cabbageboy

Yeah that was a cool match, another really fun show (this time from Nashville, which was finally mentioned before the main event). I was baffled as to why they did Lawler/Von Erich so close to the PPV, but the way it played out nothing was settled and if anything a rematch was in order. That said, the PPV match is easily better with Kerry bleeding like a stuck pig.

Yeah in fact I ranted about this while watching Raw, I am absolutely fed up with this shit with the Rematch Clause. It has become this ultra lame booking crutch for both WWE and TNA when they can't think of any actual reason as to why a guy should keep getting shots at a belt. "Oh, I get to use my rematch clause." Whatever happened to guys actually just jobbing the belt and then...they just jobbed? Did Hogan have a fucking Rematch Clause after he lost to the Warrior? No. He jobbed and didn't get near the belt again for a year.

I will go on record with this: Nothing possibly decent can come from Kong being involved in this tourney. Either you have her beating up men and becoming the new Chyna for TNA and it buries people on the roster, or you needlessly put the women's champion in matches with men where she jobs. Keep in mind that Kong isn't even really invincible in the Knockouts Division anyway, since Gail Kim has defeated her. It's always funny but when I read TNA spoilers it always makes me want to pull my hair out, but then I end up largely enjoying the show.

You know, I've seen some OVW shows in the past that ended like this, but there's a big difference in ending a nothing show like OVW with that and ending a Raw with a world title match like that. Please tell me this won't lead to another inane 3 way at Judgment Day with HHH/Orton/JBL, with JBL obviously being the guy who jobs. In fact why is JBL even issuing challenges when he was the first man eliminated and has no basis for another shot?

I actually disagree with that assessment of the NBA in the 1990s. Only the absolute most casual viewer would have said the league was about Jordan and Jordan only. In fact the overall league wasn't really even hurt all that much by his brief 1994-95 retirement, mainly because all the other teams still had the stars that they already had, and in some cases teams caught on with the public due to newer stars (Shaq and Penny with the Magic, Reggie Miller became a massive star due to his exploits vs. the Knicks). Add to it you had the Ewing Knicks, Barkley with the Suns, Hakeem (and later Drexler) on the Rockets, David Robinson on the Spurs, Malone and Stockton on the Jazz, Payton and Kemp with the Sonics, the list goes on and on. Nearly every team in the 1990s seemed like they had SOMEBODY. Hell even the otherwise pitiful Sacramento Kings of the 90s had Mitch Richmond. As far as the Spurs go, I think personally it's been hard to buy into their run because of a few reasons. First, they won their first title in a lame lockout year by beating a #8 seed Knicks. Not exactly the most credible way to begin a run. Second, the Shaq/Kobe Lakers largely beat their asses in the playoffs in 2001, 02, and 04. Also, the Spurs were solid contenders in the 1990s but there was never that ONE team that gave them hell...they just kinda lost to a variety of teams. So there was no one for them to finally overcome. Lastly, let's face it...none of the Spurs Finals have been any good at all. The 1999 Finals vs. the Knicks was a tedious 5 game squash. 2003 was a dull, heatless semi squash against a wildly overmatched Nets. Last year was a 4 game squash of the Cavs, who really had no business going that far. I guess the 2005 Pistons series went 7, but 5 or 6 games of it were almost completely unwatchable, with the Horry 3 pointer game being the lone highlight.

Maybe Orton's run finally erased the stigma of his 2004 debacle of a title reign, but just take a look at Orton's 2007 work alone in the first half of the year. Here was a guy who was playing 2nd fiddle to Edge and looking like a moron, was a non entity in the MITB at WM, jobbed at Backlash, lost clean to Edge to blowoff the Rated RKO storyline, and also lost to RVD in Van Dam's last serious WWE match (not counting that Santino thing). Pretty much all he did was beat up a 60 year old Dusty Rhodes and his boy to earn a title shot. It wasn't like he had a long win streak going into the Cena feud. Mostly he just kicked some people in the head and came up short in major matches. Orton's dilemma is that WWE doesn't want to seriously put him over anyone. They kinda put him over Cena but it was never in a 1 on 1 match and Orton got nothing out of pinning Cena at WM. He may have beaten HHH for the title but it was HHH's third match of a PPV. He beat Michaels solely because HBK wasn't allowed to use his finisher. To sum up, Orton isn't a good enough wrestler and he isn't compelling enough as a character on the mic to succeed with such wishy washy booking.

