sek69

Seems pretty cut and dried to me. He's a tough guy from Oklahoma who embraces the healing power of Jesus and homophobia after finding out he didn't mind having a dude suck him off. See also: practically every openly homophobic person in politics.

So I've mentioned that I'm a fan of SAW (Showtime All-star Wrestling) which is a Tennessee indy run by Reno Riggins. Their champion was Phil Shatter (Gunner in TNA), and since they have a deal where SAW can use guys who sign with TNA but not on TV, they did an angle where Shatter dropped the belt and they ran a tournament. During the tournament they mentioned several times that Tommy Mercer (Crimson) was involved but they can't show his match because his contract with TNA prevents it. So on the show that aired August 8th they ran the finals, and your winner and new centerpiece of the promotion and TV show? Kid Kash. Guess who then made his return to the Impact Zone the next week?

One thing that really stands out when you watch late 90s Raws on WWE 24/7 is how they hyped each show one week to the next. I swear I see more promotion for the next Raw during reruns of House and Law and Order on USA weekday afternoons than on the show itself. It used to be Opening Segment to further the main storyline > midcard shit happens > angle advancement for main storyline > more midcard shit and possibly advancement for top secondary storyline> hype for next week's show > main event. Now we have to go on WWE.com or Twitter to find out what happens next, and most of the time we don't even know full PPV cards until the day of the show.

I'm probably naive on this, but Flair never struck me as a steroid guy. He seemed to be rocking the stereotypical roid bloat prior to the plane crash but not so much after, learning what HBK would discover 25 years later that bad backs do better when you drop 30-40 pounds of excess weight. Also, anyone else surprised that for a guy so obsessed with being 1985 Ric Flair forever, he would let himself go on TV in 2011 with Arn Anderson hair and a melted candle face? I know not even Flair can fight being in his 60s, but wasn't the angle with Curt Hennig bashing his face in the cage door in WCW a cover story for him getting a facelift? I guess I'm just kind of surprised he never used his scamming/grifting powers to score free hair plugs or plastic surgery.

The Conan thing was because HHH was openly lobbying, practically begging, to be considered for the part. His cosplay routine where he did his entrance at WM dressed in Conan gear was allegedly him giving the producers a visual of what he would look like in the role. I'm guessing he wanted it so bad because it's a role Arnold made famous and Hunter has such a tremendous hard-on for anything involving bodybuilders. Speaking of, the tidbit where Dave mentioned Stephanie gave Hunter posters (not clear if it was several or just one) of all the Mr. Olympia winners for Christmas one year gave me the mental image of Hunter as .

Acknowledging the WHAT chants just prolong them. Vince handles them best: if they start doing it to him he shoots a "the fuck you think you're doing" look, and if they continue he just starts speaking at a pace that doesn't allow them to get a WHAT in edgewise. Every time I've seen him do it, the crowd gives up within a line or two. I still can't believe Nash of all people got so thrown by the chants. Poor Hunter was out there like Bruiser Brody used to do with WCCW guys who couldn't do promos... "what Kevin is trying to say, is..."

Looks like they also want to rebuild the tag division, people seem to be so caught up in Vince having Lawler bury Otunga/Mr. Perfect Jr that they seem to be missing that it seemed to be done as part of the process, bury the last champs of the "old" tag team division to set up Kofi/Evan as the launch point for the new tag division. They picked the right crowd to do the change too, I haven't seen fans pop for a WWE tag title change like that in years.

I was wondering if anyone would mention that, and I was kind of surprised that didn't lead to some sort of Benoit chant. Or perhaps since Punk went for the Savage elbow, Cena just thought they were having a contest over dead wrestler's finishers.

