Jingus

Except there's no such thing as "safer". You could make the padding thicker or more soft and the ring more springy and bouncy, sure. But then it provides much more shaky footing for walking, running, anything involving your feet impacting the mat. Ankle and knee injuries become much more common in a softer ring.

Yeah, but Angle had already kicked out of a couple others beforehand.

Someone else once pointed out to me how that finisher fit into that night's context with the other main events. It took three F-5s for Lesnar to beat Angle. It took three Rock Bottoms for Rock to beat Austin. It took three legdrops for Hogan to beat Vince. But it only took one Pedigree for Hunter to beat Booker, bah gawd.

Everyone else has posted about the emotions and the shock and awe of the situation (I'm not even being sarcastic, I think those words fit here). For myself, I find myself wondering about the future. Obviously, NOAH has a pretty difficult road ahead, a thing like this could conceivably destroy the whole company. Japanese wrestling in general and "strong style" could easily be permanently effected as well.

Yes, aI ppreciate the irony. All the people we heard reports about who were bitching backstage about Jericho's wrestling style apparently could not. During that autumn, it seemed like every single week there was some new internet/newsletter story about the office not liking his stuff, despite the fact that he wasn't really doing anything different from various other guys who already worked there. For the first few months it seemed like some people were determined to bury the guy no matter what, using any flimsy excuse that came to mind.

The point wasn't that he was a stiff worker, it's that they Just So Happened to match Jericho up with the company's top shooter in his first WWF feud. It wouldn't be the first time they'd taken measures to aggressively introduce someone to How Things Are Done Here. Although I have heard stories about Shamrock being stiff; he hurt Vader in their first match together, and iirc Sabu once had a chair-throwing tantrum in the locker room of TNA over liberties he considered Ken had taken. With a guy who spent years as a professional fighter, it's not hard to imagine that he might throw some potatos out there, possibly more frequently and with more force than your average worker.

Think it was a coincedence that Jericho's first scheduled feud was with Ken Shamrock? I know this is conspiracy theory territory, but I wouldn't put it past the company to "welcome" a new arrival by having the local badass beat the shit out of them. Heck, they kinda did the same think with the Dudleys around the same time by putting them with the Acolytes. And good call on the Chyna thing, I'd forgotten that might be relevant. If anyone needs any proof of what a fucking miracle worker Jericho could be at his best, just check out the tolerable matches that he carried her to.

That still doesn't explain Hunter's pretty clear longterm bias against Jericho. -First there was all that bitching we heard in 1999 about how the office didn't like Jericho's style. Depending on who you asked, he was either too stiff, too loose, too much of a spotty highflyer, too small to be doing all these heavyweight moves, or just "too WCW" whatever the hell that meant. Even if HHH wasn't officially part of management at the time, he certainly still had a lot of influence, and one must imagine that at least some of this complaining was stemming from him. -Then there was the feud they had in 2000. You know, the one where heel HHH outsmarted babyface Jericho at every turn. And then heel Hunter cleanly won the blowoff match. -Even worse was the feud in 2002. Hunter not only became the guy who beat Jericho to end his undisputed title reign, but he did so in a fashion which made Chris look like shit. Not only did HHH structure the entire Wrestlemania match around how invincible he was and how Jericho could only get offense on him by taking advantage of his badly injured leg. No, he also went out of his way to make Jericho look like a total loser in the storyline. Remember Lucy the dog? I wish I didn't. -Jericho was one of those guys who suffered from that period where it seems like they were forcing every guy with long blonde hair on the roster (except for one, of course) to cut their hair short. Nothing really solid here, but still, another brick in the wall. -Finally, the well-publicized incident of HHH going around backstage making his stupid mocking jokes about Jericho's impending return. So what the fuck was Paul Leveque's problem with Chris Irvine?

Differing styles, maybe? HHH is clearly an NWA mark who copies plenty of Harley & Horsemen schtick, with a side serving of Billy Graham. Meanwhile, even toned-down modern Jericho is obviously influenced by the Japanese way of doing things. Aside from that, I dunno, maybe they're just two of those personalities who instinctively rub each other the wrong way.

Has Angle ever scored anything even resembling a clean win over HHH? He got a pinfall at Royal Rumble '01, but only with Stone Cold running in to attack Triple H and hand him the match. Does he go on that same shelf with guys like Kane and Jericho who never once got a meaningful win over Captain Trips despite multiple feuds with him?

Makes it less surprising as well that they gave Dreamer the ECW belt. I'm sure nobody really cares about that one, but they might've figured it was safer to have it over the shoulder of a guy who's probably addicted to nothing stronger than the catering buffet.

The first two complaints were things that didn't bother me, but I guess I could see how they could bother others. But the insider stuff, I don't think was that bad. Sure, now in this post-Russo smark era that's become terribly overdone. Every Dave Prazak wannabe on the indies drops the insider terms, I've done it myself, and it does typically sound pretty lame. But at the time, it was practically unheard of; Styles was the only guy doing that. The company's product was very deliberately aimed at smart marks, and that was just one of the many methods they used to try and get the newsletter/RSPW crowd to feel like ECW was on their side. It was a marketing tool, and one which I don't think hurt their show in any significant way.

Firstly, I thought he had great timing and rhythym. Which are absolutely subjective things, I will admit. But I admired that sometimes Joey was brave enough to just shut up and let some moments speak for themselves during a match. That's a hard thing to do; any time you've got dead air on commentary, the mental pressure to fill it with chatter is very strong. Another thing is that I genuinely think he did a good job of explaining the psychology of what was going on. Don't make some dismissive joke about ECW and psychology. Sometimes he would invent it if it wasn't there to begin with. I don't know how many times during various matches, some wrestlers either blew a spot or did something illogical, and Joey instantly covered for them with some fairly plausible-sounding explanation that he pulled out of his ass. I liked his mix of humor and seriousness. Once again, a subjective thing. But I think he tended to get the proportions right, and didn't mind it when he did both within the same match. For whatever reason, Joey has gotten painted hard with the brush of "he only said what Heyman told him to say". Well no fucking shit, announcers always put over what the booker/promoter wants them too. Joey didn't do anything to indicate he was being fed more lines than anyone else, and I don't think it's like Paul E. was using him as a sock puppet like Vince tends to do with his commentators nowadays. So I'm often puzzled as to where this net meme of Styles being Heyman's ventriloquist dummy came from.

Let's not pretend that Vickie was some great performer who got heat because of her own unique talents. They took a pudgy middle-aged woman and made her be a screechy heel authority figure who treated the babyfaces in an emasculating manner and took up a lot of mic time speaking in a nasal whine. They could've done that with damn near anybody. Vickie just stood there and read her scripted lines in a wooden fashion. It was the booking that got her heat, not anything the woman herself specifically brought to the table. Only if they make you hate them AND make you want to pay to see their comeuppance. Another problem I've mentioned in the past. We're supposed to want to see the righteous babyface get their comeuppance. But whenever Vickie was punished for her actions, it always came off like she was a helpless woman being bullied. Why are we supposed to cheer the Undertaker giving the tombstone piledriver to Eddie Guerrero's freaking widow? I've grown sour on the Heel GM idea in general, but Vickie's was one of the worst. Especially since they made it pretty clear from day one that she was being manipulated by Edge and others like him, so she was a victim herself. Vickie a a heel doesn't make me hate her character. She makes me hate the company for using her in this way. I don't see the logic there at all, especially given that her named reason for quitting the company was staying home to spend more time with the kids. Obviously there's more to it than that, but still, obviously she wasn't happy there. How would be treating her like a charity case be bad? If you object to the language, just call it paying her a pension or long-term life insurance for her prematurely dead husband and father to her children. You're rather seriously underestimating the amount of time that she was on television. Especially during her Smackdown heyday, there were endless backstage segments devoted to her storylines. So it's a charity case to spend her money, but not a charity case to give her a job she has no experience or qualifications for? And why are you acting like if they didn't give her an on-air role on television that she would just sit in a dark locked room all day? There's all kinds of things they could've done which didn't involve making her leave her kids at home while she flies all over the country and consistently putting her in embarassing situations every single week on national television.

I've been saying from day one that there was absolutely zero reason for this woman to be on television. "But she gets great heat, Jingus!" So did Adamle. "But it's so nice of Vince to give her this job, Jingus!" And he could've paid her the exact same amount of money to stay home. I'm glad that she'll no longer be wasting time on my television with her uselessness, and also glad that this poor woman just decided to stay the fuck home rather than be further humiliated on national tv for no apparant reason.

I always thought he was damned good on a variety of levels. I've never understood why people say he sucked.

Vegas takes bets on MMA, right? Wouldn't be too hard to make a shitload of money that way. "We weren't insider trading, we were just betting that our friend was gonna win the fight, and he did!" You'd have to be smarter about it than your average fighter probably is, but considering a lot of them live in or operate out of Vegas, it wouldn't be too difficult to think there are some MMA guys who know how to rig a sports bet. After all, boxing's been fixing fights probably about the same length of time that wrestling has, it is possible to do so and get away with it.

I don't think Cornette really believes he can take it back to 1980 again, but it does seem like he wants to. He's willing to put over stuff like ROH when it suits him for being non-sports entertainment, but listening to him talk for any length of time makes it pretty clear that he desperately wishes he could stick the cat back in the bag and go back to the good ol' days of kayfabe.

