sek69

Was that the match featured in Beyond the Mat then? With Dennis "I'm not booked" Stamp?

I think it's from the Terry Funk's Wrestlefest show.? Yep, it's on Terry Funk's Wrestlefest 1997. I had this on VHS, as it was released by a company I think called Deltavision (?) in the UK. Just before the ECW rites were officially purchased by WWE they put out lots of the non PPV ECW shows which you could get in places like HMV. The Funk/Hart match is really good from my hazy memory. With Bret being in the middle of his heel anti US run, he works a really old school match, which is a lot different from a much of what Funk was doing in ECW at time. There were some other pretty interesting matches on the show as well including a Sabu/Foley match, but with Mick in his Mankind persona. The Dory Funk/RVD match is something of a styles clash if I recall... The date shown for the match is a few days after Montreal so Bret would have been babyfaced by that point.

WWE matches by nature are going to be very similar since everyone's taught to work the same style.

They seem to think Ziggler is at that level on Smackdown, and while he's probably doing the best promos he's done in a while (ever?) I just don't buy him as a guy who can just be slotted in a main event/title program and have any credibility.

Does anyone know if he left ROH on good terms? That would probably play a role in him being able to go to CMLL or New Japan.

I guess there was something on a MLW podcast that Paige was being pressured to break up with ADR by the company. Apparently it should be taken with a grain of salt, but it wouldn't be out of character for them to do it.

I should know better, but I hope this means that someone is realizing throwing a bone to older fans isn't a bad thing.

So if that's the actual Last Battle of Atlanta, then it must have been in the Georgia footage they got in the WCW/JCP vault. If so, how did that stay lost for so long?

He just doesn't work in WWE, for whatever reason. He seemed like a big fish in a small pond when he was in Lucha Underground though. He had the aura of a superstar there. I wish he would have never went back to WWE. This. He was good there, in AAA, and even the few times he was in ROH. For whatever reason what he has doesn't seem to translate well to WWE. Seems like his only option left now since he burned all his bridges last time would be TNA since they wanted him before.

He definitely has "it", but not the "it" Vince wants him to have if that makes any sense. He has such a bad ass aura about him that making him the Cena-esque superhero seems like forcing a square peg in a round hole.

Oh come on. To steal a JR-ism, lighten up Francis. Obviously I was making a joke about how A. there's been more important people who've passed on who never got a whole section devoted to them and B. all the comments about how he had a job for life for being the clean up man.

I know there's debate elsewhere on Mr. Fuji and if he was any good or not. I don't really have any strong opinions one way or another, but seeing a whole collection put up on the network for him made me think he really must have known where the bodies were buried.

I *think* his reasoning is that the CWC is a limited run event and not a show that runs all year long, which... yeah.

Cheating to win over AA and then Slater would be a pretty good jumping off point for a heel turn.

I don't think there's a worse "this isn't what anyone wants" push worse than 2000 WCW Jarrett. At least with Justin Credible in ECW you could kind of defend it since what the hell else where they going to do since the moment anyone got a push it seemed they immediately got poached.

Heath Slater has been my favorite thing the last few weeks. I wonder what the end game is going to be. Rhyno turns on him in the finals? If they lose clean, the crowd will probably turn on the winning team pretty hard. Also holy shit the Headbangers must have been too amped up over being back on WWE TV, not only did Rhyno get potatoed it looked like poor Heath got killed taking their finish.

Watching the current episode, Nakimura doing a pretty good longer in ring promo. Maybe I never noticed before, but it seems like he has a lisp on top of the accent. Normally that would be distracting, but since his whole gimmick is being a weirdo it works for him. Also was this the NXT debut of the "YEAOH!"?

WWE seems to think there's something wrong with going with the hot hand if it's not someone they've anointed, which is kind of opposite of what the point of pro wrestling is supposed to be. They'd rather punish someone who got over on their own without the Hand of God guiding them than run with it and potentially make money off of it.

https://wwe.2k.com/wwe2k17-roster Some interesting names popping up among the usual suspects on the Legends roster, like Fujinami and Lex Luger. I wonder if that means we'll see Lex in the HOF this year.

That's only a portion of the story though. It wasn't just people booing Roman because he wasn't Bryan, it was because the company was making a deliberate effort to push the guy they wanted at the expense of the guy the crowd clearly wanted. All the self serving "we listen to the fans, we do this all for you" speeches came home to roost for WWE when the fans saw it for the bullshit it was. That's a part of the whole Roman saga that seems to be surprisingly glossed over to me, at the root it was a case of a company digging in their heels and doubling down when their fanbase was clearly rejecting what they wanted to do.

Well if he's a heel that gets cheered, at least that's a backdoor way for them to get what they wanted. The Rock should have been the blueprint they followed the moment he started getting booed out of the building. Allowing him to vent on the fans who hated him allowed him to show the personality that changed him from dorky Blue Chipper Rocky to the MF'in ROCK almost overnight.

When do you ever say anything positive about WWE? You are one of the biggest complainers on the board. I just posted about how I love how Smackdown has been doing more with a roster that most people would consider lesser than Raw. I used to almost never watch SD and now it's my favorite WWE show. Really, my only issues with WWE is positioning Steph as the Alpha Female beyond reproach which at this point is what it is, and their insistence on continuing to miscast Roman as Smiling Babyface Diesel when he could be used 1000% better as a heel. I get far more annoyed by "wrestling twitter" types who seemingly don't realize how snobbish they come off when they browbeat the plebs for not liking the same things they do.

Of all the various types of smart fans being discussed, one that always confuses me are the types like Parv who clearly hate the current WWE product but seem compelled like a moth to a light to any and all discussion of it. I honestly don't get it. I personally find most of 70s and early 80s (W)WWF boring as fuck so I don't really spend much time watching it, but I've never felt the need to run in to a group of people talking about it and go on and on about how much it's garbage and everyone involved in it is boring and awful. I was close to just assuming Parv was working some kind of gimmick, but reading posts where he's clearly not interested in anything that might challenge his view makes it clear he's just posting to get a rise. Calling it trolling seems to harsh since it seems like he has some very closely held beliefs. I just don't know what his end game here is. Everything about WWE seems to offend him on a cellular level, which is fine, different strokes and all that. I'm not sure what he seeks to accomplish by continuing to bang his drum.

They really haven't been on screen much after the first week or so. The promo last week with Bryan announcing the new titles was the most he'd been in front of the crowd since the draft it seems. Speaking of, I really like how it seems like whoever is writing Smackdown realized they got the short end of the draft and went "you know what, fuck it, we'll make it work". They've really made a more entertaining show and revitalized guys who were dead in the water previously.

It's not so much a justification as much as an acknowledgement that there's far less people who share the same level of concern than there are people who would rather not support a large business that frequently takes a dump on their heads.