sek69

HHH's promos make me long for the guy who yelled "GET TO THE POINT" at HBK that one time. Seriously, if HHH is the smartest man in the history of canvas and ropes, why does he waste so much time saying the same thing every week?

The moral here seems to be don't get injured or serve your country.

Well RAW was certainly interesting. On one hand you had a 20 minute Benoit-Christian match and the start of a good Shelton-Jericho program. On the other hand you had yet another looooooooooooooong winded HHH promo to grind the show to a halt and the continual undermining of Batista. Compare how the two brands' new champs started off: Smackdown: John Cena cuts a spirited promo in which he introduces (and does a good job of getting over) a new catchphrase. The champ.......is HERE. RAW: Batista gets less than 5 minutes of promo time before HHH has to come out and re-establish himself as the dominant guy on the show. I mean, odds are Batista isn't going to be able to cut a promo like Cena can, but they should really let him sink or swim on his own merits instead of letting HHH throw him an anchor.

He's also the embodiment of why they never will have one.

The name change stuff was for copyright issues, but he's repeatedly shown he wants to have control of all information about his workers, especially mid carders, when it doesn't even concern him.

WWE wants to control all aspects of a wrestler's life. Remember when they wanted all their workers to close their personal websites and only have WWE-operated sites? Vince is so paranoid about getting bad PR from his employees he's turing into a control nazi.

You'd think that they'd pay attention to which DVDs sell best and take that as a sign on what the fans want to see. Hell, if Comcast ever got off its ass and offered 24/7 I'd probably lose my job cause I'd be watching old NWA and AWA shows nonstop.

Apparently WWE is now a "drama free zone". I can't access that page (firewall at work blocks anything sports related which seems to include wwe.com) but what justification could there be releasing Matt Hardy? Wasn't he about ready to come back from his injury?

Maybe its just my bleeding-heart liberalness, but if someone's expressing suicidal thoughts you try to get them some help rather than kick them in the balls. I guess Vince already proved his views on suicidal employees with the whole Kerry Von Erich deal, so as long as the blood doesn't get on his suit no big deal.

Wow. This is turning into one of those stories that ends with "...and then he turned the gun on himself." Someone says they have nothing left to live for and they respond with firing him, taking away the one thing left in his life?

There's just something about how he uses the number of words in each issue as a selling point that makes me wonder if his high prices are worth it. Speaking of Dave's sales pitches, I always wondered why people in the industry would subscribe to the Observer. Especially now, since WWE is the only game in town. Seems kind of self-serving to read a newsletter full of stories about yourself, wouldn't you think?

It seems like Dave charges an awful lot for the newsletter. $90 doesn't even get you a full year sub. Does he know it's not 1986 and there's other sources for information besides newsletters? Just seems like an awful lot of money when you consider the best parts end up on the net in some form sooner or later anyway.

The "IWC" always gets behind the underdog, then if the WWE ever pushes them they end up turning on the guy faster than one of Hogan's tag partners. I think part of it is the somewhat elitist attitude of being a mark for someone underpushed just to be different, then once your guy gets pushed and has people on his bandwagon being a fan of the guy is nothing special. As far as Heyman style booking being hated, I'd wager most of the heat comes from the workrate wonks since that kind of booking usually protects poor workers. Not to mention sometimes Heyman didn't know when to stop, with half the matches having 947 run-ins and "lights go off and on" spots just to hide the fact that there was two garbage workers in the ring.

Austin and Eddie having good matches would have gone a long way toward making Eddie a star no matter if they had a long term program or not. One day WWE will learn that all you need to do to make someone a star is have them face a main event guy who's got mark cred to spare (Rock, Austin, HHH, Taker) and have the main event guy make him look like a million bucks. The main eventer doesn't even have to job as long as he makes the guy look credible. Then (and this is the part they haven't figured out yet) you let the guy try out his newly minted credibility before you have the main eventer who "made" him squishing the guy right out of the box.

Rhyno was over in ECW because of Heyman's ability to get anyone over and the fact that most of the guys in ECW were average sized. Once he was in the ring with WWE guys it really exposed him as a midget. I can't say I'm gonna miss him, but getting fired for breaking a flowerpot is pretty lame. I guess they view public domestic disturbances the same way they look at flying first class, only main eventers are allowed to.

