cabbageboy

Quite an enjoyable little show, as ECW has been of late. Evan Bourne (Sydal) is one of my favorite guys to watch in WWE right now. Main event was pretty good after a sluggish midsection. Ortiz' finisher in OVW was called The Boneyard Boogie in case anyone was wondering. One thing that made me chuckle was "Gavin" Spears. I guess there's room for only one Shawn in WWE land. But why not another S name? Shane Spears...ah crap there's already Shane McMahon (but why not use it anyway, Shane is barely on TV anymore). Or maybe Scott Spears? But Gavin? Are they trying to make sure he has no hope of getting over?

Gotta love Vickie wanting to make up to the fans by setting up the same ultra TNAish main event for the SD side of Unforgiven. I really hope that neither world title changes hands in a match like this. Yet how absurd would it be for both Punk and HHH to both retain given those odds? I actually think HHH might be more likely to lose since MVP seems like the type to screw someone over to get that first title win. I wouldn't put the belt on Jeff in something like this and of course guys like Kendrick and Shelton are non contenders. Anyone know what's up with this UT storyline at this point? Let's see: UT destroyed Edge and sent him to hell, Vickie and Edge have had a falling out, La Familia hates Edge, but UT still goes after La Familia? What is La Familia going to do in all this, become like the FBI did while feuding with the Taker?

I'm trying to think of some really crappy WWF PPVs from 1999. WM was a pretty mediocre show. Over the Edge is of course the Owen death PPV so I don't even want to rate that one at all either way. KOTR 99 is a pretty mediocre show. The July PPV I can't even remember to be honest. Unforgiven I recall having some decent stuff on it. No Mercy had a fun card if I recall it correctly. Survivor Series I don't remember being all that good. And Armageddon had of course the fun Vince/HHH match with Steph's turn, as well as the Kat showing tits.

I would assume that Hebner and his wife adopted her from overseas?

One thing that irked me last night (not greatly but a little) was the total no sell of titles by Mickie James and Kofi Kingston. Both of them came out cheering and jumping around like all was well in the world, never mind the fact that they both lost titles the night before in a ridiculous mixed tag. Kofi in particular should have been ultra pissed since he wasn't even beaten at all.

I actually recall liking Rey/Sabu from ONS until the ultra goofy finish. Anyway the reason Punk is drawing comparisons to Rey is that both guys are smaller than most of their opponents and they have lost non title matches. Rey obviously more than Punk so far, but the thing is this is no way to book a face champ. A world champ losing non title matches is a heel style of booking, kind of like Ric Flair in the NWA.

The Brewers might just be trying to get the most bang for their buck with Sabathia. He isn't likely to sign a new deal with them, so maybe the upper management isn't terribly concerned about his long term future a few years from now.

Really? At least they are consistent. Guess I just didn't remember hearing about any protests There's Something About Mary drew at the time.

Luger's whole initial face run was badly conceived and of course ended up being badly booked. There was no hint of him turning face at all before July 1993. No encounter between him and Yoko on TV to set it up. He was quite literally the Narcissist at KOTR and then showed up on the battleship to slam Yoko. I don't think it helped matters any that Luger didn't really DO anything to get a title shot in terms of winning matches. He mostly campaigned for a shot by riding in a bus as though he was a politician or something. But that SS 93 booking still baffles me to this day. If Vince seriously wanted to create a new Hogan, Luger should have gone over Yoko cleanly and decisively. I don't recall Hogan chasing the Iron Sheik for 6 months and winning by countout or DQ. He just beat the dude.

Late era WCCW might be more depressing than fun though, so I don't know how much I want to see that stuff. Old school Global action though? I'm there. Used to watch it every day when I got home from school, which I couldn't do with the AWA since I was in elementary school for most of their ESPN run and seemingly never got home until 5:00 or so.

Everyone in WCW started to lose their fanbase by mid 1999. The entire promotion was completely booked into the ground at that point. Was there anyone who went into the Fall of 1999 with their heat intact?

