JHawk

THURSDAY N.C. State at Georgia Tech FRIDAY Syracuse at Connecticut SATURDAY Illinois at Indiana Minnesota at Michigan Oklahoma vs. Texas Air Force at Navy Missouri at Oklahoma State TCU at Wyoming Georgia at Tennessee Texas Tech at Nebraska North Carolina at Louisville Iowa at Purdue Utah at Colorado State Texas A&M at Colorado California at UCLA Ohio State at Penn State Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the N.C. State/Georgia Tech game? 84 Tiebreak: #2: How many rushing yards will Syracuse's Damien Rhodes have against Connecticut? 113

Arn and Tully, but it's damn close.

I'm at 4. I'd probably have more but I'm too damn selfish to lose the two I've already got.

Um...the PPV went long, so we had Spike-Flesher after we went off the air. Yeah, that's it!

Isn't the Hammerstein Lodge in NYC? Or is this some other Hammerstein Lodge nobody's ever heard of?

I actually have a TV master of Rumble 88. Decent quality considering I've watched it about 50 times since it first aired. I need a DVD recorder so I can preserve that shit before it's too late.

I'll explain the chop block finish. I had planned on having Ward make the hot tag to Blank, who'd get some offense in before tagging Ward back in. Then, as Ward was lifting Landon up for a suplex, Hawke would hit the chop block with Landon falling on top for the pin. Much more sensical, right? Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to work that finish, I was already at 4300 words and didn't know if I could pull it off in under 700 words without taking away from the story of the match. The goal was not to job you out at all, and if you felt that's what happened, I apologize.

Not always. There's going to be a late show on occasion (real life take precedence and all), but three in a row is pretty rare.

FRIDAY Pittsburgh at Rutgers SATURDAY Michigan at Michigan State Virginia Tech at West Virginia Navy at Duke Utah at North Carolina Kent State at Eastern Michigan Minnesota at Penn State USC at Arizona State Iowa State at Nebraska Florida at Alabama Washington State at Oregon State Kansas State at Oklahoma New Mexico State at Louisiana Tech Notre Dame at Purdue Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Pittsburgh/Rutgers game? 37 Tiebreak #2: How many yards passing will USC's Matt Leinart have against Arizona State? 295

"Panties aren't the best thing in the world, JR, but they're right next to it." "I'm shocked, JR. Moolah and Mae Young came out here, and you didn't tell us where they played college football at."

So Ghost Machine doesn't even have theright to wrestle? Or does this prove Ghost Machine isn't a robot? I'm confuzzled.

Chalk that up to neither team being able to do anything in the red zone. Biggest beef with that game as a Browns fan: the taunting penalties. I mean, the very idea of the taunting penalty is stupid anyway. I can knock a guy's head right off his shoulders, but I can't go "Nyah nyah, Manning's got a big BUTT!" Hell, what do these teams do during pregame press conferences? They're verbally taunting their opponents. It's a basic part of football. But the shitty rules is on the books, and Braylon Edwards gets called for one in the first that was never on camera. I'll give the benefit of the doubt on that one. Antonio Bryant gets called for one in the second quarter for lightly tossing the ball toward a Colt that was talking shit to him (which I'd consider taunting, but I'll give the referee the benefit of the doubt that he didn't hear anything). Then late in the third, Bryant comes *thisclose* to catching a TD, the defender knocks it away...then proceeds to spike the football toward Bryant's head as Bryant is laying on the ground without a taunting call. The rule's fucking stupid anyway, but if you're going to call it, call it both ways. Anybody else really freaking bored with NE-Pit at this point?

Basically, at the time ROH needed 400 fans in attendance to break even and didn't draw it for either show. I can honestly say I did my part to try and keep it there but have had to settle for Dayton until next month's Cleveland show comes around.

Got ridiculous with CM Punk and Samoa Joe? The beauty of the Punk-Joe feud wasn't that Punk was trying to figure out Joe. It was also about whether Joe, the champion for over a year at that point, could figure out Punk. The fact that we got three match of the year candidates out of that series of matches made it even better.

I will say this, Zyon. Had Superstar given you the win there, I would not have argued. In fact, I would have earmarked that one for next year's MOTY. About the only thing I noticed that was wrong with that one was the grammar, and by the halfway point of the match I was so completely into the match that I was ignoring it. Great job.

I actually woke up like four hours earlier than I needed to today to read this bitch, so let's get started. I liked the triple threat match as whole, particularly Walters' elimination. Some good action after the elimination, but I thought it was about twice as long as it needed to be. Good opener overall though. Typical good stuff in the tag team title match for W&D. TORU > your God. Excellent read. Bruce Blank is slowly but surely becoming one of those guys whose matches I'm looking forward to. An absolutely fantastic promo led to a laugh-out-loud funny match that might have earned Match of the Night honors on any other night. I still don't comment on my own stuff, but I'd love to read Zyon's match. Cortez wins what I think went down as MOTN (not counting my match, obviously). Great action with the entire storyline woven in marvelously. Congratulations to ELM being the only new champion crowned this past Sunday night. It was at the point where I half expected the match to be stopped a la Lawler-Von Erich. Probably a good half hour in length, and it flew by. Great fucking show.

I would honestly just tell them to play a full quarter and hope to hell you've got the lead at the end of it. But they won't do that because because "nobody wants to sit through that much football" or some lame excuse like that.

