sek69

It's WrestleMania time. Get ready for Lagana, Bauer, etc, etc, to be all over net radio/ podcasts explaining how smart they were and how great their ideas were, and again going on about Vince and Stephanie's quirks. Last year they were all on Lagana's podcast at IWantWrestling, which he shut down when he got the TNA gig.

Not only is the feud bad, but stuff like tonight where they had a Hogan/Savage-like moment where it looked like they cut to the back early and it appeared that Kane gently escorted Eve into the ambulance instead of forcing her in. It's very rare WWE has gaffes like that, and when they do it always seems like the most embarrassing kind possible. Also how brutal was it while Cena was trying his best to babyface it up, only to have a large portion of the crowd chant "WE DON'T LIKE YOU" at him. He tried his best to play it off, but it looked like it even caught him off guard how vicious the crowd was.

I agree with the old timers, but for different reasons. They feel ex football players in wrestling make it seem more legit, I feel guys with an athletic background are more likely to stick around when the going gets tough and won't bail like bodybuilders and TV actor types. Plus football players in particular are probably more accustomed to things like bullshit hazing, so you'd expect that to appeal to old timey guys.

I love how Punk and Bryan have stolen each other's gimmicks with Punk now BEST IN THE WORLD and Bryan as the Meatless Messiah (VEGAN MEANS I'M BETTER THAN YOU!). Also seeing the reaction to the Mania buildup on the internet makes me realize how just completely opposite my tastes seem to be compared to the IWC at large. I was just posting on another forum how this year's WM has been one of the best hyped in years and the potential with three great matches with Rock/Cena, Punk/Jericho, and Taker/HHH (opinions on which will almost entirely be based on what people thought of last year's match, but whatever). Throw in Show/Shaq for the mainstream pub, and a Mike Tyson appearance for the HOF segment, and I don't see how this won't end up one of the biggest Manias ever. That doesn't even take in to account the rest of the card that will at least include a MITB match.

I could see Rob being a better Josh Matthews than Josh Matthews is, if that makes any sense. I just hope he doesn't end up one of those guys who hates the business after being run through the WWE wringer, It would be sad to see someone who enjoys what he does have it get squashed.

To me, everything about Hogan can be summed up by his latest face turn in TNA not too long ago. He was battered and bloody in the corner while the rest of the heels are beating up Sting, who's yelling for Hulk to help him. Hogan's regaining his senses and realizes the situation, and looks to the crowd for guidance on what he should do. The crowd wants him to be the Hulk they remember so badly and start going nuts, and after a few moments of indecision he finally makes the save. The crowd loses it like it's 1984 all over again, and for a few seconds it seemed like he was the old Hulk instead of just Old Hulk. I think Bryan and Vinny said it best when reviewing the show when they said "there's no one better at being Hulk Hogan still to this day than Hulk Hogan". When he puts his mind to it, he can work a crowd better than anyone wrestling has ever seen. That's why I still enjoy the WM Rock-Hogan match to this day. Yeah it's not a technical masterpiece, but it's two of the best ever at crowd manipulation putting on an absolute clinic.

I love how Dr. Lucha seems to make a conscious effort to filibuster when he's on with Bryan. After he does the intro and whatever the week's jumping off point is, Bryan barely gets a word in edgewise.

I believe the story goes that Sting was banging Slater's woman (Dark Journey maybe? I forget who it was) behind his back, Slater found out, and punched him. Sting allegedly didn't even attempt to fight back because he knew he was in the wrong.

There's certainly valid reasons to have a "locker room policeman" role, most sports teams have a guy who makes sure that everyone's behaving properly. The problem lies when whoever is in that role lets it go to their head. Taker's been that guy for decades and you never heard any stories of him bullying people, hell the only story I've ever heard was when he implied to HBK he'd beat the shit out of him when it looked like he was going to try to weasel out of doing the job for Austin. With Holly, I at least got the impression when he was being an asshole it was either in receipt to what he perceived as a legit misbehavior or in the case of the Tough Enough kids just trying to weed out the ones not cut out for wrestling. He seemed like an equal opportunity grumpy bastard. With JBL I always got the impression he preyed on people (like mentioned before) who couldn't fight back for one reason or another. That's why the Joey Styles story became so well known, he thought he could bully this pipsqueak announcer guy around, and even if the Rocky-like retelling of the story is exaggerated, it seems at the very least Joey got tired of his bullshit and popped him one. Even the non-violent tales of bullying like making Miz change in the hallway because he didn't feel he belonged is just straight up high school ridiculousness that just make him look no better than beating up the chess team for lunch money.

When I think of Paul Jones, I think of a guy who's stable was largely second tier guys. Other than Rude and Fernandez his guys were always on the US tag/Mid Atlantic/Six man championship level. Plus watching NWA tv, he frequently loses his place and/or stumbles in his promos. It's even more obvious when watching the promos between the Powers of Pain and the Road Warriors. Ellering didn't do much in terms of traditional managing, but he was excellent when he would sum up Hawk and Animal's promos (which at times, they needed someone to do for them). Then Jones comes out in his goofy ass 70s cowboy gear and mush mouths his way through another interview. Ironically, I think the WWWF trio probably suffers from less footage available. Most people today remember Blassie as the old guy the WWF would trot out and Albano as either Mario from Saturday Morning TV or the sloppy fat guy who did those funny skits on TNT. The Wizard died right before the big boom and hardly ever gets mentioned anymore in official WWE canon, so he's almost forgotten by everyone who didn't grow up watching 70s WWWF TV. Albano would probably be a solid #2 behind Heenan all time when it comes to being a guy who could get people to pay to see him get his ass beat. The main difference I noticed is that Bobby usually would get his ass beat and bump like a superball for the babyface, while Albano would usually do his "take one bump, juice, and bail" routine when it came time for the payoff. I thought people would figure it out that he always seems to escape, but it seemed to work every time they did it until they turned him face. Most of their best work is locked in the basement somewhere in Titan Towers. They just started running WWWF Championship Wrestling on WWE On Demand so hopefully we'll see some of the masters at work before they close it down for the Titanic Channel (aka WWE Network).

I've always wondered, I know Steve Lombardi was Kim Chee in the WWF, but who was under the mask elsewhere when the character was called Friday? Also, rewatching the 1988 NWA Saturday Night shows on demand is a good way to remind yourself how awesome Cornette was. Not only does he do his usual rant against the jobbers of the week (all without stopping to breathe), when the announcers offhandedly mention that Tully and Arn will probably be #1 seed for the upcoming Crockett Cup tournament due to being world champs it causes him to go off on another rant mentioning the MX were champs for the first one in 1986 and were not named #1 seed. It put over his team and he had an absolute legit reason for feeling his team got boned before by the seedings and reason to feel they should be ranked ahead of the champs.

It's not just that they job him out, but they seem to be going great lengths to make his character look as lame and unbelievable as possible. The way he's being booked has the distinct flavor of someone they've soured on.

Speaking of wrestlers and their lady friends, Bryan postulated that something must have went down with Maryse to make WWE knock Miz down from Mania main eventer (I know he wasn't the focus, but still) all the way to lower midcard joke in about 6 months. He made it clear he wasn't trying to imply he knew any INSIDER NEWZ, but if you think about it, she left kind of suddenly and he's never been pushed as anything close to something that should be taken seriously since. WWE has a track record of getting upset when women decide to go out on their own, so it wouldn't be completely out of left field to suggest they'd try to get back at her by burying her boyfriend. Hell, I can't think of anyone who fell so far in a short period of time that wasn't due to their own direct fuckup.

Some of the B awards were even more ridiculous than usual... Mike fucking Quackenbush getting more votes for Promoter of the Year than Vince? GTFO. I don't know what's funnier about that: Quack getting votes despite the WON more or less ignoring indy wrestling these days, or that hipsterism seems to have enveloped the voting process for the awards now.

Stormfront is the name of a neo-Nazi/White Supremacy website in the US. The ironic thing is that 90% of their members probably look exactly like Lance Storm.

Right around that time is when Vince went over the cliff with that. I distinctly recall several times hearing JR consciously avoid using pronouns to the point it became distracting.

Holy shit @ that Lance book title. I would almost be willing to believe a Canadian (and especially Lance) wouldn't know the significance of that, but NO ONE involved with publishing noticed?

My impression was that Legends contracts were a quick and easy way to get the rights for old timers to be used in video games and other nostalgia merch without having to haggle over royalties with each one.

From Todd's RAW report for this week: Yeah, because when Vince finally ate a Stunner they totally waited for a PPV to do it. Oh, wait....

To be fair, the WWF was pretty bad at telegraphing skippable shows. If Sean Mooney and Lord Al were your commentary team it's most likely C Show Buffet Time.

As long as Spike has Bellator, I don't see them changing format to be all rainbows and puppies. TNA should be safe as long as MMA is around.

What I don't get, is that no one seems to think guys like Monsoon/Ventura/Finkel were anything more than just good fits for what the WWF wanted to do at the time. If it was that simple, why has everyone else who's been doing those jobs since been so noticeably inferior? Ring announcing in particular has suffered, I don't think anyone can seriously say Tony Chimel and his ridiculous sing-song pattern are an improvement over Finkel. Justin Roberts is probably the least horrible guy in the role post-Fink and even he gets grating with how he seems to have a running contest over how long he can stretch out John Cena's name. They had to bring back Lilian recently so it seems like even WWE knows its something they could do better. Announcing has been even more abysmal, other than JR they haven't had an announcer who didn't generate channel changer heat since Vince gave up the headset. When they do find someone who seems like they could be okay, they get their ears screamed out until they quit or become an emotionless robot churning out Vince-speak. I honestly wish Vince would just go back to doing commentary since it doesn't seem like he can stand having anyone else do it.

I know HHH was really pushed down people's throats before he finally got over, but to say he's the Kamala of the 2000s makes you sound as ridiculous as Dave did in the 80s with his obsessive Hogan hate. His politics have been debated ad nauseum and he sometimes is too smart for his own good ("I'm good enough to have a long match with Scott Steiner!"), but lets not start pretending he was just another broomstick who happened to nail the boss's daughter. *Note that I'm not even a huge HHH fan but some of the arguments against him here seem kind of silly. Also the mention of Ken Shamrock earlier reminded me that the story about the ESPN piece on fighter pay is giving Dave plenty of chances to mention Ken being the guy that put the Zuffa era UFC on the map. I get the feeling he's going to start pushing Ken on the basis of that.

Between the names listed on the polls and the people who usually end up winning them, there's definitely some trolling going on. Not sure if it's Dave or the readers doing it. Maybe both, but if you include Kevin Nash on a HOF poll someone's being fucked with for sure.

Still, it's not like they were going against reruns. Just because the game didn't set records doesn't mean they didn't potentially draw viewers away.