Mad Dog

Watched Super Brawl III tonight. Great show as Rhodes/Payne was really the only match that I wouldn't classify as good. Sting/Vader and RnR/Bodies were both great matches.

That MSG show was a lot better than the usual crap they parade out most months on there.

Comparing Hogan to Batista is a huge fucking downplay of Hogan's inring ability. Batista doesn't even start to touch what Hogan could do in the ring. Sure he was limited but he could go out there and put on a good match on a fairly consistent basis. Batista is more like the Ultimate Warrior. No real inring ability that gets drug kicking and screaming to good matches. Batista doesn't even begin to understand the comebacks that Hogan made a career out of and how to milk the crowd for every bit of emotion they had. Even in recent years Hogan has pulled out some good matches. Track down his 2003 match against Chono. They managed about **3/4 or so and it was a very surprising match. Batista would probably tear every muscle in his body if he went for the Ax Bomber. As far as getting over today. I think you could stick him in a lot of different eras and he would've found his way to the top. He just connects with people that way. People try to say right time, right place in the 80s but that doesn't explain how he was a big star in Japan, AWA and then going national with the WWF. But there's a point I'd like to make as far as Hogan vs. Austin. Hogan came back and reinvented himself and became a huge draw years after the initial shine had faded. Austin hasn't. So you could argue Austin is more right place, right time than Hogan is/was.

Yeah, so I'm done as far as new WWE programming now.

Yeah that argument pisses me off by how stupid it is. They tend to shut up quickly when you point out the biggest year ever for the WWF was also the year they had top to bottom great wrestling in 2000. But that argument seems to come from the myth and revisionist history that ECW featured great wrestling.

This is an area where Scott Hall deserves credit and never gets it. He laid down for Jericho on Nitro and really made him look good in the process. Even though he won the rematch he still made Jericho look great.

Larry Zbyszko as a commentator is a lot better than I remembered. Namely his selling of the cruiserweights. He spends their matches just talking about how insane all of them are and I think he helped the division quite a bit with his commentary.

This month needed a lot less Pedro Morales and a lot more Mil Mascaras. I know people like to slam on Mascaras but he was pretty good most of the time. That's another by product that I hate from Foley's book. You have Foley crying about a legend not selling for an undercard guy and suddenly you have a bunch of guys slamming on a guy who they've either never seen or only seen when he was way past his prime.

Putting Hayes in charge of Smackdown was probably the smartest thing she's ever done while having the book.

It's funny how Stephanie is basically in charge of the company and she always has an excuse for not going to OVW to check out the future talent. And also hiring guys like Rodimer and wanting to push them as main eventers because she has a crush on them. Raw ratings shouldn't even matter now. The WWE doesn't get a piece of that action so why bother trying to pop a rating when you won't see a dime. That should've been a clue to pull back on big free tv matches and sell the PPVs and paying events more. But whatever. Vince is still living in the Attitude Era.

There's also the fact that the WWE seems to intentionally fuck guys over they put years into with OVW. I mean look at Brent Albright. He was with OVW for several years and then lasted on the main roster for a matter of months and getting his release. Why bother then?

There's also the incestuous nature of the indy scene and that indies tend to use the same 15-20 guys. All the east coast shows have the same core group, same on the west coast, in the south, etc. That makes it really hard for new guys to break in and get a decent paycheck and not give up quickly.

Actually if you see them in tags together right after ICW closed Poffo is actually a little bigger than Savage. I think Poffo's issues were he was just too comedy and he was just too small for the WWF. I have to disagree with the talent pool these days. It's there it's just a matter of several issues: 1. Booking doesn't protect weaknesses anymore. 2. The WWE being more interested in bodybuilders than actual wrestlers. 3. The wankfest that the coastal indy scenes have turned into. Getting pops and showing how you appreciate wrestling blah blah has become more important than actually having sound matches. 4. Training in general. Cornette talks at length about this. Guys come in with a gimmick in mind before they've even learned a single hold and then shoehorn themselves into that role instead of learning to wrestle and then letting a gimmick develop on it's own. 5. The elitist nature of coastal indy feds and not using more veterans. Again Cornette has said you can learn more in 10 minutes with a veteran than you could in years of training and matches. A lot of the guys out there don't get the chance to get in their with a real veteran and therefore don't get that experience. 6. No one from the 90s put anyone over. Look at Memphis. Lawler won't put anyone over. Austin, Taker and HHH have yet to really put anyone over. Now instead of the top putting over the next generation we have the generation never put over by the 90s generation putting over the next generation. So you aren't building stars anymore. 7. A total lack of focus on promos. This is another coastal indy thing. They'll throw anyone on the mic and not care if they can talk or not. You head down south and you still get good promos and such. Not saying the coastal indy guys suck at promos per say. Just that a majority of them do and don't seem interested in learning.

