cabbageboy

Here is the problem with KOTR 99 in a nutshell: There was no one decent in it. Would friggin X-Pac have won it? Jericho hadn't debuted yet, so he was out. There was just nobody currently in the WWF at that point that needed the tourney win to be elevated. Everyone was either already established or very nearly there (HHH). If Gunn had ever gotten the belt he would have likely been a transition guy to The Rock or someone and it would have been forgettable but not outright awful. Now, RVD and Austin. This one is right up my alley because I was captivated by this storyline for a brief period of time. There was one huge albatross that hurt the potential here and that was the tanking Invasion angle. In another context this could have gotten over gangbusters, since RVD was a fresh and VERY over opponent for Austin (unlike UT and Kane, or really even Benoit and Jericho who were both perceived as lesser stars than Austin). I still remember that one great Smackdown where Austin was pissed at Angle and vowed to beat the shit out of the next Alliance guy that walked through the door....and it was RVD. Then RVD beat him in the main event. And yes I know Angle's music played so it wasn't totally clean, but they left serious money on the table by not phasing Angle out of the feud and going with Austin vs. RVD. Of course the next week Sept. 11 happened so they almost had to push Angle harder, yet oddly enough I think Angle started fizzling out as a face at that point. It seemed as though his patriotic act was forced and phony, whereas RVD seemed cool, calm, and collected (which seemed more genuine). That said, what do you really do with Austin vs. RVD? HHH was coming back for the Rumble in 2002 and was obviously winning it and taking the title at WM, so what do you do? Have the Alliance turn on Austin and side with RVD, then RVD ends up in that Jericho spot winning the undisputed title and then getting buried by HHH at WM? Here's a fascinating what if that I've pondered with RVD: What if Van Dam was in the WWF during the Attitude Era (1998-99)? How would Russo have booked him and would he have feuded with Austin at that point?

It is interesting to me that people still think the Warrior was some talentless shithead who never had good matches. I mean I'll accept that he was blown up against Hogan and Hogan was basically carrying him, but how about the Rude match? Or the Macho matches? The guy wasn't being flat out carried all those times. I recall on the Warrior DVD it was DiBiase I think who said someone like Hercules was a much better worker than the Warrior. Did Herc ever have any good matches in his life? Cause I really haven't seen them. Anyway, NWA. I did like that 6 man tag, especially the Garvin/Flair portions of that match. Garvin gets a lot of crap nowdays mainly because people thought he should never have beaten Flair for the title. But the guy's style was incredibly fierce and physical, he and Flair beat the piss out of each other. He was just better off as a contender who never quite won it, rather than a guy who had a lame duck title reign.

I can't see this restraining order being upheld after a certain point. As noted the Titans are basically trying to screw the guy over. This is a disturbing ruling thus far because it is saying a guy doesn't have the right to make a living doing another job while suspended long term from his current job. The silly thing about it is that guys like Kevin Greene were wrestling The Giant on PPVs, and the Panthers didn't really make a peep about it.

It seems to me like they are already sorta burying Batista here and it's a foregone conclusion he's jobbing to Khali. He and Flair already have a ready made feud with D & D over the tag belts and the right to nail Cherry. Here's what they need to do: UT comes back, beats the crap out of Henry at Unforgiven. This gets him into title consideration at No Mercy where he beats Khali to end that experiment. At that point it really all depends on when Edge is healthy and back on SD. If he's back in time I'd build to UT vs. Edge at WM, with Edge jobbing obviously.

That Orton poster for No Mercy seems like something out of a John Woo movie. As far as Kennedy goes I thought the initial story was that Vince was ultra high on him and wanted him to use Kennedy as his last name, but the Heyman part makes sense too. Oh and if he had kept his real last name he would now be Mr. Anderson. Wonder if he would do a Matrix gimmick?

I agree with tapout. Those other guys aren't going to be especially hurt by the lack of Benoit footage, it will the fans that are hurt mostly by not getting to see those matches and segments. The Horsemen stuff in WCW is annoying to watch now and I wish they would just forget about erasing Benoit, since it's insanely stupid to also erase Ric Flair and Arn Anderson from WCW shows. The other guys mentioned like Jericho, Angle, Eddie, HHH, Shawn, etc. all have had legacies outside of facing Benoit. MVP will be hurt the most. They already can't even mention who he beat for the US title and really little of his work outside of the Benoit feud has been all that notable. Orton is now hurt as well, but I have to wonder if he won't beat Cena to give him a title win they can actually refer to besides the Benoit win.

