ISportsFan

I think I read last week on PWI that it's the theme from the ECW Rise and Fall DVD, but I am not sure. Jason

Yes he was, he was very upset. So was I; but, I can see why it was called. The only thing that makes me mad is that it's never called in any circumstances, except for when the White Sox have Hunter Wendelstedt as the plate umpire. Jason

I was watching. It clearly hit Crede on the arm. He did go into the pitch, but that call is never made (except for today). Jason Edit: To add onto this, Wendelstedt called the pitch a ball, which indicates he actually called Crede back to the plate because he thought he went into the pitch. And to expand on what I said in the previous post, Froemming blew a call at the plate last night and the balk on Marte last night scored a run that otherwise would not have scored if the remainder of the inning went exactly as it did after the call. The balk was questionable, at best, as he put his foot off the rubber slightly before he moved his arm in a direction that was clearly not for either pitching or throwing to third base.

I haven't seen a player who was hit by a pitch called back to the plate (i.e. the umpire only calling it a ball) in the Major Leagues in forever. Crede did go into the pitch, but almost any major leaguer worth their weight in any substance more valuable than coal does so as well. As a result, Guillen and Crede ended up being ejected, which caused the shortage (as well as three injuries to infielders over the course of the series in Oakland). Along with the balk called last night that didn't look like much of a balk and a blown call at the plate, the White Sox lost two games they could have won. They definitely didn't deserve to win last night and it's debatable whether or not they should have won today, but it is two games in a row with an umpire (Wendelstedt) and his crew that we've been at odds at since last season making some questionable, at the least, calls. But, they didn't deserve to win yesterday and, with all the double plays we hit into today, we probably didn't deserve to win today. Jason

White Sox win again, this time 3-2 in 10 innings at Kansas City to make their record 14-4. Contreras got hurt in the 4th inning, pulling his hamstring. But, the bullpen only allowed one run in 6 2/3 innings to get the W. Tenth inning heroics by Aaron Rowand, Juan Uribe, and AJ Pierzynski despite the 3, 4, 5, and 6 hitters only hitting something around 2 for 37 in the first two games of the series. Finally, the best moment for the Sox in the game came on a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning where Damaso Marte covered home to barely get the tag out to save the Sox from a loss. Jason

I just got to my computer, so this is a late update that everyone has probably already seen, but so be it. White Sox win 8-2 over Kansas City, making their record an AL best 13-4. Juan Uribe went 3 for 3, Scott Podsednik had 3 stolen bases, and the offense basically manufactured a bunch of runs with the wind blowing in. Freddy Garcia pitched 7 strong innings to pick up the win. Jason

More on the "is it fake?" line of thinking... Notice that "Vengeance" has awkward letters E and A, while "Hell in a Cell" only uses the same E that Vengeance has. The A in "Hell in a Cell" has the line going across the middle whereas it doesn't in Vengeance. Jason

The White Sox won again, a 4-3 decision over the Tigers, making this 4 wins in a row and two consecutive two game sweeps. The Sox have won each of the six series they've played so far this year. Buehrle wasn't "on," but did pitch well enough to get his 3rd win of the season. A late comeback from a 3-1 deficit led to the victory over Bonderman, who did pitch very well for 6 1/3 innings. This puts the Sox at 12-4, which will be either 2 or 3 games ahead of Minnesota (depending on the outcome of that game against Kansas City this afternoon). To put this in perspective (although it's very, very early and probably means absolutely nothing), the White Sox never led the AL Central by more than 2 games all of last season. Jason

No. They should not have hype videos at all on the PPVs. Put those things on Heat (which they already do) and don't waste time on the shows with the videos. For example, if they cut the videos from WrestleMania there'd be extra time for Cena/JBL to not be cut to 11 minutes, plus if those videos and 5 minutes were shaved off Hogan's ego-stroking pose-a-thon then Eddie/Rey and the ladder match would have both had some extra time to work with. The videos are awesome, but they shouldn't be on PPV at all. Leave them on Heat and throw them in a special section of the DVD. To officially answer the question: if they can fit all of the videos on Heat and still have time for one match, then give them all videos. Jason

How could I forget Benoit and Guerrero fighting 150 times on Nitro that year? That was awesome. I take it all back. The WWF had better matches on PPV for the most part but WCW was winning by the end of the year because of all the Horsemen stuff UseTheSledgehammerUh was talking about. That Horsemen angle with Anderson, Flair, and Sting was pretty good. Jason

Another thing I failed to mention was just how much more disappointing WCW was in 1995. Diesel was expected to completely suck, but when he had a quality opponent his matches were excellent. Of course, they had sucky Mabel v. Diesel matches and such, but that was no worse than Hogan's garbage. Also, I forgot to mention the ladder match at SummerSlam and all the undercard matches Bret Hart had that were really good. Hogan, even when paired with good opponents like Vader, still had terrible matches. It was a much more disappointing main event picture than the WWF had. The undercard was developing, but it didn't really translate into great stuff on the PPVs like the WWF's undercard did for some of the year. I would be remiss in not mentioning Fall Brawl, though, with Johnny B. Badd v. Brian Pillman and Ric Flair v. Arn Anderson in great matches. Jason

