tomk

this is from where? Who was involved in the UWA in Georgia and when?

building housing for Crime Tyme and Pretty Ricky. Lusting in his heart for Maria.

Instead of just looking for celebrities who want a paycheck, the WWE seems to be going after celebrities who are actual fans. These are all the guys who showed up in the "I too am a WWE fan" advertisements years ago. I imagine they'll avoid Steve O. I imagine that this means they won't get anything that will get as much mainstream coverage as Cena v Federline, but it means at least the borderline celebrities will appear to be legit enthusiastic.

Kimala isn't a guy who lacked ability at all. Really mobile super heavyweight. Big bumper. That second and occasionally top rope splash was a pretty big crazy move. He’s got an excellent Sano/Ringo Mendoza back savate kick. I remember Jewett praising him for his moveset for the time Really like his WWF cage match with Andre. He’s credited with bringing the cage to Arena Mexico. A lot of his matches had shitty finishes but a guy who I normally looked forward to in Mid South main events when we were putting together the Midsouth set (he was really dull when working a scientific midcard matches built around nerve holds but in a main event with big spots he entertained). My favorite thing was that Joel Watts was clearly embarrassed about the racism and would call all of Kimala’s matches as though Kimala was a “cerebral” worker playing mind games. “Kimala is a real thinking man’s wrestler”…” Comes from educated royalty”..”He does this to confuse and intimidate his opponents”.

So one of the weird things about watching lots of 80s New Japan is that I'm constantly looking forawrd to Tiger Toguchi matches and really wondering what is available form the seventies and if there is anyhting from WWF worth giving an additional look to.

Man we need a seperate thread for Babinsack.

Nikita is a guy who is pretty solid in 92. I don't know if you can compare his 92 to Luger's 89 or whatever 6 month period people point to for HHH. And well lots of people were performing at a high level in 92 but feels like 92 Nikita is a guy who didn't need to be protected from exposing himself.

Jim Ross of all people calling this an "Atlantis style torture rack" made me doa full on spit take.

Did anyone think that this "promo" was that good? I watch boxing hype interviews and there are guys who come off natural and guys who come off forced and this felt cheesy, like the wrestling promo that a local sports commentator would play and laugh at with the weather man. It may have been too blue for that but still.

Singles or tag? There may not be a better singles match with him in it. Just watched Hoshino, Choshu, Inoki v Hall, Orton, and Murdoch which I think is a better gimmick match with Hall then the ladder match.

Fuck these long assed threads mean I miss pages and pages of these things and find interesting things pages back but Neither Watchemn or Dark Night are particularly great stories. The gimmick worked for Watchmen and Dark Knight. And demonstrated to generations to come that gimmick will appeal to adolescent boys and get you farther quicker. Both Hall and Michaels have been in better matches than the Mania ladder match, matches that told better stories. But gimmick is memorable. Jeff Hardy and Edge are both multi time world champs. People still regularly talk about Shelton Benjamin’s huge upside. People took the correct lessons from both Watchmen and the Mania ladder match. The gimmick will get you far.

Give up on him. He's pretty univeresally dissapointing. Part of the problem is I think that his instincts aren't good. If someone put together a complete WCW TV title set ( a title built around how do you put together a showcase match with variety of opponents) I think his run would look far more dissapointing than even Johnny B Badd's. Orndorf with the Tv belt often reminds me of HHH in a guy who has tools and ideas but he lacks an understanding of how those work.

The Junk Food Dog criticism seems to be of his willingness to get fat and lazy. If more prime promos were available AND he stayed as roided as Graham than maybe.

Was Barbarian as the first challenger to Simmons' world title booked any worse than Barbarian as first challenger to Ultimate Warrior's world title? B

People butted heads with Ross (HHH, Russo, Ferrera)...they just happen to be people I don't put much value into. Still the question is what's wanted out of guy in this position? It's possible that basically upper management wants midddle management to be the fall guy. It's possible that they don't want a guy in that role who workers feel loyalty to. It's possible that they don't want a guy in that position who is very good at saying "sorry I don't want to do this but my hands are tied" I think the nature of the promotional wars was such that the NJ3 plus Saturn would have ended up on RAW no matter who was in charge especially with Benoit just winning the title... as it comes accross as a coup. I mean they hired Meng when he had the WCW Hardcore title too. That's classic Vince.

