goc

It's funny how people act like he's gotten this never ending super push (that's included a bunch of midcard PPV matches) at the expense of others yet the people who complain about his push don't seem to have any problem with the fact that the last time Seth Rollins was in a PPV match that wasn't for the WWE Title was February 2015.

Not all uploads are complete just yet but by the time most of you will read this I will have uploaded 15 episode of 1981 Southeastern Championship Wrestling to youtube. Now Matt D has no excuse not to watch the greatness of Alabama rasslin. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqPNCmgH5lH-KS8cejs-Aww/videos

Bruce Prichard has talked him up a lot so he might have been more of a Prichard guy than Cornette's as they had worked together in Global. As far as "why did he get to keep his gimmick?" it was pretty much tailor made for what they were doing in 1997 and let him come in immediately at the top of the card.

Worked for The Rock and Austin.

Bob Armstrong was robbed, definitely should have been #1 in the GWE poll.

All I ask of flippy dudes is that they be as good as Matt Sydal. Great bumper, can sell his ass off, has good looking strikes and generally doesn't just do flippy shit for the sake of doing it.

Russo was there at the beginning? I thought TNA branding for "Total Nonstop Action" was a Jarret thing. Russo himself has taken credit for the name. He wasn't officially with TNA at the very beginning but he was talking about it with Jeff from day 1. I think the only reason he wasn't officially with TNA at the start is because he was still getting paid by WWE as a consultant. He got re-hired by WWE in 2002 to be head writer again but that only lasted 1 meeting and he immediately got demoted down to stay at home consultant.

I just got home and the last thing I heard on the radio was the introduction to Dan Le Batard's show where he talked about Billy Corgan being a guest and said "a huge wrestling fan, he's actually the President of...he's running a huge wrestling operation right now" which just goes to show how much those 3 stupid fucking letters have held back the company. The Vince Russo curse.

If Ziggler is gonna be under a mask with a Spanish name then he has to go by "El Pinche Perdedor Sin Valor"

If this had happened 6 months ago I wouldn't care. But with the stuff Matt Hardy is doing right now I would like to see what a fully controlled Billy Corgan TNA would look like. I know Matt Hardy is booking his own stuff but Corgan was apparently the one pushing to let him do it.

I can't think of a match where I would ever root harder for The Miz than one with Ziggler's career being on the line. The whole storyline on Ziggler for the past few months has been he's a loser who can't get it done and the best payoff for this would be for him to lose. And then just fuck off forever.

I don't see how pointing to some good matches Zayn had in NXT is supposed to be evidence that it's all WWE's fault he hasn't had a very good run so far in WWE. Being a great week to week wrestler is a very different thing from being able to have a great match when all the spotlight is on you and you're given a bunch of time. Being able to have a good TV match that's only going to go between 6-9 minutes is also a fairly important part of being a WWE wrestler. If the takeaway is supposed to be "WWE is fucking up Zayn because he's only really good when he's given a chance to have an epic match" then I see that more as a fault in Zayn than with WWE.

No one should be faulted for not being able to have a good match with Billy Graham or Ichiban though.

Great post. Regardless of his disappointing WWE run he still seems like he should definitely be in the HOF. 5 years as the hottest wrestling star in all of Mexico is nothing to just hand wave away just because now he's gone from "the best drawing act in the country" to "a pretty good one." The idea of "career top tier draw" is pretty silly because there are a ton of guys in the HOF already who don't pass that criteria. Even Hulk Hogan & Steve Austin (whose peak drawing period is even shorter than Mistico's) don't pass that test.

Cornette was talking about Mansfield on something I listened to explaining the thing where Mansfield went on 20/20 and "exposed" the business. Cornette said Mansfield had pretty much gotten blacklisted but not for anything that he said on the show but because he was a guy who would frequently no show. So once he'd gotten fired from a few places for it the word got around to other promoters and no one wanted to bring in a guy at his level with a history of not being reliable. Personally, I always liked him in what I've seen of him and think he's a pretty good promo. Was one of the guys I managed to snag late in the 1983 draft.

