Loss

I don't think they would have had Cena win the match unless they had plans on turning him heel. I also think that this will in the end somehow result in Michael Cole, the real mystery GM, managing a heel John Cena, which will be out of this world if they ever do a Cena/Danielson program, or even a one-time angle on Raw.

Not arguing with your overall point, but yes. Vince threatened him and HHH with firing (or just canceling the match, don't remember which) if they had any physical altercations in the build to No Way Out. They did a few drawn out segments where Austin pondered whether to attack HHH and ultimately didn't because he didn't want to miss out on the PPV match. But HHH feuds are exceptions to a lot of rules on how babyfaces and heels are typically booked.

There weren't really any managers around anymore by that time, which could probably be traced back a few years to the WWF and WCW starting to pull managers from house shows as a cost-cutting measure. If managers with a successful track record of drawing money had trouble working a full schedule, it would be even harder for new managers to break in I guess. There definitely weren't many options on the existing roster. I'm not a fan of Jim Mitchell.

Going back to a point Strummer made earlier in the thread, I think WCW genuinely wanted to get Meng over, especially since the bookers were huge fans of the story where he bit off the guy's nose. They tried to push him hard several times, but he never clicked as well as he did when teamed with Barbarian, and even that was never over huge. Meng was a perfectly acceptable wrestler, but I think never giving him a good manager hurt him, as I like Robert Fuller, but not in that role. Also, I don't know that this hurt him that much, but I really hated the Tongan Death Grip, mainly because of the way Meng applied it, and because usually, holds like that as finishers require an announcer to sell the nuance and explain how it's applied, which WCW announcers weren't really doing. WCW's JTTS heavyweights like Meng, Scott Norton and Jerry Flynn always felt like channel changers to me at the time. All of them should have had managers, and they probably should have done squashes on syndie TV and the weekend shows on TBS so that their Nitro matches seemed a little more interesting.

This is very, very true. Part of this is wrestling's shift away from emphasizing feuds between two people who don't like each other, one of which usually holds a championship belt. Wrestling seems like the easiest thing in the world to do right (in terms of booking), but I think there's a sense of self-importance and job justification with writers that leads to them needlessly complicating things so they can be "creative" or "innovative". I'm not talking about bigger concepts. There still needs to be some united vision between the booking and wrestling of a promotion that knows its identity and presents a style that fits that vision and that people connect with, which is more the job of the promoter. I'm just talking about the granular details of booking, which tend to get bogged down in overthought and people trying too hard to be clever.

Cena has got to be the most hands-off top star they've ever had, in the sense that I've never heard of him shooting anything -- at all -- down, when honestly, his appeal has dwindled so much over the last year and a half or so that he should probably start protecting himself a little bit more, mainly so they'll stop scripting those cutesy promos that are just killing him.

I'd much rather see a return of Booking with Bowdren.

I don't mind the Hogan/Savage match. I like it a lot, actually. Savage was pretty great in his performance in that match. Hogan .... yeah, not so much. Still, I do get the criticisms of the booking and the finish and I see how that took the match down a peg, and also working in the terrible Trump Plaza didn't help, but I thought Savage gave an inspired performance. I'm curious which Hogan/Savage match most people consider their best. Would it be a house show match from the '89 run or something earlier, in '85 or '86, when Savage was one of a long line of heels working Hogan at house shows? I should make it a point to see whatever match people consider their best.

