sek69

In a way, someone being a spot machine makes me like them more since everyone in WWE has to use the same boring style. TNA certainly needs to fine tune some aspects of their product to be fully on WWE's level, but WWE is so stagnant right now that even a flawed TNA show beats WWE on many levels besides talent. Another thing to consider is that you see WWE talent twice a week, and have so for years. TNA kinda has to stop and re-introduce the national audience to their roster so right now it's kind of a "look what everyone can do" phase before they can go in and start getting people invested in characters. I know when I first saw an AJ Styles match I was unimpressed. After getting a chance to get a handle on his character, it let me get into matches I probably wouldn't have before. I'd wager once everyone gets a chance to get some depth on who everyone is, you might enjoy the product a little more.

Heh, how ironic if it's true that Tom Zenk was silenced by WWF/E lawyers. It's probably the only thing their legal team was successful in.

He sounds a lot more southern-ish than I expected.

What I find funny is that with the return of the McMahons, Austin, and now minis, if any viewers who used to watch when they left USA came back they would think nothing has changed in 5 years.

They're devoting a whole division on Smackdown to what they're calling "Juniors", which is anyone under 5 feet tall.

There's a lot of things that could have been awesome if WWE didn't handcuff them, so I don't see why this would be any different.

While HHH got a more watchable match with Batista than JBL did, that hardly makes him the best in WWE. Getting Batista over was HHH's pet project last year so he put in the effort he usually reserves for matches with friends. I'm wondering how you think HHH made Shelton look like anything but a jobber by letting him get cheap wins but never a satisfying payoff. Angle and HBK went miles beyond HHH when it came to making Shelton look like a star. If you think HHH is going to do anything with Cena other than expose his weaknesses and get the title back, I have some prime swampland for sale.

Between the Boogeyman and the new midget divison, it's clear Vince hates Smackdown.

Someone needs to get a screen cap of the guest book in that funeral segment. In the quick glance I noticed Kevin Dunn, Paul H., and "Pat & Sylvain".

Some tidbits from an interview that can be read here: He got heat for his comments about Smackdown guys being lazy when he was still on RAW, but he still thinks there's some people who aren't completely motivated. He thinks the hardest working guys in the company are HHH and Taker. When asked about him going over HHH three times "there were no politics involved". He buries JBL by not offering any comment on their matches beyond "We had zero chemistry". He buries OVW again while saying Bobby Lashley isn't ready to be in WWE yet. Obviously DAVE~! doesn't watch OVW TV, as he'd see what a good booker can do with someone like Lashley. He repeated the new mantra that the Hassan disaster was all the worker's fault. Someone else could have made it work, but Copani's heart just wasn't in it. His views on TNA (after admitting he's never watched): "I've also seen clips of their car wreck matches with AJ Styles doing his stunts. That's not wrestling. Wrestling is storytelling." It's funny, you can practically see Vince's hand up his ass puppeteering the whole interview.

Ref bumps absolutely expose the business the most. Not only do refs play dead for 10 minutes because they got lightly shoved into the ropes, but the booking is so lazy it happens in almost every RAW main event. It's like when fans at Nitros started looking toward the ramp for the run-in every week, you know its coming. The Hemme thing was just a funny screw up, she was wearing assless chaps with panties underneath that were the same color and Melina probably thought she was grabbing the chaps but pulled the panties by mistake. It reminded me of how fat guys in wrestling will adjust their trunks when they're laying on the mat supposedly selling. on edit, this discussion reminded me of the time Brian Pillman wrestled almost an entire match with one ass cheek exposed since he didn't stop the match to deal with his wedgie. That's dedication to your craft right there.

You know, I always thought American and Japanese wrestling fans had more in common than they realized. American fans always popped for the babyface comeback, the hot tag, the scrappy underdog. So do the Japanese, only they had a term for it: "fighting spirit". Whether it's Hogan "Hulking up", Ricky Morton enduring a pounding to finally make the tag, or someone like Rey Mysterio taking on guys literally twice his size; American fans love nothing more than to rally behind the guy who looks like he's got no chance. Sometimes people who appear to be looking for something entirely different end up rooting for the same basic concept.

All of us have seen SS97 ad nauseum, but that's us. 10-15 years from now, it won't be as well known to the current fanbase.

Bret had more input in his set than anyone else, so his DVD set should have higher quality matches. I mean, I don't have a problem with most of the matches on the set, but they really should have put all the famous/historic matches on considering it's not certain if WWE and Bret will work together like that again. It just seems like they were so cautious to not do anything to piss Bret off.

It just keeps getting worse for JR.

The XFL got coverage in WO because it was started by the owner of a wrestling company. Vince started a football league because it's always been his obession to broaden his reach beyond wrestling. Same reason he's gotten into bodybuilding, supplements, movies, music, and ice cream bars. It failed because after the first week, football fans didn't want to see "sports-entertainment" in their football and wrestling fans didn't want to see football in their wrestling. Monday Night Football takes a chunk out of everyone's ratings, since football is argueably the #1 sport in the US. What I said was the reason I can't get into MMA is that mentally I'm always thinking that someone could get seriously f'ed up and it keeps me from getting fully into the match. Maybe that just makes me a pussy, but whatever. I don't have to worry about that when I watch wrestling, unless Nash drops someone on their head again. Not really. In the world of legit sports, baseball doesn't compete with football, basketball doesn't compete with hockey. The TV stations they air on compete in terms of ratings each sport gets, but I doubt Bud Selig gives a shit what the NFL playoffs garner in the ratings. He might care from a business standpoint when it comes to negotiating with the networks, but I don't think MLB is brainstorming ways to beat the NFL.