The reason I brought up Gorilla is because Dave and Bryan have been (justifiably) bashing Michael Cole for killing the product he's trying to sell, especially his constant burial of Daniel Bryan. He gets "boring" chanted during his matches and Bryan has casual fan friends of his telling him they think Daniel Bryan sucks and they both feel it's because Cole is out there calling him a nerd and saying he has no personality every week. Now granted, that's his gimmick and Cole is largely just saying what he's being told to say. I just wonder if that ever makes Dave especially pause when considering Gorilla, for all his faults, at least tried to get guys over. He played a big part in helping Bret get over, even while part of the dastardly Hart Foundation he was putting over how solid Bret was in the ring. When they decided to pull the trigger on his singles push, they could build on the fact that this was the guy who was the fundamentally sound portion of a great tag team. While no one will ever confuse him with Solie or JR on the mic, it does speak to how your lead announcer does have a role in getting your product over with the home audience. Of course Hogan would have been Hogan no matter what, you only have to look at his AWA career to see that. I just think a lot of other guys on the card got a rub of sorts by having Gorilla give them props. Same thing when Jesse would grudgingly admit when a babyface did a good move, it beats the hell out of having Michael Cole literally take a shit on half the roster every week (to borrow a Gorilla-ism). That's why I brought it up again, you now have exactly what Dave seemed to think Gorilla was doing take place every week on WWE TV and it's arguably several times worse than the damage he thought Monsoon was doing. Also I always thought his wrestling career was largely overshadowed by his post-wrestling career. He was one of the better drawing heels of the early WWWF era, but since almost all the footage that exists are either of him way early in his career in Stampede or the tail end of his career in the late 70s. It would seem the bulk of his peak time has been lost to the ether. As far as his backstage role, I was always under the impression that Gorilla was an important guy behind the scenes. Maybe it was just people putting him over after he passed away, and certainly toward the end he wasn't doing much, but I thought he was almost like an agent of sorts and would give advice to guys who were interested in hearing it. Perhaps he just held the wall up, who knows. If that's the case, then strike that portion and just consider the other parts then.

So is there any reason Monsoon's not already in other than Dave spending most of the 80s just wailing on his commentary and making sure he won Worst Announcer every year (when anyone in the AWA was right there)? Even if you don't feel his wrestling career was worthy (and I think you could make a case it was), his importance backstage would seem to make him a slam dunk. I don't ever recall Dave doing any of his pimping posts on him, and I'd wager a lot of the new voters might not see him as anything other than the guy who did comedy bits with Bobby Heenan. Personally, I think his announcing was a significant part of the boom era since it lent legitimacy to those who remembered him as a wrestler, and new fans saw him as the voice of the WWF since he called all the big shows. Doesn't seem fair he should be shut out because Dave acts like Gorilla pissed on his cat.

RE always reminded me of a slightly more functional version of Chris-Chan of internet fame. For those who don't know, Chris-Chan was a dude with some kind of autism spectrum disorder who was at least in his late teens if not a full grown adult who went around wearing a homemade medallion of his Sonichu (hybrid Sonic the Hedgehog/Pikachu from Pokemon) character. He also stalked local malls for "nice" girls to fall in love with him and have his babies, only to lash out at them when they would invariably get creeped out by him. Also anyone who tried to help him act normal (teachers, mall cops preventing him from creeping) were known as "Jerkops" in the long, rambling fiction he would write where he would be the King of the World and everyone had to be punished for being mean to him. If you ever look up any of the stories about Chris-Chan and replace the "Sonichu" stuff with Chris Benoit it's a pretty eerie parallel.

Mistico got Wellness'ed, and Hunico worked under the Sin Cara mask because the 30 days wasn't over until this week. Yet Hunico is still under the mask. Mistico apparently rubbed practically everyone he came across the wrong way and it was thought that this was the opening they could seize to get rid of him but keep the Sin Cara gimmick. Especially since Hunico looked better than the original last week. May have been helped in editing, but there wasn't that point that is in most Mistico matches where you think "Is something going to get fucked up here?".

It's getting lost with all the Punk stuff, but man I hope Rey ends up one of those guys who WWE takes care of for life. He's probably at least 5 years past the point of having a destroyed knee, and the last couple of weeks have been painful to watch. He's been doing everything WWE has asked of him, including wrestling the main event on RAW last night. I know Dave's mentioned it before that the last time Rey had surgery he was told he shouldn't even jump off a curb with his knee, and he's still out there running around doing moonsaults.

