Marty

Amusing how poor the booking has been in WWE when Kofi Kingston (who's basically been a tag wrestler for the last year or so), The Great Khali (who hasn't really been portrayed as a threat in a while) and Santino Marella (longtime resident comedy character) are all in matches for one of the company's top two titles this weekend.

What do you mean, exactly? There have been non-wrestling celebrities who got involved and did heelish stuff, especially with the run of guest Raw GMs over the past few years. Plus Dennis Rodman, Kevin Federline, David Arquette (after his nonsensical turn), etcetera. Celebutante/famousque basically means someone who got famous for not real reason at all. K-Fed would fall under this category for sure. But what I mean is if wrestling ever tried developing someone's character like this, especially from day one of that person's character. So what it would involve is that person, at the very least, being nothing overly special, but getting every opportunity in the book. To some extent, Drew McIntyre's early character was like this ("handpicked by Vince McMahon as his next champion", having some power over Teddy Long due to Vince liking him, etc.) but I'm not sure fully if that's what I'm going for, since Drew even then had some upside (of course now, he's really, really good in the ring, IMO). I also thought, with wrestling crowds being lowest common denominator audiences and celebutante/famousque people being generally hated, it'd be something they'd try. Of course, for all the reasons listed, it could turn people off, which is why I wasn't sure myself if this was a gimmick I'd like to see developed. Loss mentioned MNM. I'd need to rewatch a lot of their stuff, as I stopped watching mostly from 2004 to 2007. I've seen a few of their really good tags with the Hardys and Rey/Batista, but I'm not sure how effective they were as characters under what I described. I remember the entrance, but I'm not sure if the entrance got that much heat. Remember some online friends of mine thinking it was cool more than anything else.

Has there been a celebutante/famousque heel gimmick done in wrestling yet? I'm not sure if it'd necessarily work (talk about something that's almost a given for X-Pac heat) but it was something that came to mind wrt this topic.

1995: Antonino Rocca & The Grand Wizard (2) 2004: Big John Studd & Junkyard Dog (2) 2007: "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig & The Sheik (2) 2008: "High Chief" Peter Maivia, Eddie Graham & Gordon Solie (3!) 2009: The Von Erichs (5 of them) 2010: Gorgeous George & Stu Hart (2) Still room for Savage this year, given that history, but I agree that he won't likely go in this year for some of the reasons already given.

For better or worse, Jack Pfefer deserves to be mentioned in this thread.

Orton (WWE Champ) vs. Kane (World Champ), 10/22/10 Smackdown. (Yes, I had to look that one up!)

No subscription, but The W has a list of winners and runner-ups: http://the-w.com/2011-wrestling-observer-awards Ryder getting Top 3 votes for Best and Worst Gimmick is amusing.

It effectively announces to the fans the Pro Bowl doesn't matter, does it? The players were banned from tweeting during regular season games but it's ok for the Pro Bowl. No one ever claimed the Pro Bowl mattered, like most All Star games. They generally are a celebration/break period for the fans. The fact that they are extending this celebration from the live audience (generally the only ones who care about All Star games/events) to the cyberworld isn't a bad move, IMO.

This might be just me, but I actually enjoyed the WWF from WM6 up until WM8 far more than the previous year or two, and some of that involved the change of color commentator. I don't know what it was, but Piper and Heenan just seemed to add a lot more energy to the setting and there seemed to be additional energy elsewhere (the ring work, the crowd heat, etc.). To me, the company felt reborn in a way after the Golden Era was winding down, and just before the Hart/New Generation era was happening. They seemed to have that added burst of energy that hadn't been seen since the calendar year building to WM4.

I thought often at times he was the best thing (or one of the best things) on RAW in 2003-04. Really started hitting his stride during that time. It was 2002 during that face run on Smackdown that he started getting watchable/average. As for the topic at hand, from the stuff I've seen on YouTube from his run in GCW, Terry Gordy.

Tremendous! Also, as someone who owns both Boogie Nights and Transformers (and enjoys them both), I loved the family movie night gaffe story.

A running gag of Johnny Ace that happens from time to time actually isn't a bad idea, as opposed to what I said earlier.

This is a really fun site that I'll frequent and I'll definitely recommend it to others, but you guys might want to trim down the "John Laurinaitis hires the wrong..." jokes. I found each case to be funny myself (don't get me wrong), but newer visitors might feel it's an overdone punchline. Unless you're trying to keep it to a niche audience of course. Other than that, awesome stuff!

Thanks Keith. Back to Austin's set: That fourth disc (the one with all the promos and segments) is one of the most fun discs they've made. Arguably the fastest two and a half hours one can have, especially if you're an Austin fan.

Never heard that story, what's the deal with that? I can't remember exactly what Orton said. Thinking about it now, I think they referred to it as a near drug overdose too (my mistake above). I'd have to rewatch it just to see, but I remember whatever the incident was being brought up here at the time (around Sept or Oct of 2007). They pretty much don't hide the idea that Orton was pretty screwed up in the past in a lot of ways before he settled down, got married and had a daughter.

There was no mention of Debra (there was footage of course, but no mention of Debra by name in any of the interviews), thus no discussion of what went down in 2002. I liked the doc in a "celebration of Austin's career" way, but I don't feel it really dug all that deep or anything like that. He seemed less harsh on Owen for SS97 than other interviews I've seen/read (if anything, Bret seemed a little harsher). Seemed more understanding of WCW's position when they released him in 1995. Also took the "If I had to do that again, I might have handled things differently" line when discussing him walking out in 2002. Other that that, like I said, it's one of the best DVDs they've done covering the guy's career. They've arguably chosen all his best matches and promos/segments. Covered his career top to bottom quite nicely (although more WCW stuff could've been used). It was nice to see some USWA stuff in there. But again, I didn't think it was that deep a doc. Heck, at least Orton's talks about things like his suicide attempt. All that said, it's a fun set if you're an Austin fan.

Bret Hart: 1. Steve Austin 2. Jerry Lawler 3. Undertaker 4. Owen Hart 5. Curt Hennig Not fully cemented on the final two, as I feel those spots could also go to Bob Backlund, Davey Boy Smith, Kevin Nash and Shawn Michaels (specifically for the mid-92 stuff). The first three I'm certain on, for various reasons.

Yeah, the list I have above is a truncated version of all those names put together. I originally had Blassie in there too and feel silly taking him out. Had considered Monsoon too. Was Maivia a face when working that series with Backlund?

In the continuing celebration of Mark Henry, I recommend the ECW Championship rematch with Matt Hardy on ECW (8/19/08). Excellent match to make up for the SummerSlam non-match.

Looking at WWWF/WWF over the years: - George Steele - Killer Kowalski - Chief Jay Strongbow - Ken Patera - Mil Mascaras - Pat Patterson - Stan Hansen - Jimmy Snuka - Sgt. Slaughter - Roddy Piper - Don Muraco - Paul Orndorff - Ted DiBiase

I need to think hard on the others, but for one of them... John Cena: 1. Edge 2. Big Show 3. Randy Orton 4. Umaga 5. Batista With CM Punk getting an honourable mention, and JBL and Chris Jericho not being far behind. I guess what I looked at more than anything is what each guy meant to Cena's career. Edge is the least of all these guys (all 8 of them), but I thought his 2006 run was the first time Cena faced a guy who was an actual heel (since Cena moved to RAW anyway). Haven't seen their RR match in a while, but really liked the SummerSlam and TLC matches that year and I think the SNME match that year was pretty good too. There wasn't really too much difference when they feuded again in 2009, but I liked stuff like their WM triple threat (an underrated match that had to follow Taker-HBK). Big Show is an underrated Cena opponent. Cena works best with heel monsters, and when he worked with Show he got to hide his weaknesses and show his strengths more often than not. Also, the WM20 match got the ball rolling on the Cena face run. Orton and Cena have had a number of good matches over the years. Orton in 2009 (heck, even today) had expressions that were almost Edge-like, but like Edge, was willing to play an effective heel. I really like the I Quit match. I've seen this place long enough to know that I don't need to state a case for Umaga. Batista is another diamond in the rough as far as Cena opponents go. Only a couple of matches come to mind, but what Batista really brings is a nice Clash Of The Titans feel in both matches with Cena. Probably could've had a very nice series if Batista stuck around longer. The only one I know of is from 2003 when Cena was a heel. I remember it being one of Cena's best matches to that point, but that was 8+ years ago they've both had tons of better matches since They also had a Smackdown match that Cena got the win back due to A-Train interference. I haven't seen that match in ages, not sure if it was as good as the Vengeance one.

Yeah, the fall of business is what struck me as the driving force to change things up quickly. Savage was bombing as champ, and while Mad Dog makes some points about Flair as two-time champ losing and beating his rival, at the end of the day, I look at Flair's WWF reigns and feel he wasn't treated too much differently than the company's tradiitonal heel-transitional champs. Weren't they building towards another Warrior reign before things fell through? If that's the case, it'd be interesting when they decided to change things up. Was it just after SummerSlam after Bret showed how he could carry a main event? Or some other time? The Tito thing is an interesting bit of commentary. I remember thinking "bullshit" when reading that in his book, but a lot of the factors mentioned make a lot of sense. That said, I wonder if it would've worked, he wasn't exactly doing much in 1992 (as others mentioned, push-wise, he didn't have a bad 1990), and him getting the gold instead of Bret would've felt really out of nowhere. (Apologies to Loss, as I realize this doesn't exactly fall under WWF philosophy, aside from how they likely viewed Flair.)

I was reading some DVDVR Workrate Reports that were still on The W, and dug TomK's comment about the Lesnar-Angle Iron Man match (which somehow I never read before until now):

Maybe it's just because of the short times, but it's amusing to me how this Rumble's 5th, 6th, and 7th longest entrants were Aldo Montoya, Eli Blu and Mantaur. The match is a Shawn and Bulldog show, with a little Luger in there too, and that's about it.

Yeah, those two would be good as well.