Why did I think he was in that 10 man? Brain cramp on my part I guess. Either way, I don't think there's a reason to have a Killer Bees match and both Bulldog matches included when there's several more important matches (historically and/or work wise) that could have been included.

You answered it yourself. Stylistically they are similar. They look similar. There are many common elements between the two that appeals to fans. Well then let me try this route: Do you think it's fair to have a worked sport compete with a legit one? Wrestlers have the advantage of having agents, bookers, and writers to cover their weaknesses while MMA fighters are pretty much out there swinging in the breeze when they have a match.

Because football and boxing aren't being covered by the same newsletters like MMA and pro wrestling are. (They *are* both found in the sports page of your local newspaper, however, because they're both legit contests. Pro wrestling usually isn't, cause it's not. ) Because Vince McMahon isn't trying to convince actors to no-show movie shoots and appear on Raw like he is with UFC employees.

By the way, the point of this chat (at least when I started the thread) was to discuss how a real sport and a worked sport can be considered competitors.

I get the point, no matter how sarcastic and condescending you care to put it. *MY* point is no matter how realistic you can make pro wrestling look, the fact remains it's worked. Of course I'm well aware that WWE doesn't define pro wrestling. I wouldn't have become goodhelmet's man whore if I only was aware of WWE. I know boxing isn't very simliar to MMA in terms of technique and tactics, but they really hit each other in boxing. They really hit each other in MMA. They're not supposed to really hit each other in pro wrestling. I wouldn't consider Sam Waterson capable of handling a real case just because he does an outstanding job playing an assistant DA on Law and Order. He uses the same techniques a real lawyer uses, but his cases are all scripted.

That was the point I was trying to make, boxing and MMA are legit contests. Well MMA is, I'm not to sure about some boxing matches these days. Stylistically, wrestling and MMA are more closely related since you'll see stuff like powerbombs in MMA and tap outs in wrestling, but in the end the worked factor makes the difference to me.

I don't want to come off as knocking MMA, I respect the sport, I just don't understand how it became to be considered a competitor of pro wrestling when as you said boxing seems a more natural choice. I know, thats why I said that Meltz is trying to gain cred by covering a "real" sport but the people he's trying to gain cred with don't respect MMA.

Well to be fair, Stu Hart was stretching people in the Dungeon up almost to the end. I know MMA is a relatively safe sport, but the object is still to knock out your opponent or make him tap (or pound him until the ref stops the match). Crippling injuries in wrestling like Hayabusa or Droz were the result of botched spots. Boxing is definately the most brutal sport, and why it gets treated with respect and MMA is considered barbaric is beyond me.

Wrestling fans have always had options when it came to what show they wanted to watch. Whether it was WWFE, NWA/WCW, ECW, AWA, or if you were lucky, a regional promotion like World Class or Memphis, there was always an alternative if you didn't like one company's style of product. With everyone but WWE folding and TNA just now beginning to emerge as a viable second option, a lot of the IWC (led by Meltz) are pimping MMA as an alternative for wrestling fans. Meltz even tries to make it sound like you have to be a MMA fan to be a complete fan of wrestling. I'm wondering if the blending of MMA and pro wrestling isn't like forcing together cats and dogs. On paper it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, since both are presented as athletic contests, and both undoubtedly require skill to excel at. The problem lies in how each side's fanbase views their sport and how the public at large views both sides. Most longtime MMA fans (I don't know if MMA has an equivalent term to "smarks") look down at wrestling as "that fake stuff" and resent being lumped in with wrestling fans. A lot of pro wrestling fans don't like wrestling to be compared with MMA since it tends to expose a lot of the worked side of the business. I mean, you watch a guy work an armbar as a resthold in WWE, then in the "real stuff" someone taps to the same armbar in seconds. There's also the view of the mainstream, non-fan, public. Most non-fans think MMA is barbaric and all wrestling fans are inbred retarded rednecks. Lumping those together doesn't help anyone in the public eye. Wrestling journalists like Meltzer seem to think covering MMA will give them some mainstream cred, but those people he's trying to impress think MMA is nothing more than contained barroom brawling. Personally, I don't mind MMA but I can't sit down and watch it like I can with wrestling. I think part of it is that when I watch MMA I always have a twinge in the back of my mind that someone could seriously get hurt doing this. I don't have that in wrestling since there's usually a low risk of someone getting f'ed up unless something gets botched. I think what it comes from is that I used to watch boxing a lot growing up, but then I started seeing guys I watched growing up who ended up brain damaged and punch drunk. It made it hard to enjoy boxing knowing that these guys getting knocked out are probably going to suffer long term effects. When I watch wrestling, I don't worry that the guys I enjoy watching are going to end up vegetables. At least not from wrestling. They may fuck themselves up with their personal demons, but most guys retire from wrestling with scarred foreheads and bad knees at the worst unless they had some kind of drug problem. I know a lot of people here are MMA fans, I wondered what you guys think of the breeding together of MMA and pro wrestling.