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On Austin's podcast, Austin brought up the Bruiser Brody murder and Flair jumped in that he was there the night it happened. He talked about being at the show and having to go out and wrestle Carlos Colon for an hour right after it happened. Thought it was weird I never heard of him being there that night... Well on Observer Radio today Dave said Flair wasn't in Puerto Rico that night.

I re-watched most of the best AJ matches from the 90s a few years ago and this was the point where it fell off a cliff for me. Just wait until you get to Misawa-Taue next month.

Shawn was actually suppose to lose the title to Sid on this show. At one point he was going to lose it to Bret at WM but they changed that a few weeks earlier to make Bret/Shawn a hair vs. hair ladder match and Sid/Taker the title match at WM (at least according to Bret's book).

You can cut Jericho/Ultimo from BATB 97. I watched it about a year ago and thought it was pretty lousy. Really over the top choreographed. The '95 WAR matches are a lot better.

Today's WOR Bryan: I heard from people planning on smuggling a laptop into WrestleMania to watch the New Japan PPV at the same time. Dave: They're not on at the same time. Fuck.

From today's update:

Bix and I were talking about this the other day, with the amount of matches and the fact that every WrestleMania since 24 (except 26 but that had two 3 minute matches) has had a 1 minute match, what will be the 1 minute match this year? 24: Kane vs Chavo (11 seconds) 25: Rey vs JBL (21 seconds) 27: Corre 8-man tag (1 minute 34 seconds) 28: Bryan vs. Sheamus (18 seconds) I think the safe bet would be Henry vs. Ryback. I'd say the dark horse would be Del Rio beating Swagger in a minute because they think it'll help him and to punish Swagger.

In my opinion, Rey was officially done back in the summer of 2011 where he got shelved for a year. When he came back, he was still over and could seemingly still work but he's been getting nicked up far too often to believe he's ever going to get another significant run in the company. I would guess he'll be back but it's starting to become sad. His knees are totally shot and I'd almost rather him not even try and come back. He'd probably fuck his knees up again in two months. When he came back last summer I thought it was the first time where you could really see he wasn't the same.

We say it every time this happens but how much longer can Rey possibly go?

I think the best option would be HHH & Undertaker w/ Shawn vs. Punk & Lesnar w/ Heyman. It gives Undertaker an easy match. Lesnar doesn't have to get pinned. Plus no one believes Punk has a chance against Undertaker in a singles and it continues the HHH/Shawn/Undertaker lovefest from last year.

I'm still trying to figure out why a group of people are out of step if they dislike New Japan or even just don't think it's the greatest wrestling they've ever seen. I'm even more interested to know why there's a segment of New Japan fans that take it so personally if someone doesn't like it as much as they do. When the Observer awards were posted on the F4W board it only took a couple of replies before someone was wondering what this board and DVDVR would say about the results. Same thing happened immediately following the 1/4 show when they all thought it was the best show they'd ever seen. Rovert came on here to say hey me and my friends liked this show so if you guy's don't agree you are out of touch. If you and your friends like it, you have a community to discuss it in and all agree it's the best wrestling that ever existed or whatever, who gives a shit if another board doesn't feel the same way?

Ah yes, that. Then what about Sheamus... vs a heel Orton? A match that has been done to death. Another question is does Ziggler win the World title before WM and what match will be for that belt. In the ring it doesn't look like a strong show yet.

You're forgetting Lesnar vs. HHH which will be the #2 match on the show.

It may have made more money, but where would it leave the company if Brock was put over Cena, Punk, Orton and Sheamus this year before losing to The Rock or The Undertaker or Steve Austin at WrestleMania 29 and then likely bailing? I think having Lesnar lose now to Cena, giving them plenty of time to rehab him before WrestleMania 29, is probably the best compromise. Of course, feel free to kick me in the balls if Hunter beats Brock at SummerSlam! Yeah, I understand the outrage of Lesnar losing his first match but in reality the idea of him beating Cena, Orton and Punk to then lose to Rock at WM29, and then the next day both him and Rock are gone, would be significantly worse. I've yet to see Dave or Bryan bring that up. If this years WM did 1.3 million buys with that completely botched build of Rock/Cena, they have plenty of time to rehab a Brock/Rock match. But the HHH thing is really scary because with Cena, Punk and Orton you have guys that will work stiff with Lesnar and go above and beyond to put him over, where as with HHH I just can't see him working that style with Brock (look how easy Brock was working with him on Monday) and the HHH cartoon brawl special with the sledgehammer bullshit will absolutely kill Brock's aura.

It's a cover by Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols most famous for being used in the closing credits of Goodfellas.

It's definitely true they change their minds all the time. But there have been too many incidents where Mike Johnson says one thing (and turns out right) and Dave says something entirely different (and is wrong) resulting in Dave using the "they changed their minds" excuse.

And now Dave has completely changed his tune: "Those in the company believe it's Jericho. Jericho claimed he'd be in Hawaii that day, but he's going to deny it until it's either true and he's there or if it's not true he'd deny it as well. Jericho was always supposed to come back in January until the video game deal happened."

Someone posted Mike Johnson's article saying it was Jericho on the WO board. Alvarez replied: "For whatever it's worth, more and more people who I talk to are saying they believe it's Jericho. My guess is that the way they are designed, if Jericho falls through they can use the same promos for Undertaker and just say that was the plan all along."

Follow-up on the 1/2/12 videos. Mike Johnson said today he's 100% certain (confirmed by his WWE sources) it's for Chris Jericho and it'll be Jericho vs Punk at WrestleMania for the title. One thing he did mention that makes a lot of sense is they are blowing through all of Punk's challengers now (Del Rio, Miz, Ziggler) and are clearly not saving any of them for WM which has to mean someone new is coming in for the WM match. But Dave said today on Observer radio "at last word" the videos are for Undertaker and Bryan agreed. They sure didn't seem confident though. Only one of them will be right but I'm betting against Dave on this one and I'm pretty certain neither he nor Bryan will admit they were wrong. They changed their mind! It was a swerve!

Thought some people would enjoy this. Huge Dave response to the poll criticism.

So Dave said on the message board over the weekend that Chris Jericho & WWE had a major falling out and Jericho would not be coming back. Johnson & Scherer got their digs in at him today because the "It Begins" video last night was for Jericho and they heard the same falling out story over the weekend from "B-level sources" and knew it was bullshit.

I just listened to it and it sounds like he had a meeting with WWE in April about the network launch and at the time the plan was to broadcast the PPVs on a week delay. So it's obviously very possible that idea changed in the past 6 months especially since the huge push for the network just started in the past few months.