Ricky Jackson

To be fair, if you read the whole article it is a critique of Vince's alleged habit of changing things on the fly, scrapping months of storyline development on a sudden whim, and reverting to the status quo, and not really another attempt by Shoemaker at forcing a bullshit postmodern interpretation of WWE, at least not like his "Reality Era" obsession. His conclusion is: He's a big Punk fan, a Bryan fan, a fan of the new, and basically just another of those frustrated wrestling fans who fantasize about revolutionary change on the level of the Monday Night Wars era, the last time wrestling was "cool" for many people. I have a friend who is like that and is a big fan of the Grantland stuff. He really loves wrestling, but it often seems like he needs to convince people that wrestling is really this cool art form that hipsters should appreciate alongside obscure "films" and indie bands. Hell, I'm guilty of wishing WWE would become relevant again. Be careful what you wish for, I guess... Anyway, what I love about the article is that the first footnote is a link to the devastated Punk fan.

I changed it as a birthday gift to Musgrave. I find your Martin avatar creepy as shit for some reason.

That is new greatest thing ever.

An interesting thing I read in the original Observer review of this show is according to Meltzer one way Vince at this time punished guys who were in his dog house for whatever reason was to book them to work a lengthy stretch in the Rumble match and force them into a marathon physical performance. So I guess Martel, Valentine, and Hercules were on Vince's shit list in Jan 91.

The Rumble match was very good. Very well worked. I've always been a Cena fan, but I hated his promo on the last Raw so much that I really can't stand him right now. I was pulling for Ryback at the end. My wife picked #19 in the pool where we watched the show and won $65, so that was cool (I had Tensai and, of course, Kane). I also thought the finish to Punk-Rock was uninspired and a pretty anticlimactic end to Punk's run.

I say go with the territories/groupings as they are and try to come up with names for the mini tournaments. Just use this thread and see what happens.

That too.

I think one thing we can take from the results of the WON awards is that North American wrestling on a big time level is in desperate need of rejuvenation.

I've never liked Taz and Tenay's soul was probably crushed years ago.

16 mini tournaments, one for each territory. 4-8 wrestlers in each mini tournment, depending on how big you want this to be. The winners of each mini tourney, ONE wrestler from each territory, advance to the 16 man main tournament. 16 wrestlers, 16 different territories represented. This tournament could be fun, or it could be a complicated clusterfuck.

Raw certainly deserves worst TV show of the year. Didn't watch Impact, ROH or any of the other contenders though. I like what I've seen of NXT, although tonight's show was kinda dull. I don't even know if I can get Main Event with my cable package and haven't been motivated to download it yet.

I wish I could forget WWF in 99 or WCW in 2000.

Yeah, the whole Aces and 8s gimmick sounds very Russo-like. Are we sure his firing wasn't just a work and he's going to be unmasked as the mastermind and we get "It was me Austin Sting, it was me all along!!!"

Is TNA really better since Russo was canned or are people just pretending it's better in order to maintain their "Russo is Satan" narrative?

In case anybody hasn't seen this elsewhere, here are the awards not included in the original links WORST PROMOTION OF THE YEAR 1. TOTAL NONSTOP ACTION 269 2. Ring of Honor 202 3. World Wrestling Entertainment 80 4. Pro Wrestling NOAH 72 5. Extreme Rising 65 6. Strikeforce 56 7. Bellator 44 8. Inoki Genome Federation 32 9. Championship Wrestling from Hollywood 18 BEST BOOKER 1. GEDO & JADO 592 2. Joe Silva 154 3. Mike Quackenbush 58 4. Vince McMahon 20 PROMOTER OF THE YEAR 1. DANA WHITE 379 2. Takaaki Kidani 289 3. Vince McMahon 171 4. Mike Quackenbush 59 BEST GIMMICK 1. JOSEPH PARK 154 2. Damien Sandow Savior of the Masses 147 3. Daniel Bryan Yes/No 111 4. Kazuchika Okada Rainmaker 97 5. C.M. Punk all year as champion 58 5. Ryback 53 6. Team Hell No 26 7. Antonio Cesaro 21 8. Bray Wyatt 19 9. Bully Ray 17 WORST GIMMICK 1. ACES AND 8S 163 2. Tensai 148 3. Natalya farting 92 4. Claire Lynch 90 5. Brodus Clay 48 6. The Miz 27 7. A.J. as General Manager 21 8. Joseph Park 18 BEST PRO WRESTLING BOOK 1. SHOOTERS BY JONATHAN SNOWDEN 137 2. Heroes and Icons by Oliver/Johnson/Mooneyham 72 3. From Prison to Promise by Booker T 49 4. Storm Front by Lance Storm 23 BEST PRO WRESTLING DVD 1. C.M. PUNK BEST IN THE WORLD 548 2. Last of McGuinness 21 3. Such Great Heights: The Jon Fitch Story 19 Congrats evilclown!

I guess Kane now being involved in the worst feud of the year 7 times is impressive if not interesting.

For what it's worth, my "source" (Coffey, who quit the board a few months ago) said it was Del Rio who told Vince the product sucked last year.

Yeah, a sub form is probably needed to do this thing right, or maybe it could be part of the microscope, because we'll essentially be analyzing different wrestlers and discussing their respective pros and cons. No need to rush things.

I thought somebody else would have jumped on this already. Here are the results, in two parts because these were the best links I could find: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...24044619AAAaxG9 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...24045106AAIcsLw No surprise, New Japan dominates.

Robinson's backbreaker is one of my all time favorite moves.

One way you could set up the brackets is to begin with essentially 16 mini-tournaments--a 4 man WWF tournament, 4 man AWA tournament, 4 man Crockett tournament, etc., until you have a "Final 16", with each territory having one representative in the main tounament. This would guarantee no one or two territories dominate the whole tournament. If you want to get really ambitious, the individual territory tournaments could be made up of 16 guys as well ("The First 16") and we could have a 256 man mega-territory tournament! Of course, it would probably be tough to come up with 16 names for places like Central States, Stampede, etc. And I'll just say this: some of the absolute worst wrestling I've ever seen was a disc of 86-87 era Central States. I'm sure the area had better days, but that stuff was really shitty.

What's the exact timeframe, 80s or just early 80s?

A poll or vote of some sort would be more fun.

Harley owned a piece of both at one point and wrestled extensively for both as far as I know.

I think wrestlers and classic Hollywood stars is actually a better comparison than most. Many/most movie-goers paid to see Grant, Gable, Bogie--the Star being "themselves", being their persona, not necessarily because they wanted to see a good story. Same can be said of most wrestling fans, who paid to see the Star--Gorgeous George, Hogan, the Rock, Cena today, and were not terribly concerned about seeing a good match.