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jdw

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Everything posted by jdw

  1. Dave: "ERICK SILVA VS. CARLO PRATER, WELTERWEIGHTS First round: Silva landed a knee and threw about a dozen punches on the ground and it’s over in seconds. Prater’s right shoulder went out as well. Knee to the body. It was exactly 12 hard punches on the ground and ref Mario Yamasaki stopped it. This guy is for real. :There is some talk about illegal punches in the background. We may have a Dusty finish here. Mario Yamasaki called it a either a no contest or a DQ for illegal punches to the back of the head. :29 They called Prater the winner via DQ. How is this when we have this happen in three finishes on every show. They were all legal except one inadvertent shot. Even if it’s accidental, that would be a no contest unless it’s deliberate. No way this should be a DQ. Mario Tirantes Yamasaki said he has to decide right there and then. People are not rioting. I’ve seen tons more heat at wrestling matches when they do these kind of finishes." One wishes he covered MMA like this over on Yahoo. John
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  3. I think we were pointing out it was a vanity promotion damn near from the start as it became clear that it was all about Jeffey. Suspect Bruce was as well... don't know if Dave was really explicit about it early on. I'm trying to remember when Dave got all sad about the possibility of the company going out of business because it would mean few jobs for the boys in the US. It's kind of ironic over the long run just how much of that money got sucked up by old washed up wrestlers. It would be amazing to have the real books of the company and figure out what % of the salaries were paid out to: * Jeffey * Washed up stars from the past * WWE Cast Offs * sycophants Suspect it's well over 80% over the years. John
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  5. What did this year's Raw do versus last year's Raw? 3.05 2011 2.87 2012 The old +/- 0.2 range. John
  6. TNA's probably has always been that's it's a Vanity Promotion. First Jeff's, then Dixie's. Under Dixie it's run the line of Jeff's Vanity, Kurt's Vanity, Spike's Vanity, and Eric & Hulk's Vanity. It's a masturbatory promotion: more interested in getting itself off than getting involved in a mutally satisfactory relationship with a fan base. As was long ago said about ECW, I have no problem with folks jerking off. It's just that they need to understand that their own personal fantasy doesn't always play to me, or a mass of fans. John
  7. What NL said. It's not like the game last night drew USC-Texas ratings. John
  8. I'd say the statement was true... but I'd also say that JR probably isn't an expert on Japan. John
  9. Linda doing a little plagiarism: Linda McMahon Wrote Keystone Op-Ed Parroting TransCanada John
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  11. 12 good pages of discussion, two posts at the end that go mildly off-topic (though tie into the discussion of wrestling vs sports storylines) and you want to lock the thread? *sigh*
  12. Looked at it as a general dumping thread for HHH Era WWE. Beats the heck out of me where the stuff from last week's thread was. John
  13. How does one take Hase's career output if one isn't the teeniest bit interested in New Japan? John
  14. Just checking Martin's review... year, that Funkosaurus thing really makes me ponder whether it was worth missing the show last night. So what's the over/under on Mute Jericho? I'm guessing that Mike Johnson's sources must be dialed into where this is headed, and when. John
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  17. Beats me. I'm just pointing out that it's a hard question to wrap one's head around. John
  18. Are there actually people arguing that Tenryu had the "best pre-peak" of any worker? That would be a new one to me. It's also a hard question to define. Three examples: If Jumbo's "peak" was his work in his 1990-92 Grumpy Old Jumbo run against Misawa & Co., it's a rather ridiculous pre-peak because he was awfully good at times for a long term. If Flair's "peak" was 1989 which some folks really love, then he has a long pre-peak loaded with a lot of good matches. That's prehaps extreme. So instead: If Steamboat's peak was briefly reached in 1989 opposite Flair (playing ultimate babyface challenger) and Luger (as a vet helping a younger worker hit a new level), Steamer sure has a lot of quality work prior to that. So... it's a hard one to wrap your head around. "Best" also limits the discussion because a poster is looking for one answer ("42!") rather than tossing out a half dozen examples of people who were quite good before their peak, or good for long time prior to reaching their peak. "Best" discussions tend to do that. You're forced to compare Masa Fuchi with Jumbo, rather than taking Fuchi out on his own: "I knew Fuchi might might have hit his peak in the early 90s as a grumpy old bastard, but I was surprised on the DVDVR set to see he was quite good back in 1986." That's kind of a useful discussion. But do the discussion get there if it's narrowed to "best"? John