I too am saddened when good wrestlers get the opportunity to keep having good matches.

were you saying that when Benoit or Eddie was World Champs, we live in a times when majorty of guys are cruiserweights or borederline cruiserweights you got US and IC as secondary to the World and Universal so why not have a title exclusive to the division that guys can eventualy outgrow Benoit was never presented as a cruiserweight in WCW and neither Benoit or Eddie were presented that way in WWE so I don't really see how that's relevant. The only guy that managed to get anywhere after in WWE after the company put a cruiserweight label on them was Rey and even though he was the biggest draw on the Smackdown brand a lot of the time he never really got pushed as a serious contender to the World Title. And we all know how his title reigns played out. It just seems like putting a hurtle in place for guys all to create a division that I don't think can even stand out as something special or unique as compared to the rest of the matches in the company. This isn't 1996 WCW where the cruiserweight matches look completely different from your Hogan vs. Piper type main event match.

That's really just another reason the idea of a Cruiserweight division doesn't work because he's not really any bigger than TJP.

Personally I don't really see what the point of a cruiserweight division is in 2016. What's the hook? What makes it stand out from the rest of the matches in WWE? Does WWE really need a "flippy do/workrate division" when half the guys in the company do some kind of dive? At a period when the pace of most WWE matches is faster than ever I don't see how the CWs can stand out. I don't see any positives to it and all it seems like it will do is limit guys' career who start in that division as it kind of sticks them with a "can't hang with the rest of the roster" stink. If they wanted to bring something completely unique to Raw they should have raided AAA for minis and brought back El Torito to build a whole division around him. It's something that has never really been done in American wrestling (yes there used to be a lot more midget wrestlers in the territories but they were attractions only used a few times a year) and would have been something totally fresh. El Torito managed to have some damn good matches with Hornswoggle of all people, putting him in a division with 5-6 other guys that can really go would have been great. Not to mention the fact that it would have led to far more marketing opportunities and likely would have been a hit with kids.

Just gonna start this now while I'm on since people have had so much trouble starting the new weekly thread lately. I'm expecting HHH will be on Raw tonight with the video that WWE posted of a happy Steph getting in a limo with him after the PPV.

I don't hate Zayn the way I can't stand guys like Rollins and Ziggler I just don't "get" him. Nothing I've seen from him in WWE says he's anything more than "just another guy." There are plenty of guys who manage to stand out despite shitty booking either in a "this guy is a great character" way like Rusev or by always putting on a good match like Cesaro or Sheamus. Sami Zayn doesn't do either and I feel like if he was "the best babyface in wrestling" the way some people hype him up as then there would actually be some evidence of it in the past 6 months or so instead of having to point way back to his NXT run.

I don't even understand why people care about steroids in wrestling, especially in the current era where it's easier to get it through a doctor in the form of something like TRT instead of getting roids from some guy in a gym. It's not going to create a "competitive disadvantage" because it's not real competition and steroids help you recover quicker from injuries & workouts. Steroids taken in moderation don't have worse side effects than most other prescription drugs it's only when guys go crazy overdoing them, combine them with a bunch of other drugs/alcohol or have some genetic heart condition that they are really a danger.

Zayn has not been very impressive since he's come to the main roster and I'm baffled by why so many people still cry about him being "wasted" or "buried" like he should be a permanent fixture of the main event. I struggle to think of any really impressive TV match that Zayn has had since he's come to the main roster while a guy like Sheamus is always churning out good matches to zero fanfare outside of some people on this board. I didn't even really care for the Owens matches which everyone would probably point to as Zayn's best stuff on the main roster.

"Given that anyone close to being a truly great draw is already in" Well if Dave said it then it MUST be true. Even if it's demonstrably wrong.

Same here. That's one move I'm shocked more people haven't stolen.