JaymeFuture

Pillman is one of my all time favourites. Its a real shame that he wasn't destined to be more than he was, he had the potential to be a top level heel, but the environments he found himself in just didn't lend to it happening. Had the humvee wreck not happened and he stayed in WCW like he wanted, he would have got stuck behind the top 10 just like everybody else did. Had he gone to the WWF while perfectly healthy, who knows - the landscape was wide open for a hot new heel at the time since they screwed up Vader, and Austin and Helmsley didn't have any traction yet.

They were still fun-loving babyfaces when Canterbury got the broken neck. They came back as babyfaces at first, with Knight still the happy go lucky idiot, but with Henry completely surly and pissed off and repeatedly telling Phineas to knock off the stupid stuff. Then they attacked LOD to go heel and brought in Tony Anthony as Uncle Cletus. They pretty much vanished after Mania 14 and appeared just before King of the Ring as Southern Justice. I don't think anybody is going to say the Godwinns were really much good, because they weren't. I dreaded their matches every time they came out. I think they exceeded their ceiling for a while just due to lack of depth as much as anything.

Oh agreed, I'm not saying there were no legs at all to the nWo, even as little juice as the concept had left I think they had more in them than WWE ultimately got. I just think it would have been the absolute wrong move to have them involved in the Invasion - you have so many years of built-in WCW Vs. WWF heat, and you're going to make it about the nWo? Why? I actually think Cornette's idea of telling people WCW was purchased, but the WCW wrestlers remain together and as figurative outsiders because they hate the WWF and the WWF guys hate them, and treated it like a massive internal conflict, is a hell of an idea - I think telling people they were not all owned by Vince would have been a tough sell. As long as you did it with conviction they may have been able to pull that off, but who knows.

They had some interaction on the pre-Mania 22 SNME and they worked really well together, its a shame they didn't have a match on PPV.

Honestly, I'm surprised with the number of longtime fans I know who have a completely distorted view, some of whom are wrestlers, that just hate Brock Lesnar's guts for that whole "he doesn't love the business" stuff. I went to Mania 28 and was at the Raw when Brock returned, and while everybody else was going fucking crazy, a couple of them are standing next me disgusted. I asked why, and their response was "because he left the second something better came along", which, given the actual course of events, just boggles the mind. These fans were the ones most appalled at Lesnar breaking the streak, and I laughed in their faces.

I remember stunning my Grandmother when the £250,000 question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was "In what US State is the city of Chattanooga?", which I answered correctly before the options come up. Same as everyone else. Lots of geography and language, As a ten year old I once used the word "plagiarism" to my Mom, who then said there's no way I knew the definition of that word. I told her, she looked it up, and I was right. All after reading a bit in Power Slam magazine about how WWF was plagiarising ECWs gimmicks in 1995. Similar to an earlier poster, the Bob Backlund gimmick made me buy a thesaurus as a kid after hearing him tell the audience not to "exacerbate" him. Also got an underscore on a paper I wrote for my journalism degree for using the word "trifecta", as my tutor thought the word was just bullshit.

I was actually disappointed when I watched this after hearing a lot of good things about it, it's a rather disjointed mess that doesn't particularly hook the crowd that much. They seemed like they weren't really on the same page at points, which is odd given their chemistry as a heel act.

Thing is, the nWo was so played out, at that time people would have HATED if the big WCW Invasion they'd been waiting for for years started by being about the fucking nWo. Not that what they did was any better.

Well, Evo/Shield is apparently doing very well in the quarters and overruns, so I can understand why they'd feature them more. They absolutely need to have some kind of key issue for Barrett, he's on the verge of being the hottest he's been since the Nexus days, they need to keep that up.

I don't mind that so much though, the point of the first match was to make Cactus invincible since HHH was about to beat him, and then the next month, retire him. I think both that and the Summerslam 02 street fights both hold up pretty well. The story of Shawn's back was obviously such a major question at the time that the punishment he took really resonated, and the crowd was electric.

Not to be too much of a dolt on the subject of steroids or growth hormone, but I would imagine looking like Rob Terry costs a fair bit to maintain? Surprised he took a low offer in that sense...

I thought that Guest Booker was Russo in an absolute nutshell - came up with an interesting idea, but if you watch it, he doesn't actually book anything of substance at all. He doesn't get from point to point, he doesn't have an ending, and he keeps talking about the same buzzwords ("logic"..."reality"...), and then blatantly violates them with his following comments.

Summerslam 2002 with Shawn and Rumble 2000 with Cactus are the standouts. Rock/HHH ladder match was Summerslam 98 was tremendous as well, mostly due to Rock.

If they wanted to be topical they should have just had Summer Rae and Layla kiss like that. You know, just to see if the reaction to two women doing it would be the same ¬_¬ That sounds like the kind of shameless logic Vince would go for. The Bryan booking hasn't been as outright horrendous as those Mysterio/Christian reigns when it was obvious Vince just didn't want to do it. But given that the obvious opponent after Mania was Batista, it looks as if HHH just prioritised his own angle over Bryan, which left Bryan with the scraps and put him in a tough position to succeed in, which is a terrible approach if they really want Bryan to make it.

Aces & Eights was pretty putrid, I couldn't call that successful. Roode's title reign and Storm saga are classic balls-ups where even if they had were thinking long term, they ultimately made the wrong moves at the wrong times and fucked themselves on both counts. 2012 was good for a period of a couple of months or so, I think TNA's problem now is that the fan's expectations have been coldly brought to reality that nothing that happens here will make a difference in the bigger world of wrestling. So they'll enjoy it for what it is and have a far more limited emotional investment because it's just content to watch. Nothing more and nothing less.

Gotta feel bad for the guy. Has his dream come true at WrestleMania, gets married and goes on his honeymoon. Comes back and his Dad passes away and then has to have neck surgery. I guess for his career the silver lining is that absence will do him more good than this Kane angle in the long haul, just hope he doesn't come back too soon.

For whatever reason, the shot of Savage pulling up Heenan's toga while giving the camera the thumbs up is one of the funnier forgotten random visuals in WWF history. Right up there with Jesse Ventura carrying Matilda off in the ring cart at Mania 3.

Just google'd it, and it was at the Summerslam commercial shoot, which was May, Booker wasn't even champion yet. I hate to credit WrestleZone with anything, but the link below has a story on it in May 2006. http://www.wrestlezone.com/news/224867-more-backstage-details-on-batistabooker-t-fight Point is, the fight happened and I think the so-called "de-push" was more about not getting the belt back straight away and people twisting Vince's arm to get him to do it in November. It was clearly nothing long term, doubt it would be for Sheamus either.

I don't think that timeline is correct - Batista hadn't returned from his injury yet when it happened, because I remember a big thing was the concern that he could have been reinjured. I think the fight happened in May, some time before the Judgment Day PPV. I remember the Sharmell/Melina fight happened right after (that JBL of all people broke up), and the fallout of it all was the burial of Melina on the JD PPV.

Taker in the early 90s had, for the most part, dreadful opponents. Kane did nothing for Bray Wyatt or Dean Ambrose at all in their PPV matches last year and was far more of a negative in terms of elevating them than a positive. He works hard, is in great shape, and can certainly exist in the current environment, I won't deny that at all, but I think stretching that to "great worker" is a push (not to put words in your mouth, just my general opinion), when you look at his body of work especially. DIdn't Sheamus get his ass kicked by Yoshi Tatsu a few years ago as well? That said I didn't see this story about him and Hunico in the new Observer?

Kane is not a great worker. Regardless of how well he plays the role, for a long time now he's dragged everybody down a number of levels and gets them less over than they were beforehand without gaining anything himself. I no longer believe Rollins is screwed once the Shield dies, they seem to be treating all three of these guys like they're the future, which is good to see, but I don't see him doing better than Reigns. I think the bigger problem is that, as a result of the saying nothing, the rivalry isn't very relatable and its not exactly easy for a casual fan to grasp what the hell "the message" is that they are fighting over in the first place.

Even though it was a very short period of time, his time as Syxx as the runt of the nWo was great - he was vicious and credible in his own way, but you just knew if he didn't have all these guys around him he'd get his ass kicked in a fair fight, a great dynamic for him.

As a kid I thought the finish to the OMG/Bigelow match from Mania 4 was absolutely retarded, and thought the referee should be fired. Bigelow standing on the ring apron, OMG attacking him and stopping him from getting in the ring, ref counts out Bigelow. Bogus.

I think Pillman was supposed to be a bad son of a bitch as well - obviously the famous story of backing down Sid in 91, but he pulled Brick Bronsky's eye out in a fight in Stampede and had a few fairly well witnessed altercations in Cinncinnati (including defending a drunk Brian Blados at a Bengals alumni banquet against several guys at once and coming out on top). Also heard it said that he called out Bill Kazmaier countless times back in the day.

A lot of what works against Valentine's case as a HoFer I think is the fact that throughout a lot of his finer work and greater prominence, even at his peak it never felt like he was absolutely critical to a territory or a guy that was ever going to be any kind of cornerstone. In many ways he always felt like the quintessential guy to cast as a mechanic.