sek69

I thought it was more like five. Six if you count the chest-first turnbuckle bump he worked into almost every match.

If it's steroids related, I'm kinda shocked, since I thought Masters was looking rather HHH-like in terms of pudginess the last two weeks so I assumed he was off the juice. Who else has fallen to the drug policy?

From WO: Wow, who was he traveling with to cause "extreme heat"?

Yeah, that WCW work was all Benoit because lord knows Kevin Sullivan didn't know how to get a reaction from a crowd.

Even though this was in the wrong thread, I feel the need to reply. I don't think Benoit's overrated, he just took advantage of the positions he was put in possibly more than anyone else in wrestling. Since most guys blow chances handed to them on silver platters, it's a testament to his character that he busted his ass in situations like in WCW where it probably didn't matter if he had his working boots on or not. WCW really never had any main even plans for Benoit until when they were trying to keep him from jumping and gave him an obvious "please don't go" title change. Benoit certainly has a bigger moveset than someone like Lance Storm, but they were both the same in terms of ability to engage a crowd for a long time.

The build for the Foley-Edge WM match included Edge reminding Mick that he's never had a "WrestleMania Moment" in his career yet. Foley now says their WM match was the best hardcore match ever and he doesn't want people from ECW tarnishing the term hardcore with their antics. It really was a pretty well planned turn by WWE standards, but they goofed by turning Mick heel before establishing ECW was returning (God forbid WWE promote 2 PPVs at the same time) so the crowd was pretty "WTF?" at first. I think now that the fanbase is realizing ECW is coming back (at least for ONS II) it's making more sense.

Well you don't seem to have the most open mind on the subject, but considering Storm's career started 5 years later than Benoit's, I think that Storm's career pretty much paralleled Benoit's during the same phases of his career. The only difference is that Benoit got the breaks in terms of getting pushed in major US promotions. Benoit's only recently started to connect with the audience and was very Lance-like in his emotionlessness for most of his career. Benoit's time in Japan was spent in New Japan mostly and wrestling against some of the best juniors of the era. Storm's time in Japan was spent in WAR in lower profile matches. Benoit's time in US indies before hitting it big was spent in ECW when it was just breaking out. Storm's time in US indies before hitting it big was spent in Smoky Mountain, which no one was really following at the time. If you really don't see how that would give Benoit the edge with smart fans, you're being purposefully obtuse. I'm sure you're going to twist this into me claiming Lance was a better wrestler than Benoit, which I'm not. I'm not even that big a fan of Storm, to be honest. I just see that there but for the grace of God (including having a career shortening injury) goes Benoit. Had things worked out differently, they could have been in each other's boots very easily.

That's been taken out of context a lot by smarks who got their feelings hurt. When Lance made those "you can't judge if you haven't worked" comments, he was talking to people like the DVDVR PLAYAZ (not just them, but they're the most visible suspects) who act like they are more qualified to judge wrestling than actual wrestlers because they have a big tape collection or watch a lot of 90s AJPW or whatever bullshit reason they give. That's the attitude that irks a lot of guys in the business, but Lance made the mistake of bitching about it on his website. I was being half-facetious comparing Storm to Benoit, but Benoit had tons of smark cred just from being trained by the Harts and competing in the J Cup which was probably the first tape most of the people on DVDVR ever got from Japan. He was also in ECW in the short time it was a technical wrestling playground, earning him even more points. I'd blame the booking for that more than Lance, since he kept getting saddled with "serious" or "boring" gimmicks. That short time in WCW when he was actually getting a push and winning all the secondary titles was the only time he was allowed to show any personality other than that stupid "cabbage patchin' Lance" WWE gimmick. Yeah, Lance came off as a whiner, and he probably does think he's better than Kawada, but the net thinking he's barely above a jobber because he called some elitist mofos on their bullshit is petty too.

Nicca please. Until he made that crack about DVDVR, Lance was one of those guys worshipped by the net community. The over-reaction spawned by his comments only proved him right, IMO. The only difference between Lance Storm and Chris Benoit is that Lance didn't gain more smark cred by touring the world before becoming a midcarder in the US.

