cabbageboy

Like last week I'll separate this into predictions and answer questions in a 2nd post. Early Chicago at Atlanta: This is a really tough game to call, since both teams are baffling. Falcons are pretty tough at home though so I will take them to somehow win by 3. Miami at Houston: Houston has played so well the past 2 weeks only to blow it both times. I think that has to start wearing on them and the Dolphins win this by 10. Baltimore at Indianapolis: For some reason I just can't see the Colts losing 3 straight at home. I'm not sure how they will win this exactly since they have looked god awful thus far, but I'll take Indy by 4. Detroit at Minnesota: Vikings might be getting it back on track and playing the hideous Lions will only help further. Vikings by 14. Oakland at New Orleans: Saints can't afford this to be a loss, especially to the mess that is the Oakland Raiders. Saints by 7. Cincinnati at N.Y. Jets: Bengals just can't seem to buy a win even though they have played pretty well in several games. Can't see them winning this one either though. Favre will make enough plays and the Jets win by 6. Carolina at Tampa Bay: I'm not quite sold on the Panthers yet, but I'm not sure what Tampa is doing at QB right now. If it's Garcia I'll take the Bucs at home by 7. St. Louis at Washington: After a rough early schedule it gets a bit easier for the Redskins. Washington by 21. Late Jacksonville at Denver: Jacksonville is a bit of a tough luck team and the Broncos are a wildly lucky team, especially at home. Denver by 3 (what else?). Dallas at Arizona: Cardinals just baffle me, so who knows what to think of this. Cowboys don't really look on their game right now though, so I'll take Arizona in a shootout 35-31. Philadelphia at San Francisco: I gave the Niners the benefit of the doubt last week, but not again. Philly by 8. Green Bay at Seattle: Both of these teams need a win. But man Seattle is just...not good. So I'll go with the Packers by 6 somewhat reluctantly. SNF New England at San Diego: Okay seriously enough of this Matt Cassel crap. Chargers by 14 since they desperately need this one. Football on Monday night N.Y. Giants at Cleveland: This should be vicious. Browns are still really crappy even though they did manage to beat the even worse Bengals. Giants by 17.

That was an exciting 4 game series. I too was baffled as to why the Angels did that squeeze play in such a situation when they just had 1 out and any sort of flyball to the outfield scores the run. Going in I would have thought the Angels would be the better team at manufacturing a run. But really now, what's up with the Red Sox celebrating like crazy over winning a division series? The Rays haven't even been to the playoffs before and didn't go this wild. I'd like to see the Rays go to the World Series but somehow I have a feeling the league will be desperate to get Sox/Dodgers. Let's face it, if home field holds out the WS would be Rays vs. Phillies and that sounds truly bizarre.

I still think Bret vs. Shawn was a truly bizarre match since there was literally no face in it for the fans to side with. I guess the Canadians cheered for Bret, but for the US fans I don't see how there was anyone to cheer in that match.

Yeah I noticed a lot of that on this show tonight. Odd stuff like Regal being the timekeeper and Orton being the commentator for the main event. While Regal did at least attack Batista (but why?) I fail to see why Jericho would insert Orton into this at all considering he could care less about either man in the match. Have to admit I'm not real sure where HBK goes from here. I thought they might do a feud with Cade but he flat out squashed Cade tonight.

Appaloosa could have been better than it was. I do agree that at times the film seems really slow moving, like it needed some tightening and as it went on Ed Harris' character starts doing a bunch of things that seem completely out of step with what we had seen from him early in the film. I suppose that was the point, that Zellweger turned him into something of a pussy, but as it went on I gravitated more to Viggo.

Eh I doubt it. SD was bound to drop a bit going to a network that a lot of people have no access to at the moment. If it bounces back to the CW level then it's no biggie, but if it declines past that then it's time to worry. As far as Hogan goes, I don't know if he ever technically went back to being simply Hulk Hogan again. Maybe it was a deal with Marvel not wanting WCW to use the "Hulk" name? I seem to remember him being technically still called Hollywood Hogan but was basically just doing his old act. Either way I'm not going to get on 24/7 for listing it that way.

These posts hint at something that may well have hurt Luger in the long run, namely that he did so many heel turns during his career that eventually people tuned out. Although most of his WWF work from 1993-95 was mediocre at least the guy found a stable character in the All American schtick that was reasonably over. I did enjoy his tweener work in 1995-96 WCW though. Along with Diesel's antics at that same time on Raw I wonder if these two innovated the tweener concept.

