JHawk

CanadianChick's never had a boyfriend? I know she's young, but that still surprised me. I avoided the whole Valentine's Day bullshit by working 7 1/2 hours this afternoon and evening. Not like I had a girlfriend to piss off by covering the shift, so fuck it.

The real reason DiBiase got screwed was because The Honky Tonk Man didn't want to job the IC Title to Savage at the first NBC prime time special. They had to promise Savage the World Title to keep him from shooting on Honky, and that cost DiBiase a planned World Title reign. If Chris Benoit doesn't get the title at WrestleMania, I'd be willing to add him to this list.

The title says it all: What angles/happenings were so bad that even the broadcast team didn't try to sell it at all? I can think of one off the top of my head: Al Wilson. Watched the 11/7/02 SmackDown today for the first time since it aired, and Al Wilson is proposing to Dawn Marie. And the segment is so bad that Michael Cole and Tazz sound like CWM and Anglesault on commentary (sorry, guys). Tazz starts off by saying "This could be really good or really bad, but it will be memorable," and that's probably the closest thing to a serious comment they made the entire segment. The two best lines: Al: "If you don't, I'll kill myself, I swear to God." Tazz: "Say no Dawn, say no!" And; Cole: "I thought it couldn't get any worse than Billy and Chuck." Can anybody else think of anything?

I have a tape of various matches and interviews from the TBS show around that time, and I remember Cornette trying to hype the PPV for Eaton and hyping a Florida show for Lane and Dick Murdoch. I'm pretty sure it was the same night. They also note on that tape many times that Big Bubba Rogers was the first to qualify for the Stampede final, and he's nowhere to be found despite not going to the WWF for another 5 months or so.

Not only was it a horrible card...but one of the poorest promoted/managed events ever. Fucked up starting times, ticket info, etc just killed NWA's first attempt at payperview. Wasnt the double main event Ric Flair vs. Hawk(Im sure there was alot of suspense as to who was walking away with the belt after that one) and Dusty's clusterfuck steel cage match thats only purpose was to put himself over? Yeah, pretty horrible, and I dont even recall any undercard bouts but I think there was only like 3. At least the Bunkhouse Stampede match was mildly entertaining, imo. Yeah, I remember reading about that. Tickets had about 3 different start times. The undercard matches were Nikita Koloff v Bobby Eaton Larry Zbyzsko winning the Western States Title over Barry Windham Flair over Hawk (and it was markedly worse than their blah match during Bash '86) Rhodes winning the Bunkhouse Stampede. Personally, I HATED the match (when Luger is one of the BETTER workers in a match, you have a problem). A lot of the eliminations were just so ridiculous (why the heck would Luger get COMPLETELY out of the cage to try and eliminate Anderson & Blanchard?) Why didn't they release Vengeance 2002 on DVD? They released everything else and it is one of the few shows I never saw. I know it was hardly a great show --- but that didn't stop them putting out Judgment Day 2001, did it? -=Mike ...BTW, was I the only one surprised that they didn't edit out Chyna's boob slippage in her match with Lita from the JD 2002 DVD? Actually, Windham-Zbyszko is pretty good. Koloff-Eaton was over before it got started, which is really sad when you figure it was a 20-minute draw. Didn't Crockett run another show in Florida that night? Granted, that would have been a B show, but for the life of me I can't figure out why you'd do that and hurt a PPV.

I'm trying to figure out how WWE managed to have such a slow news day that we got two pages over whether a DVD cover will sell the DVD or not.

I actually think it was the "F-Cincos", AKA "F-5s" in Spanish. That would make sense, although technically they should have been called the "Efe Cincos". Although nobody would have gotten that one.

SmackDown from JHawk's Beak (2/12/2004) La la la la la.

Then explain Terry Funk. Just kidding. Terry Funk rules.

Um...I was trying to go by wrestling ability more than anything else. And here I used that reference because I thought if I said "she makes Gail Kim look like Ric Flair" people would think of current Ric Flair and think I was giving Jackie too much credit. *shrugs* And don't worry, RRR. I don't know enough about MMA to even consider covering it.

The impression I got from Foley's first book was that Vader was supposed to break the three count for the DQ but was late getting there, which is what led to Shawn attacking Vader as he came in.

