Mad Dog

If you can find it, Ellering took the Persian Club challenge in Mid-South over the course of two episodes.

They also hurt Nagata by jobbing him at the end of the IWGP tournament and then winning the belt a month later. He was also pretty fresh off of getting absolutely destroyed by CroCop in an MMA fight.

I thought the whole package of Animal, Hawk and Paul Ellering were great on the mic. I think Hawk in particular was underrated as far as talking. To me, Hawk is the one that tied it all together at the end and threw the catch phrase out there. Animal was a little more incoherent but his anger and intensity usually made up for it. But I think Ellering loses some of his luster in hindsight. At the time, he had still been active as a wrestler pretty recently and I think part of what he brought at the time was tough guy cred. He wasn't like those managers that hadn't wrestled 10 years ago. He had been recent up until then and you were pretty sure that if things really hit the fan that Ellering was probably the third toughest guy in whatever scrape the Road Warriors got into.

I agree, Nagata is a better worker but I don't think he's a better candidate than CIMA. Nagata's big IWGP run for New Japan was during a down time for the company. His 1/4 defense did pretty poorly. Now, in fairness to him, things got worse after his reign ended and his 2007 run did better but the company was also a little hotter going into his win and he wasn't seen as the top guy. CIMA on the other hand has been one of the top 4 guys for Dragon Gate as it's climbed from essentially being a wrestling gym show to being a national promotion that has arguable been the no. 2 promotion at various points over the last few years.

Does Walton count? He was 6'11. Hakeem and Ralph Sampson were the original Twin Towers in the 80s as well.

I don't feel like anyone ever watched ECW because of Tommy Dreamer. You might have liked the guy and he might have been a favorite but I don't believe that many people ever bought a ticket to see Tommy Dreamer in a match. I think the fact that Heyman never put the belt on him for more than a couple of minutes says something to his place in the company. I know when I was showing the product to other people in the late 90s it was about showing them Taz, Mike Awesome, Rob Van Dam, etc. Honestly, I would sell people on Little Guido or Tajiri as guys to watch. I never thought to use Tommy Dreamer as a company selling point.

Look at the bright side. You get to see Blitzkrieg's awesome 4 month run with the company. Honestly, the first 8 months of 1999 weren't that bad. You started the year off with the Hennig/Windham vs. Benoit/Malenko vs. Raven/Saturn tag feud that was really good. The early part of Mysterio's unmasking was fun and the Spring Break Nitro where he takes on Ric Flair was a fun match. Then you get the Jersey Triad which was entertaining. Blitzkrieg's run and Mikey Whipwreck showing up. And Hulk Hogan going face which wasn't terrible. It doesn't really fall apart until you get some variation of Golberg/Hogan/Nash vs. Steiner/Sid/Savage every week for like a month. And the No Limit Soldiers suck but the Rednecks were awesome.

I think there's an argument that Mike Awesome's run during the early ECW on TNN show makes him a more valuable piece of the ECW puzzle than Tommy Dreamer in some ways too. I'd argue Public Enemy were more important overall to the company as well. They really seemed to be the piece that made the company start taking off towards the second fall of 1993.

You'll find guys taller but not as big all around. Same thing with Andre, it was not just being tall, it was he was giant in proportion. But Andre was also around in the 70's and 80's where you didn't see guys as tall so often. Wilt and Kareem.

Yeah, still pisses me off. I was at the Nitro after Starcade where they jobbed Wrath to Disco Inferno. Sigh... such a depressing era. One question. Does anyone remember the episode where Norman Smiley fell into the Demon casket and came out for his match as Screamin Demon Smiley? I also watched Smiley tossing Pepe into the wood chipper and laughed my ass off at Chavo's distress over losing his horse.

There's not a ton of footage of Red Berry's peak with the Fabulous Kangaroos so it's really hard to judge.

It's been almost 14 years but I still get pissed off when I see Kevin Nash beat Wrath in the lead up to his Starcade match with Goldberg in 1998. It might have flopped but I really think they were stupid for passing up Goldberg/Wrath as a PPV main event.

My main problems with his promos is that he was always trying to be too clever. He'd try to string together some big words and would really lose the point by trying to sound so smart. I think he was better about that when he managed Abyss. During a match, he was useless. He'd stalk around the ring and try to look scary but he never really did anything. When he managed Abyss, he wasn't really helping Abyss get heat and he wasn't really adding a ton to the Abyss character. He was just kind of there and you got some good promos out of the guy. Same with Mortis and Wraith. He never really did anything to help them get over, in fact, they did better without him. The only time he added something was with Mikey Whipwreck and that was because they were just being a couple of oddballs backstage.

WCCW for Gary Hart is his peak. Mitchell was a good promo but he added virtually nothing once the action in the ring started. I liked his run in TNA a lot and his ECW stuff was fun. But it always kind of felt like he should have been better and more memorable than he was.

If I go live I almost always have fun. The only time I ever hated a show I went to live was a Smackdown in 2003. They had Booker T vs. Hardcore Holly and that match literally lasted for 35 minutes and 20 of it was spent in a headlock. They botched the end and came back out later to shoot the end again and the crowd was screaming "no!" when they thought they were going to have to sit through more.

On the D'Lo subject. Weren't there some rumblings that he might have been WCW bound around the time the time Bischoff's group was thought to be buying the company?

There can't be enough said about Ron Wright's promos in SMW. He'd come out talking about how his medication went up in price and how winter was going to be extra cold that year and the fans would absolutely hate him for it. He got the fans to hate a man in a wheelchair and it's just an experience to sit through his work.

Jimmy Hart Bobby Heenan The Grand Wizard - more for his Detroit work than anything else Gary Hart Sherri Martel Jim Cornette Ron Wright Captain Lou Albano JJ Dillion Paul E. Dangerously

I haven't seen fans flee in terror like that since Bruiser Brody. The whole first episode is up on Youtube, it's interesting.

Fans in India fleeing in terror from Scott Steiner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89FHgivPGd0 From what I've seen and read, this Ring Ka King looks pretty good so far.

JBL was the only reason I watched Smackdown when he was on commentary.

I read it several times when it happened and it was gross. I'm just being honest here, the Tough Enough thing never bothered me that much. I've seen guys stiff each other like that numerous times and I still think someone put him up to that. And even if they didn't, shit happens. Holly really is guilty of stiffing guys in the ring and beating up Dupree for a little vigilante justice. Compared to guys like Dynamite Kid or JBL, I really think his transgressions are pretty small time.

I skipped whichever show had that 45 minute HHH/HBK Hell In A Cell. I don't regret skipping that. More than one person I know stopped going to wrestling after that show.