Petey

The Austin turn was incredibly well done and well built throughout the episode.

I'll second Dylan on Cena/Khali. Thought Cena gave a great performance in that match and found it way better than I thought I would.

I was 13 at the time WWF purchased WCW, so keep that in mind with my thoughts back from 2001. A) I thought we were going to get constant WWF/WCW dream matches. Some combos involving Rock, Austin, Hogan and Goldberg. Undertaker/Sting. Really seems endless. The night ECW came back and then got swallowed up by WCW with Steph McMahon as owner was bad. I hadn't watched much of ECW but always thought of them as the "cool/edgy" company and was excited to see them spruce up the angle. I kinda thought it was already flat due to the Booker/Buff match destroying everything. C) The high point is also the ECW night. Even in the following days, I was still curious to how ECW was gonna be incorporated and if they were gonna hire anyone else from ECW besides Rob Van Dam and Tommy Dreamer. It was the followup that put a damper on things. Points for the Alliance singing "Wind Beneath Our Ring" for Austin with his head bopping from word to word on the Titan Tron. I actually liked that part better than the actual milk truck incident. I think it was destined to fail. Yeah, it could have turned out better than it did considering the talent they used, but I don't think there was any chance it'd ever live up to the hopes everyone had when the news broke. If they were gonna do it right, they needed Goldberg, Sting, Flair and the like right from the beginning. It wasn't ever gonna happen (and I understand why) due to the absurd Time Warner contracts. I don't think the period/angle was as bad as people said at the time as much as it just happened to be the first major angle to followup the company's most successful period and was probably the face of the immediate post-wrestling boom.

I'm surprised Vince hasn't put AJ in an angle where she falls in love and aligns with a male wrestler in hopes that it turns into a shoot just to spite Punk.

I feel like I was pretty much done with it after the Benoit/Angle/Jericho feud in 2000. Once WWF bought WCW and had 340 championships, it was done.

Being at Joe/Kobashi is still the greatest bell to bell experience I've had as a wrestling fan. I remember walking out after the show with my buddy and it was like nirvana. Couldn't wait for the DVD.

Joe/Briscoe was also my first ROH show! I went to every NYC show from 05-08 except the spot show they had the same day as the first ECW One Night Stand. Also went to the Liger New Jersey show and the few shows they did on Long Island (which even though the shows weren't great, Sports Plus was 10-15 minutes from my house and the idea of ROH running across the street from the shopping mall I killed so much time at as a teenager was the coolest thing to me).

This thread has me feeling nostalgic. I was a huge ROH fan from 04-08ish (I started to lose interest when Gabe got fired and then I met a girl and totally stopped following). 2005 and 2006 were my two absolute favorite years. 05 was when they had their deepest roster and 06 with the CZW feud and Homicide's title chase was the company's creative peak. 04 was an important year since if ROH didn't have such a quality year, the RF thing might have prevented them from seeing 05. 07 is when the talent pool started to dry up and by 08, it seemed like Gabe was just burnt out.

Maybe it's the accent, but Rick comes across so nice and should always have been a babyface.

That would be an awesome callback. It'd be awesome if they set him up as the surprise final entrant, but when the buzzer hits, someone comes out WITH SOME BAD NEWS This is actually what should happen.

Austin/Hogan in 98 would have drawn really well. I remember their picture being plastered on a mainstream non-wrestling magazine during that summer. I don't know if it would have drawn better than Austin/Goldberg, but both would have set wrestling PPV records.

They should have done an Undertaker/Cena match at WrestleMania while Taker was still undefeated. Maybe Cena instead of Lesnar this past year? Or instead of Punk last year? HHH should have been the one who ran over Austin. Rikishi shouldn't have been involved at all. Yeah, the reveal wouldn't have been a major surprise, but at least it would have been logical. Could do without Austin dropping HHH in a car from a forklift and HHH being fine just fine the next night, but I'm not gonna go crazy into details.

I was a huge ROH fan from 04-08, so I've seen plenty of Aries' work. I always really liked him as a wrestler. Very explosive and crisp offense. Kinda struck me as a better AJ Styles before AJ went on his incredible NJPW run. I'm also biased because Aries is a manlet and so am I.

I assume that the lack of new archival stuff is because now they have like two people working in that area due to the budget cuts.

This thread got me wondering, what ever happened to UCW? Their footage was used on a lot of RF Video "Best Of" tapes but only in the very early 2000's. Guessing they went out of business but it seemed like a bunch of the early ROH wrestlers also worked for UCW. Was the company any good or was it just another early 2000 indy?

I'm 27 and my views have changed several times. I started off watching wrestling at a real young age in the early 90's, the end of Hulkamania into the New Generation. I loved pretty much all wrestling though and would watch old WWF and WCW tapes just because it was wrestling. Things started to change as I reached the end of elementary school and into middle school when the WWF/WCW war was the big thing and "coolness" became a big draw. At first it was WCW with the nWo storyline but once the Attitude Era took off, the WWF became the "cool" company. Change continued as I reached high school and started to appreciate "workrate" and "good workers". I started watching ROH at the end of '03 and that shaped my wrestling preferences for a while. I checked out some 90's AJPW online and fell in love with head drops (not knowing the context) and really liked that style for a wrestling, not realizing until later how silly it was for indy workers to do Burning Hammers in the middle of a match in front of 200 people. Like mentioned above, the Benoit tragedy and Misawa's passing changed my views again into what they are today... less is more. I've rewatched a lot of 80's JCP and really enjoyed it. Also watched a lot of the old house shows and Prime Time Wrestling's that were on Classics on Demand and enjoyed those too. At some point I liked the ultraviolence stuff but not all that much. I started to really get back into WWE last year with my interest peaking around WrestleMania and a little bit after but it's waned again. Thank God for The Network.

Good: Dangerous Alliance angle culminating in one of the great War Games matches ever. Bad: 103 year old Cowboy Bill Watts replacing Kip Frey and taking WCW back to 1977. Ugly: The Survivor Series buyrate?

100% agreed. The night after Fall Brawl was one of the most depressing episodes of wrestling television you could ever watch.

Problem with Raven is that his specific memory is pretty shot and that's, in theory, key for the Timeline series. Of course, they had Sandman do a year so maybe Raven's memory wouldn't be that big of an issue.

Another one for Great American Bash '89.

Wasn't Vince only insisting on Cena being booked strong so that it would create some doubt in the viewers' eyes as to who might win? I don't think it's part of some big picture plan to rebuild John Cena.

I haven't been to a house show since probably 1998 or 1999, but I think the allure of a house show is because it's like a throwback to our youths. It seems like house shows tend to be filled with more kids and you get more of a traditional face/heel divide as a result. Yeah, you know there's not gonna be angle advancement or a big title change, but I can see the appeal in just checking out a rasslin' show with no strings attached.

lol @ Boston Garden being "The Garden". I could see Jericho/Rollins being an entertaining house show match.

Saw Bix retweet this: http://www.thewrap.com/warner-bros-in-talks-to-acquire-entire-wwe-library-exclusive/ So confused.

Anarchy Rulz '99. Same show where Taz dropped the ECW Title in the three way dance with Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka.