ISportsFan

Copied it straight from WO.com, I didn't think to change anything. And to add on to what others had to say (in addition to my praise of the two underlevel title matches), Abyss and Hardy could be decent or could be a complete trainwreck. Jason

According to several fans I heard from this afternoon, there's nothing to the charges that were filed by an Alabama man claiming that Ric Flair, Chris Jericho, and Dave Batista harassed him Monday night in a Hooters restaurant. Several fans claimed that the person who filed the charges, Dana Mixx, actually challenged Jericho to an armwrestling match and lost. One person who witnessed the incident claimed that Mixx handed over his hat after losing, but Jericho later returned it. The group of wrestlers were in the Hooters for over an hour after that, signing autographs and taking pictures with different fans including Mixx. One WWE employee who was in the restaurant also noted that there was no incident and no physical threats made towards any fan as well. Everyone I heard from also claimed that Batista was not even at the restaurant, much less involved in the incident. Credit: PWInsider.com and Mike Johnson Jason

That was in Dallas on 2/7/00. The 8-man in Chicago before Backlash 2004 was also good--Evolution v. Benoit/Michaels/Foley/Benjamin. Jason

I believe you would not be in the minority on this one. Jason

At least in that situation, Jericho and Benoit were in a different match for the PPV, so that way they got to have a tag title match too. In this case they just switched the tag titles on the show before the PPV. Why? I don't get it. It makes absolutely no sense. The whole point is to make people pay to see the faces win the titles at the PPV, but they gave it away on free TV. So now they pay to see if the faces can defend the titles. I am not sold on this logic. Same thing happened in WCW for Road Wild 97 I believe was the year--Luger won the belt from Hogan in Chicago the week before the PPV, and Hogan won the belt back at the PPV. Made no sense; the element people typically want to pay for is the chase by the face, not the heel having an automatic rematch that costs $30 less than one week after losing the title on free TV. Jason

Right before King of the Ring 2001, they beat Jericho and Benoit for the titles with Austin's help. McMahon wasn't happy with Austin after the match. They, I believe, added the Dudleyz v. Kane/Spike to the PPV... I don't think that match was on the show previously, I think they added it on Heat. Jason

I was at the show in Champaign for Raw. Attendance was probably around 2500-3000 (best guess). Lots and lots of empty seats. My review of the show is on the Observer site. I didn't take a guess at attendance in that report because people were too spread out for me to make a guess for a major news site. Jason

They may have hyped Taboo Tuesday more than almost any other pay-per-view, but it's really hard to plunk down $35 to watch something where you don't know what will be shown. I know I didn't want to watch the show unless Benoit won the voting, but I wouldn't have known until I bought the show. So, I didn't buy the show or buy a ticket to the show. There are probably a lot of people like me that didn't want to buy a show where they didn't know what will take place. For this reason tournaments almost always do poorly on PPV for pro wrestling, if I am correct in my memory. Jason

How is that successful when WWE is still wasting a lot of money on producing these p.p.v.s? They could just do one p.p.v. per month and get those 2 buyrates combined. Let's say that the average single-brand show is about 225,000 buys, and at the most 250,000 (which is way high). If they did one PPV in October, they would not have gotten 360,000 combined buys. If, for instance, 100,000 is the break even point (as mentioned by CyNick as being the possible number), then a single one-brand PPV with the 225,000 "average" is 125,000 over the break even point. With the two shows, they are 160,000 over the break even point, thus making more money. Therefore, it's a successful month. Even if the average is 250,000 (which it isn't), they still came out ahead this month by 10,000. Also, consider one of these shows was an experimental Tuesday night show where the main event wasn't known until after the show started (the main reason why I didn't buy a ticket and go to Milwaukee from Champaign that night for the PPV), and you realize that 170,000 is really good considering the self-imposed circumstances. In all, not a bad month for them. Jason

1. Benoit 2. Steel Cage 3. Lead Pipe 4. Shelton 5. Servant 6. School Girl 7. Evening Gown Jason

Since Shawn can't actually wrestle very well now with the injury, the smart thing to do now is to, regardless of who gets voted into the title match, is to give Benoit the title match (and say the fans voted for it whether or not it actually happened to give it credibility), then have Edge punk out Michaels during the tag match. That way they give all the matches they advertised, Michaels can stand on the ring apron while Edge does the bulk of the match, and they can advance the Edge story with him beating up his tag partner. Jason Edit: Got beat to the punch.