Yeah, I am quite intrigued at these shows in retrospect when it comes to Bret. At the time I didn't notice any of this because I didn't know what to look for and didn't really look much at net wrestling sites until after Montreal.

This show was heading towards WCW 1999 level crap during the first half but I will say that the last two matches delivered the goods big time to save this PPV. HHH vs. Jeff was a really good match with a hot finish and Jericho/HBK was a terrific main event with a truly brilliant finish that I've thought about over the years (two guys grabbing the belt at once). Matt Hardy vs. Mark Henry was actually pretty decent and probably the best thing on the show before the main events. Enjoyed the psychology of Matt working over Henry's leg to cut the big man down to size. Women's title match was of course total junk but at least Beth retained. I would have had a mega rant ready if they actually had put the belt on Candice. Rey vs. Kane was also silly and made me notice that this PPV was full of too many dull big men in the ring vs. either each other or a smaller worker. The finish cool looking but showed that they had no idea who to put over with the mask stip. The whole MVP/Orton/Priceless/Punk/Kofi medley was pointless and once again these long interview segments should NOT be on a PPV. With all these guys there why not actually book them to wrestle on the show? I can see some value in MVP being traded to Raw for Lance Cade. Batista vs. JBL was amusing and thankfully short given their bleh matches in the past. Not really PPV caliber stuff, but at least Batista went over strong. JBL's promo was fun after the match, but the Cryme Tyme stuff was pointless. Again, if these guys are there why not actually book them? UT vs. Show was pedestrian stuff, watchable I guess but if you've seen these guys wrestle once, you've seen it a hundred times. They have got to stop with the goofy MMA inspired knockout finishes, cause it just doesn't work in pro wrestling. The ref needs to raise a guy's hand 3 times at least, or just pin the guy. Anyway, both title matches were really good stuff and make the show a moderately enjoyable show.

This Red Sox/Angels series isn't shocking in the least. The Red Sox own them in the playoffs to begin with and stats wise the Angels were simply not a 100 win team. Anyway it looks like we're going to see Rays/Red Sox at this point which is cool since that's the series I wanted to see.

In the long run I don't see it being much different. He still would have feuded with Simmons and Sting, it still wouldn't have been a real successful title run, and come 1992 he would have bolted. In truth it was already too late in Luger's WCW run to draw money with him as champion. He had chased the belt for so long with no success that it was anticlimactic when he did win. I think he should have won the title from Flair at GAB 88. That was the time to put it on him even if Flair regained at Starrcade. Luger just needed some sort of title win then to cement his status and it never happened. In fact he never even got the Sting "time limit draw" treatment. Seriously how could anyone book something like that blood stoppage finish at GAB 88 and not expect to go under and have to sell to Turner? Luger's makeshift 1990 feud with Flair did him no favors either since he was a blatant placeholder until Sting got back from injury. With that said, Luger did have a fresh start in the WWF circa 1993 and people were desperately wanting to cheer for SOMEONE as an uber face in the post Hogan era. Luger's face turn was bizarre but even then I think people wanted to cheer for him. The match was set, the timing was as good as it was going to get for Luger, yet they still didn't pull the trigger on his title win. In fact the booking of SS 93 is such crap that it hurts some decent wrestling on the show. Luger came off like such a moron since it was his one title shot and yet he was satisfied to take the countout win and then jumped up and down cheering like a fool. After that, Luger was toast as a top guy in the WWF. Fans gravitated back to Bret at that point and in a lot of ways that Summerslam was the end of the superhero babyface era. The irony of Luger's career is that after being denied in all of these title matches he probably deserved to win, he actually did get the title briefly in 1997 (from Hogan) in a pointless run. The way WCW was building to Sting/Hogan at Starrcade I don't think Hogan should have done a job for anyone until that.

I had no problems with the HD feed. In fact MyNetwork was vastly superior to the CW's HD feed. It didn't have any of the blurry pixelation that CW had.

I'll put it this way about X Factor's music: As a song on the radio it might be somewhat passable, but as ring music it's as bad as something could ever be. It just killed the heat of any building. Regarding Glacier, wasn't Rob Van Dam supposed to be his tag partner for that angle vs. Wrath and Mortis in 1997, but RVD didn't sign with WCW and Ernest Miller ended up getting that spot? Glacier/RVD vs. Wrath/Mortis could have been a pretty cool match. That whole storyline is one thing that would have been much better if Russo had booked it.