LOD-Arn/Tully and Hogan-Sting are what leaps to my mind immediately, since they pretty much killed years of booking. I also vote for Angle-Austin from Unforgiven 2001. Not that Kurt didn't deserve to win, but the whole thing seemed forced having the All-American win the belt a few weeks after 9/11. It was actually kinda sad to see Kurt celebrating in the ring with his family in front of an apathetic crowd. (it was funny to see Taker join the celebration late then leave early, still pissed over the Taker/Kane - Kronik match)

Could they pick a worst name for the LOD DVD? Oh well, not like Vince is known for his tact. As long as it has AWA, NWA, and Georgia footage this should rock all sorts of ass. The Greatest of the 80s set sounds odd, the title sounds like an old Coliseum best of tape but a 3 DVD set is bound to have some gems on it. I'm not really bummed out over no HOF DVD, considering who was inducted. I mean most of the good matches amongst the people involved were on the Hulk Rules DVD anyway.

HHH did the right thing after all. I wonder if by WM 22 he'll be the champ again while Dave is in the second match from the bottom.

Cena beat JBL, which means either they are switching both belts or HHH decided Batista isn't worthy after all.

Well Meltz is raving about the Ladder match and HBK/Angle, so it's definately going to go on my DVD buying list. Speaking of, since HBK accidentally busted Angle's mouth during their match, I wonder if Kurt's wife is going to go around calling Shawn a sloppy worker now.

I figured Taker was going to win the moment Orton announced on RAW he was going to challenge him and pretty much got booed out of the building. They've done a pretty good job getting the fans to boo people from the opposite brand regardless of their heel/face status so that sealed the deal for Randy. As far as HHH goes, a long match can expose him too but if they go 25 minutes and the match sucks he can just go to Vince and do the old "he can't work WWE style" and get his precious back. WWE used to know how to book monster faces, you never saw the Warrior going 25 minutes during his time on top. Now everyone has to have a half hour chinlock match with Hunter to prove their worthiness.

Judging by how they seem to be blowing through the undercard, I guess HHH got his wish for a 25 minute match. That should do nicely to completely expose Batista.

From WO.com: Sources in the cable industry confirmed a few days ago that WWE has finalized its deal with the USA Network for Raw and the rest of WWE's cable package. WWE sources say the deal may be announced tomorrow. Thank God, they never should have left in the first damn place.

HHH/Batista: I think Batista's getting the win, but they've squashed the heat on this feud enough to give HHH the justification for winning it back in a month or two. HBK/Angle: This match kind of exemplifies the WWE right now. These two can bring the house down if they both have their working boots on, but so what? No one's being elevated here, no new stars are going to be made here. Just two guys who both are wrestling on borrowed time. I'm going to go with HBK just because he's got the worst of the beatdowns during the buildup and that usually signals who's getting the win. Cena/JBL: Cena really should get a win here since he's the most over guy on SmackDown by far. My spider sense is tingling however, between Vince being a mark for JBL and HHH probably dropping the RAW belt (and him convincing Vince that two title changes on one card would dilute the value of him jobbing) I think Cena might get screwed here. Christy/Trish: Christy's gonna win here since they're going to try to get something for their $250,000. Christy seems to try pretty hard and Trish can make this look better than a complete clusterfuck. TBS/Akebono: This will end up being a Russoific schmozz I'm sure. Seems like they're trying too hard to have a "Wrestlemania Moment" to air for the buildup for next year's WM. Eddie/Rey: Didn't I hear they want to move Rey up to face more heavyweights? If so, I think Rey's winning here to get some main event cred. Orton/Taker: I think they had Taker convinced to job until Orton fizzled as a face. They pulled the last minute heel turn, but I don't think Orton is the future WWE wishes he was unless there's a single McMahon female he can marry. Money in the Bank 6-man: I'd like to see Shelton win so that the IC champ can actually be the #1 contender like it used to be.

I always thought Hogan not putting over Sting after one of the best buildups in wrestling history was the moment where WCW went down the toilet. Everyone points to the Fingerpoke of Doom, but that was just two guys using the Ego Dildo on each other where the Hogan/Sting thing pretty much killed Sting's character by having him job after being built up as an Undertaker-style unstoppable force. Nash makes a good punching bag because he used to take snarky shots at smark favorites (vanilla midgets) and was friends with people who booked themselves to the top. I certainly don't think he's innocent but as soon as Hogan jumped to WCW you could see the entire promotion bend to catering to his every whim no matter if it hurt the company.