Alucard

Glad to see these back, always thought the Ivory one looked good

Love "Pan to reveal Bret Hart (in a ponytail)" ** LOAD THE SHIELD UNDER THE RING **

the card is insanely weak right now Orton v Big Show, which ok, they've done a good job pushing Show and he's over as a babyface now, but nobody really wants to pay to see this Cena v Del Rio? meh. Cena beat him clean with an injured arm, they totally threw Del Rio under the bus here. Nobody is gonna pay to see this, and nobody thinks Del Rio has a chance Bryan/Punk v The Wyatts? I don't know what the f they are doing here. They did that big angle with Punk/Bryan/Usos/Rhodes family v The Shield and the Wyatts......then they book a tag match? why? Ugh, that is just not very good. Can't believe they have only announced three matches at this point. Now we've got Usos/Rhodes Brothers/??? vs Shield/Cesaro/Swagger in the 5 on 5

Same here. I thought he was going to be a real breakout star of 2011 after the excellent face turn on Miz and when he was tagging in six mans with Cena & Orton.

They already did those things. He had Vickie for two years then after that immediately got AJ which was abysmal. He got the IC title for a 160 day reign back in 2010. They should've never stuck him with AJ. The only time he was on track to be a breakout singles guy was after splitting from Vickie late last year then he suddenly gets back to back pinfalls over Orton and a PPV match with Cena. All downhill after that.

Agreed. Never got any of the praise I've seen it get, thought it came off very silly from what I remember.

Agreed with the last few posts. The Aries push was a slow rise build that started with him ruling the X Division, the crowd turning him face and then big PPV wins over Bully Ray and Joe.. especially the Bully win being a clean tapout. Then the feud with Roode was REALLY good with Aries owning the mic and the segments with Hogan really strongly putting over Aries. Then the actual Aries/Roode match was my favorite of the year and favorite moment of the year for sure. They made the match feel like it had a ton on the line and Aries win was a genuine feel good moment with a proper crowd jumping up and down reaction to it. The rematch was just about equally as good too. The Sabin thing was completely terrible. He had been pretty much as bland as could be ever since returning, despite Hulk trying to put him over on the mic a time or two. Wins the X Title immediately then he loses the title only to get it right back to cash in. He wins the title and just looks so out of place in the ring with guys like Angle and Sting, where as Aries fit right in with Hulk Hogan and looked like a star. Sabin came off like a kid with the title and now has turned into this awful whiny heel character. They should've stuck with the shockingly excellent Suicide angle they did with Aries and had him cash in again.

Loved the story on Austin's podcast that Bruce Pritchard tells about how Doink came about because Borne showed up to a WWF show looking miserable so Road Warrior Hawk started calling him Krusty the Clown then pitched the idea to Vince... I had never heard that story as well FLIK until I heard Bruce Prichard tell it on Austin's podcast. Out of interest *IF* Hawk did indeed see Bourne looking Krusty-Esque I don't think it would be for WWF as Doink's debut was in October 12th 1992 on a Superstars taping, when he was shown in the crowd. Bourne did not work the WWF in 1992 before this. Earlier in the year Bourne was in WCW as Big Josh until August 10, 1992. In 1992 Hawk did not appear for WCW when Bourne was working as Josh so I am unsure where there paths would of crossed for Hawk to see Bourne backstage slumped look miserable. Edit: I asked Bruce via Twitter and his response was: "WWF in Hamilton Ontario 92 or 93". I checked again and Hawk didn't work Hamilton at all in 1992 for WWF. Found these two: WWF @ Hamilton, Ontario - Copps Coliseum - January 12, 1992 WWF IC Champion Bret Hart & WWF Tag Team Champions the Legion of Doom defeated the Jacques Rougeau & the Natural Disasters when Bret pinned Rougeau WWF @ Hamilton, Ontario - Copps Coliseum - June 1, 1992 (9,000) WWF Superstars taping: The Legion of Doom defeated Bobby Starr & Bob Knight

Great stuff, enjoyed this all the way thru!

