Bix

Didn't Johnson report that it was always going to be Sheamus?

Big Show is a huge powerful giant with giant hands (established many times in the past as being able to VanDaminator dudes with a punch) who gets the right range and timing to blast dudes with a knockout punch to the face. Works for me, and I was surprised he didn't use it as a signature spot sooner.

Actually I might be wrong about that. There are some places where steroid abuse is exclusively linked with primary but Bryan's telling me it can cause secondary as well and googling around it looks like that's the case. I can't remember when I was first told this but believe Keith Kizer is under a similar impression.

It was the Highspots suit, but Conbraco had a claim on the belt itself that superseded Highspots'.

John, it's not that the NSAC said so. His FSH levels being normal means it's secondary hypogonadism (as in testosterone levels are low secondary to a problem that's not in the testes), which cannot be caused by steroid abuse. Steroid abuse causes primary hypgonadism, which is where the testes fail and FSH levels are high because the pituitary is trying to tell them to produce more testosterone. It's surprising but there's no other way to interpret the test results, which makes his doctor look even worse because he originally misdiagnosed Chael as having primary hypgonadism.

I'll be damned. He really does have a legit need for TRT that wasn't caused by steroid abuse. That was definitely a surprise.

WWE paying off the debt (actually, it's two debts due to the plumbing and heating valve company's claim) makes a lot of sense. It came out of nowhere when it looked like he'd really have to go to jail. As for the rest...wow.

Well, if they were gonna do the Big Show turn, I'm glad that it seems like the idea is Laurinaitis promised to give him his job back while being throttled as opposed to it being a SECRET PLAN. Also, for once, they didn't change an obvious angle. PLANS DID NOT CHANGE.

It's a long Punk singles match, if if you can't learn to block out the long headlock conversations you won't have a good time. And yes that match was awesome.

The injury (watch Rude's landing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EbWHo2is9I The one thing that always struck me about this match and something that Meltzer kept asking in the WONs at the time: Who the hell was Lady Love and why did he have a Japan-only valet? Also, did I miss the posts or are the Rude-Hase title switches not on the yearbook?

I'm glad Dave addressed the Dana thing on the the podcast, because it made his reaction a lot more clear. To me, the forum post read like "He may have mocked me, but at least he called first!" while on the podcast, it was more "He called me first to warn me, which was really weird."

Strikeforce on CBS won in the key demos, too. Todd Martin (who I've been finding myself agreeing with a lot lately, oddly enough) made a very astute observation about Dana's rant in the thread about this on THE BOARD: Dana likely comes off worse if you don't know who Dave is (and that he has a very successful small business with the WON and will do fine without Yahoo), Dana likely comes off even WORSE. A $100 millionaire mocking a reporter for getting laid off will always come off badly, but most people watching probably think Dave is some middle class guy who Dana is toying with. Even with Fuel's viewership being what it is Dana is probably lucky he didn't get to do this on TV as planned, because it would've come off even worse.

Gene died in 1991 and CW's debut (under a mask, with no training) was in '93. I don't see Troy Graham as really being post-modern. He had the name and the Dusty-ish manner of speaking, but he was almost always doing it as a heel without any of the "son of a plumbah" working man stuff either. When he was Troy T. Tyler he was a babyface in total Dusty clone mode.

Whose school is it and where is it located? Up front payment or do thy charge by the class/week/month?

When did Bruno drop his "I don't know about today but when I did it we didn't fix matches" gimmick? When did Bruno have that gimmick? I'm sure he probably has elsewhear plenty over the years but Bruno's been on Observer radio a billion times and never kayfabed in any of the interviews that I can recall For years and years. His ROH/Cornette shoot interview was the first time I remember him opening up.

Kreski replaced Russo as head writer not long after Russo left in early October '99. Stephanie replaced Kreski in September '00, right before the misguided love triangle blowoff. And Too Cool at least were still tepid heels when Russo left.

By the way, it's worth pointing out that a lot of their issues on GFL, especially stuff like the audio sync problems, were likely on ROH's end and not GFL's. ROH was not producing the shows using GFL's Tricaster (a specialized Windows PC that's basically a mobile production unit in a box for Internet video streams), they were just sending the output of their production equipment into it for the stream. It was just acting as a pass through and likely wouldn't be the source of a lot of their problems. What they really should've done was just use UStream for a show or two until they made sure the new system would have no problems. UStream is a major company, trusted, well-known entity, asks for the same split as GFL, would've handled the orders, etc. Anyway, to reply to sek and go along with what Mad Dog is saying, they've had 3 major shows in a row that were disasters. They have nobody to blame but themselves this time. Their DVD business is dead: As bad as it was getting when it was declining along with the overall DVD market thanks to the economy, the shows at least still had some buzz. Now, only the iPPVs have any buzz, and they're in danger of losing whatever goodwill they had left. There's no way they're not in for a dark period.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, that even a virtual server should be able to handle it. Based on DNS info and a story at the F4W board about a Sinclair station's digital time card server crashing during peak hours, it seems like Sinclair has all of their properties running off one overloaded server

Yeah, I don't see how they can get past this. Their website wasn't able to handle at most (and likely a lot less after the WM weekend mess) about 2,000 people trying to access it. Keep in mind the stream itself worked fine and was being handled independently by a content distribution network.

ROH fucked up the protection on the stream itself so a buyer who did get through was able to leak a direct link. The main event was awful and featured the most hilarious "WE ARE THE NEW ALL JAPAN!" sequence in ROH history: - Davey, desperate over not being able to beat Steen, uses "the DR Driver," a double underhook piledriver. - Kevin Kelly screams "THE DR DRIVER! WE HAVEN'T SEEN THAT MOVE IN YEARS!". Hmm...a desperation double underhook piledriver that hasn't been used in years? I wonder where they got that idea? - Davey followed this up with a series of "Kawada kicks." Also, the tag titles changed hands thanks to an ether-soaked rag in a Jim Cornette promotion almost SEVENTEEN YEARS after ECW made fun of him for using it in SMW. He is now officially a self-parody. Meanwhile, during the match, Nigel on commentary let his concern get the better of him again: They didn't have monitors, and when a Briscoe took a scary bump on the other side of the ring, he said he hoped there was a table there (which there was). He then explained that while going through a table is no picnic, it's better than "falling 15 feet to the concrete floor," forgetting that going through a table is worse in Wrestling Logic.

How is that the same situation? Like you said, Rock had the world's most amicable possible divorce. Cena...won't.

Conversely, I noticed the same thing a few days while watching the 1996 match. Yeah, he was in rough shape, but the main cosmetic differences from 20 years earlier were being scruffy and not having as much as an athletic physique, which was to be expected with age, injuries, and being off steroids for years.

The best part of Gangstas vs Meanie & Austin is a skulleted Cary Silkin looking on in awe from the front row: