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What are you basing that wild claim on? His magnificent ability to compile meaningless regular season stats? or his magnificent ability to lose 6 of 9 playoff games, often going down like a dog on top of that?

If that's the same Sean Payton that was the Giants offensive co-ordinator that sucked so much that Fassel usurped his position then I'd have to respectfully disagree. I'll even go so far as to say that he won't last the length of his contract even if it's only a 3 yr deal because that's how much faith I have in his ability, or lack thereof as the case may be.

Ever since Taboo Tuesday he's been in tag team/brand feuds first with the RAW guys, then Show/Kane, and lastly with MNM. It's been about 3 months since he had any kind of prominent role as a singles wrestler.

Think Hogan vs The Rock - was that match really, truly, great? Not really. But the heat was incredible. This is essentially the UFC's version of this. But if Hughes KO's Gracie in 2 minutes it won't really live up to the hype. Had Hogan/Rock been booked to go 5 minutes no one would care and that's the big difference between fixed "dream matches" and legit ones. I don't think anyone has fond memories of seeing Tito Ortiz all but sodomize Ken Shamrock in their first fight, well unless you hate Shamrock, but still there's a lot more potential for something like that than say Bonnar/Griffin.

I was referring to your assessment that someone who is over can't be pushed out of nowhere, unless I read that wrong. Neither Rey nor RVD is in title contention for different reasons, and as such putting the belt on them without some build would be senseless. welllll that's why they would have to build, for example: Rey wins the Rumble, gets punked out by Angle, dedicates it to the fans, Batista and Eddie, etc. etc. Maybe I'm not seeing where you're coming from here...do you mean like, just all of a sudden give them the world title, like Kevin Nash in 94? RVD has been out for over a year, he'd have to work his way back up...I doubt, however, that the fans would shit all over Rey being the champ if he all of a sudden won it next week on Smackdown. What I'm getting at is, why not give Rey a trial run with the US Title to see IF fans will take to him routinely beating the top guys on SD before doing something like giving him the Rumble/'Mania double with no guarantee that it'll pan out the way they hope. Yes, some people would love to see Rey defy the odds, but then again if you do that too frequently or push the guy too hard it could backfire just like it did to Cena. I for one would see a big issue with Rey going from dicking around in the tag ranks against MNM to suddenly winning the Rumble and the WHC at WM. Granted I'm not a fan of his, but wouldn't it have seemed somewhat sudden had he been booked to win the title last week considering he has never really been a contender? This really only applies to guys looking to win their 1st title since former champs can basically go from doing whatever straight to a title push.

I was referring to your assessment that someone who is over can't be pushed out of nowhere, unless I read that wrong. Neither Rey nor RVD is in title contention for different reasons, and as such putting the belt on them without some build would be senseless.

Batista was in Evolution, and only got pushed to the top because Orton bombed. If Randy was even competent I don't think Dave ends up winning a singles title until probably this year. What has Rey done since beating Eddie 104 times last year to warrant a push to the World title? By your logic RVD could be champ as soon as he comes back, and if that happened I'm sure a lot of people would complain that he didn't earn the push/title.

I don't get the idea that Rey Mysterio should be pushed to the WHC level when he's never even been a secondary champion in the WWE. Why aren't people clamoring to see the WWE give him a run with the US Title and see if people still want to see him wrestle the same match before pushing him from basically nowhere to the top of the company, at least on the SD side of things?

Kenyans aren't sprinters though, they only excel at distance races and that likely has more to do with their training environments than anything else.

I don't want to derail the topic too much, but I'm very happy with the removal of bonus points. Now the Williamses can't play 10 times a year against top competition and pick up 1/3 or more of their points just by beating people in the top 50. I really wanted Serena to lose in the first round so her points could plummet to the point where she was ranked in the 40's, but it simply wasn't to be. I didn't see any of her match with Li, did you? If so, how did Serena look?

I will give it a go, hopefully it'll be over in an hour or so either way though I'd love to see Martina make it to at least the 3rd round or so just to get her ranking up.

That KO by Ludwig was hilarious.

This match has exceeded my expectations, though I do wonder why you'd have these two in particular take massive bumps like these.

