cabbageboy

Yeah but Indy is at least in a big state for basketball, but even still the Pacers are the worst drawing team in the league. I'd blame that more on everything they've done since the 2004 brawl in Detroit than on the fans however. I don't get this Sonics move to OKC. Or well I get the logic behind it from the ownership end, but I can't see how this is good for the NBA. I've never been a Sonics fan particularly, but I can't fathom that team moving somewhere else. Think about it, if someone told you in 1996 that the SuperSonics would leave Seattle for OKC (where the federal building had been blown up), wouldn't that just sound insane on every level? OKC has shown that they are worthy of having a team, but that team should be the Hornets in some sort of split deal, though I have no idea how playoff home games would go. But to leave a major market like Seattle to go to a mid level city in a football state with no serious history of basketball (okay maybe OK A & M in the 40s) just seems like a backward move. It would be like if the Rockets had actually gone through with the idea of moving to Louisville in the late 90s.

While I'd prefer Castro to be toast tonight, let's not kid ourselves. It's gotta be Brooke after that botch last night. Archuleta is probably who they want to win this thing since David Cook can likely end up similar to Daughtry and not win but sell more records. Archuleta as the Idol winner might sell a few albums, but him trying to sell albums as the 3rd place finisher? Ha. Archuleta reminds me of an early 80s soft rock singer.

Thing is, of the guys mentioned there how many of them are really gold mines or had any serious potential to be such? Abyss is good at what he does, but a casual fan looks at him and sees a ripoff of Kane or Mankind. Sting is at the tail end of his career and hasn't drawn any real money in 10 years, so why exactly is he a gold mine? It's not even a knock against him, in fact Sting's TNA work has been his best post 1996 work in my view, but he's well past the stage where he can seriously draw money. And Booker? The guy was buried so many times in WWE that there is no real chance he could draw money for TNA as a main event guy. But yeah, they have sorta screwed up Joe. It's not too late to fix it, and I think they are on their way to attempting to fix it, but we'll see.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to why they keep jobbing Punk out to Edge? They put the MITB on the guy but since WM he's lost televised matches to Jericho (at least got a win back there), Regal, and now Edge. How is this booking productive in terms of building a guy up?

Regal winning KOTR is truly puzzling to me. He fits the gimmick and all but let's be honest....they aren't going to do shit with him. What can they really do that is going to be notable? Maybe HHH wins the belt on Sunday and Regal uses his KOTR win to challenge for the belt? That might work had we not already seen Regal job clean to Orton (in the UK no less). The demented aspect of this booking is that the announcers never put over how bullshit Regal's KOTR wins were. They were congratulating him and everything as though he went through a real bracket. I mean he beat up a midget in 10 seconds and then beat an injured Finlay. I'll agree CM Punk didn't really need the MITB and the KOTR as well, but he also sure as hell doesn't need a loss of any kind to a friggin GM either. In the end I am going to assume Punk will challenge Regal at a PPV or on TV in the near future and cleans his clock to get some heat back. Anyone think that the added stip of the 4 way at Backlash being elimination style means that Orton is jobbing at long last? I mean he only retained at WM because WWE thought the main event matches were all too predictable and they couldn't change the booking anywhere else (Flair had to retire, UT had to keep the streak, Mayweather couldn't job to Show). If Orton actually retains and goes over 3 other men elimination style I have no idea where you go from there.

Would you believe at my HS any girl that got pregnant was thrown out of school? Once she had the baby then she could come back, which I always thought was a bit hypocritical. From what I saw though there was no real stigma towards these girls in class. The scene with Page and Cera at the track seemed to point towards her keeping the baby. The way it turns out Garner and Bateman get divorced and Garner gets the baby, while Page and Cera actually iron out their differences and get together. Not a bad ending really, but curious.

This is bewildering to me, I can't wait to see it on the show. I'm not even going to watch it online right now.

Most of these are quite good, but how about the build to Austin/UT for SummerSlam 1998? In fact that whole summer in 1998 was just awesome and well booked.