Is that going to be the show where Dusty beats Flair for the belt? Or is that one they will show at all, or maybe just a highlight of it?

Thing is, didn't the Freebirds leave the AWA at the same time as the LOD? If I recall Hayes on the Legends Roundtable he basically said to Gagne that the Freebirds were finishing up one night in Denver, where they cost the Warriors the tag titles to Jimmy Garvin and Steve Regal (not the same Regal we know). Losing the Road Warriors and Freebirds at once seriously hurt the AWA, in fact I don't think they ever drew any real money after that.

Vlad will be eating a Pedigree in due time, don't worry about it. That's one relief about HHH being on SD, you know these tedious pushes will all end in him beating that ass. Fun show tonight and I was glad to see these various champion vs. champion matches have a finish and not just the typical DQs. The women's match was amusing to me since I wondered about the logic of having that Raw vs. SD match and then at the PPV a nothing crap match with Beth Phoenix vs. Candice. Regarding the IC title, I think it was a very relevant belt up until it was buried in late 2002 (aside from the run of dreck in 1999). Once the IC title was brought back in 2003 along with the US title though I would say the US title has clearly been the better belt.

Yeah Hogan had gone back to the red and yellow maybe a month before this. I think it was the very night that Jericho debuted on Raw actually. In regards to the kid friendly lack of blood....what kids don't want to see some blood in a violent match? If a kid doesn't want to see that sort of thing then I doubt wrestling would be something of interest.

Yeah I do wonder what these guys are exactly hoping to get out of this lawsuit. While I do agree with what they are saying for the most part, I'm not sure if they are the guys to file such a suit. Maybe if some current workers did it I could see WWE having to make some changes.

I'd like to say I am shocked at this series, but the way it's gone down....nah, not really. And yes, I fell for it big time, with the whole "It's been 100 years!" thing and also that the Cubs have the best record in the NL. But there's just nothing from the first two games that would make anyone think they could come back from this 0-2 hole. We're not talking about losing 3-2 on a Manny HR. These have been two beatdowns by the Dodgers, with the Cubs looking horrible and clueless. There might be something to that theory that the Cubs need some guys who are wacky idiots. The Red Sox certainly had that in 2004, along with a guy like Schilling who basically said "I don't care about a curse, I'm here to win a World Series." Or like the White Sox in 2005, who had Ozzie Guillen doing his schtick and attracting all the attention and thus the team went out and won. The Cubs don't really have this mindset.

I don't know if it was exactly a hometown deal but I think the Hardys should have won the titles at Summerslam 2000. It was in Raleigh, NC. Yet for some bizarre reason E & C retained there, and the Hardys didn't win the belts until the next PPV.

Thing is, I don't recall that Pillman angle having much to do with the past. In fact I just recently read that Pillman and Terri dated back in the early 90s in WCW. Didn't have much to do with the 1997 angle though.

Yeah, I understand that Watts was planning to run in those areas some day and hence paying those stations, but why? I listened to an interview with the One Man Gang a while back (of all people) and he said even back then he felt it was foolish for all of these promoters to try and expand nationally to compete with Vince and that Watts needed to focus on his backyard. Ironically enough one promotion that lasted for years after the expansion era was Memphis/USWA and they mainly focused on their main towns. Jarrett did buy out WCCW and when he saw it really wasn't working trying to run out of both Memphis and Dallas he moved everything to Memphis.

I never thought Glacier was all that bad actually. Anyway, wasn't Mongo supposed to be in the JJ/Angle match as the enforcer until Foley signed and they put him in that role?

Yeah the Melanie Pillman part of Raw was something I skipped since I remember thinking it was awful to put her on the show in that painful situation. What's wild is that the rest of Raw was such a good show that it completely took my mind off Pillman dying.

Interesting maps. Is there some kind of law that says the Cowboys have to be the main game on at 4:00 every week? They're just going to squash the Bengals, so it's not like it's a major game. Ah well, Colts vs. Texans is what I'll watch. Though a part of me wishes Ravens/Titans was on instead. That one should be a man's game. What's the over/under on how many guys are carted off the field in that one?