Mad Dog

I want to like the Primetime Players. Love the characters but Titus O'Neil bugs the shit out of me when he wrestles. You're 6'7'' fucking wrestle like it. I've never seen such a big guy wrestle so small before. It just drives me up the wall. If I had to go with my personal tag team of the year it would probably be Chuck Taylor and Johnny Gargano.

Let me ask you this though. If you had put anyone else in Sting's role for the nWo would it have worked as well? First of all, it'd be a differently executed role. That said, I think Flair could have done something similar as a guy who bled WCW. It would be different but my point is that Sting doesn't get enough credit for his part in the nWo. There were things unique to Sting that made him take off. The guy didn't wrestle, didn't talk and didn't even appear much but he was the most over face on the roster for that year. Sting was inherently WCW. The guy stayed with the company through thick and thin. He had a credibility as the last bastion of hope that I don't think guys that had wrestled for the WWF could've pulled off.

I went from thinking he wasn't IWGP Title worthy to thinking he deserved it when he defended the belt against Naito in March. And I was pissed when they gave the belt to Okada.

Let me ask you this though. If you had put anyone else in Sting's role for the nWo would it have worked as well?

I look at the mid-carder as a three pronged position so to speak. I think you have high end mid-carders, mid-range mid-carder and a low end mid-carder. There's still upper mid-carders and lower mid-carders but I tend to think there's a high variation in the mid-card ranks. Take the WWE as it currently stands. I would consider Cody Rhodes to be a high end mid-carder while someone like Heath Slater is a very low end mid-carder. Slater would beaten lower mid-carders like Alex Riley, Justin Gabriel and Tyson Kidd. Slater would even beat other mid-carders like Ted Dibiase or Sin Cara. Slater probably would never beat someone like Rhodes. I think someone like Zach Ryder would fall squarely in that middle of the pack mid-carder. I feel to be a mid-carder, you're getting a push of some kind but you aren't put in a position to draw. To me, you're getting a push if you're beating wrestlers that aren't jobbers. You're not getting the strongest of pushes though. You might trade wins back and forth and not have any real momentum. A JTTS to me is someone that picks up wins on the B and C shows over jobbers and then shows up on the main shows and drops falls to mid-carders and up. An upper mid-carder to me is someone that might pick up a win over a main eventer and is in kind of a standby position for programs with main eventers as filler. Ryback would currently be an upper mid-carder. He's working with Punk as a filler feud and might not necessarily main event past that program.

I'm past the Volunteer Slam now. That tournament was straight up bullshit. I've never seen anyone win a tournament and be that cut off at the knees the entire time. He pins Buddy Landell by rolling him up when Landell goes for the Figure Four. He then pins DWB after he wipes out on a top rope move and Lee gets the pinfall. Then the DWB kicks the shit out of him afterwards. Then we get to the final and he wins it on a pretty BS DQ from Bob Armstrong. Then Orndorff and DWB proceed to kick the shit out of him. Armstrong and the locker room clear out. Lee gets beaten on a bit more as things progress. I know there's building sympathy for the face and everything but this was way overboard. DWB called him out for it being a fluke after their match and Orndorff rightfully calls out Armstrong for costing him the match. So what did this do for Lee. He didn't hit his finisher on anyone in the tournament. He won with all flash pinfall type moves. He just looks like a total chump after this tournament. He didn't even get to celebrate with the belt afterwards. Added to that, why the hell did the Heavenly Bodies need nefarious methods to beat the fucking Rich cousins? I know they're heels but they don't need to cheat to be everyone.

I'm right before the first Volunteer Slam on my watch through. This has been a tough stretch as they did a clip show for the tag tournament, an episode and then a clip show for the heavyweight tournament. Tim Horner and Hector Guerrero cut maybe the worst promo ever in the clip show. Horner actually had a foam lightning bolt to further his point.

Race drove me nuts in a lot of Vader matches. If you're setting up for your manager to do a diving headbutt off the top rope, you've gotten way too complicated.