Okay hold up....how exactly is Punk beating Jericho at Unforgiven going to happen when Punk is mired in this "Hardcore title 24/7" style match with 4 other guys and Jericho is bound to be jobbing to Michaels (if Shawn graces us with his presence)? This is the bizarre dilemma Jericho faces in some ways: He should be in the title scene, especially after a non title win. But in the end, we all know he has to job out to HBK, because well, that's how it goes. The thing I found absurd is that they actually bothered to protect hometown boy D-Lo Brown tonight in Chicago and yet jobbed out the obviously more popular world champ Punk. Why not just job out D-Lo and do the Cade run in for a DQ in the main event? WWE just doesn't know how to book a guy as a plucky underdog champ anymore. How hard is it to watch tapes of Bret Hart circa 1992-93?

Mikey vs. Kidman was a pretty solid match from Uncensored. It's not the best WCW cruiser action out there, but it was decent.

I don't get why Batista would turn heel. Cena is in much more need of a heel turn at this point and I am tired of the whole merchandise argument. If the guy has a cool shirt, people will buy it anyway. The NWO had one of the biggest selling shirts ever and they were total heels.

I'll rebook the AWA circa 1983 right now if you like: Hogan beats Bockwinkel. Hogan gets the belt. Hogan draws a ton of money for Gagne.

I'm already being threatened with being punched and I haven't even posted in this thread? Thoughts on the various matches: --Opener was okay, just par for the course of seemingly every Jeff Hardy match these days. He seems to be channeling Macho circa 1995 in terms of opening hot, then getting his ass kicked for 90% of the match, then hitting a comeback move, and either winning or losing from there. I would assume this booking would now lead to MVP going after HHH, since they can nicely slip into Jeff vs. Shelton for the US title. --I enjoyed the mixed tag quite a bit and thankfully they didn't do anything ultra stupid with it like put the women's belt on Santino or the IC on Beth Phoenix. Hopefully Kingston gets a rematch since he didn't even lose his belt at all. Santino isn't the greatest wrestler but he may well be the most entertaining guy on WWE's roster. --The Michaels/Jericho angle was excellent stuff, but it had zero business being on PPV. People pay to see matches, not a Raw angle. This was frustrating given the next match. --Matt Hardy vs. Mark Henry. The ECW title continues to get dumped on by WWE creative. I mean a 30 second match with a DQ finish? WTF?? I assumed as it happened that Teddy Long would simply come out and toss Atlas and restart the match but that never happened. Either quit booking any ECW matches on PPVs or give these guys some semblance of respect in the booking. --Punk vs. JBL. This was what it needed to be. Punk needed a win, he got it. I would have preferred it be Jericho since the match would have been better most likely, but whatever. Now let's move Punk on to something more useful. --HHH vs. Khali. See above. Obviously this wasn't going to be any good, but it served the purpose it was booked to have. I actually picked Khali since I just don't see any point in HHH with the belt at this point (other than to feed his ego of course). Figured Khali could transition to UT at Unforgiven if nothing else. Seriously though, please WWE....stop main eventing Khali on major PPVs. --Cena vs. Batista. This shocked the hell out of me. Once the Henry/Hardy match had that lame DQ I figured they wouldn't do that twice in one show, but I thought Cena needed the win more if it came to someone having to win clean here. But wow, Batista just beat his ass in the center. Kind of an average match and didn't really even have the crazy crowd heat one expects from Cena. I think Cena has gotten to the point where he's so played out and stale that he doesn't even get the hostile boos at this point, it's more drowned out in apathy. The clean, decisive finish leads me to think this won't be any sort of WM rematch next year, or if there sorta is it would involve a 3rd man. --HIAC, Undertaker vs. Edge. I was basing my enjoyment of this PPV almost entirely on this match since I assumed the undercard would be mediocre. Did this match save the show? Eh, it did in some ways. After the superb, psychotic build from Edge on SD I was expecting.....something else. They had to do an ultra hard sell for this match because truth be told unless Edge has 10 guys running in he simply can't beat UT one on one. I'm amazed anyone would think Edge could win here since he beat up his own lackeys and the entire point of this match was him jobbing. The jobbing part was never in doubt, but the journey of how he jobbed and how UT beat his ass was the key. After the SD build, it just wasn't vicious enough. I kept waiting for the Edge massive bladejob...and waiting...and waiting. And it never happened. Is this some byproduct of the weak new PG rating, the lack of blood? This is a match that needed it since the match felt like it was missing something without it. Also, I don't know how wise it was to have the tease of going outside only to do a table spot and nothing involving the top of the cell (which is what people expect, even demand, when guys exit the HIAC). Truth be told, it might be time to give HIAC a rest. The first two set the bar so high that it's almost impossible to ever top those. As much as I wanted it, Edge with his neck surgery and other injuries over the years simply isn't the guy to take some crazed bump in it. So where do we go from here with any of this stuff? More Batista/Punk on Raw? UT vs. HHH on SD? Or HHH vs. MVP?

