Coffey

At Hell in a Cell (the previous night), The Miz & R-Truth did a run-in after the WWE title main event. This is a black & white picture of the aftermath. It is also the reason why I cared to watch RAW at all...and I'm glad that I did! From reading around various websites today, the feelings on RAW last night seem to be.. mixed. I, however, liked the majority of what I saw. Namely the closing angle with everyone walking out on C.O.O. Triple H & the awesome 12-man tag team match (which even featured Mason Ryan). WWE right now have a lot entertaining guys on the roster. Although not main event caliber (at least not all of them, not in my opinion), people like Evan Bourne, Kofi Kingston & Dolph Ziggler are damn entertaining to watch. They bring that high energy feel to the show, and I'm not talking about the Owen Hart & Koko B. Ware tag team. I wasn't a fan of how Mark Henry was used over the course of the night though. He's been built as this unstoppable monster. He has beat Randy Orton clean in the middle with his finish on two consecutive PPVs. One for the title, the next (in a Cell) to defend the title. That's pretty impressive. However, after the Cell match, Orton beat him down with a chair and he ran away. On RAW last night, after Randy Orton had already wrestled a match, Mark Henry came out to start some shit or potentially split a wig. A brawl broke out, with security doing run-ins to pull the two apart. For the first time since becoming a new & improved THUMP-slam throwing main eventer, Orton got the upper hand on Henry. I'm O.K. with that, actually, because you need people to believe the babyface can win too. But then later in the night, Henry was talking about "unsafe working conditions" and there not being good enough security. This is the same Henry that purposely injured people with a Pillmanizer (Kane, Big Show, Vlad Koslov) and just earlier in the night was subdued by said inept security. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense. Whatever. Storyline "kayfabe" or not, this was hilarious to me. What does Morrison have to lose at this point though? He's already in the doghouse, being completely buried (see his twenty second loss to Alberto Del Rio) & his wife was fired. At least he's doing something entertaining for a change! Go Twitter. Speaking of Twitter, Kevin Von Erich has been going off. Shitting on Mark Henry & even Chris Jericho. Here's his Tweets: Pretty funny burn at the end there. I'm surprised WWE never tried to get Lacey Von Erich though. She seems to be exactly what they would be looking for. A famous name, blond with big fake tits. Maybe she is being black-balled because she worked that Hogan/Flair show? I have no idea. She would have to be better than fuckin' Kelly Kelly though. Take that either way... Allah Ackbarrrrrr!!

How about "Diamond" Dallas Page? Not too many "classic" matches but he did have good matches against Savage, Hart, random Johnny B. Badd and even Goldberg. Plus his stuff with Benoit, Raven and Eddie Guerrero. I think some of the Jersey Triad stuff happened in 1999 too. I remember there being some decent tag matches.

