RWOOD

Bruno is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame with Bob Backlund this year in Madison Square Garden. Seems about right.

I remember being in BC around this time. My cousin was so excited about the damn thing. A bit of a factiod, International Incident is touted as being the first event held in GM Place. Watched this match for the first time today, great match. The crowd was real hot during the whole event. Loss, as usual you seem to beat everyone to commentary. I couldn't agree more. My standout point was Vince selling the idea of Owen using the cast on Michaels off the top on commentary but instead Owen nails a nice dropkick. McMahon seemed a bit peeved that Owen wasnt playing his heel role. Forgot Vader got the fall to set up the Summerslam match. Michaels looked so upset with himself for taking a pinfall loss.

I remember being in BC around this time. My cousin was so excited about the damn thing. A bit of a factiod, International Incident is touted as being the first event held in GM Place. Watched this match for the first time today, great match. The crowd was real hot during the whole event. Loss, as usual you seem to beat everyone to commentary. I couldn't agree more. My standout point was Vince selling the idea of Owen using the cast on Michaels off the top on commentary but instead Owen nails a nice dropkick. McMahon seemed a bit peeved that Owen wasnt playing his heel role. Forgot Vader got the fall to set up the Summerslam match. Michaels looked so upset with himself for taking a pinfall loss.

There was a fan at the Ottawa RAW after Montreal who yells "beat him up!" quite audibly during a Slaughter/Helmsley altercation at the end of the show. It was the highlight of a pretty bad episode of RAW given the circumstance. Listen for it. Its funny enough given the tension in the building with no Harts there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ddQABuyPgao#t=434s

Steve Austin - I just went through all of RAW from 2001. Aside from the nonsense booking there were a lot of interesting matches and wonderful promos from everyone you'd expect. Austin had great (sometimes painfully short or painfully long) segments with just about everyone in the company and elevated a lot of talent. His paranoid work as a heel is amazing, probably better than his first run in 1998 depending on who you are asking. I could go on but highlights that immediately come to mind are his matches with Spike Dudley, RVD, Benoit before the King of the Ring, a great match with Jericho the week before Vengance and a subsequent cage rematch with Jericho that I'm actually watching as a type this. He had amazing promos all over the (singing nonsense with Rocky, whipping Taz when didn't wear an Austin or WCW shirt), and started another phenomenon with the "What?" stuff. I haven't read throgh enough threads to see if the thought has been established but I think Austin's best work of his WWF career was in 2001. I cannot wait to go through Smackdown. Maybe I should have watched it in order with RAW. Oh well. I will also note that I love his in-ring work in WCW before he was saddled with injuries. I didnt realize he was a no-knee-pad-wearin'-son-of-a-bitch back then. I watched a random ep of Saturday Night where hes wrestling Scott Steiner and the show goes off the air before the finish. I found this odd because Saturday Night was a taped show and one would think producers would want to put a finish on TV. The Hell Nos - I guess this counts as two people. Great tag team matches with a humorous promo work, helping to elevate workers like Sandow (although I dont know if he needs much help). Perhaps the shtick has gotten tired lately with the unnecessary return of Shelby but their segment was the highlight of the Rumble match. I dont really ever want to see them stop being a tag team. I'd love to see a rheash of their TLC match with the Shield at Mania sans Ryback since it seems to be turning into BigMatchesFromLastYearMania. Ric Flair - Ive recently seen a lot of 88 - 91 WCW for the first time as well as some old NWA stuff (I didn't get into WCW until I saw Flair in WWF and my dad told me where he came from and why he was a big deal). I think that should be enough for me to justify this choice. Enough has been said about Flair on this board, haha. Seeing him back on current product is always nice, too. I have an odd urge to see his WM match with Taker again. I recall loving that match live but havent seen it since. Cesaro - Anything I say will be repeating what everyone else has already said. I will say this: He had a great match with Khali and then two weeks later when twenty minutes with Orton on TV in an arguable four-star bout (even brass noticed as they have had about three tv rematches since which didnt turn out as well). Then he stooged for the Miz and is more over. Who the hell does that? Goldust - Loved his Rumble appearance, great work with his brother. Watched some early stuff from 1995 - 6 recently. The gay stuff is amazing. You can quote me out of context on that if you want. I will also mention Punk. It was a variety of reasons I'm sure but he is probably the main reason why I have been semi-enthusiastic about the WWE in its current form again. I haven't been this into wrestling since 1998, watching old shows every chance I get and keeping intune with current product. Maybe its a quarter life crisis or an extreme nostalgia situation but I'd perfer to think its because the product isnt stale anymore. I can't even believe Im saying that. Cheers, have a good weekend guys.

