PeteF3

Just speaking for me, Eric Fires Back seems like it would get old to read, much less transcribe, real quick. Another vote for Herd.

Might be Cesaro vs. Neville from the first NXT Live. Did that one ever get an official release anywhere?

Turning Goldberg sounds worse than what they actually did.

I do think Scott Steiner had potential to be that heel prospect, but he was always a question of reliability (not just whether he'd do something stupid to get himself suspended, but the constant injuries he was facing).

I'm of the firm belief that whenever the Streak would end, that it should happen clean as a sheet. You could make a new star if they beat Goldberg clean and you play your cards right. Kevin Sullivan agreed with me, and pitched an alternate finish where Goldberg would try to spear Nash and knock himself out against the turnbuckle or post. That would give Nash a monumental win, but at least protect Goldberg inasmuch as the only guy who could "beat" Goldberg would be himself. I'm also of the belief that you don't really worry about ending the Streak until it's clearly time to do it. After all, did Vince, Sr. and other promoters fret about Andre the Giant "going stale" in the '70s and early '80s? Of course not. When he was finally decisively beaten on a major stage that everyone saw and knew about, it was when the time was right and not before. And while there was that little out in the opening part of the match with Marella to protect Andre and give cause for an eventual rematch, in the end he put Hogan over without any gaga or interference or cattle prods. That said, viable Streakbuster options as I see it: - DDP. I agree with C.S., he wouldn't be my choice either. But he's listed because he had the one move that could believably put Goldberg down, which no one else can say. - Scott Steiner. Probably my #1 pick. You'd have a new monster heel and he was believable enough as being big and crazy enough to beat the unbeatable. - Chris Benoit. Okay, maybe my early-2000s smarkdom is showing. Forget about what happened afterward for a minute--Benoit was believable enough as a Giant Killer and a win would have erased the best-wrestler-not-to-hold-a-title choker label that he had, and would get him into main events where a lot of fans clearly wanted him. Obviously politically it was never going to happen, but in a perfect world he'd be an intriguing option. - Bret Hart. Not really making a "new" star, but in a perfect world where Goldberg keeps the belt, it's hard not to envision a Starrcade where Bret makes the ultimate Memorial Parade of Champions moment and triumphs over him. A properly built match for Starrcade '99 could have sold out SkyDome or Stade Olympique in Montreal, and the story just seems too good to pass up. - Sting. Again, maybe a waste, but like DDP he's another guy that I think WCW fans would have bought as being able to believably do it so I'm obliged to at least acknowledge him.

I've fallen out of modern-wrestling-following with the lack of crowds, so do we know for sure that he was injured or was this a "Jumbo Tsuruta will miss the next tour with a knee injury" type thing?

Bruce Mitchell turned into Andy Rooney so gradually I didn't even notice. Holy shit, talk about talking loud and saying nothing. And no, Bruce, COVID has not at this time "possibly mutated into something more deadly." There is absolutely no evidence to support that. You can't preach about "responsibility" and openness and spread a mistruth or outright falsehood like that. Sorry for continuing to derail a thread about a better man than Bruce Mitchell ever will be. Carry on, folks.

https://www.mediotiempo.com/lucha-libre/muere-dr-alfonso-morales-icono-lucha-libre-box-mexico The voice of lucha libre on Televisa died at 71 of kidney failure, as the "fuck 2020" tour continues.

I can't even tell you hard I did a mental fist pump the first time I heard Bret cut a promo hyping WCW's May PPV. Yes, as I hoped, he declared that he would be at "The Slamboree."

Dave said on The Board that the number of ballots he sends out is "over 400," though he doesn't get every ballot back.

Not to get off PWO but that's actually the opposite of the premise of Carlin's bit, which is that the condition was treated more seriously when it was known as "shell-shock" and not buried under jargon like "post-traumatic stress disorder." The whole bit was an attack on the dishonesty of euphemisms.

People need to get on the Network and go to 12/4/95 Raw and watch the segment with Dr. Unger talking about Shawn Michaels. He frankly and convincingly lays out the long-term effects of even a single concussion and does it in so matter-of-fact of a manner that it's obvious that the medical community was pretty much at a consensus over the short-term and long-term effects 25 years ago. That was transparently bullshit even in 1995, at least with actual doctors who weren't marks on some organization's payroll. People just had their heads in the sand over it, and the NFL was actively covering the long-term effects up.

