cabbageboy

Regarding that Heyman shoot....he has nobody to blame for Taz being buried than himself. He's the one who spent the last 3 months of 1999 jobbing the guy out to everyone in ECW. I personally think Taz totally lost his mystique after that and was never the same. He went from a vicious, unbeatable bastard to a glorified midget who couldn't beat anyone and made you wonder "Why was this guy ever special?"

I personally don't think Angle is the new champion at all. In fact I thought it was quite clear that Sting had the 3 count on Christian and then tapped out to Angle right after. Why Sting would actually tap at all in that situation when HE HAD THE PINFALL I have no idea. I mean he can't hang on another 5 seconds? He was in the move about 10 seconds and was just tapping like crazy. Having just read that the NWA stripped TNA of the belts I have to think that was to create a title vacancy and then they will fill the vacancy at Slammiversary. That said, this is yet another cheap, crummy finish to a PPV for TNA. These guys just do not know how to book a main event that's simply a quality match with no bullshit. Honestly, it's time to quit the bullshit TNA. The trouble is that now they've set up a title vacancy and a new champ will be crowned with the KOTM match at Slammiversary, which is possibly the worst way to get a guy over with the new belt. Ooooooh, he hung it from the ceiling, what a champ! I'm assuming much of the booking tonight was to set up blowoffs in June. Tonight was a very heel dominated PPV in a lot of ways. I'm perplexed as to what they see in Chris Sabin as X champ, since he's not especially over (and never has been whenever he gets the belt), they have Black Machismo right there to put it on, and Sabin and Shelley desperately need to start tagging and go for those belts. Decent show tonight. Best match was certainly Harris and Storm, they made up for the debacle last month by bleeding buckets here tonight. My only quibble was that Storm needed to go after that bad eye a hell of a lot more. You've busted the dude open, he was blind in one eye....piston the hell out of it. Study your old school Lawler!

I was just looking at wwe.com at the Raw, SD, and ECW roster pages and I couldn't help but note the guys who are being pushed on the shows, and the guys who are being buried. There are also a few people that are on the fence, as in they may win occasionally but overall are either new, injured, on TV a lot but losing high profile matches with few wins, or treading water. Let's have a look. Note I am considering Matt Hardy as SD since that's where he is listed on their website. Raw: Pushed (8): Jeff Hardy, John Cena, Santino Marella, Shawn Michaels, The Great Khali, HHH (injured but will obviously be pushed), Umaga, Melina. Buried (17): Carlito, Charlie Haas, Chris Masters, Eugene, Jim Duggan, Johnny Nitro, Cryme Tyme, Kenny Dykstra, Ric Flair, The Highlanders, Shelton Benjamin, Super Crazy, Val Venis, Victoria, Viscera. On the Fence (5): Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch (as in tag challengers but mostly buried), Randy Orton (alleged top tier guy but mostly loses...status dubious), Micki James (former women's champ, but mostly losing now), and Candice (hasn't wrestled enough to be a serious contender yet). Smackdown: Pushed (14): Batista, Chris Benoit, Deuce and Domino, Paul London and Brian Kendrick (could be considered on the fence, but they held the belts way too long to be anything but pushed), Edge (new world champ), Finlay, Mark Henry, Matt Hardy, MVP, Ken Kennedy (hurt but was being seriously pushed), Rey Mysterio (hurt too but will be pushed upon return most likely), and Undertaker (hurt but was world champ). Buried (7): Daivari, Funaki, Gregory Helms, Jamie Noble, Scotty 2 Hotty, Shannon Moore, Mike Mizanin. Note that most of these guys are the barely existent cruiser division. On the Fence (10): Ashley (women's challenger but now injured, status iffy), Boogeyman and Kane (treading water vs. Regal/Taylor, no real direction), Regal and Taylor (see previous), Chavo Guerrero (cruiser champ but never on TV, never defends), Jimmy Wang Yang (possible cruiser challenger but who knows), Jillian (on TV but doing a goofy gimmick), Michelle McCool (just returned, iffy right now), Booker T. (hurt right now but it's iffy how much he'll be pushed when he returns). ECW: Pushed (6): Vince (dear god), Bobby Lashley, CM Punk, Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, Gene Snitsky. Buried (9): Balls Mahoney, Hardcore Holly (injured but was essentially buried), Little Guido, Mike Knox (he is still there?), Stevie Richards, ROB VAN DAM, SABU, THE SANDMAN, TOMMY DREAMER (caps lock for extreme cases of burial). On the Fence (4): Kevin Thorn (what does he do from here?), Matt Striker (on TV, loses more than he wins, but not quite buried), Major Bros. (too new to say yet). Is it any wonder that Smackdown is easily the best WWE show at the moment? They actually have talent that is pushed, few people are outright buried and the ones who are fall mostly in the cruiser category (which is unfortunate but that's life in WWE). Right now they have a new world champ with a top challenger, tag champs with a top challenger, US champ with a top challenger, injured guys waiting in the wings that can come back to make the show better than it is now, and so on. I didn't know what to consider the Blue Bloods and Kane/Boogeyman, since that feud is getting TV time but doesn't really seem to be amounting to much. ECW has a list of guys being pushed that's damn near as big as Raw, which is sad if you think about it. Since the ECW Originals aren't likely to be around much longer they are the uber buried guys on the entire list. The really disturbing part of this is the insane level of which guys have been buried on Raw. Of the various guys mentioned only Carlito and Flair could even possibly be considered on the fence, but they lost seemingly every tag match and maybe the winner of their feud could be considered on the fence but as of right now both are seriously buried. Micki and Candice are iffy and thus on the fence, since I can't see either unseating Melina but they are de facto challengers right now. Orton is the curious case since he's all over TV and gets high profile matches, but hardly ever wins and is often made to be a fool. Thoughts?

