cabbageboy

The NWA could certainly draw better ratings with a decent time on WGN. The station does shit ratings mainly because aside from the Cubs they don't have much. A wrestling show could change that. I dunno about going for the Monday night slot though, but it might be an interesting slot for those fed up with HHH.

I'm baffled as to why anyone outside of MA would want Boston to win this series. The Celtics have no heat whatsoever, if they advance they are a Pistons sweep waiting to happen (ok maybe it goes 5). Pacers/Pistons would at least be a blood feud. Why the Alonzo hate? Hell, Van Gundy grabbing his legs and being stomped is one of the highlights of 90s basketball, haha.

My one problem is in the odd execution of Eddie's Rick Martel heel turn. Usually when a guy does that he just says fuck it and walks. Eddie was almost too conflicted, it was as though he kept having to think about it before finally just walking out. Eddie has to go into full blown Evil Eddie mode now. No tongue in cheek silly heel tactics, I'm talking full blown fuckhole mode.

What exactly is this improvement that Bradshaw has made? He's still shit in the ring, the only reason anyone thinks otherwise is the occasional guy like Eddie who will go out there and damn near kill himself to make the guy look good. When not facing someone who won't kill himself or have a match booked with ludicrous amounts of interference, the guy fucking blows. Watch that shit vs. UT, or the Cena match. He's pretty good on the mic, always was even in the APA. But the guy was such a 2nd tier bum for so long that I can't ever take him seriously in a main event. Hell I consider him along the lines of Bob Holly or someone (Holly is actually a much stronger in ring performer).

Heh, 60s AIP stuff is kick ass. I dunno about the 50s stuff though, wasn't most of it just JD type movies with John Ashley? It boggles my mind that John Ashley actually starred in stuff. I actually heard that Samuel Arkoff started AIP by ripping off Ed Wood. He was Wood's lawyer circa Bride of the Monster and of course Wood got in debt so Arkoff paid him practically nothing for it and reaped the profits. After that he started AIP and the rest is B movie history. I think in about 1980 or so Arkoff sold AIP to someone and it became Orion. This has nothing to do with WWE Films really, but hell I think Vince would take the kind of profits American International used to have.

It's hard to place Reggie Miller really since his teams have rarely been truly superb. Yeah he was in 1 finals where they were the designated jobber for the Lakers, but otherwise most of his career has consisted of "Reggie goes nuts and wins a game, then his team loses the series." He's a clutch player, but it's hard to be clutch EVERY game on a so so team.

I didn't say that Eddie was more over at this moment. After all they are turning him heel and it seems like the guy hasn't won a match in 6 months. So of course Cena would currently be a little more over...he's actually getting a PUSH. Eddie has remained quite over despite jobbing out to everyone the past few months. If Cena was in Eddie's jobbing role his heat would be bye bye. I guess in an odd way it's to their credit for realizing that some guys can take being jobbed out, and others can't.

Why would Two Princes be a guilty pleasure? That's a great song. Anyone mentioned the TATU song All the Things She Said?

I'm not sure what happens with the Suns' court. I used to really like their court with the purple on it and all that, but now it has no color to it and bizarre shades of the wood. That said it'd be nice if the Suns won it all this year. They have to be the best franchise that has never won. Even the friggin Golden St. Warriors have won it once.

I couldn't really tell that much by the trailer. I have to admit seeing Dennis Hopper in a zombie movie warms my heart however. I can't decide if I want him to live or whether I wanna see him overact in a death scene. Hell, John Lequizamo is in it too...all they need is Bob Hoskins in there somewhere and it'd be Super Mario Bros. old home week.

Cena isn't the most over guy in the company, he's just the guy they are pushing. There's a big difference there. Put him against an Eddie Guerrero in a face/face situation and I think the crowd would gravitate towards Eddie. 1. Eddie is a better wrestler by far and even a dumb mark would know it. 2. Eddie has more credibility. Hell, put Cena against RVD when he gets back and see what happens. I think the crowd would gravitate towards RVD, or at best for Cena would be confused and not know who to pull for. In a wilder idea, if they wanted to revive the Cena/Carlito feud with a more over Carlito I think you might see Carlito get a shocking amount of support.

Thing is about the Jags is that they didn't lose to ANYONE besides the Titans that year. I hated that whole Tenn. Super Bowl run that year. It began with a fluke garbage miracle play, then continued when they got the Colts into a boring shitfest (bear in mind we could have had Colts/Rams in the SB that year), and then beat up on the hopeless Jags. Ironically the SB itself was one of the best ever, it's just that I didn't want to see the Titans in it.

Time for some Kentucky area basketball, more of these are UK than U of L. --Laettner making the shot of course, but it didn't bother me as much as others since Duke was really the better team anyway. --I was always more disgusted with UK losing to Michigan in the 93 FF. I've always found the Fab 5 incredibly overrated and to this day and to this day don't understand how the hell UK didn't own them by 20. UK was just destroying people in that tourney, beating Wake by like 35 and Florida St. by 25, while Michigan was getting lucky as shit every single round. I was sure UK would trash them. --The single most upsetting UK defeat however was the 97 finals loss to Zona. Pitino didn't play Derek Anderson (who had basically recovered from injury but Pitino didn't wanna risk it), and now Lute Olson gets to carry that 1 title to his grave. --As far as U of L goes, I am a bit young to remember the early 80s FF losses. I'm sure if I had been alive in 75 that UCLA game would have about killed me. This year's FF vs. Illinois didn't upset me all that much since they were better. I'd have to say the 1996 Sweet 16 vs. Wake was a truly awful defeat. U of L was up 5 with about 2 mins left and Tim Duncan scored the last 6 points (including getting away with a charge) and Wake won 60-59. It was sickening since U of L would have played UK in the Elite 8 if we'd held on. I ranted after the game "Why the hell did Wake have to win that? They're just going to get murdered by UK now! We would have had a puncher's chance!" And of course UK murdered them the next round and made Duncan look like a little bitch.

