Jingus

You are sometimes. Not trying to insult you, if I'd been around as long as you and seen all these discussions a thousand times I might get snooty too, but that is a side of you that comes out on occasion. Maybe not but I still haven't seen a good Bundy singles match except for the Lawler minute challenge. The strength of that match was more in the stipulation playing up to Bundy's gimmick and not because Lawler is a wrestling genius who squeezed a good match out of Bundy. I watched that match just a few weeks ago, and remember it seeming to be a case where both guys brought their A-game. Personally I think Bundy was a little underrated by some, but regardless I don't think Harley could've had that match with a total broomstick. As to the piledriver argument, I've seen Harley have jobbers kick out of his piledrivers in squash matches on at least two or three occasions. Not even really sell it afterwards, just kick out and go to the next spot. That's worth a raised eyebrow, back in the early 80s.

Backlund's run was about five years too. So really Bruno is the only old-time WW(W)F/E headliner who breaks that particular mold. There are exceptions, though. Nobody will ever convince me that December 2 Dismember failed so miserably just because it wasn't over as a concept. Being a really lousy card which farted in the general direction of the old ECW fanbase had to have something to do with it. It is kinda frustrating how they can break every rule in Booking 101 and do shit which should simply cause them to lose money in buckets, and yet still turn around and make a big profit. Of course, before we talk about what a great business machine they are, let's remember that WWE stock has yet to make a profit for anyone who bought it at its original selling price. Wall Street does not count that as being successful.

I've got copies of two WWWF Andre/Hogan matches from the Spectrum, and at least one from New Japan. They were damn near identical to the matches they had in 87 and 88, only slightly faster. But still, lots of long bearhugs was always the rule of the day.

Dammit Marty, I was just coming here to post that. Real WTF material.

Well, I did know a blind guy once who was a wrestling fan, true story. Don't know how/why he derived pleasure from just listening to it, but there ya go. So theoretically it could be real. Of course, my favorite piece of edged weaponry, Occam's Razor, would tend to suggest that it's a scam.

Yes, it would, wouldn't it?

If I ever (for whatever godforsaken reason) get back into doing commentary for wrestling, I am SO stealing that line. One thing Lance missed is that this isn't the first time Taker has done this. I recall him using the dragon sleeper as a submission finish around Invasion, and variations on the triangle choke on many occasions, iirc he beat Big Show at Backlash 2002 with that hold.

The common IWC demand for anyone whom they think is being underutilized on Raw is "move him to Smackdown so Quadruple H won't BERRY them anymore", but this is one case where I think that might be correct. Jericho is lost in the crowded upper-midcard on Raw. Smackdown is much more starving for starpower, especially on the heel side; after Edge, who's their #2 in-ring villain? Of course, since SD is being cancelled anyway, maybe it's not such a great idea.

For those few of you who still watch TNA, Brother Earnest was on there last week as the preacher who married AJ Styles and Karen Angle. They've used him at least twice before too, once as Jarrett's lawyer and once as AJ's former gym coach. I love stories about shit like this. Wow. For the first time ever, I think Vampiro might not have been completely full of shit when he claimed he wrestled more than twenty times per week in his early days in Mexico. He's still lying of course, but it reduces the severity from an "the earth is flat" lie to a more forgivable "Raven says he worked 400 matches in his first year" typical wrestling exaggeration. Heh.

By the time any company publically announces that they're cutting back, it generally means that they're in serious trouble behind the scenes. To be fair, Chuck Taylor recently held their heavyweight title for an entire year. As to predictions? I wouldn't even want to try to make any. The past year sure as hell didn't go like I expected it to.

Early reports say torn bicep, so it's quite possible.

Which of course makes the dubious arguement that "true fans" of a product will love every second of it 100%, and never once feel that the show could've been better in any way. We've all seen various official promotions' message boards have censorship problems like these. My favorite example was on the Glory board, which is entirely devoted to women's wrestling and entirely populated by midnight chokers. The esteemable Larry Goodman posted a negative (and accurate) review of a Women's Extreme Wrestling show, and the rest of the board went haywire over it because they were only supposed to be there to "support" the ladies, and any sort of criticism was verboten.

I went to the same school as Jeff Jarrett. Uh... got no joke here, that's a real story... it was a private Christian school where my first-grade teacher once treated the class to an angry sermon about how we couldn't trust the Jews because they murdered Christ.

I keep hearing that there were supposed to be some racial overtones in the Edge-Kristal thing, but nobody has ever explained exactly what they were gonna be. (And depending on how hard he's been hitting the tanning bed recently, Edge's skin might actually be the darker of the two.) I wouldn't be surprised at all about Lashley or any black wrestler quitting over the old boys' club mentality. People in the wrestling bubble just never seem to realize how awesomely backwards their outlook on race issues is. See Lance Storm's recent column where he was all like "well maybe they said "nigger", but they didn't mean it". They've got a thousand excuses, but the basic fact is that wrestling as an American industry is still run entirely by whitey, and they're seemingly still uncomfortable with letting non-caucasians into the inner circle.

So tonight Adamle interviewed, in his own words, "Jeff Harvy". Whoops. Not quite a Shockmaster, but it's always exhasperating (and funny) to see someone fuck up their debut.

