sek69

What kills me about Cena's reply promos is that it's the old rule of if you say your opponent is a nobody then who cares if you beat them? Yes, Cena's delivery was very good, but at the end of the day he's calling the Miz a jobber and when he inevitably goes over it just confirms it. Just like he always does, he'll do a promo the next night how he respects the guy he beat but that doesn't erase weeks of build where you constantly tell the fans this guy isn't on my level.

Also I think the Rude match probably doesn't get the credit it should for making Warrior look like a top guy and not just the roidbag of the month.

Agreed. I think it will take a lot for Eddie to get topped in this category for me.

I hope he decides to keep working elsewhere and isn't another addition to the list of guys WWE has beaten the passion out of.

TNA is basically that cool part time job that suddenly decides to start asking their employees to treat it like a full time job, and get surprised when everyone leaves. I wonder what the plan is to fill all the gaps, maybe this is why they made a deal with NOAH and Jeff is trying to start a bromance with Konnan at Crash shows.

Nikki calling Maryse a bitch is much more risky in terms of what people who care about PG are concerned about than the Orton-Bray stuff,

You can't expect talent to sign over booking control when they already fucked guys over doing that previously (different regime I know, but still), and it's not like they are running a WWE like schedule where working indy dates would be a bonus and not where most of their income comes from.

Not sure why TNA is insisting control over everyone's independent bookings when A. They only run like one show a month when they do tapings and B. it's been the dealbreaker in 3 of their top acts leaving in a row.

Intentional or not, the writing staff sure isn't doing Seth any favors. Nor does it seem they're even trying to accentuate his strengths/hide his weaknesses.

Funny how his opponent was given a mealy mouth, wishy washy promo to deliver before Hunter H. Christ came out to save the day.

It's a vicious cycle. There's no way TNA could earn back the cost of the kind of contract the Hardys would command, but without acts like the Hardys TNA will never be in the position to make any more money than they do.

The Impact Zone crowd really took to Allie as a sympathetic babyface, helped greatly by Maria being great as her asshole bully boss. Maria was forcing Allie's crush (and real life husband) Braxton to marry the evil Laurel Van Ness just to hurt Allie because she's just that evil. She threatened to fire Allie if he didn't go through with it. Of course it was obvious what was going to happen at the wedding but that made it even better because it was just 100 pure pro wrestling corny greatness.

From what I can gather, Bruce has been teeing off on Dave as the evil dirtsheet writer who lies like it was still the mid 80s and when people @ him about it Dave just brushes it off.

Pretty neat thing in the George Steele collection they included him having title matches against Pedro, Bruno, Backlund, and Hogan. Dave mentioned in his WON obit that George was the only guy to do that so it was cool to see it added here.

Last night's show had the best wedding angle in years. The crowd was super hot for it, everyone was perfect in their roles, and the closing scene of Allie and Braxton finally declaring their love while jilted bride Laurel on her knees in the background chugging champagne dejectedly was like the last panel of a great comic book arc.

I can't help you with footage, but the SNES game Hammerlock Wrestling was originally released in Japan on the Super Famicom as a WAR game:

FWIW, Dave has been basically calling Bruce a bullshit artist on Twitter re: things said on his podcast so I would take this Houston information with a large grain of salt.

Dave didn't 'give' Mr Fuji anything. The awards in the Observer are voted on by the readers of the newsletter, nothing to do with Dave. It was a reader vote but to suggest Dave didn't have any influence on the process is disingenuous. If he's constantly telling the readership that someone sucks, there is a trickle down effect. Only if you don't have a mind of your own. Being influenced by someone widely regarded as the foremost authority in their field is hardly a sign of not having a mind of your own. It's not like Dave can wave a magic wand and make things happen out of whole cloth, but to suggest he doesn't have any influence at all is patently not correct.

Harvey was born and raised in Pittsburgh, his mom was my Sunday School teacher.

I'd say it was almost certainly because of Charlotte pulling out the "OMG" moves at every opportunity. Also didn't Becky have a serious concussion in her pre WWE life? I seem to remember the roverts of the world thinking her career was done at one point.

Not to mention UFC Fight Pass apparently has every show from all the groups they've purchased available, and WWE only has the full run of Nitro and a handful of other episodes from other groups. It sucks, but it's a self fulfilling prophecy. They don't ever promote it so it doesn't draw a lot of views, so they don't promote it because it doesn't draw a lot of views. Clearly by their marketing they think people only care about PPVs and original shows. It's the same mindset that led them to ruin the Invasion angle since they could never put over the WCW guys even though they owned the property. Vince just can't seem to get behind promoting another company's product even when he owns it.

The 2011 Smackdowns are starting to upload now, nearly completing the SD library just in time for the network's third birthday on Friday. Also WWE.com announced there will be a George Steele collection uploaded on Friday as well. Probably going to focus on the Savage stuff and the TNT skits where Captain Lou was teaching him how to talk, but they might slip a few 70s matches in there as well.

Did I miss any mention of Ivan Koloff on TV this week? Obviously George Steele would be more important in the "nothing prior to 1984 ever existed" WWE mindset, but considering Bruno is back in the fold there was a chance to give Uncle Ivan his due as well.

Uh, am I in some kind of bizzaro world here? Pointing out a screwup is now being upset about something. I mean, maybe they should have called an audible like Vince did at the Rumble that got screwed up (minus the blown quads of course) but no one's getting legit upset here. More like "lol, that didn't go as planned now did it". My initial post on it was JR being his usual self pretending that people were actually mad instead of pointing out the obvious screwup.