JimmyHendricks

By the power of Grayskull!!!!

http://ncfmb.ytmnd.com/

I love being able to tell this story. I attended the '02 Rumble in Atlanta that year, and Mr. Perfect got a HUGE pop when he came out. When he hits the Perfectplex, the place went nuts. The really cool thing, though, is this: After Mr. Perfect is eliminated, keep watching for a bit. All of a sudden you will hear a massive pop in the arena that comes from out of nowhere, and really doesn't make sense given that nothing out of the ordinary is going on in the ring. What that pop is is the crowd giving Perfect a standing ovation as off camera he makes his way to the back. I've had friends who've seen the PPV tell me they always wondered what the hell the "mystery pop" was for. Well, that's what it was, and deservedly so. I remember that "mystery" pop as well. Ah, the days when the crowd actually knew, or gave a shit about past stars. If Hennig were alive to appear on the RAW XV special, he would have gotten no reaction because everyone is 14 and a Cena fan now.

My favorite Simpsons moment ever, from "The Front", where Homer finds out at his high school reunion that he never graduated, and has to retake a class....... (Going from memory here) Teacher: Welcome to remedial Science 1A.....my wife recently passed away and this class keeps me busy.....but I still miss her.... Homer: Excuse me, is this going to be on the test? Teacher: (shocked) No! Of course. We see Homer has written "DEAD WIFE" on his sheet of notes. He erases it.

It isn't THAT much of a distraction, I actually liked them. My favorite was after Shawn's "Losing My Smile" interview, where it popped up and said something like "Shawn Michaels has forfeited more titles than any other WWE Superstar". Zing! It would be nice to have them optional, but giving it away because of it is a bit much.

That was funny the first 34 times someone said it. I never thought 2007 would end with Chris Benoit dead. And I never thought Chris Benoit would kill his own family, either. It's still somewhat shocking, and I'll never fully be over it as a fan. What a crazy year.

I think they feel that Perfect's DVD will sell to the smarks and hardcore fans. Those who picked up the new DX and Cena DVD's probably don't even know who he is.

But he is!!

What's the content of the extra Wal-Mart disc?

How could they suspend the HITC above the ring in the outdoor Citrus Bowl? I'm sure it can be done, but it would be interesting.

Seriously? Now THAT'S funny. Jillian is officially the first heel "crappy egotistical musician" character in wrestling history who really DOES have an album out. Thus she has succeeded where the likes of Double J and Three Count have all failed. That being said, I think she's way over the top with the bad singing gimmick. Yeah, I know she's supposed to suck, but she could at least go for a "Ashlee Simpson unplugged" sort of sucking rather than screeching in the way she does, where it's all too obvious that she's trying to sound as off-key as possible. Anyone else actually look for Jarretts record back in the day? Didn't Jarrett pull a gimmick that he DID have an album out (kayfabe), but it was so popular that it was probably SOLD OUT everywhere (to cover up that it didn't exist)? I'm real vague on the whole thing, but I can be perfectly honest and say that I looked for a "Jeff Jarrett" card at Best Buy whenever I was out. I never made a special trip or anything, but I kept my eyes out. I guess since I didn't see Barry Didinsky plugging it on RAW should have said something.

He probably thought he'd get blacklisted for speaking out against the industry. And no matter how many times I hear a former WWE'er say they never want to work there again, I never believe it. Too many of them have gone back.

Yeah, that's definitely Lance Storm. As soon as I read that guess, it was easy to imagine/see his crewcut under that "hood". He was one of the voices on TV right after Benoit died as well.

I can remember Luger (in the early Narcissist days when his steel forearm would knock out every opponent) pinning people with his pinkie. I always had wished someone would do that before he did. I'm sure this has been asked somewhere in the previous 113 pages, but I'm not going to go back and re-read them all: What was the point in the different colored belt straps? Each color was a completely different belt, right? I can remember Warrior having a yellow, blue, purple, white, and maybe an orange one. Shawn had a white I-C belt at WM IX (the Tatanka talk made me think of this). Isn't it a lot of money to make a completely new belt, just for a different colored strap?

I bought it from Amazon Canada. It cost a little extra to ship it here, but it's an option.

Unfortunately, it IS real. I've been reading up on it for the last 2 years or so, via various news bits from Meltzer and such. It was supposed to come out back in 2005 I think, but got delayed and was supposed to come out this year. Now it's next year. I can't imagine what could be slowing down such a high scale production. Absolutely awful in every possible way. Even worse is they are trying to put this over as a serious work of art, much like Macho Man's rap CD. I hope it somehow never comes out. It's obvious they don't have a distributor, and I can't imagine any studio backing this shit. Of course, it's Hollywood, so go figure.

I've always wondered, is the voting a work, or do the fans legitimally choose the matches? I know they've always tried to sway fans to vote a certain way (Flair begging in a promo for his match with HHH to be in a cage last year for example), but didn't know if they actually acted upon real voting results or not. It's obvious Shawn is supposed to win, but if Hardy actually got more votes, would they go with him?