Besides, Flair ended Carlito's farce of a reign and that match was kinda fun. And he also beat HHH in a good cage match while IC champ. So Flair certainly isn't in the bottom 5 by any means.

If Impact was a 2 hour show it'd be much better. It seems like a manic, truncated version of a 2 hour program that was squeezed into 1 hour. I share the same disdain for the KOTM match, but since they are doing it next month Angle should just chill and get a shot then. There was no point in putting him in this match. As a rule if multiple paragraphs are needed to explain the rules of a match, it's a bit hard to pull off successfully.

Good grief, how exactly can HHH bury Edge more than the DX vs. Team RKO feud already did? The poor guy had to be paired with the albatross known as Orton for months and found a way to make that decent (if hilariously homoerotic). His team was swept at Survivor Series. And when HHH got hurt Michaels finished the burial job in the build to WM, though I guess in a way that was necessary. I don't see how HHH making Edge eat a Pedigree is going to hurt the dude more than what has been done. Edge is the ideal choice to go to SD to win the title. He was unjustly frozen out of the Raw title scene and had just blown off his mini feud with Orton so he had even less to do. Honestly what was Edge supposed to do on Raw for the next few months until HHH got back to grace him with jobbing? HHH can still beat up on Orton, who will be the sacrificial lamb anyway. I heard the plan was for Kennedy to beat UT, but they did actually have some Edge/Kennedy interaction that led to that match on Raw. So I wonder if they had cold feet about Kennedy all along.

Ripper, if the Suns don't win the next one they are for all intents and purposes screwed. Looks like we're headed for Spurs vs. Pistons II regardless of whether anyone outside of those two cities wants to see it or not. You know, the NBA isn't ever going to rise back out of that #3 pro sport standing until some interesting teams start winning titles. I've come to the conclusion that the NBA's popularity goes as the Eastern Conference goes. The West is for the most part just kinda the West, which is to say there's usually a good number of quality teams in it historically that can come out of it (Lakers being the most notable obviously, but seemingly everyone has had some kind of run in the West). But the East is where the NBA's biggest group of markets exist and there needs to be some group of Celtics, Bulls, Knicks, Sixers, and Pistons being upper tier teams to make the league credible. Right now it's just the Pistons doing anything of those teams, and while the Bulls have improved they obviously aren't any serious sort of contender judging by the current series. The Pistons historically work as that antagonist team that can win on occasion but are moreso a heelish foil for the popular teams (Lakers, Bulls, etc.).

Lushus, I didn't care much for the first Fast and the Furious and never bothered with Tokyo Drift, but damned if I didn't kinda dig that 2nd one (2 Fast 2 Furious). Even first saw it while on a particularly bad date, but strangely enough I enjoyed the movie.