What do you do when two of your least favorite fighters ever face off in what objectively should be a dream match of some sort? Regardless of who wins I want to see GSP stomp the victor for the title.

Edge didn't fuck Chyna, thus he wins.

Is this the GREATEST MATCH EVER!!!1!1 yet? The only match pairing that I can remember being more tiresome in under a year was Eddie/Rey in 2005.

Hewitt is easily the best player to watch in all of tennis between having opponents spit at him, racially tinged comments, the Vischt, his obnoxious COME ON'S!, and generally being a surly prick on and off the court. Losing his mullet only took away a fraction of his greatness.

According to the ATP site Goran quit after losing to Hewitt at Wimbledon in '04. Rafter retired in '02 and his last tour match was at the Masters Cup in '01, losing to you guessed it, Lleyton 'The Legend Killer' Hewitt

That was just an attempted get him more heel heat. On SD! last week, they were muting his battle royal win I know, but I'm just saying that they can at least try to manipulate crowd noise even on RAW. Considering he's facing Michaels it'll likely be a 50/50 crowd anyway. If he was facing Cena or Edge or someone like that, then it would probably be 90% Angle and they couldn't touch that in any way.

I don't disagree with this, but I also think the main issue is that the "apologists" for lack of a better term sometimes feel that it's their mission in life to find the positive in something as inane as Dr. Heiney (sp?). Yes, there are times where I'm criticized for being cynical but it boggles the mind that the WWE has had the most talented roster they've ever had over the last few years and yet continue to push talentless slugs simply because THEY want to, and the fans be damned if they don't care about those guys. How did guys like Orton, Masters, Carlito, Lashley et al earn a push? Why do guys like Christian, Jericho, RVD et al end up getting shorted simply because they went out and got over on their own merit? It's just retarded and counterproductive to take a product that is all about fan interaction and ignore the fan's wishes at least 90% of the time. For that reason alone, I find it really hard to be excited about the product, and it becomes more than a bit annoying when people who are on the other side of the spectrum can't even acknowledge that there are some huge problems within the company.

Uh, they did (try to) censor the "You Suck" chants for a while. They can do whatever they want when Angle walks out, but they'd be foolish to act like he won't be the top face on SD.

I don't disagree with the business aspect but Rey being booked as a champ would almost by definition make his opponents look silly, and that's not something SD can really afford at this time considering he'd be facing guys with limited heat/credibility like Orton and Henry who by the way tower over him. He's never been booked as a pure technician, he's certainly not a power wrestler and there's really no one close to the ME level that's a relatively speed guy save Angle and maybe Benoit who I'm guessing are both going to be faces for a while since they're the only guys on SD who can work that way at the top. The WWE doesn't book Rey where he's just that much faster than everyone else, they usually book it so that Rey's opponents look stupid, stiff and plodding. There's only so many times I can see a JBL or someone of that ilk swing a foot over Rey's head in slow motion and seem stunned when Rey ducks or slides through their legs to escape. The 619 and West Coast Pop just don't strike me as legit finishers and the 'rana where the victim has to put his legs in the air like a prostitute so Rey can hook them just don't make me see how him being a champion is the smartest thing to do given the staff of monkeys in charge. I guess I can't buy a guy who relies on contrived looking comebacks and flash/fluke pins as a marketable babyface champ. If Rey was able to work as a heel and hooked the tights or otherwise cheated to win every match for a few months I wouldn't really have a gripe with it, but then he'd lose everything that makes him who he is.

He should have known that Vince does not like to lose, and that he was only rehired because people chanting his name ruined Vince's shows. Just picture if Brock Lesnar came back this week. The guy is a 3-time champ and one of the most protected workers in the history of the WWWF/E and even HE would be jobbed out mercilessly because Vince is vindictive enough to destroy his own product simply to prove that he's always "right". I would feel bad for Matt if he hadn't been stupid enough to walk away from what I can only imagine would be decent money and a better career path had he chosen TNA and/or the indies instead of being a higher paid, completely miserable jobber.

The Tennis Gods have granted me one of my three wishes by bouncing Venus early. Now all we need is Roddick and Serena flaming out and I can call this two weeks a positive. If they'd like to bump Sharapova early, that'll be fine as well.

Does it seem like any of the fans know who Tanahashi is?