The US title is so terrible looking, with there barely being any gold. It's a huge red, white, and blue sticker basically. So, it wins. The women's title is also awful, though, with the red zigzags and huge writing. Jason

Am I the only one who found the title of this thread to be a little sadly ironic considering who is in the pictures in spman's avatar and sig? Jason

They won't in North America. They will in the UK, and I'm not sure, but possibly other parts of Europe. Jason

Summer job is with a small business in manufacturing blood bag indicators for hospitals. School time job is supervising and officiating intramural sports. Jason

I believe it is. And I agree... who does care about Shane? Jason

I'm not, and I have work in about 20 minutes. Benoit made Flair tap to the crossface, seemed like a long match. Meltzer says not as good as the TV matches with these guys in it. Jason

Randy Orton v. Kane Eugene v. HHH in a steel cage Plus, diva search stuff. Personally, I thought that Eugene and HHH wouldn't mess with each other again after the debacle last week, but I guess Hunter has to get in the final word. I think the Kane/Orton match is non-title, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Jason

I was waiting for someone to say this. Considering he's in my sig and all, I think I might be biased, so I need someone else to help me out. Jason

They aren't B-players. But, the show they're on is secondary to Raw. And thus, they're fighting for "secondary" prizes, like the WWE title compared to the World title. Even though the WWE title has more lineage, the World title has main evented every co-brand PPV since SummerSlam 2003. Raw is live, and they mention it's live, and Smackdown isn't. Raw house shows are promoted well, Smackdown house shows are promoted on radio by saying "HHH" (or some reports have said). It's just constant. Benoit didn't want the Smackdown title, he wanted the Raw title. And so on. Jason

The big difference between that and Raw/Smackdown is the fact that WCW still treated itself as one huge promotion. It wasn't as if Thunder got it's own world title, tag titles, secondary title, and women/cruiser title. Thunder was just meaningless, like Saturday Night for WCW, or Velocity/Heat for WWE. Also, it wasn't as if Thunder got its own PPVs. Smackdown is portrayed as a big deal, in that it gets its own titles, but then again is portrayed as secondary to Raw. If anything, it's hurting the product more than Thunder did for WCW, because now it's as if half of co-brand PPVs is with "secondary" matches, and whole Smackdown PPVs are with "secondary" guys. With Thunder, it was just another TV show. With Smackdown, it's a major revenue source, and it's being treated as secondary. Jason

First one was a meaningless RAW match on the buildup to Vengeance. HHH was going to win, Bischoff came out and said that HHH needed to "destroy, not beat" Eugene, and then Benoit came out and accidentily laid out Eugene with the chair. Then HHH pedigreed Benoit. Second one was SummerSlam. Third one was last week. So this week is #4. I figured I'd start the thread because matches have been announced, so the board might have interest in the matches and might want to discuss them before the OAO thread on Monday. Jason Edit: I guess you remembered there was the meaningless one on RAW a while ago. But, I'm leaving this here because some others may have the same question.

The match is downright terrible. There are two huge bumps, lots of downtime while Mick regains consciousness (or is being wheeled off on a gurney), and not much else. There is no psychology, mainly because one person could not think during the match, so there is no actual logical planning behind any moves. The bumps were awesome. Actually, I can say without caution that the match itself was awesome, literally, because almost nobody can see it without having their jaw drop out of awe. But looking objectively at the match, as a match, it's clear that it's not very good. Just nothing really of substance outside the two bumps at the beginning of the match. Unfortunately for the match itself, there was about another 13 or so minutes after the bumps, and they couldn't do anything during those minutes worth much or anything. I give it *1/2 about as a match. As a spectacle, it's unheard of, and probably nothing ever again will be even close to matching it. But it's not a very good wrestling match, or even a good brawl. It's just two bumps. Jason

I don't think he's really ever truly been in touch with reality. He was in touch with kids in the 80s, but kids aren't really in touch with reality either. Even during the "boom" phase of 1999, he had complete crap like the Undertaker sacrificing Mideon, kidnapping Stephanie, and so on. In 2000, when everything was going right, he still had no idea that Patterson and Brisco in evening gowns was not humorous in any way, and in fact was disgusting. He had Mae Young become pregnant and give birth to a hand. Whether he wrote the stories or not is irrelevant. He approves everything, thus he's to blame for this stuff. And while he had some great years of wrestling and some good storylines in the top of the card around 2000 and 2001, the fact is that these things prove that he was never really on the same page as reality, even during the good times. It's just when everything goes to crap when his "touch with reality" is questioned. Jason

By the way, here's the full preview: Jason