Coffey

I liked Tajiri but he didn't really do anything in WWE. This is probably better for him professionally. I'm sure it's worse financially though. I liked him in ECW and think that he is a good worker. Too bad his best stuff in WWE was probably being the non-English speaking henchman for Commish Regal.

I wrote Hogan a letter after Earthquake squashed him too. Heh. I was such a mark. I remember during Wrestlemania 6 I thought I was going to get sick. I didn't know who I wanted to win.

Where did you guys hear that HBK sandbagged Carlito in that match?

Feud of the Year - Batista/HHH Story of the Year - Jade Chung & The Embassy (I assumed this was storyline) Company of the Year - Ring of Honor Best Champion - Austin Aries Most Popular Wrestler - N/A Most Hated - Prince Nana Overall Best Wrestler - James Gibson Comeback Wrestler of the Year - James Gibson Most Improved - N/A Rookie of the Year - Ken Kennedy Tag Team of the Year - MNM WWE MVP - Shawn Michaels TNA MVP - Christopher Daniels ROH MVP - James Gibson Puro MVP - Kenta Kobashi Lucha MVP - N/A MMA MVP - Andrei "Pitbull" Arlovski

Alright, so whom do you guys think is the best worker and talker in each promotion?

I'm actually middle-of-the-road as it pertains to the "private ballot" thing. On one hand, I like it because it means that people won't be persuaded before making their votes. On the other hand, we can't really discuss anything in this thread. I want to defend my votes, dangit, and I'm impatient and can't wait for them to come out!

Do they put up any non-WWE new stuff nowadays? Like, is the funeral skit from TNA on there?

Alright, I gotta change some votes anyway. Actually, can you explain something for me? By "most popular wrestler" do you mean the wrestler that got the biggest pop or the one that's generally the most loved by the IWC? Also, GH, I'm interested in the MOTYC comp, for what it's worth.

Private ballot? PM you our selections then? EDIT: I'm having a lot of trouble with Comeback Wrestler of the Year. I've answered the rest....

They always seem to do new, innovative spots though. It gives me a reason to keep checking them out. Especially in 3-way matches where they look for new ways to do spots involving all three guys. In WWE, you can tell when a match is supposed to be good because it goes at least fifteen minutes and has each guy kicking out of the others finish. In ROH, it can be a throwaway undercard match and still impress. Even if it's just an eight minute match, a couple of neat spots, maybe a little humor, and you're entertained and lost in the match before you know it. It's like, I can look at a TNA or WWE card and tell you which matches will be good and which matches won't. Usually, you'll be pretty close. In ROH, sometimes it could be a match that you completely write off and it'll turn out good. I know that I've done that a few times with Nigel McGuiness, Spanky & Colt Cabana for example. I know what you're talking about though. I think CM Punk suffers from that a lot. It's like he's too patient when seemingly setting up the next sequence of moves or something. Like he has to slow down. It seemed like Samoa Joe did it against Liger in TNA too.

My biggest complaints with ROH are the same complaints that I have with TNA. The crowd and the commentary. In both promotions, the commentary is bad. In TNA, you have to hear "this is the greatest thing I've ever seen" over and over and in ROH you have to hear "this is a match of the year candidate" (two minutes into the match mind you) and "be sure to check out ROHwrestling.com for all your shoot promo needs!" There's just not a lot of calling the match. The lighting and audio are really bad in ROH too but it's an indy fed that puts on quality wrestling so I can certainly look past that. As far as the crowds are concerned, I dislike the TNA Orlando crowd more than the ROH crowds mainly because ROH at least travels and gets different fans that are trying to get themselves over. Both ROH and TNA fans seem to be more worried about coming off as "smart" instead of, you know, just being vocal fans. Heel/Face alignment goes out the window. Dueling chants are bad, especially when one of the wrestlers is heel. I don't know what the hell the Orlando crowd is doing with their "Abyss..WHOA!" and "Bentley Bounce" crap. I really don't know if it's better or worse than having "dead" crowds. In Japan, when crowds are quiet, it comes off as respectful. I do like the ROH matches though. Unless there's a lot of spots being blown, which does happen when you have guys like Jack Evans wrestling on each show, but I enjoy their main events more than any other promotion right now. I'm not real high on each match in the main event slot having to go at least twenty minutes, WWE style though. I think the times should vary a lot more. A "surprise" win early in a match wouldn't be too bad every now and then. A TNA main event that ended without a run-in, ref bump, etc. would be nice too.