Chris Rock's act just doesn't work in a scripted film environment. The funniest movie scene he has done in his life is his brief bit in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. It was the first time I'd seen him and I used to rewind the tape and watch his scene with Isaac Hayes over and over. Tucker has always been a poor man's Rock (Rock even used to joke about it on his old HBO show, stuff like "Hey, you all really went out to see me in Rush Hour" circa 1998). But the curious thing is that Tucker works better in a film than Rock. I think some of it is that Rock never seems to be playing anything but Chris Rock, whereas Tucker can drift into various roles and at least sorta mesh into a role.

It was due to the way Jarrett kinda held Vince up for money in late 1999 to job the IC belt before he left for WCW. Besides, Jarrett was on top of WCW when they were REALLY tanking, so it's not like he would have been a really logical signing. Speaking of Austin/Owen, am I the only one who always found it lame and insincere on the Owen Raw that Austin was the last guy on there giving his beer tribute? I thought "Dude we know you hated the guy...."

The DX invading Nitro thing is so insanely overblown in history. At the time it was just a goofy dumbshit skit or two. Overall it meant nothing to the WWF's business and in my opinion did nothing to hurt WCW. I saw it, maybe chuckled, and went on watching Raw. The Montreal Screwjob boosted interest, that's for sure. With that said, the WWF didn't truly start drawing big money until the big chase with Austin/Michaels leading to WM 14. Once Austin got the belt the WWF was going to skyrocket anyway. Vince could still do the evil boss gimmick, but it might not have quite the same real life screwjob behind it. It wouldn't have really mattered in the long run. The key to the Montreal Screwjob and Shawn's back injury is that it gave the WWF a chance to get rid of the stale guys who weren't really drawing. With Bret and Shawn around the WWF was never going to be all it could be at that point. Bret was stuck in his particular ways and Shawn was busy playing politics. Once it became Austin/Foley/UT/Kane and Co. they had actual team players who wanted to turn things around.

You mean Jericho's debut where the Rock buried him big time on the mic and he proceeded to not even feud with Rock but instead with the jobber members of DX (X-Pac, Road Dog)...and not even beat those guys? And yes, I did enjoy his debut at the time, but in hindsight Jericho did jack shit in the WWF right after he debuted. Tomasso was a guy in OVW who was doing a goofy shrink type gimmick, getting Justin "The Ox" LaRoche and Charles "The Hammer" Evans to count to 5 and relax before matches. It's hard to forget a guy named Tomasso....he even looked sorta like Harpo Marx.

The last thing the world needs is some sort of possible Astros charge at the division title. Anyone else (not from TX) sick of these guys making these late season runs every year after sucking for 3/4 of the season? I still think if the Cardinals can put anything at all together late they could have a shot at the NL Central. Worst division in baseball bar none.

My cable company is Insight. They seem to do a good job of updating every Wed. Anyway that is in fact a new NWA show, just watched it tonight. Also, the WCCW show will have Flair vs. Kerry next time. This one was great though. Hell it has Iron Mike Sharpe jobbing TWICE in one hour, first in the 6 man finals and then he is the 2nd place guy in that battle royale. I always liked Sharpe as a worker. No matter what he could always make me buy into his chances of winning, even though I always knew he was a jobber that never won.

I was a +1. You are central in your beliefs about wrestling. You accept the idea of both old-school and sports entertainment but you are not extreme in either way. You believe that angles and matches are equally important to create a good wrestling product. Most similar booker: Paul Heyman Most similar promotion: TNA 2005

I am hearing conflicting reports about Orton vs. Cena at SS. Meltzer and Alvarez both seem to think Orton is getting the belt, but who knows for what length of time. PWInsider seems to be saying that Orton is just some one shot contender there to job out to Cena at SS and that is that. I personally agree more with Meltzer. There aren't too many guys left for Cena to face on Raw if he wins this one, unless they want to put the belt on the illegitimate Kennedy.

