cm funk

Sting-Flair from the Clash is a chore to watch. So many repeated spots. They had enough stuff for 15 minutes and had to kill 45 minutes with it.

I'm not surprised that the overall numbers are down, because there is seriously nothing good on RAW right now except Punk. I really don't like the way they structured the roster w/ the draft. Rey belongs on SD, Miz has been depushed and would have been way better off going to SD, Del Rio is in a holding pattern, R-Truth gets hot with the new character and they still have Cena dispatch of him with ease, they've repeated a beyond tired Kofi-Dolph program, Zack Ryder a fresh face who's over with the tastemaking fans can barely even get on the show, the GM angle is so beyond played out, Nexus has become a complete joke.......and worst of all it feels like every week you're watching the same show Re: Cabana coming in, Alvarez sort of implied that a little while back as something of a dealbreaker for Punk. If Punk seriously comes back with Cabana, Hero and Claudio in tow it's going to be so surreal

Hayes had been head writer on SD for yrs, and I have generally been a fan of the show. Considering they have to reboot every year when raw poaches their talent, but at the same time, they probably get more freedom being the b show...

I was a huge fan of the first Cena v Punk match on RAW this year, best Cena match in a long time, and I love this story that somehow Punk always manages to beat him Still a little pissed they gave away their first match on a 3 hr raw for no reason a few yrs ago

Yeah, my family got basic cable in the 87-88 range and I'm almost positive we didnt get TBS on basic until 92. The north east is a bit weird that way in some areas, still tons of cable providers up here that dont carry WGN at all, when Superstars was on I couldnt have seen it without switching to directv or dish or whatever

Speaking for myself, I grew up in the heart of WWF country in New England and never had access to the NWA as a kid, be it TV or live events. In the early 90's I started getting to see WCW on TV, and found a video store with all the Starrcades and Turner Home Video releases so I got caught up on it that way Part of liking 80's WWF is nostalgia for me, but there's still a lot of good stuff there that I can go back and enjoy now. And there's a lot of crap in the old southern rasslin too.

Guess I'm getting SummerSlam and Survivor Series confused, I just knew the plan was for Vader to beat Shawn for the belt that year and Shawn talked Vince into giving Sid the spot WWF at some point did a reversal on their house show booking though, and it didn't start with Vader and Shawn. It went from first match on TV/PPV->house shows in the 80's to at some point the opposite. I know for example they did Luger and Yoko all summer with DQ finishes leading up to SummerSlam 93.

I think he already needed surgery when he worked the Dome Show and had a great match with Inoki. Vader debuted later in the month at the Royal Rumble, then worked the following RAW, and was off the road for a few. So, I guess the timeline is right, unless he got surgery between the Dome Show and the Rumble. The other HUGE problem Vader has about 96 is that they ran Michaels vs Vader on house shows all around the loop before Summerslam 96 with Vader losing cleanly. So by the time the PPV hit the majority of the fanbase who would have ordered the PPV had already seen the match and a definitive result. The Vader shoot is pretty good. Believe the reason for this is Vader was meant to get the title at the time those shows were booked, and Shawn talked his way out of it. It was a given he wouldnt have jobbed in a bunch of return matches, so they tried to get money our of it on the house show loop first

SD6 was another example of the degrees of heeldom thing I'm blanking on any specific examples but I know Heyman would do this in ECW too I think heel v. heel dynamics work great as long as you have good performers and a reason for it. I've always loved matches where both guys are trying to cheat and take shortcuts.....it happens in real life and other forms of media as noted, so why not in wrestling?

Hogan/Warrior II would have robbed us of Savage/Warrior, so that would have sucked. I'm assuming the Savage/Liz/Sherri angle and the wedding angle had been planned well in advance too. It never would have worked as well without Warrior. Who could they have even put in that spot?

I pretty much quit TNA cold turkey last year and had been sporadic in 08-09, but stuff I checked out and liked due to word of mouth AMW-MCMG best of 5 series Flair-Jay Lethal program Flair-Foley hardcore match a 4 way tag team match that was memorable due to it being Booker's last appearance and Scott Steiner having an awesome performance Bully Ray v. D-Von matches Joe-Daniels-AJ 3-way rematch Angles matches with Kennedy and Jarrett have been pimped fairly heavily, but I just can't bring myself to care about anything Angle does anymore

Different strokes for different folks on Monsoon. He was a marketed character like everything else in the WWF, and the presentation wouldn't have worked as well with a straight commentator like a Solie or Russell. Monsoon as the host and voice and character and comedy straight man was more important than the technical details of his commentary. I always thought the stuff some people complain about with him were part of his charm. He was like the grandfather who's gotten a little goofy. Plus he did a lot to get the characters and stories over, whether selling someone like Mike Rotundo or Bret Hart as a great technician, or Dino Bravo as a dangerous strongman, he was really good at that stuff. Pointing out little things in matches that the average person wouldn't even notice is just nitpicking. I didn't start watching NWA/WCW until 92-93, so Schiavone was always the voice of that company to me. I think I liked him up until some point in 98-99 when he very noticeably stopped caring and it was hard to rise above the crap that the product was becoming. I always loved Dusty and Larry Z when they'd do the 3 man booth. The main thing I expect out of a color man is that they be entertaining, and those two entertained the hell out of me. Heenan in WCW could be hit or miss on the same show. Sometimes he'd get really into a random undercard match and do a great job with it, other times he'd kind of mail it in, and you could tell when he thought what he was seeing really stunk. He always entertained me too though.

Is there any footage of Ladd from the 60's? I've heard it said that he was incredibly agile for his size (hence the Big Cat nickname) and a really good worker in his prime, but everything I've seen of him is mid-70's on where you could tell he was starting to lose a step. Still pretty good for a guy his size though.

Well, this just about sums up Vince Russo

2 things on Savage never working with Vince again - I had heard years ago he was really upset about the Confidential piece they did after Liz died - Lanny Poffo had intimated in an interview a year or two ago that Savage going into the HOF would have to be a package deal with Angelo

Fair enough. We all know Dave has little to do with quality control of what does and doesn't go up on that website though. Maybe he should get more involved, but he's an old man with a family, doesn't he have enough on his plate already? Nothing is perfect. I place the blame squarely on Alvarez & co. for that type of shit, and I know better than to read any "articles" posted there anyway I'm sorry for ranting btw, I don't like to get combative over stupid shit like this, but I did not appreciate the dismissive, holier than thou tone of John's post. I understand he's been around the webs a lot longer than I have, respect, no ill will meant and hopefully none taken

John, aside from my making the stupid mistake of pointing to Pats/Colts, something I really should have known, isn't everything else I said true and at the root of what Dave is trying to say? Thanks for being super snarky about it after I already noted my stupidity on that point too. It was an honest mistake. I'm sorry I don't read and study every word of every inane argument you guys have to know what has and hasn't been shot down previously. Usually when I see stupid arguments and pissing fights on these boards I just skip past it all because it never makes for interesting reading, and here I find myself getting into one against my better judgment. I "get it," because it's a simple concept that had eluded me. I'm not going to go do whatever stupid puro shit I don't care about and shift the topic on you. Guess I'm the exception to your well traveled rules of A and B outcomes to this argument. The point isn't NFL = pro-wrestling, that's the oversimplification you guys choose to label it by. The point is SPORTS ARE ENTERTAINMENT. Pro-wrestling is FAKE SPORT MEANT TO ENTERTAIN. Therefore any comparison to REAL SPORT is not outlandish, especially not the way pro-sports have evolved in this country where the emphasis is on the show as much as the game. Is it really such a hard concept to understand? It's a little clumsy, and maybe Dave doesn't verbalize it very well, but the gist of his meaning is pretty clear. Nothing Dave says of this nature is any more ridiculous than you guys mocking this talking point to the extreme degrees you guys do, ad nauseum, and it's really about the only thing here and at DVDVR that really bugs me because it's so fucking stupid and you guys just never give it up. /rant

No, this is where Dave gets confused and we try to correct him. The Pats and Colts play every year because you play the other division teams that finished in the same spot as your team. The Pats and Colts get first every year, except for one where they both got second. You're right. I'm ashamed for not knowing that. Some NFL Entertainment fan I am

The NFL is booked in a sense. Not in the "it's fixed" sense but in the presentation, which is what Dave tries to get it in an obtuse way. The schedule is built to maximize exposure of the best teams in primetime games and to give national games on Sunday the best matchups. They introduced flex scheduling to put the games with the most heat on tv. And why do you think the Pats and Colts play every single year? Rivalries, matchups, ratings, heat....it's all coaxed along by the NFL. I just find it funny that the discussion here basically made all those points, which is all Dave is really trying to get at but maybe doesn't articulate in the best way or bogs it down with wrestling analogies

You might want to go back to see what those two pages were in response to. John A stupid article by some guy and then the ever tedious "Dave thinks everything is wrestling/sports entertainment, even the NFL" talking point leading to a long discussion of exactly that. What did I miss?

It's hilarious that a complaint about Dave comparing sports to wrestling turns into 2 pages of dissecting the NFL as sports entertainment You guys realize how ridiculous this is, right?

He meant it in the sense of Brody being a radical iconoclast. The original meaning of the word, not the Boris Zhukov/Nikolai Volkoff tag team

I do not think this is a rib. And in the end not bizarre. It is pretty standard WWF 80s formula. A good chunk of 80s uppercard WWF stuff is indistinguishable matches where WWF formula heels fly around, get pantsed and stooge for WWF faces. It's also pretty typical of Funk in the WWF, and later in his career. He loved playing the clown.

I guess he'd count now (did he actually work a billed match when he hosted RAW), but the question was posed in 2003 Thanks. I can find info on him doing some worked fights with Inoki in the 70's when Inoki was the "WWF World Martial Arts Champion" but nothing about him working a card under the WWF banner. I guess that counts but Dave was really stretching on that one

Somebody guessed Iron Sheik but he was never actually an Olympian Bad News was a judo bronze medalist in the '76 olympics Somebody guessed Patera but he didn't medal Dave would pull trick questions on a lot of his trivia, but he clearly said "olympic gold medalist" so somebody winning a gold medal in the world championships or pan-american games or something like that wouldn't count, and there would be multiple winners in that case, and he also clearly said wrestled in the wwf, because somebody guessed Ali I don't know, I'm stumped. At this point I'm thinking it's somebody who got an honorary special olympics medal