Oct. 03, 2011 * Mark Henry is the best thing in all of U.S. wrestling in 2011. I hated him running away from Orton & his chair after the match though. Nice to know that a Hell in a Cell match can not end a feud! I'm not sure why no one here seems to use the blog feature anymore, but I wanted to jot some of my random wrestling thoughts lately down. This will be pretty unorganized and focus a lot on current WWE or TNA. Although I'll occasionally hit a nostalgia trip and mention something from years ago. Granted I know full well that I am not as learned as a lot of people here about the history of wrestling. I claim to be nothing but a normal fan with his own random thoughts. Feel free to comment, I just didn't wanna spam up a thread: * I don't understand why Alberto Del Rio lost the WWE title two weeks ago if he was just going to win it back last night at Hell in a Cell anyway. Same with Beth Phoenix: why not let her win the title in her hometown of Buffalo if you're just going to give her the belt two weeks later anyway? * Speaking of Beth Phoenix, I'm really glad that the Divas title is off of Kelly² & she held it for way too long. She can't even run the ropes properly & it's completely ridiculous that she's even wrestling, let alone a multi-month champion. At least Trish improved! I'm not sure if women can draw in the States, probably not, but what can draw in wrestling anymore? WWE offering a bunch of different aspects during their show is not a bad thing. They're slowly seemingly bringing the tag division back to relevance. Cody brought back the old IC belt. Why not try to improve the women too? Let Tamina get some work in. Beth/Tamina or Natalia/Tamina. Maybe try to groom AJ Lee as the female Ricky Morton. She's still really green but I think she has a lot of potential and it seems like it would be pretty easy to put sympathy heat on a pretty, small girl. Give little girls a role model too. * It was noted by someone on, I think DVDVR that John Cena is "the Jason Voorhees of WWE." Now I can't stop picturing him in a hockey mask & it's hilarious. No matter who has the belt, he's going to keep coming. You can't stop him. He'll get you eventually. * I wish everything in WWE didn't feel like a second-rate rehash of the most popular characters/angles in WWE history. I wish WWE, when trying to recreate things, would at least look farther back in history than like six or seven years ago. Randy Orton is a poor man's Steve Austin with his tweener gimmick. John Cena is the Hulk Hogan style 80's babyface. Punk/HHH is pretty much Austin/McMahon all over again. Although now it's morphing into some sort of weird conspiracy angle featuring like six other people (Miz, Truth, Ace, McMahon(s), Nash). At least it's kinda different that way though. * I think Kofi/Bourne is a good tag team. Whoever chose the name "Air Boom" should be fired though. Also, they should do more double-team moves, have an actual tag team entrance not just a spliced singles entrance together. Give them matching outfits, not just matching colors and a damn tag team finisher! The Dudleys were super over in large part because The Dudley Death Drop was booked as, well, death. I think they have potential but if WWE treats it half-assed, it'll be viewed as half-assed. * I really like Booker T. on commentary. He's still learning and makes mistakes, which sometimes make moments a lot more awkward, but he's funny and feels fresh. He had the lines of the night at the PPV last night and on RAW last week. "I had that steak at Denny's this morning!" in reference to Ross saying Sheamus was tougher than a $2 steak. * Impact Wrestling is doing some good things lately. I think Eric Young and Robbie E. are legitimately funny. The Robert Roode road to the title is fun. I like joker Sting. * Watching older stuff, I sometimes wish I would have been born about five years earlier. I just turned 30, but I missed a lot of great stuff the first time around in the 80's. I'm a big fan of Nikita Koloff, but I completely missed Magnum TA. I got to see some WCW Muta, but had no access to his Japan stuff. Now as an adult, I can seek it out but it's not the same as seeing it happen at a current state with the eyes of a child. I took for granted how many greats I was watching growing up: DiBiase, Rude, Roberts, Santana, Valentine, Duggan, Steamboat, Perfect, Adonis, Piper, Bad News, Eaton, Morton, Savage, etc.

Why not? It was still him. There have been good workers that excelled in shitty gimmicks before. Hell, Kane is a pretty shitty gimmick when you think about it. It sucks that he was pigeon-holed but it's more about the body of work than the moves anyway and I just find him...below average. Regardless of if he's doing a Big Boot/Jackknife Powerbomb or a Chokeslam/Tombstone. Ya know? This has been derailed kind of anyway, as I don't think anyone would argue trying to put Kane on the list (since this spawned from him being above Lance Storm). But I would agree that Storm shouldn't be there either. So it's all good.

Well, he was also Isaac Yankem DDS & fake Diesel, neither of which can be ignored when we're looking at his 90's work. And both of those runs were absolutely abysmal. Even when he first showed up as Kane, he was still pretty bad. Go back and look at his early Tombstones, to Taker or Vader, and try not to cringe!

The only one of those I would argue with is Kane. Lance Storm did have a helluva drop kick, so I'll give him that. I can't really disagree with anyone that shits on his work though. To me, it felt like a lot of people, at least on-line, would talk about how great he was, and I kind of just kept waiting for him to show it and he never really did.

Well, those names were given to my via text message by a friend at work when I told him about the thread. So I'm going to dig around, do some reading, watch some matches & see if a case can be made for any of them. He's coming over tonight after work to watch the Hell in a Cell Pay-Per-View, so I thought I would humor him. I guess I shouldn't have said they "came to mind" but they did after he mentioned them. I've never liked Saturn, Storm or Douglas, but whatever. I'm sure there's some decent early Douglas tags with Steamboat and maybe some Eliminators stuff with Saturn? I don't know. Jericho debuted in 1990, had a J-Cup in, I think '95 and then showed up in ECW in '96. So he missed like half the decade from what I know. Maybe I overlooked some earlier stuff or something though. I personally think I could make a stronger case for Haku/Meng than I could for Saturn, but whatever. Also, I challenge your 100 list! I couldn't even come up with 10 for this list! I'm stuck at six...

