Cox

I think Mero's main problem amonst his peers was that they perceived his best ability to be getting paid extremely well, while being a solid, yet replaceable mid card hand. I think Mick Foley, in particular, resented that he and Mero were making the same money, despite Foley believing himself to be a good deal better than Mero, which is something that was only made worse when Mero got a better contract jumping from WCW to WWF during the start of the Monday Night Wars, whereas Foley came in at a much lower guarantee coming from IWA/ECW. I don't think it should be held against Mero that he was much smarter than a lot of his peers at getting fat contracts, but I do think that has a lot to do with his bad reputation amongst fellow wrestlers. Amongst fans, I think his career ending the way it did makes him easy to forget. He was a solid worker for sure, but he was injured near the end of 1996/beginning of 1997, and by the time he came back, his career wound up being eclipsed by Sable to such a degree that he never really recovered. I always found it interesting that Mero never found his way back to WCW after his WWF career fizzled out. I can understand Bischoff having bad feelings over what happened in 1996, but with all of the other regimes that were in place around that time, it's odd that at least one of them didn't find a spot for Mero.

I think it was originally replaced so they could use a track from his new album as his entrance music to help sales, but it was never changed back. Maybe they felt his old music was too mid-card for some reason?

That sure makes it sound like he's, in fact, not a decent guy and all too willing to pass the buck when something clearly isn't going as envisioned to me.

I don't know what happened to as I know I had them on my list at one point, but they must have fallen off accidentally while I added the data. They have been added to the quiz.

So I was bored at work last week and decided to make a Sporcle quiz of the wrestlers who only competed at one Wrestlemania, or as I like to put it, "148 wrestlers who had better WWE careers than Lance Storm." If you have some free time, give it a shot and post how many wrestlers you were able to name in the responses below (but try not to name any answers if you can). I think naming all 148 is damned near impossible, since it features dudes like the football players at WM2 and various other celebrities, but maybe I'm wrong. http://www.sporcle.com/games/cwilcox813/one-and-done-wrestlemania/

And he doesn't look a day under 165.

It really is remarkable how lopsided the babyface side was in WWE from April to August 1995. The babyface side has Diesel, Shawn, Bret, Bigelow, Luger, Bulldog, Ramon, and Undertaker. The top heels were Sid, Mabel, Owen, Yokozuna, Lawler (and later Isaac Yankem), and Hakushi (who turned face in the fall). I mean shit, Tatanka got a PPV main event during this time period! They couldn't leave either Shawn or Bigelow as a heel? Shawn turning at the same time completely took the wind out of the sails of the Bigelow turn. And I know he wasn't under contract, but why not try going back with Luger as a heel? Luger as a heel might have been fresh after his babyface turn failed to set the world on fire two years previously. It's really odd booking, that the babyface side would be so stacked with almost no heels who could actually work with these guys. The last thing they needed post-Mania was more babyfaces.

Just guessing, but maybe Batista requested something in his contract that said he had to headline Wrestlemania, similar to Kiss demanding that the Kiss Demon had to wrestle in a main event match?

Kris, Does any of that peach state exist? I love the idea of Scott and Steve Armstrong as heels going up against their dad. This was supposed to happen in Smoky Mountain, with Cornette managing the Armstrongs, but Steve took a job with All Japan, and Scott went to WCW as enhancement talent, so it never happened. One of my biggest regrets with SMW, as this surely would have been awesome, and the resulting Armstrongs/Rock 'n' Rolls matches would have been really great.

His most recent babyface run? The fans sure as hell didn't want to give him the standing ovation after the Brock match that it was obvious he was supposed to get. This could also be because he's a terrible babyface, and not nearly as beloved as many other older generation WWE stars would be in this same position.

Didn't the Raw when he "bought" the show also spike the ratings? Wasn't that the commercial-free Raw?

In other words, they didn't offer him a contract.

It's easy for Batista to move numbers when he hasn't been around week to week (or at all, really) in many years. What will the numbers with Batista look like after he's been around 4-5 weeks? I understand that once Batista's return drew a huge number that it meant that WWE was going to lock into their Wrestlemania plans, Daniel Bryan be damned, but using that as their primary reason to continue Batista's push without a larger sample size just shows confirmation bias on their end.

Which is the shit match, Punk/HHH? I don't know if a motivated Punk can make HHH good or even interesting, and we're pretty fuckin' far from having a motivated Punk these days.

TNA won Worst Promotion in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards this past year for the seventh year in a row, with Impact winning Worst Wrestling TV Show for the sixth time in seven years (their streak of five straight years was broken last year when they inexplicably won Best TV Show for some reason). In addition, Aces and 8's won Worst Gimmick for the second year in a row, and Tazz won Worst Announcer. At this point, they are just padding their stats as Worst Promotion in History.

He does bitch and moan about his Dallas stint a lot in the MX book. It would not surprise me if his split with WCCW was not amicable. But you're right, he did seem to leave Watts amicably.

Has Jim Cornette ever had an amicable split with anybody, ever? I am being completely serious here.

Sold.

I love Fuller's promos too, but he was in Smoky Mountain for a few months. It's hard to compare his promos to guys like Cornette, Morton, Smothers, Dirty White Boy, etc, who were being asked to carry the promotion for years at a time.

On the contrary, I'd say if Honky Tonk Man has been around in the past year, that probably means his bridge is freshly burnt.

There were some coworkers talking about wrestling yesterday, and one of them was surprised every time he heard a wrestler was alive, which says something fairly sad about the state of affairs in wrestling these days. "Really, Goldust is still alive? Wow!"

As much as I love Jimmy Golden and as much as this board loves Jimmy Golden, I think the ECW Arena crowd would have shit all over Bunkhouse Buck. And a lot of hardcore fans still thought Dustin was a product of nepotism in 1994. It might have made for a better match, but the crowd would not have given it a chance.

-Finish the 1990 Yearbook That's it for me. Anything else would be gravy.

What made you change your mind about Bryan at #3?