cabbageboy

40 mph? It's been so long since I played little league but that doesn't seem enormously out of the ordinary. I recall going to the 45 mph batting cages at that age. That league is so lame. Go to another league, kid. Then if you play them in an All Star game stick it to them, and if they try to back out of that game as well then it's a forfeit.

Outside of the amusing Piper/Mountie match the actual entire show of RR 92 isn't too amazing. Well and New Foundation vs. Orients is an okay tag match. That show is all about the Rumble.

That Mabel crap nearly forced me to give up on the WWF in the Summer of 1995. Such a phenomenally awful idea. The sad thing is that SS 95 is actually a pretty good PPV outside of that main event and maybe the women's title match. The problem it had is that too many matches are one major star going against a guy that....sucks. Diesel/Mabel, Bret/Yankem (decent match, bad gimmick for the future Kane), UT vs. Kama (another guy who got over after repackaging).

Didn't Scott Hall have the Jho surgery as well and did fairly well? Thing is Hall was on the downside of his career and wasn't really wrestling enough to put the neck in jeopardy. Angle tried to rush back and kept going full tilt after the surgery. This could be a blessing in disguise for Cena. He came back too early from the pec tear in a number of ways and frankly he hasn't had a real stellar year kayfabe speaking. After all the jobbing he's done this year he almost needs that time off to freshen up his character, not to mention get back to 100% physically.

Why does Statham have to be "The Guy" anyway? He could have a really solid career being this generation's star of violent actioners. He is good in stuff like Crank but it's in that seedy UK underworld milieu that he truly excels, like in the Ritchie films or The Bank Job. He should alternate between standard American action flicks and the gritty British crime stuff.

How many PPV title defenses did Nash have that weren't against either Bret or Shawn? Rumble was Bret, Survivor Series was Bret, at KOTR I think Diesel and Bigelow teamed for some lame match, it was Diesel and HBK teaming at another IYH. I guess there was the lone Bulldog match in Oct. 95. And of course the crappy Sid and Mabel matches, which I think are the ones that really tanked his title run.

Bear in mind that GAB 88 was the first PPV a lot of people got from the NWA since stuff like Starrcade and Bunkhouse Stampede were not widely seen outside of the Crockett area. And they give people THAT finish to the main event? I feel somewhat the same about the first Clash, since I hadn't seen much of the NWA and as a kid assumed Sting was going to win the title on that show. Why not just put the belt on Luger at GAB 88 and then if he tanked with the title they could have gone back to Flair at Starrcade?

I guess WWE didn't have the interest in Tomko that some assumed? I do think TNA really missed the boat on him though and it would be nice to see him back in TNA with a fresh start.

Is this going to be something requiring the Benoit/Edge type neck surgery? Or is it something a bit less serious? On the Scramble match front, why would anyone have picked Cena to win that match? The dude had zero momentum at all and frankly shouldn't have even been IN the match.

No way do they put the belt back on Batista in this silly Scramble match. In a bizarre way it would be like rewarding him for injuring Cena. Punk is actually getting over as champ, so why take the belt off him? After last week they flat out have to do a Jericho/Punk feud once this Michaels stuff plays out.

Yeah stuff like Hogan in 1983 and Luger in 1993 at SummerSlam are obvious picks but allow me to take a look at that RVD notion. I didn't think Van Dam was going to win at No Mercy 2001. It just wasn't quite time for it. In fact going in I assumed Austin would simply end up pinning Angle to blow off that feud and then it would spin off nicely into Austin vs. RVD for the title and control of The Alliance. Or maybe RVD is thrown out of the Alliance or maybe just decides to join the WWF side, who knows. That said, it was probably still a bit soon to put the belt on RVD. With HHH coming back his big run would have just meant he would be the Jericho job boy role for WM. It WAS in fact a good idea to give RVD the IC title for a while and make fans want to see him win the world title all the more. The ideal time to do this would have been at SummerSlam 2002. That Lesnar crap should have never happened, since that ironically enough did give Brock too much, too soon. Consider: RVD would have been in the top mix during the Invasion, but never quite got the gold. He would have had a decent IC title run. He would have somehow triumped (in my fantasy booking) over Lesnar in the KOTR finals. So now you can either put him in the main event of SS against either Taker (who RVD had come oh so close to beating on Raw in 2002) or the dream match with The Rock on PPV. And right there is where they should have put it on RVD. It pays off his 2001-02 push, and they could have put the IC title on Lesnar at the July PPV with a screwy win over Van Dam, with the idea of setting up a bigger rematch later for the world title.

Here's the reality about Taz: He actually stayed in ECW way too long. As in too long after his job out of the World title there. Once he dropped the title to Awesome in that 3 way, he should have flat out walked. In my opinion a guy owes a promotion a title match loss to get a belt off him so he can leave, but he doesn't owe them being buried and jobbed totally out. Especially with Taz, who had the gimmick of being this unbeatable badass guy. That match with RVD at N2R 99 was a big time burial, as RVD treated him like a jobber and the match said "See, if these guys had fought Van Dam would just kick his ass." In other words, Taz had lost that aura of invincibility. And once you take that away from him, what did he really have left? He's too short to be credible against the top WWF stars of the day and they also took away his array of suplexes to boot.

