cabbageboy

I like WM IV as well, but it was really the first WM that I remember as a fan so I am fond of it. And WM VIII has some really good stuff on it. WM XIII though? Bleh. Check out Bret/Austin somewhere else and don't worry about it.

If the Giants do somehow win this game 23-17 though I will bow down to Plaxico Burress forever. It's hilarious to watch the hype for this game. There are way too many people picking the Giants to win considering on paper it's one of the biggest mismatches ever. A 16-0 team against a 10-6 team in the Super Bowl, and seemingly 45% of the experts are picking the Giants.

Eh, there were a couple of other theories that it was someone besides Goldust but I forget now who those others were.

Well I was going to comment on how well the US title has been booked but The Big Show's tedious late 2003/early 2004 run was crap and of course Orlando Jordan nearly wrecked the belt entirely. I'm still trying to figure out why they jobbed Benoit out to Orlando in that initial match....I almost remember that more than Benoit squashing him a dozen times in 20 seconds.

If there is one thing I 100% know it is that HHH isn't jobbing at WM. I don't even think it's a good idea in the first place. If HHH is going to keep insisting on main eventing WM then he's got to WIN some of these matches. HHH hasn't won a WM match since 2003. What does it matter what sort of brownie points he gets from the boys in the back? The only people he needs to keep happy are Vince and Steph. Further, how does Orton even stay in the title scene if he simply jobs to Cena? It's easier to do a double pin or whatever screwy finish to keep the belt on Orton and then have both Cena and HHH with a case. I don't see them putting the belt back on Cena since he may not be totally healthy and it's somehow wrong to rush him back to put the belt on him again. I think Cena is just there to hopefully add to the WM buyrate.

Joy, now Memphis is the only undefeated team in college hoops. Oh well, let them go undefeated and be like UNLV in 1991...though I don't guess anyone would really be shocked if Memphis lost in the tourney.

Yeah there's no way McGrady is a HOF right now, not with him never even making to the 2nd round. Of course there's plenty of time for him but he's not a surefire HOF guy now. As far as guys who aren't in the HOF yet, are Stockton and Malone in? Or is it a bit soon? It's hard to think of that many really notable guys who aren't in. Anyway, with my point about the 1980s vs. 1990s NBA....guys like Stockton and Malone, Jordan, etc. really hadn't hit their peak in the 80s. Teams like the Nuggets were entertaining I guess but they weren't a serious threat to do anything. Aside from a couple of mediocre Rockets teams (one with a losing record in fact!) nobody but the Lakers came out of the West at all in the 1980s. Sticking with basketball, here's a question about college. Best college team ever? Single year, not a whole era. I recall some ESPN fantasy tourney where they had UNC from 1982 winning it and I thought that was such bullshit.

I haven't really been outraged by most of these recent horror remakes but remaking Nightmare is a big mistake. As noted, it is the one slasher franchise that relies on an actor doing an actual role (Robert Englund) and not just some goon stuntman with a mask. The idea of a Freddy movie without Englund in it is pathetic. I don't much care if they remake Friday the 13th. It's not like any of those are really GOOD movies to begin with. Entertaining crap perhaps, but not really good.

I almost wonder if Cena is a red herring, as in everyone thinks he is going to waltz back in and win the belt back but the NWO match will go to a double DQ or something (or a double pin). Then we get the 3 way with HHH at WM. Cause I honestly have no idea what Orton would do at WM if he wasn't in the title match.

I actually don't think Khali squashing Rey really hurt the world title as much as Rey himself. And really the Euro title wasn't buried all that much by Michaels and HHH. It was mostly that Shawn already had the WWF title, and rather than defend a lesser belt and cause friction with his best friend he just let his pal have it. HHH had a decent feud with Owen over the title in 1998 and D'Lo treated the belt like it was special. Now once Shane won it, yeah, it was mostly useless after that.

There is a difference between someone having some amount of prejudice dating back to how they were raised and an outright racist. Hayes for instance is from the deep south and likely has some leftover prejudices, but it doesn't mean he can't function around black wrestlers or get along with black people for the most part. Bill Watts is probably like this as well. I don't believe he was that much of a racist, since a flat out racist wouldn't push black stars to the top regardless of the money at stake. The MLB owners who passed on Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron are actual racists, since they passed on major talents due to their own prejudices. Anyway, isn't WWE getting a little carried away with this spying stuff? I'm not saying Lagana didn't deserve to be fired, but it's amusing the lengths they went to. Worry about the actual product, not whether a 3rd tier writer is leaking spoiler info.