Wasn't Austin of the opinion that Flair could have spoken up and prevented the Blondes from breaking up, especially considering their big feud was with the Horsemen? I know Flair didn't have the book, but it sure seemed like he didn't go to bat for the guy he was supposed to be grooming as the next top star. The notion that Flair, world champion for most ot the 1980s and main draw pretty much up to the end of WCW, needed to have the book to voice his opinion on something (at least until Hogan showed up) always struck me as silly. I'm not saying they would have not broken the team up anyway, but I'm under the impression he didn't even make an attempt after telling Austin he was going to make him a star. So in summary I'm not saying Ric Flair broke up the Hollywood Blondes, but rather he didn't try to stop it.

It's a testy subject. The accepted answer is they were broken up because certain people felt their spots were threatened by how quickly the Blonds got over. It's alleged that Ric Flair was instrumental in said breakup, but that tends to attract the rabid Flair marks who dogpile anyone who suggests Flair ever did anything negative. I believe it caused some heat between Austin and Flair, especially after Austin becaue a superduperstar.

Both teams were broken up by politics as well, if the stories about the Blonds are true.

It only took 8 million to make. After DVD sales, they'll end up making a profit. Most movie experts only expected it to take in 3-4 million the first week so it already is a success by horror flick standards. As far as ECW on Sci-Fi goes, they've already veered pretty far from the science fiction stuff so ECW won't be completely out in left field.

I'd be willing to bet they only did so because Taker jobbed clean to Khali. This PPV is a prime example of why WWE, or any top level wrestling company, should never cater to what smart fans want. This show had everything the typical net fan demands in their professional wrestling (Benoit and Finlay in a 20 minute match, Taker jobbing clean, women having an actual match and not T&A garbage, a team of young flippy flop guys winning the tag titles) and it still got shat on.

Melina had some sort of tangle with Sharmell, and she had previously been full of herself backstage to the point where they did one of those "wrestler's courts" on her a while back.

Benoit and Finlay had what Meltz called "a freaking awesome 70s style match" as well. Apparently someone tied Vince up tonight and allowed all this awesomeness to happen.

Somewhat of an offshoot of this, it does appear Melina and Sharmell got into a scuffle for real and MNM was broken up at the PPV tonight because of it.

Tony Soprano's new baby niece (Janice and Bobby's daughter) is played by Tommy Dreamer and Beulah's twin daughters.

I think it was a combination of them wanting to go back to Japan, WWF not having anyone who could hang with them on their roster, and some of the guys feeling upstaged by Japanese chicks doing shit that wouldn't be commonplace in men's US wrestling for almost another decade.

It sounds ridiculous, but pretty much everyone in that Wargames besides Sting and JJ take indy bookings during the week and probably couldn't all be in one place at the same time prior to the show. Considering having 8 guys in a cage would take some planning to avoid it becoming a total clusterfuck, they had to do something to get some planning done. Personally, I'm waiting to see how the ROH-botz and TNA haters (they're usually the same people) reconcile Corny being the on-air authority figure in both promotions.

I've always thought Nash could (and should, considering how he's looked in the ring lately) be the Jesse Ventura of our time in terms of the "wrestler turned color commentator who's great on the mic". Having a wrestler on the announce team would give TNA's shows a boost in cred since the best announcers in wrestling have always been guys who were former performers like Jesse, Gorilla, and Bobby Heenan.

I like it just because it seems to be a natural heat seeker for the smarter TNA crowd. For all the (not entirely undeserved) heat Nash gets from net fans, the man's gold on the mic and as long as it doesn't lead to Big Kev squashing the entire X Division single handedly I'm looking forward to this.

After hearing it on the radio, I Googled the lyrics to "Obsession", most famous to most of us as the theme to Saturday Night's Main Event back in the 80s. Considering what we've heard about Vince McMahon since then, I can guess what made him like the song:

Short answer is Vince wants to give guys a WWE-owned gimmick they control the copyrights to. Longer, more hypothetical answer is that Vince seems to think any gimmick that a guy uses outside of the WWE is too bush league. Ironic considering the company line is that they'll listen to any input the worker has, yet the record seems to show they ignore that input and put the guy in a clown suit and demand he get over.