I just checked and it looks to me like they have the new NWA show from 11/16/85. Hope there wasn't anything interesting on that 11/9 episode. Word Class from 1/1/83 is now up!

Hey at least TNA is trying to come up with new match ideas, even if they are ridiculous matches. Not just have Mark Henry squash jobbers and Chris Masters doing the Masterlock Challenge 2 years past its due date.

I mentioned it in last week's thread, but having Punk win tonight was stupid booking. They flat out had a way to do this and make Punk look good by lasting the 15 minutes, then he gets the title shot. Why book him to pin Morrison with 5 seconds left? What exactly are we supposed to tune into SS now to see with these two?

In all fairness to Ross on that one, I too think Jillian and Beth Phoenix look very similar. In fact I wondered why they didn't put one on Raw and the other on SD.

Okay if this paternity suit thing is the same deal as Kennedy being Vince's son, what gives? TMZ compared this to the Eddie Murphy/Scary Spice deal, but that is over a newborn. I mean what woman would wait 30 years to file such a suit, and also the kid in this case (Kennedy) would be working for his dad and making six figures!

The Dating Game bit was hilarious, but I hope they don't overdo it until it gets played out. The amusing aspect is that the entire thing was essentially rigged for Santino to win, since the other two are old guys like Duggan and Simmons (who both have probably been married for 2 decades)...and Santino STILL fucked it up! Maybe Simmons will bring Maria as his date to the Teddy/Kristal wedding?

There was a recent OVW show that was hilarious. Through the summer OVW has had WWE guys come down for the Six Flags show and one week The Miz came down for a show. Get this: OVW had an entire tourney on TV with 8 men to see who got the huge honor of facing THE MIZ! As far as The Miz goes? He's horrid, but that isn't exactly news.

I was sorta wanting SS 88 to win since 89 was on there and I wouldn't mind seeing where the PPV began. SS 91 is easily the best of those shows though and probably one of my favorite PPVs. If WWE wants to do some amusing sports entertainment type stuff again, they need to look at that Bossman/Mountie match and the subsequent post match antics.

Or maybe, just maybe they could stop booking that stupid fucking finish to every battle royale? Hell, we saw Edge win a MITB spot by doing this same tactic, and recently on OVW I saw Shawn Spears hide and eliminate Cody Rhodes (which cost him a shot at Cena).

What the hell, at least this Raw wasn't boring as shit tonight. At this point I'll take having my jaw drop over Vince badmouthing Congress and the IRS. And I kinda dug the Dating Game bit as well, Simmons is awesome. Not that I'd want to see such a skit every week, but it was fun for tonight. If there is a troubling aspect of this show however it's that the entire program was once AGAIN all about Vince: Him badmouthing Congress, the IRS, the paternity suit. I don't exactly see how Kennedy can be the illegitimate kid, since the whole point of a paternity suit is that the mother would have a young child and need some money. How could Kennedy be Vince's kid and why would the mother wait over 30 YEARS to mention this? What, did Vince knock up some chick after a Packers game in the men's room at Lambeau Field? I dunno. I couldn't help but think whoever wrote this show tonight was doing a Vince Russo impersonation without taking into account the things that made Russo's WWF booking interesting. Namely things like everyone has a role, everyone is doing something, the belts are all being defended and each title has a program (even if belts change hands rapid fire). After tonight we have a world title feud with Cena/Orton and.....what exactly? I don't see Umaga with a viable challenger, unless it's Carlito the Job Boy. No sign of the tag champs. Maybe Jillian is being built to challenge Candice, but who knows. And by the way, that Regal thing was total bullshit. I expected him to win and become GM, but the way it went down was horribly done. When they came back from commercial I was looking for him and didn't see him in the ring, so I figured he was eliminated with zero fanfare. They really should have at least shown Regal on the floor or made some kind of mention of it.

The thing is, Jackson actually DID serious edit down the ending to ROTK. In the book they have all this stuff with Saruman and Wormtongue taking over the Shire and the Hobbits revolting against them. In other words the ending was even more drawn out in the book. I personally would have ended ROTK with the shot of the 4 Hobbits at the ceremony. The other stuff could still be filmed but put in the Extended Version.