cabbageboy

Still, the curious aspect of the Kaz push is that at no time did Tenay and West put Kaz over as a Cinderella making some unlikely run to the finals. The whole deal was so odd in the way it was booked via elimination in a battle royale to determine seeding. So you have Eric Young as a 1 seed despite being a comedy act, while James Storm was the 8 seed. There was no seeding by actual merit. Having looked at the bracket Kaz really didn't do THAT much to make the finals. I think he beat James Storm and someone else before the Christian match. It seemed like a nice little token push to let a guy make the finals of a tourney before Christian beat him.

Yeah, I have to agree with that. If we're supposed to take the guy seriously he can't just be Kaz. He needs a bit of a repackaging, or just call him Frankie Kazarian again.

Mike Tranghese has to be praying that WVU wins the Big East. UConn winning would be a nightmare for the Big East and only start the goofy talk again of stripping the league of its BCS bid. And Cincy is just....Cincy. I've actually praised Cincy quite a bit this year, but anyone who actually lost to U of L this year (not to mention Pitt) shouldn't go to the BCS.

There's still this sort of "WTF?" quality about this Kaz push. As in why him, why now? So he just jobs to Angle...now what do you do with him? I'm not saying he isn't a reasonably talented performer but before this tourney there's been nothing to suggest he could ever main event. Before this Kaz was mostly screwing around with Raven's bunch of jobbers and hitting on Ms. Brooks. I don't think Russo grasps this aspect of pushing someone. You can't just suddenly push someone, like he did with Booker in WCW. Seeds need to be planted, guys need to win a bunch of matches and get over, and then you push them. If Kazarian had beaten people on TV for a couple of months and had some excellent matches, then it might be more plausible for him to win a tourney.

I'd rather the WM main event be Jericho vs. Orton, cause I am so not feeling Orton vs. HHH. I'm not feeling Orton vs. much of anyone to be honest. Is there any doubt the real WM main event will be the SD title match?

Interesting set of spoilers, though the past few weeks of tourney were basically wasted since Kaz simply faced Angle here and jobbed with no fanfare. What a bizarre push attempt. Are we going to get an Outsiders reunion? Good lord it would be sad if Styles and Tomko actually jobbed to them.

I think HHH has feuded at some point with nearly every guy on his team. And Umaga as a leader of men still doesn't make much sense. Ah well at least we know Jericho is going to show next week. I hope his debut turns out even better than his 1999 debut, which to be honest is a bit overrated historically. He might actually DO something this time, whereas then The Rock basically ended up punking him on the mic and Jericho was off to struggle in feuds with Road Dog, X-Pac, and Chyna for the next 6 months.

Do they seriously think HHH vs. Kennedy is anything worth building to?

Okay as far as Butler goes, it wasn't out of the total blue that they might do something. Recall in 2003 that they did make the Sweet 16 and once they beat IU last year I started paying attention to them. Gardner-Webb is literally like scheduling a complete jobber and they actually come in and beat some ass. Completely out of nowhere.

Just wondering but does anyone know where to find Raw ratings from 1993-95? I have a site that has the ratings from Sept. 95 onward since that was when Nitro was on as well but I'm curious as to the pre Nitro Raw ratings. Is it just me or did Shawn Michaels do jack shit for nearly all of 1997? He loses his smile early, shows up on Raw for no real reason and cuts shoot promos that lead nowhere, almost quits again during the summer, then refs at SS. He did have quite the excellent last couple of months in 1997 though.

How about Mankind vs. Shawn Michaels from Mind Games? Really crazy match but they should have had some sort of pinfall, even if it was HBK just rolling him up for a pin and then do the crazy UT and Vader stuff. The WM 17 match with Austin/Rock had a business killing level of bad finish. Regardless of the Austin heel turn aspect it simply goes on way too long. Vince is out there for an eternity and it takes way too long for Rock to go down. If the guy was going to film the Scorpion King and wouldn't be around for months, why go to that length to protect him?

It's obvious that Orton's title run isn't even being taken seriously by WWE. Did they only put the belt on him to build to him simply jobbing it to HHH?

Oh lord, they actually had friggin Kazarian win a #1 contender match? Shouldn't they actually try establishing someone as more than a complete jobber before pushing them like this? It reminds me of Steve Corino vs. CW Anderson for the #1 contendership in ECW.

That was just such bullshit. Let me get this straight. It takes having Harrison, Clark, and Freeney hurt, Manning throwing 6 INTs, Vinatieri completely melting down in a career worse miss, and some dubious officiating for the Chargers to win this game. By the way who scheduled this shit anyway? After the epic last week the Patriots get to chill and have a bye week. Meanwhile the Colts have to travel to play a team that went 14-2 last year.

I have to wonder. Let's say Bret tried to sue the WWF after Montreal (which would make no sense really). Couldn't Vince say that the entire situation was a work and then back that up by showing all the TV from 1997 where Bret ranted about being screwed by the man? Vince could further state that they did a worked conversation for Wrestling With Shadows but the REAL booking plan wasn't recorded.

The main thing I wonder about is exactly what does WWE consider first rate programming? Austin running his mouth and burying younger guys? Vince all over TV for no reason?

How can 3 teams from the Big 12 get to the BCS? I can see Oklahoma and the Kansas/Mizzou winner, but if Kansas loses to Missouri they are basically screwed and won't make any sort of BCS game even at 11-1. I still want to see Oregon vs. Kansas though, it would be something wildly different and if there's ever a sport that needed a change it is college football.