What is with all this Orton love? I mean let's face it, the guy had an ultra lame title run, never even main evented a PPV aside from the initial time he won the belt and the time he lost it. What's he been doing that's so great with the belt that he needed to keep it? Was he over as champ? Um...not really. Was he cutting awesome promos? Of course not. Was he having great matches? Passable, but any singles match was his usual headlock happy stuff. He was so utterly heatless and unbelievable as champ that they had to book him in 3 or 4 way matches on PPV. I believe someone posted the Observer notes from WM that noted Orton won at WM because WWE simply felt the card was too predictable with UT winning the title and Flair retiring. It's not like they seriously wanted to keep the title on Orton.

I actually kinda dig this Jones Army. But then I'm always a sucker for a cheesy heel faction full of jobbers and a whitemeat babyface like Jimmy V. fighting enormous odds. But yeah if you look at Jones as a manager he's really crap compared to Heenan, Hart, etc. in the WWF.

I can't make a good case for 3/4 of those guys actually, haha. I want the belt off Orton, I certainly don't want it back on Cena, and I never wanted it on JBL in the first place. That basically leaves HHH as the Kansas of this foursome, the least offensive option. So I'll pick him to win the belt tonight. UT will retain the world title, though I don't know if he'll pin Edge or if it will be a DQ. Can't help but think they need a gimmick blowoff to this feud. Kane will survive Chavo's various antics to retain. The good girls will beat the bad girls in the Divas tag match. I actually think MVP will retain just so they can bury Matt a bit for Jeff's idiocy. Matt will get it next month though, since that will be MVP's 1 year anniversary with the US title. Batista over Michaels with a Jericho miscue (or heel turn). Think HBK at SummerSlam 1997. Anyone find it odd that CM Punk isn't booked at all on this show? They are in somewhat of a bind with Punk since he's a face and thus wouldn't look right in attacking someone to cash in the MITB. And there isn't a plausible ONS type PPV for him to cash in like RVD. I'm not sure when he'd cash in. Oh and early 90s WWF is wildly underrated.

Anyone get the feeling that some people bought tickets for Baby Mama and snuck in to Harold and Kumar? Kinda like with 300 and Wild Hogs last year. The new H & K isn't really as good as White Castle though. The first one had some racial and political overtones in it, but this new one practically beats you over the head with it.

Man, Brohm could have been a big time pick last year but he came back to let Steve Kragthrope screw up his draft stock. I'm actually a bit puzzled as to why someone like the Vikings didn't take Brohm...do they seriously think Tavaris Jackson is any good? And I am still scratching my head at that Jacksonville move of trading up from 26 to 8. It was a WTF type moment.

Technically those aren't strap matches though....aren't those more like Texas bullrope or cow bell matches? A strap would indicate leather, whereas the JBL matches I think used rope.

In theory I'm hoping Punk moves to more of a real show and gets off ECW. But really, WWE has to make some sort of announcing move. You can't have multiple shows where the wrestlers do guest mic work and bury the announcers cause they suck.

I stopped watching these shows for a while once they got into the dreary post Scott Hall 1986 era when it was tedious Larry Z. squash matches and boring crap. However, I DVRd a couple more this past week and they had the build to SuperClash III and also showed about half the PPV on free TV! Can you imagine a promotion doing something that crazy? I don't know when the PPV aired compared to when it was shown, but I think it had to be the same month. The build up show was brilliance, since we got to see what amounted to the AWA guys visiting Memphis and it was awesome to see a TV show from the Mid South Coliseum. As a kid I had a love for old Memphis/USWA stuff, so it's great to see this stuff. Unfortunately, the AWA/Memphis alliance basically fell apart by Feb. 89 when Gagne didn't pay Lawler and Co. for being on the PPV, so I am going to make sure to watch these shows now. Where else are you going to see Billy Joe Travis and The Stud Stable?

Why not just put Taz back with Cole and get him off the dreck known as ECW? Does it really matter that much that he's on there, since they keep trying to rid themselves of the original ECW guys anyway? If he and Cole have some personal issue, Vince should tell them to make up and be pros. Personally I would just put Taz and Styles on Smackdown, fire Cole entirely, and keep Coach and Adamle on ECW for shits and giggles.

I'm trying to remember when I felt like WCW was truly sliding downhill. I mentioned the heel DDP title win, but that was more something that started really killing their actual ratings (and for what it's worth I am not bashing DDP here, in fact he could have been a solid face champ circa 1997-98). Somewhere around the time of Aug. 1998 is when WCW truly started sucking quality wise. The NWO factions feuding was going nowhere, Bischoff was doing lame Jay Leno skits that took up 30 mins. of TV time, and the Warrior debuted and cut long winded, incoherent promos. Fall Brawl 98 was the first WCW PPV I ever bought, and it sucked ass from start to finish. It didn't help that most of the enjoyable midcard feuds that carried WCW in the first half of 1998 were waning by Aug./Sept.