Yeah but here's the thing. Okay so Turner has all of the various MGM/Warners stuff but AMC never showed that stuff even at the peak of old school AMC. Fox Movies I guess shows that stuff, but would they not be willing to loan stuff out to AMC? AMC could have still focused on a lot of old Universal, Paramount, RKO. Hell, when I think back to it now the stuff I watched in the early 90s on AMC was all stuff like Universal horror movies, various comedies like the Road movies, Marx Bros., W.C. Fields (all Paramount), and Wheeler & Woolsey (RKO). I recall about 10 years ago they showed quite a bit of old Capra stuff from Columbia, and not just the typical Mr. Smith and Mr. Deeds stuff. I also taped the fully restored All Quiet on the Western Front off AMC during their 1998 Preservation Festival, something I don't think has ever even been released on DVD. AMC sold out in late 2000 and I am still very, very bitter about it. Bottom line: They suck.

In regards to the WWF in 1992....their business really went south after WM that year. The whole period from roughly April until August when the SS build started up big time was very tedious stuff with the same stale house show matches. Hogan was for the most part gone at that point in "retirement" post WM 8 and by that point wrestling wasn't perceived as cool anymore. While I would have been intrigued at a house show lineup featuring Savage/Flair and Bret/HBK on top, this apparently wasn't the majority opinion at the time (not to mention the undercards weren't so hot). I flat out loved the WWF from the SummerSlam 1992 build till year's end. That brief era gave us Bret vs. Bulldog at SS, the entire Macho/Warrior feud with Flair and Perfect messing with them, Flair's subsequent win over a hurting Savage (with Razor's debut), Bret shocking Flair at a random show in Canada for the title (which stunned everyone at the time), the whole segue into Perfect turning on Flair to team with Savage against Flair/Ramon, and Bret's "fighting champion" gimmick that was a breath of fresh air at the time compared to previous champs who never defended at all on TV. Hell, I even enjoyed the silly cheese feuds of that period like Bossman vs. Nailz and UT vs. Kamala. The WWF in 1992 was financially down the tubes, but I think most fans now wax poetic about that particular era. Probably one of my favorite times watching wrestling.

I vividly recall when AMC went to hell. It was Halloween 2000. I taped a movie called Supernatural with Carole Lombard and was watching it and halfway through some commercials popped up (just one break). I was just...outraged.

I don't have a problem with him fighting AJ on the cage, but why is anyone giving a damn about his whining afterwards? It's not like Angle won't be one of the umpteen guys in the KOTM match in June, so why does he need a shot RIGHT NOW? Even if he wins he'd be stuck in the KOTM next month and have no advantages, so why is Cornette acquiesing to his demands? My frustration with the angle isn't so much that it makes no sense, since Angle would want a title shot and all. But it's more that I don't care what he thinks and don't wanna hear it. Let Sting have his 1 on 1 match, job out via nefarious means and the usual 15 ref bumps and run ins, and then Angle can have a shot along with everyone else at Slammiversary.

I am assuming Henry will cost Batista the match against Edge at the next PPV, and then go on to job out hard to Big Dave during the summer. He'll settle into a bodyguard role with Edge after that and beat up jobbers and participate in tag matches. Once UT returns, he'll have to go through Henry to get to Edge.

I have to admit while I warmed up to Batman Begins and now dig it a lot.....I can't help but think The Dark Knight is destined for suckdom. First off, it's a mistake to do The Joker again anyway since everyone and their brother can only envision Jack Nicholson as The Joker and thus it really doesn't matter who they get since he won't be fully accepted. Second, they get Mr. Brokeback to be The Joker? I can't imagine him being able to pull off the role at all...there's nothing about his physical features, his voice, or anything that suggests this is good casting. It's not like the casting of Daniel Craig as Bond for instance, where most of the ridicule was either over him being blond or just not being well known, but his defenders noted his attitude and demeanor would be good for the role. The Joker and Catwoman were really the only villains that were done right in the original series. This dead serious and sinister take on The Joker is bound to be bad move, since The Joker isn't really a role that can be done without a certain crazed, over the top glee. The ideal Joker needs to make you laugh and scare the hell out of you at the same time with his heinous acts. The whole relaunch of the franchise wasn't as odd and obvious with Begins, since they did use some new villains (Ra's Al Ghul, Scarecrow). But once they start recycling the same villains I think moviegoers will get quickly tired of the new Batman series.

I'm glad someone mentioned Dan Rodimer. Having seen his OVW work, I can safely say the guy has zero redeeming value. He can't wrestle for shit, has zero charisma, and they would constantly give him the mic ad nauseum and he has a lousy voice and no mic skills. In fact fans here did a preemptive strike and started trashing him the first moment they handed him the mic, knowing full well he's the sort of well built guy with "the look" and no talent that they will want to push. As far as his look, imagine playing a video game and doing a create-a-wrestler mixing Lesnar and Orton and somehow ending up with the worst attributes of both men.

