kjh

The future of the business is the company that's paying my bills at the moment.

Wasn't Jericho able to have decent matches with a wide variety of guys during his WCW TV title run? I'm sure ring rust and not knowing how to work WWE style played a part in his difficulties early on, but that doesn't completely explain why he had such a lame match with Sean Waltman on PPV, a guy he had much better matches with in WCW. I think Jericho's difficulties had a lot to do with Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara leaving when they did. They were key supporters of his, even scripting Jericho to beat The Rock on the last Raw they wrote for the company, which was nixed when they handed in their notice. When they left, Jericho had a lot less people to bat for him.

It's slightly ironic Vince telling someone that they have a rep as someone very difficult to work with.

Todd Martin complains about Vince McMahon promoting WrestleMania as a bigger deal than the Super Bowl: I mean what do you expect him to say, actually there'll be a half dozen bigger UFC PPVs this year and we're not even in the same stratosphere as the Super Bowl? A promoter's got to promote and within the universe he's trying to create that's got to be the image he portrays.

I think Mero did as well as could be expected in '98, given that he was never the same after rushing back from reconstructive knee surgery. The top guys (Austin, Foley, Hunter) had no respect for him and didn't want to work with him, so getting his wife over to be more popular than Foley or Hunter was the best thing for his career at the time.

WWE doesn't really work like that though. It may seem like Shawn and Undertaker did that, but by and large they both just kept getting injured. They were under long term full time, albeit with a reduced schedule, contracts. Big Show and Jericho both worked full time for several years after coming back from their lengthy sabbaticals. The only guys who got those type of deals were Roddy Piper in the mid 1990s and Hulk Hogan last decade, and well Edge isn't at their level, yet alone at Shawn and Undertaker's level.

WWE gets under Dave's skin:

I thought he was talking about Boesch.

Edge is pretty banged up, like most of WWE's headliners. He's been working on a surgically repaired neck for seven years. Not to mention his other major injuries like his torn pec and torn Achilles tendon. If he wants to get out of the business in one piece, then he needs to be thinking retirement soon. I'm not sure Edge is a big enough star that he would get the Shawn schedule, even if he does have his eyes on that.

At the time, Mero really wasn't all that hated by the sheet readers. In the PWTorch rankings for 1994 jdw posted a while back, he was ranked 83rd, comfortably inside the top 20 workers from the big two American companies. Mero worked hard to improve over the next couple of years and the sheet readers recognised that. Even when he was really green when he first entered WCW he got praise for portraying his gimmick well. Really the Mero hate was largely confined to people within the WWF jealous of his guaranteed contract and later the popularity of his wife, then retro hate for daring to speak out post Benoit.

No real evidence, but it would be highly surprising, especially as he's an obvious guy to be inducted in the Hall Of Fame this year, if he's too banged up to wrestle. Also, if you'd wanted to fuck with TNA, you'd attempt to sign the biggest star of the bunch. I'm surprised that Dave has said there has been "no contact" whatsoever, as common sense suggests otherwise:

It's funny how two of the guys they were pushing ended up working for WCW in less than six months.

Even better was Dave complaining about when he gives Strikeforce storyline ideas, they turn around to him and say you want to turn us into pro wrestling.

I don't think Mooneyham was lying, just that his source isn't the most reliable. I also think Flair expects more than superstar treatment. I mean does TNA pay for anybody else's wife to go on foreign tours with them? I know people will bring up Jarrett's name, but he is a part owner, not merely a wrestler.

I agree with Cox, but will add that Flair paid $10,000 of his own money to bring his current wife on tour with him, which makes him look even more financially irresponsible.

It fits Dave's meme that the NFL scheduler is a booking genius after reading this article.

I had to point out to my friend on facebook that posted that video that Kendo Nagasaki used hypnotism in pro wrestling long before these American indy guys did.

Corrected so that we can include Ric among the addicts and ne'er-do-wells that TNA harbors. No need to correct, after all alcohol is technically a drug and if not, Ric is covered by the catch all "ne'er-do-wells of every sort imaginable". Moreover, I guess the people most upset at Ric's behaviour weren't the people with worse problems than he has.

I thought it was implied given that Dave's post seemed to be in response to "He's been at it all day, pure DVDVRing up the place crying about MMA" as his post immediately followed that post and Dave talked about them not him. Guess I was mistaken.

I'm amused at Dave saying: when someone likened a poster complaining about too much MMA on a radio show to "pure DVDVRing up the place".

I would have loved this just to hear Bryan and Dave's reaction, after they complained that WWE may f*ck with the integrity of the Royal Rumble gimmick by having some jobber win it and then get screwed out of the title shot in their Rumble preview.

Really Vince would have done TNA a favour, if he has indeed done that.

Amusing feedback to the first of three DGUSA iPPVs this weekend:

I guess it has something to do with satellite TV exposure on The Wrestling Channel? I must be ahead of the European curve as my interest peaked in 2005/2006.

More insane was Dave thinking that Evans vs. Jackson was the best built up feud of the Observer years, outside of something like Ali vs. Frazier/Foreman. "It was like I'd never seen pro wrestling before it was so good". I did like knocking Steen vs. Generico for being an indy feud, while putting over the Evans vs. Jackson conference call as something magical.