I found an old Coliseum tape that is literally called Wrestlings, Bloopers, Bleeps and Bodyslams. It came out in mid-1984 or 5 from the looks of it. Its listed as WF001 so it might be the first tape ever, I dont really check or know. It has botches, highlights from Tuesday Night Titans, Vince and Andre dancing around with steel drums nonsense with Rock n' Wrestling and Paul Vachons wedding where everyone including Vince ends up covered in cake. Its mostly heels at the wedding. It isnt really a C-show but you did mention old tapes they put out and I think this a prime example of Vince not really giving a fuck whatsoever. It reminds me of a tape I had called "Hockey: The Lighter Side" that I got in 1992 although I think got released in 1987. Considering how storied they try to make those day seem today on television with their revisionist stuff it its nice to see old stuff that came out then actually be more entertaining and expose you to things like no Legends Roundtable could. I also like WCW Power Hour in 1991. I guess thats a C-team.

Lex Luger the producer is only 21 years old and was 3 when that song came out so I doubt it is a refrence to him. It probably is a refrence to the total package, referring to the total package of a Lexus I guess. One of my favorite rap lines was from a lesser known LL Cool J song called Fugetabowit where he says "Out of my fucking mind and they won't let me back in because I was down before the hype like Dusty Rhodes, Bob Backlund, Bruno Sammartino, Stan Stasiak, now I'm rockin' Stone Cold on my favorite maniacs. The top rooster pluckin' chickens when they cluckin', the WWWF stands for "women, when we fuckin'?" Fugetabowit." Theres also Juelz Santana's 2004 mention of Austin when he said "Do more more street talkin' than Stone Cold Steve Austin" and hilariously and softly said "What?" in the back ground ad libs right after.

Id like to point out that Clay was a bodygaurd for Snoop before. I dont know if I have to tho.

I took the time to watch all RAWs from the Royal Rumble to Wrestlemania XI recently (I spend my days off cleaning and watching wrestling sometimes) and Bam Bam was the highlight of everything. It came off like he really thought this would finally be his big break. Sad, since they dropped the ball on his babyface turn a few months later. I had read about this segment before and knew what was coming when I saw it. This did not ruin the segment. Lawrence Taylor had great mid-ninties nonshalance that was lacking a lot in the WWF then. It seems out of place and at the same time makes the WWF seem out of place in the rest of the world. I suppose that makes sense.

the 7/23 halifax flag match with bret, owen and bulldog against taker austin and foley as dude love would be a cool one to highlight that us/canada fued. or the 7/6 match at the paperview that was a ten man tag in calagary. harts vs. austin, lod, dustin and shamrock. sasuke/taka also wrestled on that ppv. rock and mankind had an ok ppv match at an in your house which was their first rather uneventful ppv meeting. it was an ok match that buried the maivia character just as mankind was doing shoot interviews and turning face. speaking of which, those were good interviews. hell in a cell and austin/bret will be included i think almost by default. theres a lot of coolish wwf stuff from 1997 raws you could throw on there. bret had a good match with goldust somewhere, the cauctus/hhh street fight austin vs pillman that ended in a frakus, the rock and stone colds first promo together in ottawa the night after montreal... it all depends how deep you wanna go with the wwf stuff. 1997 is already a pretty hightlighted year for them and it tends to be lowlights, i think. 1997 wasnt my favorite wwf year but it was definitely the most memorable for me becausei was most into wrestling that year. i havent watched the other yearbooks... id like to.