The WWE was willing to let his contract expire and honestly if he had made the phone call this story would have gone down as as big of a mistake: “The WWE let Rock’s contract expire and adding to the insult the only guy they had contact Rock was middle manager John Laurinitis”. Very little of this looks like legit Laurinitis mistakes. Most of this is just him doing his job. You don’t blame middle management for doing what upper management wants/tells him to do. Even something like the A-Train push in 2002, where pretty much everyone (outside the company) knew that having A-Train be the guy who took out Rey was a complete waste of Reys value. It’s seven years later and it’s unclear if the WWE values Rey significantly more. Laurinitis was acting in accordance with management philosophy. The idea that the firing of a pregnant woman (who If memory serves Vince thought was ugly to begin with) was Laurinitis decision alone or wouldn’t have happened if someone else had the job seems silly. The WWE wants disposable women who look model pretty and not just "wrestling pretty". The WWE wants Laurinitis to be the guy they can use to play bad cop. Those aren't his "mistakes". Legit errors that can be blamed on him. -Authorizing Bob Orton, who had hepatitis, to bleed all over the Undertaker. John knew about the hepatitis, and didn't tell Undertaker in advance - Hiring the wrong one-legged guy The first is a serious error. Felt like the type of thing that gets you fired. The second still amuses me and I have no idea why no US indy has run the one legged match up between the two. I’m unsure about what to say about this one: They WWE didn’t want to run OVW anymore. Who are the WWE guys that didn’t go through any other WWE “developmental territories” besides Florida? Only two I can think of are Ezekial Jackson and Ted Dibbiase Jr. It feels a little early to say program is failure. Part of me thinks that it was a big mistake not to work with Booker T…a semi retired Booker T with a program in Texas and Africa could be useful asset. You have a place already set up a guy who has contacts with local businesses and a Texas wrestling audience that is a significantly better than the Florida ones and Booker T does media appearances well. So not using booker Ts program can be blamed on Laurinitis' desire to party in Florida. I have no sense of pros and cons of Jody Hamilton’s program in Georgia. And yeah they had a lot of fuck ups in the set up of the Florida program…(the no bathrooms, etc)..but my sense is that the WWE was committed to building a program from scratch instead of piggybacking on an already established program. They were going to fuck that up in really predictable ways (permits, bathrooms, etc) and it didn’t matter if they put it in a place where Laurinits liked to hang out or not.

Yeah from an aesthetic point, I expected him to see thigns differently than me and Phil. That said "his opponents, some of whom were among the most talented wrestlers in the business"=2007 Morishima, Suguira, Bison Smith, Sano, Taue, and Samoa Joe (the Kenta defense not being in Japan) is not something I thought Meltzer would say. There was a workrate juniors match on every NOah show if the GHC title was defended or not. Even if you were dissapointed/dismissive of the GHC defenses...the general point about 2007 was that there was no one there credible to be on top, and rest of card was built on guys who weren't ready yet getting built up which is why Misawa was stuck with the belt. While he teases at that: is a set of sentences that really misses by a big degree exactly how dire the situation was if it weren't for Misawa.

More dissapointed in: Than all the foolishness in Bryan's obit. As don't expect anything out of Bryan and that is real odd read of those 2007 shows by Meltzer. Unless he thinks 2007 Morishima, Suguira, Bison Smith, Sano, Taue, and Samoa Joe were among the most talented wrestlers in the biz. Or that SUWA's retirement or Bull Buchanon or that Arai/Iwisa tag team equaled stacked undercards. And yeah I was hoping for more out of part II.

Thanks for the thread link titled "Issue 730 out now"". Am amused to no end that Alan4L was one of the proofreaders. Did people defend Keller when he confused Great Sasuke and Kensuke Sasaki with the same kind of "this is a general purpose survey post not in depth researched piece" explanations. I really liked the narrative piece Bryan wrote at beginning of decade about going on the road with Buddy Wayne during Waynes supposed last run. But his defense that reading figure four and expecting more than Shanon Rose level insight seems accurate. He's smarter than Babinsack, but probably less insightfull than Todd Martin, maybe functional equivalent of Wahlers. I wouldn't read any of them for anything more than shit and giggles. his obits embarrasing but did anyone actually expect better.

Has the thread been purged? I see an Observer thread from June 22 with no mention of Alvarez' bio. And a Figure four from June23 with no mention.

I assume the criticisms and defense of his Misawa piece are somewhere on figure four board. Someone want to give me the name of the thread as I'm struggling to find it.

How have you never seen a promo for Slappowitz? He's working rabbi/kabbalistic religous leader gimmick not lawyer gimmick.

I remember really liking the Cannonball Grizzly stuff I saw on European tapes. Don't remember much about his post Grizzly run in ECW...Did he get any matches or just fed to Spike?

A couple years back remember watching a couple handhelds with the Whipwreck/Spike team v Can ams and being surprised by how much I enjoyed the face team. I imagine that when Spike wasn't working giant killer who sold like an acid casualty or stuck in Dudleys v Spike/ Balls(NEw Jack, whoever) clusterfucks he probably has a bunch of neat matches in his ECW run.

He asked me to stop taking shots based on opinions posted two years earlier and I stopped. All this is true. The point was that the WWF style was built on loose work where guys controled their own bumps with weak heels/strong faces. It's a style that preserves the bodies of the faces (not so much the heels who were working same schedule). Either way don't know if we should accuse him of a lack of work ethic.