cabbageboy

What should I do then? Spell it out totally or say SD instead?

Yeah but in the context of that show it was such a horrible finish. I mean the crowd and viewers already had to see that bullshit Flair heel turn in the HHH/RVD match, and then in the other title match they book a goofy DQ finish. I'd have just ended the show with the Raw title match rather than the SMDN title in this case...the DQ wouldn't have been a biggie in the middle of the show.

Yeah you'd think they might put a title change on the actual MAIN SHOW, but I'm not sure what the Smackdown bookers are thinking of late. Why can't they do a US title change on Velocity as well? Am I the only one thinking it'd make Eddie and Rey both look like jobbers if Christian won tonight? I mean Rey has beaten Eddie like 6 times this year and wouldn't beat a guy with a 5-20 record? And Eddie of course would look like a huge jobber for losing to Rey all those times while Christian steps right in and wins.

It worries me that everyone on earth is picking U of L to crush in the Big East. 23 of 24 writers did at the conference. WVU might not be too bad, we've got them on the road. That said, I have the feeling Tom Jurich is looking for any reason to fire Bobby Petrino after the past two years of him flirting with Auburn and LSU. Not making the BCS would be a good reason.

That Unforgiven 2002 show still has some repercussions. The HHH/RVD match set up the Flair heel turn and thus the birth of Evolution. I know that show had a good Angle/Benoit match and also I think a good Eddie/Edge match, but that whole RVD assfucking and the DQ in the main event made me hate that show. And yes, Rude debuted at HH 91 but I meant matchwise the Chamber of Horrors was the most amusing match of the show. Rude just squashed Tom Zenk under a mask.

The fact that I have no idea what the Overdrive and all that even IS speaks volumes about their lack of effort to get his finisher over. Getting a finisher over requires the guy winning several matches in a row doing the same move. Hell, at least with Chris Masters I could see the point of doing the Masterlock Challenge, however tedious it is. At least it's an attempt to get his finisher over.

I saw Jillian at an OVW show before all the work, didn't find her terribly attractive. My friend Chris knows her on some sort of level, even wants to date her I think. He's not the most discerning person in the world however. Then lo and behold I went to the Raw house show recently and they had an OVW tag match, Jillian was managing some dudes. She was now buff, had bigger boobs, lots of work done...I was kinda impressed oddly enough.

Yeah but what storylines? What exactly is going ON on Raw that we need all this exposition? Jericho/Cena, ok we got that. Next. Michaels/Hogan, check. Maybe now this Matt/Edge thing. This isn't really enough stuff to excuse all the blathering and talking. Going to the show live isn't really that bad though. There's always some Heat matches and stuff that keeps you interested, despite all the talky crap.

I think I remember bringing up all these issues at the height of this whole shoot/angle. I pondered exactly how you can bring Matt back and not conflict with the whole Kane/Lita/Edge thing. Basically they have now admitted "This is fake bullshit" in regards to what we have seen for the past 6 months. Sure we know that but it's always bad to say it on TV. The whole thing really reminded me of Russo era WCW, when guys like Nash and Steiner went out saying they were going against the booking and all that. As in "What you saw before was fake except for what you're seeing right now, which is real."

Well what I mean by busting stuff out is doing ANY sort of notable moves. As in something besides the neverending headlock fest that Raw has become. The problem I think they have is that they are pushing the wrong people. Eugene right now has no business wrestling Kurt Angle, it's a total mismatch. Also, what is Shelton doing dicking around with Chris Masters and Snitsky? Also, why does it seem like no one has a fucking finisher? Carlito has been around since October or so and I still don't know what this guy is supposed to do to put an opponent down for 3. If nothing else Chris Masters is being built around having an invincible finisher that no one can get out of. What is Gene Snitsky's finisher? Carlito? Orlando Jordan? To me the coolest thing about a wrestler has always been the finisher. When I think Jake Roberts I think DDT, etc.