I wanted to add something. I'm a big fan of women being involved in the storylines. To me, all the best storylines, or at least a lot of them, involve women. For example, I liked the story told during the Macho Man Vs. Ultimate Warrior match at the end with Elizabeth and Sherri. I liked the "Love Triangle" with Triple H Vs.Kurt Angle over Stephanie. I even liked the Jericho & Trish angle. That's why I'm usually pushing for shit like Traci having a bigger role in TNA or talking about how "I like Maria" in WWE. Hell, I was a mark for the whole Jade Chung & The Embassey shit in ROH. Of course, not all of them are gold, like Stacy being pregnant in WCW but still, I like a lot of them. As with any other storyline, it has to make sense and make you care. If it features bad writing or bad talkers it probably won't catch on. Other than the nWo & Austin Vs. McMahon I think all of my favorite storylines have been based around love or something like it in some way. So, in that regard, I do think that I enjoy soap operas in wrestling, I just want the soap operas to build to something and have a payoff that matters. I don't want two people to feud over a woman and then have her turn on the person she leaves with in a month. It needs to have long term effects. Why does Trish never mention Christian anymore? Or Tomko? Why does Vis no longer care to get with Trish? How come Kane doesn't seek his revenge on Edge AND Matt Hardy?

Instead of talking about Raw or iMPACT!'s ratings changing by .2 or talking about Vince saying "nigga" or Smackdown being "offensive" I wanted to have a different conversation. I think this forum has the best ratio of "intelligence to ignorance" when it comes to discussing wrestling, so this is where I'm posting it at. I was having this discussion with a couple of my friends the other day. I thought we could use a new thread here, so I thought I'd make this. We were discussing the "big three" in the current North American wrestling scene. I was talking about my love for ROH and how if they weren't around in '05 I might've abandoned wrestling altogether. My friend from Ft. Wayne, IN, Capen, was in town for the holidays and he stopped by and was going on and on about TNA and how he watches all of their shows on his computer but how he "still hasn't watched the WWE Homecoming show." Then the conversation turned into what each product provides. WWE = More soap operas, less wrestling. ROH = More wrestling, less soap operas TNA = Less wrestling than ROH, more than WWE, less soap operas than WWE, more than ROH So, I was just curious which promotion was closer to what you guys wanted out of a product? It's not to say that each promotion can't provide you with a good promo, match, etc. It's not like ROH doesn't have any soap opera angles or WWE doesn't have any matches. They do. However, using the formula above, which product would you lean more towards? Which of the three do you actually watch the most? Myself, I watch WWE the most because it's on the most. I watch Raw and most PPV's. Occasionally, if I read that something happened that I'm interested in, I'll even download Smackdown. I like TNA and I do watch iMPACT! but that's only an hour a week. I check out all of their PPVs too, so I watch them as much as WWE it's just that they offer less in terms of hours. ROH, I watch all that I can. Especially anything from '05 or involving James Gibson. Of course, I can only watch what is there, so it's limited when compared to the other two feds. When it was WWF Vs. WCW Vs. ECW, the overall scene was different. It wasn't comparible in the way that I'm comparing the promotions now. WWF & WCW were trying to "out do" each other. It could be argued that WCW had the better wrestling because of their cruiserweight lower card though. Still, they were both soap opera driven. ECW was like the "underground" fed that "cool" (or people whom thought they were cool, too good for WWF, etc.) watched. It had soap operas, it had hardcore wrestling, etc. It couldn't compete wtih WCW or WWF but it had it's own demo much like ROH now. Now, I can enjoy a good storyline. Any wrestling fan, I hope, can. I can be entertained by any promotion depending on what they're doing at the time. That being said, currently, I do enjoy Ring of Honor the best. I like what they're doing. I like the characters. I like how the promotion is driven by matches. They have the spotfest matches, the comedy matches and the "main event" matches that are supposed to be good. I legit hate Prince Nana and think he's a tremendous heel. They provide, to me, exactly what I want out of wrestling. WWE has a lot of guys that I enjoy watching. They have guys on their roster, whom in the past, have more than entertained me, so I know they're capable of it. Currently, though, they're not my cup of tea. I watch Raw out of habit. I watch it with friends because that's what we do on Mondays. Besides, if I didn't watch it, I'd be lost the whole week when reading and posting on message forums. I feel like I can get into the characters and whatnot on WWE it's just that I don't usually like most of them. I like some, like Triple H (because I'm a mark) but it's hard for me to get into whom WWE usually starts to push. I'm not real big on Randy Orton. I don't like John Cena. Masters is starting to grow on me but he's certainly not amazing. I like the Boogeyman and what has he even done? With WWE they're like "you like this guy." You either do and you like what you're watching or you don't and you hate it. With ROH, the guys go out and wrestle and you find yourself liking guys because they don't suck. TNA I'm, right now, indifferent to. I'm not real high on Jeff Jarrett although I admit that I like him more now because he's aligned with Gail Kim & AMW. I like the X-Division but I don't like how it's just the cruiserweight division. I mean, yeah, Samoa Joe is thrown into it now but it still has that lowercard vibe to it. Even after giving AJ Styles multiple World Title reigns, it just doesn't work. Hopefully Joe can change that. I just wish the X-Division was more like ROH's Pure Title division. A midcard division with good matches. That's sort of what it is but it involves a lot more high-flying instead of ground work and submissions. Here's a post from one of my friends from a discussion that we had the other day: I've have a lot of conversations with the above poster about TNA. He's the friend from Ft. Wayne that I mentioned earlier, Capen. We've talked about everything TNA from Don West on color commentary (even with me playing devil's advocate just so we could converse) to Jeff Jarrett: Main Eventer (which I struggle to defend). We had a long and winded conversation about Bound for Glory about me talking about how it let me down and him being, generally, excited about it. That conversation came down, eventually, to him saying he hadn't seen the other PPVs from this year and I said most of them were better with less fuck-ups. Capen has seen very little ROH so we can't really talk about that. I just tried to explain to him a couple of things. The only exposure that he has to the product is him watching some of the ROH Comp. tape that I had Downhome make me awhile ago and a couple of matches that he's downloaded. I really don't know where he stands on the product but he seemed to like the Briscoe Vs. Briscoe match. My other friend, Jeremy, has started watching wrestling again recently. Mainly because of TNA. He used to be real big into WCW when they were around. His favorite wrestler is Psicosis, so obviously he's a big fan of cruiserweight matches. He likes the X-Division and was impressed with AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. He doesn't read the internet about wrestling so he's not "persuaded" by the opinions of others. You could say he's a mark but he does have a grasp of a lot of things that go on just from hanging around my circle of friends. He likes what he likes and it really only matters what happens on-screen to him. It certainly provides a differing viewpoint in the discussions. That being said, he was turned off by Jeff Jarrett in general and the Ultimate X match because of all the mistakes with the X falling down. When he talks about WWE, it's usually in regards to Steve Austin or asking "is the brand split over yet?" I don't know if he's seen any ROH. Still, to me, it's interesting that TNA pulled him back in. Of course, Eric and I might be a big reason for that. Alright, I remember one time when I still had an active blog over on TSM Rudo said that my posts generally tend to be "a bit scatter-brained" and "a bother to read." I can certainly see where he was coming from now. That being said, he also said to, basically "save some discussion for later. You don't have to say it all in the first post." So, that's what I'm going to do now. I'd like to talk about the good and the bad about all three promotions. Compare them. Compare the commentary, the common man appeal, the wrestling, the storylines, etc. I think it could be interesting.

I was actually in disbelief that HBK went over Carlito in their match on Raw. Admittedly, it was a lot better of a match than their first contest but that's not really a compliment since their first Raw match was the drizzling shits.

I'm sure it's just because he was working with Angle and Haas at the time but I enjoyed Shelton a lot more when he was heel. Maybe a turn could benefit him?

I just think someone like Kennedy, whom is also young & new, would've been better in the spot in this situation. In regards to the Undertaker comment, he had been around for awhile. He'd already had the run as Mean Mark and was a Skyscrapper. WWF just gave him a new gimmick and a mouthpiece (Brother Love & DiBiase). I'm one of the people that shit on wrestlers if they can't wrestle. That's why I don't like Carlito. It's why Lashley has yet to impress me. It's why I like Kennedy more than both. Brock had Heyman to help get him over. Lashley is left to drown thus far.

TSM hell, I'm pretty sure that *I* said that and I stick to it. What's so special about Lashley? Yeah, it's not right that they're pushing him as a monster and then he's the first one to go but to be honest what makes him better than Matt Morgan whom got cut? I also never said it was "OK" I said I didn't care, which there is a difference. I also said he's "just another no talent hoss" not "just a" which, again, is a difference. I stand by my statement. Lashley would be better off squashing jobbers on TV than being in the main event of one of the "Big Four" PPVs. Maybe a topic on Lashley should be made? You can point out to me what he brings to the table other than being green and big. Try not to use the words "potential" or "develop."

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin Vs. Mr. McMahon Hulk Hogan Vs. "Macho Man" Randy Savage Jake "The Snake" Roberts Vs. "The Model" Rick Martel (Arrogance sprayed in Jake's face leads to Blindfold match) "Stone Cold" Steve Austin Vs. Bret "Hitman" Hart "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes Vs. "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase (He bought Sapphire!) "Stone Cold" Steve Austin Vs. The Rock The Ultimate Warrior Vs. Rick Rude Degeneration X Vs. The Nation of Domination The Undertaker Vs. Kane "Macho Man" Randy Savage Vs. "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair (Flair's got pictures of Miss Elizabeth and if he wins, he's going to reveal them!) I'm such a mark...

There was no "kicking out." It was a Last Man Standing match. You had to get to your feet by a ten count or it was over. Flair just kept trying to get up until the sledgehammer shot. Goldberg, Nash, Warrior & Batista all come to mind as other people to kick out/no sell the Pedigree as well. I'm sure The Rock, Austin and probably Undertaker have as well.

I'm reading the results as they're posted and trying to follow several threads at the same time so I can keep up to date with the happenings when they happen. That being said, it sounds like the negative crowd is reason enough for me to want to see this PPV. I sure hope the problems with PWTorrents get worked out soon.

Eh, he's just not a good worker. He can sell and bump well. Obviously he's a good talker. He's even got a good gimmick and an interesting, original look. He can be successful, he's just not going to be putting on unforgetable matches anytime soon. I don't think the comparison to an early Rock should be made simply because The Rock was more athletic than pretty much anyone, even when he was a terrible worker. I want to throw out that I don't think Shelton Benjamin is a great worker either. I see a lot of people talk about him in a positive light, the same way people talk about Carlito in a negative light, and I don't see it.

I was under the assumption that Triple H called the match.

I know my friend Eric marks out for Steiner. Hanging around with him when WCW was still in business, you had to hear about that shit all the time. I liked him during his solo push in WCW. That's about it. I do remember his WWE debut pop being monsterous though. Steiner + Roid Rage + Live Mic = Ratings! I think he could've been successful in WWE (again) had they just given him time to get his cardio back to where it was. It was obvious that he was suffering from ring rust and was probably too heavy too. They just instantly stuffed him into a feud with HHH and Hunter worked circles around him. It made Steiner look really bad. I kinda miss him though, to be honest.

Just a general question but how come whenever anyone seems to mention WCW nowadays it's always in a negative light referring to the dying days? WCW provided me with many hours of great TV.