Boondocks Kernoodle

There's only one acceptable wrestling tribute to MJ:

Was there ever a bigger waste of money Michael Buffer in WCW? I suppose having him do intros gave the matches an air of legitimacy and a "big match feel." But who cares? Will it make a difference of one single fan whether it's Buffer or Dave Penzer doing intros? I wonder how much they spent on him. His fee these days is $25K per shot. I'm sure WCW wasn't paying that much but still, it's a ring announcer!

http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/9835/ Edge was injured tonight. Looks like the tag team division is going to start suckin' hard again.

Dave has said that there were guys telling him in '98 that it was Taker's last year as a wrestler. I hope all that money he has buys him a nice wheelchair. Also, does anyone else find themselves now asking what was up with Edge's three-month break last fall? They don't just give main eventers a whole quarter of a year off with a fake injury unless it's Michaels or Undertaker, especially not when the top heel in his absence is the, shall we say, unpolished Vlad Kozlov. I can't imagine they would just give him that time off to rest, not when he was out four months with an injury in '07. One thing Dave doesn't point out with regards to Jeff Hardy's suspension in '08 is that Hardy apparently tested positive for a recreational drug. I have no doubt that WWE sees recreational drug use as a negative and something they don't want their wrestlers doing. Therefore, especially considering Jeff's past, they thought it was necessary to force him to clean up, because if they didn't, it would send the message to the other guys that getting high is OK. WWE doesn't want to send an anti-steroid message to their wrestlers, they just want them to use better masking agents. So if a main eventer tests positive for the juice, sweep it under the rug and hope nobody notices.

The significance of the Disney tapings is pretty overrated but I have to say passing off a successful title defense by Harlem Heat from before Slamboree '95 as them winning the titles back from the Nasty Boys was one of the dumbest things ever to air on WCW television. I was 10 years old at the time and even I knew something was fishy with that.

Pfew, stupid me. I had some doubts it was in Atlanta, but I was pretty sure it was. Guess not. Either way, he wanted live attendance up. We know that for sure. EDIT: As opposed, of course, to the numerous promoters who want less fans at their shows. Wow, I'm on a roll today.

Observer and F4W reported a while back that Goldberg was interviewed. Watts was a good booker, but the "no moves off the top" rule made the promotion look boring and dated. If he wanted to teach the wrestlers to work on the mat, he could have just told them not to come off the top but not publicized it on the air. Also, the worst thing he did was the Barbarian title push. I'm sure we have some Barbarian fans here, which is fine, but nobody took him seriously, despite WCW Magazine's 10 reasons telling us why it could happen. Halloween Havoc should have been the Simmons/Vader rematch. Also that whole angle which led to Simmons winning the title would have been better had it aired on Clash XX, but part of his job was to get Omni attendance up. Also Beach Blast '92 had a really terrible match order. Look it up. Can we all agree that WCW in '93 wasn't nearly as bad as Scooter and others always claim it was? I'm sure it was a disaster backstage, but on the air it wasn't horrible. The biggest problem from that year is that most of the undercard matches on the big shows disappoint, but I thought the main event scene was pretty solid. I may be looking at it through rose-colored glasses, however, because I was 8.

sources: www.pwtorch.com, PWInsider.com -- The word going around the locker room is that Vickie Guerrero was only being paid $500 per appearance by WWE. On top of that, she had to cover her own hotel and road expenses.

There's no way that look was an accident. If someone showed up looking that bad, they'd send him home. It's his gimmick. He can't just be "The Irish Guy" because that's Finlay's role. So his Unique Selling Point will be that he's a near-albino.

The book "Long Bomb" implies that firing Stacy was a roundabout way of firing Lawler for referring to a poorly-performing kicker during an XFL game as "about as dependable as a Honda automobile." Honda had pulled advertising from XFL broadcasts, but I'm sure NBC wasn't happy with that line.

Letting the Rock's contract expire without telling him isn't something that can be chalked up to a clerical error. That was a "fuck you" from Vince for being successful without him.