ive always liked the civc centre over the arena or stadium for on television and live, keep in mind live ive only been to shows in ottawa. corel centre is your standard early 90s 18 000 seater i dunno if raw ever drew more than 11 000 to be honest. the old civic centre had some hot live events in the early 90s and a really good tv taping that i missed in june 1992. theres been some very good raws (2001) and some very bad ones (1997) in ottawa. i wanna make the trip down next time wwe does a ppv in toronto. the raw this fall in montreal doesnt seem worth it based on the damn traffic alone. theres a smackdown in ottawa but i think id rather go see a house show somewhere else in ontario like sarnia since hhh has been tapped to be at the tapings.

It was appreciated that they tried to have three decent main event matches on television at each top hour. the tag match and the show/cena match ended up being really good too which is always nice. the crowd seemed to give a lot of heat which always adds to the elements of a good bout. Im excited to see where the 3hr format goes given how much time was given to wrestling this week. id like to see people like sandow, kidd and whoever else on the low to mid card they want to push get five to seven minute matches. well see. the whole thing with abraham washington was a little overblown in the media (which im sure wwe loved) but i thought it was a call back to offensive heels. too bad twitter often bites them in the ass with compaints and they have to go beyond vince on commentary saying "we apologize for those remarks" passively.

Of course it's worse. Rey is a trained athlete. Shane is a guy off the street. Untrained athletes should be tied in knots by Olympic gold medalists. I suspect most people don't know Kurt Angle still wrestles. He still wrestles a spotty brawling style with little selling except for the two count, similar to the climax of most WWF matches in the Attitude era where he learned how to wrestle professionally, right? I haven't really watched an Angle match in years. Cena, on the other, I see all the time. I often find myself rooting for Cena all the time in situations where he is in the ring with a terrible worker or whatever and is able to pull off great stuff in the ring.

What did you think of the psychological analysis?

Thought I'd continue this week in this thread since they keep saying "RAW 1001" tonight... I'm not sure how many of you watch new WWE on Mondays when something special isnt happening but there is an okay to decent match between Dainel Bryan and Sheamus right now. It was voted to be a street fight by kids on twitter apparently and featured some good outside brawling, backdrops and suplexes on the floor. Bryan even got to do his flying shin gaurd off the stage, which is a lot shorter than I remember it being. Maybe Sheamus is just taller than most guys. Anyway, they worked their way back into the ring and did some okay kendostick work. Bryan hit the droptoe into a chair he set up in the corner but Sheamus came back and got the win with his finisher or whatever. The steel steps were involved somehow. I dont think he did the big boot whilst Bryan was on standing on the steps but whatever, it was a pretty good match between the two, probably the best I've seen. More exciting than the Extreme Rules one ... the quick brawling kept the pace up and the spots were great. Alsewhere, Punk cut a pretty standard promo concerning his heel turn last week and pushed it pretty hard but it didn't really go over with the live crowd. Not surprisingly, the fans seemed confused at best. Dainel Bryan, on the other hand, is very over as a heel right now. There was also a pyro accident before doors opened and pushed back whatever taping they might still do before RAW. Looks like Punk/Cena will be the title match at Summerslam. The three hour format seems to be the exact same only longer. I'd say the show has been entertaining enough. The only things that really irritate me are the hashtag nonsense coupled with this new video socializing site they seem to have. It reminds me of the time RAW was in Biloxi (or to be fair, Halifax) in 1997 and they interviewed fans about outcomes. The match I highlighted is good enough for me. I'm not much into the olympics or reruns.

Whenever someone is gone their absense is always conspicuous.

