Loss

http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/20050412ksmolly.jsp I think now, they're just trying to annoy us.

If they're playing this for total nostalgia, they REALLY need to get the Iron Sheik involved in this whole angle.

My theory is that Hunter has gone out of his way so much to establish his superiority to all of his peers that now he's associated with those same losers. If everyone else in the company looks like a bumbling idiot and an asshole, and that's the environment in which you work, it's going to rub off on you as well. So, in HHH's quest to state his dominance, he's managed to bury himself as much as anyone else.

Not the best RAW. I liked Benoit/Christian quite a bit, and it was about time Christian actually got to win a match, but that was about it. The rest of it is same old, same old, and bringing back Hulk Hogan is not the answer. Yeah, Benoit/Edge and Jericho/Benjamin should keep the show from being a total wash at Backlash, but: (1) We've already seen both of those matches way too many times, especially Benoit/Edge. and (2) The crowd doesn't seem to care about anyone anymore. There was almost no heat for the Jericho/Benjamin confrontation, and turning him heel at this point in time, after he got so over with some recent star-making performances, is akin to burying him. You don't have him come out there and say that he can do things in the ring no one else can; if anything, JR says that, and Benjamin keeps his mouth shut and backs it up. The crowd doesn't even invest in Jericho's feuds anymore, because he doesn't even care if he loses a match, because he never even reacts when he does. So why should the fans invest in his feuds if he himself doesn't give a shit? There are only a few people on RAW right now that I'd consider commodities: (1) Batista (2) Edge (3) Shawn Michaels (4) Chris Benoit (5) Shelton Benjamin (6) Christian I'd probably put them in that order. HHH needs to go home for six months, Jericho has been getting pushed sideways for so many years that he's not even over anymore and the above-mentioned names aren't always pushed in quite the way they should be anyway. Batista is just a trophy champ, and after he feuds with HHH, there's nothing left for him to do, which is I'm sure how Hunter will justify getting the belt back. Edge is doing okay, but he shouldn't have lost a match last week coming off of WM. He needs to be protected at all times since he's literally Batista's only hope after the HHH feud. HBK is the only babyface that's booked consistently on RAW, and the crowd reaction shows. He was not nearly as over in 2003 as he is now, and it's because he's the only face that isn't booked to either be ineffective or be a jerk on a regular basis. Benoit has stayed over because his matches are some of the few that actually feel like real struggles where the winner and the loser matter, so people have a reason to care, but they're so inconsistent on his push (he's a main eventer one week and a midcarder the next) that it's hard to figure out where he's going. Shelton Benjamin should be the guy in reserve right now that they're gearing up for a WM 22 title win, but putting him in feuds with other babyfaces and having him brag about his athletic ability aren't the right steps in that direction. Christian has everything he needs to become a top guy except the company backing him. The show is a mess. Postponing the draft until an undetermined date is the worst decision they possibly could have made.

The bad guys always win in wrestling. It's sad. Not that that's news or anything.

Nothing to say about Benoit/Christian going 20 minutes?

I also wanted to add that the company has a really weird, fucked up sense of morality when getting cheated on results in termination, while making Nazi hand signs and getting the company tons of bad publicity results in a nearly year-long title reign. Bob Holly stiffs Rene Dupree in the middle of a match in front of a live audience and doesn't get punished, while Rhyno breaks a flowerpot in a hotel lobby and gets fired. As far as the getting cheated on, Schemer is reporting that the reason Hardy was fired is that he took the circumstances of the whole Edge/Lita relationship public, and that he is most likely being terminated for addressing the issue on his website.

This, Gail Kim and Rhyno have all been some horrible choices in who to release.

I totally agree. It's always been weird that Vince has to put his own spin on every little thing (why Rhyno and not Rhino, for example), but it's disgusting that he feels he can just wash his hands of a situation where the wrestler needs something to do to keep himself busy and motivated, where he feels like he's at least serving some sort of purpose, even if it's just to entertain.

The right solution would have been to suspend Rhyno for 30 days, make him pay for the damages and then give him some time off, maybe even paying for psychiatric care or strongly suggesting that he do it himself if he wants to keep his job. Releasing him is irresponsible.

Dave also has a perspective that those who are around every day don't always have, because they're too entrenched in the situation to look at it objectively. You know who has always had the rep of being more obsessed with the Observer than anyone? Hulk Hogan.

It's the right kind of booking, regardless. Even the best workers in the company aren't perfect. You wouldn't book Benoit to do 20-minute promos every week. You don't put Eddy Guerrero next to divas that are taller than him. You don't give Rey Misterio a live mic. It's the same thing, really. Why expose someone's weaknesses when the goal should be to make everyone look as good as possible?