What on earth could you possibly do with her on a wrestling show? She obviously couldn't get physically involved, having no prior experience and probably her various producers and insurers wouldn't allow it. Plus, she's completely fucking insane even by wrestling's standards. This is a woman who's shown clear signs of everything from deep depression to bipolar disorder, and displays occasional hints of much worse conditions such as possible schizophrenia or dissociative personality disorder. The LAST thing she needs to do is be on frigging Raw. Not only would it be unhealthy for her, but there's absolutely zero confidence that she'd do what you told her to. Heh, really? Weird. As vicious bastards as Matt & Trey can be at times, there have been multiple examples of holding off on doing a certain topic because they didn't want to cause serious trouble.

They still have the most noxious part: the posters. I'm currently in an arguement over there in which people are claiming that the WWE has never been racist in its depiction of minorities. I bring up Saba Simba and a bunch of other examples, and get "well, those are just gimmicks, aren't supposed to take 'em SERIOUS or nothin" in return.

I guess I can accept that. His matches this year only bored me, while last year they were the type of stuff to induce seizures.

How so, considering he got a world title run? Unless you want to make the argument that Khali is a talented grappler. I've seen that opinion voiced before, and never once understood it.

I've never liked him, for a variety of reasons. He always sounded phony and insincere to me (yes, I know, but I mean even by wrestling's standards). His attempts to get over various Announcer Catchphrases came off as even lamer than Ross and Styles doing the same thing. I'd agree that he's gotten better over the years, while Tenay has gotten radically worse. It seems like these awards are often treated more like a Lifetime Achievement deal rather than confining their judgement to solely what has been presented over the past year. Hence the votes for Grisham and Coach, when technically they haven't even been television announcers during the voting period. That actually is Meltzer's definition for the award, though. Not that that makes Khali overrated, anyway.I'm confused, are you saying that the "low talent, high on the card" definition doesn't fit Khali?

The Invasion. Talking to random fans from all walks of life, from the nerdiest smart marks to the most casual Stone Cold fans, nothing ever seemed like it disappointed and pissed off more people like that bungle did.

At the beginning of the sentence, you acknowledge that it really happens. At the end, you say it's unrealistic. What reason? Besides the obvious one about muscle mass and upper body strength. Because as you pointed out, strength isn't everything. Forgive me if I'm being presumptious, but it sounds like you're projecting your personal feelings onto humanity in general. I was there live for the early TNA feud between Kid Kash and Trinity. Those two beat the absolute living dogshit out of each other. And guess what, the crowd loved it. Around the same time, in the indy fed that I worked for we had ODB as our television champion, wrestling (and beating) men every week. That crowd loved that too. And these crowds were not made up of progressive sophisticates who believed in female equality, these were Tennessee rednecks straight out of the trailer park, and they loved this shit. They had no problem believing that these women could legitimately defeat these men in a fight. Hell, one time I even wrestled a tag match where it was me and ODB against Traci Brooks and another girl. I was the only guy in the match, and I took the heat segment! Those chicks kept me down and beat the crap out of me for five minutes straight, and the crowd bought it. And not because I'm some Mysterio-sized guy, I'm six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. Yet the crowd had no problem suspending their disbelief, and even popped when I made the hot tag. Like I said earlier, popular mainstream media has given us a steady diet of badass women who are entirely capable of hanging with the guys. I spent a little while on IMDB coming up with this list, just to make my point. Various movies and shows have given us two-fisted heroines played by actresses like Keira Knightly, Uma Thurman, Carrie-Anne Moss, Halle Berry, Jennifer Garner, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jessica Alba, Milla Jovavich, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie, Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Asia Argento, Charlize Theron, Devon Aoki, Summer Glau, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Famke Janssen, Eliza Dushku, Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore, Rose McGowan, Kate Beckinsale, Ashley Judd, Maggie Q, Gina Gershon, Rosario Dawson, and estrogen-power poster girl Lucy Lawless. Hell, Hilary Swank won Best Actress in a Best Picture about a female boxer. Every single actress I just named has played multiple roles in the past decade where she kicked a man's ass or was portrayed as a serious physical threat. And it's not like this is some new phenomenon which exploded out of nowhere: they're just following the trail that was blazed by women like Sigourney Weaver, Sharon Stone, Geena Davis, Linda Hamilton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates, Glenn Close, Bridgitte Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, not to mention the countless Asian asskickers in the kung-fu films, all the way back to Pam Grier and her fellow tough broads in the 70s exploitation flicks. One could make a case for going back even further to the boulder-chested dominatrixes in Russ Meyers' potboilers, and to various thick-skinned bitches who packed iron in countless Westerns. None of those shows or movies caused audiences to stop going to theaters or turn off their TV in disgust. Quite the opposite, they mostly drew a whole lot of money. So why do you keep insisting that society isn't going to believe seeing a girl beat up a guy?

Why? She's much bigger than Jericho, and possibly stronger than him. Similar to how Awesome Kong is bigger and stronger than most of the top guys in TNA; if Kurt Angle can sell for Christian's offense, I don't see why selling Kong's would be a problem. Do you just not believe that a girl can whup a guy, period?

Chyna was ridiculously over circa 1999-2000. She got the second-biggest pop of the night the one time I saw her live, which definitely wasn't piped in. It's arguable whether she was actually a draw, but she certainly wasn't driving anyone away. I don't think Jarrett or Jericho lost any credibility from feuding with her, if anything they were more over afterwards. Her push coincided with their all-time highest ratings, and her Playboy sold however many billion copies. It's pretty hard to argue that she wasn't a success, at least until she Self Destructed due to ego, drugs, jealousy of the boss's daughter, or whatever.