Loss

Randy Savage

Shawn Michaels

No, to show up the heels. A comedy spot is usually going to end up with the heel looking inept, outsmarted or outwrestled. Even if the heel is doing the work, he's doing it to put the shine on the babyface.

Great! Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions! I will try to get a comp of the matches you listed ASAP. How long would such a tape run? Would it fit on two hours or would I need four hours?

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Vote for the wrestler that you think had the better career in WWE (whether you base that on impact or match quality is your decision), from 1985 to 2005. Voting will end tomorrow morning at the latest. Please give the wrestler's name first and any explanation thereafter. Thanks.

Shawn Michaels

Mick Foley

Chris Jericho Your tactics will see your demise, HTQ.

Undertaker

Randy Savage

Wolverine, I've been meaning to ask you, what would you consider the essential ARSION to pick up? It's obvious PUNQ is not a fan, but he's the only guy I know of who's gone through all of the stuff, although Chris Coey has covered some of it.

Stooging is begging off, bumping theatrically, cheating and working comedy spots to show up the heels. Ric Flair and Terry Funk are probably the best "stoogers" I've seen, although Flair has a tendency to do it too much and in cases where he probably shouldn't.

Quote from alkeiper about Foley/HBK: Could you clarify what you mean by the word "psychology"? Not to say this is the case with you, but I've seen many people who seem to think that psychology is something that focuses on the unimportant stuff instead of the important stuff. Psychology is simply "why" -- not much else to it besides that. All matches are going to have psychology, it's just that some matches are going to have good psychology and some matches are going to have bad psychology. In short, a match that has good psychology is a match that makes sense. It's something that's often taken in the wrong direction -- some seem to think psychology is nothing more than not forgetting to sell a body part all the way to the finish, or thinking that psychology means nothing more than working a body part to build to a finish. While that's part of it, it's not all of it. If a babyface is in a chinlock and pumps his fist and shakes his body to rally the crowd, that's psychology, because it's emphasizing his role as the babyface fighting from underneath. Good psychology doesn't necessarily involve taking apart a body part to set up a submission hold, although that's one way to get there. Problems start when a wrestler stops selling the hold, switches to the wrong arm, shrugs off all the work put into destroying him when making his comeback, and the work not leading anywhere. That only serves to remind the viewer that wrestling is fake and makes it hard to continue getting into the match. The body part stuff is less about playing into the finish and more about making it clear to the viewer what the wrestler's strategy is -- good psychology will have the viewer having a clear idea from beginning to end of the role of each wrestler and the strategy of each wrestler. I think the term sometimes gets mislabeled as an "overanalyzing smark" thing or whatever, when that has nothing to do with it. All psychology is about is giving a reason why the wrestlers are doing what they are doing. I see the word misused quite often. I also wanted to point out that it puzzles me when I see a wrestler described as "having great psychology". Wrestlers don't "have" great psychology -- matches have psychology. You can say most of their matches have it, but saying the wrestler has it is not accurate. The other word I see misused often is workrate. I find the term to be useless quite honestly. It's never been accurately defined, and it implies that the only way to be a good wrestler is to have lots of moves and wrestle hard and fast, when sometimes, taking one's time and slowing things down is the right path to take. I prefer a Harley Race match over a Sabu match, and Sabu is nowhere near Harley Race as a worker, but based on the way the term is normally used, Sabu would have the higher workrate because he works faster and has more moves. So, when the debate between Hulk Hogan and Chris Benoit was ongoing in the WWF tournament, I noticed that a few people asked if the tournament was about "workrate", which was weird to me. I'm not even entirely sure what workrate is supposed to mean, or how it's supposed to be considered an applicable term. I'd rather look at the number of good-great matches someone has had and talk about the specifics. Anyway, this has all been said far more eloquently many times before, but I wanted to say it here. There's some other stuff I would link that I think has nailed the subject quite nicely, actually, but I can't seem to find it.

Yes and no. The idea is that you have HHH and HBK do squashes and promos afterwards instead of putting them in 15-20 minute matches. You don't do long matches between big names on TV, because you want to make people pay to see those.

The idea is that if you can't see them for free and know the only way you can see them is to pay for them, then you'll be more likely to pay for them. Heat was the biggest waste by the way, especially when it was on MTV. Do you realize how many companies trying to reach an 18-34 year old male demographic would *kill* for an hour a week of primetime exposure on MTV? It was treated as an afterthought by WWE, though.

We did. You're right. People can still vote, but their votes will only count if they are different than what they were the first time around.

I retract the initial statement I made -- WWE still very much exists in a pre-monopoly mindset, and that comment was made in a pre-monopoly mindset. There is a belief that every single wrestler has to be on every single TV show every single week, which is simply not true. If you look at the rosters of companies in the past that have been enormous, they haven't used every single television show to spotlight every single piece of talent they have. Appearances would become more special, from everyone, if they weren't happening every week, and maybe they could switch gears and start running squash matches again with a longer main event. It would make people appreciate the longer matches more, the rest of the roster could get their finishers over in the undercard and they wouldn't burn out the top guys as quickly as they have over the past few years. By proxy, house shows may draw better, because the guys would work harder and they would feature matches you couldn't see every week on TV anyway.

The only problem with the brand extension ending, however, would be that they would simply not have enough TV time to push all of their talent, and guys like Chris Jericho would end up on Velocity.

This may be the beginning of the end of the brand extension as we know it. USA was hesitant to even pick up RAW; I'll be very surprised if they pick up Smackdown too.