I agree, it's a pointless show. Year in and year out NWO as a PPV serves two purposes: 1. It crowns a #1 contender for the other brand. 2. They have the usual idiotic match where the Rumble winner puts his shot on the line for no reason. NWO is a better PPV when it doesn't try to be anything substantial. Last year's show was weak for the most part, but at least it was part of the overall story leading to WM (Batista turning on UT). It is the most filler PPV on the schedule, so treat it as such. Use it to develop things that will pay off at WM, but don't have such blow away matches that it upstages WM.

I do agree with Kane being left out of the SD chamber match. That's bullshit. He finished 4th in the Rumble and had a quality outing in it, yet Khali is in and he lasted all of 1 minute? Is Big Daddy V even an actual SD guy? I thought he was still ECW but did guest shots on SD along with the other ECW guys who pop up there. As much as I've badmouthed Orton on this board over the years even I don't think he deserves being jobbed out to Cena in such dubious fashion. It reeks of such desperate booking as in "Hurry, we know Orton sucks and can't draw at WM, so we'll put it back on Cena so HHH can beat him!" It's like WWE knows Orton/Cena is a shitty WM main event and moved it up to No Way Out, but brought Cena in because Orton/HHH also blows and won't draw. And let's face it, HHH is winning at WM. Frankly I don't think he can even afford another WM main event loss. Besides, they have the ready made excuse that Cena wasn't 100%, etc.

I've always hated X-Pac. Hell I hated him back when he was in Global as The Lightning Kid. He just always has seemed like such a little douche, as in legit and not just playing one on TV. I was also a pretty big Razor Ramon fan in 1993 so you can imagine how thrilled I was that he would job to "that little douche from Global" that I already didn't like. Take a look at his career and his pushes have always been against guys he has ZERO business beating in matches. Razor (though he and Hall are friends), then in WCW he was feuding with Eddie, Malenko, etc. and not just getting his ass kicked. He even feuded with Flair for crying out loud. Then of course his WWF run when he was going over Kane, Jericho, and of course the truly awful tag team with the Road Dog. Now, we also have Justin Credible, who I disliked possibly more than X-Pac due to his ludicrous overpush in ECW. Albert I had no big problems with aside from a general feeling of apathy.

Yeah, I can tell you the exact game that I would have loved to have seen live that doesn't involve any of my local teams. It would be Game 3 of the 1993 NBA Finals, which is still the greatest pro basketball game I've ever seen (the Suns beat the Bulls in 3OTs). That game and Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals in 93 made me a Dan Majerle and Phoenix fan. But that Game 3 of the Finals was just unreal in its awesomeness. Speaking of the NBA, here is a question. What is the best era of the league? To be honest there are really just two answers to this in my view, depending on which era you prefer. Was it the 1980s Bird/Magic era or the 1990s Jordan era? I gotta go with the 1990s. Some say the league was "watered down" in the 90s but I think that is crap. In the 1980s there really weren't many good teams in my opinion, just the Lakers and a bunch of nothing in the West (well okay the Rockets made a couple of lame duck Finals runs). The East was a bit more competitive but there were usually only 2 good teams at once (Boston/Philly, Boston/Milwaukee, Boston/Detroit) with maybe a 3rd decent team on occasion. The West in the 90s was certainly terrific even if no one but the Rockets ever broke through (well and the Spurs in the shortened 1999 season) and won it all. But in that decade you had the Trailblazers with Drexler at the beginning, the Lakers made a Finals and stayed mostly competitive even without Magic, the Suns were really good with Barkley and Co., Houston with Olajuwon, Utah with Stockton and Malone, San Antonio with Robinson and Co., Seattle with Payton and Kemp. In the East you had obviously the Bulls, but at various points the Knicks were at their thug peak, the Pacers were at their tweener peak with Reggie, the Magic had Shaq and Penny, the Pistons were still competitive and in the playoffs for the most part, even the Hawks had some good years. Oh, and the Cavs had their best teams in the early 90s (yes, better than the JTTS bunch the got swept by the Spurs) with Price and Dougherty. The Heat also were really good by the end of the 90s.

I've had the feeling for a while that they were grooming Sage Steele to take Jacobson's spot on First Take, but I thought it might be because Dana was being promoted or leaving for some other (better) job. Now I wonder if they might just fire her and put Steele in that spot anyway. And Lushus, I agree. This incident made her seem a lot hotter.

