Boondocks Kernoodle

I think the biggest lesson to learn from this is that Ryback really needs to start wearing a cup when he wrestles Punk.

You can add Jake's feud with Sting to the list as it started with a hot initial angle, drew very well on PPV by WCW standards and culminated in a boring match.

Can we all agree that Flair's purple robe is the best of them all? I also believe that his robe and trunks should always be color-coordinated, EXCEPT when he wears his black robe and then it's OK for him to wear red tights with that. It just works, plus the alternative would be for him to wear black trunks, and I always thought it was wrong when he did that. The Nature Boy is supposed to be colorful!

I think anyone who has followed the McMahon-Ross relationship knew that at some point, Vince was going to have to do this, because he just couldn't allow JR to make that decision for himself. Vince wins!

By 1990, they were making $2000 apiece per match in WCW (with an added $1100 for Precious Paul). WWF wouldn't have paid close to that for a tag team. They only left when Jim Herd tried to renegotiate them to $156,000/year deals.

Re: Arn and Eaton in ECW:

Aww geez. TNA got so wrapped up in the hype over the A.J. "shoot promo" that they had to do one of their own.

Gary Wolfe.

No, it was inside criticism. From the 1/25/97 Torch:

Hogan vs Savage was already planned for Halloween Havoc at that point, and in fact had been for months before that, as Slim Jim would only sponsor the event if that match headlined it.

Back in '98, the name "mixed martial arts" wasn't very familiar to the general audience. I'm guessing that's what Tenay meant by "shootfighting."

Poor Rob, he has to give up this pimpin' lifestyle.

I just watched the six-man on Youtube. I don't know if the international feed is different from the American version but the match as aired lasted a full four minutes. Christian pinning Ambrose did get over big, but I wonder if the Shield is in the "depush them to see how they handle it" stage of their careers now. I do, however, think Dean is winning the MITB match and will be champion next year, but he's going to do a lot of jobs before he gets that belt.

It was Porkchop Cash.

It's the conventional wisdom that Joe "would have been Umaga," but was that ever reported to be true? There would have been opposition to him within the company due to his working style and he's not an Afa relative, which means he doesn't have the goodwill within the company reserved for members of the Samoan wrestling family. I can't see them giving him the monster push. Furthermore, I remember something on DVDVR, or maybe it was the old Kaiju board, where Kevin Cook and/or PolishBobStupak (Matthew Randazzo) said something about how Vince announced to the creative team that he was tired of seeing "the internet" (code for Meltzer) praise Joe so much and he wanted to sign him just to bury him. Someone within the company then leaked this to Joe and that's why he chose TNA. Not sure if I have that all correct or if it's accurate, but that's how I remember it.

Not to discount Jericho's effect on the ratings but the week after the HHH-Jericho title switch was also the week after they announced Austin was returning at Backlash. It's possible more viewers tuned in thinking Stone Cold might be on the show.

To follow up on this, what historical lessons can we take from how DX buried The Spirit Squad that would help us predict what they will do here? I think The Shield is a way hotter act, but perhaps the top guys could use the same formula to bring them down a peg. DX beat the Spirit Squad approximately 5347 times between June and November that year. HHH and Taker aren't likely to be working with that frequency, if at all, but that doesn't mean Cena can't beat them on every Raw with a partner or two, or on his own. Not that I believe that necessarily will happen. But I think it will be bad news when someone in creative decides to split Roman Reigns from the group because he has "star potential" (size) and gives him a hoss push while Ambrose and Rollins take the tag belts and defend against Sin Cara and Adrian Neville, then they'll split up and have good matches for the I.C. title that get far less attention than the Cena-Langston title program. Of course, I could be totally wrong but you seemed to want a worst case scenario.

Will HHH get his own "Tell Me A Lie" video?

When I was 8 I bought a tape from the local K-Mart called "Wrestling Spectacular" which advertised a Tully Blanchard vs Brett Hart match. I bought it because I wanted to see a young Bret. I was not amused.

The Thanksgiving weekend shows in '90 and '91 had Hogan while the previous shows didn't. The '92 jump in attendance was probably for Bob's return.

It's easy to blame HHH-Brock's poor reception on the fact that it followed Taker-Punk, but I thought the biggest problem was that they did all the brawling at first and then went into a boring middle section of straight wrestling. And of course Brock getting knocked out messed things up too. If they had delivered a match as good as the Summerslam match, I doubt it would have received "boring" and "go home" chants. I was there live and after Taker-Punk I really wasn't that eager to see Brodus Clay and the Bella Twins, not to mention that with the video packages, there were almost 10 minutes between Taker's exit and HBK's entrance, so there was more than enough time for the crowd to cool down.

I find there to be a certain charm in the conversational tone of Dave's writing. Sure it's annoying on the (rare) occasion that you'll be reading the Observer and see "Crockett's best-drawing show was in Gina Carano did an interview this past week shfiohjgrgesdvd" but overall I'll take his style over Wade Keller's straightforward news reporting.

Anyone else find it annoying how often the back issue of the week is delayed proportionate to how long the new issue is being delayed? I understand that sometimes a new Observer has to be pushed back to Thursday but that doesn't also mean they have to push the 1996 Observer back to Wednesday. And I also think one back issue of the week is too little considering how at that rate it would take 12 years to catch up to where all issues (post-typewriter era) were online.

I'm only doing Mania. How bad is the traffic going to be getting into the event? I live in northeast PA, about 90 minutes from Metlife. Should I budget an hour for sitting in traffic waiting to get into the parking lot? I've never been to a stadium, I don't know. And then the standing in line to get into the building. How long is THAT gonna be?

Has anyone ever noticed that some time around 2001, Finkel in his ring introductions stopped saying "and his opponent" for the second guy in the match? Like, if Rock came out second, instead of "and his opponent, from Miami, Florida," he would just say "from Miami, Florida." Which seems like a minor thing to notice but I figure for someone who had been doing things a certain way for so long to suddenly change, he must have been told to do so, as though Vince had decided that the word "opponent" was too old-school rasslin'.