cabbageboy

I think it was the same guy who had the "HHH fears divorce" sign that also had one saying "This date in history 1992: Bret beats Flair." It had to be in Canada, why else would anyone have such an out of nowhere sign?

Aenima isn't really one of my favorite Tool CDs. The production is muddy to the point of being distracting, and aside from a few main singes (Stinkfist, 46 and 2, H) I really can't think of anything else I liked on that album. I think Undertow is still their best album. Lateralus is good in spurts but there is a lot of boring crap that is FF worthy (seriously, taking 3 mins to get into a song?). And really, circa 1993 or 94 was there much else that was similar to stuff like Sober or Prison Sex? Really weird and disturbing.

Yeah he was at the house show I went to and wrestled Flair. Wasn't the most strenuous match, haha. I think Shawn was off from 1998-2002 somewhat due to the back injury but they really didn't NEED him to come back. Ratings were great, they were drawing money, and frankly I don't think most people cared whether he came back or not. By 02 however ratings were sliding, business was down, so he came back.

I can't believe anyone would defend Hassan main eventing the 2nd biggest show of the year. He's a lousy wrestler, he has a cheap heat heel gimmick, and if he actually beat Batista it would seriously destroy Batista's rep. I mean the guy beats HHH every time but can't beat friggin Mohammed Hassan? By the way, if they do UT/Orton at SS there's no way in hell Orton is winning. He would have already cost UT the JBL match and also the #1 contender match....do you seriously think UT is going to job to him at that point? I'm not sure why everyone is stoked for Benoit/JBL. Unless it's a gimmick brawl match JBL will still be lousy and given that SMDN main event when Benoit was drafted it's safe to say this won't be anything special. Why not do Benoit/Regal? One problem is that neither title challenger has any credibility being on that level. Hassan I've mentioned, but what about Jericho? There doesn't seem like any way Jericho would win the title in that match, and there really is no justification for him getting a title shot (at least Hassan would win some lame #1 contender match). Seriously, what has Jericho done to deserve a shot? Who has he beaten? And instead of having Jericho go over a few guys on Raw to cement his #1 contender status, he's doing battle of the bands crap.

Carlito isn't remotely as good as Piper. Piper wasn't the best technical wrestler but at least he could brawl all over the place. Carlito can't brawl, he can't do much aerial stuff, can't wrestle scientific....he fucking sucks. He's amusing on the mic, but I don't think if you're a truly bad in ring performer you can get pushed much further. I had someone PM me a while back when I said I'd like to see a healthy RVD vs. Shelton. The PM was like "Shelton would have to take it down a huge amount to compensate for a bum like RVD." I was like WTF? Say what you will but have you seen Van Dam almost crash and burn with some dangerous spots the way Shelton has of late? I can assure you RVD could at least get a sorta fun match out of Carlito, even if it consisted of nothing more than Carlito being used as a crash test dummy for Van Dam's wild spots.

ROH probably should have just jobbed Matt to Daniels then. If he walks instead of going through with it, fuck him. Not like he'll be back or anything.

The thing that disturbs me about this Carlito/Shelton feud is that they are jobbing out a guy with huge potential to a guy that frankly isn't any good. Carlito is a good talker, but man does he suck in the ring. I saw the same match at a house show and Carlito on offense is like watching paint dry. It's simply not believable to have him beat people when he has not ONE credible offensive move. No finisher, nothing. Smackdown is still a decent enough show. The Eddie/Rey stuff is consistently entertaining (though I worry what this secret will be). At least you have guys like the Mexicools who can have a fun midcard match. Just job the useless Orlando Jordan to Benoit and get a real US title scene going and that show is going to be just fine.

Man this must have happened fast because I saw Earl ref some matches at the Raw house show on Sat. It's tough to feel sorry for the guy though. Note that in this thread no one has said "Gee I feel sorry for Earl Hebner, he didn't do anything wrong and was such a great ref." They could bring in Fonzie if they wanted, have him do a corrupt ref gimmick or maybe have him enforce all the rules like he did in ECW.

I maintain that they try to deliberately make Raw suck when HHH is not on the show. I'm not sure why everyone thinks Raw got the better end of the draft...Cena isn't doing shit, just messing around with Jericho in a feud that no one thinks Jericho can win. Carlito is doing his lame HTM routine and getting DQed and counted out. Angle is still doing the Challenge, and the Big Show is now involved with Chris Masters. Van Dam is injured, who knows what he'll do when he gets back. Meanwhile on SMDN you have Batista cementing himself as champ with what will be a big win over JBL. Benoit is likely to win the US title and feud with the Cabinet. Orton is hurt but once back will likely feud with UT. Christian is at least getting a decent push and can veer into either the US scene or the world title scene. Smackdown is thus far doing a much better job of incorporating the new talent. Raw meanwhile has too many guys doing the same schtick: Angle and Masters doing challenges, Jericho and Carlito doing interview segments, etc.

By not doing much of note, I mean that Palmeiro really hasn't ever had that huge postseason run or anything real defining about him to say "Yeah that guy is a great HOF player." I mean Eddie Murray is a fairly boring, nothing happening guy too but at least I can say he hit home runs from both sides of the plate in one game. Maybe the O's will make the playoffs this year, then he'll get a decent shot. This isn't to say Palmeiro isn't a Hall of Famer. 3000 hits and 500 homers is automatic...what I think Bayless is whining about is that he simply isn't a truly GREAT player, but just a journeyman who was consistent and wasn't really dominant at his position. I think Eddie Murray had similar trouble, he wasn't a dominant player so there's some cognitive dissonance involved in putting him in the realm of Aaron and Mays. It's funny how perception works. Sandberg is going into the Hall this year. I don't think he has 3000 hits and might not have reached 300 homers. But the thing is he SEEMS like a better player than either Palmeiro or Murray. Perhaps that's because he was the dominant 2nd baseman of the era, and at least won the MVP in 84. Was Palmeiro on those Rangers teams in the 90s that mostly got swept by the Yankees in the playoffs?

Hey, Shawn jobbing never gets old to me, so count me in on him going down to the boot and leg. Maybe Hogan will do it TWICE in the match (Shawn kicks out first time) and that is what will put Shawn down. Downhome: Which do you prefer...Big Sleep or Murder, My Sweet? I'm assuming Big Sleep given the Martha Vickers clip.

I loved the trashing of Bayless on there. His rants about "It's not the Hall of Very Good, it's the HALL OF FAME!" are really hilarious. If you take a look at it, there are actually quite a few guys in the Hall that are just "very good" if you go by Bayless' definition. I guess the main knock against Palmeiro is that he really hasn't ever done anything of much note. He really is just a "very good" player, but what Bayless doesn't realize is that you can be a "very good" player and put up 500 homers and make the HOF. All it takes is hitting 35 or so homers for 15 seasons to get over 500. I don't think anyone would say that a guy who does that is much more than a very good player, but those pretty good years add up to quite the career when all is said and done.

I saw virtually all of the Benoit/Booker series, aside from the PPV matchup. I wasn't exactly so thrilled that I wanted the GAB 98 PPV. They were nice little TV matches, but nothing as good as even the chopped Benoit/Regal match from this past week. They were all about like what Benoit would do against most anyone that isn't inept.

If the house show I went to had been televised my bro and I were gonna bring two signs. Mine would say "Push Chris Masters!" and my brother's would say "Release Chris Masters!" Thing is, Masters wasn't even at the house show (and yes, mine was meant to be ironic).

I just went to a house show the other night and their ultra safe "two men in a ring working abdominal stretches" style is boring as fuck. I'm not saying every match has to be a wild ECW style brawl, but it'd be nice to have at least 1 match that was a bit different on a show.

If you go back to Hogan in his prime he's actually a lot better than given credit for. At WM 5 he had a solid match with Macho and I don't particularly think he was carried there. Sure Hogan would make the superhero comeback but his opponents always got a lot of offense against him and Hogan would sell stuff before his comeback. Hogan could also work a crowd during the match much better than Cena. That said, no way should they put the title on Hogan again. Hogan should just be used as a guest star at this point, a guy brought in to give someone a rub (like tagging with Cena on Raw, made him look important). Since he's too old and won't be around full time, there is no reason to put the title on him. With Matt I dunno. If Edge got the title via his Money in the Bank thing I can see Matt in a title feud easily enough. He could hopefully use that heat to catapult himself to the upper card for good, but it's tough to say.

Rando, I think you forget that RVD will be easily the #2 face on Raw once he gets back. Big Show and Kane have no real heat to speak of, and the whole Carlito feud killed Shelton's momentum dead. I say enough of heel champions. It's been done to death and really when does it ever draw any money? Especially long term? What is needed is a strong face champ who is given some chances to draw. If I did give Edge the title at some point it'd be just to pay off the Money in the Bank thing, and then he'd just be a short transition guy.

One I liked was from when Jericho had the title: "Jericho is a jobber!" I'm shocked no one has mentioned the one from Starrcade 97: "Ray Traylor Will Job For Food."

