over through quality matches. It's that simple. When he was getting over it was due to his efforts in the Money in the Bank match at WM, and subsequent good bouts with Michaels and Jericho. I still say Raw desperately needs someone like RVD, and it'll be great to see him back in Oct. Raw's face side is so horrible as to not even be funny at this point and the addition of RVD would give the fans someone to actually like.

It was stupid as shit to even try to turn the crowd on Hogan in favor of....Michaels??? Hell, a lot of long term WWF fans turned on the company around the time when Michaels first had the title. It was really the only time I EVER liked WCW more (the initial NWO had a place there too). No matter what Shawn does to try and rehab his image he always will remain a total cock in the eyes of quite a few people. Cena has never explicitly talked about being shot in the hood or his hoes, whatever. But these things are implied with his gimmick. If he wants to be taken seriously as a guy with street cred or a rapper, then these things have to be to some extent implied. If not, you get what we saw tonight: a poseur. A Vanilla Ice wannabe, which is the point Christian was making about Cena a couple months ago.

Yeah but the thing is Orlando Jordan FUCKING SUCKS. He's not the future, he ain't shit. If anything he's worse and more heatless than he was when he debuted as a total jobber. I can assure most everyone that once he jobs the US title to whomever he won't even be on Smackdown at all, aside from maybe the occasional JBL lackey role type stuff. In regards to MNM, isn't it odd for Benoit to job to them when they themselves just jobbed to friggin Animal and Heidenreich? It's not like Benoit has all this rub anyway, the guy is a career journeyman who has had his 1 cup of coffee in the main event. I'm not saying Benoit should be a perennial main eventer, but jobbing him to total bums like Orlando Jordan is insulting. HHH has gotten even smarter with time. More subtle in his burying. Benoit was never destined to be a long term main event guy, so HHH had no problems jobbing to him since he's highly respected. I would imagine the plan to shift Batista over to Smackdown had been in place for a while, so HHH probably didn't care about jobbing to him either. See, before with guys like RVD, Kane, and Booker HHH would bury them and after the feud they would proceed to do nothing of note. With Benoit, HHH jobbed a few times and after that feud Benoit proceeded to do jack shit.

Yeah as far as WM IX goes, I never really hated Hogan for it. If anything I was glad to be spared a Yokozuna title reign at the time, though of course that happened anyway. I just got the Death of WCW book today and it said there that Hogan thought Bret was too small and didn't wanna job to him, so he jobbed to Yoko instead. Maybe he thought he'd look bad against a younger, quicker Bret? Anyway the backstage politics of WM IX had no serious long term effects on Bret's career since he beat Yokozuna for the title at WM X and things were fine for him, whereas the Montreal thing obviously did.

Well I dunno so much if Cena's color has much to do with the video. It was just a lame song and lame video for a variety of reasons. Mainly due to it taking whatever edge Cena had left away. I remember ranting on Cena's lack of serious street cred being from West Newbury, MA and from what I saw in that video it looks like a nice, small New England town around Boston. Add to it his lame buddies and the whole thing came off as poseur cheese. I noticed the live crowd wasn't thrilled with it either. That said, the first hour at least was pretty decent...at least it had wrestling. I dunno why but I marked out for Rob Conway's 2% body fat, maybe because I've been watching these old Lex Luger WCW shows and found it funny. I too am puzzled though at why Shelton is being jobbed out so mercilessly. What does this even mean for the IC division? Is there an IC division?? I kinda enjoyed the Angle/Eugene thing tonight but wished Kurt hadn't lapsed back into a heel after playing to the crowd. How sad is it though that friggin EUGENE is getting major SS matches two years in a row, one vs. HHH and this vs. Angle? And he has about as good a chance now as he did then. Anyway, I'm looking forward to Shawn getting trashed next week in Montreal.

That's the main problem I have at this point with HHH. He's jobbing his ass off, but it's not really mattering. I mean when a guy jobs out on 3 PPVs to the same guy fans should view the winner as clearly better, yet with HHH and Batista does anyone feel that way? All this jobbing is doing nothing to HHH storywise...he jobs and then next Raw comes out and demands another shot, rinse and repeat. Sure, HHH got his ass kicked by Benoit and Batista. What long term good did it do Benoit? The guy is now jobbing out to Orlando Jordan. The jury is still out on Batista. Meanwhile, HHH will undoubtedly go right back to the main event soon after he comes back, all the clean jobs not meaning a thing.

I voted for Hogan. No real reason other than I have hated Shawn since about 1992 and see no reason to stop now. As far as the booking goes, I have no idea. It depends on where they want to go with this. I've heard they want to do Austin/Hogan at WM 22 so Hogan could win here. Yet Hogan won't be around that much and Michaels will be and thus Shawn should get the win....it's a really tough call.

Fanofcoils, to address your points. Eddie hasn't hardly won a match period this entire year. Aside from the recent win over Bob Holly of all people on Smackdown I can't think of any match I've seen Eddie win in 2005 (on TV). It's all a blur of him jobbing to Rey in every meeting. Hell, Eddie didn't even technically WIN against that one jobber he squashed and beat with a chair. Eddie still has heat of a sleazy, cheap variety due to his Bedtime Stories, but in ring wise he hasn't done shit this year to warrant a title shot. I mean if he beats Rey ONE time this justifies him facing Batista, discounting the other 129,384 times he jobbed? The one thing I will give Eddie over Jericho is that he's still perceived as some sort of threat and is really still the main draw on Smackdown. Jericho got jobbed out of the IC division this year and has literaly done zilch to warrant title shots. Now, Cena. When he was feuding with Carlito, Carlito had just debuted. There was no real chance of a fan backlash against Cena since Carlito was not a credible opponent. The dude has not one offensive move. Cena is over but it's certainly not for his in ring work and that makes the backlash inevitable. I saw him at a house show recently, crowd popped for his entrance and all that, but his match with HHH was so god awful boring that it killed the crowd.

Nah, Benoit's heat is dead and buried, at least to me. The guy jobbed fairly clean to ORLANDO JORDAN. He's fucked. No matter what Benoit does at this point, he still jobbed to Orlando Jordan. And it wasn't even sold as a shocking fluke. I'm telling you, I think WWE is just tanking these last couple months of Raw on Spike TV and then once they're back on USA the show will improve dramatically. With or without the HHH/Flair return I had that notion. Cena has had a few good matches (the JBL I Quit, the parking lot match with Eddie) but note his good stuff is hardly ever a regular 1 on 1 wrestling match. As far as Cena's popularity goes, the guy is a crowd backlash waiting to happen. It happened to the Rock, a guy way more talented and over than Cena. It hasn't happened yet because Cena (as a face) hasn't had an extended feud with anyone worth shit. He spent most of last year squashing dipshits like Dupree, Suzuki, and Carlito...then he feuded with JBL (who has zero heat or credibility even after the long title run). Now he's feuding with a heatless Jericho. Next he gets a heatless Angle, who has spent the past few months jobbing to Booker T, being a sexual predator, jobbing to Shawn, and jobbing to a retard. And even then I think both Jericho and Angle will have segments of the audience cheering for them. Speaking of Eddie, what is the source saying he is going after Batista post SS? God let it be true. The problem here is that Eddie has been jobbing ALL YEAR to Rey so how is he supposed to have any credibility to beat Batista? They literally almost have to put the title on Eddie via some ultra devious means to have it mean anything. In my opinion they never should have taken it off Eddie last year.

As far as U of L goes I do believe that Oregon St. game is here at Papa John's so the Cards should be favored. Does Oregon St. still have that really shitty kicker? In terms of what I'm hoping....I'd just like to win the Big East. Just get IN a BCS game, since we got so close last year. In some ways this has to be a transition year so U of L will take a few lumps. First year in the BE, Brohm's first year as starter, not sure about the defense. Now next year....I think we'll be fucking awesome. And get Miami in a rematch here.

I dunno, I don't think somehow that another Bret/Austin matchup would have resonated as much as the way things turned out. I'm not that big of a fan of rematches from previous WMs though. It would have just come off like "Bret beat Austin a few times, now Austin finally wins and gets the title."

Well the submission/ladder stips would only work with someone who had a submission move like Angle. For the most part they could kill each other with the ladder but also toss in some of Angle's submission stuff. The only problem would be getting the audience to buy any of the submission stuff since they'd be so used to a ladder match ending with someone grabbing the belt.

