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I'm guessing it was the Outlaws match at WM 14 too, as there was a couple of "holy shit that was almost fatally botched" moments. Not to mention the whole thing was rendered pointless by a Dusty Finish the next night on RAW.

I would imagine after the Mel Phillips/Pat Patterson scandals they want to get the fuck away from any potential pedophiles as quickly as possible. If OJ was getting some young fruit on his own time I doubt WWE would have cared, it was only when he started taking the kid with him on the road and exposed WWE to another embarrassing sex-filled tabloid-attracting PR nightmare that something was done.

Why is that? He's proven to be a perfectly acceptable wrestler and SD is in dire need of warm bodies to fill a 2 hour show these days. The "he's old" argument is not an allowable answer since he's younger than Finlay, the same age as Booker, and only 3 years older than Batista.

When Tatanka made his return to WWE, a lot of people were barely able to stifle laughter at the thought of a guy from the cartoon era wrestling in 2006. Yet when he did make it back on TV, pretty much everyone was impressed at not only the shape he was in, but how he was still pretty decent in the ring and took bumps some of the youngin's would hesitate taking. Considering SD's roster is pretty much barebones now due to injuries and ECW needing a talent pool, I can't figure out why someone like Tatanka is still jerking the curtain on Velocity. I'm not saying he deserves the title, or even a main event push for that matter, but Finlay's proven that there's room in the midcard for a middle aged guy who can still go. It looked like they were going to do something with him, with the promos running about him getting back to his roots (which seemed bizarre considering his gimmick was already as back to his roots as he could get without declaring war on the white man) but that seems to be dropped already.

It's still one of the better WWF/E shirts I've seen.

TNA is the new Lance Storm in terms of their current target of hysterical over-reaction. The smarkier-than-thou types are going nuts over Impact getting record ratings when they keep beating the drum of TNA never being able to succeed. I especially like in the Impact spoilers thread they're all "OMG TNA IZ TEH DUM" over Shane Douglas' "hardcore bingo hall" references as if it was giving free pub to One Night Stand. Someone pointed out that TNA is doing a houseshow that same day at the ECW Arena and got chastised for "grasping at straws here to make TNA booking seem logical" because "this [the TNA houseshow] hasn't been mentioned on-air yet". Which of course is exactly what Shane was doing, making references to it on air. Since smarky-smarks like to pre-judge things, hilarity ensues.

That was last Tuesday, so The Fight Network wouldn't be running Stampede now if the story is factual.

From Meltz: With the Pillman DVD, and the impending debuts of Harry Smith and Nattie Neidhart (she's rumored to sign after recovering from knee surgery) I figured Vince would be getting the Stampede footage soon. I just hope they don't do anything stupid considering they have tons more footage featuring Bret and Owen.

Kane vs Kane is already better than Taker vs Taker, since whoever was in the Classic Kane suit is at least as tall as Glen Jacobs. Nothing was funnier than seeing Brian Lee go face to chest with the real Taker at SS 94.

Chyna has said on Stern shows that HHH likes to pitch and catch when it comes to backdoor activities. I seem to recall Meltz making a throwaway comment about Steph doing whatever enhancers HHH was doing and that was the main reason she turned into everyone's chubby smokers-voice aunt practically overnight.

See, if WWE wasn't so adamant about making their workers hate the Internet, maybe Orlando would have read the RF story and decided that the NAMBLA lifestyle just isn't worth it.

This will probably cause more sports bars and restaurants to stop showing PPVs, since their prices usually get raised as well when they do this. WWE hasn't produced a PPV worthy of $40 in years, and even if they do the DVD will be out for half that price a few months later.

Wow, that's just....wow. Morality of teenage love affairs aside, why would he be riding with him to shows? That's like asking for shit to hit the fan.

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.