Yeah but most of those big drops were nothing movies anyway...like something opened at 2 million and then made zilch the next week. I mean Gigli opened at about 6 million and made maybe 1 million the next week. Wedding Crashers will be a bigger overall success than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I think. Charlie had a crazy 150 million budget, which it might struggle to make back. Crashers had a 40 million budget and should easily make a big profit.

Well, the Best of 7 series with Benoit has taken on a sort of lore that it really doesn't deserve. At its core it was two guys fighting 7 or actually 8 times on Thunder and shit just to get to....Fit Finlay. The irony is that Booker finally won there and beat Finlay, though I think Benoit/Finlay would have been the more logical matchup. The matches were all a blur to me really, I don't recall any one match being a classic. I think it was popular mainly because it did NOT involve the NWO and lord knows WCW viewers were looking for something decent that didn't involve the NWO at that point. WCW never had a clue where to take these angles long term, even if they were good. I think Booker got hurt after that and don't recall much he did until about 2000. Jericho/Malenko is a well regarded feud but I don't recall Malenko ever beating the shit out of Jericho in a final blowoff. It was just sorta like "Malenko is a ref, costs Jericho the cruiser title, Jericho forgets it and moves on to the TV title." You're telling me Deano couldn't have beat the fuck out of Jericho for making fun of his dead dad, instead of Juventud beating Jericho in a nothing match? Or the Eddie/Chavo feud....great stuff, did it go anywhere in particular? Not really. Chavo just goes nuts and rides Pepe for a while, but didn't do much. Eddie dicks around with the LWO and gets hurt in a car wreck. I know some of these angles were aborted due to injury but I doubt they would have had any payoff anyway.

Kiss Me Deadly is a movie that Europeans must like more than Americans. I remember seeing it a couple times and wondering what all the fuss was about. Just wondering but how could these stories be expanded? The 3 stories were filmed almost page for page, so there really isn't much from the books that could be added.

I meant it was sad that they put all that stuff on a nothing show like Vengeance to top the buyrate of a PPV of a company that is defunct. A show that didn't even have ONE match announced on TV. It's sad that they'd be that petty.

Yeah there were some good cruiser matches in late era WCW. I remember Chavo and Shane Helms having some good ones. Rey/Kidman vs. Elix Skipper/Kid Romeo was also a good match. Thing is, none of it meant anything. As far as the Invasion goes, I actually think it is somewhat underrated. The impossible nature of it killed the angle from the get go. You had WCW, a promotion that just went under and had nobody, going against the WWF juggernaut. People think of an Invasion angle circa 1998 when both promotions were fairly equal. A WWF/WCW feud at that time wouldn't ever work, just imagine trying to get Goldberg to lay down for Austin or vice versa (the dreaded time limit draw?). It would have been just as big of a mess. They probably should have brought in Bischoff for the Invasion instead of having Shane run WCW. But in the end there was no good way to do it. Everyone knew WCW sucked by that point, that the WWF had bought the company, and that they were really no serious threat. Take a look at the PPVs and matches during the Invasion (aside from the Invasion PPV itself which had RVD/Jeff and little else). The shows were actually pretty good, certainly better than the horrible crap being churned out the next year.

I just went to the Raw house show here in Louisville last night. Suffice to say nothing as cool as The Boogeyman went down here, just by the numbers "heels put feet on the ropes" type finishes with Carlito and Kerwin White.

If anything, RVD was initially helped by not stalling and playing to the crowd ad nauseum the way he did in ECW. Iggy, let me explain the difference. WCW used to have better actual wrestling up until about 1999 (aside from the fossil main events). I was just watching Rey/Eddie from Havoc 97 earlier today and was astounded at the wide array of moves. But the problem overall with WCW was that it was hard to give a shit about any of it, always was. Technically sound, but duller than shit. For instance, some of the early 90s stuff I've seen lately like Pillman vs. Zenk from WrestleWar 92. Technically sound....but it was boring as shit. WCW at its peak offered a wide variety of styles that the WWF simply didn't have. Frenetic lucha libre, Japanese cruiser stuff, violent hardcore brawling, technical wrestling, etc. By 2000 (the time you mentioned) no one really gave a shit anymore so guys were half assing it on TV...it also didn't help many of the better guys they had left for the WWF by that point. Anyway I like Booker fairly well but in some ways he is overrated. He's not all that crisp in the ring, some spots he simply cannot do well (the scissors sunset flip in the corner for instance....watch Booker clumsily do it then watch Jerry Lynn do it). Booker is mostly remembered for his TV title run in 1997-98 and the Best of 7 (actually 8) against Benoit. None of those matches was really all that memorable I didn't think. Think about it for a minute...how sad is it that the man's greatest work was a series of matches to get a shot at FIT FINLAY???