I agree. Sherri and Flair are a bad pairing to me as she has the wrong personality for Flair.

He only has himself to blame. The product has been awful with him at the helm. Tantrums aren't going to fix that.

I like Cornette but good riddance. Go to your cave and never return.

Tommy Rich got announced for the Legends of Wrestling card game today.

I think he might've become a USWA/SMW/Global kind of regular in that 93-95 era. Then running a string of failures like the AWF before showing up for a Saturday Night/Main Event/Worldwide run in 96-98 in WCW again.

I think he would've gotten a title run in 1987 and maybe again in 1988. I tend to agree with Loss though. I think we would've seen him start to get pushed down the card as Luger and and Sting rose up the cards. I think we would've seen one of those "WCW guys goes to WWF in the early 90s and was misused and didn't get over" type of runs too. I think as time went on he would've just settled into a mid-card, upper mid-card role.

That stuff was the first 4 months of the year. Once you hit the summer and didn't have the DDP/Raven/Benoit feud and the Malenko/Jericho feud it got really bad.

Cena losing frequently is a pretty new development, and it's mostly been against Punk Other than Punk, who they've invested heavily in, what heels have gotten over at Cena's expense? Miz beat him at WM, but that was entirely focused on The Rock. Rock beat him at WM, but it's The Rock. When he was programmed with Barrett and Nexus he never lost clean. I don't see the case for Cena not being protected. He never loses to anyone beneath him. They're very selective about who, when and how he loses. He's always lost quite a bit. It always feels like he's been setting up to look worse than his opponent.

Hulu is a good option. They chop Raw up but the other shows are intact. As I said earlier, I watch Main Event, Superstars, NXT and some Smackdown. I tend to avoid Raw and I'm pretty happy with the product.

To go in a slightly different direction. The Miz and Kofi Kingston pulled a really good match out of their collective asses on Main Event several weeks ago. It was probably the best match I've seen since starting to watch again in August. Rollins defending the NXT Title against Joe Hennig from last month was also really good.

It's a faulty metric I like Matt and think his research has value. But he has never come out and published all of his research. And the 10k plus metric has obvious flaws. Having said that I don't think it's out of the question to put peak Sheik in the same league as peak Bruno. It was an act that was hot in some big markets. My immediate thought would be similar to yours - "this can't be right, Bruno has to be the bigger draw by a wide margin" - but that may have as much to do with personal bias/how the business has evolved as anything else. I think the Sheik was easily in the same league as Bruno. He was huge in Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto for a really long time. I live in that general area and people speak of him as this monster that came off of the television screen. I mean they hated him with a burning passion and a lot of people judge every heel by the metric of the Sheik.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0m-HSntNA This is the last time I remember Wallstreet appearing on WCW TV.

The thing that stands out to me about John Cena is how little they protect him. They do more on a weekly basis to protect Randy Orton, who has failed repeatedly as a main eventer, than they ever have for John Cena. They go to some absurd lengths to protect Orton. Cena will repeatedly get bested by the heel every week, go to the PPV and lose.

I actually really enjoying watching Superstars, Main Event and NXT on a weekly basis. Main Event seems to be never fail for a good match and Superstars and NXT usually manage a good match a week. There's been some really good matches on Superstars over the past couple of months.

He might have still been on Saturday Night at that point. I don't totally remember though. I know they started phasing him out of the television around the time he joined the nWo.

It was Starcade, then he was striped on the first Thunder. That Souled Out was Flair/Hart with little nWo stuff on there. Then Hogan/Sting was Super Brawl.

From what I remember as I watched WCW 1998 some time ago, it was really all about "swerve", and no good reason was ever given, and really nothing came out of it. One of the most illogical and worthless nWo turn of the bunch, but they thought they that had to keep the angle "fresh" with new people at this point. I think they mentioned it on the Nitro after and then was never mentioned or a real factor ever again. Maybe he helped the Outsiders win the tag belts back from the Steiners but that's a big if.