Aside from the Sun Media hotlines in Canada that have already been touched on and shows like Off the Record in Canada there was also the weekly wrestling column in the Sunday Sun paper here for as long as I can remember. I can recall an almost explosion of wrestling websites in mid-1997. When people talk about an "IWC" or whathaveyou now I laugh and think back to those times. Personally my hardcore wrestling fandom began with the discovery of the Other Arena. It deserves a shout out in this discussion. I gained so much knowledge from the people there, some of which I'm still learning from today (hi jdw). Its fantasy booking section got me into creative writing which helped me stay afloat during high school truthfully. I even used a guy from my high schools namesake in the fWo, which is apparently a character that went on to be the fWo commissioner or something after it was out of my control. I remember writing for prowrestling.com (then known as the Internet Wrestling Zone, har har) when I was a tween and insisting that the webmaster run a banner ad for tOA above my column. He didn't like it too much haha. Maybe more concerning is I wrote for prowrestling.com as a tween. Either way, tOA will always have a special place in my mind and heart. This might not be right on topic but there were a few people who I traded tapes with in Ottawa as a kid but I definitely had the biggest collection that I knew of at the time. There was an indy video rental store in Ottawa whose owners I assume were huge wrestling fans because the whole back wall of the store (minus the employee enterance) was devoted to WWF and WCW/NWA titles dating back to 1984. It was an amazing selection with pretty much every pay per view you could possibly want during that time as well as all of those classic "Best of the WWF" volumes and all the other goodies from Coloseium that I wish I had more time to bootleg before the store closed up shop in favor of a Rockin' Johnnys Diner sometime before the millenium celebration. There was never a fire sale and Ive since lost 97% of the tapes to theives et all. Very sad.

I've seen this match many times but I haven't seen it in a very long time but I just chimed it up on youtube to get a the feeling back. Theres a lot of waistlock to headlock to armbar to wristlock to headlock work in the first ten minutes or so and it feels like it SHOULD have taken about three. Bret hits an ok spinebuster and teases the sharpshooter about fifteen minutes in and it quickly goes back into restholds. The crowd is so dead during most of this except for when Michaels skins the cat or pulls off one of those "fancy Mexican maneuvers that Jose Lithario taught him", as McMahon said during commentary. Theres a finish tease approximately every fifteen minutes or so which usually leads to a delightful Michaels highspot; However, the most entertaining parts of the match are when they potato eachother. Call me cynical, but knowing that these guys genuinely didn't like eachother makes this a little bit more entertaining to watch now than I thought it would. Its no excuse for the sloppy wrestling and all but the inside knowledge (which is pretty much common knowledge now) makes for an interesting watch. There are a series of nearfalls about 30 to 35 minutes in that include Bret reversing a cross body and small package spots that would have been perfect for a few falls to happen. Specifically if Bret had reversed the top rop cross body and gotten the pin with Michaels getting one of the small packages almost immediately after to create some "look at how they know eachothers moves so well" kind of intrigue. It probably would've popped up the crowd a bit. I really like the top rope work from Micahels towards the end of the hour. The moonsault is passable and actually connects perfectly with the pinfall. The jump into the sharpshooter is a good spot. I always wish Bret would've held onto the sharpshooter for a few seconds after the match rather than dropping the hold at the bell but I guess it plays into the exaustion storyline. The ending falls flat for me because Michaels had to repeat the superkick spot to "get all of it" as McMahon points out. Everything about the celebration is comical from Lithario getting into and then out of the ring almost immediately because Michaels wants to celebrate alone to Brets son singing along with Sexy Boy. I didn't watch the whole thing through but the match holds up for me. It was one of my favorites from back then but then again I was a mark for both Bret and Shawn at age 9. I remember telling all of the pissed off kids watching Survivor Series 1992 at my house the the main event match would probably be better than the cancelled appearance by the Warrior would've ever been anyway. Nobody really listened at the time... haha. That being said, I like that match from 1992 and their matches they did for Coloseium (one is a gem of a ladder match) a lot better than this. Their willingness to work together back then makes for better matches, I guess. I'd even rank their Montreal match higher than the Ironman based on crowd heat and the fact that I like a good aisle brawl every now and then. On a side note, where can I get these yearbooks you speak of?

Almost all of Brets appareances on USWA TV during this run are on Youtube. I spent the afternoon a while ago watching them (and the McMahon run delightfully titled "McMemphis") and it was a great deal of fun. Lawler hulking up is fantastic. Bret plays the heel role so damn well but I can't help but cheer him being Canadian and all ... Spitting on Lawler after he and Gigante get the heat is such a great touch to the match. Even the clothesline that gets Lawler the pin is well done and the stoogy reaction from the big man here is something I wish could happen more in modern WWE. Finishes like this never look good anymore. He looks genuinely dumbfounded that he clocked Bret just long enough to make the suprise pin by Lawler look good. The heel beatdown at the end is also great foreshadowing for what is to come in this fued. Great contrast to what was happening at the same time in the WWF. A lot more entertaining too. Kinda wish I was watching this stuff as a kid.

I remember seeing something about a 2002 run aside from his match with the Rock somewhere in this thread or the other one while waiting for my account to be vailidated but I can't seem to find the specific mention of it aside from Loss' use of the phrase Humble Hogan. Either way, its something I've been watching a lot of this summer and its been a lot of fun. I watched some of the Mr. America stuff including the debut of Zach Gowan which is oddly well orchestrated. I think back to flipping through it on TV in 2003 and being really put off but found it entertaining so many years later. The promos with Piper are fun enough. Quite frankly I think Hogan in a mask really does it for me. I haven't seen an ep. of Smackdown where he actually wrestles as Mr. America yet. I would assue its the same stuff as usual except with a mask which is fine. His match with McMahon at Wrestlemania was really entertaining. I went back a year this past weekend and was watched the Smackdown where Hogan actually goes down pretty clean to Trips. I think its the 6/6/02 episode. It was kind of nice and a little bit laughable years later to see Hogan putting over Trip and Taker and Angle and whoever else he did. The next week he got the shit kicked out of him backstage and missed a tag match with Trips against Angle and Taker, who had just beat Hogan in that match where Hogan dogged the chokeslam for the title. After Trips cleaned house Hogan came down Hulking up, Angle did a bit of stooging and then Trips and Hogan did a pose down for the 2nd week in a row. I'm interested enough to see the stuff with Edge as on the show he has sustained a shoulder injury of some kind and the return should be triumphat enough. Other than that I like Hogans other WWF matches with Savage and the double count out match with Flair from the Garden. I saw a really good match with Rick Rude in Boston I think. I'm pretty sure it was from 1988. I specifically remember being eight and marking out for Hogan in the Rumble, at SNME in the tag match and at VIII itself with Sid despite the clusterfuck finish. I recently rewatched my own VHS tape copy and it still gives me nostalgic chills. It was my first WWF pay per view and was obviously excited for it. I saw Starrcade 89 at the time but was six and don't remember. I haven't seen it since. Hogans work in WCW wasn't very great in my mind but I've only seen the nWo run and the bad matches from Uncensored and that thing with the monster trucks on top of the arena from PPV. His heel promos always kept me on the edge of my seat but I think that may have been more the crowd and my keen interest in wrestling at the time. I was more interested in the good matches WCW had to offer and at that point anyway. I will be the second (?)person here to mention Hogan's match with Page in October 1998 as one of my favorite millenial Hogan matches. I always though the Nitro crowd was a bit canned (am I wrong?) but that match had amazing heat. I remember watching and getting mad at myself for marking out a bit for a Hogan match. I forget how it ends. I haven't really seen his good matches from AWA. I'm sure I'll come along a comp someday. I've always held Hogan footage in high regard because it is linked so much to my childhood. I'm excited to see No Holds Barred again. I don't know if I'd consider myself a mark though. If it weren't for Hulk Hogan I could safely say I might not be interested in wrestling which is so much greater than Hulk Hogan itself. I just realize Hogan's place as the reason I started watching in the first place. Thats as positive as it can get I think. I'm glad it was my first post. Hey everyone.