There's all sorts of theories on the main reasons WCW went under. Some cite the botched Starrcade 97 show with Sting/Hogan. Others say it was Nash ending Goldberg's streak and the subsequent Fingerpoke of Doom angle. While these were really horrible angles I don't think it put a vicious dent in WCW at the exact time those things occurred. There is one angle that in my opinion killed WCW: The Hummer Angle. It all started innocently enough on an episode of Nitro in June, 1999. Kevin Nash was lured into a limo by Madusa and Gorgeous George, only to have some maniac come crashing into the limo driving a Hummer. Everyone knew Randy Savage was behind it, but the mystery was "Who drove the Hummer?" At The Great American Bash Nash defended against Macho Man and out of nowhere Sid did a run in and attacked Nash. To anyone watching it was obvious: Sid was the Hummer driver. But wait! The next night on Nitro they explained that Sid did NOT drive the Hummer and that Macho still had that mysterious person waiting in the wings. At this point the angle started heading south, as it dragged on for months with no real developments aside from the announcers speculating that maybe it was a female driver. They didn't just forget the entire thing though, since Savage kept occasionally mentioning the Hummer Driver (even during a feud with Dennis Rodman!). Bear in mind that Nash--the VICTIM of the Hummer attack--actually did a heel turn during this period and lost the world title to Hogan in a "title vs. career" match. Did the angle end there? Of course not! Enter Lex Luger to stir some shit. Hogan had a title defense against Sting at Fall Brawl so Luger tried to convince Sting that Hogan was in fact the Hummer Driver (there were of course lots of fake Stings being seen in Hummers to make people think Sting did it). Surely the pictures of Hogan standing next to a wrong colored Hummer was conclusive evidence. Let's stop and think about this however. Nash was "retired" at this point. Savage, the initial mastermind, had nothing to do with it at this point. Yet this fucking angle was still going on! I have no idea what Luger had to do with the Hummer angle, or Sting for that matter. Or Hogan. Anyway, at Fall Brawl 99 Sting did a nonsensical heel (?) turn and beat Hogan down with a baseball bat....to the cheers of the crowd. Was the Hummer Driver revealed? Of course not. Soon after Vince Russo was hired from the WWF and this entire angle was simply forgotten. Until.... April 2000. Bischoff and Russo had both been on the outs with WCW and then miraculously came back. On the first New Nitro under the B and R regime Hogan of all people was hit by a Hummer and it turned out it was Bischoff driving. Personally I was never sure if Bisch was supposed to have been the original Hummer driver, or whether he was the guy doing the new Hummer attacks (was it ever fully explained?). Anyway, to me this is the single angle that killed all interest in WCW. If I recall, WCW's ratings went on a downward spiral during the Summer of 1999 that they never recovered from, and this angle was a main reason.

Well, TNT cancelled Nitro due to all the stupid shit they did and the big thing that first truly pissed fans off was the Fingerpoke. If Goldberg simply gets the title back and feuds with some other people I think WCW would have been reasonably ok. There's always the chance his rather one note persona would start to bore people though, but at least they might have stayed in business. Watching WCW in 1999 I couldn't help but think "Where is Goldberg? Why doesn't he just come out and destroy _____ and get the belt back?" It was so simple, yet they literally refused to give the fans what they wanted. It's almost comparable to Heyman not putting the title on RVD in ECW during this period, although that was a different situation with less politics involved.

The only real knock I had with the Conway/Val match was that it seemed like a typical Heat fare, whereas on Raw they should step it up a notch. The sad aspect of it is that I like Conway and heard they want to push him, but after the reception he got tonight....eh. Raw desperately needs someone who can bust some moves out. I'll be glad when Van Dam gets back, if nothing else he'll actually wrestle matches and do some wild spots....lord knows they won't put him on the mic for 10 mins a la Matt tonight. Incidentally, what was with Matt saying all that shit about "Edge took away my chance at a family, to have kids, etc." Dude, you can't be like Uncle Eddie and knock up some skank or something? Get over it, holmes. Get a new chick.

It would help if they ever had Jericho, oh I dunno, DO SOMETHING to prove he even deserves to get a title shot. As much as I detest the neverending JBL push on Smackdown at least there is some logical basis of late as to why he is getting title shots. As bad as Smackdown has been of late at least the show for the most part is about wrestling and competition, well aside from the recent Eddie developments. You know the sad part? Rob Conway and Val Venis had a perfectly acceptable match tonight and it seemed like half the crowd started chanting "This match sucks" at them. Given the pathetic lack of in ring action the crowd absolutely should not shit all over a match (which wasn't horrible or anything). The last thing needed is the message that the fans don't even want wrestling matches. Anyway I did like some stuff tonight. The Vince/Matt announcement was pretty cool, though I couldn't help but think that Matt's heat was already dying once he did his long promo and mentioned wanting to see Edge die in a car wreck, etc. Also his promo veered off into Russo 2000 territory in flat out discussing that the Lita/Kane marriage was phony and a booked part of the show. How wild is it that I just watched a Raw from 1996 on the 24/7 package and it had maybe Tatanka's last WWF match vs. UT? Then I see him tonight. And that same show had a parody skit of Billionaire Ted on Larry Fling...and tonight we had Hulk Michaels on the Larry King show.