The missing match was Buddy Landell (sub. for Dean Douglas) losing to Ahmed Johnson in about 30 seconds. Notable only for Jeff Jarrett's brief return to the WWF. I'd actually like to see IYH 4 in its entirety, but can leave IYH 5 outside of Bret-Bulldog.

IYH 4 and 5 were sorta released by Coliseum Video, but they took three matches from each and called it "Winter Combat" or something. Apparently they felt the shows weren't good enough by themselves to be released separately. WCW SuperBrawl IV was never released commercially that I know of.

What was lost in all this was the one year anniversary of Curt Hennig's death was also the 20th anniversary of David Von Erich's death. ::waits for someone to go "who?"::

I wish Kucunich would get the hint that even his own state won't vote for him and quit already.

Because that worked so well last time, Spoon! Dames had been asking me to do Raw while he was unable to, but I have no idea if that's officially the plan or not right now.

Merry Christmas! Oh wait... Happy birthday. Just be careful at the strip club. You don't want to die of a heart attack tonight.

I'm happy to see Low Ki back too. But if I'm gonna call WWE out for logic gaps, then I'm gonna call out ROH for logic gaps, and that's a gaping hole in logic there.

At least when they announced Halle Berry as the Catwoman, you could say Eartha Kitt once played the role. What the hell are Smallville fans gonna think? Hell, they'll be too busy thinking "I thought her name was Lana" to even notice she's black all of a sudden.

I've never said anything about them burying Benoit. Hell, I took the backstage segment with Benoit as Benoit searching for Michaels and Bischoff offering him a match with Shawn in an attempt to prevent a locker room brawl. I still find the insistence on building a triple threat match to be total bullshit, but I don't think they're burying Benoit yet.

The kayfabe reason is that Samoa Joe is trying to prevent a double team from the Prophecy of Whitmer and Maff, however, ROH is playing it up like Low Ki may be more inclined to go for the title then continue his war against the Prophecy. But the kayfabe reason makes no sense since the ROH World Title's appeal is based upon the fact that guys have to earn their title shot. The entire point of the number one contenders trophy was to prevent another Xavier title win, where someone gets the shot for the sake of getting the shot and gets a lucky victory. Why not just make Low-Ki the last entrant in the pure wrestling tourney? The same effect is achieved (borderline fans now want to attend the show because Low-Ki's there) and it doesn't cause confusion in the World Title picture.

I'm still confused as to how Brock-Goldberg is a "dream match". Because they tried to make Brock into Goldberg version 2.0 the first six months of his WWE career? Bottom line is marks and smarks would all care much more about HBK-Rock than Brock-Goldberg if it came about, especially if trying to look at it as a "dream match". Now Goldberg-Austin would be a dream match is Austin could go at all, as fans have been talking about that one for six years.

IC Champ Shawn Michaels faced Bret for the WWF Title at Survivor Series 92, but the match was signed before HBK won the IC belt. As far as the contract signing, it's another case of WWE deciding "Fuck the people who pay attention, let's play to the stupid people who buy our bullshit." I agree that HBK deserves a rematch, storyline-wise. Bitch all you want, but throughout wrestling history, non-decisions have almost always meant an automatic rematch. I have no bitch about that aspect of it. But they've already tested our patience with the bullshit "legal loophole" that fucked with continuity from only a year ago, and now this? I don't know too much about contract law, but it's a pretty safe bet that underneath the dotted line that HBK signed are the words "Chris Benoit", and those two little words would be scattered throughout the contract. Shawn Michaels' name wouldn't be on it. Plus, why in the hell would there NEED to be a contract when the Rumble winner is GUARANTEED the title shot? My head hurts.

I remember when the King came back to the booth, JR said something like, JR: In my career, I hope we never again see a match like that. King: (Seemingly knowing where JR's going with this) Well, now you won't have to because Al Snow is outta here! I also distinctly remember JR saying "That match just set our business back about 20 years" after that one. Classic. I was thinking about Hogan's match during Survivor Series 89, where Hogan gets every elimination for his team (three of the four by DQ) and plays face-in-peril for about 20 out of 30 minutes, and Ventura is more or less calling bullshit on the booking (as kayfabe as possible, of course, but he seemed genuinely pissed).

The undercard of 95 was OK, but the battle royals were impossible to follow to any degree.