Wouldn't that be kind of stupid since the only thing they ever used him for was the Gooker? The Guerreros did a lot of stuff in Texas from what I remember. I know Chavo had a babyface run in SCW and won the tag titles there with Manny Fernandez and also won their Junior title. I don't even know who owns the SCW footage at this point.

I'll try but I can't promise. You'll probably see flurries from me where I comment on everything I see for a few months at a time followed by a few months where I comment on a few items here and there. This will be competing with 24/7, my weekly Mid-South project and my steady stream of puro and lucha purchases. I will watch everything I get though.

That wasn't a comment on his skill level per say. It was more a comment that everyone else on his level card wise sucked horribly.

True, but then Poffo doesn't completely suck. I'm almost always tempted to turn the shows off if they start out with S.D. Jones taking on some jobber. Those matches always go on forever and they always seem to be slow as hell with them just rolling around on the mat until Jones gets the headbutt in.

This conversation comes up a lot with my other main hobby too which are comic books. Honestly no wrestling and nothing but Archie comics if I ever have kids. Ok, I might exceptions on wrestling if it were Chikara, CMLL or Dragon's Gate. Those are all fairly harmless. With the WWE I don't trust their programming. There's just too much that's not appropriate for a child on those shows. The Katie Vick thing, the HHH/Booker T racism deal, the post Eddie death stuff, the Kane/Lita rape angle and Edge/Lita live sex show are all things that a kid shouldn't be exposed to. Indy shows are a matter of the fuckface fanbases and their odd hostility to kids, see that RoH show from last year. Now real sports are a lot different. I can watch an NFL game with a fair amount of confidence that Tom Brady isn't going to get on the mic after a game and cut a promo on Bill Parcells and accuse him of fucking a dead chick. I mean it could happen in theory I guess but you get the point. Comic books are just a matter of violence and the graphic nature of what that's become.

I don't think slower matches are worse per say. I just think the WWF style per about 1987 was really bad. Very slow and basic and a lot of guys who were really over the hill populating the shows. Match length was also an issue they had. S.D. Jones doing 20 minute matches just doesn't thrill me. Like I said, you get a Barry Windham in there and he really stands out just because he's so much more agile than just about anyone else. I just like the quicker moving, more varied and harder hitting style of JCP, Mid-South and a lot of the other areas. I've also noticed what a complete dick the Undertaker was to Vader and just how out to bury the guy he was.

I don't even remember but that guy that landed on his own head to make a Nikita Koloff clothesline look brutal was one of the bumps that stand out. Nikita in general is a real trip. I love how he flexes and kind of just hisses during interviews when he's not talking.

Black Bart. I didn't know much about the guy before getting 24/7. Not great or anything but a solid promo and he seems pretty competent in the ring. Actually the World Championship Wrestling shows are my favorite feature on there. I looked forward to seeing that Blanchard/Taylor match more than I have for any wrestling match in a long time. Jeff Jarrett. People have really let the last few years cloud what he really is. Not a flashy guy but a very solid guy in the ring that can have a good match with just about anyone. His match with Chris Benoit at Mayhem in 1999 was really a gem that got lost over the years. It's made me realize how sucky the WWF was inring before Vince raided the territories. Just an awful slow and plodding style and anyone that can sort of move immediately stands out. Pedro Morales is beyond awful. I also don't remember ECW Tv being so cornball but hey whatever. Related to that I've been buying the Mid-South DVDs off of the former Mrs. Watts site and it's really reminded me how great guys like Ted Dibiase and Paul Orndorff were. Especially Dibiase. He really dumbed it down once he got to the WWF. Though I've noticed a lot of guys in the 80s seemed to dumb it down once they got there.

I'd be up for giving this a try.

I ordered Bound for Glory last night and it was a great show. Just from start to finish nothing below watchable and they had a string of three great matches with Sabin/Senshi, the cage match and Christian/Rhino. Totally worth the money if you're thinking about getting the replay.

I found David Flair to be at his most entertaining during this period of time. He was pretty good at playing a psycho.

It's up there. I guess it's fitting for a shitty wrestler to have a shitty name.