The key detail is that Mike Awesome was not an independent contractor in the sense that he had no written agreement and was working the territories in the old days, thus being able to leave whenever he wanted. He had a written contract. I don't know the exact nature of whatever grievance he had with Heyman (I thought it was something about PPV bonuses) but he should have had the decency to stay another week or two to build a match with whoever and job the title...then start with WCW. I don't think anyone would have had a problem with that. One additional problem Heyman had was who to job Awesome to. They had just started the build for RVD/Awesome, which would have obviously led to Van Dam FINALLY winning the ECW title. Problem is, RVD got hurt and thus Awesome couldn't drop it to him (it's debatable as to whether Heyman would have even had Awesome job to RVD in a match with zero build on a house show). Thus, Awesome's dick move wound up with Taz coming from nowhere to win the ECW title again, and a musical chairs with Dreamer and finally Justin Credible winning it.

Let me address those points you just made. 1. Yes, we know that Michaels eventually did the job at WM 14. Until I hear that he DIDN'T threaten to refuse to job I'll accept UT's word for it. Why would Taker work the interviewer about this? Besides, it's not like that whole thing isn't Shawn's m.o. 2.An argument could be made that the Bulldog/Michaels match was a foolish idea, but why do THAT particular booking? Why piss off the entire UK fanbase by humiliating the local boy? And no, Bulldog isn't a loser...in fact previous to this he was undefeated in the UK and Europe as far as the WWF goes. You're telling me they couldn't have just booked a huge DQ brawl there with the Harts and DX all fighting? Bulldog retains the Euro title (which meant nothing to Shawn anyway...witness the fingerpoke with HHH) and the belt doesn't become a complete farce. Shawn goes on to win HIAC and Montreal anyway, so no one would have thought anything about this match. Basically the finish they did was a slap in the face to the entire English audience and it made no sense, as well as having no context in the US because no one here saw or cared about that show. 3. I dunno to what extent Shawn was involved in Montreal, but he was in on it. He admitted as much. Thus, he 100% lied his ass off for a good 5 years about it. 4. The "Lost Smile" promo was a fucking embarrassment. Shawn's knee hurts? Who gives a shit? Get in the damn ring and job the title to someone, then get the surgery or rest needed. His mysterious knee ailment certainly did heal up quickly. Shawn forfeited titles WAY too many times to make anyone think that he was flat out too hurt to wrestle and at least drop a title. He pulled the same shit with Shane Douglas in 1995. 5. Yeah Bret and Shawn were both dicks to each other and hated one another. No one disputes that one....though I don't recall Bret airing Shawn's various love life details (true or false) on TV.

Yeah I'd say Awesome over nearly anyone else who did the ECW jump to WCW. People who left ECW in 1995 or 96 were doing a typical "indy fed guy who goes to a major promotion" type jump. It was not much different than a guy from the USWA or somewhere jumping to the WWF. But by 2000? ECW was a more notable company, had PPVs and a TV contract....it was bullshit for Awesome to do what he did. I think he had a dispute over PPV payoffs which is why Heyman didn't get a lawsuit out of it (or I never heard of one). That said, he should have given some sort of 30 day notice so they could at least position someone to take the title from him.

Ever imagine what it would have been like if BRET had been in the Austin role? Although him still being there kinda takes away from the "Montreal screwjob was real" aspect that got Vince over as a heel in the first place.

If Angle won the title he could face Cena in a rematch, Michaels in a rubber match, or in a fresher matchup a returning RVD. Anyway, I think Batista is better off defending the title while Cena is better off chasing it. It was odd that Cena never really had a big chase for the title...he just won a #1 contender tourney, dropped the US title, then won the WWE title.

I always thought the Bullets becoming the Wizards was a marketing move to get away from the image of DC being violent and riddled with bullets. Do these Indian groups even realize that the intent of this isn't to demean a particular group but instead to HONOR them? Teams have Indian mascots and names because it is supposed to be a cool thing, something brave and macho to strike fear in the opponent.

Perhaps so, but at the end of the day heels and faces are determined by who gets cheered and who gets booed. But yeah Austin was a tough character to book for those reasons, which is why I still think his only real time of drawing money was from WM 14 through SS 99. Before WM 14 the WWF was getting beat down by WCW, and shortly after that SS in 99 Austin had the neck surgery. It was really only during the Austin/McMahon angle that Austin was a character people could get behind. Being a Bret die hard I didn't like him worth shit in 1997. I suppose he also was a draw in the late 2000/early 2001 period before the heel turn, but that stuff isn't really as timeless (Austin being screwed over by Vince = timeless, Austin dropping HHH in a car with a crane..not so much).