Is the Ottawa match the one where the Alliance interfered for the DQ, and Jericho just walked off because Rock told him to stay out of his business? I loved that angle.

This was generally a fun year, idiotic booking aside in WWE, so there's some stuff here I'd love to talk about. Most notable on that list, at least for WWE, would be Rock/Jericho v Benoit/Show from the RAW the night after the Royal Rumble in '01. Really sweet match with everyone doing everything they're supposed to do. I reviewed this a while back, actually. Also in 2001, Austin v Jericho from the Smackdown after Summerslam was terrific, with Jericho doing some nifty submission work on Austin's arm. The downfall is that it was all building to a Walls of Jericho (??), but the upside is that it's a very fun match. Jericho v Taijiri from the RAW after KOTR is fun as well. I also liked the Benoit/Jericho v Angle/Regal match from RAW in spring. All the other good TV stuff has pretty much been covered. WCW did some terrific stuff before folding too. Scott Steiner v Kevin Nash is a total miracle in every sense of the word. I believe the match happened the night after Sin '01. Jake Roberts said it best, when he remarked that if Nash has always been able to work like that, and hasn't been, he should have been fired on the spot. Just WAY better than it had any right to be. The cruiserweight gauntlet on Thunder to earn the title shot at SuperBrawl is very good as well, although the match was hurt by an almost complete lack of heat. Rey and especially Jamie Knoble shine here. They could have conceivably doubled the match time, because even at 20 minutes, it was still too rushed. Steiner/DDP from Greed '01 is DDP trying to recreate the magic of the Goldberg match at Havoc '98 by also stealing spots from Hart/Austin at Wrestlemania XIII, and getting a good match out of Steiner. To Scott's credit, he was motivated at this time, and had some better-than-expected title defenses against Kidman, Rey, Nash ... and HUGH MORRUS. Yes, you read that right. There was also a six-man involving Luger and Buff (Booker T returned here, I don't remember all the participants) that I loved at the time because people who hadn't worked hard in years came to impress that night. Sass, if you're reading, now would be a good time to talk about that Benoit/Show match you love so much.

RVD **so** should have won. Austin was bombing, and RVD was the most over guy in the company. He and Jericho winning the titles in the same night would have signified a new era.

You're going to find examples on both ends. A great match provides that suspense and drama that involves the crowd. When I say "great match", I don't mean "technical exhibition", which is a mistake people seem to make. Savage/Warrior from WM VII >>> Eddy/Rey from WM XXI, for example. Fans are going with the intent of watching wrestling and getting involved in the matches. And I actually consider HBK/Sid an overrated match for that very reason -- the crowd *didn't* buy into Shawn as the babyface at all. Wrestling isn't mechanics, it's making people suspend disbelief, and if that match didn't do that, it's not any good. As for an opposite example, look at how the company tanked when Diesel was champ in '95. Look at how house show business immediately picked up when the belt was put on Bret Hart. Just to clarify my stance, I think Hulk Hogan is a better worker than Dean Malenko.

SG, I accidentally edited your post instead of quoting it. My apologies.

More than the wrong person going over in that HHH/Jericho match was HHH getting his win back from Jericho in the six-man at the end of the evening. The first win looked like a fluke, which is fine, considering where they both were on the totem pole at the time. You take the belt back and put it on HHH so he can drop it to Rock. No problem. Then, you run the main event with HHH & DX against Jericho & the APA, but you have Jericho beat HHH again. That's two wins in one night, and it would have shot Jericho into title contention. When HHH won the belt back from Rock, he really should not have dropped it at King of the Ring. Dropping it to Jericho at Fully Loaded and making the LMS match a title match would have been the right decision. Even involve Angle in the finish if you're wanting to build that feud. It wouldn't have hurt HHH one bit, since he'd be turning face anyway, and it would have helped Jericho and Angle. I guess that's why it didn't happen. 2000 really should have also had Benoit decimate Foley after Foley screwed him over in the title match against the Rock. Mick wanted to do a match at X-7, but he turned down a match with Regal because he wanted it to be a bigger deal. Foley/Benoit would have been a bigger deal, and it's a feud people would have been more likely to get into. The storyline was there. So, in 2000, you could have had Jericho be the one to finally end the Game, maybe even turning him heel afterward when it's revealed that he ran over Steve Austin (and also dropped the cinderblock on his head). HHH and Angle could have conceivably feuded until Wrestlemania, which would be the point when HHH would get his heat back officially and go on a chase for the title, leading to a big Austin/HHH match in 2001, and Rock is the one to beat Jericho before Mania. Jericho sidelines him out of anger so he can go film The Scorpion King, and you have a built in feud when he gets back. 2001 could have seen Rock/HHH/Benoit v Austin/Jericho/Angle, or some combination of that, depending on the face-heel alignments, and everyone involved would have benefitted, and you could have gotten two years of feuds out of that group. Keep 'Taker as a sideshow act feuding with other giants like Kane and Show, and let other guys who are over, like E & C, or the Hardyz, or Rikishi, have occasional runs on top. I also would have had the Royal Rumble in '01 come down to Austin, Rock, Edge and Christian, with Austin winning in the end. Rock beats Jericho for the title the next night on RAW, and Austin and Rock feud with Edge and Christian at No Way Out, and E & C get the win because of miscommunication between Austin and Rock. SO many possibilities there that just weren't explored at all that could have made all the new stars they wanted, and maybe they wouldn't be in this situation now.