Also being excited you won the WWE title isn't being a cartoon character either.

I remember Dave chuckling when the character debuted about how much it was more or less just Mil's shoot personality. I wonder if WWE came up with it or if Alberto pulled a Scott Hall and convinced Vince he came up with this great character that was just a copy of something Vince wasn't aware of.

To be fair, I don't think Nash is going to be coming back to be a full time wrestler. He's a smart guy and seems well aware his in ring career is pretty much over. He didn't even seem to want to do much in TNA wrestling wise. WWE is usually much better at handling older guys too, and having Nash as typical WWE manager who's physically weak would be silly considering his size, so having him being a bodyguard of sorts seems to work well for him.

Then it's good that they already have the main event at WM booked this year so they don't have to worry about not having guys at that level until the following year's show.

If we're going to talk goalposts, what about all the talk (not necessarily on here but I've seen it on other places) that MITB was going to do 200k+ buys which was completely unrealistic for a B level show that WWE more or less conditions people is skippable. When the early numbers came in higher than previous levels for that PPV but lower than inflated expectations there were renewed cries of "THIS ANGLE IS A FAILURE".

I would argue if anything is making this angle "fall off the rails" it would be from having the target audience for all the insider shooty style comments over analyze the shit out of every detail looking for reasons to dislike the angle/have no faith in it/convince themselves it's going to fail. Yes, it did lose focus two weeks ago when it seemed like it was building a Punk-HHH match that (for the moment at least) isn't happening instead of SummerSlam. Yes, the inability of WWE to consistently do long term planning has hurt it in the sense that everything they do gets redone a million times before airtime. However consider that before this started Punk was the leader of a group of jobbers and not really seen as much of a threat to the main eventers. Now he's over fairly big as a top babyface and is main eventing two PPVs in a row, including their #2 (or #3 if you want to argue) show of the year. At this point I would say it achieved the goal of making a guy a bigger deal, and unless he gets the Booker T treatment at some point down the line I don't see this being a flop in the "it didn't get anyone over or make any money" sense since the last PPV did better numbers for a B show and his merch is flying off the shelves.

I'm about 75% certain Punk must have stiffed jdw on a tape trading deal or something based on how he immediately jumps to the most negative outcome possible to any situation and assumes it's the most likely result.

The crowd completely shitting on the Dudes and cheering the dastardly Midnights at that one Clash is quite possibly the first documented example of the smarkish crowds we know and love today.

Don't doubt the power of Hulkamania, brother:

I just think it's funny TNA is party to an arrangement that pretty much 100% benefits the other side, and I'd be pretty confident that no one in TNA has a clue what makes it funny. It's like why did they even bother? They have footage of Jarrett winning the AAA title at a big show, something that actually makes TNA look like one of the big leagues instead of their usual bullshit indy selves, and they not only don't show it, they barely even mention it other than part of some comedy skit. I'm not saying they needed to educate TNA fans on the ins and outs of lucha, just show scenes of TNA guys in front of big ass crowds like when they aired matches from that Japan show in 2008 or whenever that anyone watching would see and think "wow, these guys must be a pretty big deal". I guess my point is that there's not that many opportunities for TNA to come off as one of the big boys. For them to go out of their way to ignore one that was pretty much handed to them on a platter has to be disappointing/infuriating to TNA fans who still hold out hope that they will ever become competition to anyone. Then again, you can probably count the number of those fans on both hands and have fingers left over so it's probably a moot point.

So DR LUCHA commented on this in the newest Bryan show. The belief as he understands it is that it's tied in to the settlement of the lawsuit Konnan had against TNA. The terms were they can't mention him or AAA or anything related, and that's also why they haven't brought any AAA guys in to the company. Meanwhile, AAA has mentioned TNA on their show and used TNA guys to their benefit. This may be the most TNA-est thing TNA has ever done.

It's Zack Ryder. If he sold one shirt it would be far out of proportion to his push.