Dory did appear in ECW a few times (as well as Smoky). Terry had runs in WCW in '94 and again from '98-'01.

As someone who couldn't possibly be compelled to comment on modern-day WWE, I'll only add that after going through the '90s Yearbooks my opinion on the MVCs lies much, much closer to NintendoLogic's than anyone else's here. Along with Ultimo Dragon and Koji Kanemoto they were the biggest disappointments of the set.

This was an issue for me for awhile but I haven't noticed it in several weeks. The only weird thing is the RIP Mitch Ryder thread, which takes me to an error page and seemingly everybody else as well (since it's sitting on 0 views).

That was way later, like post-Russo.

Well, that's a pretty big "Unless..." Tuesday Night Fights did good ratings for USA 52 weeks out of the year and when management changed, it didn't fit their vision and went away. The new guy in charge of TNT is also the guy who got rid of boxing on HBO.

He might well be done but I put zero stock into almost anything Rusev says. Dude just likes fucking with people.

Unfortunately in contrast to the reaction on this show, I think there's a strong argument that the decision to put the title on Slaughter was, from a purely financial and publicity standpoint, the singular worst booking decision in WWF history. Certainly the worst up until 1991 and maybe one of the worst for a long time afterward. So much of their more recent decline has been of the "death by a thousand cuts" variety, whereas this is a singular decision that ended up being a critical and financial flop, and brought untold amounts of negative publicity--negative attention that I would say planted a seed and exacerbated the reactions to the even-more negative publicity to come a year later. I can tell you anecdotally as well as with facts and figures that Earthquake was demonstrably more over in the fall of '90 than Slaughter was in the spring of '91. Anecdotally based on house show reactions and with proof in the pudding with the fact that SummerSlam '90 outperformed Mania 7 on PPV by a substantial margin (sorry JT, but Mania 7 was the *lowest* grossing Mania to date, not the highest). Now, the Rumble itself actually did very good numbers by the rather low standards set by the '89-'90 shows, so the whole distastefulness of putting Slaughter in a PPV main event mere days after war breaks out could probably have been a footnote in history...but when they doubled down and actually put the title on him, shit hit the fan and not in a good way. Maybe Warrior-Hogan doesn't keep the WWF in the Coliseum either, but they went with a main event that couldn't even sell out the LA Sports Arena and pissed off a bunch of people in the process who weren't shy about publicly saying so (a planned celebrity "get" in Bob Costas, as well as Jesse Ventura), all for a 2.8 buyrate after a 4.5 the previous year. The bloom was off the rose as far as Vince being a genius impresario, and his public reinvention as a cynical sleaze merchant would not help with even more serious accusations to come.

It was an issue with Flair in the '80s, too. Part of that was Flair himself, part of that was Dusty, but people operating in JCP at the time failed to understand the difference as well and still do to this day.

NWA champion model fetishization, with everyone missing the fact that the NWA champion model worked a hell of a lot better when the champ came to your territory once or twice a year instead of being on TV every week, and nowadays on top of it, wrestling every week.

On Cornette's Facebook group some months ago, someone suggested to Last that Cornette review something like WrestleMania III--something from a more classic time period but still outside of his wheelhouse. He seemed open to the idea. I think that would make for a fascinating show.

That would be quite the scientific discovery since to my knowledge there's been no known cases of re-infection, just stories of dying viruses still triggering false-positive tests. Did Kayla actually test positive twice or was she one of many people I know who just "know" they had it in the first 3 months of the year because they had a bad cold or flu but didn't actually get tested? (Partially because it was almost impossible to do.)

That crowd is definitely not impressed with ol' Fred's temper tantrum, as I recall. IIRC Kitao had already done one job to Tenta and was extra-pissed at having to do another one.

Yep. Gone. He made two more Tweets doubling down on it that I didn't save, about "I SAID I wasn't blaming victims, you dumbasses!" sort of in the tone of that guy in Office Space screaming about how he had people skills.