While we're on the subject of Muta, I'm always shocked when I talk to casual fans who I wouldn't expect to know him that they know him. I remember watching Nitro in 2000 with a bunch of people that were pretty far removed from hardcore fandom that popped huge when Muta showed up, saying things like that they hadn't seen him in forever. I understand hardcore fans knowing him, but I guess his run in the U.S. was pretty memorable. I realize he did occasional shows in the decade after, but there's no way that's why he's so remembered. Poor NWA in '89, genuinely creating new stars and fresh feuds, and going in a new direction that on paper should have worked to turn business around, but just didn't. I really need to finish out those last few '88 WONs so we can get into '89 and recap not only this time period of the early days of WCW, but also Dave being blown away at the WWF's build of Hogan/Savage at Wrestlemania, which for years I believe he considered the greatest angle of all time because it was so slow and disciplined and drew so much money. Changing the subject slightly, I don't want to get too much into this now, but Dave does think Savage losing at WM was a really bad move, because Hogan chasing Savage still had legs and Savage was in the middle of a red hot run on house shows. Dave said in a WON that the best possible finish that they would never do at WM would be Elizabeth spraying Hogan in the eyes and turning on him, leading to a Savage win. Can you imagine the heat for THAT?

Is this REALLY missing from DVDVR's entrance music tournament? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIhHQ8Jt7ZI

Undertaker will likely keep going until he stops making seven figures a year, or until Vince decides to end his run. I can't see either happening soon.

Well, that was fun. Closed.

What are your thoughts on Taz? Do his tanning booth activities make it more difficult to enjoy his matches?

"Phoniest" is a measurement concept from people within wrestling that seem to be marks for themselves. It's all equally fake, how can some of it be more phony than other stuff? I wasn't aware German suplexes and missile dropkicks were realistic, or that people apply sharpshooters in bar fights. You don't judge wrestling on how "phony" it is, you judge wrestling on the environment it creates and whether or not everything makes sense within that universe. Memphis, for example, existed in a different universe than All Japan. Jingus, I have no problem with anyone saying a particular style isn't their thing, but when the reasons provided for it not being their thing don't hold up, then of course people are going to say something. The whole idea of wrestling that I don't think is unique to any one style or territory is that the more people can (even temporarily) suspend their disbelief, the more they will pop, and the more heat there will be. Considering how much crowd heat most matches at the Mid South Coliseum had, I'd say they were exactly as plausible (I like that word better than "realistic" in discussions like this) as they needed to be.

If your point is that the secret to a healthy relationship is compromise, and sometimes that means the woman giving into what the man wants, and sometimes it doesn't, that isn't really a controversial argument. It's just an odd way to formulate your opinion -- to give credence to Russo's original argument in a way that it doesn't deserve. Russo's argument was not "sometimes yes, sometimes no", for the record.

This. Wow:

Looks like the DSCC is already on the attack.

I love that it's come out now that WWE spent a nice chunk of change on lobbyists, with the goal of killing legislation that would have made it illegal to market sex and violence to children. http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docI...ws-000003745379

Which is funny because ECW was heavily influenced by Memphis.

DDP was able to do a lot at his age by not flat back bumping too. Then he went to WWE and Undertaker didn't like it, and he started having back problems almost immediately.

Pro wrestling is a dying business. This has already started happening in some ways. Thinking about who is eligible next year, now that Rey is in, even if I had a HOF ballot, I'd vote for Jerry Jarrett, but that would be it. There's not really anyone else I can think of. So I'm guessing in order to keep the concept from fading completely out, it will eventually be expanded to include MMA, because John Cena is the only active guy I can think of that even has a case. If Edge gets in next year, that's an all new low, as he makes Angle look like a brilliant candidate.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever asked Wade about the Jericho stuff? And if so, what was his response?

The Crush angle I always thought was really well done, where he got sidelined in a surprisingly good match with Yokozuna and Savage came to the rescue too little too late. The heel turn with Savage trying to talk him out of going with Fuji at the end of Raw later that year was tremendous.

This. Rock's answers to those questions say absolutely nothing about him as a person or performer or anything else. That doesn't necessarily mean that assumptions people make from watching the interview are false.

It would certainly make the voting more interesting. Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels and Undertaker would be eligible for the first time this year. Eddy Guerrero and Kurt Angle would be discussed three years from now, and Benoit and Kenta Kobashi two years from now. Jericho wouldn't even be on the ballot until 2015. Liger would have showed up on the ballot for the first time last year. Jim Cornette would have been on the ballot in 2007 for the first time. Interesting.