  19. So how did Week 2 of Jericho go? John
  20. Most likely the ability to deal collectively with four cable companies rather than individually with them, especially since the WWF has a long history of dealing with them on the PPV side. Of course another example of the WWE being too late to the well: their leverage on PPV is down compared to what it once was, obviously due to their own declining buys and also UFC moving ahead of them in terms of buys. John
  21. They're both reasonable arguments. Shankly laid the foundation and was very successful. Paisley took it to its highest heights, made some critical changes on the fly (Keegan --> Dalglish being the most obvious, though there were others), and left the team in strong enough shape to continue to win after he left. Flip the coin. English history has given Shankly more of the credit in most of the books that I've read over the years, but that may just be that Paisley came out from under Shankly's wing and the "club" in general was taking credit after Shankly retired. Trap's late-70s teams were largely rebuilt for the team that dominated in the mid-80s. He also largely built the Juve team that won the 1993 UEFA Cup under him then the 1995 Scudetto & 1996 European Cup under Lippi. 3 sides with one club, success in Europe and league... that's pretty close to Fergie. Would no doubt have done it again if he stayed. Of course a lot of success elsewhere, but I know less about the building of those sides. I think that's fairly well known in the past half decade, at least among those who understand the concept. He's generally given a lot of credit as a leading proponant of the concept, whether he was inovative on it or not. I think most top sides have gotten and employed the concept more and more over the past decade. I think a lot of this is due to both the rotation system and his strong belief in depth (and of course ManU's ability to fund it). League is a marathon. Having depth and rotation allows you to cover injuries, keep people rested and healthy, and more options in selecting lineups and tatics for different opponents. Other teams with less depth (say Leeds in their short window of challenging) didn't have the depth to sustain their play late in the year as the injuries piled up, and as players got run into the ground. Yes in general, perhaps no in specifics. Butt actually was a excellent English player, and a good EPL player. With the exception of Arsenal and probably a couple of other teams, he would have been good starting DMF for most of the EPL teams in his prime. Game is different now, so that's not applicable. But at the time, if he were your starting DMF and he was surrounded by players of his quality and work ethic, your team would have been in the upper half of the table and at little risk of relegation. Which is the general value Sir Alex saw in him. A good player in the rotation, even if he wasn't at the level of Roy or Scholes or Giggs or Becks. Very smart on his part. Also smart to use the power (i.e. money and status) of ManU to attract young talent. Roon was an Everton player for life... until Sir Alex showed interest, at which point he wanted to play for ManU. Blanc was mediocre his first year with ManU, which helped end the run of three straight Premierships. Okay the following year, but he didn't play as much. We basically got him when he was well past it. A better example might be Teddy in 1999, and periodically after that. Yorke and Cole were pretty much when they had to go, and both were off their prime. Cole's prime was before we got him, while Yorke peaked with the Treble and never was the same. Right time for both probably would have been selling them at least a year before they were, to max out money. RVN and Stam were more feuds. Stam was something of an offer we couldn't refuse, but Sir Alex has said since that he was wrong on thinking what Stam had left in the tank. RVN kind of needed to go due to the feud, and the team ManU wa altering into. Better examples are Becks, Ronaldo and Ince. Max value in sales at the time when the players were becoming headaches (all of