Allegedly, the main problem was that every heel refused to do any jobs for the jumped-up transitional champ, hence Ronnie's being taken off television and doing few title defenses while he held the belt. In his shoot interview, Flair claims that Ronnie was over in the southeast, but not really in the other parts of the country due to lack of consistent exposure as a top guy. A quick look at his career bio halfway confims that point, since he seemed to spend half of his career in Georgia and most of the rest in adjacent southern states.

Former ECW backstage interviewer guy and friend of the man in question, Steven Prazak had this to say: So apparently Joey's opinions are legit, but even a guy who knows him thinks that saying this stuff publicly under the company's letterhead does smell fishy.

He's a flip-flopper. Watts sometimes has that Kevin Nash Syndrome when it comes to saying things to smarks that will make it sound like he shares all their opinions on wrestling, then he turns around and does something completely different in the actual business.

He also had his biggest famine during Clinton's entire first term as president. Come to think of it, he also did pretty poorly with most things he tried during the Carter administration. Pure coincedence that it happened that way, but you could see how it might subconciously program a fellow to think that a Democrat in office means bad times. Hasn't business been steadily declining over the past year as well? As eager as Vince has consistently proven to be about blaming all his problems on other people, it's not hard to see how he'd naturally embrace a Them Damn Democrats Are Ruining The Country philosophy. Also remember that this is a guy who waited until 2006 to put any world heavyweight title on someone who was obviously a black man (as opposed to Rock, whose skin tone could've come from anywhere on the planet if you didn't know exactly who his parents were). So it's not beyond reason to think that Vince might have an ingrained bias against the darkies, as it were, which gives him another angle to be predjudiced against Obama on. Remember, even right now, the only African wrestler who's ever been on contract to this company is portraying a Jamaican character, which shows you just how much Vinnie thinks about that particular continent and its denizens. I'm sure there are liberal wrestlers out there. Just probably not many who are willing to publicly talk about it. Wrestling is still very much a macho boys' club establishment, with old white rednecks in charge at the top, and such types naturally lean more right than left and set the tone for the industry as a whole.

No, no, and yes. The idea that the WWF wasn't "forced" into it like they were with Eddy, Benoit, or Rey is wrong because the company had an entirely different style of doing things back then. It didn't matter if Bodydonna Skip vs Reno Riggins was by far the best match of the night, there's simply no freaking way that the company would elevate them past their planned level. The company only pushed two smaller workratey types on top, and they were Bret (who got grandfathered in from the stunt booking title reign in 1992 when they couldn't decide who to put it on, and it seemed like they only put the belt back on him whenever their other planned stars crashed and burned) and Shawn (whom it's been long established must have secret photographs of Vince being the shooter on the Grassy Knoll for all the unheard-of preference that McMahon has given him over the years). Everyone else who got the belt back then was a Great Big Monster who the company had planned a long-term reign for, unless we're counting things like Backlund's week of fame. And yes, it was kinda odd to put the belt on Backlund rather than Owen, who cost Bret that match anyway, but clearly Vince just never saw Owen as a top guy. Could opinions have changed in the post-99 era? Possibly, but it sure as shit didn't look that way at the time of Owen's death. He was doing a comedy heel gimmick, basically the same thing Kurt Angle did but earlier and with a silly superhero outfit. He was being pushed at a lower level than he had been in years, and the Intercontinental Hot Potato Title didn't mean shit at the time. Austin didn't want to work with him, Hunter probably wouldn't either. He might've eventually got a Jericho-like transitional reign, but that's assuming a hell of a lot, including that he'd stick with the company that long. After all, how many guys from the mid-late 90s are still with the company today? How many guys who spent as much time in the undercard as Owen did ever got elevated to the world belt? Jericho, Eddy, Benoit, Rey, RVD, Punk, and other guys along those lines only got their (short) reigns after spending 3-5 years with the company. The only single one I can think of who'd been there for over a decade and suddenly got rocketed to the main event outta nowhere is Bradshaw, and I don't think Owen would've gotten the Bradshaw push.

Tommy Fierro sighting! That guy still hasn't managed to drown in a bowl of oatmeal yet? The internet itself is surprising, never would've pegged Cornette as a Democrat. Just for the lulz, here's a compilation of everything Joey has said in that direction: It is worth noting that Joey posted messages on here for almost a full month before starting up this crap, so one does wonder if it is just brown-nosing to please the boss. He once ran a marketing agency in New York, right? That's not exactly a conservative bastion in any way. It certainly reads like he took his talking points directly from whatever Fox talking heads show that he happened to channel-surf past. Styles has written plenty of more in-depth articles in his time which came off as a hundred times more intelligent than any of the drivel he's posting here. And he also threw in a wisecrack about "E. Stan Kroenke". I say work here.

I know, just wondering if there was a complete listing of them anywhere, maybe in some unlit corner of DVDVR that I'm not aware of or something similar.