Fall Brawl 98, and I knew less than two minutes in. As soon as they said War Games could end by a pin...and before everybody entered the cage...I knew immediately that WCW screwed me out of $35. Raven vs. Saturn was the lone saving grace of that show, and it was *** at best.

Good point, ELM. Sadly, if my match won...and if yours won...and if Spike's won... That's about a full three hours to read this thing right there. I'm hoping for some short matches on the undercard.

THURSDAY Air Force at Utah SATURDAY Penn State at Northwestern Purdue at Minnesota North Carolina at N.C. State Iowa at Ohio State Boston College at Clemson Wyoming at Mississippi Western Michigan at Temple Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech Nevada at Colorado State Michigan at Wisconsin Memphis at Tulsa USC at Oregon Tennessee at LSU Tulane at SMU Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Air Force/Utah game? 51 Tiebreak #2: How many total yards will Virginia Tech's Marcus Vick have against Georgia Tech? 254

10,363. I thought it was overboard until I find that ELM still topped it.

MAIN EVENT SWF WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP "Deathwish" Danny Williams (SWF World Heavyweight Champion) v. El Luchadore Magnifico -- ELM has been too damn hot lately not to go over here. SINGLES MATCH "Hollywood" Spike Jenkins v. "The Superior One" Tom Flesher SINGLES MATCH Landon "La Cucaracha" Maddix v. "Urban Legend" Todd Cortez -- Gonna be hard to top the casino brawl at Ground Zero Vegas either way SWF INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP "The Dean of Professional Wrestling" Jay Hawke (SWF International Champion) v. Zyon -- No prediction SWF HARDCORE CHAMPIONSHIP HOUSE RULES: WE DESTROYED IT ONCE AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN MATCH Bruce Blank (SWF Hardcore Champion) v. JJ Johnson -- Bruce is showing improvement but still seems too rough around the edges to beat JJJ SINGLES MATCH TORU v. Marcus "The Mastermind" Ward SWF WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS TWO ON TWO MATCH Wild and Dangerous (Wildchild and Johnny Dangerous, SWF World Tag Team Champions) v. The Crimson Skull and Ghost Machine -- Ghost Machine winning a title would make Baby Jesus cry. TRIPLE THREAT MATCH FOR #1 CONTENDERSHIP TO THE SWF WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP Akira v. Manson v. Devon Walters

It took several months for Punk to get over in ROH too. Three years later he was arguably the best -- and most over -- worker in the company. I would honestly take more merit from the "he doesn't know how to work" complaints if they came from people near the middle of the card that, you know, don't panic the second somebody looks like they're capable of taking their spot. Punk, if given an actual chance to succeed, can get over on his ring work alone, and he's so good on the mic that he's not going to have to. Funny how a guy that's in the middle of a program with Chris freaking Masters has the gall to say somebody new to the company can't work. Like Masters can work any better than half the guys who never made it out of OVW before their release.

I usually have a couple of things in mind and go from there, although if there's a specific story I want to tell I might do a rough outline before I start writng

For the record, the match times in this review are based off of how long it took me to read the match bell-to-bell unless a match time was announced by Funyon. Flesher intentionally adds a tenth of a pound just so he can throw an opponent over the top rope? Awesome! But how would one circumvent pure wrestling rules? "That's What They Said About The Buffalo" is the national anthem? Was that the only Buffalo reference we could find? Manson's getting all vicious with the current losing streak. Could he be on the way to turning full-fledged heel? I hope so, just so I can start typing "MANSONOSITY~!" without feeling quite as stupid about it. Tom Flesher pins Ced Ordonez with the Ego Buster in 7:25. Essentially an extended squash to show Spike Jenkins what to expect at Genesis. Perfectly acceptable. Landon cuts a killer promo on Todd Cortez, ending it with probably the single greatest sentence in the history of wrestling promos. Good stuff. Landon Maddix defeats Manson via KO to the Land of Nod in 8:50. A pretty good back-and-forth match here. Maddix's cockiness gets him in trouble a couple of times, but a cool counter sequence into the Crash Landon sets up the finish. Again, perfectly acceptable as a way to make Landon look strong heading into Genesis. Bruce Blank pins Devon Walters with a fisherman buster in 17:02. I liked the banter with Pete and King a lot here. As for the match, pretty good by big man vs big man standards. I think Bruce wrote Walters pretty well here, actually, although I'm not sure Matthew would have actually gotten as involved as he did. Still, some good downhome Memphis-style cheating by Blank with some good wrestling thrown in. Be careful though, and somehow Devon changed his last name to Williams about halfway through the match. I don't comment on my own stuff. Sweet promo by ELM, who not only explains exactly why he turned on the fans but suggests that Danny Williams should do the same at Genesis if he wants to retain the title. Very simple, very direct, yet very effective. El Luchadore Magnifico pins Johnny Dangerous by countering the Super Spinal Explosion into a DDT at 12:03. A very good TV main event, with Dangerous having control of the majority of the match only for his temper to get the better of him and eventually cost him the match. It's going to be interesting to see exactly how ELM's apparent rib injuries play into the World Title Match at Genesis. My only real complaint is that it took about three minutes for the false countout spot, but if this were WWE we wouldn't even blink at it, so it's kind of hard to complain about it. A very good Genesis preview overall.