Well, it'll be the epic Louisville vs. Kentucky battle for the Governor's Cup here. I have no idea what to expect but the local paper has U of L going 7-5 on the season, UK going 6-6. Frankly I'm astounded that UK could even go .500 this year. All they had was Andre Woodson last year. I'm not expecting greatness from U of L this year by any means, but Cantwell should be a decent replacement for Brohm at QB. Now if the defense can improve.....

It doesn't shock me to see Tropic Thunder on top again but I thought Death Race would at least be #2. Thing is (which I noted in the Comments thread) Jason Statham is the sort of guy that is a DVD rental type star. As in nothing he's in looks so captivating that people go to the theater to see it, but he's well liked enough that a lot of people will rent or buy a DVD with him in it.

Well in the end WCW fucked up the cruisers and Benoit, etc. as well. But at least those guys provided some solid wrestling and perhaps could have main evented. I still think Goldberg would have gotten over in 1997-98 regardless of this and maybe they could have put him vs. Raven's Flock in a more extended main event angle.

WCW would have been just fine without Hall and Nash. In fact they probably would still be in business if they had kept the various cruiser guys strong and featured a better main event scene. You can only get by on bad main events with run ins for so long. People forget that WCW actually won the ratings several weeks in late 1995 and early 1996. I took a look at the ratings for 1995. Nitro beat Raw in the 16 head to head weeks 8 times and lost to Raw 6 times, with 2 ties. In 1996 Raw did win 11 to Nitros 10 in the head to head matchups, but WCW had the NBA screwing up their schedule for a while there.

See, the problem with that hypothetical booking is that I don't see WCW even bothering to do another heel faction if Flair was there. See what I mean? The Horsemen had become a booking crutch by 1991, constantly there feuding with the top faces. The sudden loss of Flair jolted WCW into trying something, anything different (even if it was another heel group). In retrospect I quite like the Dangerous Alliance. They formed, beat some ass for a while, but ultimately were defeated and broke up. The only thing they really lacked was a true main event level guy...I guess the closest thing was Rude but he was US champ at that point.

The amusing part of that is that the NWA wanted girls 14-17 to register for the RNR contest. There was another that was more in the "win a date!" vein for females over 18, but man I can't help but think that the 14-17 year old contest is a strange idea. Wonder what happened with that?

Vader's time was simply up in WCW. It wasn't so much a case of not wanting to pay him, but he'd jobbed out to Hogan and had no heat left. So over whatever trumped up reason (fighting with Orndorff, etc.) they cut him. With Mero, I don't know the whole story there. I assume his contract was just up with WCW and the WWF simply wanted him more. In Foley's book he said it wasn't so much a deal of not getting paid as much as not being appreciated or used properly. In particular he felt they didn't capitalize on his feud with Vader and finally said the hell with it and didn't sign a new deal. Austin's time in WCW was simply up by 1995. He had been hurt a lot and was so far out of any title scene by that point that being released was the best thing that could happen. He needed a new approach and a new surrounding. It was that very rejection by WCW that brought out the Stone Cold character.

How sad is it then that Harley Race actually was in a title match at the last AWA taping before then went under? That match wasn't really too bad, yet again with the lame countout finish. The promotion was going under for crying out loud, give us a finish.

Hermit, I took a look at that link and was amused by it. Morrison according to that lives about 15 mins. from me, and I have to admit it's a bit of a surprise since that area isn't exactly where I'd figure a guy who is likely making 6 figures would live. Edit: Actually I checked it out a bit more and it's likely a pretty cool condo.

I saw Shelton or MVP bust out the dual nerve pinch on SD last night and it really reminded me of The Trooper. Wonder if he's been studying his old AWA?

That Sabu and RVD comment is hysterical. Is that even true? Anyway, in regards to Flair I don't think him leaving hurt WCW much at all. People jump to the conclusion that it hurt WCW, but Flair wasn't drawing shit by 1991 anyway so who cared? He didn't want to put over others and wasn't drawing, so why should Jim Herd bend over backwards to appease Flair? Herd came up with idiotic ideas and those goofy notions obscure the fact that his hypothesis was correct: Flair was stale and WCW needed to rebuild around younger guys. The WWF would have been fine. At the end of the day, all it would mean is Flair wouldn't face Hogan at all on house shows and wouldn't feud with Savage in 1992. They would probably keep Hogan, Sid, and UT in the top mix and Macho/Jake would have been a bitter feud lasting until WM. Just not blow it off at SNME. Savage was toast by the end of 1992 anyway in terms of being a draw for the WWF, and with Hogan leaving they could still go with Warrior coming back as a top angle. Maybe forget the Warrior/Shango trash and have a serious feud with Macho culminating at SS. Or maybe just push Bret Hart a few months earlier. The WWF had plenty of options. WCW with Flair? I don't think it would have been very good. Flair had simply exhausted all the feud possibilities. Sting, Luger, Windham, etc. He had already feuded at length with all of them and basically if he had stayed it would have been more of that. More Horsemen. Maybe he could have feuded with Rude earlier than he eventually did, maybe Vader. Of course maybe Herd wouldn't have gotten fired as well.

You know this might sound crazy but I actually dug the Texas Hangmen vs. Tokyo Bullets 2/3 falls match. It was all the more hilarious since the Bullets actually went over in a bizarre finish.

I agree, I bet I've seen it 5 times in the past from renting it. If you are into the Bulldog, this is your tape.