Marty

I think Jericho will be fine. While he won't get as quick a feel for it as Benoit, it's not like Jericho hasn't been in his share of different rings before. He'll be fine.

Thanks for the info on Benoit and Christian, Will. Neat stuff! Seriously, I'm guessing when Austin walked out, he left a chunkload of beer behind, and the McMahons decided to see if they can run the company drunk. That's the only explanation and reasoning I have if they did lowball Benoit. Mad Dog's explanation makes sense, however.

I just realized now that they can have live performances, so they will have Limp Bizkit's Undertaker live entrance at WM XIX, as well as the two HHH Motorhead ones at X-7 and 21. I retract my above post. Oh, and Jimmy Hart owns the rights to a lot of the songs edited out (Demos, Bossman) and they didn't want to pay *him* royalties. That's why they're not in.

BTW, here's another thought: If they cut out Limp Bizkit's stuff, does that mean Undertaker's entrance at XIX is cut out period?

I imagine Stacy Keibler's Kid Rock theme is also edited where applicable. Bossman's I'm clueless about. Who wrote his theme back in the day? Demolition's: Does Rick Derringer own the rights to that song? Or does Al Eadie (Demolition Ax) own all things Demolition, including that? Those are my best guesses for that. Not only will Hogan's Eye Of The Tiger theme be edited, but so will WMX8 and XIX, where he had Voodoo Child. I found that out with the Undertaker DVD, where they edited that for the Judgment Day 2002 match. Really, though, any blurring of the logo or whatever I can understand, but stuff like this, on a box set that celebrates an event that they take pride in more than anything else, is inexcusable. Would it kill Vince to contact Stallone and say, "Can I use Eye of the Tiger?" or "Who do I talk to about that?" or for him to re-contact Kid Rock, Durst, Derringer (if necessary), whoever has the rights to Hendrix's music, etc. for this? This just reeks of laziness. I actually saw the set at a store today, with someone ready to pick it up, who's a casual fan. I told him about the spare disc packaging, the copyright issues, the lack of extras, among other things, and it caused him to stop in his tracks. It's affecting the casual fan too. If word gets out on these shortcomings, sales for this might not be pretty.

What? Where did you come up with that? When does Masters have a track record of stiffing people? Stevie Richards. I wouldn't call that "stiffing" Richards. More like being sloppy, IIRC.

Meltzer note tonight: So the big news of the day isn't Christian [email protected] Steve Austin was told he was going to do the job for Jonathan Coachman on Saturday and refused. Apparently he also found out that Jim Ross also wasn't returning as Raw announcer despite how the angle was playing on television. Tonight on Raw they changed the match to Dave Batista vs. Coachman. Torrie Wilson is also gone. Goldust and Vader debuted on Raw. --- I've hardly watched any of the show tonight, but caught some of the Coach-Goldust-Vince-Funaki-Batista-Vader (did I get all that?) segment, and wondered what the fuck was going on. This angle's looking rather fucked for the PPV tomorrow.

I think it was more his situation than what others such as those you mentioned were doing. And really, his case, that I stated above, is even worse than Kurt Angle going to RAW just when the Angle-Sharmell-Booker storyline took an interesting turn... I have to wonder why they do that too. I mean, things like that give a nice unpredictable nature, but you leave the fans hanging when they get into a certain feud, storyline, etc. and you only piss off your workers that are getting nicely into it too.

I'm waiting for someone else to confirm it too, but I don't think it's impossible for this to happen, at all, or even improbable. The guy's had the rug pulled out from under him so much as far as his push goes, with the worst happening this summer when he got sent to Smackdown just when he was getting into a feud with WWE Champ John Cena. And on Smackdown, he does... a whole lot of nothing. If this is true, Helmsley must be thrilled. Not only is Jericho gone (even if it's temporary), but so is some of Jericho's clique.

http://www.wwe.com/inside/news/christianquits WWE.com has learned that SmackDown Superstar Christian has quit World Wrestling Entertainment. Be sure to stay tuned to WWE.com as more information becomes available.