I've never been a huge fan of Jeff/UT since at the time I never bought Jeff as any serious title threat so whenever he got close to pulling the belt down it didn't quite have the impact it would have if he had more credibility. I just knew UT would stop him, know what I mean? TLC 4 is a forgotten classic for obvious reasons. Frankly I TRIED to block that show out of my memory due to HHH's promo at the end that started the Katie Vick angle. And I suppose on some level I found it bogus that Kane would win it by himself, basically meaning that he beat 6 men who were all busting their asses like crazy to make him look good. Then that unreal effort to make him look good was undermined 2 minutes later! Hell, Kane took a Van Terminator and still won. Raw's booking was the drizzling shits at that point, quite literally wrecking some unreal wrestling right there. Check out all the RVD signs in the crowd and how over he was, see how he was rocking the shit in that TLC match, and then ponder how anyone with sense would think a HHH vs. Kane title feud over Kane's dead girlfriend could be a good idea.

What does it say about this faction that it was led by X-Pac and the name was also taken from a 3rd string X-Men spinoff comic?

Thing is, then Umaga just gets jobbed out to UT and Batista as well and he's right back where he started. He really needs a tag partner if they want to bother keeping him around long term.

Haha! My brother said the said exact thing about Punk looking like DDL in There Will Be Blood. I thought he looked like the one guy out of the Beastie Boys "Sabotage" video.

I think that if Bias had lived the Celtics would have ended up being the biggest rivals to the Bulls in the 1990s. Maybe they could have made the finals in 1994 when Jordan was playing baseball. Best year in sports is a tough one, but I will go with 1998 as well. The last true Jordan year of the NBA, the Yankees were one of the best teams in history, the home run chase, UK winning the NCAA tourney, etc. The thing about 1993 is that the NBA Finals wasn't a GREAT series (the Bulls were always pretty much in command) even if that series is one that made me an NBA fan. The World Series was a 6 game series but I would have preferred Braves/Blue Jays. And in the NFL, the Niners weren't really as good as they were in 1992, since they were only 10-6 in 1993. Now, the question. What is the worst year in sports over the past 25 years? I'd go with 1994. The baseball strike cancelled the WS, the NFL season produced one of the lamest Super Bowls ever (Niners/Chargers....total squash), Jordan was playing baseball and thus the NBA had a dreary and boring Finals mostly known for OJ Simpson's white bronco chase, etc.

You know, Hoyt, Rave, and Hemme reminded me of a bunch of jobbers in OVW called Gothic Mayhem. GM would be Pat Buck, Johnny Punch, and this chick Melody. They are complete and total jobbers...as in Punch has lost 110 matches in a row.

Who knows about Big Show...he'll probably be on TV before long but they have already missed out on a couple of chances to debut him (the Rumble, last night as a mystery tag partner). My thoughts on Cena and Michaels are more complicated than it usually seems on this forum. The main problem I have with Cena is that I'm mainly bored with him and find him stale. Certainly wasn't enthused with the prospect of him showing up and simply being handed title shots again. I would have maybe had him win NEXT year's Rumble after chasing the title and feuding with others for most of 2008. I still think he needs a heel turn in the worst way, and I'm baffled as to why WWE doesn't do this even for a short while. Michaels? I liked him quite a bit in the Rockers, found his early singles stuff forgettable, but he earned a place on my shitlist for years after beating my favorite wrestler (Bulldog) for the IC title. From 1992-98 I had zero use for Shawn Michaels. I didn't get his uber push, and as a HS student during that era he was the exact opposite for what a cynical teenager wanted to see in a wrestler. Nearly everyone who watched wrestling at my school felt similarly and found it a joke that he was beating guys like Bret Hart or Diesel. I also thought HBK was a joke in that he always seemed to forfeit belts rather than actually lose them in the ring. What kind of "real man" does that? Anyway, after he finally got his comeuppance in 1998 against Austin and was injured for 4 years I finally let my loathing of HBK go by the wayside. Since 2002 I've at least tolerated him and at times enjoyed some of his work, but feel that if he's just going to keep losing title matches it's time to quit main eventing him.

Man I watched that Ladder Match Vol. 4 on 24/7 and I had forgotten what a jaw dropping, great match that TLC was from 2002 on Raw. I guess I had tried to block out how great it was due to the Katie Vick crap with HHH that followed it (literally right after the match!). But wow everyone was on their game in that one, and it was certainly peak Van Dam. It's a shame RVD and Jeff never tagged more.

Thank god they had the common sense to realize Cena vs. Orton is a really shitty WM main event. That said, for some reason I just can't see Cena flat out winning at No Way Out. It's possibly even more bullshit than him just showing up and winning the Rumble. If he just shows up and wins the Rumble, then shows up and gets the belt back without any real struggle....fans will boo him till the end of time. I can buy that 3 way idea actually, but the whole idea of jobbing a champ out at No Way Out only works when that guy has a ready made match (i.e. Angle vs. Benoit in 2001, or Lesnar vs. Goldberg in 2004). Orton really doesn't have much to do otherwise.