WWF had the better year solely for the main events of 4 of their PPVs and some undercard matches. The Bret v. Diesel matches at Royal Rumble and Survivor Series, and Bret v. Bulldog at IYH 5 were all very good to excellent. Shawn Michaels v. Diesel at WrestleMania XI was decent as well (even if Bigelow/LT was "main event" too). Plus, Jarrett v. Michaels at IYH 2 was phenomenal. Both WCW and the WWF had terrible years with gimmicks, and the WWF had the terrible "Diesel Power" year, but since all the out-of-the-ring stuff sucked for the most part I'd have to say the WWF had the better year due to ring work. Jason

I didn't think Unforgiven was bad, but the love triange ending was what led to the downfall (in my opinion) -- of course, combined with Kreski. Probably both of those are related. Survivor Series did suck, Mike, you're right. King of the Ring sucked too. The main event had a world title change when Rock pinned Vince McMahon, a crappy DX/Dudleyz table match, and a whole lot of nonsensical booking in the tournament itself which led to bad matches throughout the night. Jason

I think this news is Keller, not Scherer, but Keller is worse than Scherer so the point holds very true. Jason

I thought I was the only one. I also loved it. I like it so much, in fact, that when I see Christian come out on Raw I sing it in my head. I thought Dean Douglas was a very good gimmick too. I think Shane hated the fact that he was sabotaged by the Clique more than he hated the gimmick, but after the fact he more or less combined both into a single memory. The gimmick could have gotten over much more than it actually did. It's not like Simon Dean where the gimmick is DOA; it's something that could actually work. Jason

White Sox with a 9-1 win over Detroit tonight. Dye, hopefully, got out of his mini-slump to start the season by getting some big hits (4 RBI on the night). Garland is having the best start of his career (3-0), allowing only 1 run in 8 innings of work. Jason

2000 WWF was unreal. Everything, except the brainfart of King of the Ring, was outstanding, until Unforgiven. The unsatisfactory end of the love triangle angle killed the momentum the company had, storyline-wise, practically until this day. No Mercy had 2 great main events, Survivor Series was kind of there, and Armageddon was the definition of a one-match show. 2001 was a bunch of great wrestling for the first half of the year (until Benoit went out for his neck surgery and the Invasion started), but the angles were just not very good after Unforgiven 2000 had HHH win over Angle and keep Stephanie. Jason

That's another thing I didn't really bring up in my original post -- the crowd didn't really lose interest until the match started (like RRR said). They were into the entrance, seemingly, but the match wasn't what they really wanted to see apparently (from my point of view on TV). Jason

Regal is good at selling long term and submission moves. Regal is not very good at selling punches, which is what the Heart Throbs gave a lot of. He sells punches and forearms with a slight delay, plus when he falls from a punch it's very unnatural, similarly to how JR did tonight when he fell from HHH punches. That's what I meant. Jason

The crowd, I thought, was chanting boring near the latter portions of the match. They also didn't seem that interested in the post-match beatdown nor the hot tag to Tajiri. In their defense though, Regal and Tajiri haven't been on Raw since the Raw before WrestleMania, so it's not like this was a big happening. Jason

Basically they come out with pink and black boas thrusting constantly. They act kind of gay (and apparently that was their OVW gimmick), but Coach was talking about how many women they got while hanging out with the Coach last night. They weren't that good in the ring, but Regal playing face-in-peril didn't help things (Regal's worst attribute probably is his selling). The crowd crapped on them and the match, probably indicating that they should have gotten promos or videos to lead into them appearing. Jason Edit: I forgot to mention that I enjoyed their entrance a whole lot. It's very entertaining.

My thoughts are: That cruiserweight match better show up on TV somewhere. Plus, how on earth can they gain any momentum if their angle from last week is not played up on Smackdown? Who is booking Smackdown these days, and why does he seem to have a penchet for making impromptu tag matches stemming from singles matches? I don't know how it'll play out, but MNM will either get made tonight or they'll end up like almost every other team/guy from OVW that got a huge push to start--on Velocity. Cena and Jordan seem like they've wrestled 200 times recently. Jason

For the other perspective (the guy who was calling Meltzer): Jason

Final Smackdown report (also added to the first post on the page) from pwinsider. MNM were shown getting into a limousine with the WWE Tag Team Title belts as paparazzi took their pictures. In the main event of Smackdown, WWE Champion John Cena defeated Orlando Jordan with the FU. Jason

Updated at the top too, but here's the latest from pwinsider. MNM defeated Eddie Guerrero & Rey Mysterio to win the WWE Tag Team Championship. Towards the end of the match, Rey Mysterio set up Joey Mercury for a 619, but Melina stopped it. Eddie Guerrero chased Melina up the aisle, allowing Johnny Nitro to hit Rey from behind and set up the elevated DDT by MNM for the pin on Rey. Following the match, Guerrero and Mysterio argued, and Guerrero shoved Mysterio. Mysterio the shoved Eddie down, and walked away. Jason