MikeCampbell

He's already been outed as being from NYC.

Most of Puder's name value stems from the fact that Angle couldn't shut up about him. I stopped listening to Kurt long ago, so maybe he's finally gotten off the topic.

I'm actually thinking the opposite, they need to scale themselves back a bit. They're getting to be like SMW. Too small to be big, too big to be small. Being on TV would mean probably paying for a timeslot. And either running more shows, or doing what ECW and the territories did, and tape like a month of TV shows at regular shows. But by doing that, what incentive does the average fan have to spend the $$$ on DVDs when he can see everything on TV?

So the WON is reporting that ROH is starting to scale back on the spending. Puder is already done with them for now, they'll be cutting down on the amount of wrestlers they fly in, and the amount of guys they're booking. I'm honestly not surprised at all, between the trips to England, Japan, and the two shows on the West Coast, there's no way they could have hoped to break even. Nto to mention that while the PPV venture was low risk, it was also very low reward. Especially given ROH's tendency to completely rely on word of mouth.

OK, what exactly is Dave's criteria for a rookie? Unless Eric Stevens is different from Erick Stevens in ROH, FIP, etc. Then the 2007 Rookie of the year has been wrestling since 2004.

Shelton won underrated, and Sapolsky won best booker. Who are you going to hurt, Bix?

Funny, I was just watching the WWE World Class DVD, and when this subject comes up, pretty much everyone interviewed (except Kevin) talk about this as a big sign of the promotion's downfall, and lay the blame on Ken Mantell. Kevin claims that it wasn't supposed to be a heart attack angle, but that the fans came up with that themselves and it just started spreading.

I got the three-disc Best of RAW 15th Anniversary DVD set for my birthday along with the World Class DVD. The match lists for the RAW set look great. But does anyone know if the matches/angles are shown in full? I'm swimming in DVDs at the moment, and with work, wedding stuff, and all the family stuff over the holidays, who knows when I'll get to sit down with them.

Someone, I'm thinking Bix, said it best: One thing a lot of people online don't get is that you can criticise something, a lot, and still like it.

I sort of get what RE is trying to say, although Loss, tomk, and FH all have good counterpoints. You certainly can't limit *all* pro wrestling to being an exhibition form of MMA, but stuff like UWFi could certainly fit that bill.

'You don't need music to wrestle. You need balls, big ones!' - From the movie Bodyslam

I sort of see how Vince could think he was backed into a corner. If Bret is still on WWF TV with the title, especially at a taped show, and Bischoff goes on a live Nitro and announces that WCW has signed Hart, the WWF is basically screwed.

SSS has partial results for the time frame you're looking for.

I just picked this up the other day, and finished it off in two days. It's not bad, but it reminds me of a cross between Flair's and Rock's books. It's really condensed and abridged like Flair's, and like Rock's he doesn't really have a whole lot to say because he's not had much of a career. He's got some good stories, but he more or less just rushed through his childhood and pre-wrestling days. The line about him having a 3-way while his wife couldn't vaccum may have been removed, I don't recall seeing it in the book, and I was especially looking for it when he mentioned her cancer, and his various cheating exploits. The 'fight' with Booker T was totally dodged, he just made a mention of him not showing him respect and that Booker had earned his respect and that was that. Funilly enough, he also mentions that it was his dream to have a Hell In A Cell match with UT.

Flair, Arn, Tully, Ole, and J.J?

Well TNA runs in the south, and ROH runs in the northeast, are you saying TNA > ROH in those departments?

Better in what sense? Matches? Angles? Promos? MOVEZ~!?

No love for Gorilla? 'Give me a break!' Actually I agree for the most part. Lust the other night I was watching an old Coliseum tape with a match between Jake Roberts and Scotty McGhee and somehow Monsoon and Ladd got talking about Migeul Perez and how his son started wrestling, and I sat there asking myself how they got onto that topic and what the point of it was.

What I find to be both funny and stupid at the same time, is that everyone was giving props to the WWE for actually going through and making the violations public, especially to a young guy they seemed to have hopes for. And now with the truth coming out, they look just as bad as ever for basically screwing out with the policy so they could make themselves look good to the media.

I've been reviewing Vengeance 2003, and I was totally taken by surprise by Cena/Undertaker. I could have done without them disrespecting the FU, but aside from that, the match seemed to be exactly what it should have been, judging by the storyline, the young punk needing a lesson in respect, but also earning some of his own along the way. The more of these earlier Cena matches I see, the more I agree with Loss about the Cena backlash being all about his character, and not his wrestling. Not that Cena was a great wrestler here, but he was more than up to the task. I saw the Word Life DVD a few weeks back at FYE, and I'm wishing I picked it up to see how good their SD rematch is.

And I'm bumping this back up. I was watching the Jeff Hardy match from RAW Monday night (which I thought was damn fine) and I suddenly thought of something: Aside from the history of attitude issues. Are Randy Orton and John Cena really that different? I don't mean they're exact equals (I'd put Cena over Orton), but when I got to really thinking, I found lots of similarities. They both had good runs in OVW before being called up in 2002. They both were groomed for greatness upon their call-ups. They both take lots of flak for their lack of MOVEZ! Yet both have been part of some damn good matches. They've both taken flak for their finisher, but they're two of the most over and protected finishers in the WWE today.

The funny part (to me anyway) was that it wasn't even anything I started. Someone else started a thread about the ass-sucking wonder that was Misawa/Marufuji and wondering if that's the sort of performance they could expect out of Misawa, and it just sort of snowballed from there.