goc

For anyone who likes reading about the history of various territories this a nice place to kill some time. http://www.legacyofwrestling.com/NWATerritories.html I had NO IDEA someone tried to start up a territory running a bunch of towns in Virginia like Petersburg, Hampton, Virginia Beach, Hopewell, Suffolk, Richmond, Portsmouth, Newport News, Williamsburg, West Point, Tappahannock and some others only to get squeezed out by the NWA and Vince McMahon Sr.

I've been watching quite a bit of Continental recently and decided to just go ahead and make a topic for the stuff I write about it instead of continuing to post everything in the What Are You Watching thread. Outside of some people of Wrestling Classics who talk about the territory like it was the greatest wrestling ever, there really is not much talk about Southeastern/Continental pre-Eddie Gilbert days. But I have to say most of the stuff I've seen from the territory has been at least good. Some of it being REALLY good. Hopefully anyone who has something to say about the territory or any of the main stars from it will feel free to chime in and this won't just be me writing to myself.

Watched the first Continental TV show in July. Show starts with former champs Tommy Rich and Steve Armstrong having a long squash match against The Invader and my new favorite jobber name, Snake Brown. Then we get a promo from Frankie Lancaster swearing revenge on Jerry Stubbs for giving him the brainbuster on the floor. He's stumbling all over himself in this promo. Continental has a lot of good promo guys, but they are almost exclusively all on the heel side. 50 year old Bullet Bob Armstrong is the only babyface who can talk. And maybe Tommy Rich but I really haven't been interested in any of his stuff so far. All the young Armstrongs, Brad, Steve, Scott, Wendell Cooley, Tim Horner, Frankie Lancaster, none of the young babyfaces can cut a promo. Tim Horner defends the U.S. Junior Title against Roy Lee Welch. Welch grabs the mic before the match and asks Tim Horner if he's SURE this is a title match, going back to their non title match 2 weeks ago where he swore before the match that Horner told him it would be a title match. Horner hits a cross body on Welch and the momentum and Welch uses the momentum to roll on top of Horner and they wind up landing with Welch's feet on the ropes for the pin. The ref counts 3 but saw Welch's feet on the ropes and call it off, but Welch has already grabbed the title from the announcer's table and is celebrating in the ring. Horner then comes from behind and rolls him up for the pin. I'm already anticipating Welch's promo next week about the injustice of it all. Roy Lee Welch then beats him down with the Junior Title after the match and leaves with the belt. That crossbody into the pin with Welch's feet on the ropes looked really good, and I totally thought that was going to be the finish. We get an Adrian Street/Wendell Cooley match and I can not express to you how disappointed I am that they seem to have already retired that Wildcat jacket. Now he's coming out in a Cowboy hat with "If Heaven Ain't a Lot Like Texas" as his entrance music. Adrian Street's "Imagine What I Could Do To You" is a real underrated wrestling entrance theme. Street looks like he doesn't know what to do during his entrance without Linda there. Street wins the match when Linda shows up at the end to trip Cooley on a suplex allowing Street to fall on top and pin him. I love Street's character but I've never seen him have a memorable match. Cooley & Street cut promos afterwards to build up a match in Columbus with Linda handcuffed to Cooley's brother. Cooley says he doesn't have the pink belt because it's "under recontruction" and for some reason I was thoroughly amused by Street's line about Cooley "Ever since I put a dress on him he's been acting just like a female dog." The show ends with Roy Lee Welch saying he thought he won the match and that's why he left with the belt, but as soon as he was told that Tim Horner actually won he went to return the belt to him. But it was missing! There's a thief running around, someone went into his dressing room and stole the belt. I really love Roy Lee Welch in this feud. Tim Horner comes out and attacks Welch and the show ends with them brawling and Gordon calling for someone to come break it up.

"On the downside, I thought the most important angle of the show hit the wrong notes. WWE has a continuing issue with coopting fan movements in a way that undermines their original power and basic identity." Does that boil down to "how dare they work me!"?