Yeah I had no idea how they could even do a Saw IV after the ending of III. The fact that they got something semi coherent out of what was left made IV a pleasant surprise. Saw I left them in a bind long term as sequels go. Jigsaw was already a dying man in the first film, so you really can't keep him alive too much longer. I think they did make a mistake of killing him off in III at the end of the film, especially a guy killing him that I really didn't care about. That's what I meant earlier by the series needing a guest star for the finale, someone like Morgan Freeman who could match wits with Jigsaw and finally catch him.

Thing is, I think we all knew to some extent back in 1997 that the WWF just didn't have much of a roster and thus a select few guys had to carry the bulk of the TV time. Who else could you put in those spots?

I have a bit different of a thought about this. I thought wrestling was almost TOO popular in the late 90s. It was too hot. In fact I found it frustrating because I was used to being able to easily get tickets from 1992-95 or so. I recall having to stand in a huge line for Raw tickets in May 1999 and joked "Man, wrestling needs to start sucking again so these bandwagon fans will go away." There isn't any one time when promotions really hit the wall, but more of a series of events. I don't think there were ever really these two distinct groups of fans, but rather a smaller couple of groups loyal to only one product while most people would try to flip back and forth between Raw and Nitro. People say the Fingerpoke is what wrecked WCW but I maintain that WCW putting the belt on DDP and veering away from the established Flair/Hogan/Goldberg stuff that was successful started the downward spiral. Yes, they did all sorts of horrible shit in the latter half of 1998 but it was still drawing money. The Flair/Hogan feud after the Fingerpoke drew money. But once they put the belt on DDP and feuded him with Nash, it was all over. From there we get the Hummer Angle, the No Limit Soldiers, and the most unwatchable crap in the history of wrestling. I vividly recall the WWF's downturn. In Oct. 2000 they had a SD taping here and Freedom Hall was sold out. Full house. The next time they came back here was May 2001, after WM and after WCW and ECW had both gone under. Austin was a heel now feuding with UT and you could just tell this stuff wasn't getting over. I bet the entire upper section on one side of the building was empty.

Cornette looks like he's veering towards a heel turn or at least a complete mental breakdown. His rant about someone stealing his strawberries reminded me of Capt. Queeg from The Caine Mutiny.

Yeah I mean Saw II has a lot to recommend it for horror fans, I just prefer the original. It's just more wildly entertaining with everyone acting like they are on crack. Besides, the major plot twist in Saw II is something I picked up on fairly early in the film the first time I saw it (namely Amanda being the accomplice). Though I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.

Yeah I agree. The first Saw was much more of a mystery: Who is Jigsaw? How did we get here? How do we escape? It also works on different levels: On the first viewing I left the theater almost in shock over the wildly insane last 20 mins. On subsequent viewings, I crack up laughing at how over the top it all is (especially Elwes) but it's still highly entertaining. And really, the relative lack of sick moments makes the main twisted moment (Elwes sawing his leg off) all the more potent. Saw II still had some mystery to it, but upped the ante with more sick traps and stuff. Thing is, the traps there were terrifying and nightmarish (the pit of hypo needles, the burning oven, the antidote in the glass cage). And there at least were some compelling characters in Saw II, such as Glenn Plummer's more reasonable ex con and Xavier the nutjob. By Saw III we had a bunch of traps that descend almost into parody, like the pig meat trap or the rack. Saw III also has easily the least compelling main guy, who isn't really in serious danger while saving these people from the traps.

That top 4 tonight had to seriously be the lamest I've seen since I have watched the show. Archuleta and Cook were obvious, but Castro and White as well? I have even kinda liked Brooke but after last night she should have been toast. It's almost like she got sympathy jobber votes.

I think it was that awful angle with Bulldog/HBK/Diana that drove me over to watching WCW more during that time period. That and the initial Outsiders stuff. Keep in mind that THIS was Shawn's first feud after winning the title. He faced Diesel at the April PPV but that was more blowing off a previous issue.

Gotta wish Sonya a get well soon there. From the sound of it she should recover though. Jim Ross had the same sort of ailment. Van Dam can consider himself lucky that he no longer is with WWE, so he won't have to endure a Dr. Heinie skit about his wife.