Oh, make no mistake I loved Edge's NYR 06 Pearl Harbor MITB cash in too. But that's the thing...we aren't supposed to love it. We're supposed to despise him for it. The difference is that this time he did it to UT, and before it was Cena. Cena was already stale and getting booed by a lot of people who were desperate to see him job the belt, so Edge ended up with quite a few supporters. UT is much more over and people were just getting into his title run before the injury, so it can be played like Edge ruined Taker's last hurrah title run.

Aside from the irritating constant commercials during the main event that whole cage match, Henry attack, and Edge MITB cash in had to be one of the best segments ever to air on Smackdown. I figure the constant commercials during the match set up an uninterrupted last 10-15 mins. however. God, this is going to be so much better of an angle than Edge cashing it in vs. Cena. For one thing, while people may have thought this was ultra cool you can't deny that tonight this was a dick move. With Cena he'd been in the EC match but let's face it...he'd just beaten friggin Carlito and Masters. Tonight UT had a war with Batista in a cage, then a vicious Mark Henry attack, and THEN Edge cashes it in. Also, since there's no bullshit with putting the belt back on Cena or HHH demanding a title shot Edge can get an actual run with the belt. Think of all the money they practically stumbled into this week: Kennedy when he gets back will come gunning for Edge, they can revive the Edge/Matt feud, Batista will want a shot, Rey can face his old tag partner for the title when he gets back, Benoit can renew hostilities with Edge after the MVP feud, and of course (are we paying attention?) the uber money that will be drawn when UT gets back and wants to kill Edge dead. Barring serious injury that should be the WM main event next year. Smackdown right now is in so much better shape than Raw it's not even funny.

I liked the animated Batman series a lot but I thought Mask of the Phantasm was crap when I saw it in 1993. My main problem with it was I didn't see how that hot redhead chick could possibly don a Phantasm suit and throw 300 lb. mobsters around like it was nothing. Batman Begins isn't as easy to "get" as the Spider-Man films, but yeah after seeing it a couple of times I can agree it is better. It still comes off like a filmed version of a one shot graphic novel (albeit an interesting one) rather than a definitely origin though.

I have to wonder...is Blake really gone next week? We've yet to have a shock result really and I think Melinda may well be tossed if Blake comes up with something wild. Jordin is getting the God push, so she's going nowhere.

I'm drawing a blank on Foley vs. Val in the post 2000 IC title era. I do remember a Val vs. Mankind feud in late 1999 but Foley himself in his book said that the feud mostly sucked due to him not being motivated and/or injured.

There's something about this whole scenario that I don't get. Shouldn't they have waited to see the official prognosis before panicking and jobbing the MITB off Kennedy? Being out 2 months is nothing with something like MITB. I know SD needed immediate relief with UT being hurt, but they couldn't have just skated by with Batista as champ for a while? Kennedy may end up with a token title run out of this, but make no mistake he'd just be keeping it warm for a while until UT returns and then they do a big money UT vs. Edge title feud. I still don't know how well Kennedy the Face would work. His act is almost the prototype for bad boy type heat as a cocky heel, but will his ring intro and screaming of his name work as a face? If he can get beyond that and get a bit deeper, then he might work as a face. That and if he feuds with Edge, Edge is such a heel that he can get the crowd to cheer for most anyone. Even Orton.

I'm glad that black chick is back for 1st and 10 instead of Steven A. Smith. Those Smith/Bayless arguments are death to all television.

I wouldn't actually call Chyna's brief 2000 IC run pointless. It served a point in the Eddie/Chyna breakup angle and Eddie rolling her up and pinning her was hilarious.

Yeah I don't know what the official ruling would be if someone besides Vince on that team pinned Lashley. As far as legal tags go, I get into rants with my brother about this frequently. Whenever I see a match where someone has their feet on the ropes leaning in for a tag, I always say "That is NOT a legal tag." And of course the response is "Nobody cares." Hand on tag rope, both feet on apron = legal tag. Anything else...bah.

Blake was totally exposed tonight, since the beatboxing thing might work one time a show, but when he was out there doing it twice it really gets annoying. That said I think he'll still somehow stagger into the finals due to two things: 1. They need a guy in the finals. 2. The 3 black chicks will all take each other's votes.