The worst part about the Abyss shit is that they actually had something good with him doing the Joseph Park thing. But I'm not watching TV every week, that may have run it's course by now. But by no means does that mean go back to the god awful Abyss character. As far as Jarrett wanting to buy it back, I think it just had sentimental value to him since he's the one who started it. Plus if you can take the TV and the roster you could just decide to completely revamp the show. New camera angles, new lighting, new set, new ring rope color scheme, NEW ANNOUNCERS, nothing should look or feel the same about the show. Maybe even work some angle like the Eric Embry tearing down the World Class Banner thing. Pretty much an open and honest "Fuck TNA they sucked, we're _this_ now" The only way to fix TNA is to turn on iMPACT one day and have it be like you were back in the territory days and sat down in Kansas City to watch your Central States Wrestling show and they replaced the feed with Mid-South Wrestling.

I'm kind of disappointed there's been no posts in this thread since my last one. I mean I bring you guys an Adrian Street music video and a picture of a guy whose jacket includes a hood with a Wildcat face and I don't even know if anyone is reading this stuff. Watched another week of Continental. Show started with Gordon Solie & Wendell Cooley showing video of how Cooley lost to Adrian Street in a non title match. Linda jabs him in the eyes for the finish which Gordon calls wonderfully with "Something happened." Then Adrian Street steals the Southeastern title. Cooley is not very good on the mic as he demands Street return his belt. At the very end of the show he does get the title back, however Street has replaced the black leather strap with a pink one. Cooley is not amused. But he still can't cut a good promo about it. Then we get The Bullet vs. El Fuego and they do pretty much nothing, but a fun nothing, for about 4 minutes before someone else in a mask runs in to attack The Bullet. And as far as I can tell that's all he is "some guy in a mask." Bullet brawls with that guy while El Fuego runs off (well he ain't running nowhere he's over 300 lbs) to the locker room. Then El Fuego comes back and BLASTS Bullet with a fireball. Now, I've seen some fireballs watching Memphis wrestling with Jerry Lawler and Eddie Gilbert, and some of those have looked pretty good. But this is on another level. I don't know what Jody Hamilton did that made his so much better but the guy threw a hell of a fireball. I didn't mention it about the last show, but there was a clip of him throwing a fireball from that episode and it was also really good looking. So anyway, Bullet gets hit by the fireball but he barely even sells the damn thing as he's up on his feet and fine about a minute later after Steve Armstrong makes the save with a chair. Come on Bob, I want to like you but you're killing me here. Jerry Stubbs cuts a good promo about how he beat the crap out of Frankie Lancaster last week and now he's looking for revenge on Brad Armstrong for "saving" him. I still dispute that, by the way. Brad Armstrong & Jerry Stubbs have a good match for the Continental title. The finish has the ref get bumped and Frankie Lancaster comes out to wake him up. Stubbs gets distracted by it and Armstrong rolls him up to win the title. Then Stubbs attacks Lancaster before Brad makes an ACTUAL save this time. Tim Horner has a match against some guy while Roy Lee Welch does commentary. I continue to love this storyline. Roy Lee Welch does a great job putting over the storyline. Welch was the U.S. Junior Champion before suffering (I think) a legit knee injury. All I know is his injury was announced sometime in the shows I watched in January and he just made his return in June. Anyway, he's pissed that Tim Horner gets a shot at the World Junior Champion Denny Brown when he never beat Welch for the U.S. Junior Title. Welch lets us know that, obviously, anything Horner does in this match he can do better. Main event is Jimmy Golden & Robert Fuller beating Steve Armstrong & Tommy Rich for the tag titles. Didn't do much for me but I did enjoy Fuller & Golden's promo afterwards.

The only answer is to put the wedding on Raw.

I miss that guy, anyone know why he left?

Emma is a dorky, nerdy character. At what point has he NOT shit all over a character like that?

The thing about Bryan is, I'm not sure he works half as well as the champion as he does the guy chasing the title. So even if he does win at WrestleMania I would expect to see them take the title off him fairly quickly and have him chase Batista. I don't see any way that they don't run with Batista vs Bryan after Mania. The hottest heel vs the hottest babyface always works best when the heel is the champ.

I don't know if they see it that way, since from everything we can tell they never even planned to have him in the main event anyway. I really expect them to have Batista win, probably though some overbooked stuff with the Authority.

Explain Batista has been great ever since they decided to just run with him as heel. I really liked that promo he cut on Daniel Bryan and the fans on Raw last week. And I think he's starting to get his wind in the ring again. He's been better the last two matches on Raw. Plus, he just has great facials as a heel. Go back and watch him when from Raw tonight Big Show counters the Batista Bomb with a backdrop. WWE needs a heel who can generate real heat and stumbled into it when they thought they were bringing back a top babyface. We are about to have a few months of one of the hottest feuds WWE has run in a while with Batista vs Daniel Bryan.

I like Batista, I'm glad he's back, and I can't wait to see him feud with Daniel Bryan. I kind of even want to see Batista win at WrestleMania by pinning Bryan. I don't care if you don't like it either.

My man Titus better be in it, preferably lasting until near the end. I haven't been watching Smackdown, have Titus or Darren Young even been on TV since their match at Elimination Chamber?

And tonight's Raw is further proof that the majority of the speculation and fantasy booking that surrounds WrestleMania for months is pointless. I'm sure there are dozens of people who wrote pages and pages of how to get Daniel Bryan into the title match at Mania, but WWE accomplished that in a span of 20 minutes in a segment that no one saw coming. Trying to figure out the WrestleMania card in January is kind of like talking about who is going to be in the SuperBowl in August. I mean you can make a good guess but most of the time you're going to be wrong.

Those two guys coming out to try and get rid of like 100 people slayed me. I'm glad they use two old inept looking guys too and didn't just find some jacked up indy guy to play security.

Is it wrong that I'm excited about that battle royal? I mean it's probably going to be like 15 minutes including entrances but I'm hoping they use it to elevate somebody, preferably Cesaro.

Now I wonder if they are still going to go with the plan of Batista winning. It seems like something they would do, "ok we gave you most of what you wanted, but we're going to try and drag this out a little more" I actually would rather see Batista win and then have Bryan chase him until SummerSlam, picking up a clean win over Orton on a PPV in between. But I'd be cool with Batista or Bryan winning. As long as Orton doesn't retain.

I've LOVED this hijacking. Honestly one of the most memorable angles I've ever seen was Savage taking over the ring on Nitro and just sitting down in the chair waiting for (I don't remember what he was waiting for) But this is great. AND now Bryan has gone all the way with and put himself in the title match! People can say that was a lazy or weak way to finally reach the conclusion but I loved it. Very memorable and unique angle.

I wonder if you say that knowing that David Stern got annoyed at Jim Rome one day and hung up on him after telling him he was going to talk to someone important like Stephen A Smith.

What the hell is happening right now??

As hot as the angle was, I think it would have been even hotter had they ACTUALLY shaved Lawler's head. That was the shittiest haircut I've ever seen for a hair vs hair match. At least when people were complaining about it after the Jeff Jarrett/X-Pac match, even though they didn't shave Jeff bald he lost a LOT of hair. Lawler pretty much just got a slightly shorter than normal hair cut.

I thought about this quite a bit after watching some of Backlash 2002 and No Way Out 2001. Now I feel like the announcing back then was better, but is it really because Jim Ross was so much better, or is because he and Lawler weren't having to hype stuff like Twitter, Tout, the WWE App, the WWE Network etc all the time? The main thing that J.R. and King had is that they were a lot more fun when they were bickering with each other than when Cole & JBL or Cole & Lawler do it now. I was legit cracking up at how annoyed J.R. was getting at Lawler during the HHH/Austin match at No Way Out when Lawler kept blaming him for the bringing the sledgehammer that HHH pulled out from under the announce table.