It's weird how the 90's seem so flaky. Especially considering the biggest boom period, but it didn't really focus so much on in-ring work as it did the story, I guess. Here's a list of guys that came to mind that I'm going to research a little bit more to see if I can make a case for any of them: Chris Benoit Chris Jericho Lance Storm Saturn Rey Mysterio Eddie Guerrero Shane Douglas

Savage is great but in WWF he turned into a commentator, then his WCW run, he didn't do much. He was better in the 80's. Is 90-93ish good enough to put him on the list where there's other guys that worked the whole decade? I think Bret is the consensus #1, but 2-10 is interesting. EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, this is a really hard list. I can't even come up with ten names. WWF, especially for the first half of the decade, was pretty damn bad. You had the steroid trial shit, and they more focused on gimmicks and characters than actual work. Then WCW, you had a lot of people really phoning it in because they were getting paid anyway. Like, I thought of Scott Hall's name, but does a couple years working 1-2-3 Kid & Jarrett put him in, because that's what it would be (and 2 ladder matches with Shawn). He had a lot of jobber squashes to get him over in WWF and in WCW, he didn't really do too much. Waltman could probably have a case made for him. But this list is really hard. Not too many guys that worked the entire ten years. A lot of people went to WCW and the quality of work really dropped off (sans like undercard guys that still had something to prove). I think I need to look at more WCW pre-Hogan and WWF post-trial/pre-Attitude. Maybe I can find some more names.

Well this just proves that we're never going to agree, so I'll just drop it. I really don't see how, but whatever. I feel like you're just trolling me at this point anyway, so fuck it.

What the fuck? Have you seen a Sabu match. He does not have shitty punches. The list of guys who have outright better punches is very small. I would say that I've seen more Sabu matches than most people. At least his ECW work. Sabu has some of the worst punches I've seen. He's not Jim Duggan or Jerry Lawler in there. He throws these crappy looking little short jabs, usually to stall to give himself time to set-up a table or something. I mean, business exposingly bad punches. First thing that comes to mind when thinking about Sabu are how his punches are almost as bad as Rob Van Dam's forearms. The first one that springs to mind is his punches to Shane Douglas in his "return" when he does his run-in during the Douglas/Taz title match at Guilty As Charged 1999 (which admittedly, Douglas super sold it to make it look worse too). Have you seen any Sabu matches?? Watch the Heatwave 1998 match between RVD/Sabu Vs. Hayabusa/Shinsaki. Take away the crowd popping big spots/table spots. Just look at the in-ring work in-between the big spots. Now try to tell me Sabu is a great in-ring worker. Here is a YouTube video of Sabu Vs. Rob Van Dam from the SyFy days of WWE owned ECW that demonstrates, I feel, how bad his punches were: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8ZFcokNmt0 2:30 mark especially. To be fair, that's not a match from the 90's, but the pickings are pretty slim on YouTube. And at least I'm trying to defend my opinion (which I stand by) and not just saying "lol hav u seen n e matches!?"

It's fine, we can all agree to disagree or whatever, but trying to mention Sabu in the same breath as Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels is, in my opinion, pretty ridiculous. Which is OK, since they only wrestled each other about five-hundred times. Ha! Everyone in ECW was pretty much like that at the time. And the "bad brawling" is pretty much whenever they go into the crowd, or whenever Sabu throws his shitty-ass punches. And I don't buy into the "blows spots on purpose" bullshit AT ALL and never have. Dude was just a crazy stoner that tried stupid shit. Like triple-jump moonsaults into the front row.

For sure. There's no question he was pretty damn innovative too. But if we're talking about in-ring work, it's going to take a more well-rounded wrestler, in my eyes, to make the list. Sabu was capable of putting on some crazy, breath-taking moments. Especially if all the pieces of the puzzle fell together correctly. More often than not though, it was a lot of bad brawling, "garbage" wrestling (tables, chairs, etc.) and blown spots when attempting his crazy Sabu stuff. Sabu has been talked about a lot lately, especially with the Sabu-A-Day thread and whatnot. He's exciting & different and a lot of the time, pretty fun to watch (mostly because he's crazy). But I would not even make him an "honorable mention" in any sort of work list. Now Dustin Rhodes, that's an interesting debate. His early 90's WCW work, his late 90's Goldust stuff. I think people sleep on him, honestly. When it comes down to naming matches, where do you start?