I'm not 100% on this but I think Cena will start feeling the backlash once he faces people the fans have some respect for. No one in their right minds would cheer bums like Kenzo Suzuki (where'd he go anyway?) or Renee Dupree over Cena, nor JBL for that matter. But what happens when Cena faces someone like Christian who is rapidly gaining support? Or faces Eddie, now that Eddie is basically a heel? Cena's gimmick by definition limits his appeal, since there are a huge amount of people that dislike wiggers. Thus cheering him is something that people are doing against their will at some subconscious level.

The Heat trashed the Nets again tonight with Alonzo Mourning going for 21 (!). Combine that with Detroit cruising past the 76ers again and they might as well just book it now: Miami vs. Detroit for the East. Here's the thing about the NBA: No one really plays truly scary D, so this stuff of saying "The Pistons won because they play great D" is silly. If you compare the best college teams they're much, much better at playing defense (intense full court pressure, weird fucked up zones, etc). Most pro playing is a bunch of pick and roll stuff or 1 on 1 "I can take this guy" play. Some games really ARE a case of really bad offense, like that Spurs game the other night. It's not that the Nuggets did anything all that amazing defensively, the Spurs just couldn't score. Couldn't hit a 3, couldn't hit a layup, couldn't do shit. These guys are pros, they are paid to put the ball in the hoop.

I have to think some of this is due to ESPN having a lack of programming due to hockey being on strike. Thus we get these college baseball and softball games out of nowhere. I don't remember much ever seeing college baseball unless it was the CWS.

Yeah, some guys used to go down to ECW and they were always glad to have a name WWF guy. It gives a wrestler a chance to get a new gimmick, and also gives him street cred due to the ECW connection. Something like this might help Val, but the thing is he's been around for so long and is so identified with his one gimmick that it's almost impossible to repackage him. With Al Snow no one really cared about him or had a fixed image, so when he busted out the Head it was like seeing a new wrestler. When I first saw him on ECW with the Head I didn't even make the connection that he was in the New Rockers, know what I mean?

What I hope they don't do with Christian is the following: Have him get drafted by SMDN and then show up, challenge Cena, job his first week there...and then have nothing else to do. And you just KNOW that'd be the case most likely.

Cube is a lot better than Vinnie boy, and I think this XXX will do just fine without him. The only marketing drawback I can think of is that with both Cube and Samuel it looks like a big budget blaxploitation flick, haha.

Val is better than the Brooklyn Brawler. Brawler was always a bum, even during his one push he was essentially a jobber. Hell, Val was IC champ a few times and very well could have been in the main event had they figured out what to do with him about 6 years ago. The whole RTC angle basically killed the heat and/or career or anyone associated with it. Godfather, Bull Buchanan, Ivory....all released. Stevie Richards is mostly injured or on Heat, and is THIS close to being released. Val is a jobber and probably should be released. It's just an angle that most everyone loathed, unlike the Ministry which lots of people liked in a cornball sort of way.

Good point. Last night I thought to myself "Christian is rocking tonight and yet once he jobs here to Batista....what is he going to do on the PPV??" The fact that he doesn't have a match to speak of suggests to me that he very well could be going to SMDN.

I have to admit this...Houston is surprising the hell out of me. I joked last year that the world was dying to see a Heat/Rockets finals for the Van Gundy vs. Van Gundy angle, but by god maybe it COULD happen. Back to that crappy Heat/Hornets series. My brother and I still rag on that series, he's like "That was the worst I've EVER seen pros play, guys just dribbled off their feet, threw it away, just brutal." Aside from maybe the occasional decent Dwayne Wade moment, it was unwatchable. Hell, that Pacers/Pistons series last year was god awful too. It's odd since the Pistons/Nets series was actually better than I thought it'd be (people SCORING???) but man those Pacers/Pistons games were unwatchable. At least now they realize that if you're gonna play unwatchable crap, at least have some violent fighting and gooning to draw money.

I'm not saying Val is a bad wrestler or anything (he's decent). But the thing is after a point a gimmick loses its shelf life. I mentioned Tatanka earlier as a good example of someone who was over for a certain amount of time, then his gimmick got stale and they got rid of him. A roster has to be turned over after a certain point. Having Val around doing his embarrassing, dated 1998 schtick is like having the Godfather around today. Lushus, the problem with your idea is that at the end of the day he'd still be Val Venis and no one gives a shit if he's tired of being a joke. It's just a case of him being so identified with a gimmick that he can't ever escape it.

Yeah, Viscera is getting over in the Mark Henry type way, namely as a 400-500 lb. black dude hitting on chicks and all that. Viscera is perhaps more bizarre and amusing, since there's no way in hell Trish would ever have anything to do with him (whereas Mark Henry making the moves on a mannish Chyna isn't THAT implausible). Anyway, Val is toast at this point no matter where he goes. He was always kind of a 2nd rate Rick Rude anyway, but the thing is that Rude never had such a cheesy gimmick of being a porn star.

I dunno, I can't see anyone much buying WM just so they can see Austin fuck off in Piper's Pit. Not like he actually wrestled or did something constructive. And Hogan wasn't technically hyped as being on the PPV beforehand, but I'd say people had a notion he'd be there. Truthfully I think people just buy WM because it's WM.