kjh

I think the lack of retirement match is mainly due to being a freelancer with no fixed home promotion since he left All Japan in 2005 and not promoting his own indy shows like Kensuke Sasaki. Apparently he pissed off NOAH management by going into business for himself and doing an unscripted promo at the end of his match with Mitsuharu Misawa in their Dome Show main event in the summer of that year, which caused the show to overrun.

There's some truth to this statement, but I work in a maths department and there's often complaints about how undergraduate students today know a lot less coming in than they did say 30 years ago.

WWE told Dave Meltzer that Punk is still under contract to the company.

I think this part is definitely true. There is a bias, especially online (maybe not here) against certain style. And no match ever starts with each guy having a clean slate to impress. Wrestlers are definitely judged on past work & sometimes to their detriment. Sometimes guys get a rep for being a lot better than they are too (Kurt Angle comes to mind) and that also follows them over the years. For example, a guy like Viscera has to go above and beyond to even get people to notice. Every match he's in is basically starting at -1 stars to anyone that rates matches or cares to do that. Meanwhile, for a long time, it felt like guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit or Rey Mysterio, Jr. started with +3 stars. So they can just do nothing and it would still be rated "eh, 3-stars, nothing special but it didn't suck." Meanwhile Big Vis would go out & bust his ass and it'd be "dud." The bigger wrestlers, that aren't Big Van Vader or Terry Gordy, definitely have to do more to stand out. It wasn't until just recently where people started to give Mark Henry credit. That's actually one of my favorite parts about this forum is that people judge things independently. I mean, you can usually guess if a match will be good or bad based on who is in it but it's not a 100% exact science. Sometimes great wrestlers have a bad night & sometimes bad wrestlers have a good night. I think the posters around here call people out, regardless of their résumé . I think this is a great post. It took years for Dave Meltzer to start giving Henry some praise as a worker, just on the basis of one crappy pay-per-view match against Angle in his crazy, banged up, drug addled phase with the knock on him always being even Angle couldn't carry to him to a good match, forgetting that he had a really good TV match with Rey Mysterio just one week prior to that bout.

Surely if Edge was inducting Lita, he'd be doing Axxess instead of Wrestlecon?

"Sup Terra?" would have been legendary. "Jean Paul! You look jacked! What happened to your accent?" Whose your doctor? I need some of that shit.

Maybe Brock and Sable will go in the same year together?

With WWE pushing themselves more as live sport's programming, then getting rid of commercial breaks during matches would make sense, because I can't think of any other sport doing similar (or a drama going to a break mid-scene), which is likely why it drives people crazy.

Doing the job doesn't necessarily equal putting the wrestler over. The Cena feud was all about getting Triple H over as a hotter babyface for his DX reunion with Shawn Michaels. Even with Batista, he got drafted over to secondary brand Smackdown when Hunter had finished with him.

I think a lot of them were. Jericho's matches from the period are pretty shockingly sloppy and messy when re-watched. I think a lot of us were blinded because we loved Jericho's character and athleticism, but if he wasn't in there with someone like Eddie or Benoit to lead the match, it was basically a mediocre spot-fest. He was good at working a cruiserweight match, but if Jericho's goal was to be a main eventer (and it was!), he had improving to do before he got there. I wouldn't disagree with this, but his work wasn't so bad that he deserved to be jobbing out to the dross of the WWE mid-card, given that on day one he showed he had breakout star potential.

Sure, they're working the smarts, which is all fine and dandy, until they lose control of the work and then have to reel it back in the next day.

Cool show, as always Will. One point I would add about the Curtain Call is that an added benefit to Triple H was that it allowed him to prove to Vince that he was the ultimate team player. He took all the shit and didn't complain about it whatsoever. You could make the argument that he wouldn't have been so trusted in later years if he hadn't done that. Dylan loses marks for not sarcastically mentioning Chris Benoit as a person Triple H carried though.

Matt Hardy's Wife NOT DUMPING HUSBAND After Violent Hotel Incident

TMZ with the CM Punk scoop: I think I called that.

I always Jim Cornette was a fool when he put over Matt Hardy as a former WWE star ROH had to use.

I wonder if being pencilled in to work with Hunter at WrestleMania played a factor in this too. He knows how that goes.

Hunter was allowed to attend creative meetings before he even started dating Stephanie.

To be fair to Batista, there was quick evidence that he was catching fire when they started teasing his babyface turn. New Year's Revolution (2005) drew a great buy rate for the Elimination Chamber match before they even properly broke Evolution up. Of course, that was a different era where it was easier to get numbers moving.

No-one will get the chance to become a bigger draw than John Cena until someone new is given the chance to. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Also, by all metrics Randy Orton is worse or no better than Bryan. Yet there's no evidence of WWE torpedoing his push.

Problem is if you book Bryan in the World title match at WrestleMania he has to win or the crowd will completely shit on it too. And I can't see WWE booking that finish. I think shoehorning Bryan into a Triple Threat match with Batista and Randy Orton is the most likely change they'll make.

I agree with John that WWE in the summer and fall of 1999 were throwing a lot of shit at the wall to get Triple H over as a main event heel, because he just wasn't clicking at the level they wanted. That's why they reformed DX in late October before he married Steph. They didn't stick with him because he was a success, but because they had no better alternatives. Well, there was Chris Jericho, but he still had the taint of WCW on him, was several inches shorter and tens of pounds less muscle, and was being sabotaged at every step by Hunter and pals.

I agree that if it was a surprise the finish would have gotten over better, but without Batista they had only one major star announced for the match (CM Punk), which goes back to the dearth of new singles headliners they've made in recent years. Also, that's booking for the pop rather than drawing money. I think the bigger mistake was having Batista's first appearance back be on Raw last week than in the Rumble itself, as once people had seen him the curiosity factor was gone.

I can understand WWE's position (they've invested seven figures into Batista's return and on the first night he drew a big rating, so under normal circumstances you don't change course, especially when it would mess up your WrestleMania plans), but clearly they scored a major own goal last night.

I sort of knew when that 3.5 rating came in that WWE weren't going to change course.