cm funk

Personally, I don't really see the problem with this tournament and tend to agree with Lance Storm's opinions on it. First off, I think it's a really interesting idea to basically have all these veterans of the business giving matches star ratings. It could be a massive failure, but I like the out of the box thinking in trying it. And Lance is right, value is in the eye of the beholder here. If somebody thinks this is worth the expense who's to say it isn't? People pay ridiculous sums of money to get trained, people pay to get tryouts, wrestlers will lose money just to travel to work a show that they might get paid for with a hot dog and a cup of coffee......this is the reality of the wrestling business, the entire business is predicated on being a scam.....Johnny Mantell is no different from any other promoter looking to make a buck, and the wrestlers who are doing this show are no different from any other wrestler who made sacrifices in an attempt to make a name for himself I mean, there's a good chance that some of these guys impress a Harley Race or Bockwinkel or Orton or Funk and it helps them get more bookings and maybe takes them another step closer to their dream of wrestling in the WWE. If all these announced judges are actually there (and that's the thing I'd be the most worried about) that's a lot of people with a lot of connections in the business....in that sense it's sort of an invaluable opportunity

I think the one guy who it could be without that being a plot hole is HHH. He's so established as both a face and a heel that he can be accepted as a shades of gray character. Kind of like Vince where he will play heel or play face depending on the situation and kind of randomly switch back and forth, but because it's Vince it works. The only people that the GM really overtly fucked with that I can remember were Jericho and Edge, which would make sense for HHH. He sort of fucked with Bret Hart, sort of encouraged Nexus but never fully backed them, and a lot of the time will just make sensible decisions for the show that don't have any sort of ulterior motive. I don't really expect it to be HHH, but it's hard to come up with another name that would work. I guess Stephanie works too. Or maybe it could be Hunter and Stephanie, and that would explain the inconsistency! One thing I'm not clear on is is Cole supposed to know who it is? There was somebody who claimed they knew who it was. Was it Jericho? And if it was, was the idea that he actually knew, or was just talking shit?

I was in high school 96-2000, but basically doing the same thing. I'd watch RAW (and often tape it while I was watching it in case something cool happened that I wanted to see again), then either stay up and watch the Nitro replay at 1am or tape it and watch it the next day after school. Or I'd watch Nitro live and tape RAW, then tape the Nitro replay. At some point in time I acquired a second VCR and dubbing cables and condensed many of these tapes down to comps of my favorite matches/interviews etc. I kind of wish I still had those. I had like 2 boxes full of wrestling VHS tapes in my mom's basement that got destroyed by a flood, along with many other irreplaceable things from my teenage years. Sigh. Does anyone know what kind of ratings the Nitro replay did? I'd imagine for 1 to 3 or 4 am they must have been pretty strong.

It's possible. They started pushing him late summertime/early fall I think, which was definitely before the new TE was officially a go, but they might have had the idea kicking around My feeling is when he had that random falls count anywhere match with Sheamus his performance was pretty great, and he got way more over in the match than they expected, and they thought, "hey, we might have something here". After that they really started pushing the idea of him having unorthodox "parkour" offense which could win or lose him a match against anyone I'm not sure how much farther this push is going to go, but every time I expect them to stop it they just keep going, so it wouldn't shock me to see him with a world title this year

I think there's a definite chance of Jeff being back once these charges are behind him and they feel they need a headliner. The company has done a decent job pushing new people in the last year (Sheamus, Barrett/Nexus, Danielson, Miz, Del Rio...even Morrison right now they're showing a real commitment to getting him over as a main event level face), they clearly understand the need to create new stars. But Undertaker, HHH, Kane, Edge, Rey and Big Show are probably nearing the end, Cena and Orton have the potential to break down at some point.....at some point they'll get desperate and look to Jeff. Plus, even with the test failures his performance was top notch in his last run, and has remained pretty consistent in TNA. With him it seems to be more a case of enjoying the recreational drugs a little too much, not a "this guy is killing himself with steroids/pain pills/booze" type of situation like Kurt Angle. Never say never, but I think Matt is gone for good.

This is tough to answer because I'm not exactly sure where popular opinion is at on a lot of guys. Seems like most underrated guys from the 80's-90's get recognition at this point I want to say Sandman, he was generally pretty fucking great and probably underrated Is One Man Gang considered a good worker?

That was an awesome match that I'd totally forgotten about, since they never followed it up with a push for Bourne Pretty surprised there's no Justin Gabriel on there. His match with Cena was one of my favorites. Also surprised at only one Daniel Bryan match, but at least they chose a great one

Same here, sort of. I didn't like him very much in WCW. I always thought he was a big awkward goof and sucked compared to guys like Austin, Regal, Cactus, Pillman and even Johnny B. Badd of the guys that were at that TV/US title level, plus I was more a fan of heels and thought he was too boring and bland. I just thought he was getting a push because he was Dusty's kid. The first time I really became a fan in fact was when Arn Anderson turned on him and Dusty came back to fight the Stud Stable, and that was basically the end of his WCW run. Looking back though, he was a lot better than I gave him credit for. I thought Goldust was awesome from day 1 though. Such a great heel character for that time period. I was so pissed when he came in and beat Bam Bam in his debut match, lol, and I just couldn't wait to see him get the shit kicked out of him no matter who his opponent was

I don't want to step on Loss' toes, but I might give that a shot

It's a huge stretch. Plus in that case, you would hope that forensics would detect that someone else was in or around the house. But then again, the Atlanta PD is apparently worse than the LAPD I think that Chris leaving it in the garbage for the neighbor to find is the most likely scenario. She was apparently a close friend of Nancy's, so that makes sense. It's just weird that it didn't come out until now, over 3 years later. Did the police even take it as evidence?