1. Diana Smith, good or bad? Not good as in good looking, but does she do a good enough acting job to make a piss-poor angle at least somewhat believable? Or do you just say...wow, get off my television. The angle sucked really hard but I don't know if it is really her fault. If I recall Bulldog almost quit the company over this crappy storyline. She's better as the concerned wife or sister, which she did with more success at SummerSlam 1992. As Lushus mentioned, Bulldog was hardly much of a heel here since he thought HBK was hitting on his wife. 2. Double pin finishes, good or bad? They suck. Why not just restart the match and have a real finish? Or in this case why not just let Bulldog roll his shoulder and get a cheap title win, then job him back at KOTR. 3. Yokozuna...why in the world is he employed at this point in time? Was there any possible benefit from having him around? I've never liked Yokozuna at all. About all he could do is job out to people at this point. Him vs. Vader could have been a dream fat boy feud in 1993, but by 1996 nobody cared. 4. If not for Marc Mero's injury later in the year, how far up the card could he have risen? Also, is he related to Little Richard? He was pretty much IC title for life. The injury actually knocked him below that level. Mero was a quality midcard guy but just by reading Foley's book you can tell Mero didn't seem to have a huge amount of respect backstage. 5. Goldust vs. Undertaker...who in the hell thought up this one? Do you like the matchup? Hate it? It was an okay side feud. They never had even remotely a decent match and really Goldust's creepy gay antics didn't make huge sense with UT. In fact I don't recall Goldust doing much of his antics in that feud. But I don't have any real problems with the feud. 6. Last one, would a strap match be a good gimmick to bring back into the current landscape of the WWE? Or is a bullrope match a perfectly acceptable alternative? I'd prefer this sort of match if they would get rid of the 4 corners nonsense. Just tie two guys together and beat the piss out of each other and end it in a pin.

Nearly all the analysts had predictions of Forbidden Kingdom being #1 this weekend. I recall seeing the trailer and noting "Man, Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same movie? That could be really cool." And to be honest I question Forgetting Sarah Marshall's marketing. The hype for the movie is mostly centered around the main guy showing his penis for extended periods of time. It's the first time I've ever heard the advance word about a movie being centered around seeing a naked dude. It would be like if Knocked Up had the marketing of "Come see Seth Rogen's ass the morning after they have sex!"

KOTR 98 was an amazingly well built PPV in terms of the stuff leading up to it and it only kept building to a bigger crescendo for SS that year. This is the main PPV from 1998 that I truly regret not getting at the time. I was very into the storylines and the next night they showed the HIAC highlights and I was like "Whoa, I missed THAT??" The July PPV was just filler, but SummerSlam I made sure to actually order. KOTR 98 was also a hard tape to find at Blockbuster. In fact I rented it one time only to have the tape malfunction and break in the VCR!

Shamrock did get the IC title though in early 1999, didn't he? Of course that belt was passed around so much during that era that I can't recall.

Yeah I enjoyed this Nitro pretty well. I don't know if I liked it better than the Raw opposite it, but it was close. More starpower at any rate. I might give a slight edge to Nitro since Raw had entirely too much Brian Christopher.

James Storm or Robert Roode have zero business ending a Joe title run. Neither guy has a lick of credibility over a certain level and are little more than midcard fodder, and I can't see that situation really changing soon. Lethal is a bit more complicated, since he's at least over but it's a silly joke sort of over. I don't really see a guy doing a Macho impersonation being given the world title. Now that Joe has the belt the dilemma is when and to whom do you job him? I don't see anyone on the current TNA roster that works for that role. They could always have Angle regain, which is pointless. Or have Joe lose it in the yearly trash known as King of the Mountain, but that's bogus. I did have a good scenario but it falls in the realm of fantasy booking.

I do agree that Cornette should have just thrown them out of his office with that idiotic complaint. But really, Cornette actually did the right thing in terms of appeasing everyone, since his demand that Super Eric simply take his mask off and verify that he's Eric Young is perfectly reasonable. I have to think this will lead to a Kaz/Super Eric feud and we're likely supposed to buy Kaz as doing a heel turn despite anyone in his position wanting to beat the shit out of Eric after the moronic way he cost them the tag belts. This was actually a pretty fun show though. The usual maddening TNA outing.

Of course the notion of a heel cashing in a MITB shot after two guys are beaten up is a tired concept....but then why did TNA do the same briefcase angle that WWE has done, and also why have a heel win it in order to set up that exact same scenario? See, the thing is why not just give Steiner his one on one title match? What, is adding Angle going to improve the buyrate or something? It's not like they can't go back to Joe/Angle at some point in the future, but just do something else right now. People don't HAVE to have rematches constantly. In fact it's much better when they don't get one, or if they do get one it's like a year later (Andre vs. Hogan II was almost a year after WM III). WWE does this all the time and it cheapens major matches. That's the problem with these jobber PPVs like Backlash and Judgment Day, it's the same crap we just saw at WM. Now TNA is going down this same road of keeping the same guys on top, even though unlike WWE they actually have a variety of options on top.

The original ECW did actually have a bunch of indy wrestlers and WWF/WCW hasbeens. However, there were the guys who Heyman molded from those categories that ended up creating a new niche for themselves, as well as guys who made a name for themselves in Japan and Mexico.

One thing I will defend Adamle on is calling The Miz "Mike the Miz." That isn't actually an incorrect name. As far as all of this stuff, I might actually have to watch ECW next week to see and hear Adamle suck.

Oh I certainly recall the Joe/Steiner feud, but bear in mind that Steiner has also feuded with Angle since then. In fact he jobbed to both men. I never gave Steiner credit for being a brain, but anyone would know that you cash in a MITB type briefcase in a match condusive to winning.

They have a new show up now. The thing that blows my mind while watching these shows is how little they even try to protect the Freebirds in the booking. We saw Hayes job out in a singles match in a previous show, while on this show Buddy Roberts loses in about 20 seconds to Iceman King Parsons. In fact I don't recall them getting any wins over the Von Erichs since the feud began, unless maybe Gordy beat one of them.

Damn, all of this seems to refer back to Saw III and I don't remember a huge amount about it since I found it the weakest of the series. Maybe it's because the movie was entirely too long? A 2 hour long horror movie with a bunch of torture scenes is tough to get through.

What is the exact ruling on that anyway? It's called American Idol but this year they have an Irish girl and the Aussie guy. Do you just have to be currently living in America? Syesha is pretty good but as far as black chicks go there were 4 or 5 better than her last year. I think that is what is hurting her and why she can't win this thing, black chick fatigue from last year. It might be why the judges kinda put her down, to steer voters away from another black female winner.

The Matilda angle was seriously one of the first things I ever saw when watching wrestling. I can't remember exactly when I started but it was at some point after the first Survivor Series and before the 1988 Rumble. I loved that silly Candido/Boo/Cactus angle. It helps to have grown up watching this silly redneck kind of booking in the USWA or SMW. What does it say when seeing the Red Power Ranger didn't make me bat an eye? Actually we didn't get SMW where I live (maybe it's TOO redneck?) but USWA was on until they closed in 1997.

It's hard to really know what to think since the participants and bracket have yet to be announced. It's hard to imagine any scenario with Marella beating all these guys in one night, even with screwjobs and run ins. Besides he and Carlito are a tag team right now. While I have lost almost all interest in Kennedy he is probably the guy that makes the most sense winning. Then he can get hurt or screw up again and wreck his push.

There is a difference though. I mean everyone under the sun knows that Super Eric is Eric Young. He has the same name and everything. There's no attempt to make it a mystery. I think what they are going for is the Midnight Rider beating Flair in 1983, with Dusty being suspended at the time of the match. In that case there was a valid reason why the Midnight Rider couldn't unmask, whereas Eric Young comes off like a goof with an identity crisis who screws his tag partner over.