King, I know Montreal was likely a legit screwjob but it's just so eerie how everything that happened with Bret in 1997 led up to that match. It was like he almost had to be screwed, there was no other way it could end in storyline terms.

The odd thing about OSU's schedule is that it is actually listed #6 on www.realtimerpi.com. They really haven't played anyone all that tough, but there's all sorts of sorta decent top 50 teams (Purdue, Penn St., Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan). I wouldn't mind seeing either Missouri or Kansas vs. Oregon as the title game. It would be different at least.

I never worried about it at all. I mean what were Warrior and Hogan supposed to do, team with Power and Glory? I think it would have been hilarious though if Tito had looked at the odds and said fuck it and joined DiBiase and Co. Then of course he would have gotten his ass kicked like the rest. I watched that MNW today and the Michaels interview was such self serving bullshit. I loved his idiotic remark that the WWF did its best business in years when he was champion....even at the time I thought that was complete bullshit. That was the exact point when WCW was kicking their asses six ways from Sunday! Oh and how about his comment on Bret leaving in April 1996 in the hope the WWF fell flat on their face with him away, so he could come back and use WCW to make more money. The only problem there is that Bret turned down MORE MONEY from WCW to stay with the WWF. As far as him walking...hell why not? What was in Bret's future for most of 1996 aside from jobbing to Michaels in rematches and maybe working with some midcard guys? What was that HBK bullshit interview supposed to accomplish? It didn't sell a PPV, it didn't even hype a Bret/Shawn match. Compare it to Mankind's interview later in that show where he hypes how sadistic and violent his match with UT will be at the PPV....that interview made me want to see Mankind vs. UT at a PPV. There was one good line from HBK in that interview though, where he said about Bret "Your obsession with me and the WWF title will be your ruination." Watching these Raws from 1997 is making me wonder more and more if Montreal was a work....it's just the perfect storyline conclusion for Bret Hart in the WWF, since he was constantly paranoid about being screwed and ripped off.

I was thinking about the Bulldog/HBK match as I was writing that previous post. There are some key differences however: 1. Bulldog was considered an invincible guy in the UK whereas he wasn't in the USA. Bret wasn't really ever an invincible guy in Canada. 2. Bulldog wasn't (in theory) leaving the company in Sept. 97, but Bret was in Nov. In other words, the loss was much worse for Bulldog than it was for Bret. Had Bulldog stayed in the WWF his European drawing power would have never been the same after that Michaels match. Bret was leaving anyway, and I doubt once he got to WCW than anyone would have given a shit. Hell Jeff Jarrett jobbed the IC belt to Chyna before going to WCW and nobody really cared about that when he showed up on Nitro the next night.

This is good and all but I was kinda hoping for the always amusing OSU loss to Michigan in the last game of the season to ruin them. Thank god Cincy smacked UConn today like the little pussies they are. Now WVU will of course crush UConn and end that farce. The amusing aspect of this though is Cincy actually controls their own destiny right now (once we figure WVU is maiming UConn). Cincy gets WVU next week in Cincy and I have to say if WVU screws around like they did vs. U of L it'll be lights out.

Dude, at best UK might be on the bubble but with a loss to Gardner-Webb on the resume. That is such a killer loss that anyone would get in over UK that was also a bubble team. I am actually interested in what Gardner-Webb does vs. UConn in this tourney. If they make a showing maybe it will seem that they are a rising mid major....of course they might just get squashed.

But still, yeah it sucks to lose to Shawn in Canada. Be a professional during the match and go out and job the belt and leave. Know why Bret wouldn't ever sue? 1. As noted before, there's no way he could 100% prove that what happened was legit and not the planned finish. Yes, they said stuff on camera for the Wrestling With Shadows documentary, but then Vince and Co. could just say they were working the documentary crew. 2. It's too hard to define what "reasonable creative control" is. The real mindfuck here is that Vince could justify his actions by saying that Bret wasn't being reasonable at all trying to dictate who he would lose to and where when he was leaving the company...and thus Bret had violated his own contract.

The more time goes on the less sympathy I have for anyone in this thing. When it happened I certainly sided with Bret as nearly everyone did but as the facts came out I started thinking about it more. Why not just job the fucking belt and leave? Bret didn't want to job to Shawn in Canada...who died and made him pope? Hell, Montreal is in Quebec and we all know about Quebec's secession notions over the years. It's not like the show was in Calgary and Vince wanted Bret to do a 3 minute squash. It's like if The Patriot had said "I am an American hero from Columbia, SC but I refuse to do a job for Shawn Michaels in Denver, CO." Bret was suffering from one of the biggest cases of hubris I have ever seen. What I think Vince understood was that for Shawn to be the ultra hated heel asshole he needed to be he HAD to beat Bret in Canada at a major PPV like Survivor Series. Bret forfeiting the belt made no sense. Bret losing in a 3 way without being pinned is a copout. As far as the idea of reasonable creative control, to me it's not reasonable for a wrestler leaving a company to refuse to job a title to whomever the booker wants. Bret acted like doing a job in Canada would have forever killed his drawing power there. In reality if he jobbed via some screwy run in from DX and then went to WCW it would have been forgotten in about 2 weeks and he would have still been insanely over whenever WCW went to Canada.