Jericho probably deserves a mention if we're throwing out names like Juventud & Malenko. I don't see how it's anyone other than Bret though. He even had good matches on throwaway shows like Thunder against people like Disco Inferno in the later 90's. Mentioning Sabu and his sloppy-ass is ridiculous though. 1. Bret Hart 2. Shawn Michaels 3. Steve Austin I don't think HBK is overrated at all. He's right where he should be.

What is the name of the long blond female announcer from early 90's WWF? She was featured in the WWF Wrestlefest arcade game. EDIT: Nevermind, found it. Michelle "Mike" McGuirk

What's your point? EDIT: That sounds a lot shittier than intended. I'm curious what your point is in saying that is all. They could still try to make money off of a fresh match-up. Plus, Summerslam happened adding the Money in the Bank part to the story, so now Punk has more of a reason to why to beat him, in theory. For the record, I think I complained about Punk/Del Rio on that RAW too. That was the same RAW where Cena squashed Swagger for no reason too, right?

Tonight they're apparently giving away C.M. Punk Vs. Alberto Del Rio for free too. Which seems like it would be a new & exciting Pay-Per-View match. Especially considering ADR beat Punk for the belt with his Money in the Bank Cash-in...but it doesn't feature John Cena, so I guess it doesn't matter. Instead we get a 3-way cage match 2 weeks after the last PPV where Punk lost.

Kelly Kelly can't even run the damn ropes and she's the champion. How pathetic.

I think the number of people in this camp nowadays might be somewhat surprising. It's a combination of a lot of things, not just the ring work (like overly smarky crowds being exceptionally pretentious and annoying). I know that we have touched on it somewhat here lightly, but it's a big reason why I can't get into Davey Richards at all. To me, he comes off as a guy trying to emulate Chris Benoit and he throws in Indy kick pad spots. I REALLY hate those kick spots. It worked on, say, Tajiri. It doesn't work, at all, with guys like Davey Richards, C.M. Punk or Chris Hero. It really does just look like dudes trying to mimic shit they saw on a tape. Plus, as has been mentioned, a lot of the Indy favorites of yesteryear are either in TNA or WWE now. ROH doesn't have a Punk, Joe or Aries anymore. Hell, last time they had Aries he was leaps and bounds the best part of the show.

No matter what they decide, stealing the premium channel will be just as easy as stealing the PPV's now, so if they're looking at it from a piracy standpoint, they're confused to start with.

Well I knew he was a wrestler but I more meant I would nominate him for "best heel" based on his managerial work. I should have written it better. Much like my Hogan point, I wasn't saying Hogan was a cool heel, I was saying he was the first heel that came to mind for the thread. I just can't type apparently.

I like talking about stuff that didn't happen 20 years ago all the time. I still watch and follow the new stuff, which includes both WWE and TNA, but it seems like a lot of the posters around here don't. I find match reviews to be a boring and tedious chore to read and the gossip stuff can at least be somewhat entertaining in a trainwreck sort way. No one ever seems to even say anything about the latest Raw, Smackdown, Impact or PPV. Maybe one or two comments in the "Comments" thread and that's it. I'm not going to read a huge reply about some dude I've never heard of before. Like Waco's reply on Blackwell in the HoF thread. It just doesn't interest me. But instead of sticking my nose in there and fucking the thread up, I just ignore it and move on. But I've always kinda stuck out like a sore thumb here.

If they put Matt Hardy on the next episode of Celebrity Rehab, I would totally watch it.

I would probably go with Adrian Adonis. I always saw people like Rude as "cool" heels, like nWo-style heels. The first person that came to mind was "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan because he went from being the biggest babyface ever to the biggest heel in wrestling, which is pretty significant. It's just his body of work doesn't hold up. Especially with the WCW booking and "creative control" shit, leading to events like the Starrcade finish with Sting and Bret Hart and Nick Patrick. Adonis could go, even when he ballooned up. I actually liked him a lot when he ballooned up because it made you hate his "pretty boy" gimmick even more. There was a show I saw where he came out with an oxygen mask and the commentators played it up as him only wanting to breathe the air from his hometown and not from the shitty city he was in. That's great. Actually, although they weren't wrestlers, Slick & Bobby Heenan were great, great heels.

Why doesn't she ditch that loser anyway? She's a pretty girl, she could do a lot better than his drug-addled, bo-legged ass.