The 6 sided ring makes tag matches very odd to watch. I don't know what exactly is the legal corner and what constitutes a legal tag with that 6 sides. I actually enjoy a smaller ring though, it gives the action more bounce.

I maintain that the NWO in the long run wrecked the promotion, which is ironic since that was their goal in storyline. If it had been a marginal angle that they had blown off at Starrcade 96 then WCW could have still gone in other directions. But then again I also think that WCW even doing Monday Nitro to begin with was a terrible idea and would lead to the downfall of the promotion. I remember thinking in 1995 when I first heard about Nitro that WCW were idiots to run a show at the same time as Raw, and that it would end up being a disaster in the long run.

SummerSlam 2002 is one of those shows that has plenty of solid wrestling on it....and I don't like it for shit. I hated Lesnar's push, didn't care for the angle that led to HBK/HHH, thought it was puzzling that Jericho would tap to the Figure 4, etc. In fact I enjoyed the 2001 show a lot more. Hell, with 2002 there was a better RVD/Benoit match on Raw than at the PPV. Eddie and Edge had better matches on SD that year than the misfire at SS, where Edge blatantly no sold the shoulder Eddie had worked for most of the match.

Hmm...I have to admit that's a somewhat underwhelming debut for Tropic Thunder. I wonder if the Olympics heating up took away some dollars? Or maybe it simply looks too strange for some people?

Yeah Luger would have been a better choice than Sting since at least he can play heel, but that is like saying Luger would have been a base hit to right field, while Hogan hit a home run in the same heel role. Thing is, would the NWO angle tanking have been a bad thing necessarily? WCW would have been forced to think of something else pronto and likely would still be in business.

My first exposure to Zumhoffe was seeing him as HHH's first WWF opponent in a jobber squash, which is on HHH's DVD (one of them). Then soon after I picked up a wrestling magazine that had a retro AWA top 10 from 1989 or so and I saw Buck Zumhoffe listed. I thought "Man the AWA must have sucked at that point if that jobber was ranked."

Let's see now....the Rumble in 1999 was a very up and down show. Foley/Rock was a vicious, sick brawl with all the chairshots, undercard was mediocre, Rumble itself is a Russo Special. It is a lesser Rumble PPV, but I'd probably take it over Souled Out 99. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre I recall being a pretty fun show with the riotous Austin/Vince main event. WM XV sucked ass, I won't argue that one. Backlash 99 was a really good show, maybe not as good as Spring Stampede though. Some of the shows I am drawing a blank on though. Armageddon is amusing stuff and has The Kat showing her tits. Even with Spring Stampede 99 if you look at the big picture WCW was left with after that show they had DDP with the belt and now as a heel for no real good reason, they had Hogan injured, Goldberg and Sting doing jack shit, etc. It's a lot of good undercard wrestling with guys who got buried right after.

The new ECW show on 24/7 was kick ass stuff. The whole RVD/Sabu match and angle with Alfonso and Taz telling RVD to destroy Sabu's neck, so he gives him a fisherman's buster off the top rope. There's also a pretty solid 3 way brawl with Raven, Sandman, and Pitbull #2.

Yeah, in regards to the retard protests, where were these people when There's Something About Mary came out? Tropic Thunder doesn't even make fun of retards themselves....it has a bit of satire on Hollywood actors who play that sort of character in an attempt to get an Oscar. There's Something About Mary actually IS a movie with a lot of mean spirited jokes about retards and the handicapped in general. In fact I have never liked that movie worth a damn because of how mean it is.