When has Dave ever complained about Angle's being on top of TNA? I know he had serious reservations about them hiring him, as everyone did. But I've never heard him say that they shouldn't be pushing him. Maybe that they shouldn't push him as hard as they have which has made pretty much every one of their homegrown stars look inferior to him. But that he shouldn't be on top? No? Comparing Foley to Dusty and Nash is disingenuous. Dusty got so much heat for the way he was booked in the 80s because he booked HIMSELF that way. Nash gets shit for his behavior in TNA because he shows up, has bad matches (though I did like some of his work late last year), shits all over the young guys he's working with and then conveniently gets injured when he's supposed to put them over. And I don't really have a problem with that, but it is counterproductive. I doubt Foley demanded to be given the title. Foley was one of the top stars during Russo's most successful booking run. Of course he's going to put the belt on him. I haven't seen or heard Meltzer rave about anything Foley has done in TNA because he's been given shit to work with. Perhaps that's somewhat his fault because I think if he had better ideas than what the TNA bookers had come up with, he's one guy who they would listen to. But I'm not going to pin it all on him.

Could anyone who has a sub to the Torch site please print the article here which I think is titled "Least Favorite Wrestler" by Bruce Mitchell? It's about Tommy Dreamer and how much Mitchell thinks he sucks. It's probably from 2000 or 2001. My brother hates Dreamer and I want to show him that editorial.

Oh Bix, is this really the best way to handle things?

Hmm. This isn't what I expected Izzy Slapowitz to look like. I was expecting short slicked-back hair and a nice suit. But I was thinking more along the lines of "Jewish lawyer." Also, those aren't "Jew curls," they're pigtails. Appropriate that he spent most of his career in ICW, because he looks like he could be the third Poffo brother.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6212457.html?...adlines;title;6 There's a AAA video game coming out.

I always had a soft spot for Candice just because of how incredibly dumb she seemed. Someone at TSM once posted an old Playboy video she did before wrestling and in it she stated that she likes when men wear lingerie, such as a wifebeater. Then she said that she's not a fan of cheesy pick-up lines but she did like it when one guy asked her if it hurt when she fell from Heaven. Then she said, "I like the sun because it's warm and it's hot and it's not cold like when you're in the water." Thank you, Ralph Wiggum! On another note: Am I the only one who thinks Kamala looked infinitely cooler when he had the big gold nose ring? Nose ring Kamala looked scary, like he actually wanted to boil you in a big pot of water and eat you. I think he had a different face paint pattern then too. WWF Kamala looked like a big goofy clown.

Well then, those are some...interesting views.

I don't know if Dave exactly said that Eddie wasn't happy about it, just that playing heel is rougher on a wrestler's body because of the bumps the heel takes. (On a side note, this makes me recall the funny memory from TSM I think of Dave reporting that Eddie's doctor said that he had the back of an 80-year-old and some poster was like "WELL WHY DIDN'T MELTZER TELL EDDIE THAT? COULD HAVE SAVED HIS LIFE." I might be remembering that wrong. I hope I'm not.)

I don't really know anything about AnarchistXX other than that whenever he says something like "I don't like the Sandman," Phil Schneider or Tomk will respond with "What, you don't like him because he teamed with Too COON Scorpio, you Klansman?" I assume at some point he must have expressed some views that could be construed as racist, but with these reactionary DVDVR folks that could be as simple as preferring Owen Hart to Butch Reed.

I swear I was just thinking a few hours ago, "I bet Candice Michelle gets released soon." Don't know why, but dammit I was right.

But why? Isn't the news already out there that it said his death was due to steroid use? Would the purpose of keeping it sealed just be making it harder for journalists to procure that information, or is there something I'm missing?

It wasn't.

A newsbit buried in the new WON, between the Raw and SD reports:

Funny coincidence from the latest classic Observer: This was around the time Brian Bosworth made his legendary film debut: