Marty

Ivan Koloff

Ricky Morton

Tommy Dreamer

Terry Funk

I think Joey Marella was refereeing that match, too, which puts things in even greater perspective.

Definitely, for more than one reason. There's the obvious reason related to Liz's tragic passing, but also any of us who followed any WWF at all in the late 80s-early 90s were at least somewhat into that storyline. I know I was, and admit to being a mark for it. I think it being the first retirement match the WWF had done on PPV before that stip got *really* overused and abused helps matters, because it made that match, and the events that followed, far more special.

A thought I had the other day about Lex Luger: Regarding his recent legal troubles, does anyone else think Luger saw all that coming a mile away and thus "prepared" for it by sucking up to everyone in that shoot interview he did recently?

You mean Mike McGuirk? Interesting.

Does this mean, if Samoa Joe goes to the "E", he'll debut by running Austin over in a car and saying, "I did it for the Rock"? The Juvi news keeps getting funnier by the week.

For what it's worth, Vengeance 2005 did superb numbers (around 450,000 buys, IIRC or so) due to a stacked card, featuring two title matches (Batista-HHH, Cena-Jericho-Christian) and another high profile match (Angle-HBK). They'll need to do something similar in order to hope for good numbers like that for a single brand PPV. This was the first single brand PPV that had two World title matches, btw.

There's that possibility, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of Vince bashing Bret and/or the DVD for the hell of it. His frame of mind is that messed up right now, from what I've seen.

This is aging, fucked-up-state-of-mind Vince McMahon we're talking about. I could see him doing this.

I expected it to sell well, but not THIS well.

BTW, speaking of Bret's DVD: I mentioned this to Loss earlier today, but on the HMV best-selling DVD charts up here, it peaked at #8 a couple of weeks ago. That's not for wrestling DVDs, or sports DVDs, or specialty DVDs. That's DVDs period. In the middle of the holiday season. As a Canuck who's been a huge fan of Bret for about 20 years, and watched his popularity grow, especially here in Canada, even that surprised, impressed, and pleased me.

In fairness, having watched the Bret DVD, I'd say it's a spot he's done more than just a few times. The difference is that, as Will said, the spot is far more realistic than a lot of the other spots Will mentioned, and Bret times the spot better. It's easy to see a spot like Flair getting chucked off the top rope, or Michaels' kip-up in most of their matches that you're seeing for the first time. On the other hand, it's hard to say or anticipate when Hart does his chest-first bump in a match you're seeing. I had just watched Hart-Hennig from KOTR 93 for the first time in ages, and Bret's timing of the spot made so much sense within the context of the match, and WHEN in the match it took place. Yet, even when you see it, even after seeing so many other Hart matches, you go, "WHOA!" That's where he's a better worker than a Flair or Michaels, IMO. He's got spots he uses in every single match, just like, well, every worker, but he times them better and he's far less predictable.

He's still a horrible choice of source for anything wrestling-related.

I was channel surfing this morning just before heading to work, and what do I see on TBS? One of Kevin Nash's Arrowsmith Chiropractic Clinic ads! He's supposedly been doing these since 2000 or so, but this one looked very recent, due to his hair. Needless to say, it caught me by surprise and gave me a bit of a chuckle.

Yeah, I think that's my problem with it too. However, I still hate it because fans themselves are not workers (to an extent) and only *wish* they could have the skill level to work a match that the average worker has, let alone a good one.

God bless WWE. Always in the spirit of the Christmas season and all...

And in fairness to Bret, he almost had the equivalent of a gun to his head. Bret wanted to be remembered on a legacy that appeals to him and if he didn't agree to work with the WWE on a DVD, he knew full well that, publically at least, he was going to be presented in the worst way possible. No way Bret wanted to be lumped in the same category as Warrior. He still isn't hung up about accepting a HOF induction, so aside from being backed in a corner as far as the DVD project goes, he's remained true to his word.

"You fucked up!" This is making me think of Cactus Jack's second famous ECW promo.

Yes. I believe he died of exhaustion from fucking Dawn Marie hard. Yep.

More importantly, it was him that made the value of titles like the Intercontinental and Tag Team titles go downhill in various ways. Instead of being symbols of value that showcased the rise of a worker, or were even used in main events somewhat often, they did become "props", just as he described them.

I'd put Luger behind Undertaker at that time too.

Very well put, and regarding the promos, you can say the same thing for in-ring working style, as everyone is so restrained by the WWE working style that no one really stands out that much, save for the usual suspects. That, of course, ties in to no longer having world-travelled workers, but even then, *those* guys were restricted by that style. Basically, in the same sense, no one is allowed to wing it in the ring either, thus no one stands out.