Well as I said Down With Love is a movie that requires knowledge of a specific genre to truly get (namely 50s/60s Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies). I liked Ewen in it, but Zellweger has a habit of irritating me in stuff like this and maybe also Chicago and Cold Mountain. Also there was no one to match Tony Randall period. Randall was the man.

Every stop and think of how much different things would have been without that Fingerpoke Nitro though? As in if Goldberg had simply beaten Nash on that show instead of being arrested. The sad irony of all this is that WCW started doing all this really stupid shit at the height of their ratings. Even though the WWF was starting to beat them in the ratings in 1998, WCW's ratings continued to grow during that year as well. Thus they did all these horrible angles with everyone watching.

On a side note I never understood why they didn't at least put the IC title on Tatanka in 93, if nothing else to justify his long undefeated streak. Then they could have had Shawn beat him in a rematch, he gets some extra cred for ending the streak. Instead they piss away Tatanka's streak on Ludvig Borga or someone.

It's odd that they group Tatanka in nowdays with all the lame gimmick wrestlers of the early 90s...he was a lot more popular than that. Who wouldn't have been a mark for a 1992/93 match with Bulldog vs. Tatanka? Canadian Chick, you liked Tatanka in 1995, after he did the heel turn that basically killed his career?

Yeah I know but The Rock had Connery in theory to pull in the masses and it at least had a marketable hook. A trailer should always show who is in the movie, and what the movie is about. The Island really didn't do either terrilby well. I enjoyed Down With Love reasonably well until the bizarre ending. It requires a working knowledge of the old Day/Hudson movies to really get though. Moulin Rouge however is one of those movies I just don't get. It's not that Kidman and McGregor weren't good in it, but people busting out Teen Spirit in 1900 Paris? I know it's meant to be anachronistic...doesn't mean I have to like it.

It sounds weird, feel sorry for poor Stevie. I think the Boogeyman should do some really out there shit like I saw this guy Rasta the Voodoo Man do on Global back in the day. He can do spells and then his opponent will grab a leg in agonizing pain, then Boogeyman can simply pin him. Hey, it'd at least prevent him from legit injuring anyone.

It blows my mind to think that unless U of L really screws up in the Big East we'll be in the BCS this year. I never thought I'd see the day U of L played the likes of Oklahoma, Miami, or LSU in a major bowl.

Does anyone else wonder why studios spend 100 million on movies that don't really HAVE anybody? Stealth with Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel (Foxx relegated to the background)...is anyone going to rush to the box office there? Even if Foxx was starring, is there much evidence he can carry a 100 million production? Same thing with The Island. Ewen McGregor and Scarlett Johansson have some fans, but are they really people who will bring success to a 100 million $ production when they are featured? And yes I know Ewen was in the SW prequels, but he's never drawn a dime outside of those.

It seemed like the WWF lost a huge amount of guys post WM in 92. Hogan left due to the roid stuff, Sid flaked out for whatever reason (though I remember Bulldog cutting a promo on Sid on Superstars in May or so...was this planned as a feud?), Jake left for WCW, Piper went wherever. Thus you go from an incredibly packed roster in March to a really depleted gimmick filled roster with Papa Shango and The Berserker being featured. As far as Nailz/UT or Nailz/Warrior in those electric chair matches goes....I think it would have been hilarious. Maybe I'm one of the few, but I liked the goofy Halloween Havoc 91 Chamber of Horrors match. It's probably the most enjoyable thing on that dreary show.

I dunno, the Jericho bait and switch never really did that much for me, possibly because I hate that type of angle. One that I liked from WAY back: Mr. Perfect beats Flair in the loser leaves town match, sending Flair back to WCW. This was like the 3rd Raw maybe ever.....from something like Jan. 27, 1993. I also went to a Raw taping with a killer Bret/Hakushi match, though I'm not sure the exact airdate. It was July, 1995.

St. Anger should so be in last. Reload was fairly tedious but at least it sounded like they still knew how to play their instruments. Am I the only one who thinks Ride the Lightning might be the best album? The 2nd half of Master has a lot of stuff I tend to skip through for whatever reason, whereas RtL has some excellent stuff later on like Creeping Death. And Justice... is simply too long and drawn out to be my favorite, every song seems like it's 8 mins. RtL is a leaner album. Kill Em All is an energetic debut but aside from Seek and Destroy and 4 Horsemen I don't listen to much off of it. The albums RtL-MoP-AJFA are the Holy Trinity of Metallica albums, at least to me.