People in wrestling have short memories too. That should have forever burned the bridge between Hogan and Vince, but he was welcomed back in 2002. Then, he quit the company when his request to win the title from Brock Lesnar was turned down, and he was brought back again. Then, he quit the company because he didn't like the direction of his character and recently, he was brought back again.

The Road Warriors v Arn Anderson & Tully Blanchard - Starrcade '87 - It's Chicago, it's the Road Warriors being put in a match where everyone expects them to *finally* win the gold, and what happens? A Dusty finish. Nice. They didn't come back to Chicago until 1989 because this was market suicide and even then, they had trouble drawing.

I wanted to clarify a few things in that post: (1) I don't think you're anti-angle. I just know that you don't watch RAW and Smackdown because of what you see as the lack of great wrestling, and most of the time, you're right. My only bone of contention is that around Wrestlemania time, everything starts getting hyped on TV, and if you don't at least have some clue what's going on and aren't eager to see the matches because they've made you think you're about to see something special, then you may be missing out on something important. There's a certain obligation I feel that's part of being a wrestling fan for me, obligation to keep up with what's going on in WWE, even if I'm not completely avid about it. I don't expect anyone else to feel the same way, but there was a time when wrestling fans would watching anything as long as it was wrestling, and those times have changed. I miss the old days. (2) Let me rephrase something I said -- wrestling isn't all about getting lost in the moment. It's just that great wrestling will often cause you to get lost in the moment. When a worker can make that happen for you, he's doing his job. (3) Ideally, I watch a match and either like it or I don't like it. If I don't like it, I can usually figure out why immediately, because I am trying to like every match I watch, but sometimes, something so ridiculous is done that it makes it impossible. Sometimes, if I like it, it's something I can't explain initially, which is fine, but if one of my hobbies is talking about this stuff with other fans, it goes a lot further to be able to explain it than just to say "I liked it." I think this is what Bryan Alvarez was getting at with his column a while back -- there's nothing wrong with analyzing this stuff, but there's nothing wrong with not doing it either. The problem comes when you have people on message boards unwilling to explain themselves in a discussion, and the topic goes nowhere as a result. You don't fit this category. At all. You probably prefer people to elaborate more than anyone, which is great. You're good at doing it too. I think with us, when we see something good, we appreciate it so much that we want to understand it. It's worth talking about and looking at. I don't think you'll argue this point at all. (4) I don't think I've ever told you how I came across the Puroresu I've seen, and what the circumstances behind it were. In 1998, around the time I first got online, I came across John McAdam's site, and he had stuff on tape, mountains of it, that I remembered happening, but hadn't seen since it originally aired. It was stuff I loved too. I had some things I had saved through the years, like some PPVs and Clashes, and even a few TV shows, but he had a wealth of footage. I made a huge order to him and purchased a lot of old NWA footage and other footage from other territories. One of those comps had a Windham/Funk match from Puerto Rico on it I wanted to see, since I was a huge fan of both, which is why I picked it up. I watched the tape, and it also had three other matches of note on it: (a) Akira Maeda v Tatsumi Fujinami - NJPW 06/12/86 ( Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu v Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu - AJPW 01/28/86 ? Lioness Asuka v Jaguar Yokota - AJW 08/22/85 That was one tape. There was another tape I picked up because it had the 40-minute title switch from '87 where Flair dropped the belt to Ron Garvin. It also had these matches on it: (a) Ric Flair v Jumbo Tsuruta - AJPW 06/08/83 (2/3 falls) ( Ric Flair & Rick Martel v Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu - AJPW 10/21/85 ? Hulk Hogan v Antonio Inoki - NJPW 06/02/83 I watched all those matches and loved all those matches. I then started visiting the tape trading message boards. I found a guy getting rid of about 50 comps he had made of 80s footage, mixed in with some other stuff, along with a copy of the 1994 and 1995 Super J-Cup. I hadn't heard anything about these shows, but they had Benoit, Eddy, Liger, Rey, Ultimo and Jericho on them, so they couldn't have been too bad, right? So I picked them up. And those comps had matches from the '92 G-1 Climax, more Jumbo matches, some Liger stuff (who I remembered and loved from WCW), Doc/Kobashi from AJPW (which I knew was the '93 Observer MOTY), and the Thunderqueen match. There was also a high-flying comp (RF master) in there that had Liger/Samurai from 04/92 and Jericho/Ultimo from 07/95 on it, among other stuff. It was all going for $100. I picked it all up. I watched it all. I loved it. That's how I got into it. I then started reading looking for other recommendations and people talked about Misawa/Kawada from 06/94 and stuff like that, and I wanted to seek that out as well. I wouldn't recommend that path, because it put me all over the place, but it did expose me to a nice cross-section of matches that I happened to see because it was additional footage on other tapes I wanted. (5) PWI. Remember that magazine? I know you do. It shaped the way I viewed wrestling, even at a young age. They were very anti-WWF and talked about how Hogan looked winded after 15 minutes while Flair could go 60 believably. They talked about how the WWF was all show while the NWA and AWA had true pro wrestling. That rubbed off on me. I may not have known why what I was watching was good, but I knew the difference between a good match and a bad match even then. I knew why Hogan was Hogan and why Flair was Flair. I knew the difference between Savage and the Ultimate Warrior, between Bret Hart and Diesel, between the Midnight Express and the Road Warriors, because of PWI. They didn't come out and say wrestling was fake, and I bought wrestling as a shoot until I was in my teens because I WANTED to believe, but they pointed out that the WWF had a lot of crap. Who knows how differently I may have seen wrestling without it? (6) It doesn't take a "smark" to know the difference between good wrestling and bad wrestling. Otherwise, HHH would be a huge draw right now. The hardcore fans are the only ones who differentiate any of that stuff. The casual fan just sees the show and considers it good or bad based on if the right people won and nothing happened that made him feel stupid for caring. (7) You're not a lazy sloth. I know you do research -- tons of it. I just think that sometimes, you have to break from the pack and take a chance on a purchase. There are no guarantees you're going to like anything you haven't seen. That's when, if you come across a match no one has ever heard of where Ric Flair and Terry Funk went 90 minutes on a house show in 1989, you'd check it out, wouldn't you? I know I would. I know you would too, because one of the reasons you got the Misawa episode of AJ Classics was because you were curious about that Koshinaka match. (8) The point of the Dustin thing is not to pimp those specific matches, but to clue people in about Dustin's work and tell them to check out all the footage they can from his 1991-1995 run in WCW. Therefore, I don't need them to tell me Dustin v Barry Windham going 20 minutes in 1993 is good. I know it will be anyway. The one time it will come in handy is when it's a match where Dustin is facing someone like Tex Slazenger who isn't regarded as being great. That's consistent with what I said.