"World Wrestling Federation" is still legal for them to use and always was. That's why, if they show a RAW match from the Attitude era, with the ring apron saying "World Wrestling Federation", it's never blurred out. It's the initials that's the issue. They'll blank out the "F" if someone says "WWF", as well as blur out any graphic mentioning of the initials (like there always was circa 1983/84) as well as blur out the Attitude logo. I'm on the fence about this set after the news. Still considering it, although I'm not buying it anytime soon due to personal reasons. Won't buy the Jake Roberts set either anytime soon for the same reasons. The only one I'm rushing out to buy when it comes out is the Bret Hart set, although, again, I'm worried about the quality of presentation if the production team was as rushed as they were, according to Dave Meltzer's last report of it.

Yep, and so are a couple other gems, such as Taker-Hart (both SS and ONO, but the latter is the important one) and Taker-Brock HIAC, which is just about the only HIAC match I enjoy watching these days.

I think that's what Meltzer means about marketable teams. I never checked the ratings, but I have a hunch the first round may have been the most watched, since it involved the Yankees, Red Sox, and Braves all losing.

Both Highspots and Silvervision say it's the IYH match. Shopzone doesn't say anything about the Hakushi match.

True, Sek, but remember: The set's 3 discs as it is, and that may have been the original plan, at least since Bret agreed to participate with the project. Considering that they were working on a tight deadline with all the changes, I imagine that a 4th disc may have been asking too much from a production team that was already worked to the bone after all of Bret's changes. I think they wanted to keep the deadline too, for the sake of the release date (it's close enough to Christmas).

Voici le trailer: http://wmsvod.wwe.com/homepageclips/200510...thartdvd300.wmv My favourite part was the discussion of the Survivor Series, even if they set it up like this: Vince: "I think there's regret from both of us." Bret: "I stand by what I did."

This quote by Meltzer fit in nicely with the other two quotes as well.

It was Smackdown '03 (in September). It's also on the Taker DVD. And now you got me wanting to re-watch it.

Eduardo. For reasons already mentioned regarding his ability to work as a heel, plus I think Eddy is just slightly better than Rey as far as working many styles. I love Rey with a passion, but I've yet to see him in a brawl the same level as Eddy/JBL JD 04. Rey's still awesome for what he does, though. It's like choosing between two children, when one child's headed for their second Post-doctorate, while the other's still working on their Master's.

Many of the choices already mentioned, such as Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, and Jeff Jarrett, fall under guys I never bought. Fuck, toss in HHH too, as I never bought a blueblood snob who waddled around in hogpens to be a credible main eventer and, evidently, no one else bought it either. Toss in any non-wrestler who ever held a title or got a serious amount of ring tme. That goes for the McMahons, Russo, Moolah, any old timer who gets to go over a younger up-and-comer in some fashion (even like the Piper's Pit segment at WrestleMania), etc. Fuck, all this can be thrown into that Exposing The Business thread too.

I actually like him and his reviews... *runs* *eventually returns* ...just brought him up because of what Sass mentioned.

Meh, most of us all thought it was a great match at the time for various reasons (Canadian Chrises go over, crowd heat, the whole internet believing that it was the start of something great, etc.) even if those reasons may have had nothing to do with the match itself. Time gives some perspective of matches like those, I guess. Since Sass brought up Tim's dressing down of SK's Eddy/JBL review, I should point out (this being the Puro Elitism thread) that Chris Coey throws in a very fine and eloquent ripping of SK at the tail end of the comments, in case anyone forgot or never read it.

Others have already mentioned his overselling, and I'll elaborate the portion of that category I really hate: His selling of punches (that twisting falling down sell he does). It looks horribly unrealistic. Heck, he even did that at Survivor Series 97 during the initial brawl of that match. God, the more I think about it, the more I feel Michaels really is and was overrated as a worker.

That reminds me so much of the bosses I had when I worked retail, they'd tell us to never give in to customers no matter what. The customers would then usually just ask to speak to the manager, who would promptly cave in and make me look like an asshole. If the INTERNET SMARTS somehow know that Vince is to blame for his talent relations reps playing hardball with their contract renegotiations, how could the wrestlers NOT know and blame JR? That doesn't make sense. Even if they know, what are they going to do? Blame and bitch at Vince over it?

You must've read a lot more of Tim's posts than I have, because I can't recall ONE post of his where I either haven't learned something new about wrestling or where I found myself shaking my head. He's one of the few posters I do a post search query on every now and then, just to see if there's a new match I should track down, if there's something about a match I had already seen that I should re-watch, etc.