Well, she returns from her vacation, and part of the diary is in one of her garbage cans? Why would it be there? A cop took it out of the house and left it there? Chris put it there for her to find before he killed himself? Or if the garbage can was on the Benoit property, or outside of the gate to their house or something, why would she be going through it? If she really ran out of the house screaming and had to leave town to deal with it, I doubt she's going to decide to play Nancy Drew when she gets home, ya know?

I think they were just there (presumably after being asked by WWE) to fish for the latest information from police and neighbours. I was assuming she encountered them before the news broke, but after she had found the bodies. I could see maybe Sunday night, nobody is hearing from Chris so they send Dave there to go check up on him. But why would Taylor lie about it? That's the part I don't get. It doesn't make WWE culpable of knowing more than what we assume they knew or suspected on Sunday/early Monday, but maybe they did? It's just another little twist that brings up a host of unanswered questions

It's amazing that this stuff is just coming out over 3 years later. The Dave Taylor thing is the biggest WTF to me. There's an explanation for most of the stuff revealed, but that's just so weird. It's probably nothing, but it could lead to wild conspiracy theories The neighbor finding part of the diary in a mystery garbage can when she returned from her vacation can't be true. That doesn't make any sense either way you look at it.

I figured the association with LayCool (and it seemingly going well) would be the best thing for him, because if he got Michelle on his side he'd have a good chance at having Taker on his side....but alas, it wasn't meant to be Which brings up an interesting (?) question, when Taker is injured does he still travel with his wife to tapings and whatnot, or does he just chill at home?

I'm shocked that Meltzer doesn't have a DVR. I get that he's probably not the most tech savvy guy, but they've been around for a decade, and they're far easier and less time consuming to use than a VCR! Alvarez needs to get on his case about that.

Meltzer on Backlund in UWF I've heard of a match ending in a draw, the heel demanding more money to keep wrestling, and the face going around and collecting money from the fans, but this is a new one! How do the logistics of this con work? They tell that fans that in order to have longer time limits they have to rent out more time from the building? Or pay their wrestlers more per match? That's brilliant!

I was wondering if someone could C&P or summarize the highlights of the Shawn Michaels stuff (about him leaving the company in fall of 93) from the last Observer back issue. I've heard some explanations for it over the years, but I'm interested to see what Meltzer said about it at the time.

They do that a lot and it's really annoying. Especially when it's SUBSCRIBER CONTENT like this one. Do they really get any new subscribers that way?

They were giving MVP a half-hearted push after he went on The View and took Sherri Sheppard to a HS Prom. They pushed all of that huge on TV for a few weeks with video packages, but then he'd lose most of his matches and look like a geek. I remember they even had Sheppard there in the front row at an MSG show, making a big deal about her cheering him on, and he fucking lost!!! It's impossible to get over beyond a certain level when they undercut you with booking like that. Allegedly he also had some backstage heat due to being a pot smoker and for fucking with one of the piss testers.

The WWF had a massive influx of TV ready talent in late 99/early 00. Chris Jericho, Taz, The Dudleys, Kurt Angle, Benoit, Eddie, Saturn, Malenko. By mid 2000 Jericho, Angle and Benoit were being pushed toward main event level, the Dudleys were solidly at the upper midcard level, and the rest helped form the backbone of the midcard. 2000 is considered a great year for match quality and PPVs, and that group of newcomers were a huge part of it. Somebody made the point about how they didn't make any new stars in 99, an interesting 'what if' is how different the company would have been without all those guys. Or even just without the guys from WCW. They would have been forced to follow through with the Test push, probably would have given Rikishi a big singles push, pushed Big Show harder, would have had to push E&C and The Hardys even harder than they did....it would have been a completely different product.

I know that these lists are essentially meaningless, put the politics of who's where and who did and didn't make it are fascinating to me. They were pretty fair to Angle and Foley all things considered, but man, they really stuck it to Hogan, Flair and Sammartino. A lot of these placements make sense when you look at it the way the company is, but then there's stuff like Rey Mysterio ahead of HHH and Cena, and Harley Race and Ricky Steamboat being in the top 10 that I have no explanation for. I know Rey gets special treatment, but I didn't think he was that special. And I know Harley and Ricky are on good terms with the company, but they're the top 2 guys from (mostly) outside of the WWF? What's the deal with Pedro Morales, is he on bad terms with Vince? He was WWWF Champion for close to 3 years at a time when that really meant something, and if I'm remembering correctly he was the first guy to hold the World, IC and Tag titles. Besides Pedro, WWWF/WWF/WWE champions omitted are Ultimate Warrior, Yokozuna, Kevin Nash, Brock Lesnar, Ivan Koloff, Stan Stasiak, JBL, RVD and Sheamus. Kind of surprised at the first 4. Hall of Famers Antonio Inoki, Vern Gagne and Ernie Ladd didn't make it. I think Ladd makes me sadder than any of them. And I'm kind of surprised Vince didn't put himself on the list.

I find it highly amusing that Dana White makes a distinction between "The Internet" and "My Twitter"

I don't want to turn this into a sleaze thread, but I'm curious what divas Matt Hardy is known to have dated. Lita and Massaro I know for sure....there were others?

Back when Dave was concerned that Saturn was either missing or dead, one of his readers did some internet sleuthing and found his Facebook page. Before it was locked down, Dave mentioned the photos he saw look like the Saturn you'd remember from wrestling only fatter. "You're welcome"