I remember he showed up on Smackdown in 2006 in a Diva Search segment, always found that random but great.

Found that absolutely hilarious. My dad happened to watch that Impact with me and thought Mick was so ridiculous. The match it built to was one of my favorites from TNA, just two old dudes having a wild bloody brawl.

I know he wasn't a great promo but I liked some of Jeff Hardy's mic work in 08-09 when he got the main event push. Particularly one with Taker and his first post-title win promo. Also agreed with those who liked Luger's promos as well as Warrior. And yeah Lesnar's recent stuff ruled, the video promo building up the Punk match was great.

It really is the best way to continue on with your reviews. The WCW ones have been great and a real highlight of the board but once you hit March '01, June '02 will be waiting for ya!

Nice was hoping for that one after just recently watching the preview clip and the Shane Douglas bit on youtube.

I'd add the Aries/Roode matches from Destination X and Hardcore Justice 2012 to that list as probably my favorite series in company history. Hell probably a lot of Aries stuff over the last 2 years.. the Aries/Hardy matches were good, Aries/Sting from earlier this year was real enjoyable too. Aries/Sabin/Manik from June was the best Sabin's looked since returning. Aries/Shelley from Against All Odds 2012 is another.. great X Divsion style match.

Correct. Angle would lose it to Storm in a minute on the post-BFG Impact, then Storm would drop it a week or two later to Roode. They built up Storm challenging Roode pretty huge for Lockdown in Storm's hometown but Roode retained, Storm took a leave and came back for the BFG Series. But they ended up putting the title on Aries so the Storm/Roode blowoff was a non title street fight at BFG.

I watched the BLOW debut show since they put it up on youtube for free. Serious contender for one of the worst wrestling shows of all time featuring 2 of the all time worst matches i've ever seen (Silvie Silver vs Jewells Malone & Silvie vs Becky Bayless) and very little else of any quality (Winters match was decent and Mia Yim vs Christina Von Erie was pretty good and 5* compared to everything else on the show) Sumie Sakai was the highlight of that show for me, thought she put on an entertaining little match with Queen Maya. I've kept up with their results just to see what she does and have wanted to see some of her matches from the other shows but they hadn't uploaded any others.

I always loved the Power Warrior run with Hawk.

I feel like Dolph had lost so many times that it was hard to ever take him seriously as world champ. He's had two reigns now and both were more or less jokes. Even when he does get a "big win" like he beat Cena at TLC last year, that was followed by losing to Cena even with interference in a long Raw match and then losing to Cena in a cage.

They were doing about 1 BFG Series match per house show when they obviously should've been running more. 6/27: Magnus over Hernandez 6/28: Joe over Kazarian 7/5: Hardy over Aries 7/6: Daniels over Park 7/19: Joe over Bradley 7/26: Anderson over Styles 8/16: Aries over Anderson 8/17: Roode over Park

Agreed. May have been Rachel's best match too. I really loved the Del Rey/Jessica James match from Volume 40. Brilliant big vs little match built around the smaller Jessica trying to bring Sara down. Felt like a real breakout performance for the often underrated Jessica but unfortunately she would never be brought back to Shimmer. As for modern joshi, I always enjoy the aforementioned Hamada, Kana, and Matsumoto as well as Arisa Nakajima, Tomoka Nakagawa, Misaki Ohata, Yumi Ohka, and before her retirement Ayumi Kurihara. Kana and Serena Deeb had a good couple matches in Japan a couple years ago.

Loving the look back/match reviews here, good stuff!

Got a laugh out of this paragraph, my fav part of the interview:

Moves. Any time I've seen the Cena vs Punk argument, moves is always a major topic. No matter how many Cena actually does or adds to his moveset, it's always brought up. Cena haters are stuck on the "5 moves" thing and will never stray from it. Some still insist Punk "carried" Cena in their matches.

Really enjoyed those 3 Survivor Series matches. Loved the 04 one with the winners being GM.. Maven was awesome booking himself in a world title match. Maven/HHH was always a great underdog vs champion pairing.