them), just exiting their peaks (Becks and Ince), and just didn't want to be there. I suspect that if Sir Alex could have a re-do, the only one he would want back is Ronaldo if he could convince him to stop dreaming about Real. That's simply because Ronaldo was still young and had/has more left on his tank at the time of the sale than the rest. But he'd also likely be realistic that he'd never convince CR7 to stop dreaming about Real. He's been pretty much the total package. While perhaps not innovative tactically, he's been adaptive and looking forward rather than back. Used the power of the club, as he should. Great manager. We haven't even mentioned what he did in the SPL, which given the dominance of the Old Firm, is damn near as impressive as anything he's done "short term" at ManU even if it doesn't match the long term. UEFA CWC: 1983 SPL: 1980, 1984, 1985 Scottish Cup: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986 Scottish League Cup: 1986 Eight full seasons. Three league titles, five domestic cups, and a CWC going over Real Madrid in the Final and Bayern Munich in the QF. Very impressive. Ponder Newcastle having a run like that in 8 years in the past decade. John
  22. I like a lot of MJH's post, and wanted to point to one thing in it... This is to me one of the elements of storyline in sports. Sir Alex vs The Boot Room in GOAT discussions has been a classic one over the past decade. It's a seemingly small one that ebbs and flows out of discussions, but it's a great one for fans to bounce around. It's the same as Jumbo-Tenryu, Misawa-Kawada, Hogan-Flair. Folks might think it's the media or historians that only care, but a pair of fans like MJH and I could go around in circles on it... because it's the type of things Fans argue about all the time. Wrestling isn't sports. It is "entertainment". But while a lot of us hate the term "sports entertainment", to a degree that's what it was/is. John
  23. Yeah... I popped when I went over to Soccernet, saw it was 0-0, and by the time I opened the Gamecast, Henry scored. I'm not a Gunners fan, but always loved the way they played football starting from the 1998 Double side with the great mixture of wonderful Euros (Bergkamp, Petit, Vieira, Overmars) and Brits (Adams, Seaman, Dixon, Platt, Wright, Keown, Parlour). Even loved when Henry, after flopping at Juve, came over and paired up perfectly with Bergkamp up front. Heck... I couldn't even hate The Invincibles since the played such fun futbol. Of course I did enjoy Scholes knocking them out of the FA Cup that year. So Henry coming back and scoring today... very cool. In turn, the storyline of Sunday ManU-ManCity game drove me nuts. John
  24. Why should it be? [...] That's the type of thing that inspires a movie not wrestling. It's like the film Clint Eastwood made about South Africa's victory in '95. It doesn't translate to wrestling and even as a movie it doesn't compare to the real thing. We all have our favourite angles and feuds and storylines in wrestling which are nowhere near this scope but well executed and fun to watch. Wrestling doesn't have to be like the All Blacks' World Cup victory to be good and it's debatable whether you can book something like that. The more complex the WWE try to make a story the more cringeworthy it seems. They should be telling wrestling stories not stories from film, television or sport. I think what gets is *not* that wrestling fails to match the All Blacks great story, or anyone of the epic off the charts all-time great stories in sporting history. But that it fails to even match any number of really good sports storylines that pop up in a given year. They don't need to match Kirk Gibson hitting the dinger in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. The Lakers run in the 1988 post season was one of the most epic things I've ever seen... but probably doesn't play that way to a non-Lakers fan, even even to Lakers Fans it's a distant memory that probably doesn't hold as much as Game 6 of the 1985 Final or the Junior Sky Hook in 1987. But it was a heck of a storylines over the run of 21 games, three seven game series. John
  25. Which reminds me: WWF @ Omaha, NE - Civic Auditorium - July 16, 1990 (10,303; sell out) Saturday Night's Main Event #27 " - 7/28/90 on NBC Kerry Von Erich pinned Buddy Rose at 3:09 with the Tornado Punch (Von Erich's TV debut) (also aired Prime Time Wrestling - 8/6/90) That's short and might be worthwhile to put on the set even it it's not all that great. Folks like Buddy, and it's a decent intro to Kerry leading into his win over Perfect at SummerSlam. John
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