I actually "imported" this from Amazon Canada and it arrived yesterday. I haven't officially starting reading it from the beginning yet, but I've been picking out passages here and there. Among other things: --He was offered a ton of money to defect to WCW in the late 80's (around 89 I think) and was personally offered over 200 grand by Flair himself. Later, he "officially" was offered 157k (on par with what Vince was paying him) from Jim Herd and refused. --He had a "top secret" photo shoot with Hogan right after WM IX where they stood nose to nose playing tug-of-war with the belt in an obvious build for SummerSlam. He says Hogan told him immediately after winning the belt from Yoko that he would return the favor, then backed off, refusing to put him over saying he wasn't in his league. --He constantly speaks negatively about Vince, even when discussing the 80s and his time as champ in 93/94, how unhappy he was with booking decisions, how he was a hair's breath from jumping to WCW all the time, etc. I understand his hatred, but he goes a little overboard. --As mentioned, he CONSTANTLY puts himself over as the best worker in whatever timeframe he's writing about, and always brings up people like Flair, Hogan, Taker, Austin, Shawn (especially him, numerous times), and just about everyone else constantly complementing him. --Montreal and Owen's death yielded very little new info, but it was interesting to hear it directly from Bret. He did say himself and Vince sat on a park bench after Owen's funeral and Vince said that he regretted Montreal and wanted Bret to come back and finish his career in the WWF. He also said Shawn was crying hysterically in the corner during the Bret/Vince fight. --Numerous "party" stories, including a doozy where all the guys (including Vince) went up to Flair's empty hotel suite and "used his bed as a urinal". Not out of hate or dislike for Flair himself, just because he had the best suite with the most booze --Brings up numerous liaisons with numerous women, but always makes them low key. Constantly says he forgave himself every time because he was "sad, stressed and lonely" on the road. All in all, it is the best pro-wrestling biography since Foley's first, and maybe even the best ever. What makes it great is he doesn't have Vince or his minions standing over him proofreading everything, which makes it much more revealing (especially the party stories, he goes into great detail about Koko's hotel rampage or Scott Steiner blowing a huge snot rocket on a hotel front desk, etc.) However, it suffers from what everyone has already alluded to, and that's Bret's self-love/promotion and his bitterness towards Vince. I expected both, but after a while I was getting tired about hearing how Vince was an asshole or how he was able to carry the very green Razor Ramon/Diesel/Shawn/ANYONE to a good match. But, you should DEFINITELY buy it. You can open it to almost any page and find an interesting story, and you can find a tidbit you had never read/heard before as well. I'd compare his highly descriptive writing style to Bill Clinton's autobiography. Not in content matter, obviously, but Bret seems to have a fantastic memory. It's superb, and I don't regret paying extra to import it down here. I'll post more thoughts after I officially finish reading it.

On another note, Bret's book arrived via Amazon Canada today. I'll read it this weekend and post thoughts on Monday, probably in General Wrestling.

Who's the source of this? I have a hard time believing WWE.com would ever put up a video of Steph being told off in the first place. I watched both of them when they were up, and the descriptions are spot on. Candice is being wheeled to a back door, still strapped to a gurney with a neck brace, and Steph runs up with a bottle of water saying "Give her some water!" Shortly thereafter, Candice freaks out and sits up, ripping the brace off. Steph then says, "Leave her alone, she can't breathe!" Then, at the very end, you hear a (female I think) medic say, "Just let us do our jobs, all right?"

We had Batista in store for a signing at the Borders I worked at today. About 350 people showed up, not bad for the middle of a Tuesday. Myself and a cop waited outside to escort him in, and he showed up in a nice Vince-sized limo. He had a guy with him I didn't recognize. I was hoping for Bruce Prichard or Johnny Ace. Oh well. He's really quiet in person, but smiled and took photos with everyone. The line ended, and we all went to the office to get our personal stuff signed, and we heard more people had showed up. He quickly went back out and signed for another 15 minutes, which I thought was nice, since his time was up and he really didn't have to stay. Then I had him sign my Vengeance 2005 DVD insert, and we actually talked for a minute about his HITC with HHH, and how it's his favorite match. He said he was bummed that not too many stores carry the DVD anymore. Then the whole staff took a group photo, and he put his arm around me, which felt more like a headlock. He was a complete and total class act, and everyone (including the non fans) were really impressed with him. The funniest part was when a little kid tried to tell him how to reverse Taker's tombstone. He just sat there and gave him all the attention in the world. Here's a photo. Feel free to tell me how grotesque I look:

Saw this while looking for Bret's book. Looks interesting, although we've talked about it to death (no pun intended, seriously).

This might belong in the General folder, but oh well. Is Bret's book out yet? I read a Observer bit where it said there was a big release in Canada this week, but it won't be out in the U.S until "well into" 2008.

That Cena 4/23/07 match is the nearly one hour one, correct? I never got the Vault DVD, so this is an obvious buy for me.

My Best Buy had the Rey DVD out a week early (street date is 10/23), so I bought it for $24.99. The box set with the shirt and pendant was 49.99. No thanks. I haven't watched it yet, but my god, someone is getting fired because the match list insert misspells "Guerrero" as "Guerrera", on both Eddie and Chavo. Worse yet, they list his Halloween Havoc match with Eddie as happening at "Halloween House 97". This is what happens when you hire non-fans to do this shit.