Bill Goldberg v Kevin Nash - Starrcade '98 is one of the most obvious answers. Nash wanted to end Goldberg's streak though, and he was booking, so who was going to stop him. Kevin Nash v Diamond Dallas Page - Slamboree '99 is another one. Page was having good matches, drawing heel heat and was the best working world champ they'd had in ages, and nearly everyone else in the company felt they should have let DDP have the ball for a while, but Nash wanted the title and he ended up winning out. War Games - Fall Brawl '97 - The Horsemen parody was fine for what it was, and was actually very entertaining, but the babyfaces should have decimated the heels after that. The booking called for it, but instead, we got Curt Hennig turning on Ric Flair in the Carolinas. WCW always ran these incredibly depressing shows where Flair was just buried to no end when they were in his home area, and it finally killed the market. HHH v Booker T - Wrestlemania XIX - The booking called for Booker to get revenge after that HHH promo, he didn't, and Booker's career died a miserable death that very night.

I wish Orndorff could have been inducted in a year where he'd stand out more. Last year might have been nice. He played a key role in one of the two or three biggest feuds of Hogan's career that drew huge money and that they were able to run around the loop God knows how many times.

Yeah, Luther is just this big motherfucker who has a lot of charisma and is great on the mic, but can't work. Better booking would do a better job hiding that fact, as they'd keep him out of the ring as much as they could. If he can ever improve in the ring, the sky is the limit for him. He was also Thunder-regular Horshu in WCW, one of the worst gimmicks of his time.

I've gotta go home for today, sadly, but I will get to this post in full. Before I go, I just wanted to say that I was arguing an ideology more than I was arguing you in that post, which may be where a lot of the confusion came from. I'll explain more later.